The King's Hall - Redigging the Wells of Abraham： The Influence of Ancient Truths in Rebuilding Christendom

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Brian here with a big announcement from New Christendom Press.

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00:00:35.820 This episode of the King's Hall Podcast is brought to you by

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00:00:49.820 And Isaac departed thence and pitched his tent in the Valley of Gerar and dwelt there.

00:00:54.420 And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father.

00:01:00.800 For the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham,

00:01:03.900 and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them.

00:01:07.940 Genesis 26, 17 and 18.

00:01:11.340 In a sermon about this passage, the great 20th century preacher Martin Lloyd-Jones

00:01:15.860 spelled out the need for revival and reformation in the church.

00:01:20.480 Swallowed up by humanism, psychology, worldly philosophy, and evolutionary theory,

00:01:25.180 the church had lost the life-giving water of the preached Word of God.

00:01:28.880 As a result, the church had grown more impotent than ever.

00:01:32.380 The decline of the church meant the decline of Christendom.

00:01:35.440 And of course, Lloyd-Jones had pastored in London through the bombings of World War II

00:01:39.340 and the dying hours of the British Empire as the last great bastion of Christendom

00:01:43.940 breathed its last and sank into the pages of history.

00:01:47.720 His church was struck by German air raids.

00:01:50.440 Worse than bombings, however, Lloyd-Jones recognized the cancerous, humanistic teachings

00:01:55.560 that had eroded people's faith in the historic church.

00:01:59.220 A dark spell lay over the West.

00:02:01.740 It wasn't simply that enemies lobbed bombs from the skies.

00:02:05.580 Much more significant was the cancerous rot destroying the church from within.

00:02:10.220 What was to be done?

00:02:12.100 Was all hope truly lost?

00:02:14.400 Like Isaac, Lloyd-Jones said the key was going back to the past and re-digging the wells of Abraham.

00:02:20.260 While the church was obsessed in his time, just as much as our own,

00:02:23.540 with trying to find novel solutions from psychology or business or the entertainment industry,

00:02:29.440 Lloyd-Jones said the solutions to the church's problems were to be found

00:02:32.960 in the careful study of the scriptures in church history.

00:02:36.120 Every time you find a great period of reformation and restoration in church and civilization,

00:02:41.320 you will also find a rediscovery of ancient truths.

00:02:45.680 Lloyd-Jones writes,

00:02:47.180 I would like to lay it down as a principle that there is great value in reading church history in a study of the past,

00:02:52.880 and nothing surely is more important for us at this present time than to read the history of the past and to discover its message.

00:03:00.920 I suggest that we should do so for the very reasons which impelled Isaac to dig again the wells which they had dug in the days of Abraham, his father.

00:03:08.840 It is very foolish to ignore the past.

00:03:12.120 The man who does ignore it and assumes that our problems are quite new

00:03:15.540 and that therefore the past has nothing at all to teach us

00:03:18.660 is a man who is not only grossly ignorant of the scriptures,

00:03:22.580 he is equally ignorant of some of the greatest lessons of secular history.

00:03:26.940 Yet I think you will agree that is the mentality that is governing the outlook

00:03:30.780 of the vast majority at the present time.

00:03:33.320 The basic assumption is that our problems are new, that they are quite unique,

00:03:37.560 and that the church and the world have never been confronted by such problems before.

00:03:42.860 Every time you get one of these great and glorious and mighty periods of reformation and revival,

00:03:48.220 you will find that in every instance, it seems to be a returning to something that the church had obtained before.

00:03:54.960 Every time the church has been revived, she is going back to something that had happened before,

00:04:00.100 rediscovering and finding this ancient supply.

00:04:03.260 There's nothing I know of that is more striking in the history of the church than that principle, end quote.

00:04:08.980 In season one of the King's Hall podcast, we took the axe to many of the temples to false idols that have been erected within the walls of the church.

00:04:17.360 Revivalism and decisionism, the big, fast, and famous growth model, whiteness and proxy wars, the plastic sword of Christless conservatism, among others.

00:04:26.600 In Season 2, we've talked at length about fatherhood and its central importance in restoring Christendom from the smallest, most atomic foundations.

00:04:34.720 But now we're making a transition from fatherhood to a new subject matter in Season 3,

00:04:39.860 in which we want to take an historical look at the first Christendom and ask a pivotal set of questions.

00:04:45.660 What was it, in all its glory?

00:04:48.100 What are the key components that made it what it was?

00:04:51.080 From the ecclesiastical to the civil to the military spheres?

00:04:54.980 What were its best moments, high watermarks, and greatest accomplishments?

00:04:59.540 Likewise, what were its failures and what led to its ultimate downfall?

00:05:03.940 How can we learn from this set of blueprints and start rebuilding the walls of Christendom 2.0?

00:05:09.340 Is everything we've been told about Christendom true?

00:05:12.100 Why go back in time?

00:05:13.580 Are we just LARPers?

00:05:14.620 Are we just living in fantasy land of knights and squires and kings and great conquests?

00:05:20.620 Not so fast.

00:05:22.160 In truth, as we'll see in this episode,

00:05:24.540 the work of Reformation always starts with understanding the great truths that have gone before us.

00:05:30.400 But after we study the blueprints, we start the necessary work of rebuilding one generation at a time.

00:05:36.260 In this transitional episode, before we move on to season three,

00:05:39.640 we want to focus for a moment on the ways in which fathers have to be the kind of men who, like Isaac,

00:05:45.520 start re-digging the wells of Abraham.

00:05:47.960 We have to go back and find the life-giving waters that once made Christianity a great

00:05:52.620 civilizing force.

00:05:54.200 We have to undo the work of our modern-day Philistines, who have blocked the wells of

00:05:58.300 church history.

00:05:59.500 They are those modern historians who have told us that Christendom wasn't great, that

00:06:04.080 it's really the source of all the evils we've known in world history.

00:06:08.200 Fathers must be, as it were, historians.

00:06:11.280 They must be the kind of historians who tell the right stories about our past, so that

00:06:16.100 we can remember the great works of God, the principles that guided the best of our kingly

00:06:20.720 lineage, and so that we can lay out blueprints for our sons to carry on the work of building

00:06:25.700 the next Christendom.

00:06:27.880 The King's Hall Podcast exists to make self-ruled men who rule well win the world.

00:06:36.740 Well, gentlemen, welcome to another episode of the King's Hall Podcast.

00:06:40.120 I'm joined by two men with the blood of kings running through their veins.

00:06:46.100 Specifically Charlemagne.

00:06:47.520 Specifically Charlemagne, the French-Canadian.

00:06:51.360 Brian Sauvé.

00:06:53.000 Welcome, welcome, welcome to this podcast episode.

00:06:56.480 Glad to have you, sir.

00:06:58.560 Brian actually didn't bring his harmonica.

00:07:01.780 Was I supposed to?

00:07:03.160 Praise God from whom on.

00:07:05.340 No, I have it already in the holder.

00:07:07.600 Like, I'm ready to go.

00:07:08.900 You're ready to go.

00:07:09.200 If you need it.

00:07:10.000 The headgear is on.

00:07:10.620 Here's the signal.

00:07:11.980 The sign of the cross.

00:07:13.060 That's the signal for the harmonica.

00:07:14.600 Deus volt.

00:07:15.260 Just do that, I run

00:07:17.040 I don't know if you guys knew this

00:07:18.820 But deus volt was originally used

00:07:20.820 In Latin to mean bring the harmonica

00:07:23.360 Yeah, it was later

00:07:24.660 Yeah, that's right

00:07:25.900 Because they're basically the same thing

00:07:27.180 Can we please, in the next crusade, not use a harmonica

00:07:30.460 If we're going to use an annoying instrument

00:07:31.940 Let's use the bagpipes

00:07:33.060 Actually, fair point

00:07:34.920 Bagpipes are way better

00:07:36.680 Speaking of way better, Dan Burkholder

00:07:38.760 Welcome to this episode of the podcast

00:07:40.800 I didn't say way better than anything

00:07:43.080 It was implied

00:07:44.360 Way better

00:07:45.260 I'll allow it.

00:07:45.900 Then me, Dan Burkholder.

00:07:48.060 Yes.

00:07:48.800 Hello.

00:07:49.200 Thanks for having me.

00:07:50.380 I don't know what you want me to say.

00:07:52.060 By the way, that cold open, I want to say props to Eric.

00:07:54.800 Eric wrote it.

00:07:55.580 It was great.

00:07:56.700 And Brian read it.

00:07:58.540 Impressive.

00:07:59.780 Impressive reading.

00:08:00.840 Thank you.

00:08:01.480 He did do a wonderful job.

00:08:02.740 It's interesting because when I was writing it, I was writing it in my best Brian voice.

00:08:07.980 Man, I felt it.

00:08:09.780 Because I was like, what would Brian say here?

00:08:11.680 I felt it, Eric.

00:08:12.840 It flowed right off the tongue.

00:08:14.540 It was just – it stirred me up, to be quite frank, thinking about the wells of Abraham, that those wicked Philistines had clogged up.

00:08:23.660 Just the way that the enemies of God, they always take that which is useful and good and supporting of life, and then they just ruin it.

00:08:33.420 They bring death.

00:08:34.440 Yeah, and so when we go on the next crusade against the modern-day Philistines, I want bagpipes and Timmy Trumpet.

00:08:40.900 And Timmy Trumpet.

00:08:42.860 I think we can do both.

00:08:43.720 Cue up the Timmy trumpet for season two – or season three, excuse me.

00:08:47.220 Season three, man.

00:08:48.220 So we are – gentlemen, we are ending season two on fatherhood.

00:08:52.200 This has been pivotal.

00:08:53.500 Hopefully it's been really helpful for the listeners.

00:08:55.820 But we've been doing a lot of research in preparation for season three.

00:08:59.080 We've been re-digging the wells of Abraham.

00:09:00.740 We're going back to Christendom and church history and figuring out all these questions that we described.

00:09:04.940 What is it?

00:09:06.000 What were its high watermarks?

00:09:07.240 All that.

00:09:08.160 But I just want to ask you guys.

00:09:09.600 I know we've all been doing a lot of reading.

00:09:11.720 We're all super excited, I think, about a number of things.

00:09:14.840 But I want to ask each of you, what has been so exciting in that research process so far

00:09:20.160 as you've looked back into these old wells of ancient truths?

00:09:25.660 Man, what has been the most exciting?

