The NXR Podcast - THE INTERVIEW - Does Theonomy Have A Mechanism For Mitigating Immigration？ with David Reece

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00:00:42.500 Applying God's word to every aspect of life.

00:00:45.880 This is Theology Applied.

00:00:53.420 All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.

00:00:56.060 I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webin with Right Response Ministries. In this episode, I'm

00:00:59.720 welcoming back to the show my friend, Pastor David Rees. Mr. David Rees, if we're talking

00:01:04.780 about Armored Republic as a CEO, Pastor David Rees, if we're talking about Presbyterian

00:01:09.280 Reformed Church that he pastors in the larger Phoenix area in Arizona. And we are continuing

00:01:17.020 the conversation. So I kind of over-promised, under-delivered on our last episode. I said,

00:01:22.080 we're going to talk about immigration as a case study. We want to talk about natural

00:01:25.560 law and the theonomic conception, and then use a case study to kind of tease out or to demonstrate

00:01:33.420 why we need special revelation, but then also saying, but there is a natural law conception

00:01:41.420 that is scriptural, and working that in. And so trying to demonstrate the principle,

00:01:46.360 the 30,000-foot view principle, with a particular example, and using immigration because it's

00:01:52.920 relevant. It's pertinent to our country, our moment in history, and fleshing that out. Well,

00:01:58.160 we didn't get to it in the last episode. If you watched that, I encourage you, if you didn't,

00:02:02.540 to go back and check that out. It's like 90 minutes. It's a longer episode, but packed with

00:02:07.640 a lot of great principles of epistemology. How do we know what we know? And then God's revelation.

00:02:14.300 How does God speak to us? How do we receive that message? And what's the standard? By what

00:02:19.540 standard. How then should we live? How should the state live? How should families live? The household,

00:02:23.880 the church, all those kinds of things. And so now we want to make sure that we don't miss it again,

00:02:28.540 because it would be entirely possible for the two of us to do this. So to make sure that we don't

00:02:32.620 miss it again, we're going to start right out the gate with immigration and talking about, well,

00:02:37.600 this is what theonomy would say with immigration. I'm going to let Mr. Reese do that. And then I'm

00:02:42.520 going to play the devil's advocate and say, well, this to me seems like where the theonomic

00:02:48.540 conception is absolutely the standard, the minimum standard, but I think there might be room

00:02:55.080 in the realm of prudence to add some additional things because we might still end up with 4

00:03:02.340 billion people that want to come into the country. So we're going to start with that. He's going to

00:03:05.860 make his arguments. I'm not really going to make arguments so much as I'm going to pose some

00:03:09.620 questions and we'll see how he responds. And then from that, it really begs or raises this larger

00:03:16.560 question, which is back to epistemology. How do we know what we know? Because if it is just prudence,

00:03:24.180 then if you're not careful, all of a sudden the state can do whatever they want. And we know that

00:03:29.600 that's a problem. So let's open it up with immigration. Right now, it seems as though we 1.00

00:03:34.760 have a flood, not just of people coming into the country, but criminals. And not just criminals

00:03:39.760 because they're coming in by committing the crime of coming in illegally. But the recent stats I

00:03:44.380 I read, I think it's 13,000 that were previously found guilty of homicide, murder, and then another

00:03:53.520 certain amount of thousands that were guilty of other criminal charges. It might've been 13,000

00:04:01.860 total, 6,000 homicide and 7,000 something else. But the point is thousands of known criminals

00:04:07.520 and at least a few thousand who aren't just criminals, but murderers. And we're saying,

00:04:15.260 come on in. That's crazy. How would the theonomist deal with such madness as we find it today?

00:04:24.660 Yeah. So the system right now, there are obviously many, many, many problems with it.

00:04:32.060 And when you think about what are the limits of the state in terms of borders, biblically, you can find the idea of defending the borders.

00:04:42.760 And you can also find the idea of the ability to check as people are crossing.

00:04:49.460 One of the things that you can find there is in Romans 13, verses 1 through 7, you have this idea of paying customs to whom customs are owed.

00:04:59.240 And that idea of customs being basically paying some sort of a fee as you're crossing borders, right?

00:05:07.040 This is this principle of having to pay as you're dealing with the transfer through jurisdictions,

00:05:14.900 which is different from some sort of a protectionist tariff.

00:05:19.180 It's this idea that there's a fee to be able to be processed through because it's an expense to have to have people on the border.

00:05:26.240 And so the people that are using the transit across the border helping to pay for that.

00:05:30.260 Our own constitution tried to capture that with this idea of customs being used and paying for themselves

00:05:36.180 and how the customs shouldn't be collected anymore once you've reached the covering of expenses.

00:05:40.520 And so you have this sort of ongoing off-and-on collection of customs for dealing with those who are protecting the border.

00:05:49.860 And so when you're crossing a border, there are basically three main things that the government's supposed to look for.

00:05:57.380 The first one is, is this actually an invading army?

00:06:01.280 And you might find a large group of military-aged men gathering together with some sort of group coherence questionable as to whether or not it's an invading army.

00:06:13.800 And so you might say, you know, we're not going to accept the claim that this horde of men crossing over together without women or children are here with peaceable and honorable intentions.

00:06:30.580 You might have some sort of a on-its-face probable cause basis for the rejection of that.

00:06:37.380 So I think prudence comes into the finding of facts.

00:06:40.200 Prudence does not come into the finding of law.

00:06:42.920 The law that the government has to operate under is given to us by God.

00:06:47.020 Prudence comes to the finding of facts.

00:06:49.240 And so what we allow and don't allow is based upon fact determination.

00:06:53.880 And so when we also think about this idea of like, okay, so they're supposed to,

00:06:58.680 there's this looking to see if there's an invasion or not.

00:07:01.240 And then there's also this idea, is a person a fleeing felon?

00:07:05.320 And so you have to have some sort of mechanism for determining,

00:07:08.120 are they fleeing just penalty?

00:07:09.960 And if a person is fleeing and they hide the fact that they're fleeing from punishment, then that is a type of perjury.

00:07:18.420 If a person is fleeing and they say, yeah, I'm fleeing, but I'm fleeing an unjust penalty or an unjust process, that's asylum seeking.

00:07:27.580 And asylum seeking, you're admitting something like I have been found guilty or I'm being chased by my government.

00:07:33.460 And so there's legitimate basis to hold in detention awaiting a due process like trial.

00:07:38.180 um and so when there's when there's when there's a basis for thinking this is an invading army

00:07:44.240 nope when there's a basis for thinking it's brigands you know organized criminal you know

00:07:49.260 force crossing you could say nope you know those are both forms of stopping invasion when you're

00:07:54.920 looking at the idea of a person fleeing justice and asking for asylum sorry a fugitive yeah yeah

00:08:02.540 fugitive you know and they ask for asylum you consider that if and and then you you know now

00:08:08.460 in our time it'd be really easy to have systems you know on our borders where we go like here's

00:08:12.060 this person been found guilty of a crime you know and and so you you simply search that and they can

00:08:16.700 say well yeah i was found guilty of a crime in mexico but it was a town that was controlled by

00:08:21.180 you know uh whichever gang and so it was an unjust system or whatever okay fine i mean let's take that

00:08:25.820 into consideration let's deal with that and and so we would want to have an asylum system to deal

00:08:30.140 with people like that um to to deal with those who are fleeing wicked tyranny um or criminal

00:08:35.760 oppression would you send away uh or reject those who are claiming asylum uh but went through 13

00:08:43.200 different countries on their way to ours like you know it's like well you're fleeing from whatever

00:08:51.180 guatemala or like and you went through this country and this country and it's like like why

00:08:56.920 why asylum here? Yeah, that's a good question. And you might go all those countries in between

00:09:04.440 here and there or tyrannical or whatever. I mean, the question of those things, those are part of

00:09:09.540 the process that you go through, right? I think a due process of law to deal with those borders

00:09:16.420 is a part of how you deal justly with asylum seekers. And then you have the idea of disease 1.00

00:09:26.380 And so there's the public safety restraint of disease, and there's the criminal justice issue of fugitives.

