The King's Hall - William and the House of Orange： Building Dynasties & Christian Nations w⧸ Pr. David Reece

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00:00:38.940 Here at the King's Hall, we talk a lot about family, about making the kind of men and the kind of women who will make the kind of households that would make the kind of nations that we would all want to call our own.

00:00:49.900 And the line between those two points really is that straight between the course of nations and history and the household.

00:00:56.600 the family. When you think of the family, when you think even of your own family,

00:01:01.480 what is it exactly that you're thinking of? Is it just a man and a woman and their children?

00:01:06.620 Just you and your wife and your kids? Now, it's certainly not less than that, but is it more?

00:01:11.960 When you set your mind to thinking about your name, your house, your generations,

00:01:17.120 do you ever lift your sight higher than just the daily work it seems to keep things going?

00:01:21.980 And the answer is that you should.

00:01:24.040 You should because William Gouge was right when he said that the family is a little church and a little nation.

00:01:29.360 Where do we think these things come from anyway?

00:01:31.480 What are churches but households of Christians coming together into households of faith?

00:01:36.160 And what are nations but families and clans and tribes multiplying into towns and cities and countries?

00:01:42.160 The household, your household, is more than a career and a 401k and a house and some chores.

00:01:48.800 If you treat it with the weight it deserves, you'd be astonished at what the Lord might do with it, with your family name, over a generation or ten.

00:01:58.680 The House of Orange Nassau is the current reigning royal house in the Kingdom of the Netherlands,

00:02:03.880 with King Willem Alexander serving as the head of state since his inauguration on April 30, 2013.

00:02:10.600 The history of the House of Orange dates back some 400 years to its founder, William, who is considered the father of the nation.

00:02:18.800 The dynasty, which originated from the medieval principality of Orange in southern France,

00:02:23.360 is closely tied to Dutch national identity.

00:02:27.080 The House of Orange, led by William the Silent, also known as William of Orange,

00:02:31.320 who lived from 1533 to 1584,

00:02:34.680 played a pivotal role in the Dutch War of Independence

00:02:37.320 against Spanish Habsburg rule under Philip II.

00:02:41.000 You may have heard of this war under the name the Eighty Years' War,

00:02:44.360 since it was fought from 1568 all the way to 1648.

00:02:48.800 William was a wealthy German-Dutch nobleman and Prince of Orange

00:02:52.540 who inherited vast estates in the Netherlands,

00:02:55.460 including Breda and the Principality of Orange,

00:02:58.100 and married into further riches.

00:03:00.220 Initially a loyal Habsburg courtier,

00:03:02.500 he turned against Spain due to religious persecution of Protestants

00:03:06.020 and the oath-breaking of the King of Spain,

00:03:08.200 who failed in his duty to uphold the Dutch constitutions

00:03:11.400 and the rights of the Dutch people.

00:03:13.800 Eventually, William became the revolt's chief political,

00:03:16.780 military, and financial leader. He personally financed much of the early rebellion, selling

00:03:22.460 lands and borrowing heavily, often to the ruin of his great personal fortune, to hire German

00:03:27.680 mercenaries and fund the sea beggars, the Watergutsen, Calvinist privateers who captured

00:03:33.120 key towns like Brill in 1572, sparking widespread uprising. He also raised armies, allied with

00:03:40.160 French Huguenots, and coordinated resistance after the Duke of Alba's brutal repression.

00:03:46.020 But William was not just a political leader.

00:03:48.500 He was also deeply concerned with the religious character of his people,

00:03:52.480 leading them in widespread reformation.

00:03:54.760 Though raised Romanist and then Lutheran and favoring religious tolerance,

00:03:59.140 William converted to Calvinism in 1573,

00:04:02.300 aligning with the Reformed faith that dominated the northern provinces.

00:04:05.880 This helped consolidate Calvinist support,

00:04:08.800 making the Dutch Reformed Church the public religion of the emerging republic.

00:04:12.800 The revolt fused nationalism, opposition to foreign oppression of Spain, and Protestant resistance, leading to the Union of Utrecht in 1579, the Act of Abjuration in 1581, which was a Declaration of Independence, and a Calvinist-led republic that brought us the International Reformed Synod of Dort, and the famous TULIP acronym for Calvinist soteriology, by the way.

00:04:36.320 now tragically William was assassinated by a Roman Catholic fanatic in 1584 he was the first

00:04:43.680 head of state actually to be killed by a handgun and died whispering Psalm 130 leaving his sons to

00:04:49.520 carry on the sacred cause King Philip II of Spain had placed a 25,000 crown bounty which is roughly

00:04:56.040 2,490 troy ounces which would by the way be more than seven million dollars in gold to buy from

00:05:02.960 alpine gold today, on him in his head in 1580 for leading the revolt and defending the Protestant

00:05:09.100 cause. Balthazar Girard, a fanatical French Catholic, took up the task. Posing as a Protestant

00:05:15.620 nobleman going by the name François Guillon, he infiltrated William's household in the Prinzenhof

00:05:21.780 using forged papers. Girard approached William in the Prinzenhof dining hall and asked for charity

00:05:27.060 money, claiming he was a destitute Protestant nobleman needing shoes to attend church. William

00:05:32.880 generously gave him 10 to 12 crowns from his own purse. Gerard used part of that charity money

00:05:38.160 William gave him to buy two wheel lock pistols. As William descended the stairs of his house after

00:05:44.160 dinner on July the 10th, Gerard shot him at close range with the two wheel lock pistols in the

00:05:50.000 chest. William reportedly said, my God, have mercy on my soul and on this poor people and died shortly

00:05:56.680 after, murdered by a pair of pistols purchased through his own kindness and charity. Gerard

00:06:02.140 fled, but he was captured and tortured horribly and executed on July 14th, just four days

00:06:07.460 later, 1584. Talk about speedy justice. He was quartered alive, disemboweled, and beheaded.

00:06:14.860 However, the assassination didn't have the effect that King Philip II had in mind. William's

00:06:20.520 death galvanized the Dutch cause, leading not to the downfall of the Dutch Christians,

00:06:25.340 but to their eventual independence.

00:06:27.780 Afterwards, his son Maurice and Frederick Henry

00:06:30.160 continued as steadholders,

00:06:32.100 professionalizing the army and securing victories,

00:06:35.120 and ultimately turning the war to Dutch victory.

00:06:37.900 Maurice, the Protestant genius of siegecraft,

00:06:40.940 professionalized the Dutch army,

00:06:42.720 and in time, town after town

00:06:44.620 would fall from Catholic Spain.

00:06:46.800 By 1648, the Peace of Munster ended the 80 Years' War,

00:06:50.920 and so the Dutch Republic was born,

00:06:53.240 independent, Calvinist, and the richest trading nation on earth.

00:06:57.660 Their leadership culminated in the Peace of Munster in 1648 and the Peace of Westphalia

00:07:02.120 and the victory of the Presbyterian Puritan Parliament and Scotch-Presbyterians

00:07:06.520 over the absolutist monarchy of Charles I, recognizing the independent Dutch Republic,

00:07:12.200 the independent state system, and the freedom of Protestant peoples from the Papal Dominion.

00:07:17.760 The Protestant Dutch, Germans, and British were free from the great threat of Spain and the papacy

00:07:22.600 and free to uphold the Reformed faith.

00:07:25.420 William declared this faith as a banner of Dutch liberty,

00:07:28.460 adopting the motto, I will maintain,

00:07:30.760 which referred to freedom and the true gospel.

00:07:33.440 From 1648 to 1672, the Dutch Golden Age would break forth.

00:07:38.520 Amsterdam would replace Antwerp as Europe's financial capital,

00:07:42.040 Reformed churches would dominate public life,

00:07:44.240 and the Dutch East India Company would plant Protestant colonies worldwide.

00:07:49.080 In God's providence, the Republic would become the Ark of the Reformation.

00:07:53.640 Sadly, a failure to remove idolatry from the land would result in a plague for future generations.

00:08:00.180 In 1672, Catholic France and England would invade,

00:08:03.760 which led the Dutch to flood their own dikes in order to save the Protestant state.

00:08:08.260 William III, great-grandson of William the Silent, then only 22 years old, would be made steadholder.

00:08:14.040 He vowed not to yield one inch of reformed ground during the conflict.

00:08:18.300 From 1672 to 1688, William III would wage holy war,

00:08:22.700 having wed Mary Stuart, Protestant heir to the English throne in 1677.

00:08:27.480 It was a dynastic union of Orange and the Old English Protestant line

00:08:31.760 that would help build a European alliance against Catholic King Louis XIV.

00:08:36.700 Now, to complicate matters, James II, Mary's father,

00:08:40.480 would turn England Roman Catholic, or at least try to.

00:08:43.500 James, who had converted to Roman Catholicism from Protestantism in the 1660s,

00:08:48.780 was nonetheless permitted to take the English throne in 1685,

00:08:52.480 having basically promised to maintain the Protestant character of the nation despite his personal faith.

00:08:58.380 But his subjects were quickly alarmed by his policies once crowned king.

00:09:02.860 James appointed Roman Catholics to key positions in the armies and universities and judiciary and the government.

00:09:09.100 He issued the Declaration of Indulgence in 1687, reissued in 1688, which suspended penal laws against Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters, nonconformists, aiming for broader religious toleration, an act many saw as a backdoor for increased political and social power for Roman Catholicism in the nation.

00:09:30.000 He clashed with the Church of England, even prosecuting the seven bishops for opposing his policies.

00:09:35.320 The last straw in the matter concerned the heirs to the throne.

00:09:39.100 Initially, many tolerated James because his heirs were his two Protestant daughters,

00:09:44.440 Mary, married to the Protestant Dutch steadholder William of Orange, and Anne.

00:09:49.500 The throne was expected to pass to a Protestant.

00:09:52.680 But in June 1688, James' second wife, Mary of Medina, a Catholic,

00:09:56.980 gave birth to a son, James Francis Edward Stuart, later known as the Old Pretender.

00:10:03.440 This created a Roman Catholic male heir,

00:10:05.800 raising the prospect of a permanent Catholic dynasty rather than just a temporary Catholic king.