00:09:27.460 Oh, I would say one of the things that people probably notice, and by probably, I mean definitely

00:09:34.160 notice, especially if you look at, uh, pastor survey or pastor cons Twitter is that it seems

00:09:40.300 like maybe some of their tweets are a little bit, um, out of the zeitgeist, you know, like

00:09:46.880 apart from them, yeah, one or two of them, maybe, maybe like just outside.

00:09:51.600 Uh, and there are actually reasons for that.

00:09:54.320 One of the things that has been exciting to me is, is you go back to the old paths of

00:09:59.740 the first Christendom and you see the culture that was, I mean, cultivated because of worship

00:10:06.740 of God and the virtues that were embodied by nobility and by peasants alike is that you see

00:10:15.220 just a completely different culture outside of our zeitgeist. And it's really been interesting

00:10:21.160 having that form our thoughts and the way that we approach problems because it's so much easier.

00:10:28.780 I mean, this is what studying history does, and this is what Lloyd-Jones was saying, is that when you study history, you realize, oh, all of these problems, these have happened before.

00:10:38.140 This problem reminds me of this event, and this is how this king or this monk or this missionary or whomever the church addressed this issue.

00:10:47.820 And this is where it went wrong.

00:10:49.100 This is where it went right.

00:10:50.580 And things suddenly become a lot clearer.

00:10:52.540 And it's funny how as you look back at the old paths, all of a sudden you know your own time better.

00:10:58.780 That's a really interesting thing that happens.

00:11:01.140 You would think the opposite would be true, that you'd go back into the past and you would be disjointed from our present time and the present perspectives and the present problems that we have.

00:11:11.640 But the opposite is true.

00:11:13.280 You look back at the past and you suddenly can see clearer the current issues of our day and knowing the times better, which is a key to wisdom and a key to, I mean, wise action.

00:11:24.460 Yeah, and even with pressing issues like, say, Christian nationalism, you can go back and you can read like we're doing in the Pastors Guild even.

00:11:32.000 We're reading The City of God from Augustine.

00:11:34.920 And it's like, wait, people have actually answered these questions before.

00:11:38.140 And so before we leap off and try to start something, quote, novel and new, which is perhaps the worst thing of all to do, we should know what our forefathers taught.

00:11:46.120 And by the way, they built amazing things over a thousand years based on something like The City of God.

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00:15:14.640 Brian, curious your take. What is exciting you as we, I know you're reading The Sword and Scimitar.

00:15:20.480 I know you've been reading a lot of stuff. We've been having good conversations, but what is,

00:15:24.160 what is getting the blood going in your kingly veins? Well, you know, Eric, it's been really in

00:15:29.780 two directions that I've been stirred. And one is in just pure rage. Oh, wow. Okay. I like where

00:15:38.800 this is going. The number of times that maybe 10, 1030 at night, I roll over and I look at Lexi

00:15:45.180 and I'm like, Islam is evil. Many, many times. You'll text us a lot of times. I'm like, you guys,

00:15:52.180 Islam is evil. Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity. So be honest. How do you feel?

00:15:59.780 It is a religion of scum.

00:16:02.240 It is demonic, and it urges giving way to every basest passion of the flesh of man, and it valorizes all of the basest passions of men.

00:16:14.620 So I've been stirred up in just absolute fire at the – just offense at the sacrilegious and wicked usurpation of Christian lands by the Mohammedans.

00:16:32.780 How do you actually feel about it though?

00:16:34.380 You know –

00:16:35.040 I can attest that this is true because at random times during the day, Brian will just scream out,

00:16:40.780 Deus Walsh!

00:16:42.140 so that's the first direction is that reliving these battles these key battles but in the in

00:16:50.560 the face of that i've said quite a bit that anger is one of those um emotions that you have to

00:16:56.760 quickly channel to righteous action or it turns into something toxic and um destructive something

00:17:02.760 that will burn you it will burn you right in in it must be um channeled righteously and and the

00:17:10.080 way that I've kind of, I feel like at least tried to do that is in also being encouraged by the

00:17:18.980 great heroes of the first Christendom, like just inspired by the courage. And also then angry again

00:17:27.340 at the way that our modern day has treated them and slandered them, base slander, and that

00:17:34.100 Christians have gone along with it. So that's been an overwhelming urge, I guess, as well along

00:17:41.780 the way. I have been struck by how much more complicated history always is when you get down

00:17:48.280 into the weeds of it than any one narrative that one might want to tell in history. But that there's

00:17:56.220 a beauty and a glory there in seeing the way that God providentially ordered his story that he's

00:18:01.060 telling through his church in all of the black portions and the glories. So there's just been a

00:18:07.280 lot. It's stirred me up quite a bit more than I expected that it would. Yeah, I can totally

00:18:11.920 attest to that. I've definitely been stirred up by some of the great heroes that people

00:18:15.980 maybe wouldn't even suspect, like Vlad the Impaler has been a personal favorite.

00:18:21.000 Didn't see that coming. Somebody sent me a meme.

00:18:23.300 Oh my word.

00:18:23.860 Oh no, here we go.

00:18:24.880 Here we go.

00:18:25.740 The top meme said, good fences make good neighbors.

00:18:29.440 Oh no.

00:18:30.100 And then it said, bad neighbors make good fences.

00:18:33.160 Oh, no.

00:18:33.820 And it showed Vlad with the force to the impaled.

00:18:37.300 The number of times that Eric has been like, you know, Vlad the Impaler.

00:18:41.080 And then we're like, just buckle up.

00:18:43.600 And please don't tweet this.

00:18:45.200 Please don't tweet this.

00:18:47.040 Because we don't want to talk about it on our podcast publicly.

00:18:48.660 We don't want to steal the thunder.

00:18:50.160 Let's do it on our podcast.

00:18:51.560 That's right.

00:18:52.080 Vlad the Chad.

00:18:53.420 Vlad the Impaler.

00:18:55.080 Maybe some questionable actions.

00:18:57.200 I can't think of one.

00:18:58.280 Look, okay.

00:18:59.700 This is all satire.

00:19:01.160 This is all...

00:19:02.120 For our handlers, for our fed handlers, I just want you to know this entire podcast is satire.

00:19:07.720 It's a joke, okay?

00:19:09.160 And in our whole lives, just one big long satire.

00:19:12.840 Sometimes it feels like it's a big joke.

00:19:14.960 Yes.

00:19:15.240 Because if you don't laugh, you cry.

00:19:17.200 So true, King.

00:19:18.040 So besides Vlad the Impaler, Vlad Dracula, if you will, being a great Christian king,

00:19:24.360 The other thing I would say that I'm excited for for this season is not only reading, like, Raymond Ibrahim on The Sword and the Scimitar.

00:19:31.000 Yeah.

00:19:31.520 And also The Defenders of the West, of which he speaks of Vlad.

00:19:34.940 But we're also going to have him on the show.

00:19:37.180 Yeah.

00:19:37.360 So we've got a lot of great historical evidence and discussion with actual historians for this season.

00:19:45.920 A lot of that will be on Patreon, especially if you're a Patreon member.

00:19:50.180 It's worth noting that we'll have a lot of these ad-free on Patreon early.

00:19:54.180 Full interviews.

00:19:55.080 So a lot of these are actually already done.

00:19:56.780 You'll get the full interview before anybody else will.

00:19:59.200 Some will drop during or after the season.

00:20:03.060 Some of them will just be woven in maybe to episodes.

00:20:05.540 You won't even ever hear the full interview unless you're a patron.

00:20:07.820 Exactly.

00:20:08.220 So some of the other guys that we have, Glenn Sunshine, we've already talked to him.

00:20:12.420 That was amazing.

00:20:14.220 Dr. Joe Rigney, phenomenal interview with him.

00:20:17.280 we've got dr george grant coming up uh this week uh we are recording with dr ben merkel we're

00:20:23.060 going to be talking about king alfred one of dan's favorites oh so i think this is going to be just a

00:20:28.880 meaty wonderful uh season i'm really excited i hope it goes on for one to 200 episodes i'm going

00:20:34.900 to be honest because there's a new thing it's just our new thing season three ad infinitum

00:20:40.200 yeah we are not limiting the scope or number of episodes in season three no uh gentlemen another

00:20:45.960 a question I want to ask you from the cold open. I was really intrigued by this. Martin Lloyd

00:20:50.740 Jones said this. He said, nothing surely is more important for us at this present time

00:20:54.960 than to read the history of the past and to discover its message. That's the end of the

00:21:00.680 quote. Do you guys think this is true? And why is church history so important for present works

00:21:05.560 of restoration and reformation? Why start here? Well, one reason I think that wherever you find

00:21:13.240 the ills within the church, which in the camp, you will often be able to trace them very quickly

00:21:18.600 to a rootlessness, to a historical rootlessness, where a lot of our, you know, even what we talked

00:21:25.560 about in season one, the errors of megachurchianity. And these are often errors that are made where if

00:21:32.500 you had just asked one question, you would have been saved from all of them. And that question

00:21:36.220 being, has anybody else in the previous 19 centuries of Christian history thought or

00:21:42.060 practice the way that I am currently considering thinking and practicing? And if the answer is no,

00:21:48.760 it doesn't necessarily by brute, you know, deductive argument mean that you're wrong,

00:21:54.960 but it does mean that you should really have an epistemic humility and pause and be able to

00:22:01.180 articulate the position of the church, how it developed through history, what were the practices

00:22:05.680 of my forefathers, and why am I thinking about departing here? Is there wisdom? And I think of

00:22:11.600 so many issues in the church today that could be rectified had we merely stopped and either said,

00:22:18.800 is what I'm about to do departing in error? And that's why nobody thought this way. Or have I

00:22:23.920 even wandered down a few miles of error and I need to go back in history and find the point where we

00:22:28.380 departed and go back there. And that's often what we have to do. Well, I think one of the issues is

00:22:34.520 that your question, like, hey, has anybody done this previous 1900 years, is actually meaningless

00:22:39.660 to the ignorant because they don't even know because and you addressed this earlier when

00:22:43.760 people try to broad brush history into a certain narrative then uh you know to essentially say

00:22:49.180 uh previous 1900 years of church history was just wrong it's actually like we've talked about this

00:22:55.280 before with dispensationalism and and some other modern ideas of christianity modern theologies

00:23:01.740 is that everybody was wrong before me it is kind of the default position whether it's explicitly

00:23:09.260 said, it's assumed. And so it is really important to go back to the roots of, of historic Christianity

00:23:16.100 and to see like, because there's another thing too, is that it's assumed that the first century

00:23:22.020 church had everything perfect. And then there was a whole dark age, you know, after maybe like,

00:23:28.160 you know, post Constantine, Constantine and afterwards that was just rediscovered recently,

00:23:32.960 which again is a very Mormon ideal. Uh, so anyway, uh, it's really, it is really important to go back

00:23:38.900 and not be ignorant of how the church exercised their authority

00:23:43.160 and their teaching and the culture and everything like that.