00:09:36.620 There's asylum as a thing to be considered for fugitives.

00:09:40.660 And then there's this idea of invading armies.

00:09:43.100 Those are the reasons to potentially block persons from crossing borders that I can find in the Bible.

00:09:51.480 Okay. 1.00

00:09:52.240 Now, when I deal with those categories, and you think about besides that, let's say you've just got a bunch of people coming in. 1.00

00:10:01.460 You've just got a bunch of, you know, Baal worshipers that are like, I'm here for the trade, right? 1.00

00:10:06.820 And I'm going to the land of opportunity so that I can do work there. 1.00

00:10:11.440 And you go like, but you're bringing your Baal worship. 0.97

00:10:13.560 Um, so, so this, this problem, um, the, the Bible has criminal penalties for 0.78

00:10:22.800 idolatry. The Bible has criminal penalties for Sabbath breaking. The Bible has criminal penalties

00:10:30.880 for people stirring up rebellion. The Bible has criminal penalties for, uh, you know, trying to

00:10:36.780 cause people to break the covenant and to abandon the true God. Um, the, the Bible has criminal

00:10:42.000 penalties for acts of violence and for certain sexual sins, the Bible has criminal penalties

00:10:50.600 relating to property crimes and relating to false oaths, especially in terms of public

00:10:59.000 judicature with others. And so those are the things we should be punishing and dealing with.

00:11:04.980 And most of the power that exists should be existing in terms of private property owners.

00:11:10.020 So if a person comes into the land and they want to do work as a pagan, they're going to know the public law here is if they engage in their pagan worship and get caught, penalty. 0.69

00:11:20.460 And so I think, you know, the boomer cons or whatever are not going to like that. 0.82

00:11:27.280 And then, you know, a lot of the guys that want a Christian nation are going to be like, well, I don't want, you know, the pagans coming in. 0.91

00:11:33.440 It's like, well, you could be a pagan and go into Israel. 0.68

00:11:36.780 You weren't allowed to do the paganism, right?

00:11:39.140 We don't, the state is not in charge of your thoughts.

00:11:41.600 It deals with external actions.

00:11:43.340 Right.

00:11:43.640 Flesh out now for the listener, because one other mitigating factor that's certainly theonomic

00:11:49.580 and clear in God's law is that nobody would be getting a cash money handout.

00:11:55.660 Nobody's getting $150,000 towards down payment on a house in California, which is not, sadly,

00:12:04.840 not hyperbole, but real conversations from Gavin Newsom about immigrants getting $150,000 of state

00:12:14.120 money, taxes taken from other people to help them buy a house. Meanwhile, we have natural citizens

00:12:20.380 all over the country that can't afford a home because of inflation. So that would be another

00:12:26.900 thing, right, that you would say that that's going to mitigate immigration is there's no free lunch, 0.62

00:12:31.880 right? Right. So a theonomic system, you would not have welfare. The idea of helping people with 0.73

00:12:40.080 their immediate needs for their consumption is the role of the charity of private persons and

00:12:47.200 households, and of the church for those in the church, and for those who need immediate help,

00:12:55.020 they can receive as a mercy ministry some material goods along with the preaching of the gospel.

00:12:59.820 And if they wanted ongoing help for some period of time, they would need to come under discipleship.

00:13:04.520 And so in the private house, people should be giving in the name of Christ, and then they should be discipling people.

00:13:11.840 And you could bring them into work, and then you should be able to disciple them.

00:13:15.480 Or you could be able to pull people in to be discipled in the church as they're receiving mercy ministry.

00:13:21.080 And so the state welfare system undermines the power of the witness of Christians and of the church in terms of mercy ministry.

00:13:29.580 And so the welfare system is not mercy ministry.

00:13:32.240 The welfare system is theft, extracting property from people by coercive power and redistributing

00:13:39.100 that wealth and giving it to people at the whims of the ruler.

00:13:42.620 And we know that what Democrats do with that is they seek to buy dependents, right?

00:13:48.140 They enslave people and make them dependent upon the state.

00:13:51.120 And by giving them these things, they become a controlled voting class.

00:13:55.660 And so it's a mechanism of buying votes cheaply.

00:13:58.780 They've determined that people who are not citizens and that can vote illegally are easier to buy and control than it is to win citizens by the prudence of your actions or by good government or anything like that.

00:14:16.160 And so if you're simply trying to abuse power for your own benefits, then an illegal class of persons or a group of dependent persons that are citizens, either of those are far easier to deal with than those that are actually governing their own lives well or that are here legally.

00:14:35.320 So if we get rid of the welfare state, that's a big thing.

00:14:38.420 So the issue, I mean, everybody looks at this whole thing and they're just like, well, OK, maybe la-di-da, but what are you going to do to get there?

00:14:46.160 That's a big part of the problem.

00:14:47.480 And so I think that the solution to that is people have to build things.

00:14:54.220 So the issue of how you get there, I want to say to people,

00:14:58.880 in order to get to a place, we have to know where we're going.

00:15:02.840 And so I want to kind of head off at the past,

00:15:05.660 people saying this is like fairyland stuff we're talking about.

00:15:09.280 But what does God say we should do?

00:15:12.420 That's the thing I'm trying to address.

00:15:14.400 And so if we think about the stuff that God says we should do, we identify that, we now have an objective to pursue, and then we can think about the means to get there.

00:15:22.820 So I can't really address both, but I want to ask people who are considering this to not be focused on the idea of just how do we get there.

00:15:31.800 But we're asking the question of, is it practical when it gets there?

00:15:34.960 Is theonomy actually a thing that when it's put into place would be good and would work?

00:15:39.640 So if you don't have welfare as a system, you're not attracting people to just take the stolen money.

00:15:47.800 And you're encouraging people to work and to come and find somebody who's willing to pay them.

00:15:53.340 So they have to offer service and come under the leadership of somebody else.

00:15:56.800 And they're not citizens.

00:16:00.300 They don't get to vote.

00:16:02.360 And so in order to become a citizen, you have to covenant, take the national covenant.

00:16:06.480 And what should be in a Christian nation include a swearing to uphold the reformed religion.

00:16:13.900 And so then if you've got that there, the other thing that the Bible teaches about people who enter the assembly is if you come in to Israel and you join,

00:16:27.460 that you're not able to participate in that congregation of voters.

00:16:32.520 You're not able to be a part of the assembly in terms of the exercise of the vote.