00:10:12.280 This event, combined with James' pro-Roman Catholic actions and fears of absolutism

00:10:16.980 modeled partly on his Catholic cousin Louis XIV of France,

00:10:20.380 united opposition from Anglicans, Tories, and Whigs.

00:10:24.340 History remembers what followed from 1688 to 1689 as the Glorious Revolution.

00:10:30.540 English Protestants welcomed William to save the Reformation in Britain,

00:10:34.340 and on November 5th, 1688, William would land at Torbay with an army flying the Orange Banner

00:10:40.500 for the Protestant religion and liberty. James II would ultimately flee, and Parliament would

00:10:46.540 offer the crown jointly to William and Mary in February of 1689. Think about what you just heard.

00:10:52.860 In one century, the House of Orange would rise from a German princely family to joint sovereigns

00:10:59.000 of England, Scotland, and the Dutch Republic, the mightiest Protestant power block in Europe,

00:11:05.000 directly thwarting Roman Catholic absolutism and securing the Reformed faith across the North Sea.

00:11:11.300 What was planted in faith by William the Silent would grow into a mighty oak, a glorious story

00:11:17.020 of faith, blood, floodwaters, and divine providence. The Netherlands and Britain delivered from

00:11:23.220 popish tyranny through the steadfast courage of the House of Orange. Much could be said about this

00:11:28.640 noble house, but a few things stand out as lessons for us today. First, it took great wealth

00:11:33.980 and great stewardship of that great wealth to accomplish great things in the Netherlands and

00:11:39.240 in Europe. Protestant Christendom was built not merely by preaching, but also by generous financial

00:11:45.580 backing, all of which had to come from somewhere. William the Silent inherited much, including lands

00:11:51.200 and wealth, and added more through marriage to Anna von Egmond, and yet he spent it not on lavish

00:11:57.380 vacations or a luxurious lifestyle, but on financing the Dutch revolt. By the 1580s, he was

00:12:03.260 bankrupt. He put it all on the line. And while it wouldn't end there for his family, as you just

00:12:07.940 heard, it didn't make it any easier in the years of financial trial that followed. Second, the

00:12:14.040 House of Orange teaches us the power of multi-generational wealth building in seeking

00:12:18.520 the good of your nation and people. William's son Maurice was industrious, spending his time

00:12:24.060 recovering lost estates, building investments in the Dutch East West India companies, and building

00:12:29.720 small fortunes through military endeavors as well. He lived much more modestly than his father even

00:12:34.860 did, rebuilding the foundations of the family wealth. Frederick also became more wealthy due

00:12:39.980 to marriage and military success and made large loans to the state to fund the war effort.

00:12:45.700 Carrying on his work, William's sons were able to rebuild the treasury, restore wealth, and ensure

00:12:51.360 the victory of the protestant cause in europe if we are to restore christendom in america today

00:12:57.020 if christendom in the west is to rise again and not breathe its last it will require such boldness

00:13:03.260 such vision and yes wealth building as we find in the story of the house of orange yes it of course

00:13:09.720 require gospel preaching and true reformation of households and true piety but this must include

00:13:15.940 serious thought by some of our best men in building wealth, building businesses, legacies,

00:13:21.660 estates, and the earthly means of power and blessing. But join us in this episode of the

00:13:26.900 King's Hall podcast as we discuss William and the House of Orange and how we might implement

00:13:31.660 his strategies for rebuilding a Christian nation even today with a special guest. The

00:13:37.280 King's Hall podcast exists to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world.

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00:15:36.860 Well, welcome to this episode of the King's Hall Podcast.

00:15:39.560 I'm your host, Eric Kahn, joined today by Brian Sove.

00:15:44.160 It's good to be here, Eric.

00:15:45.320 Thanks for having me on your podcast.

00:15:46.960 Yeah, we're going to make sweet music in this episode.

00:15:50.300 We're joined by a very special guest.

00:15:52.180 We are.

00:15:52.780 Pastor, Mr. David Reese.

00:15:54.760 Welcome.

00:15:55.500 Thanks for having me on.

00:15:56.200 I'm excited to talk about Protestant power.

00:15:58.520 I mean, basically, that's all I talk about anyways.

00:16:00.560 So this is just a continuation of the ordinary conversations I would be having.

00:16:04.240 We found him wandering around the streets, actually trying to tell passersby about Protestant supremacy.

00:16:09.800 And we said, sir, you sound like you'd make an ideal podcast for the King's Hall.

00:16:14.400 And so we brought him in.

00:16:16.240 And so here we are.

00:16:17.560 And David is not only a pastor of a frankly Puritan church, but also a manager of a fund.

00:16:26.120 Maybe you could introduce yourself to the people and tell them about your Renaissance man mystique that you're developing.

00:16:33.000 Yeah, so basically my life is taking objects and turning them into pieces of Baroque art.

00:16:40.000 Okay.

00:16:40.640 And the development of physical skills is what I'm entirely devoted to.

00:16:44.300 Yeah.

00:16:44.480 But in between that, yeah, so Puritan Reformed Church in Phoenix.

00:16:49.640 We're exclusive psalmody, and we have other interesting quirks.

00:16:53.500 So people should check it out on the website.

00:16:55.260 And then we also, I am the managing partner of Reef's Fund.

00:16:59.640 We have a number of businesses.

00:17:00.560 We have five operating businesses that are involved in manufacturing or construction.

00:17:05.080 And so that keeps me a little bit busy.

00:17:08.520 And then I also have six children, two of whom are married, praise God.

00:17:13.600 And my awesome wife is a huge help in making everything work.

00:17:18.780 So that's all the stuff going on.

00:17:21.840 It's amazing.

00:17:22.280 Every time I hear an update on your life, it's something like, hey, what are you doing?

00:17:26.880 I thought, you know, you just, the fund acquired this company.

00:17:29.720 it's how's that going you're like i'm not even thinking about that today i'm buying a sea otter

00:17:34.340 mating facility and that is gonna push forward the vision of protestant supremacy and that's

00:17:41.620 actually not true but exactly but it does feel like margins were incredible i didn't think that

00:17:48.580 the baby sea otter skin would be so well purchased for the making of boots but you know okay i'm in

00:17:55.180 i would wear them i would wear it to covas made of baby sea otters provided their adorable face

00:18:00.940 was right there no no and just have you seen the s&p 500 against baby sea otter skin though

00:18:07.360 i haven't it's wild the chart i haven't actually seen that chart well it doesn't exist i'll put

00:18:12.340 that into my material yeah yeah wow i you know i'm normally good at transitions but how do you

00:18:19.180 transition from that to brian you have a great musical album coming out oh yeah yeah why don't

00:18:25.700 we just take a take it's cuter than a sea otter it is eclectic i mean it does have like some cute

00:18:32.840 moments and tom bombadil and goldberry show up but it's actually depressing it is a lot of it's

00:18:38.300 depressing i will say if people want to support the album and at the same time get instant access

00:18:43.620 to listen to the song that I wrote to fix women that TM, then they can go to briansovey.com

00:18:51.020 slash short years, which is in the description and back the album. It costs an enormous amount

00:18:56.580 of time and money to make one of these things. I think I'll be $25,000 deep in this album by the

00:19:01.080 time it is released publicly. So if you want to help offset that and pay for, it's not AI

00:19:07.940 degenerative you know it's not algorithmic imitation of music these are songs i wrote

00:19:13.960 um real voices real fiddle players real everything so um yeah i would appreciate it if people

00:19:22.320 like it enough to or the idea of it enough or my past work is blessed to you then

00:19:27.980 maybe consider that but but enough about me but enough about me uh we're gonna be talking in this

00:19:35.020 episode uh about dynasties william of orange of course uh david i want to start uh just the

00:19:41.100 conversation with william of orange first of all how did you get into this field of study

00:19:45.300 i know you're a big history buff you've studied it uh why william of orange what what piqued

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00:20:17.660 So if you're a Christian business owner who wants to reach thousands of like-minded people and grow

00:20:21.800 your company, we'd love to partner with you. Email us at advertising at newchristendompress.com.

00:20:28.180 yeah so i really love the period of time when you look at from the reformation kind of forward

00:20:36.480 until you see sort of the decline of protestant influence right so world war one is sort of the

00:20:42.240 end of that period right so you have this this kind of falling away of a lot of those structures

00:20:46.080 so when you see the rise of the gospel kind of dramatically being published and the bible being

00:20:51.860 more widely available and stuff after luther and and the gutenberg bible stuff that that sort of

00:20:56.100 time frame. You end up with all sorts of political conflict that rises up because there's this effort

00:21:02.400 to exterminate Protestantism. And so the political organization that occurs, you find there's certain

00:21:08.060 places where there's brave men who are willing to resist tyranny and to seek to defend the

00:21:13.940 Christian cause. And so William of Orange is an amazing example of that. He ends up not only

00:21:19.600 trying to sacrifice his own wealth and comfort and eventually his life for the sake of the Dutch

00:21:24.600 people being able to be a reformed people, but you also end up with sort of this way in which

00:21:30.600 that cause gets carried on. And during his life, you know, preaching of the gospel purely done was

00:21:36.140 able to be done publicly. You have this publication that he puts out where he's explaining

00:21:42.340 the ability to resist tyranny. And, you know, he's involved in giving this theological defense

00:21:48.760 of it called the Apology. And then he also is, you know, when he is seeking to organize the Dutch

00:21:57.900 people, he encourages a covenant, a civil covenant that ends up being the Union of Utrecht, which is

00:22:04.960 this example of how to see Protestant political organization. So he did all this stuff and did it

00:22:12.300 at great personal expense. And he's often called the George Washington of the Netherlands. But in

00:22:18.420 America, they were really like, hey, George Washington is sort of like, you know, the William

00:22:21.560 of Orange of America, right? And so there's this idea of this founding father of the nation and him

00:22:27.620 very specifically encouraging a Protestant people to form in the midst of tyranny. And so I don't

00:22:33.060 see any similarities to our own time. So it's sort of hard to relate to the problems of our time

00:22:37.620 where you might need to see political organization and the use of wealth to be able to advance

00:22:42.840 Christian power, but perhaps people might be able to appreciate it even though there's no need for

00:22:48.740 anything similar now. It's totally theoretical. I mean, who could want that? Well, I do.