00:23:46.360 Actually, a book I would recommend to you is Anthony Esalen's book,

00:23:51.840 A Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization.

00:23:54.540 It's a really good broad overview of the history of Western Civilization.

00:23:59.540 Obviously, it's in the title, but he goes in depth specifically in the Middle Ages

00:24:05.040 and talks about how it was actually one of the greatest times of human flourishing in human

00:24:12.160 existence and talks about that. I think that would be really helpful if you have just a general

00:24:18.280 ignorance about church history. Even one thing that I learned, this is so obvious now that I

00:24:24.960 kind of like have read this sentence, but even the fact that we call it the West and the fact

00:24:32.160 that we identify Christianity with the West, the reason that we do that is because the West is all

00:24:39.440 that remained unconquered after the scourge of the Mohammedans went through and conquered vast

00:24:44.940 swaths of Christian land and territory that had been ruled Christianly for centuries. So even now

00:24:51.200 I'm like, the history of the West, I mean, I also want to talk about the East. And there's all these

00:24:57.800 veins of history that were just, like you said, it's not that a lot of Christians are

00:25:03.720 rejecting their history. It's that they don't even know them. There was so much that happened

00:25:08.440 in the East that I was simply ignorant of. And I know now, like the more you learn, the more you

00:25:14.240 know that you don't know. So there's just a whole, like there's this great body of history

00:25:20.180 of our forefathers that has so much to teach us today. And it's not only that the modern church

00:25:27.280 has rejected it. It's that they've rejected it by not even learning it. And that is even worse.

00:25:33.100 Well, and another thing that it does when you go back to history and discover the past

00:25:39.500 for the present time is that you realize that there is nothing new under the sun.

00:25:45.980 You think, like Lloyd-Jones had said, that our problems are new. Like, maybe it's a different

00:25:51.860 flavor, slightly different flavor, but sexual immorality coming into the church, the LGBTQ

00:25:58.080 stuff, uh, women usurping their roles, um, you know, men being effeminate and, and disregarding

00:26:04.900 their authority as church fathers and pastors. And this is old, this is old, old stuff. I mean,

00:26:10.900 this has happened so many different times and you know what, you know, what's interesting is

00:26:14.540 there's often a uniting force throughout the cycle of church history in, you know, in history

00:26:19.560 in church history, is that the church would fall into licentiousness, into sexual immorality,

00:26:24.060 into bad teaching, and somebody would attack. And all of a sudden, you have a united West.

00:26:30.300 You have a united England. You have these united nations.

00:26:35.660 All of a sudden, the Western church is sending troops to the eastern city of Constantinople.

00:26:41.380 Yeah, because of the persecution of Christians and things like that. Yeah. And so this is

00:26:46.080 this is something that's happened before. And so what, another thing that it does is it actually

00:26:51.340 gives you hope. It gives you hope because Christ is faithful. He is faithful to his church. He's

00:26:56.520 faithful to his body. Uh, I mean, you might have some crazy, you know, elimination, you know,

00:27:02.480 survivalists, I don't know, bunker Christianity idea. Like, well, no, it's inevitable that

00:27:06.980 everybody dies and that Christ comes back to pretty much no Christians. I think that's baloney.

00:27:12.460 And you can look at history and see that that's absolutely not true.

00:27:15.180 There have been worse times than we live in now.

00:27:17.160 And things have turned out amazing for the church.

00:27:21.060 It just takes a few hundred years usually.

00:27:23.280 Yeah, it's really interesting.

00:27:24.120 I was thinking of, you know, on knowing church history.

00:27:27.960 And we talked about adoption and fatherhood in the last episode.

00:27:32.140 But one of our listeners, dear listeners, one of the kings in the king's hall had sent us a thing saying, yeah, what you guys are talking about, two tiers of Christianity, like super Christians versus others.

00:27:42.460 He said, this is actually an old doctrine of Keswickian theology.

00:27:46.140 So Dan and I were unpacking that in the Pugilist on the Hardman podcast.

00:27:50.640 But it was just a good point that if you understand the history of a doctrine, you see this isn't actually new at all.

00:27:58.260 And then you can go back and then refute it based on, well, how did –

00:28:02.380 Or it's already been refuted.

00:28:03.700 It's already been refuted.

00:28:04.980 Someone – the way I learned first about Keswickian theology is somebody accused me of doing it.

00:28:10.020 by saying that there was such thing as a better way of doing something than not.

00:28:14.640 Oh, interesting.

00:28:15.200 And they were like, so what you're saying is there's like a higher tier of Christians.

00:28:18.560 And I was like, no, no, no.

00:28:19.500 Tell me where I lose you.

00:28:21.040 It'd be better to do a better job at some things, and that's possible.

00:28:26.080 It's called sanctification.

00:28:27.200 It's called sanctification.

00:28:28.440 And just learning skills.

00:28:30.080 Yeah.

00:28:30.320 But yes, to your point.

00:28:31.320 Yeah, super helpful.

00:28:32.580 Gentlemen, it seems like one of the things that I've seen,

00:28:35.260 And a lot of people, as Brian and I have been posting on Twitter about these ideas of Christendom, there's been a lot of pushback from people who have been catechized and discipled by the current zeitgeist and the current zeitgeist historians.

00:28:48.620 But the people are retarded.

00:28:51.540 But one of the charges I think could be a real charge that some of these people have said, which is, are you guys just LARPing, right?

00:28:58.180 Are we just trying to LARP back to an old age, again, of knights and roundtables and stuff like this?

00:29:04.100 And then I guess a follow-up to that is, so are we LARPers?

00:29:07.960 And then what would make us not LARPers?

00:29:11.540 That's a good question.

00:29:12.680 Are we LARPers?

00:29:13.600 This is one of my favorite tactics of the Sanbalat discouragers is to just look at anybody doing anything and say, well, because you haven't achieved what took a civilization or a people several hundred years to achieve, you're just LARPing.

00:29:30.400 And I'm like, well, no, no, no, no.

00:29:32.320 we're actually just building on our own scale.

00:29:35.280 Yeah, look at that wall.

00:29:36.440 A fox will climb on it and it'll knock it down.

00:29:39.760 LARPer.

00:29:40.360 Because you haven't built a cathedral that,

00:29:42.640 you guys know some of the cathedrals,

00:29:44.060 well, you guys know.

00:29:45.140 Some of them were started in the 12th century,

00:29:47.140 weren't finished till the Civil War, okay?

00:29:50.400 But if you went and just told the people building them,

00:29:53.080 you guys are just flipping LARPers.

00:29:54.900 Like, where's the roof on this thing?

00:29:56.540 It's like, look, things take time,

00:29:59.260 And believe it or not, we are three dudes.

00:30:03.200 We can't single-handedly rebuild Christendom.

00:30:06.380 But here's the neat part.

00:30:08.200 You can participate in it as three guys and as a guy and as a family.

00:30:12.560 And with your limited little piddling vapor of a life, you really can use that for the glory of Christ.

00:30:19.520 Don't let anybody discourage you with this.

00:30:21.560 What are you doing?

00:30:22.360 What are you up to?

00:30:23.340 Like you're just tweeting at people who are trying to do stuff.

00:30:25.360 in the election with ohio ratifying abortion into their constitution yeah and it was like

00:30:30.180 christian nationalism for the win oh yeah yeah it's like the whole and moscow idaho can't even

00:30:34.720 christianize a city how are they gonna you know make america a christian i'm like you guys

00:30:39.760 they've been at it for a couple decades believe it or not that's not that long and look at what

00:30:45.080 they've done in that couple of decades imagine it like what if what if history actually was longer

00:30:51.180 than 16 minutes what what if history didn't play out in 21 minute episodes of a sitcom

00:30:56.380 well let me ask you this brian because i was thinking about this the other day uh i was

00:31:01.680 driving to a friend's house and i passed a park and in the park were all these people dressed as

00:31:06.820 knights and they they had sort of the like i don't know type 2 diabetes body type um you know

00:31:14.440 they were clearly not actually knights is my point here right i was there i don't know why

00:31:18.780 You don't have to, like, sub-tweet.

00:31:21.320 You can just tell me to my face.

00:31:22.220 Dan was there with his sword that has a Nordic name.

00:31:24.220 I have insulin.

00:31:25.360 Yeah.

00:31:25.820 So what?

00:31:26.760 But it seems like one of the things that would make LARPing LARPing is the fact that people aren't actually building anything.

00:31:34.100 Yeah.

00:31:34.340 So even in your answer, it seems like we are actually seeking to take these things and apply them and do real building.

00:31:41.560 Yeah.

00:31:41.700 I usually say to people, like, I don't actually say this, but I think.

00:31:45.160 Like Paul, when he says, you've driven me mad.

00:31:48.140 but i'm 32 and help start a school pastor a church do a fit like all these different things and it's

00:31:54.580 like what have you done 55 year old guys sitting on the internet just like telling people that

00:32:01.060 they're wasting their life like we're not just it would be totally fair to make that objection

00:32:06.200 if we podcasted about stuff that we didn't do but we are that would be larping a hundred percent

00:32:12.500 that would totally fair call me a larper and uh you know and i'll wear the badge if that's the

00:32:17.840 case, but things take time and they don't always work. Like we're post-millennialists. That doesn't

00:32:23.060 mean that we think everything's going to be fixed within a generation or two and that we can

00:32:27.220 guarantee it. God's telling a much more interesting story. You don't get the newspaper every day and

00:32:30.920 go like, oh, darn it. Christendom isn't here yet. We haven't finished the work. We haven't finished,

00:32:35.780 yeah. No, we're small. We're tiny little pinpricks on the timeline. No one's probably

00:32:41.560 going to remember most, the vast majority of anything we ever do or say, but it's infinitely

00:32:46.220 significant because we're doing it Coram Deo, we're doing it before God. You know what's LARPing

00:32:49.960 though, Eric? You know what's LARPing? Is refighting 500-year-old battles that are already

00:32:55.240 won while not doing anything about the battles today. So that's actually one thing I wanted to

00:32:58.780 ask you. And I'll tie this in. I'm going to ask both of you this question. One of the outflows of

00:33:04.880 Martin Lloyd-Jones' life, I believe with Ian Murray, was the starting of creating like the

00:33:11.100 Puritan paperbacks, Banner of Truth, because they wanted to revive the works of the Puritans,

00:33:15.500 which has been such a tremendous blessing to the church.