00:16:36.480 until the third generation, right? So you've got the guy that covenanted, you've got his son being

00:16:41.660 raised in that state, and then you've got the next generation after that, and you're looking

00:16:48.660 at grandchildren. So therefore, these are people who are almost certainly having spent the whole

00:16:53.160 time being raised in this Christian nation. And so that third generation. And then you can also

00:16:58.900 have states where there's a history, where there was a problem, where you can say, well, not to

00:17:03.160 the fifth or sixth or tenth generation right so that's that's what i was going to say i'm so glad

00:17:07.840 you brought that up because that that helps me tremendously um if these are people who are coming

00:17:13.220 in but not given full citizenship um until because because if we're going to be theonomic that's

00:17:19.480 another i i would think a general equity um application of you know that that all these

00:17:25.760 different nations and it's ironic a little bit when when god is giving out his determination

00:17:30.980 of which nations so the the minimum threshold is three generations to and i take that as like

00:17:37.340 that's probably in the mind of god what he's thinking uh the length of time that takes for

00:17:42.420 assimilation like to really be to really be um israel to become a part of uh this nation a hebrew

00:17:50.960 um it probably takes three generations and god is recognizing that to really say these

00:17:56.120 these are my people, and I share their interests, and I share their customs, and their culture,

00:18:01.740 and most importantly, of course, their religion, their God, that those things take time. And so

00:18:07.300 the people can come in. One, you're not getting a handout. You're coming to work. Two, you have

00:18:11.520 to come in legally. Three, we can check you at the door. Are you a criminal? Is this an invasion?

00:18:18.500 And then four, even when you come in, not only do you not get a handout or free money,

00:18:24.220 um but you also you do not get um a vote that that helps tremendously and then what i was going

00:18:31.820 to say is it's interesting that um egypt you know you think of it's like egypt killed all the hebrew

00:18:38.460 boys under two years of age you know for i don't know exactly how but for several years um and

00:18:46.220 and enslave the entire the entire nation of israel for 400 years um and then after letting 0.92

00:18:53.840 them go ran them down and tried to slaughter them in the wilderness like egypt you know 0.67

00:18:57.980 and they're pagans worshiping ra and you know sun god and all these different um you would think

00:19:03.700 like if there's any variation of time um egypt's you know going to be 10 10 generations you know

00:19:09.980 they're going to be penalized but they weren't egypt uh if i'm remembering correctly egypt was

00:19:14.760 three generations uh the the minimum threshold of anybody who's um who's coming into israel

00:19:19.960 assimilating with israel um but it was actually those who were closer to israel like brothers

00:19:26.580 who had betrayed them uh when israel needed the most um that got like the harshest penalties of

00:19:35.140 like 10 generations uh because i forget exactly it might have been edom um the edomites or i can't

00:19:42.920 remember who it is but uh one particular uh particular um nation that like israel passed by

00:19:49.660 them at some point um went through their land and asked for like can we go through your land and can

00:19:55.700 can you give us provisions you know and that's all it's like egypt enslaved them for 400 years

00:20:00.400 and these other guys uh failed to give them lunch you know basically and these guys 10 generations

00:20:07.540 before you can, you know, it makes me think now I, again, it's God's law. God, God is good and

00:20:12.700 perfect and holy and right. Um, but it does, you know, that one, I'll be honest, my, you know,

00:20:18.140 I don't like, uh, cause I, I'd be scared knowing Americans. Uh, I'd be scared that, you know, 0.95

00:20:24.360 if, if everybody in America became theonomic, they'd be like, all right, great Britain,

00:20:28.840 revolutionary, you know, the, the war for independence. Um, even though we share so

00:20:33.520 much in common in our heritage. And you actually would, in many ways, assimilate the fastest.

00:20:40.840 You guys, because of the war for independence, you guys, it's going to be 20 generations,

00:20:46.780 you know? And then over here, you know, Somalia, you know, three generations. And I'll be honest,

00:20:52.660 like, at a natural level, I'm like, I think Somalia, like, can we at least give it five or

00:20:59.740 six because not, not because of, of anything, you know, because of skin pigment or anything like

00:21:05.280 that, but it's, but Somalians as a nation and their customs and their culture is not, it's just

00:21:10.740 not compatible. It's not compatible with our heritage, our history, our religion. A lot of 0.98

00:21:17.400 these kinds of things are like Haitians. Because people, I've had this argument too, and I'm curious 0.99

00:21:22.120 to hear your thoughts, but I've had people say, well, Haiti is, you know, a Christian nation. It's

00:21:26.020 like, no, it's not. The problem with Haiti is you've got one island, and half of it is the 1.00

00:21:32.700 Dominican, you know, the DR, the Dominican Republic. And it was, for the most part, you know,

00:21:37.620 settled by Protestants. And, you know, it's not first world, but it's developing world. It's,

00:21:43.420 you know, it's a lot more hopeful. And then the other side, and that's all it is, one island with

00:21:47.820 just, with a wall, you know, a border, a line, right across the middle. One side, you've got

00:21:52.680 the Dominican Republic, uh, settled by, uh, Protestant Christians and, and there's room for

00:21:59.400 improvement. Don't get me wrong, but it's doing okay. Uh, other side of the fence and you've got

00:22:05.140 Haiti, uh, also settled by Christians, but, um, but papists, uh, Catholics and, uh, and Haiti, 0.97

00:22:12.440 uh, is a hell hole. Like Haiti is, Trump said that once upon a time, you know, he's like,

00:22:18.260 Like, Haiti is a hellhole, and people gave him so much grief, and I'm like, gosh, darn it, he was right. 0.91

00:22:23.420 He was also right when he said Russell Moore is a terrible person. 0.95

00:22:26.420 You know, like, Trump has been right about a few things. 0.77

00:22:28.180 But here's the thing, when the Catholics settled, and in the little bit of study I've done about it,

00:22:32.980 when the Catholics settled Haiti, they did a syncretism of the Haitian voodoo and literal worship of demons within Catholicism. 0.51

00:22:44.180 Catholicism. So they were like, hey, we would like for you to have Catholic voodoo. Could you 0.87

00:22:51.040 have papal worship of demons? And that was the difference between the Protestants over here with 0.98

00:22:58.360 the DR and the Catholics over here with Haiti. And so anyways, all that being said, my point is

00:23:04.320 people give us, I'll make the argument and say, hey, you know what? We really don't need more

00:23:08.140 Haitians. In fact, I think we need less. We have like 590,000 Haitians in a very short window, 1.00

00:23:14.580 just a few years, that have come over here and destroying entire towns like Springfield, 1.00

00:23:18.760 Ohio. We need, I think, to deport a lot of Haitians. I would argue 80, 90 percent of the 1.00

00:23:26.660 ones who have come in the past few years need to be deported. That said, people would push back

00:23:32.080 and say, but Joel, they're Christians. Is this because, Joel, are you making that argument

00:23:36.900 because they're black? No, I'm making the argument because they're not compatible with America, 1.00

00:23:42.760 and they're not Christians. And people say, well, Haiti is 97% Christian. Okay, I can read 1.00

00:23:49.360 statistics too, but going beyond that, what kind of Christian? We're talking about a voodoo, 1.00

00:23:54.420 cannibalistic, syncretized Roman Christian. Yeah, they're 97% that Christian. That's not Christian. 1.00

00:24:04.020 that's not christian so that what do you think about all that so i would say haiti needs to wait

00:24:09.160 england yeah three generations you're in i'd be able to argue one or two but i am caught up with

00:24:17.360 because the word of god is true but it seems like god's like hey the guys who killed your babies

00:24:21.840 and uh and enslaved you for 400 years three generations and the guys uh who are your closest

00:24:27.800 kin like your cousins makes me think of the brits um but they didn't give you lunch that one time

00:24:33.300 you know, or they tax your tea. Those guys, 10 generations. And I'm like, oh no. What do you

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00:26:01.780 can be scheduled by using the link in this episode's show notes.