00:22:55.680 No, no, no. You don't understand, Eric. Seeking any earthly power whatsoever is idolatry.

00:23:01.860 Oh, interesting. All you need is to preach the gospel and the gospel, it actually doesn't even

00:23:07.000 make contact with any aspect of life. It's just either the thought world. So you want to be really

00:23:12.300 careful that you don't try to apply anything that we say here today to your life. Be very

00:23:16.160 careful about that. Very careful. That would be dangerous, like legalism or something. Very

00:23:19.920 dangerous. You studied, you actually have a history degree, right? I do. Yes. I think I got

00:23:27.860 it from a worthless secular institution. And so basically most of the things I learned were

00:23:31.460 actually from reading things apart from that. So the assigned reading was largely worthless about

00:23:36.160 how like women contributed to like the war between the states and ultimately brought about the union

00:23:40.140 victory or something like that and so that was that was largely uh doesn't have material i mean

00:23:44.880 i'm actually not kidding by the way i had a history class yeah that was on the war between

00:23:48.360 the states they didn't have that title and then in addition to that they were having us focus the

00:23:53.700 entire time on the contributions of women to the war and it's like i'm pretty sure most of the

00:23:58.300 people fighting checks notes were men right and and so this this was actually what happened in

00:24:05.160 the class it's not like a farcical pretense to like what happens in universities that's what

00:24:11.020 happened in my class on that a specific class right so what that's like studying shackleton's

00:24:17.240 great journey and focusing on like the guy who painted the ship once before it left harbor

00:24:24.740 like yeah not really the main point not the main point so you got a lot out of that i did it was

00:24:31.440 very informative for me and my worldview. So anyway, so, but I do have an interest in history

00:24:36.960 and in particular, I love that period of time from the beginning of the Reformation

00:24:40.840 to sort of the rise of Protestant civilization and looking at its decline. So the period after

00:24:45.980 World War I is sort of the after effect of that. And, you know, Protestants giving up so much of

00:24:50.660 what they built, right? And so how do we avoid that? Well, we have to rebuild. And so I think

00:24:55.840 the example of William of Orange is an amazing thing for us to see the courage necessary for that.

00:24:59.760 and then we have to be able to preserve the stuff we build. We have to avoid the mistakes

00:25:03.000 of our forebearers. We need to honor their good work and we need to also avoid their mistakes.

00:25:08.540 And so, you know, when people look at the house of orange, there's many sins obviously committed

00:25:12.680 by members of it. And that's all people want to talk about, right? You talk about like American

00:25:16.940 founding fathers, everybody's like, did you know that Thomas Jefferson did some bad things? And

00:25:20.700 you're like, is there anything that we could think about that might've been useful? Or, you know,

00:25:25.760 how about George Washington, right? So that sort of thing. So, but the house of orange,

00:25:29.080 I don't really want to spend time focusing on their failures, but to instead think about what

00:25:34.300 are the noble things that are worthy of emulation. And so that study, I think there's a lot to say

00:25:40.620 when people study things. I'm expecting that when Christians read about a person in history

00:25:46.560 sinning, they're going to go, don't do that. That is bad. But the positive example is something that

00:25:51.460 you can look at and say, what things should we pick up here? And so I think, you know, this

00:25:57.000 this, this beginning, you go from basically a Protestant people that are being, you know,

00:26:03.700 they're starting to preach the gospel. They're trying to tear down idols. They're starting to

00:26:07.120 be punished. There's a persecution. There's a council of troubles that the people start calling

00:26:11.920 the council of blood because of the mass killings of Protestants start to occur. And William of

00:26:18.380 Orange in that context privately funds and organizes the raising of an army to begin to

00:26:24.540 fight and he loses his first battle is just like this horrific failure where he and the whole thing

00:26:29.600 just falls apart and his response is not like maybe i should negotiate terms here and figure

00:26:34.100 out how to you know this is not going very well maybe i should just start over see if i can get

00:26:39.360 you know a peace treaty or whatever he's like let me figure out how to try to organize another one

00:26:43.340 is that another army yeah so that type of response the like privately seeking to do the work to come

00:26:50.940 in and interpose yourself as a lesser magistrate at your own expense, you know, that kind of thing,

00:26:56.420 I think is worthy of considering. And then after losing, going back and seeking to do more, right?

00:27:02.780 And George Washington did something similar where he helped to contribute to raise and train men at

00:27:08.060 his own expense to go help Boston when the British were resieging it, right? So you do see a lot of

00:27:12.720 similarities, the kinds of great men that are necessary to help to organize and found countries

00:27:17.160 and to see a Christian order put into place.

00:27:19.540 What do you think, like, if you look at the story of William of Orange

00:27:22.900 and you maybe bring it to bear with some of the conversation going on today

00:27:27.480 about Christian nationalism and people who say, to Brian's point,

00:27:30.960 that, like, power in itself is evil.

00:27:32.960 I read that story, and we read the cold open,

00:27:35.720 and I think no Christian should use this for the good of their people.

00:27:39.880 So how would you bring kind of those things to bear in our current times?

00:27:44.360 Yeah, I think when you think of power as evil,

00:27:46.120 you're basically just saying that Christians shouldn't apply the law of God to money or to

00:27:52.980 political power. And, you know, the response that was given, you know, to Roman soldiers during the

00:27:59.540 lifetime of Jesus that, you know, when they're asking, what should we do? The response was not

00:28:03.700 to say, you need to immediately leave in the military. It was instead, be content with your

00:28:07.940 wages and don't, you know, don't extort people, right? This idea of do justly in your position

00:28:12.880 of civil authority. So the Christian magistrates are absolutely necessary. In fact, the Reformed

00:28:18.820 have always said, you don't really have a settled condition for the church until you have

00:28:23.920 Christian individuals who are pious and applying the law of God, households that are in good order,

00:28:29.500 whether they're seeing that as like the seminary for the church and the state. And then you have

00:28:33.600 churches that are in good order and established in the land, and you have a Christian magistrate.

00:28:38.640 And so that was the Reformed ideal. All the Reformed confessions written in the Reformation era addressed this. Protestants have been working through the need to resist power and to establish Christian power in the whole of that time and the serious engagement with the Bible.

00:28:53.600 I mean, Martin Luther, in the beginning of the Reformation, one of his, he had three major treatises that were meant to call people to action at the beginning of the Reformation.

00:29:01.320 One of them was the letter to the Christian nobility of the German nation, where he said, the corruption of the church is so great, you must intervene as emergency bishops.

00:29:09.960 That call, that's right at the beginning of the Reformation, is the freedom of the Christian man that he puts out, which calls the individuals to refuse to do what evil powers say and to obey God despite tyrants.

00:29:20.860 And then you also have the Babylonian captivity of the church where he says the church is so corrupt in this situation that we have to be willing to resist its courts and its hierarchies and to see the church well established, right?

00:29:31.900 These three manifestos of the Reformation are all about resist tyrannical power and see proper order put into place.

00:29:39.020 And not just ecclesiastically.

00:29:40.760 Yes.

00:29:41.100 But both ecclesiastically and politically and civilly.

00:29:43.780 Absolutely.

00:29:44.100 So I think that the Bible itself is full of examples from the institution of the civil magistrate in Genesis 9 with Noah where he's given the sword by God.

00:29:54.700 You have this example of Abraham resisting and raising his army to go save Lot.

00:30:02.720 You have David and the thing is like David commits adultery because he didn't go out to war at the time that kings go to war when he was supposed to go out with his troops.

00:30:11.020 The problem was that he wasn't doing what he needed to do, which involved the exercise of the sword, right?

00:30:17.020 So you see all throughout the scriptures, all throughout Protestant history, this need for being able to resist evil, whether it's higher up, whether it's below, whether it's a lateral thing.

00:30:26.660 The call to exercise power according to God's law is a mandate from God.

00:30:30.800 I think one of the reasons this gets so difficult for people is because the context of applying these principles varies so widely, situationally and circumstantially, that people sometimes want a one-to-one.

00:30:46.600 Well, we're not Israel.

00:30:47.980 Well, we're not Abraham in that time.

00:30:49.540 We're here at this time of history, and it's different.

00:30:52.300 There are different needs and requirements, and it's going to look different.

00:30:54.760 We have to resist this or that magistrate, which didn't even – there were no senators.

00:30:58.440 There was no, but I think it just takes us backing up and seeing the forest for the trees and saying, but what's the principle?

00:31:07.000 It was applied in all those situations you just gave, but they all are ringing in harmony.

00:31:12.460 So they can be applied.

00:31:13.980 They just take wisdom.

00:31:15.040 They take creativity.

00:31:16.300 Christians have to be able to read the times and know what would obedience to God look like not in the 1400s or the, you know, in Abraham's day.

00:31:24.840 I'm not in those days.

00:31:25.860 I'm in the 21st century in America.

00:31:28.440 What, what does it look like today? And then having the courage to actually follow those principles because they, they can lead to some unsettling places. Yeah. I mean, genuinely, it's a different, difficult conversation when you have, we've talked quite a bit here in Ogden about like, what is the read of the land today? Like, where is Christian power today? And in some ways, America is like a bastion on paper of Christian power.

00:31:52.640 If you just look at what is the professed Christianity of the Senate or the

00:31:55.540 Congress or our presidents and like the record of that, well, it's pretty,

00:31:58.560 you'd look, Oh, it's, this is a wildly Christian country,

00:32:01.060 but in other ways we were talking about this this week,

00:32:05.480 we almost seem more to be in a situation where the cave of a doulum is like

00:32:09.740 the best, like how many Christians are there in the nation that are really

00:32:14.460 like that really get it and are trying to build Protestant Christian power to

00:32:19.900 seek the earthly and heavenly good of the people.