00:33:18.200 Yeah.

00:33:18.440 We're reading William Gooch.

00:33:19.680 Like, thank God that these things have been brought back into publication.

00:33:23.120 One of the problems I've heard about these types of reform camps, though, is exactly that.

00:33:28.860 Like, you want to wear the Luther shirt, but you wouldn't allow Luther to be in your church.

00:33:32.540 You won't tolerate anybody with a sharp tongue.

00:33:35.280 You won't tolerate anybody with a sharp sword who's actually going to use it.

00:33:39.200 So, Dan, does it seem like the reform camp really is?

00:33:44.400 I feel like there are a lot of guys calling us LARPers who are actually LARPing.

00:33:48.780 So I was going to tweet this.

00:33:50.640 I saved it for our listeners and this show.

00:33:53.900 Here's my hot take.

00:33:54.980 Do you think the reform camp?

00:33:56.080 I do.

00:33:56.800 Many of the reform camp is actually just LARPing.

00:33:59.680 Yeah.

00:33:59.960 I mean, well, you guys have already said it.

00:34:02.100 They're content to fight battles that have already been won.

00:34:06.340 And for some reason, it seems like they're – it's almost like stolen valor.

00:34:11.160 How do you mean?

00:34:12.280 Well, stolen valor.

00:34:12.920 So Josh Buisse and his wife go into some great cathedral in Europe wearing Luther shirts on Reformation Day.

00:34:21.900 It's not actually a fight, though.

00:34:23.240 It's not a fight.

00:34:24.160 They take selfies at the monuments of Christian forefathers they would have excommunicated.

00:34:28.280 Yes.

00:34:29.360 That's what it is.

00:34:30.240 They stand there and they take selfies at the monuments of Christian forefathers they would have excommunicated.

00:34:36.000 Samuel Rutherford, by the way, who wrote Lex Rex, was like he would probably be somewhere in the Christian nationalist camp.

00:34:42.140 I mean, yeah, Rutherford, all these, all these, it's to Stephen Wolf's point that what he's attempting to recover in his works are classical Christian political theology and theory.

00:34:55.360 And what we have today are people who have, they're basically, they're like five point Calvinists, you know, like the whole, I'm reformed because I'm a five point Calvinist.

00:35:04.700 They're five-point Calvinists that often without even realizing it have replaced the entire foundation of actual Reformed thought with something totally foreign to the history of Christian thinking.

00:35:15.680 And then they have the audacity to claim that they are the truly Reformed ones who are bulwarks standing against these dangerous and dark ideologies.

00:35:26.040 What is it? Dark alchemies of Christians within the Christian camp.

00:35:32.400 And I'm like, you guys, you guys, are you not, do you have no mirrors in your house?

00:35:38.240 Yeah, it actually reminds me, the passage we're referencing is Luke 11, 47, where Jesus

00:35:43.840 says, woe to you, for you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed.

00:35:48.200 So you are witnesses and you consent to the deeds of your fathers for they killed them

00:35:51.920 and you build their tombs.

00:35:53.440 So it's like this hypocrisy that's tied to history.

00:35:56.980 Dan, I want to ask you for our practical purposes, because I think we could be prone to this too as we go through, and people could, our listeners could.

00:36:06.680 Just to hammer this point home, what do you need to be doing to ensure that you're not some fake LARPer who is just appreciating some bygone era?

00:36:18.000 You're just, I just love Victorian England, or I just love this era.

00:36:22.220 How do you not just become a phony doing that?

00:36:24.800 Yeah. I mean, it starts with the basics. So Brian had said, you know, if we just did a podcast and weren't doing anything else, then we would be LARPers. So what is the distinction? Well, it's that, I mean, we could stop podcasts. This could be our last podcast. We could press the stop button on the recording and then go do our thing. And that would literally change nothing from our day to day other than we would have one less, you know, hour meeting that we talk into microphones.

00:36:52.420 Yeah. And it begins really with the small tasks of being a good father, being a good mother, discipling your kids.

00:37:02.720 It's really like living out the household codes.

00:37:05.060 The household codes. Yeah. Thinking about your generations, thinking about when you discipline your kids, you're disciplining your grandkids, thinking about your money in a way that's laying up an inheritance for your grandchildren.

00:37:16.520 thinking about the way that, you know, you interact with the church so that it'll be

00:37:20.640 a bulwark in the coming tide and flood of the cultural insanity, respecting those that are

00:37:27.760 in authority over you and submitting to them, making sure that you're, you're actually taking

00:37:32.800 care of your wife and loving her as Christ loves the church and for ladies to respect their

00:37:37.620 husbands. And I mean, it's really ordinary things. Even John Lovell, normie guy, war poet society,

00:37:44.960 Seems like a great guy.

00:37:46.140 It's really funny that John Lovell is normie to us.

00:37:48.820 Like, that's how far right we are.

00:37:50.560 The guy that like 99% of society would be like, look at that far right Christian terrorist.

00:37:55.600 And we're like, I mean, he's kind of a normie.

00:37:58.400 Well, I had just had a video short come up on my screen.

00:38:02.440 And he was saying, like, all you have to do is look at a guy's wife and his kids.

00:38:07.680 Are they doing well?

00:38:08.940 Like, does she seem like she's taken care of?

00:38:10.800 Are the kids well disciplined?

00:38:13.000 Does he have a house that seems like pretty much in order?

00:38:16.060 He's like, that's a good man.

00:38:17.620 That is a good man.

00:38:18.560 He has his house in order.

00:38:19.900 Like you're going to know the fruits of that man.

00:38:22.420 You're going to know the worth of that man just based on his wife and kids.

00:38:26.020 Yeah.

00:38:26.580 And so if you want to not be a LARPer, I mean, that's the best thing you can do is just do your duties.

00:38:33.360 Do your duties.

00:38:34.720 The guy who's got type 2 diabetes that's fighting in the park with a foam sword is not actually accomplishing anything.

00:38:42.600 They're not doing their duties.

00:38:44.220 They might be having fun.

00:38:45.440 And by the way, if you like LARPing, I think it's great.

00:38:48.240 I actually would love to LARP.

00:38:49.940 I'm not even lying.

00:38:51.140 Here's the thing.

00:38:51.980 Bros, we LARP at this place on his head.

00:38:52.720 I wish I had that much confidence.

00:38:54.840 I know.

00:38:55.500 Dan, we LARP at sunset.

00:38:57.000 Let's go.

00:38:57.920 Let's do it.

00:38:58.660 Let's do it.

00:39:00.160 I'm not going to be there for that.

00:39:02.240 You guys can LARP away.

00:39:03.480 We're secure.

00:39:04.080 coward. I do agree with you. Um, there's a time and a place for that sort of thing. Yeah. But

00:39:09.980 yeah, Dan, I think this is great. It's like, well, do the hard work. So even in those situations,

00:39:14.420 it's like, if you really want to be building Christendom, then it's going to be things like

00:39:18.020 physical discipline. Yeah. It's going to be things like, you know, yeah, we talk about this,

00:39:22.400 but then we are also building a media company. We're building a school. We're building the

00:39:27.480 church. I think some things that people miss about us is 99% of our time is spent on pastoral

00:39:33.240 ministry we have most of our conversations this is actually such a small blip of what we're doing

00:39:38.600 in fact this showed up on the calendar today to record this episode and i was like oh man we have

00:39:44.380 to record the king's hall like we got so much work to do yeah i mean we started the recording

00:39:48.360 like an hour and a half late because of different situations you know eric you know and eric was

00:39:54.100 late it reminds i there was this wonderful twitter trend that was going around like yesterday and the

00:39:59.260 day before. I think one of our own, Mr. Haller started it of the AI generated cathedrals in

00:40:05.380 your town. It was like the year 2137. Okay. Great job. First of all, Mr. Haller. And,

00:40:10.540 but it got me thinking like how many of the guys gleefully sharing these pictures don't

00:40:15.040 tithe to their church? And I'm like, how do you think your church is going to build a cathedral

00:40:21.220 even in a hundred years if you can't even tithe? What? Like, how would we have a school at our

00:40:28.580 church. If we did like all of these things that we have to be really ruthless with ourselves

00:40:33.020 and actually make sure that we're not LARPing. It really is a good pushback. It's a great

00:40:40.080 self-assessment. Where am I like, yeah, build the cathedral. And I give 1% of my income to the

00:40:45.640 church. My friends, they're not, they're going to have a strip mall. They ain't going to have

00:40:48.160 a cathedral. Or I've, I've wondered the same thing, Brian. I think that's what you deserve

00:40:51.500 is a strip mall. A strip mall. That's what, I mean, come on. It's, it's a phenomenal point,

00:40:55.540 but I've wondered the same thing.

00:40:56.540 How many people who are running masculinity accounts ended up being complete

00:41:01.080 schmucks and charlatans and losers?

00:41:03.140 How many ladies running,

00:41:04.440 you know,

00:41:05.020 like trad wife accounts are actually just terrible women.

00:41:07.740 You know,

00:41:08.040 there's all sorts of ways that we could analyze this.

00:41:11.240 Maybe one of it,

00:41:12.160 Dan is your favorite parts,

00:41:14.580 I guess of worship or one of them is that we do confession and usually the

00:41:19.380 pastors are like ruthless with this.

00:41:21.700 In fact,

00:41:22.260 our very own pastor Griffin was preaching recently.

00:41:24.720 And when he started into his application, one of my sons looked at me, because we know what happens when Pastor Griffin's preaching.

00:41:32.180 He looked at me and he was like, here we go.

00:41:34.300 Like, fasten your seatbelts.

00:41:36.140 We're about to get it.

00:41:37.400 And it's – but those things are good also because we're having to ask these questions.

00:41:41.500 Are you just a LARPer?

00:41:42.820 Are you actually doing the things in your everyday life?

00:41:45.440 Well, and I think one key to remember is that it's just like the criticisms from the people that are saying you're just LARPing.

00:41:52.380 It's like, where is your cathedral?