00:26:05.980 America is a country that was founded for the purpose of allowing Christians to do their duty

00:26:09.380 before God and not to have their consciences ruled by the doctrines and commandments of men.

00:26:13.780 Reese Fund exists in order to see the 10 commandments properly applied, not just as

00:26:18.100 a plaque on the wall, but to actually be used in business as though they're commandments from God

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00:27:41.620 the phone number that's listed in the description for this show. Go to the description, the phone

00:27:47.000 number for Elijah with Top Knot will be right there. Give him a call today. First, regarding

00:27:52.780 papal syncretism, all papist stuff is syncretism. You said voodoo cannibalistic

00:27:58.640 Roman Catholicism. That's just Roman Catholicism because they have magical nonsense and then they 1.00

00:28:05.140 believe they're literally eating the flesh of Jesus in a physical way. Anyway, I wanted to 0.95

00:28:10.960 make sure to get in my there's my puritan friend david you are truly a puritan go ahead so so uh

00:28:19.400 so that that being that being the case um what i what i want to say about the rest of it is yeah

00:28:25.640 it's interesting you look at egypt what do you have in the formation of the state of israel you

00:28:30.400 have a mixed multitude leaving egypt so a big part of their their constitutional body right

00:28:36.840 When they form, when the constitution of Israel is given at Mount Sinai,

00:28:42.080 the covenanted body that forms that state is actually largely made up of ethnic Egyptians.

00:28:50.360 And so you have this mixed multitude of people who have mixed ethnic marriages.

00:28:56.000 You have Egyptians themselves that have covenanted and come in,

00:28:58.900 and you've got those that are ethnically related back to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob.

00:29:07.900 Okay, you've got to help me with that. So where did ethnic Egyptians, I mean, we're talking

00:29:12.260 Hebrews were slaves. It doesn't seem like any Egyptian guys are going to be like,

00:29:18.940 man, I'd love to marry into that family. Where are the ethnic Egyptians marrying into Israel 1.00

00:29:23.860 come from? So first of all, during the 400-year period, a significant portion of it, Israel is

00:29:30.240 raised up as a prominent position. Goshen is a nice piece of land. That's true. They're initially

00:29:37.440 in a position of prominence. You have Joseph as the prime minister. And once there's a transition

00:29:43.600 of power, where there's a dynastic replacement that occurs, you have a pharaoh that does not

00:29:49.820 remember joseph right so you you have this like you have this sort of like a loss of power of the

00:29:55.660 hebrews as a as an ethnic group there and as and as and as the you know the yahwehists the the

00:30:01.700 christ the pre the pre-christ christians you know being there uh they they are they're in a position

00:30:06.720 of prominence and then they they are they're trampled underfoot and so there's some portion

00:30:13.020 of time where they've been mixing this occurring then you have real quick one one thing with so

00:30:17.680 that's super helpful. But just to push back a little bit more, we know Joseph that he took an

00:30:23.180 Egyptian wife. We know that. And so his sons who receive a blessing from their grandfather, Jacob, 0.71

00:30:30.540 Ephraim, and Manasseh, they're 50% DNA of Jacob and 50% Egyptian. So we know that.

00:30:41.500 But do you think that the other brothers, because Joseph, there are some extraordinary

00:30:46.680 circumstances there. But, you know, and one of those circumstances being that, yes, he was

00:30:51.760 viceroy of all of Egypt, second in command, second only to Pharaoh, but he's still a slave in the

00:30:56.440 sense that he's not a free man. He can't, so you can be a slave and have immense power, but he's

00:31:01.880 not free to just go back to his father. He's like, he's in Egypt, he's under Pharaoh's command. He's

00:31:07.920 the chief slave in all of Egypt, but he's still a slave, kind of like the Roman empire, that there

00:31:11.560 were slaves who owned slaves, you know, and slaves could be very powerful people. And you could have

00:31:15.580 free men who were, you know, legally free, but were poor, you know, and slaves that are richer

00:31:20.400 than free men. And so I think, you know, my persuasion is that dynamics going on. And so

00:31:26.100 with that, I'm under the persuasion that Joseph may not have had a say in his marriage, that he

00:31:32.320 was, you know, you're going to marry this woman and have children by her. But would Judah, you

00:31:38.800 know, and Simeon and Benjamin, would they have instructed their children marry Egyptians? That's 0.97

00:31:48.520 cool. I think, you know, the law of God would have required them to marry believers, right? I think

00:31:55.640 there would have been people who disobeyed. I think that just like, you know, I'm a Sethite

00:32:00.340 view guy, right? So I think that the men were lusting after women of the world and then married

00:32:06.640 them and then they had ungodly children. I think that would have happened in Egypt too. I also 0.98

00:32:10.920 think that there would have been some Egyptian women that converted. I also think there would

00:32:14.340 have been some Egyptian men that converted. And then there would have been Israelite women that

00:32:18.020 married them as they're a part of the church. And then I think there also would have been in the

00:32:23.860 system of slavery during the last portions of the time in Egypt, there would have been women who were

00:32:28.640 concubines or forced to be married, that kind of thing. And you would have had a number of types 0.98

00:32:34.260 of examples of abuse in that way i also think during the process of the plagues you have a

00:32:40.040 significant portion of the of the egyptian population converting um and and joining the

00:32:46.440 hebers and and so that's that that lines up with the general population starting to favor them and

00:32:52.620 giving them gold and silver as a that's a good point okay so in that way they plundered the 0.64

00:32:58.980 egyptians and you're saying it wasn't that they um they didn't plunder the egyptians by theft

00:33:03.680 they didn't go into all the egyptians house and take their stuff but the egyptians actually

00:33:08.240 resourced them out of their own personal treasury to uh to make this journey and so i think a part

00:33:14.600 of that resourcing could also by the way be the giving over of other slaves right and so you you

00:33:19.960 have you have this process of the giving of lots of stuff you have the you have the process of

00:33:24.520 of people converting you have the process of all that stuff so i mean we're talking 400 years a

00:33:29.240 huge portion of the of the nation leaving um so so this a huge body of of misraim of of of egypt 0.99

00:33:38.560 is is uh is is departing out and it's a mixed multitude okay um and so uh the other thing is 0.97

00:33:46.520 egypt would have been relatively metropolitan compared to other places because of the worldwide

00:33:53.140 famine, or at least the Mediterranean zone famine that was widely occurring. And so you would have

00:34:00.540 had a lot of people coming into there. And so you'd have this interesting kind of mix there as

00:34:05.680 well. And then there were a power center that would have attracted trade, attracted people.

00:34:11.080 And so you would have had a lot of stuff going on with just sort of a... And it's at a cross point

00:34:16.600 across three continents, and so you have this sort of massive international state thing.

00:34:24.720 And Egypt is interesting in how it didn't go and conquer huge amounts of land as compared

00:34:29.600 to other empires.

00:34:33.080 It tended to make vassals win wars and disappear.