00:32:22.080 it's it's a pretty small it can feel like it's a bad a band of discontents and malcontents in a

00:32:27.800 cave all flocking to you know david who's in exile and not you know promised the crown and

00:32:34.360 the only difference is that at least david was promised the crown at that point and we don't

00:32:37.700 have a god hasn't promised anybody in our sphere to be the president i guess so right so it's we're

00:32:43.020 maybe even lower than the cave of a duel yeah i think that's part of the point aaron ren has even

00:32:48.880 pointed this out, that we kind of need to understand where we are, that Christians for

00:32:53.600 the last century have been like slowly ceding any political power because, you know, separation of

00:32:59.400 church and state means that Christians shouldn't exercise power. It means whatever the Warren

00:33:02.600 court said it means. Yeah, exactly. So I think it's recognizing the situation, but I also think

00:33:07.400 from history, you know, you sort of get the dispensationalist vibe today, common among

00:33:12.500 Christians where they would say something like, you know, it's never been worse than it is now.

00:33:16.400 and i'm reading some of these stories and i'm like how many huguenots were killed it seems like

00:33:21.280 things are better now yeah yeah actually things have been really terrible and the thing i love

00:33:26.420 about it there's this masculine energy about somebody like william and then really his son's

00:33:30.500 after him yeah because we'll get to that it takes a legacy yeah uh you know your sons have to carry

00:33:36.860 on the work but he just has the masculine energy to to say no we're actually going to do something

00:33:41.700 about this right yeah that that willingness to act right this like you're not just like oh here's

00:33:47.020 a bunch of hypothetical things and maybe if this line got crossed and whatever else is like lines

00:33:50.460 have been crossed action must be taken right and so that willingness to say that so i think you know

00:33:54.840 when we get when we deal with if we want to be decisive we have to have clear thinking right so

00:33:59.960 so the law of god here we have the two big commandments right love god love neighbor right

00:34:03.740 then you got underneath that the ten commandments or here's the first four they teach us how to love

00:34:06.640 god here's the last six they just had a love neighbor that's the organizing set for the law

00:34:11.380 of god and then we have if then statements right the case laws that fit underneath each of those

00:34:15.620 and then you've got the approved and disapproved examples and if you organize the law in that way

00:34:19.900 and study it i mean that's how like calvin's commentary on like the harmony of the law

00:34:23.800 was written right he's just organizing him under the ten commandments and stuff when you do that

00:34:27.900 when you study the reform view of the law and go read like the larger catechism on the ten

00:34:31.120 commandments you start to organize your thoughts and you see like oh here are the exception things

00:34:35.560 like don't kill but also you're guiltless if you kill somebody who breaks into your home right this

00:34:40.840 this idea that there are there are things that help you to understand the general rules and the

00:34:44.760 exception clauses submit to authority unless it commands you to do things that god forbids or

00:34:49.900 forbid you from doing stuff that god commands or or there's a persecution of the church that needs

00:34:53.880 to be resisted like jesus actually gave there's interesting instruction that we have on on how to

00:34:58.400 deal with persecution right there's there's okay first you need to prophetically speak against it

00:35:01.940 you pray then there's this idea of the need to um if they persecute you in one town flee to the

00:35:07.040 other if you don't have the power to resist. And that fleeing is actually what allows for

00:35:10.480 concentration. So much of what's happening at your church is people going, hey, there's problems

00:35:14.600 over here. We don't have the power to fix it. Let's go where we can consolidate with people

00:35:18.280 who can. And so that work of consolidation is one of the principles in the book of Proverbs

00:35:24.140 that teaches you how to grow in power when you're weak. And so that idea of this prophesy and pray,

00:35:31.440 then flee when you're persecuted and you can't resist. And then if you have sufficient power,

00:35:36.100 you consider can we defeat the enemy when they have 20 000 troops and we have 10 right and so

00:35:41.480 there's the just war thing and this whole negotiation and so the prudence of like deciding

00:35:45.500 about the circumstances when you have the law order in place all you have to do is just the facts

00:35:50.500 what do we have the power to actually do now and what strategies do we apply given our current

00:35:56.000 circumstances and i think you're trying to help people to understand the the situation like what's

00:36:00.160 the times like being in a vissachar right yeah and so i think that understanding of like the you

00:36:04.220 the cave of Adullam, but I want to encourage people that we have a better condition in that

00:36:08.540 we have a promise that Jesus is going to take over the nations, including this one. Right. And so

00:36:13.620 that's, that's, that's how, you know, we have encouragement. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. We should be

00:36:18.160 inspired by that for sure. Um, as you look at William, I want to talk about the sons because

00:36:24.120 he actually goes bankrupt, you know, financing this whole thing, which is just wild when you

00:36:28.880 think about it. Um, but then they, they pick up the torch and they sort of have to do this

00:36:33.240 rebuilding work. So it's not like they were just handed a silver spoon. I mean, they had power,

00:36:38.960 they had, they had stuff like that, but they had to do a lot of rebuilding. So talk a little bit

00:36:42.060 about that work and why it's so important for sons and fathers to be on this legacy mission

00:36:47.580 together. Yeah. So I have the honor of having my two oldest sons working for me right now,

00:36:51.860 full time. So Logan and Ethan. And so I get to see them grow in strength and do all this.

00:36:56.480 And I think the inspiration of the past, seeing what Christian men have done to try to raise up

00:37:00.380 sons, have them be strong, have them be competent, uh, made me really want to see that, you know,

00:37:04.780 with Christian homeschooling and encouraging Christian businesses and the opportunity to

00:37:08.420 work together, I get to see that. But so with William of Orange, you know, uh, Maurits or

00:37:13.020 Maurice, depending on him. Yeah. I just said Maurice because.

00:37:18.100 You know, when you look, when you look at like non-English spelling, they're always like

00:37:20.720 Maurits or whatever. So, I mean, I, so forgive me, I'm going to, I'm going to try to suppress

00:37:24.420 my non-english way of saying that but anyway so so but anyway so maurice um is uh he comes in right

00:37:31.880 and he's a he's a military genius and he also reorganizes the estates he basically goes in

00:37:37.620 has to fire a bunch of people tries to like send them off with like some severance and figure out

00:37:41.340 how to like make things happen he gets the the estates to all to all cash flow again right

00:37:46.940 figures out how to make them run efficiently and this like logistical thinking that he's been taught

00:37:51.700 by his father but the thing is his father had to maintain this appearance of being a statesman and

00:37:56.680 so he had to like employ a number of cooks and stuff to make sure that he could constantly be

00:38:00.060 you know as an ambassador and also as a statesman doing this stuff so so malitz comes in and he's

00:38:06.280 just like look we got to cash flow this thing we got a war to fight we got to deal with this stuff

00:38:11.080 like i'm gonna have you know like like a like an army camp cook and we're gonna just deal with this

00:38:15.300 and if ambassadors want to talk to me it's gonna be in a tent in the field right and so so he like

00:38:20.280 he like just cuts all the expenses to the absolute bare bone and stops a lot of the statesman stuff

00:38:24.960 and just says you want to talk to me you know get on a saddle and so that that like willingness to

00:38:29.560 really properly to to cut off some of the niceties that were necessary in order to go hey this is a

00:38:37.240 time of war um so so he has this decisiveness that's built in and he doesn't have any of the

00:38:42.820 hangovers of of the prior generation and the need to keep up the appearances he's just like this is

00:38:47.360 the reality yeah so there's sort of like a reinventing too of what you're trying to do

00:38:52.260 right yeah and so his his creativity coming in he looks at warfare and warfare had previously

00:38:57.800 been focused upon um you know the the the hand-to-hand sort of elements you know swords

00:39:03.360 and spears and and shields and all that and you have the firearm coming in and he's beginning to

00:39:08.180 sort of recreate what's happening the spanish had this unit called the tercio which was this

00:39:12.120 extraordinary fighting force that was fearsome they had these powerful formations that could

00:39:16.680 could do things and the dutch are going how do we economically deal with this and there's so many

00:39:21.580 towns it would start to happen is walls became the thing so all these towns get fortified it

00:39:26.860 there's town town town it's very small spaces in between them difficult deal with some so maurits

00:39:32.040 looks at all this and goes we got to design the warfare to be effective to make it so there's

00:39:37.200 there's man efficiency and he starts to look at the firearm and goes as opposed to large blocks

00:39:41.800 of men we're going to have these like thin lines we're going to use that in conjunction with you

00:39:46.620 massed pikes to be able to control the movement of the enemy but he goes field battles are

00:39:52.040 expensive people die the death of people we're going to preserve them and so he's trying to

00:39:55.580 apply the sixth commandment in warfare to intelligently avoid loss of life so he focuses

00:40:00.360 on building out how to besiege the enemy and do it efficiently so the sieges are short and so this

00:40:06.600 whole like economical life-saving but swift victory view yeah where he's maneuvering around

00:40:11.520 and he starts to do all these like things where he sends small teams in to try to like break open

00:40:15.920 gates and get troops through. And so you have all this amazing stuff where he just goes,

00:40:20.060 we have to try to win. We're outnumbered. They have more money. We have to do creative things.

00:40:25.220 We have to be swift and we have to find ways of accelerating the ability to take towns.

00:40:29.500 And so this young man coming in, having received all the learning of his father and being committed

00:40:35.180 covenantally to uphold the reformed faith, comes in and goes, I'm going to fight to maintain the

00:40:40.140 God of my father and to maintain the cause of his people and to see that we have a Christian state

00:40:45.880 that survives in the midst of this horrible condition.

00:40:48.900 And so to be able to take that position of bankruptcy

00:40:52.100 and political disorder

00:40:54.120 and to use the bloody shirt of his father

00:40:56.600 to be able to be a justification

00:40:58.400 for the need to reform his estates

00:41:00.180 and to be able to see that there's an organization of power

00:41:02.680 to consolidate against their enemies

00:41:04.220 to decisively make victories.

00:41:06.440 You know, what kind of a son is that?

00:41:08.200 Barron, are you listening?

00:41:10.440 We need you.

00:41:12.160 Take up the mantle.

00:41:14.080 That's actually the American solution.

00:41:15.880 we have a problem with Spain.

00:41:17.720 Why don't we shoot them?

00:41:22.960 Depends on the problem.

00:41:24.100 What if we shot them?

00:41:26.260 Like George Washington steps in.

00:41:28.260 He's like,

00:41:28.480 we got all these British here.