00:41:54.160 Like, you know, is Ogden a Christian town yet?

00:41:56.580 You know, it's been a few years.

00:41:58.280 Like, I don't see the, you have to remember that this is the work of generations.

00:42:03.040 Yeah.

00:42:03.620 And the glory, while it may not be that, oh, you get to worship God in the cathedral that you started.

00:42:11.780 Like, that's just not reality.

00:42:14.220 But it's a greater glory because you actually stand at the headwaters of a flood of generations that did the work.

00:42:21.680 And you saw something that they get to see with their eyes.

00:42:25.980 You only got to see it in faith.

00:42:27.880 That's the point of like part of the glory of the Old Testament saints, in a sense, our greater privilege is that they looked forward to something they didn't see.

00:42:37.780 We get to see something Christ accomplished and did.

00:42:40.600 There's a sense that you can live that out in your life, in your community, where faith is looking at things that aren't yet there, but you believe that based on the promises of God, they could be.

00:42:51.680 If you'd be faithful and if your children would be faithful and your children's children, that's a glory.

00:42:56.680 Don't let anybody dismiss that as LARPing, provided you're doing your ditch digging there at the headwaters.

00:43:04.220 Yeah, absolutely.

00:43:04.920 And if you do your duties with the idea that this is generational work, I'm actually when I discipline my sons or when you discipline your daughter and your daughters, you actually have the force of generations behind them.

00:43:20.680 And so you're doing this with the hope that God would be faithful to his promise, to the

00:43:26.200 thousandth generation, he would bless them for those who love him.

00:43:29.600 Yeah.

00:43:30.080 And so you're actually doing a greater work in some senses than the stonecutter.

00:43:35.100 Yeah.

00:43:35.720 Yeah.

00:43:36.300 Well, and one of the things to piggyback on everything you guys have said, I think that's

00:43:39.920 great.

00:43:40.180 I would also give a word to the fathers in our camp who are the older men.

00:43:44.780 If you're in the boomer camp, I just want to encourage you, don't be a sandblot.

00:43:49.100 When you see your kids dreaming of cathedrals and putting their backs into it, be an encouragement.

00:43:54.640 Don't be the guy who's like, well, you'll never build that.

00:43:57.060 I think a lot of that is actually just envy because you know you didn't do it or maybe your generation wasn't able to.

00:44:02.780 Maybe you tried, whatever.

00:44:04.520 But I think for the older men, I would say come alongside the younger men and say, you want a cathedral?

00:44:09.160 Let me show you what it takes.

00:44:10.840 Be the guy on D-Day who says, you youngins, you don't know how to take that machine gun nest?

00:44:17.340 Let me show you.

00:44:18.240 be that kind of father. And especially this is about how we handle the weapon of history,

00:44:24.520 take the weapon of history and show your sons how to use it well and to give them hope.

00:44:29.880 Yeah. Because the, the young men will have zeal and hopefully you have wisdom and yeah. And they

00:44:35.440 have strength. So it's your responsibility to help direct them. Yeah. I think that's a pivotal

00:44:40.320 point. One of the things I want to talk about that fathers as historians need to do, I think

00:44:45.620 who are agreed on that role, is they need to clear away the debris of false historical

00:44:50.520 narratives. This is going to be so tied to what kind of education we give our children.

00:44:55.840 But I specifically want to ask you guys, what are some of the wells and the things that

00:45:01.680 Philistines have put in the well that we need to most take out? So these are false historical

00:45:08.320 narratives. I'll throw one out there because it's an easy one, I think. And I would say

00:45:14.340 this whole idea that colonization was all bad

00:45:18.140 and that everything that colonization did was bad.

00:45:21.700 Eric, you are speaking my love language.

00:45:25.260 My love language is not quality time.

00:45:28.340 It's not physical touch.

00:45:29.960 My love language is colonization.

00:45:33.180 Pepe Le Pew right here.

00:45:34.580 It's colonial.

00:45:35.420 It's Christian colonialism and empire building.

00:45:37.940 That's my love language.

00:45:39.660 Imperialism.

00:45:40.380 Go on.

00:45:40.740 Thank you.

00:45:41.140 Thank you.

00:45:41.460 Yeah, so I think one of the things that fathers have to be aware of is we need to be giving our sons the true stories of what, like, colonization was.

00:45:51.440 So I want to give one example here.

00:45:53.140 People are like, what are you talking about?

00:45:54.260 Who's talking about decolonization?

00:45:55.740 Why is this so important?

00:45:56.960 I found one article.

00:45:58.360 There's literally hundreds of articles on decolonization when I look this up.

00:46:02.720 One of them was even called Decolonize Your Diet.

00:46:06.880 That was one of the articles.

00:46:08.320 why you need a more ethnically diverse diet because you're a colonialist uh one of the

00:46:14.200 ones i found most hilarious beautiful was one that was called decolonize your bookshelf

00:46:18.780 and in case you wonder what that means here's what the article says it says decolonizing your

00:46:23.880 bookshelf means actively examining and resisting colonialist narratives in the books you read

00:46:29.240 and diversifying your reading to include books by authors from communities that have been victims

00:46:34.040 of colonialism and systemic racism.

00:46:36.260 Eric, why can't we just go back further

00:46:38.240 and decolonize our bookshelves, go all the way

00:46:40.180 back to, like, let's say, Native Americans that didn't even have

00:46:42.220 written language? Get rid of books altogether.

00:46:45.340 Exactly. Why not?

00:46:46.600 This is where decolonization... We don't want to

00:46:48.120 follow the narrative of white supremacy

00:46:50.140 by reading books. That's right.

00:46:52.400 That's right. So, I think, actually,

00:46:54.160 gentlemen, agree, disagree, and then we'll

00:46:56.300 get some of the other historical narratives you see

00:46:58.360 as follows. I mean, one of my favorite books was written

00:47:00.220 by a bunch of Jews, so...

00:47:02.780 It's called the Bible.

00:47:03.780 It's called the Bible.

00:47:04.540 Okay, just checking.

00:47:06.500 What I will say is this.

00:47:08.100 I find that one of the things we're actually trying to do in season three of the King's Hall, and I'm trying to do with my sons, is I'm actually trying to colonize my bookshelf.

00:47:17.040 So one of the things we're doing is we're reading Rudyard Kipling.

00:47:21.020 We're reading the things of Empire and realizing, you know, one of these stories, which maybe we'll tell in season three is a little wet your appetite.

00:47:29.880 There were, I believe it was in India when the British were in India, and they were burning wives on funeral pyres.

00:47:36.440 Yep.

00:47:36.900 Sati.

00:47:37.400 I know.

00:47:37.840 Yep.

00:47:38.220 And they said, this is our culture.

00:47:40.260 And he said, well, our culture is that we kill people who do that.

00:47:43.160 So our culture will be meeting your culture when you go to burn your wives.

00:47:46.520 We'll erect gallows around the pyre.

00:47:48.860 Yes.

00:47:49.680 So this is actually one of the glories of colonialism, one of the glories of Christendom and Western civilization.

00:47:55.460 I think it's funny, by the way, we all know the story and none of us have talked about it with each other.

00:47:59.940 Oh, yeah, we all know it.

00:48:01.460 And we've all like, we've all imagined being the guys saying it.

00:48:05.980 What a king.

00:48:06.320 Being like, oh, that's, but in like a really sweet British accent.

00:48:09.960 Oh, it's amazing.

00:48:10.480 Like, hey, hey, mate.

00:48:12.600 He's like, I can only do Cockney.

00:48:15.360 I can't do like a really sophisticated one.

00:48:17.340 So I want to ask you guys, what are some other historical narratives, areas where we've polluted the wells?

00:48:25.360 This is an easy one. Again, it returns to my absolute scorn for the Mohammedan religion.

00:48:33.060 And no, it is that we have bought this lie that Christians in the Crusades and in the wars, even in the conflicts pre-Crusades, that Christians were basically sweeping through this great civilized culture, destroying centuries of Arabic progress and learning and in all these sciences and literature.

00:48:58.660 and that these barbaric Christians lusting for treasure and killing came through and swept them

00:49:04.700 away. When in reality, what we're actually looking at are again, lands that were brutally conquered

00:49:09.980 through rape and pillaging of an evil demonic religion that were actively suppressing and

00:49:17.180 oppressing their Christian brothers and sisters, which had been reduced to what they call dimmy

00:49:21.000 status of vassals, killed at whim, raped at whim, sold into slavery. One of the greatest slave

00:49:27.780 trades in the world where Europeans, white Europeans, sold into slavery for the purposes

00:49:32.200 of sex and other, you know, awful things to the point where many elite Arabic bloodlines

00:49:36.460 became functionally European because so many white women had been stolen, abducted, put in

00:49:41.280 slavery, and raped by elite Muslim rulers. So then the Christians go through and attempt to

00:49:50.920 liberate their brothers and sisters from this horrible oppressive darkness, actually after

00:49:55.700 basically having your house stolen by somebody else and and we've bought this lie this historical

00:50:03.660 whitewashing that that they were just some kind of like animalistic well you've bloodlusting it's

00:50:10.820 just you can see this brian in in modern popular things like um the black panther movie which is

00:50:16.960 like oh well really there was like this black tribal people and they had all the technology

00:50:21.340 They were the great civilization.

00:50:22.680 It's the same as the Mohammedan lie.

00:50:24.980 But what's interesting, we'll get into this in season three, of course.

00:50:28.240 One of the things that I was reading said that actually what was happening when the Muslims would conquer, they would take all the best scientists, philosophers, et cetera, many of whom were like Coptic Christians.

00:50:38.760 Yeah.

00:50:39.060 They would change their names and claim that it was –

00:50:40.940 To like Al-Jazeera, Abdul-Al-Bazar.

00:50:43.880 And then in their histories when they rewrote them, they were like this great Muslim philosopher.

00:50:46.720 See, we invented calculus.

00:50:48.300 They were all Christians.

00:50:49.440 No, you didn't.

00:50:50.080 You stole that.