00:34:37.560 And so it sort of, as opposed to trying to expand, it tried to retain its strength and

00:34:42.060 to create buffer states.

00:34:44.060 And so it kind of kept coming back around the Nile for its center of power.

00:34:47.700 So just a lot of weird, interesting things there that kind of make it somewhat similar in a lot of ways to the United States in terms of the way we exercise power and kind of come back in a lot of ways.

00:34:57.080 But anyway, so all I have to say, yeah, I believe that the mixed multitude is mixed ethnically.

00:35:04.200 And at the same time, it's predominantly people who are genetically coming from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.

00:35:13.240 And so you have these peoples that are attached on, hangers on, that are mixed ethnicity, all that kind of stuff coming in. 0.71

00:35:19.160 And so that group that leaves out, they're the ones that covenant, and that's the assembly that forms the electorate.

00:35:27.160 electorate, the heads of house would have been the voters, the men of 20 and above that are heads

00:35:30.780 of house would have been the voters in that body from the beginning. And so Egypt, like Britain for 0.70

00:35:36.980 us, would have been sort of the state of origin in terms of their Declaration of Independence coming

00:35:42.860 out. And so I think the mixture of history, there's an interesting way race is sort of

00:35:47.780 predominant there. Even though there was abuse, there's also this recognition of the historical

00:35:52.440 reality. And so I think our historical connection to Britain is something that would make us that

00:35:57.680 we would need to have a recognition that the Commonwealth countries are places that we would

00:36:02.840 need to think of as sort of having a similar connection to us as Egypt, even looking at

00:36:07.400 failures in the past or whatever, wanting to have that. So I think the shared connectivity

00:36:12.080 is important. So then the history of Israel as a state interacting with other people is very short

00:36:18.320 apart from its long-term connection to egypt its interactions with other people you have a very

00:36:24.520 short list of interactions from its initiation as a covenanted body i see i like that okay yeah

00:36:31.140 because i that that's super helpful um that was good because because what i was you know struggling

00:36:36.280 with is like man you know uh if if the minimum you know threshold is three generations for full

00:36:42.940 assimilation and full voting rights um and citizenship um but but then there's even further

00:36:48.740 penalties but the further penalties are for the guys who seem to have the least in common and have

00:36:54.620 oppressed the most like egypt um or i'm sorry uh like uh the the you know 10 generations you know

00:37:01.140 the furthest penalties are the guys who have the most in common you know your your cousins who

00:37:05.400 didn't give you lunch that one time and then the guys who have the minimum threshold are guys who

00:37:09.600 actually did oppress you like Egypt and have less in common. And I was like, oh man, I'm afraid

00:37:15.400 my theonomic spidey sense begins to tingle because I'm thinking like, oh, the general equity of that,

00:37:21.480 I'm not going to like it. It's going to be, you know, three generations for Haiti, you know,

00:37:25.500 and 20 for England. But the way that you just conceptualized and espoused that idea is helpful

00:37:33.640 and seeing, no, actually, Great Britain might be more likened to our Egypt.

00:37:42.940 So anyways, that's really helpful and intriguing.

00:37:46.520 One of the things that also I think is interesting in the New Covenant era,

00:37:49.840 when you think about Israel was the national church,

00:37:53.080 and the provincial or parochial or localized nature of the church in the Old Covenant

00:37:58.900 is such that the international affairs of Israel were kind of stuck in this isolation place.

00:38:04.940 When you think about the dominance that occurs during the Davidic reign

00:38:12.120 and then ultimately in the Solomonic reign, 0.62

00:38:14.780 where you have a number of nations that become covenantally subject to Israel,

00:38:19.380 and we're told that Solomon ruled from the river to the river, right?

00:38:22.260 He ruled basically collecting tribute in all the zone that was promised to Abraham

00:38:28.240 from the Nile to the Euphrates, and so he had subjugated that whole zone

00:38:33.740 largely through the work of his father.

00:38:35.720 I mean, Solomon, like Alexander the Great, inherits this military power from Philip.

00:38:40.900 Solomon inherits that from David, and so during that period of time

00:38:44.940 where there's this sort of hegemony of Israel, you have covenanted states.

00:38:50.080 Some of them are treated in ways that are interesting like Tyre.

00:38:55.620 There's this obvious mutual relationship of trust.

00:38:59.520 There's an adoption of the true religion in various places that are subjected by Israel.

00:39:04.980 And that sort of gives us some of a hint of where that can go.

00:39:08.140 But the relationship of nations can become as close as the relationship of the tribes.

00:39:13.640 The tribes are confederated together.

00:39:15.320 They have a federated government where the tribes act sort of like in the United States we think about states.

00:39:20.740 Our states are like our countries.

00:39:22.240 Our states are as powerful and big as countries.

00:39:27.880 And so that federating process, as we covenant, you could have covenanting that extends out who is there, right?

00:39:37.100 So if you had a nation become reformed and it has a great covenant and you have another nation that's reformed and has a great covenant,

00:39:46.820 and there's this interaction, it's possible to covenant together to share in a,

00:39:52.560 now you have a federal union, and so you can eliminate the differentiation over time

00:39:58.560 of things for citizenship, or sort of like how you can move from one state to the other in the union,

00:40:04.160 we're recognizing the citizenship of each other and not requiring that.

00:40:07.500 But if you had this Christian covenant that's overriding for the nation,

00:40:11.040 then you would make it so that whether you're in this sovereign peace

00:40:15.640 or that sovereign peace, you're united in such a civil covenant

00:40:22.220 that makes it so that the voting populations can transfer without loss.

00:40:25.820 But you're creating a zone that's outside of that covenanted body.

00:40:29.940 And so the Christian process of seeing Christ acknowledged

00:40:33.220 as the king over all of the nations, you have Christian individuals

00:40:38.040 governing themselves well, governing their households well.

00:40:41.040 then they are seeking to see good churches in place,

00:40:43.980 to have those churches be united and to see an established church.

00:40:48.000 And then your goal is to have the state acknowledge through a civil covenant

00:40:52.020 what Christ's rule in the civil sphere.

00:40:54.880 And you want churches across borders to acknowledge each other

00:40:58.660 and potentially help to start to build the bridges of fraternity across those borders.

00:41:03.580 And as those two nations are both solidly Christian,

00:41:05.980 there's opportunity to potentially share in a federal union.

00:41:08.660 And so there's this way in which peace and unity spreads.

00:41:12.440 And you think about, like, the United Nations has a humanistic view of this, right?

00:41:15.940 But Isaiah talks about the beating of swords into plowshares and, you know, of spears into pruning hooks.

00:41:23.580 And, you know, as conservatives, we kind of laugh, you know.

00:41:26.100 And it's like, well, look, I make body armor for a living, so I'm not, you know, I'm not, like, trying to pretend like I don't believe in human evil. 0.87

00:41:32.300 But the point is, when Christian influence reaches a certain level in a state, you spend less on security and policing, and you spend more on productivity as a percentage of what you're doing. 0.70

00:41:43.760 It's one of the blessings of peace. 0.74

00:41:45.560 And with nations, as Christ's reign extends in the post-millennial hope to the nations, and more and more of them are Christian, there's less and less warfare there.

00:41:55.440 And the international relations are less dominated by warfare and more dominated by peace and commerce and confederating.

00:42:06.300 And so those types of activities is what we want to work toward.