00:41:29.600 What if we shot them?

00:41:32.060 And then they left like,

00:41:35.300 man,

00:41:35.800 that's actually really interesting though.

00:41:38.200 The way that he had to pivot,

00:41:39.960 but then that it's,

00:41:41.640 you see God's hand of providence and raising up the right son.

00:41:44.260 because the wrong son could have ruined everything.

00:41:46.860 The story would have been far different.

00:41:47.960 But just one guy who was willing to do really different things

00:41:53.000 from what everyone else was doing,

00:41:54.540 think completely, even from his own father,

00:41:56.860 to honor him but yet still say,

00:41:58.880 even some of the patterns that my father maybe had to walk in,

00:42:03.560 the times have changed.

00:42:05.300 It's time to go to war.

00:42:06.420 It's time to, you know, we don't gild the railings of the warship.

00:42:10.160 like that that's a pretty amazing display of god's providence i think in that story yeah even

00:42:16.120 the military aspect i think is fascinating to me that um you really need men who have

00:42:21.100 multi-faceted competencies right that's something often i think that we lost for the majority of my

00:42:28.180 lifetime in pietism was like no the godly thing is to pray and read the scriptures that's of course

00:42:34.300 godly but the godly thing for a nation also is to study the latest technology and warfare

00:42:39.900 yes yeah and to protect your people and and to be thinking about even things like

00:42:43.980 i remember people who were running the government 15 years ago or involved with that process i

00:42:50.760 remember talking to them and they were saying things like china and the gold and trade policy

00:42:56.000 is going to be a huge problem well are christians thinking about that though you have christian

00:43:01.300 statesmen who are like no actually that's bad for our nation you know and even even you can

00:43:06.100 watch somebody like putin and there's all sorts of problems but you also there's something to

00:43:11.180 respect about a guy who's like i want to do what's good for russia like we need more people thinking

00:43:17.100 about those things in a christian sense and it's going to take as you've you know you've done this

00:43:22.780 in your own life the economic as well sure right like they wouldn't have won if maurits didn't

00:43:28.980 figure out economic solutions to real world problems yes because one of the big things that

00:43:35.080 happened to the spanish was they would often they had this huge amount of silver coming in

00:43:39.820 you know from the new world and so they had enormous revenues but they kept having to

00:43:45.660 declare bankruptcy and they kept having to not pay their troops so like the spanish would be

00:43:50.260 on like the verge of like winning and then all of a sudden they like weren't paying their troops

00:43:53.880 and their troops are like well we're not going to attack anymore and so you'd have this like

00:43:57.660 i'm only dying for a paycheck right right right so you so you end up with this like you end up

00:44:03.120 with this like crazy thing where managing the economics and having stable citizen soldiers

00:44:09.320 became sort of the the backbone of the dutch republic right so you have these you have these

00:44:14.980 these protestant men that are willing to die for their own country and you also have the economics

00:44:19.400 and logistics being managed well and think about maritz having to deal with his uh his own estates

00:44:25.080 and the logistics of us of a nation right yeah and so the two are together right it's the training

00:44:30.200 ground. It's a simplified version on the household level, right? And so this need to be competent,

00:44:35.220 whether you look at the qualifications in Exodus 18 for a magistrate, one of them is kail, which

00:44:39.980 is the Hebrew word for the man of valor, right? But that word really means like you're competent,

00:44:44.140 you're decisive in business and you're decisive in battle. And so being like you were talking

00:44:48.360 about, this man who understands warcraft and statecraft and also, not a video game warcraft,

00:44:54.780 anyways, so- The craft of war. The craft of war, thank you. Yeah, so anyways, and then also being

00:44:59.980 able to deal with, uh, this idea of, of, so you can manage your own estate. You can manage

00:45:04.540 the, the, the ability to, to manage people in a public sphere. One is directly indicative of the

00:45:09.700 other. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Man, there's so many different threats that I want to chase down,

00:45:15.760 but I did want to ask on the financial side. So the Dutch East West India company plays a huge

00:45:23.780 role in this too. So it's also like the heyday of the age of exploration. There's a lot of people

00:45:30.380 that were a part of that, but the Dutch have a pivotal role. Also, it's economic, but it also

00:45:38.200 ends up being the vehicle by which the gospel is spread across the globe, right? This is just wild.

00:45:42.660 Yes. I mean, so there's this, I can't remember, there's an English missionary who came up with

00:45:48.000 this. I'm stealing it from some English missionary, but he talked about how, look, Christianity,

00:45:51.260 you take the gospel out, but to a certain extent, how do you make it self-sustaining?

00:45:55.400 So Christians doing commerce creates the economic lines and the logistical lines in which Christianity

00:46:00.680 can be taken. So it's good lawful dominion work where you're, you then open up contexts where you

00:46:05.860 can talk to people about Christianity and civilization comes out of that context as

00:46:11.080 there's a reformation. And so often, you know, there are obviously, you know, everybody wants

00:46:14.700 to emphasize now all the unjust wars from the colonial powers or whatever, but just, just hear

00:46:18.560 me out here. Some of them were just, and some of them were because of there's lawful activity

00:46:22.720 occurring and something happens. And as a result, you have some just war that results in the

00:46:26.960 possession of land afterwards and the institution of Christian power there. And so, you know, it's

00:46:31.200 like, oh, burning widows will stop. You know, that like that whole thing that occurs that you

00:46:35.380 say a Christian law order is going to end some of the horrific things that exist. And it's going to

00:46:40.740 become a tutor to those nations as the Christian influence occurs. So there's a mixture. Human

00:46:45.700 beings are evil. Christians are a mixture of evil and righteousness. And the Lord uses the

00:46:51.380 righteous things to do amazing stuff with 11 leavens lump and to totally disregard everything

00:46:56.340 about, you know, our forefathers because they have things they did that were sinful and to not look

00:47:01.860 to the benefits of the good things that comes is a horrific breaking of the fifth commandment.

00:47:05.720 It's crazy to me too. I'm sorry. But the, like today people are like, I can't believe

00:47:10.420 you would go to another nation across the globe and you would get militarily involved and there

00:47:17.020 would be economic reasons bomb iran right now and also we need the oil reserves and you know and

00:47:24.380 you're like like these things happen and it can be a function of just you can do it righteously

00:47:30.240 or unrighteously yeah as you said even in the dutch trading companies there's there are many

00:47:35.860 lessons to be learned from some of the downfall of those companies, which was from massive

00:47:41.680 corruption, graft, uh, bribery, the, I mean, because it was a massive locus of wealth, huge,

00:47:49.540 huge wealth production happening in the Dutch trading companies. But they, they're the downfall,

00:47:55.060 the thing that ended up destroying the actual vehicle for the whole totality of what it was

00:48:00.820 doing on the side of spreading gospel truth, but also of establishing civilization. It came to an

00:48:06.940 end because of financial corruption and what money can tend to do. When you look at the warnings in

00:48:14.160 scripture about the love of money, it has to come up in a topic like this, where we're talking about

00:48:20.080 estates and we're talking about dynasties and we're talking about wealth building. And we make

00:48:23.900 fun of some of the pietism that can reject these things wholesale for really stupid and unprincipled

00:48:29.300 reasons. And yet there's a real danger. You have to look and say, the love of money is the root of

00:48:35.600 of evils, you know, like all kinds of evils. You look at what the love of money will do to even

00:48:42.980 the most, some of the most glorious aspects of Western Christian civilization. And I mean,

00:48:48.680 people could go look at, that's not the topic of this episode, but maybe a whole episode on

00:48:52.920 the rise and fall of the dutch east india trading company would be um profitable well i think even

00:48:59.880 for both the positive and the negative even people like tolkien right with thor and oak and shield

00:49:04.460 like they understood that yes the dragon's gold like it can pollute your heart um so it's important

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00:51:39.740 So then you get, what is it?

00:51:42.220 Would it be third generation by the time you're at William III?

00:51:45.700 So I think fourth, basically.

00:51:48.020 Fourth generation.

00:51:49.180 There's like a whole new era of, you know, acquiring kingdoms and alliances.

00:51:55.600 Just walk us a little bit through that.

00:51:58.000 Why was that so pivotal?

00:51:59.220 because here you have william the third really carrying the torch now at this point why is that

00:52:05.300 so pivotal yeah so i mean one of the things that happened is is you end up with this period of time

00:52:09.520 where france the absolutist monarchy that's roman catholic there they've defeated the protestants

00:52:15.520 there they've largely there are these wars of religion where the protestants they win multiple

00:52:19.780 times but they end up negotiating peace even after they've had victory and this is a huge

00:52:23.380 lesson for statecraft when you win do not negotiate yourself into a weak position again

00:52:28.700 you have to when you win make sure that you are in the dominant position after that and so what

00:52:34.060 happens is you have like for you know like a peace a peace meal a meal where they're celebrating the

00:52:39.960 peace um and there's there's this there's this massacre of the protestant leadership that occurs

00:52:45.160 called the saint bartholomew's day massacre that breaks the back of of huguenot power protestant

00:52:50.660 power in france and so what happens is the the admiral de coligny who is the military leader

00:52:57.000 of the french there he dies his widow ends up actually marrying after his death william of

00:53:04.120 orange william the first that starts this this line because she's a very godly woman he was and

00:53:10.160 her first husband was a godly man the widow marrying william results in a more godly line

00:53:16.220 and so uh frederick hendrick who comes from from that line ends up having william the second and

00:53:21.780 And you have William III coming through that.

00:53:24.880 So that whole setup, during this time, France is getting worse and worse.

00:53:30.260 And it sets it up for the French Revolution, right?

00:53:31.960 Where you have this horrific, all you have is secularism and degenerate Roman Catholicism,

00:53:37.360 as opposed to the Protestant influence that previously existed.

00:53:40.300 So by the time you get to the Sun King, Louis, he is trying to expand French power to dominate the country.

00:53:46.660 Is he 14 to 14th?

00:53:47.280 Yeah, right.

00:53:48.340 And so he is trying to expand power.

00:53:50.360 And so you have this sort of – this significant time period where there's this dealing with the expansion of France and there's the famous Cardinal Richelieu and all that stuff, three musketeers.