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00:52:45.360 yeah and the point isn't like there's a the point we're not gonna act like we're not gonna

00:52:54.940 say this either the point isn't that you had this sinless christians and they never did anything

00:53:00.340 wrong. That would be silly. That would be because all of us know that we ourselves are not like

00:53:06.080 that. We all do things that are sinful and wrong. It's not that we can never say, well, I don't know

00:53:11.820 if I would have done quite that. It's that the overarching narrative is replayed such that

00:53:17.100 Christians are basically orcs and they went through the woods of Lothlorien and just like

00:53:24.360 all these virginal elves were there with their high elvish culture and the Christians just ruin

00:53:28.820 it and sent them to the tumbling back to the dark ages. And I'm like, you've never picked up a

00:53:33.320 history book. If you believe that that's the case, or at least a true history book, if you think

00:53:37.640 that's the case. Yeah, absolutely. So this will be a pivotal is understanding history as it was

00:53:42.980 Dan, any thoughts, anything you want to add on that discussion? I was looking for a quote. I

00:53:47.900 couldn't find it. I'm kind of bummed, but essentially Esalen said that we as moderns

00:53:54.360 would be uncomfortable in the Middle Ages because it was so full of light, of joy, and of flourishing

00:54:00.640 that we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves. He says it much better, obviously. But back to

00:54:07.660 your question about what are some of the ways that the Pharisees or the Philistines-

00:54:12.900 Even calling it the Dark Ages.

00:54:13.740 Yeah, calling it the Dark Ages is just ludicrous. I mean, it's absolutely insane.

00:54:19.160 It's interesting because even modern historians have said, yeah, the Dark Ages is a completely – in the Enlightenment, that was invented to be like, oh, Christians are so bad.

00:54:28.860 I would contend that we're actually going to be known in this age as the Dark Ages by future historians.

00:54:34.340 I'm also bummed that we lost the – like one of the wells we got stopped up is we lost the recipe for Greek fire.

00:54:41.100 Oh.

00:54:41.960 I don't know anything about Greek fire.

00:54:44.620 Greek fire is like – it's like napalm on the water except better because it won't go out.

00:54:49.000 The Christians figured out a way, like they had this great, you know what?

00:54:52.580 I don't want to ruin all of our future season.

00:54:54.620 You got to wet the appetite.

00:54:55.280 We got to wet the appetite.

00:54:56.420 They had basically napalm that they would use to burn opposing ships on the water.

00:55:02.500 It would burn on the water.

00:55:03.300 The Christians absolutely dominated the Muslims at sea in Constantinople.

00:55:07.760 I mean, they made them look silly.

00:55:08.920 People tried to replicate today what Greek fire was.

00:55:11.820 Nobody can figure it out.

00:55:13.100 So I just looked it up on Wikipedia.

00:55:14.860 there's a painting

00:55:15.620 and it says

00:55:16.120 the Roman fleet

00:55:16.880 burned the opposite fleet down

00:55:18.660 a Byzantine ship

00:55:19.560 using Greek fire

00:55:20.460 against a ship

00:55:21.080 belonging to the rebel

00:55:22.000 Thomas the Slav

00:55:23.540 in 821

00:55:25.060 dude the Slav

00:55:25.800 Thomas the Slav

00:55:27.080 I don't know anything about him

00:55:29.100 I need to have more children

00:55:30.080 to name

00:55:30.540 he probably deserved it

00:55:31.480 to name

00:55:32.420 my sons

00:55:33.440 after these Chad Kings

00:55:34.700 of history

00:55:35.300 please somebody

00:55:36.380 name one of their sons

00:55:37.460 Vlad the Emperor

00:55:38.060 my sons are

00:55:38.760 many of them are gonna sound like

00:55:40.020 Eastern Orthodox

00:55:41.200 saints

00:55:42.480 because like

00:55:43.480 some of the

00:55:43.960 some of the eastern christians like the way that they handled the the turkish invaders it is like

00:55:52.540 nick my guy never mind i'm you know what i'm not gonna shoot my shot now we gotta wait and get

00:55:56.980 there dude come back king's hall season three you don't even know you don't even know what you're

00:56:01.580 in for you don't even know uh speaking of things we don't even know by the way sign up for patreon

00:56:05.740 so we can hire a full-time sound designer to everything to haunted cosmos the king's hall

00:56:11.440 up even more it's going to be it's going to be rich uh things we don't know moving on now to

00:56:15.720 things we do know uh building monuments i want to talk just a little bit about this there's been

00:56:20.840 controversy in our time over monuments uh one of the places we've seen this obviously is with the

00:56:26.380 recent melting down of robert e lee uh this has been highly problematic and controversial in our

00:56:32.080 era a lot of christians have even said things like why would you ever celebrate somebody like

00:56:36.300 Robert E. Lee. One of the books I think that is most helpful in understanding the idea of monuments

00:56:41.700 and rewriting history is Pat Buchanan's The Death of the West. He says that tearing down monuments

00:56:47.160 and rewriting history is one of the central aims of the leftist state, and of course, it has been

00:56:52.580 very effective. Effectively, killing the West, he will say, by destroying its heroes in history.

00:56:59.880 Well, I want to tie this, though, to scripture. What does scripture say about this? Well, we find

00:57:04.180 in many places that God ordered the building of monuments to remind the people of what God had

00:57:08.240 done in the past, and it was supposed to encourage future generations. So example of this would be

00:57:15.420 Joshua chapter 4, and I'm going to ask Mr. Daniel Burkholder, my guy, Daniel Burkholder, if you

00:57:22.060 would read that for us. When all the nation had finished passing over the Jordan, the Lord said

00:57:26.640 to Joshua, take 12 men from the people from each tribe, from each tribe a man, and command them,

00:57:32.380 saying, Take 12 stones from here out into the midst of the Jordan, from the very place where

00:57:37.320 the priests' feet stood firmly, and bring them over with you, and lay them down in the place

00:57:42.040 where you lodged tonight. Then Joshua called the 12 men from the people of Israel, whom he had

00:57:47.120 appointed, a man from each tribe. And Joshua said to them, Pass on before the ark of the Lord your

00:57:52.180 God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder, according to the

00:57:57.460 number of the tribes of the people of Israel, that this may be a sign among you. When your children

00:58:02.220 ask in a time to come, what do those stones mean to you? Then you shall tell them that the waters

00:58:09.360 of the Jordan were cut off before the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord. When it passed over the

00:58:14.620 Jordan and the waters of the Jordan were cut off, so these stones shall be to the people of Israel

00:58:21.060 a memorial forever. Beautiful. Thank you, Dan. Well, one of the things, guys, that we've been

00:58:26.620 talking about in particular with this episode, sort of the work of season three of King's Hall

00:58:31.040 is we're trying to metaphorically at least rebuild the monuments of some of our heroes

00:58:36.060 to remind our sons and future generations of the great works that were done.

00:58:40.640 I find it interesting in this passage that the fathers of one generation were commanded to erect monuments.

00:58:47.120 And God says, your children were asked in time to come, what do these stones mean to you?

00:58:51.720 And so we ought to have an answer for that.

00:58:54.340 People might ask, Brian, why are your children named Vlad the Impaler?

00:58:58.720 Yeah, actually, my children aren't named Vlad the Impaler.

00:59:01.700 But when they are, Alfred.

00:59:04.300 Exactly.

00:59:05.260 Alfred, absolutely.

00:59:07.260 King Alfred.

00:59:08.200 I want to ask you guys.

00:59:09.060 Alfred Kingsley.

00:59:09.900 Yeah, Alfred Kingsley.

00:59:10.620 I mean, I cannot make it any more obvious.

00:59:12.800 My wife, she was uncomfortable with naming him literally first name King, middle name Alfred, which I don't understand, guys.

00:59:20.380 I don't understand.

00:59:21.240 So I want to ask you guys this question.

00:59:23.480 Why are visible signs in God's wisdom, why are they important for the transmission of history from one generation to the next?

00:59:31.100 We've got to fight Gnosticism.

00:59:32.640 We've got to fight this spiritualizing instinct that is the instinct of the Anabaptist.

00:59:37.760 It's the instinct of the church in Colossians that needed to be rebuked.

00:59:42.980 It's this instinct of saying basically—

00:59:45.640 Buildings don't matter.

00:59:46.540 Buildings of Jesus juking everything all the way down to the bottom.

00:59:50.560 Like, of course—

00:59:51.660 What's your problem with a Jesus juke, Brian?

00:59:54.160 Do you hate Jesus?

00:59:55.300 Do you hate Jesus?

00:59:56.260 That's what I'm saying.

00:59:57.000 It is so facile.

00:59:58.600 It's so – like try to think clearly.

01:00:00.500 Try to think in categories.

01:00:01.620 Try not to be an ignoramus and actually like live your life in the real world as a disciple of Jesus Christ who cares about all of it.

01:00:09.980 So one of the Jesus juks we had recently –

01:00:12.880 And this is I think exactly what you're talking about.

01:00:15.660 I had posted – obviously it's from 1 Peter.

01:00:19.440 But, you know, ladies, call your husband Lord.

01:00:21.660 And people are like, I have one Lord.

01:00:23.840 He is the Lord Jesus Christ.

01:00:25.640 And I'm like, okay.

01:00:26.740 I'm like, how is he the Lord of Lords then?

01:00:28.400 That's really confusing how he could be that.

01:00:31.720 Like GM King and people are like, there's only one King and it's the King of Ages.

01:00:35.680 So Brian, are you arguing in your insanity over there?

01:00:39.540 Are you actually arguing that monuments and cathedrals actually matter?

01:00:44.220 Of course they matter.

01:00:45.700 Like what we're saying in the things that we build is we're, it's a language.

01:00:49.700 We're communicating in stone and stained glass things that we think are true.

01:00:54.200 For example, we're saying by building a cathedral, even a church like the one that we are in

01:00:59.760 now, we're saying Christians believe in transcendent beauty.

01:01:03.620 They intend to be here for a really long time, and they actually think that the world God

01:01:09.420 made was good and that there is such thing as beauty and ugliness, and that those things

01:01:14.100 as you behold and contemplate them will either shape you into an ugly soul or a beautiful

01:01:18.480 soul.

01:01:18.840 So we have this pietistic Christian instinct that is like, let's reduce everything down to its heavenly ultimate.

01:01:27.820 But the Lord's Prayer immediately teaches us not to do that.

01:01:31.780 It teaches us that we pray that God's will would be done on earth as it is in heaven in the earthly things, that we would orient earthly things to their heavenly realities and heavenly good.

01:01:43.060 I mean, don't you know that heaven looks like Dallas, though?

01:01:46.360 Strip balls all the way down.

01:01:48.440 Our number one listener city is Dallas, and we keep dunking on them.

01:01:52.740 Guys, just simply build a more beautiful city.