00:42:10.800 And so there are times when you have to tribalize and separate off because there's this grand humanistic empire that needs to be divided from.

00:42:19.020 But the hope is to then consolidate, build, and then grow back out.

00:42:22.820 And that peaceable way of growing back out is by the spread of the gospel.

00:42:25.860 And there's the old missionary trope, right, which is you use commerce,

00:42:31.440 which helps to bring Christianity in, which helps to build civilization.

00:42:35.080 And that allows for that building of Christian civilization and Christendom,

00:42:40.560 so where you're able to acknowledge each other and work with each other.

00:42:42.840 So that process is a constructive process.

00:42:46.560 And there's also the process where wicked nations, nearby righteous nations,

00:42:50.520 Sometimes the wicked nations start an unjust war, and the righteous nation gets to expand by righteous conquest.

00:42:59.300 And so as we think about this process of international interaction and the way that theonomy allows for a positive program of building,

00:43:09.660 it's the power of the gospel, but also the proper use of the state and the waging of just warfare.

00:43:13.600 So I hope that gives a picture of sort of the way international interactions would be conceptualized.

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00:45:45.060 oh that's fascinating i i really appreciate it so um

00:45:52.840 um you know i it's you know i still struggle with just um theoretically before all the other

00:46:03.300 nations catch up and let's and that isn't you know we we're currently on decline so we'll see

00:46:07.740 what the lord and his providence does but let's say that america repents we get back on track

00:46:11.420 and we're just you know thriving uh as a nation our civilization all these different things the

00:46:18.540 metrics keep you know pushing back the way they used to you know life expectancy longer um and

00:46:24.760 and you know personal individual wealth and poverty is being you know further eradicated

00:46:29.740 and all these kinds of things if that's the case um and in a hypothetical you know simulation here

00:46:37.080 let's say the rest of the world is just in dire straits and uh lots of war um invasions thugs

00:46:45.860 cartels you know all these kinds of things and we have this theonomic nation uh if you come here 0.60

00:46:51.320 you got to work um you got to come here legally uh you don't get to pagan you can be a pagan but

00:46:57.400 you don't get to do paganism um and you certainly uh will not be a citizen for a minimum of three

00:47:03.340 generations and at that point you would have to be a christian in covenant with us and voting

00:47:07.580 citizen what's up voting voting citizen gotcha you take the covenant you become a citizen but

00:47:13.060 you're not you're not a voting citizen until the third generation until the third generation yep

00:47:16.400 so all those things um but if the rest of the world is torn by war and crime and all these

00:47:26.500 different things and poverty um what's what if four billion people in half of the world what

00:47:33.940 if four billion people what if with the whole nation of india at one point i think it's 1.2

00:47:38.540 1.3 billion people. What if they all say, all right, we will not publicly worship any cows.

00:47:46.220 We're not going to eat them. Still not going to eat them, but we won't worship them.

00:47:51.200 And we will not do these pagan things. And we're going to come. We're not criminals. 0.98

00:47:57.540 We're going to come and we're ready to work. We will answer all the phones.

00:48:03.700 there will be thick accents for every you know every uh phone service that you use but you've

00:48:10.420 already had them because you shipped all your jobs to us anyways now we'll just be in your country

00:48:14.060 doing the jobs instead of doing your jobs over there so we're coming 1.3 uh billion um i just

00:48:21.200 feel like practically the nation is going to collapse america i just i'd like how how is it

00:48:29.340 how's it going to work? It's like, we're coming for a job, but we don't have that many jobs.

00:48:34.600 Jobs have to be created. It takes time to actually expand and create industry. And honestly,

00:48:42.820 I'm not trying to be facetious in asking this. You're better at business than I am. So I'm

00:48:48.340 genuinely asking, you've created jobs. You are a guy, a pastor who is theologically sound,

00:48:55.620 but also has some serious real-world experience that's worthy of respect. You've created

00:49:02.100 more jobs than I have. I created a job for Nathan over there. I did that by the grace of God. God

00:49:07.420 did it, but he used me. I created one job, David, and I'm proud of it. Nathan is feeding a family

00:49:13.420 with a job I created. But I'd be willing to bet you created a lot more jobs than I currently have.

00:49:19.120 And so I want to hear your honest answer, and I'm open to learn here and be proven wrong.

00:49:25.620 but 1.3 billion, the entire nation of India moving here and doing it legally and all the 0.77

00:49:30.760 criminals, let's, let's, you know, being fair to your conception, let's say, let's say 0.3 billion 0.98

00:49:36.960 of them get sent back, you know, because, because they're, they're, they're criminals or they're

00:49:40.700 this or they're that, but the rest of them really are non-criminals and they still love cows in

00:49:45.740 their heart, but they won't worship them in the streets. And, you know, and, and they're not going

00:49:51.220 to vote be voting citizens and they're going to work and they're not going to get welfare

00:49:54.820 but still a billion a billion people and let's say over a six-month period how do we how do we

00:50:01.920 survive that yeah so i think i think one of the things is that we have to remember that one of

00:50:08.360 the big problems in america is the widespread existence of publicly owned spaces and so we

00:50:15.220 think about the space being governed by the state, right? We think about cities, counties, states,

00:50:22.180 and the federal government. I live in Arizona where a majority of the land, I think it's close

00:50:27.120 to like three quarters of the land, is owned by a government. And so as a result, the land is being

00:50:32.800 totally efficiently used, right? It's amazing. Like all the government-owned lands are just a

00:50:36.260 wonderland of efficiency. That's not the case, right? It's just, you've got like empty, empty

00:50:41.380 wasteland, and then the private land is just this sprawling metropolis of glory. And so when you

00:50:48.600 think about private property and the government of private property, if you actually enforce

00:50:54.800 trespassing laws, where are these people staying? And so you talk about the idea of the nation

00:51:03.980 collapsing. The problem is infrastructure systems and the idea of wages. So if you have a huge

00:51:10.160 number of people come in all of a sudden you're looking for jobs what happens well wages collapse

00:51:15.180 for low skill jobs that don't require communication or cultural understanding that's true what what

00:51:21.980 happens to positions where where there's and so now you have a bunch of rich people being able to

00:51:27.560 hire very cheap labor to do low value positions and the now managing those people becomes a

00:51:35.340 difficulty and you know what else becomes a difficulty is servicing the profit increase

00:51:40.820 of all of the rich people who now have very cheap labor pools and so you hire people who have

00:51:46.020 cultural understanding and who are willing that you prefer to work with right you go like i don't

00:51:50.760 want to be i don't want to have to interact with people who have really thick accents i'm going to

00:51:54.060 hire this guy to interact because it takes the frustration off or i don't have time to deal with

00:51:59.340 any of that your goal as you're wealthy your goal is to reduce the points of contacts that you've

00:52:03.520 out because time is limited. So you go, I'm going to manage people through somebody else and I'm

00:52:08.200 going to manage through a person who's easy to manage. So what happens is people are wealth

00:52:14.800 generating machines. That's what people do. So if a person is working well enough to keep a job,

00:52:21.260 that's because they're generating wealth. They're generating wealth at a faster pace

00:52:25.520 than they're consuming it and they're receiving it. So somebody who's good at allocating resources

00:52:31.320 is hiring somebody else to do something, and they're generating a profit off of that.

00:52:37.500 And they're then going to also have to pay for management.