00:54:03.120 I mean it's basically all just total fact, three musketeers, every line of the book.

00:54:06.120 Yeah, I choose to believe it.

00:54:07.060 Yes, great.

00:54:07.500 So anyway, so you get to this and you have sort of this situation where there's this question of Protestant power on the continent.

00:54:14.520 And will Rome, even after the peace of Westphalia and the peace of Munster, will they end up coming back and swallow up all the Protestant nations?

00:54:23.980 And so the Netherlands and England are sort of the cornerstones of Protestant power.

00:54:29.440 and and when you end up with in england with james ii that you talked about you know he is

00:54:34.840 going to try to he's roman catholic you know charles ii was a crypto roman catholic a convert

00:54:39.680 on his deathbed and your puritans were like you know we knew it the whole time yeah you didn't

00:54:46.100 fool us and so and so you have this uh you have this like effort to to kind of destroy those

00:54:53.180 protestant bastions of power and so william coming in he's married to charles ii's daughter

00:54:59.880 uh mary and so she's like the the second or the second line to the throne and he

00:55:05.240 is like third in line to the throne and she refuses to take the throne because she's like

00:55:09.780 i'm a woman i don't want to rule the nation you have to make my husband king or i won't accept

00:55:14.240 based right and so and so i'm just saying she was a king's hall listener she listened to that song

00:55:20.480 you're about to put out it was that's right yeah she fell mighty high with that college degree no

00:55:24.780 not her if you know you know so this this results in um basically the protestant the protestant

00:55:32.820 powers there go okay look william third not yet william the third but you know or you guys william

00:55:38.760 the third but not yet the king william uh he they go you you come over and we'll support you so

00:55:43.340 there's a a the archbishop that had been appointed by charles ii was armenian so he meets william

00:55:49.380 the third on the beach when they land there and all this crazy stuff happens

00:55:52.920 where like the English fleet doesn't intercept them and all these other

00:55:55.680 things.

00:55:55.980 And so the Dutch army like just like comes across the sea and,

00:55:59.040 and all,

00:55:59.560 you know,

00:55:59.720 like William gets off on the ship and he gets off onto the beach and like

00:56:02.920 walks forward and like all this regalia.

00:56:04.500 He sees the archbishop and he says,

00:56:06.260 do you believe in predestination now?

00:56:10.720 If that's not sound designed,

00:56:13.080 what he just said,

00:56:13.820 Tate,

00:56:14.640 then Evan is fired.

00:56:17.220 Wait,

00:56:18.000 I'm just kidding.

00:56:19.380 because i want to hear the waves i want to hear it that's base that's wild wow it's the all this

00:56:26.260 story has so many turns like that where one one little thing changing and literally western

00:56:32.920 history is completely different well and i love it too because when you're reading stories across

00:56:37.820 generations i i hear that and then i i translate back into my own life and i think okay so i'm

00:56:45.740 actually part of something bigger happening. It's not just me. There's this thing that I think God

00:56:51.060 loves to do that has to do with fractals. Are you familiar with fractals? You know, where you can

00:56:56.220 zoom infinitely in and out on these patterns and they just repeat at whatever scale. So you can

00:57:02.540 look at the history of nations and civilizations, not even nations, civilizations, and you'll see

00:57:06.960 these things happen. These certain patterns that repeat, you know, the desperate last stand that

00:57:12.400 ends up working the courageous single leader who steps in and changes everything and complete like

00:57:18.600 where all the odds are stacked against there are things like this that happen but then you zoom all

00:57:22.680 the way in and you look at your own life and often you'll find just lowercase examples but there it's

00:57:28.040 the same pattern god is a storyteller yeah and he tells these stories on the civilizational scale

00:57:35.660 but your family's scaled too and that's why it's so important that we look at these things and we

00:57:41.220 learn from the examples because yeah, like we're probably none of us going to be able to stand at

00:57:45.520 a point in history like William of orange or any of his descendants, maybe, maybe not, but we can

00:57:51.240 have moments like them in our lives that change everything for our generations, maybe for your

00:57:57.600 church, maybe for the business that you're starting or work in or whatever it is that you put your

00:58:03.360 hand to these little fractal patterns play out on the micro scale too. When they don't just matter

00:58:10.920 if you're a king and it's supposed to inspire you i think that's it the reason that the left

00:58:15.560 and liberals and progressives and the god haters have stolen your history is because they don't

00:58:20.240 want you to be encouraged they know this there's this disenchantment of the west where it's like

00:58:25.520 you have to hate these men after this episode my middle name is william i choose to believe

00:58:30.900 that i'm related yeah wow that's you heard it here first yeah yeah not dutch but i am now

00:58:38.720 You're the heir to the throne of the Netherlands.

00:58:40.980 Could be.

00:58:41.440 And this is totally not, you know, if you accept that claim and go there, it won't be a crime.

00:58:45.360 I choose to believe it without evidence.

00:58:47.360 Wait, so as you get an essay, I do too.

00:58:50.640 I don't need evidence.

00:58:52.460 I choose to, yeah.

00:58:53.340 But they also, so they go to England.

00:58:55.280 So does, William has descendants in England too?

00:58:58.500 So he ends up dying without a male heir.

00:59:02.980 And so, and the liberals always want to be like, and you know, he was gay.

00:59:07.340 It's like, why is that?

00:59:08.060 It's like, because he had Christian friends that were men that they would like have parties

00:59:11.600 where they would drink and talk.

00:59:13.120 Okay.

00:59:13.480 If that makes you gay, call me Elton John.

00:59:19.020 Because I love all the things you just listed.

00:59:21.820 So the guy, and so like this idea that, you know, just like trying to find ways to attack,

00:59:26.800 right?

00:59:26.960 Everybody who does anything.

00:59:28.680 And so there are real sins that exist, right?

00:59:30.880 And so you're like, like with Malitz, there's this like failure to get married and he commits

00:59:34.600 sexual sins and fornication in a significant way that's horrible you know so you go like okay

00:59:38.280 that's real but he also helped to prevent the armenians from taking over the government and

00:59:42.940 made the church have its own independent synod and stopped preventing it from having the synod

00:59:47.520 and as a result you have the synod of dork right and so like it's like okay did he do anything is

00:59:52.240 it possible he was a believer and did some really good things and okay there's sin there too kind of

00:59:55.860 like king david right so you get to like william the third and he's there and as king like one of

01:00:01.860 the things he notices the english are like worshiping the the office of the king and so

01:00:06.280 he's like they have these weird practices where they'd have like like charles the second would

01:00:09.500 go out there and like they'd have the sick come they'd be like here alms and i'll touch you with

01:00:13.360 my magical healing powers so people so people come to these events right and william william

01:00:17.660 i would be cool if it was aragorn the hands of the king or the hands of the healer david

01:00:23.880 come on haven't you read tolkien which is literally history but it's real history fine

01:00:30.400 Elves too.

01:00:31.040 Carry on.

01:00:32.180 That was his Roman Catholicism coming out.

01:00:34.100 Okay.

01:00:34.840 So he was going to oppress us all and eat us and kill our children.

01:00:37.300 So that right there.

01:00:40.160 So we end up with, so William III comes in, right?

01:00:42.560 And so there's these poor people coming and they want to get touched to be healed.

01:00:46.460 So he goes out.

01:00:47.980 He gives them all money.

01:00:49.980 And every time, as opposed to touching them and trying to heal them or whatever, he says this.

01:00:54.220 He hands them the money.

01:00:54.980 He says, I pray that the Lord give you better health and better sense.

01:01:00.280 i'm gonna steal that the whole the triumvirate you give them money and then you say those

01:01:06.160 better health better sense move along we could do this outside of bethel church that sounds great

01:01:13.260 sounds like a great way to buy appreciate like hey better health better sense here's 20 like

01:01:18.360 go put it in the tank with current gas prices it'll get you at least drive to a different church

01:01:23.820 yeah like 15 minutes away like come on that's wild so uh he william the third is wed to mary

01:01:32.240 yes and she's a steward yes is this okay where does john knox come in so this is earlier on so

01:01:40.140 you have so you have uh with with the time of henry the eighth yeah you have you have the

01:01:45.400 reformation in england right and by the way everybody's always like henry the eighth totally

01:01:49.220 made up a reason to divorce his wife it's like look his wife was married to his brother the

01:01:54.620 bible forbids you to marry the wife of your dead brother unless it's a leveret marriage in the old

01:02:00.860 testament to continue the seed according to that which is a ceremonial law that is abrogated and

01:02:05.680 henry the eighth was not obligated to marry her in order to have a continuation of the

01:02:10.200 divorce beheaded died divorce beheaded survived so the divorce was so number one totally maybe

01:02:16.940 He cleared that, divorce beheaded, died, divorce beheaded.

01:02:20.040 Yeah, so Anne Boleyn, yeah, so Anne Boleyn, whether, yeah, anyways, so anyways, so you

01:02:25.040 have that, you go to, after Henry, his son Edward is this awesome Protestant, like,

01:02:29.940 Chad of a man, and he's like 11, right?

01:02:31.980 So he's like a young King Josiah, just awesome, right?

01:02:34.880 And so then he dies, and Mary, who was Roman Catholic, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon,

01:02:40.240 the first wife, she's like, my mother was real, this was real, she was a real queen,

01:02:44.600 I am the real queen, this is all terrible, the Protestants are terrible.

01:02:46.940 This whole thing was the thing to take away my throne.

01:02:49.240 So that's four.

01:02:51.280 So Bloody Mary is then the one who John Knox writes the first blast against the monstrous magic women.

01:02:59.220 Which, by the way, labeling it first, you're like, how many do you plan to write?

01:03:04.520 How many blasts are we going to get?

01:03:06.520 We use the second blast.

01:03:08.800 Dude, we write the second.

01:03:10.380 The title.

01:03:11.200 Hey, dude.

01:03:12.140 Second blast.

01:03:12.880 I will buy it.

01:03:13.320 I will buy it.

01:03:13.940 Please do this.

01:03:14.420 Without any other information, David Reese is willing to – all right.

01:03:19.080 You heard it here.

01:03:20.000 We kind of are, though.