01:01:55.160 I know you didn't do it.

01:01:56.100 Good restaurants in ugly buildings.

01:01:58.080 But please, please, I am begging you.

01:02:00.900 Somebody buy something ugly and knock it down and build something beautiful.

01:02:04.080 And the funny thing is that when you build ugly things cheaply, it ends up being more expensive in the long haul because you have to keep knocking it down.

01:02:12.620 It keeps destroying the souls of people, so they actually want to just utterly destroy it and build something in its place.

01:02:18.640 So Christians are always speaking in our architecture and our art and how we live our lives, how we garden and how we have courtyards around our churches and beautiful graveyards and mausoleums and all.

01:02:30.660 Like, of course, you can idolize those things.

01:02:33.760 But you don't destroy idolatry by destroying the object of your idolatry to the degree that it is a good thing that God created.

01:02:41.840 You don't destroy man's tendency to worship the woman by destroying the woman.

01:02:46.520 I mean, the thing is, in the passage—

01:02:49.080 Or making the woman fat and ugly.

01:02:50.620 Yeah.

01:02:51.440 In the passage that we read from Joshua, it's full of signs and symbols.

01:02:57.520 I mean, this is just the way God operates.

01:02:59.140 God says to do it.

01:03:00.300 He says, build a monument.

01:03:01.660 And by the way, what was the monument representing?

01:03:04.480 The Ark of the Covenant passing over the waters or through the waters.

01:03:08.420 The Ark of the Covenant.

01:03:09.180 Does God need the Ark of the Covenant?

01:03:10.880 Like, no.

01:03:11.580 No.

01:03:11.880 Obviously not.

01:03:12.360 Does God need what the Ark of the Covenant contained?

01:03:14.740 He doesn't need anything.

01:03:16.280 No.

01:03:16.820 I mean, it's a sign and a symbol so that you remember and that it's tied to truth.

01:03:21.740 And that's why something like a cathedral or a church building, stained glass, like you said, all of these symbols, you know, actually matter because they remind you of the promises of God and of the great works that God has done.

01:03:34.660 and yeah and and what people want to do they want to continually be like well those were built

01:03:40.280 through the sale of indulgences and slaves so are you saying you're for those things and i'm like

01:03:44.840 no tell me where i lose you i'd like to build cathedrals without selling indulgences or

01:03:51.300 enslaving anyone well just to do it get us a cathedral faster and to pay just to pay for it

01:03:58.100 you know like actually you can do the one thing without the it's like saying you know people that

01:04:03.700 People that enslave people lived in houses.

01:04:07.500 Were you building houses?

01:04:08.840 And I'm like, you're just not thinking clearly.

01:04:10.940 You're just revealing that you're a low-tier intellect who can't think in clear categories if you talk like that.

01:04:16.560 That was really insulting.

01:04:17.700 Well, it should be.

01:04:18.380 Like, these people should be ashamed of themselves.

01:04:21.040 No, I'm 100% with it.

01:04:22.320 Why is everybody always mad at Eric when every episode of the King's Hall, I basically insult, like, 100,000 people.

01:04:31.360 Literally every episode.

01:04:32.280 I'm actually like, I'm kind of disappointed.

01:04:35.680 I know.

01:04:36.460 It's because of the curls on your mustache.

01:04:38.920 People are like, oh, that was really mean, but he's got a curly mustache.

01:04:41.820 I'm shaving it.

01:04:42.660 That's it.

01:04:43.260 No, please don't.

01:04:44.920 I'm not.

01:04:45.900 Exaggerate the curls.

01:04:46.900 I'm not.

01:04:47.420 I'm not going to do it.

01:04:48.100 Chase Davis, the other day, he asked for a picture because I went on his podcast to help promote it or whatever.

01:04:56.400 And he's like, by the way, you're the only person I know in the world that curls your mustache like that that's not woke and gay.

01:05:02.280 And I was like, bro, it's called colonization.

01:05:07.040 We're reclaiming the mustache from the wokes and the gays.

01:05:11.200 I think the curl mustache is too far gone to recover at this point.

01:05:14.180 But anyway, moving on.

01:05:15.160 You just don't have the eyes of faith, man.

01:05:16.760 I also look terrible with a curl mustache.

01:05:19.820 You would look so good.

01:05:21.340 LARPing.

01:05:22.020 No, you're a Viking.

01:05:22.940 You can't do it.

01:05:23.640 I'm French.

01:05:24.680 I had thought of braiding my beard.

01:05:26.780 Actually, I bought beard ties and things like that.

01:05:28.860 I would look so dumb.

01:05:31.040 I'm just not confident enough to do that.

01:05:33.100 But I hope for a day when you are confident.

01:05:35.480 Also looks really funny in like a jacket, you know, a blazer having a beard.

01:05:40.720 I hope for the day when Daniel Burkholder has the confidence to braid his beard in public.

01:05:47.120 Wow.

01:05:47.700 I'm on record.

01:05:48.520 This was not in the notes, but it's beautiful.

01:05:50.780 Actually, this was all in the notes.

01:05:52.440 Eric wrote this all in.

01:05:53.800 This was actually a script.

01:05:54.200 We're just reading a script.

01:05:55.760 This was a script.

01:05:57.580 Brian, I wonder if you would walk us through just reading the next section.

01:06:01.700 I want to tie this together with the magisterial reformation.

01:06:04.940 And because the last thing I want to talk about today is it's going to take a certain kind of person to carry out this work of Christendom.

01:06:14.720 A lot of times when we look at church history, it's guys like Ambrose.

01:06:18.880 It's guys like, you know, that are maybe offending people.

01:06:22.500 God forbid, right?

01:06:23.540 Yeah.

01:06:23.680 These are guys who are not the cookie cutter, Matt Chandler, nice guy who's afraid to step on toes and wants to, you know, play nice with the current culture.

01:06:32.920 So if you would just do me the honor.

01:06:36.280 I got you.

01:06:37.300 Well, it really takes us back to the beginning of the 16th century when God began to raise up a series of strong-willed figures that we now call the Reformers.

01:06:48.660 Eric.

01:06:49.300 Based.

01:06:50.480 There had been earlier reformers in the church, but those came to prominence in this period

01:06:54.780 were the best educated, the most godly, and the most faithful reformed leaders the church

01:06:59.700 had ever seen.

01:07:01.300 These men were steeped in scripture.

01:07:03.540 They were marked by audacious courage in the face of opposition.

01:07:07.000 They were emboldened by deep convictions as to the truth and a love for Christ's church

01:07:12.060 that drove them to attempt to bring it back to its timeless standard.

01:07:16.040 In the simplest terms, they longed to see God's people worship him according to scripture.

01:07:21.520 These men were shining lights in a dark day.

01:07:25.340 Some of them literally lit on fire saying, I hope that my burning body is a candle that

01:07:29.740 illuminates such a flood light in England as to never be put out.

01:07:34.180 The reformers did not see themselves as inventors, discoverers, or creators, historian Stephen

01:07:40.980 Nichols tells us.

01:07:42.360 Instead, they saw their efforts as rediscovery.

01:07:45.180 They weren't making something from scratch. They were reviving something that had become

01:07:50.240 dead or dying. They looked back to the Bible. They looked back to the apostolic era, as well

01:07:55.840 as the early church fathers, such as Augustine in the fourth and fifth century, for the mold by

01:08:01.560 which they could shape the church and reform it. The reformers had a saying, ecclesia reformata

01:08:08.160 Semper Reformanda, meaning the church reformed, always reforming. The magisterial reformers are

01:08:15.380 so-called because their reform efforts were supported by at least some ruling authorities

01:08:19.560 or magistrates, and because they believe the civil magistrates ought to enforce the true faith.

01:08:25.860 So this term is used to distinguish them from the radical reformers, the Anabaptists,

01:08:30.180 whose efforts had no magisterial support. The reformers are also called magisterial

01:08:36.180 because the word magister can mean teacher

01:08:39.200 and the magisterial reformation

01:08:41.340 strongly emphasized the authority of teachers.

01:08:44.860 Okay, Brian, first of all, based?

01:08:46.660 Based.

01:08:47.280 I thought you were going to read the whole thing

01:08:48.860 like you were discussing it.

01:08:50.040 Like I was just coming up with the off the top of my head.

01:08:52.140 Yeah, I was really impressed.

01:08:53.100 Dan, it's called just segueing naturally.

01:08:57.240 I learned it from Eric Kahn.

01:08:58.720 Segway naturally.

01:09:00.280 Speaking of segway.

01:09:01.300 Speaking of the reformers, tamales.

01:09:03.920 I'm just kidding.

01:09:05.620 I love it.

01:09:06.780 Yes, but lunch.

01:09:08.080 Seriously, Ben.

01:09:09.120 So, Dan, there are often problems that we have with reading the reformers.

01:09:13.960 We've talked about this, some of the LARPing that can happen.

01:09:17.340 But I want to point specifically to the magisterial reformers and perhaps why they were so effective.

01:09:22.400 It says, from what Brian just walked us through, these men were steeped in scripture and marked by audacious courage in the face of opposition.

01:09:31.040 Maybe they were men like Charles Martel, whose name means the hammer.

01:09:35.300 I mean, tours, come on, Brian.

01:09:37.500 You're French people.

01:09:38.200 The battle of tours.

01:09:39.440 French people represent.

01:09:41.860 Represent.

01:09:42.460 Not French Canadians, but real French Canadians.

01:09:43.000 If anybody says French Canadian, I am going.

01:09:45.840 Hey, by the way, I love how we all love colonialism until it gets to Canada from France, okay?

01:09:53.040 But they're just so, oh, Canada.

01:09:54.600 Look, I know that we've fallen far, but which of our great races have not?

01:09:59.280 Which great races of men have not fallen far?

01:10:00.960 Yeah, that's really true.

01:10:01.800 Eric, we need to reclaim them.

01:10:02.980 and stop spitting on them and stamping the French people into the dirt

01:10:08.720 and instead reclaim the glory of Charlemagne.

01:10:11.960 So I totally agree.

01:10:13.920 One of the interesting things is the other day I was talking to Brian's kid,

01:10:17.320 and he was like, well, you know, our family is French.

01:10:19.480 He was telling the other boys, and I said, actually, you guys are French-Canadian.

01:10:23.460 And he was like, are we really?

01:10:24.840 We're really not even.

01:10:25.900 French-Canadian is the best part of the whole joke.

01:10:28.280 You told me this.