00:52:40.620 And so if you had all of a sudden three times our current population quickly come in,

00:52:46.400 the people who are currently here who have skills,

00:52:49.760 what you would find is that those skills are continuing.

00:52:52.960 Now you're going to have increased profitability,

00:52:55.140 and you're going to have increased wealth being dumped in.

00:52:57.020 And the people who have skills, those skills are going to become higher demand.

00:52:59.520 The other thing is the people who previously were doing low-level work are going to be given opportunities to manage those people,

00:53:07.360 and there's going to be a general rise as long as there's productivity that's occurring.

00:53:12.360 There's going to be an increase in the production of wealth, and there's going to be some people are going to not be able to get a job.

00:53:17.680 And so they're going to come in, and then they're not going to be able to find a job, and they can't therefore pay to be someplace,

00:53:21.900 so they're being pushed around because they're trespassing, and they're going to be removed,

00:53:25.340 and maybe they get removed because of the crime of trespassing,

00:53:27.360 Or they start to steal because they're like, oh, I can't get a job.

00:53:29.760 Okay, great.

00:53:30.200 Now there's a penalty on that person, whatever.

00:53:33.000 So you have this sorting out.

00:53:34.940 It would absolutely be a mess.

00:53:35.960 It's just horrific.

00:53:38.060 You're just going from 300-something million to three times that being added.

00:53:43.860 All of a sudden you're at 1.3, 1.4 billion people.

00:53:47.420 So if you've got that scenario, those people are coming in,

00:53:50.880 and they're quickly taking opportunities to do work and increasing productivity,

00:53:54.800 and they're spreading out looking for the opportunity.

00:53:57.360 And so it's going to create chaos, but that kind of dramatic move is a little bit unrealistic in most scenarios.

00:54:04.280 Most scenarios we're going to have that is because it's in response to a humanitarian crisis or whatever else, right?

00:54:08.980 But you're going to have in those crazy scenarios something where you're dealing with.

00:54:14.780 But in general, the issue of private property ownership, the state ought to sell off its land to private property holders

00:54:23.040 and only hold on to property as necessary for its functions.

00:54:27.360 and then you have all that land being managed by private property holders,

00:54:33.540 and then people are working.

00:54:35.360 You need to remember, we think of business as this secularized zone.

00:54:39.440 Christian business is supposed to be a place where you disciple people

00:54:42.040 and apply the Word of God.

00:54:43.400 You go, you want to come work for me? That's great.

00:54:44.560 You're going to submit to the law order of Christ here,

00:54:48.900 and you're going to learn.

00:54:51.340 I'm going to disciple you as a servant in my house.

00:54:53.440 and so people a lot of people are going to ricochet off of that because they're like no i don't want

00:54:59.140 to do that and so they're going to leave or they're going to commit crimes or whatever it's

00:55:02.400 going to create problems and it's going to get sorted out and a lot of people would get discipled

00:55:06.080 under that christian power under private property ownership and you'd have a christian state that's

00:55:11.060 dealing with all sorts of stuff that needs to be punished helping to sort that out and so in most

00:55:15.660 situations you'd have a flow of people that's coming over time and so that flow of people over

00:55:21.320 time to be dealt with by systems. But sometimes we have a huge, crazy system where a bunch of

00:55:25.900 people are coming in. The other thing is, as a state, you might go, all these people are coming.

00:55:30.520 There's some sort of huge thing going on. They're basically asylum seekers. And for the sake of 0.99

00:55:35.140 order, we're going to do a process of managing how to deal with this gradually. So we're going

00:55:41.400 to do tribunals and stuff to investigate and look at stuff. We're going to deal with them in groups.

00:55:46.300 And so that might be, is this an invasion or not? So you'd have probable cause. You'd have

00:55:50.940 warrant for some sort of a dealing with that group and holding. And you might provide care

00:55:57.380 for them in the short term in some sort of a way where there's a containment as you're gradually

00:56:02.360 releasing and doing stuff and you're sorting out who wants to take the covenant. Which of you is

00:56:06.660 willing to confess Christ now and to take our national covenant and to come and work in that

00:56:10.660 context? Okay, who wants to come and look for an opportunity to work in some sort of a Christian 0.97

00:56:17.660 home looking to be willing to be discipled in that context and, you know, relying for economic 0.53

00:56:23.240 independence for a period of time, being sponsored by that. Okay, who's looking out to go be a wage

00:56:29.180 laborer or a day laborer or whatever type of a thing? So you could sort stuff out in some sort

00:56:34.480 of a crazy scenario where the state is having to kind of corral, temporarily help, and then to deal

00:56:39.720 with a process of sort and release. So, I mean, I think there are things like that where there's

00:56:43.980 exercise of power to deal with it and and that's that's a crazy scenario and i still think you

00:56:48.460 could manage it in a christian system with the law order of god in a way that would be a blessing

00:56:52.360 to everybody okay all right and if we ask you know who's ready to take the covenant now not just work

00:56:58.680 you know but take the covenant now and profess christ as lord if we're skeptical um and it's

00:57:05.500 india we say who's ready to also eat a hamburger and if they're coming from israel you say who's

00:57:12.840 ready to eat a hamburger with bacon. And then we know for sure that the profession is too.

00:57:18.000 It is funny though. I've talked to guys offline. That was great, David. That really was helpful.

00:57:25.340 That really was helpful. I need to think about it more, but you answered a lot of the contingencies

00:57:32.300 because that's a lot. Whenever we're testing truth, when we're testing a system, when we're

00:57:38.480 testing a train of thought, a system of thought, that's what you do. You test it. Here's a problem.

00:57:45.740 You throw the problem at it, and can this concept, this system, this doctrine hold up, right? That's

00:57:54.240 how I became a Calvinist, was going every verse in the Bible, and like, does this work? Does this

00:58:01.460 work with the doctrines of grace? Does this work? And at first, you're like, well, Calvinism,

00:58:08.480 doesn't work that's ridiculous because the bible says choose this day whom you will serve you know

00:58:12.480 and that's man's you know and like and so at first you're like you have problem verses right there's

00:58:16.540 there are certain problems but that's even with verses even with our hermeneutic that's what we

00:58:20.680 call it problem verses problem is the emphasis so we throw problems at a system whether it's a

00:58:26.400 systematic you know theology or whatever it is a doctrinal system it's like can it handle the

00:58:31.520 problem and at first you well there's too many problems the system can't handle it um and

00:58:37.220 sometimes that's true. It's a bad system. And then other times, it really can be just simply

00:58:41.680 ignorance with the system. The system's actually better than you thought it was,

00:58:45.300 and there are apparent problems, right? Like apparent paradoxes, you know, within Reformed

00:58:50.760 thought, but they're not true paradoxes. It's actually not a true contradiction that, well,

00:58:54.820 with the agency of man and the sovereignty of God, it turns out they get along just fine,

00:58:58.420 and God's sovereignty is preeminent above, but there's no contradiction, not in real logical

00:59:03.940 terms or biblical terms and blah blah blah and so um that's what i'm working through is is just okay

00:59:09.980 like um because right now everybody you know everybody is getting real really interested in

00:59:17.360 um political theology or political philosophy and um and and guys who you know guys who have

00:59:25.280 been doing politics for a long time are because everything's such a mess you know like i the state

00:59:33.120 is a joke. Our culture is a joke. We have a country filled with degenerates. And so guys

00:59:37.820 who have been doing political philosophy for a long time, and if they're doing it just even

00:59:42.080 halfway decently, just halfway decently, all of a sudden, they're launching into the stratosphere

00:59:49.260 of notoriety and platform. And people are like, please, please, I would love to hear you out

00:59:55.740 because I've got clown world over here. And then even within Christians, 95% 1.00

01:00:02.800 of the Christians, even evangelical Christians, are just a bunch of pietists and have no solutions 0.93

01:00:08.620 to offer except just pray a little harder and, you know, extend your quiet time from 15 minutes 0.96

01:00:13.900 a day to 25 minutes a day. You know, it's like, okay, well, if that's what I've got from 95% of

01:00:18.520 the evangelical pastors, then yes, talk to me about your political philosophy, you know, that

01:00:23.640 you can track back to the reformers and the founders and, you know, these kinds of things.