01:03:21.180 I mean, we basically are.

01:03:22.580 We should work it into the title.

01:03:24.240 We work it into the title.

01:03:25.480 By the time this episode comes out,

01:03:27.400 maybe people will know more about what we're talking about in terms of the book.

01:03:30.800 But you heard it here first, folks.

01:03:33.400 You did.

01:03:33.660 Or not, but you heard it here.

01:03:35.360 So during – so Knox is there.

01:03:37.280 Then you have Mary dies, and she's childless.

01:03:40.680 She marries the king of Spain, or the prince of Spain, the heir to the throne.

01:03:44.420 And so everybody's like, ah, we're going to turn into this Catholic empire thing, be a part of this whole thing.

01:03:49.640 So then, so Mary dies, Elizabeth I comes in, she kind of tries to do this middle way between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, and the Puritans sort of get built up during that time.

01:04:00.480 So Puritan power, the base of it gets established there.

01:04:03.020 When she dies, James I, who is James VI of Scotland, becomes king.

01:04:08.660 That unites the crowns.

01:04:10.000 That's the steward line.

01:04:12.120 The Tudor line was before that.

01:04:13.400 So Henry VIII is the Tudor line.

01:04:15.140 So the stewards, you have James I, you end up with, he is followed by Charles I, and that's who the English Civil War is against.

01:04:26.220 And then you have Charles II, who after Charles I is beheaded, Charles II tries to come back in and Cromwell beats him.

01:04:35.540 And then you have him being restored to power after the death of Cromwell.

01:04:39.860 and that results in um the the puritans being persecuted the presbyterians being persecuted

01:04:45.740 it's called the killing times uh and then and he broke covenant he took the solemn he took the

01:04:50.720 solemn uh uh salt solemn league and covenant and he ended up breaking it and and then he uh ends up

01:04:59.080 being followed by james the second who is his you know brother right he's the one that just

01:05:04.040 openly drove the cat this this to your point earlier we're like inflation's bad it's the

01:05:08.940 worst time in history and then like someone in the great cloud of witnesses is like my time was

01:05:13.380 called the killing times the killing time that was my time you've seen the meme it's like a

01:05:18.160 painting from like i don't know the medieval period and on the one side it's like our times

01:05:22.720 have the times have never been worse and then it was like their times and it's like some guy

01:05:26.480 like a sword through his head yeah and he's like actually yeah i think there were things that were

01:05:37.280 better about i'm not i know i get it times are times are tough yes i get it it is wild to me

01:05:43.380 so we think about all this man i could i could talk about this forever it's so cool i love the

01:05:47.820 history side as well um how do you put this together today like what are you building today

01:05:54.160 how is this shaping what you're building what you're thinking through you look at our nation

01:05:58.920 and i i think through our friendship the one thing that i've been most encouraged by

01:06:03.120 is you're like the most anti-black pillar i've ever met yeah it's true david's like we could

01:06:09.060 build fight win right now let's do it build fight win let's buy a sea otter baby boot company the

01:06:14.720 margins are outrageous it'll be ethical they'll have a good life we'll kill them quickly like

01:06:21.540 they'll be eating a little the spiky thing what are they the sea urchin next thing you know they're

01:06:29.400 in otter heaven and then we'll be able to make umami from that and it'll be an add-on the margins

01:06:34.140 will be even more outrageous they were making you look like one of the most evil people he's like

01:06:40.140 but not on purpose reality is just yeah yeah wow so the things you're building today uh walk me

01:06:50.680 through that why does it matter how are you applying all these principles or at least some

01:06:56.100 of them yeah so one thing i've been really encouraged by is you guys talk about guge and

01:06:59.920 like the greatness of domestical duties oh yeah and the original version yeah where he talks about

01:07:04.620 the relationships with people who are in you know the master employee relationship and all that kind

01:07:08.740 of stuff and there's this going to go through all of that right so there's so so much great stuff

01:07:12.940 there so thinking about a house and thinking the children i have today you know are going to bring

01:07:19.100 forth nations right so this this idea of a long-term vision and thinking you're talking about

01:07:24.920 the fractals in history and in life right it's like when you see your child as a small child

01:07:28.900 lying and you discipline them and prevent it and teach them you stop who knows how many generations

01:07:34.880 isn't that wild to think about yeah like it's not even just that you're disciplining your

01:07:39.520 grandchildren like eat think of abraham like he's the father of what nations yeah like you're

01:07:45.600 disciplining the nations when you simply yes my children my children's nations have been

01:07:51.460 disciplined. Every time I tell Cyril that he's getting a spanking, the nations right now are

01:07:57.440 stinging. That's right. So yeah, covenantally. Yes. And so, so this idea of blessing going out

01:08:06.840 to the thousandth generation and all that through, through the application in faith of what God

01:08:10.840 commands. And, um, and so the importance of teaching right doctrine, right? That like truth,

01:08:15.520 truth, like when you're wrong about stuff, the skew is bad, but across generations,

01:08:19.700 the errors can multiply. So the importance of like really catechizing and pouring the Bible

01:08:24.540 into your children. And then the idea of doing that with servants, two of the servants of

01:08:29.340 William's house, one of them helped to write the apology, which is this great defense of the

01:08:33.120 Protestant resistance theory and the devolution of authority and all that. And one of his men

01:08:38.320 was a chaplain in his house and became a great minister that helped to defend the reformed cause.

01:08:42.760 And so you have these things where it's like, okay, so he is able to give men stations and

01:08:48.820 then they were prepared with skills to be able to do great things outside. And so sometimes you

01:08:53.280 have people work for you and they leave and it's a launching pad where they were developed. You

01:08:57.780 disciple them as a servant and they're developed to be able to go do great things. And I'm always

01:09:02.800 so happy when I see an employee leave and go start a Christian business or something like that.

01:09:06.640 Cause it's just like, praise the Lord. Like there, here's a Christian estate that's being built.

01:09:10.820 And when they've learned skills to be able to do that. So this idea of, of open handedness

01:09:15.360 with people who work for you and with you.

01:09:17.560 And so this, like, with sons and children, with servants,

01:09:24.840 and then just the need to be diligent to build up,

01:09:28.740 to use your money to buy future income, right?

01:09:31.140 To invest in things that are going to make it

01:09:33.400 so you make more money in the future.

01:09:34.860 And that makes it so that you can start to build wealth

01:09:37.260 that could be the source of wealth

01:09:39.240 that future generations use

01:09:40.680 for a great deal of Christian power.

01:09:42.440 This building over time is huge.

01:09:44.920 So the people and the resources that you help to develop

01:09:48.400 are things that could do amazing things in the future.

01:09:51.540 And it's always shocking how fast the Lord uses things.

01:09:54.700 But you're just like, oh, you know, the days of small beginnings,

01:09:56.660 it'll take forever, generations and generations.

01:09:58.520 It's like, no, the Lord can do shocking things in 10 years or 20 years.

01:10:02.400 And you can see the fruits of labor come out in ways that are enormous.

01:10:07.320 And so this idea, the other thing is on the negative side,

01:10:10.480 looking at failures of consistency and the way they breed problems.

01:10:14.920 you're talking about like the temptations of wealth or power. And so being consistent as

01:10:20.340 opposed to pragmatic, being concerned to discipline in children and not letting sins linger. And so

01:10:26.980 there, you know, all the things that, you know, William I would be joyful to hear about his

01:10:31.280 children, you know, wonderful. And all the things, all the sins that he sees his children commit

01:10:36.400 because of his failures of leadership, he's going to go, I wished I had, it worked harder to

01:10:41.120 discipline and to teach and catechize. And so those big things, that there's so much that can

01:10:46.360 come from a house, and also that failures are not permanent. The bankruptcy of the house,

01:10:52.020 the name of William was so valuable that Maurits was able to rise to great prominence and to be

01:10:58.240 able to rebuild so that he was able to still be this economic engine for a nation and to be able

01:11:03.360 to lead. And so the name of the righteous is a blessing. And there's so much value in giving a

01:11:09.380 good name that your sons get because the glory of sons is their father yeah oh that's good yeah

01:11:15.740 it's really good stuff a part of it too i think is and maybe we can wrap things up with this

01:11:20.460 training sons uh i was reading i think i might have shared it with you i don't know if you read

01:11:25.080 it but the johan kurtz book um it was like on building thousand year families or something

01:11:30.680 but what was interesting i don't know how i somehow know this i'm absolutely gonna find

01:11:34.720 wherever this is that you sent it to me i've got to read i can resend it it's phenomenal thank you

01:11:38.200 so much um but one of the things i really liked about it is like he goes through the whole ethos

01:11:43.260 of like elites and he's like yeah like the reason they throw parties it's a diplomatic it's a

01:11:49.280 relationship building process so it's just like rethinking education for them exposing them to

01:11:56.320 the business early making them do hard jobs but learning that hey one day like you're gonna have

01:12:01.940 to run the show yeah it really makes you think differently about your kids um in a way that i

01:12:07.560 even what we've talked about here where it's like, well, how do I include my kids in this business

01:12:11.820 and in a meaningful way where they're going to have to take on rule? You train a kid differently

01:12:16.440 when there's an, a high expectation of rule. I remember my oldest, I think he was about 16

01:12:22.540 and we were having to talk and I was talking about the kind of wife you would need to, to,

01:12:27.900 to be an elite basically, and how you need to view life and what your responsibilities will be.