01:10:30.340 I didn't invent it.

01:10:31.600 But you said that there was one of the king's prostitutes that was sent to Canada to have –

01:10:38.500 The daughters of the king were French women that came and helped to colonize in Canada.

01:10:46.860 But then my people immigrated into America, which is just – that's how immigrants work.

01:10:51.240 We move around.

01:10:52.480 But our motherland is France.

01:10:55.080 Okay?

01:10:56.100 It's France.

01:10:57.040 It's the Frankish people.

01:10:58.540 It is – I'm probably descended from Charlemagne.

01:11:00.700 Like, I'm just, it's likely.

01:11:04.020 It's likely.

01:11:04.960 I'm actually the great grandson of Charlemagne.

01:11:07.820 I don't know how to say that.

01:11:08.900 Charlemagne is my cousin.

01:11:10.500 He's my cousin.

01:11:11.800 So, speaking of great men, gentlemen, I want to tie things up with a nice bow here.

01:11:16.280 Again, it's going to take somebody with audacious courage to do this work.

01:11:20.340 Obviously, you're going to have sand blots.

01:11:22.640 We have found this, Brian.

01:11:23.540 You go on Twitter.

01:11:24.240 You say, normal Westminsterian things.

01:11:26.620 And people are like, what is it with you and your hot takes?

01:11:29.500 quoting William Gouge.

01:11:32.260 Oh, good night.

01:11:33.120 Yeah.

01:11:33.660 Your tweet recently,

01:11:35.440 it was just like

01:11:36.020 an exposition of Genesis 2

01:11:38.240 in the marriage ceremony.

01:11:39.620 Right.

01:11:40.220 For, you know,

01:11:40.940 God, Adam, and Eve.

01:11:42.080 Yeah.

01:11:42.660 Saying parents stand in the way,

01:11:43.920 in the position of God

01:11:45.140 in a marriage ceremony.

01:11:46.840 Like, that's obvious.

01:11:48.420 It's obvious it's normal.

01:11:49.440 And people exploded.

01:11:50.780 They lost their ever-loving minds.

01:11:52.900 But if you were a soft guy,

01:11:54.300 if you were the guy

01:11:55.400 who couldn't take criticism,

01:11:57.140 I don't think you're going to be

01:11:57.920 leading this work of reformation so again just what kind of guy is it going to take

01:12:03.060 obviously guys like us okay no eric eric's been building on the whole in all humility

01:12:10.560 no it's me it's me i mean i'm serious but like you do want to be in unironically

01:12:18.480 this is we've we've been taught that there's a false kind of humility that is that is true

01:12:24.200 virtue when it's actually a damnable vice and it is being too humble to want to be like the great

01:12:32.660 heroes yeah you should you should absolutely want to be the good guy in the story to be like them

01:12:38.480 to imitate them and to walk in their footsteps and so of course you don't want to be the kind of

01:12:44.040 like egomaniac that's like i basically am as cool as charlemagne today but you should be be saying

01:12:51.520 I'm going to try to be a good king in my domain.

01:12:55.120 Well, don't you think, Brian, like the number of times I've –

01:12:56.700 No king but Christ.

01:12:58.860 Get out.

01:12:59.340 You know what?

01:12:59.680 I think there's a G3 podcast that you might be gifted to start.

01:13:04.060 Brian, one of the things I notice a lot with you, though –

01:13:06.740 Co-hosted by Jolly Roll.

01:13:08.540 Oh, jeez.

01:13:09.700 Wow.

01:13:10.220 You're going to have to bleep that out, Ray.

01:13:11.740 Leave it in.

01:13:12.820 One of the things, Brian, that is interesting, though, is I've seen the criticism fly toward you a lot,

01:13:17.760 which is you know you're going out there you're saying things with conviction like you actually

01:13:24.860 think they're true and people are like no no no you need to come out and you need to be like

01:13:28.140 well you know let's have a moratorium on making a declaration here but why is like we have to

01:13:34.640 resist that temptation correct yes like of course i always love it because i'm like oh and you're

01:13:40.340 very confident that i'm being proud in being confident that i'm correct about this thing

01:13:44.640 or like and you are very confident that i'm wrong and that we should do what you think is right

01:13:50.280 like it's inescapable that you're going to have confidence somewhere down the line even if you're

01:13:55.160 like i'm i'm confident only of this that i don't know anything and i'm an idiot and then i'm like

01:13:59.380 well why are you speaking to any issue at all if you're so confident that you're such a dummy

01:14:02.880 it's like you must have conviction and you must live by those convictions it's inescapable it's

01:14:08.520 a not whether but which issue you're going to have convictions make sure they're good ones

01:14:12.360 and then full send full send stop being a coward who's pretending to be humble by by play acting

01:14:19.480 at being a kind of guy who has no firm convictions in his mind nobody's buying it nobody actually

01:14:25.060 thinks you're humble we're just annoyed now some people do think they're some people do but the

01:14:29.740 rest of us we're just annoyed so dan this principle a lot of men have said it i think

01:14:35.760 doug wilson is one of the places i heard this but he said you can't love your enemies if you never

01:14:40.200 make any. And, uh, you know, Churchill said that if you're fighting for good causes, you're always

01:14:45.700 going to have enemies. So why do you, if you're going to be a reformer, if you're going to be a

01:14:49.300 cathedral builder, why do you need to be comfortable as being the kind of man who has real enemies who

01:14:54.660 hate him? Well, I mean, just the principled man in general is going to have people that hate them

01:14:58.160 because I mean, one of the principles of being principled is that you're immovable on your

01:15:02.640 principles. That was a lot of principles, but if you know something is right, you're immovable

01:15:06.680 people you're not going to bow to the whims of the crowd or the mob or whatever ideology the

01:15:13.640 zeitgeist of the time and so people are naturally going to hate you and so if you don't have enemies

01:15:19.120 if you don't have people that dislike you maybe you're not a principled guy

01:15:22.740 beautiful beautiful guys we've learned about history yeah we're teeing up for season three

01:15:30.300 we're wrapping things down now yeah i do want to give a few plugs if you're not yet on patreon

01:15:35.360 Please go there.

01:15:36.120 You're going to have lots of exclusive content, not only this week,

01:15:38.880 but in the future with the Kings Hall After Hours.

01:15:42.060 Dan, we're going to have a lot of – not everything is going to fit in a main episode.

01:15:45.660 No.

01:15:46.380 There's going to be so much that is going to be put behind a paywall for you,

01:15:50.980 dear listener, who's a supporter of this show, one of our kings.

01:15:54.620 So we encourage you to check that out.

01:15:56.440 You can sign up for as little as $5 a month.

01:15:58.400 and uh brian i i want to uh you're you're you play a flute uh what's the um i actually

01:16:06.500 don't play a flute you're a flautist you have a flautist album coming out no this is actually

01:16:11.180 all incorrect yeah everything everything you just said yeah all untrue uh but there are some

01:16:16.940 exciting music things that people can yeah for the record i'm incapable of making a sound on a

01:16:21.620 flute a real flute i can't do it like his brother was first chair my brother's a very good flautist

01:16:28.380 what i'm not i'm not making that up and he has one obviously so i've tried i literally cannot

01:16:33.180 do the thing where you blow across the hole and make the sound it's it's like a three-year-old

01:16:38.160 trying to do it it's actually embarrassing interesting not embarrassing you do have music

01:16:41.920 i do have some music yeah i got a three song uh acoustic ep christmas ep two great hymns let all

01:16:48.720 mortal flesh keep silence joy to the world and then psalm 124 a setting of that uh included as

01:16:53.860 well. This is like real organic stuff. I recorded most of it in one take with a single mic just

01:16:59.040 sitting in front of me playing the song. So it's much less produced. I did all of it myself. Mix

01:17:04.420 mastered everything myself. By organic, he means drum circle. Like drum circle. Emily Heimstra came

01:17:11.660 back, played viola on Joy to the World. I played harmonica on Psalm 124. And guys, I think we can

01:17:18.500 all agree that it is easily your favorite musical moment of all time that right uh i would have to

01:17:26.360 ray can you put in like cheers and edit in like a whole roaring crowd just right there when i

01:17:32.760 actually brian charges me for his music so really yes you're still a patron of brian so many eric

01:17:40.040 is a patron well this makes no sense i feel like it would be really awkward oh i used to be a

01:17:46.700 patron of hard men yeah you did and i canceled it and i still remember you know why because i'm like

01:17:51.880 on 60 of your after hours yeah that's true why would i pay to listen to myself yeah but you know

01:17:57.160 what in all seriousness guys go share heart songs or if you like the music go share it because you

01:18:05.280 wouldn't believe like 13 000 people have hit the follow button on spotify only 30 of those people

01:18:11.260 have even listened to my heart songs album yet really so you think like when you're on twitter

01:18:15.660 that everybody's heard it. Most people

01:18:17.720 haven't. So share it with your friends if you

01:18:19.760 like the music. Share this podcast with your friends.

01:18:22.280 If you like the stuff

01:18:23.740 that we're putting out, red pill them.

01:18:25.660 Or if you hate it, share it.

01:18:28.020 Dunk on us, guys. Make a whole YouTube

01:18:29.760 channel. I'm looking at you, Deanie Lentil Beanie.

01:18:32.220 Just, I mean, get out there and

01:18:33.960 make some dumb responses to our

01:18:35.920 content that make no sense and make you look

01:18:37.740 unintelligent. You would appreciate it

01:18:40.000 if you would do that. After you listen to

01:18:41.700 horror songs, you gotta check out Le Chant de

01:18:43.780 Templier.

01:18:44.360 is that French

01:18:46.360 it's the way you said it sure sounded

01:18:48.320 okay well it is because it's the chant

01:18:50.340 of the Knights Templars we listen to this

01:18:52.320 in our house yes and it is

01:18:54.440 based that's we're gonna have to include

01:18:56.300 that yes absolutely season three absolutely

01:18:58.460 we want to encourage everybody

01:18:59.780 thanks for listening also

01:19:01.800 festin Alente make haste

01:19:04.240 slowly and until next time

01:19:05.860 stay frosty and also listen to the

01:19:08.160 Hardman podcast

01:19:08.840 Kings all out

01:19:14.360 We'll see you next time.

01:19:44.360 Kings Hall if you'd like to support the show and get some extra content.

The King's Hall - November 24, 2023

Redigging the Wells of Abraham： The Influence of Ancient Truths in Rebuilding Christendom

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