01:12:33.440 and he got like really quiet and he said dad this is overwhelming he said the responsibility of this

01:12:39.420 like if i fail it affects all my people and it was so cool because i said to him i said yes that's

01:12:46.200 right the standard is extremely high and by god's grace you can do it and i'll help you do it and

01:12:52.300 then you could just see over the years like that trajectory of stepping up because he knew he had

01:12:55.980 to that's beautiful so i i think being able to pass that on to our sons i know you've been doing

01:13:00.380 that work as well, but a certain kind of training too. Yes. I think one of the key things that I

01:13:06.480 want to point out for everybody who's listening, you beautifully both encouraged your son with the

01:13:10.680 law and with the gospel. Yeah. Right. So you're telling him the law shows us the way that we

01:13:14.900 should go, right? Here's the lamp unto our feet, son. And then you said also, and the Lord is

01:13:19.560 merciful and he forgives iniquities, transgressions, and sins, you know? And so this pointing to the

01:13:24.220 blood of our savior, that there's both, that we, if we're going to teach the law at a ratcheted up

01:13:28.800 way. We're going to need to teach the gospel at a ratcheted up way. You better have the mercy of

01:13:33.980 God, the kindness of God. You better be giving your children and your churches and your people

01:13:38.680 in business, a view of their father, that he's for them, that he loves them, that all of his

01:13:43.840 activities towards them is motivated by his love and kindness and mercy. That has to be a dominant

01:13:48.380 note. Otherwise you do just end up crushing or creating sometimes wildly successful, but evil,

01:13:57.720 arrogant self i'm building a kingdom unto my own power and glory and all the rest john milton has

01:14:05.500 this thing where he talks about the three different like concerns right and it's like okay

01:14:08.240 you've got this you could be the domineering man who's like you know samson and you're just like

01:14:12.540 trying to conquer and you use this domineering like apply the standard do this thing there's

01:14:16.160 no kind of grace but there's also like a laziness after you win and then there's like the diffident

01:14:19.820 man adam who just fails to protect his wife and engage or whatever and you've got christ the

01:14:24.000 diligent man. And I love that thing. And so this idea of a diligent man, but pointing to, yeah,

01:14:28.520 the mercy of God to keep the motivation rolling. And so I think that's, that's, that's key.

01:14:33.040 Yeah, absolutely. Any final thoughts, Brian, as we wrap up?

01:14:35.640 Well, there's about a million things I think we need to have David back on and talk about,

01:14:39.740 because there's a ton of threads in that, even what we just talked about that I think could be

01:14:44.540 fruitfully tugged upon. But that, I mean, what strikes me centrally just is the recovery of

01:14:51.920 the optimism and the will to try. I was talking about this on X this week, just the difference

01:15:01.820 between a man of agency and a man who is not a man of agency is vast. You have to move from being

01:15:09.440 the kind of man who thinks things happen to me to I happen to things. And you could have two men

01:15:17.340 an identical with identical gifts and identical circumstances. And the one who has the first

01:15:22.300 thought will often be dominated by his circumstances and destroyed. And how many

01:15:27.580 moments in all these great men's lives could they have taken that path? But they didn't. They said,

01:15:33.100 no, I happen to things. Oh, look, this, the Spanish have elite troops in this well-established

01:15:40.520 mode of warfare. What if we change all the rules and shoot them? Well, oh, you know, we're

01:15:46.140 bankrupt. Well, what if we completely change how we've been dealing with money and statesmanship

01:15:50.280 and we change the rules completely and we take agent and we, you know, as a man of agency,

01:15:54.440 we confront it head on with the right aims and the right legacy aims. And yeah, like directed

01:16:02.280 by the right motives. That thread right there is one that I've been thinking about quite a bit.

01:16:08.960 Even the book I've been working on, on how to love your wife, that meditation on husbands,

01:16:13.740 love your wives as christ loved the church and gave himself up for her a lot of the work in a

01:16:18.880 way that was surprising to me tended to this threat of agency just how important it is in

01:16:24.200 something small like that something great like the management of nations i think that's one that

01:16:27.860 every single person could profitably meditate on what bring to application the other application

01:16:34.080 i like from stuff you've talked about before is the importance of the household so if you look at

01:16:38.540 the pattern of scripture and in the law um and you see this in the new testament like if you can't

01:16:45.040 rule your house you're not going to be able to rule a nation if you can't rule yourself you can't

01:16:49.340 rule your house so then what you're trying to teach men and we do this all the time is this

01:16:55.460 agency of when you see problems take responsibility for them yeah and so it can be a 13 year old boy

01:17:02.040 who's not picking up after himself or it can be in pastoral training when you say that family

01:17:08.480 over there has a problem you're responsible yeah how many denominations churches etc have been

01:17:13.580 destroyed just by kicking the can oh yes yeah there's pretty much at some point all of them

01:17:20.220 all of them that have been destroyed that played a part i mean without fail men whose responsibility

01:17:24.940 it was to go do something about a problem kicked the can yeah or they didn't do something about it

01:17:31.860 yeah so being the kind of community and people where we do take agency and we're starting in

01:17:38.060 the right places. And I think a lot of guys, like you said, there's been so many experiences in my

01:17:42.360 life where I'm like, I I'm nobody, I'm working a menial job or doing whatever in my early twenties,

01:17:49.000 I'll be of no substance or use in a broader way, whatever. And you hear that, you know,

01:17:54.140 even from Jordan Peterson, like, well, make your bed and be a man who, you know, disciplines

01:17:57.440 himself and works hard at what he does. And then you find out if you take agency, especially in

01:18:02.180 this world, I think, wow, the opportunities are everywhere because almost no one does this.

01:18:06.780 So, and then you,

01:18:07.480 you just see the way that the Lord will do that in somebody's life who's

01:18:10.500 faithful and think about what Christ says about a faithful servants.

01:18:14.620 Well, if you're faithful with this, you might just get more. Yeah. Yeah.

01:18:18.380 And, and, and who knows what the Lord would do, but to Brian's point,

01:18:21.920 the Lord is generous. Yeah. Like he wants to bless his people.

01:18:24.860 You take that principle into your business as you've described. And you know,

01:18:28.480 I love you, you were off, off camera last night.

01:18:31.120 You were talking about, you know, you might, let's say that the Reese fund.

01:18:36.100 has a business acquisition. You're going in and you're saying, here's a business that could work,

01:18:40.500 but we can make it work better. And the way we're going to make it work better is we're

01:18:43.720 going to be Christians. So you tell the employees, look, here's what's going to happen. Two things.

01:18:48.880 If you do a really good job, you're going to be rewarded and it's going to go well for you.

01:18:53.460 And it's not just going to be this thing where, you know, you're the employee that does 80% of

01:18:57.680 the work and, oh, look, I make the same as everybody else and I never get rewarded. What's

01:19:01.460 the point, but also the flip side's true. If you're, if you're don't work diligently and you're

01:19:07.100 not serious about your job and you don't really care about, because you're not, when you're doing

01:19:10.900 that, you're not caring about everybody else around you. You're not caring about the customers

01:19:14.700 we serve because the economy is just love in exchange of goods and services. That's what it

01:19:20.960 is. And, and then you do that. And so the employees that do a killer job, they advanced and they do

01:19:27.620 well and ones who don't get fired and they have to find a different job. And I think that right

01:19:32.420 there is just, it's such a basic thing, but what a good example of everything we're talking about

01:19:37.280 applied to the economy, applied to commerce, applied to business ownership. It's like,

01:19:42.020 here's what we're going to do. We're going to be Christians. Has anyone thought of this before?

01:19:49.960 And then when you stop being Christians, Dutch East India Trading Company, in the case in point,

01:19:54.240 then guess what happens?

01:19:56.280 It doesn't matter how many billions of dollars that you have.

01:19:58.640 Right.

01:20:00.140 Guess it's not going to go well for you.

01:20:02.100 Yeah.

01:20:03.700 It's all in Deuteronomy.

01:20:05.060 It's all there.

01:20:06.620 Well,

01:20:07.040 gentlemen,

01:20:07.400 great conversation.

01:20:08.580 David,

01:20:09.040 I want to ask you if people want to find out more about what you're doing,

01:20:11.700 if they're interested in that in any way,

01:20:13.140 what's the best way to reach out to you and find out about it?

01:20:16.040 Yeah.

01:20:16.500 Reesefund.com is for,

01:20:18.420 for business stuff and for,

01:20:19.980 for church,

01:20:20.860 puritanphx.com.

01:20:22.480 Okay.

01:20:22.720 And so people who reach out on the contact pages on either one, either myself or somebody on my staff will respond quickly.

01:20:29.580 And, yeah, I love to be of use.

01:20:32.340 And people reach out to me on church stuff.

01:20:33.780 I give them free books.

01:20:34.820 So just, you know.

01:20:35.280 Oh, that's true.

01:20:36.360 Lots of free books.

01:20:37.080 I've received some books.

01:20:37.840 It's very true.

01:20:38.840 You'll get a stack of books.

01:20:39.860 You don't even have to ask.

01:20:41.420 He'll just send you books.

01:20:42.400 Take the books.

01:20:43.860 Read them.

01:20:45.580 That's so helpful.

01:20:47.000 Well, gentlemen, it's been a great conversation.

01:20:49.120 We do want to thank our Patreon supporters.

01:20:51.060 You guys have been awesome.

01:20:51.720 could not do this work without you so thank you be sure to tune in to our after hours exclusive

01:20:57.760 content brian i mean we jam to all sorts of music eric sometimes holds his telephone up to the

01:21:03.960 microphone not knowing that there is literally a bluetooth connection to the soundboard yeah but

01:21:08.620 it's not as cool like if you're doing this have you ever seen djs on tv i mean they don't they

01:21:13.080 don't do that yeah he's with me on this one djs don't hold their i just i want to make that clear

01:21:17.640 I have no idea what DJs do.

01:21:20.580 They probably have professional sound equipment.

01:21:22.560 DJs are also mostly just terrible people from what I'm seeing, like, generally.

01:21:27.660 But these are DJs in the Christian nationalism.

01:21:29.460 I think we've really sold it.

01:21:30.860 Yeah, we've really sold it.

01:21:31.800 I think we've really sold it.

01:21:32.520 Check out Patreon.

01:21:33.320 We have a ton of fun there.

01:21:34.420 And we will catch you guys in the next episode.

01:21:37.500 Well, in case you didn't know, we have another King's Hall show called The After Hours,

01:21:41.040 and it's available only to our patrons.

01:21:43.700 We have a great time in The After Hours.

01:21:45.260 I play hype songs, which Brian loves.

01:21:47.080 Sometimes we even talk about Brian's cut.

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01:21:52.200 Overall, it's a great time, so I'd encourage you to head over to patreon.com slash the

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The King's Hall - May 08, 2026

William and the House of Orange： Building Dynasties & Christian Nations w⧸ Pr. David Reece

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