01:00:29.760 and so all of a sudden there's this rise of um other voices that i was unfamiliar with

01:00:36.280 and um and a lot of what they're saying i'm like man that i think that's good i think that's good

01:00:40.880 and i think it's true to the word of god and then there's other times where it's like yeah but ah

01:00:45.220 that one i don't like because that one seems like it would be good so long as you have a good leader 0.97

01:00:54.140 which might last a generation, and then you get Cromwell's son, and now it's going to go to crap.

01:01:02.000 It's going to be terrible because it's still just the reason of man. And I feel like the reason of

01:01:08.340 man is part of the reason why we're here. I think even some of our founders, although I appreciate

01:01:12.660 them, and I absolutely believe the lion's share of the majority were not deists, but evangelical

01:01:18.540 Christians. But I do think that they intentionally left out some Jesus's Lord language that I would

01:01:23.580 of light, you know, in some of our founding documents. They could have been a little bit

01:01:26.780 more explicit. And I think part of the reason they weren't is because the ripples of the

01:01:31.340 Enlightenment were already working on some good Christian men and perverting some of their thought

01:01:36.520 and giving reason a little bit too high of prominence. And even though, you know, Deuteronomy

01:01:43.180 was the most quoted, you know, book, you know, in a lot of different sessions, but still it's like,

01:01:48.560 man, I wish you would have put that on paper a little bit more and etched it into our founding

01:01:53.800 so that we would have been preserved from some of these future problems. And at the same time,

01:01:57.560 I'm sympathetic and gracious that I don't think the founders could have even conceived

01:02:03.480 of taxpayer-funded transgender operations on minors. So there's certain things they just

01:02:13.960 didn't put in there because they're like, surely, you know, to us and our posterity, surely our 0.99

01:02:18.220 posterity won't be completely mentally retarded, at least not every single one of them, but here 0.95

01:02:25.220 we are. We showed you, we are absolutely insane. And so, you know, and likewise, like the first, 0.99

01:02:32.980 you know, the first amendment, Congress shall make, yeah, so we should not have a national

01:02:37.460 church. Great, that's great. They didn't spell it out as much as they could have because I don't 0.99

01:02:43.460 think any of them could even conceive of, um, the, the, um, the temple of the satanic, literally

01:02:50.880 satanic temples. I get emails by the way, cause people will see my clips. They'll go viral.

01:02:55.160 And so people it's, it's, I, I actually have to tip the hat. I appreciate the creativity of the

01:03:00.880 trolling, but I, I get emails from Planned Parenthood. I get emails from the satanic 0.79

01:03:04.460 temple. I get, cause they'll sign, they'll take my email from the church website and sign me up 0.85

01:03:08.900 for all these different organizations. And so until I unsubscribe, you know, and then somebody

01:03:13.440 they will resubscribe me. And so anyways, but I don't think the founders could have conceived,

01:03:18.220 possibly conceived of when the first amendment was there of satanic temples being a legitimate

01:03:28.600 religion that's respected and protected under the constitution. That's not what they were

01:03:35.060 thinking about, but here we are. And so anyways, I say all that to say, I really appreciate

01:03:39.300 the thoughtfulness, the level of thought and thoroughness of thought that you offer, David,

01:03:44.120 because prudence, we need prudence. I'm not against prudence, but I'll say reason,

01:03:52.740 man's reason. We need that too. But there is a certain level. If man's reason becomes preeminent,

01:03:59.820 supreme, then that gets us right back to where we are. You can have better men, more righteous men

01:04:06.880 who have less, therefore, less corrupted reason, but that doesn't ultimately, in the end,

01:04:14.520 if our American experiment has taught us anything or taught me anything, it's that

01:04:18.960 one generation of righteous men, or even multiple generations of righteous men,

01:04:24.860 if reason is the only hedge, then it does not protect their children from squandering everything,

01:04:34.080 the inheritance that they left and ultimately just destroying everything that they built.

01:04:39.600 And that's what it is. We've just had consecutive generations now for at least, I would argue,

01:04:44.460 120 years of just swarms of locusts. They've just come and devoured all the fruits and all

01:04:50.800 the harvest of good men. Good men made good times and good times produced soft men. And those soft

01:04:57.980 men, we've come and made hard times. And we need good men, hard men, again, to come on the scene,

01:05:03.160 but we need hard men this time to hopefully come and hedge the bets with a little bit more explicit

01:05:09.240 language. Like the law word of God says X, Y, Z, you know? So anyways, so I, that's what I love

01:05:18.460 about you is you're like, let's use the word because you can have a righteous guy, a righteous

01:05:26.440 guy and an intelligent guy. But if it's, we want reason, but if the reason is not subordinate

01:05:34.340 to the law word of God, then we get in trouble. And I think that's part of why our founding,

01:05:40.960 it's the best one we've had yet. It's the high watermark. It's the high watermark of

01:05:45.680 human civilization. And the closest we've gotten to a Christian nation, and I believe it really

01:05:51.700 was a christian nation but the the the best christian nation we've conceptualized in human

01:05:57.320 history thus far america these united states i really believe that um and i would like to think

01:06:02.980 that in the future by god's grace over the next thousand years or two thousand years whatever it

01:06:08.520 is uh we'll have we'll have a lot of nations that'll look and they'll look at america's

01:06:12.880 founding say yep this this this let's use it let's use it um and then they'll also say um

01:06:18.000 and in our constitution, let's say, the Lord Jesus Christ, you know, and so that, you know, 1.00

01:06:26.680 whatever it is, 100 years from now or 150 years from now, when the blue-haired feminists come

01:06:31.800 and say, we're not a Christian nation, we can say, no, no, no, no. We are. Nice try. Go ruin

01:06:38.720 some other country. I feel like this might be a good place to, what are your final thoughts?

01:06:47.260 reason epistemology you know we already laid out the case study i think you did a great job

01:06:52.200 what are the final thoughts final warnings even admin admonitions to people so i i don't have the

01:07:01.280 ability in a short way to give you anything really useful on epistemology now but i do think there

01:07:06.560 are a few things about some of the stuff that you you laid out uh that i think is is beautiful and

01:07:10.900 helpful. One thing I want to communicate is that reason is laws of logic and necessary inference

01:07:20.320 where you use syllogisms and you use immediate inference. I think most people, when they use

01:07:25.360 the word reason, they have no idea what they mean. It was basically just like whatever my

01:07:30.440 opinions are, whatever I think is right. And reason is the laws of logic and the rules of

01:07:36.620 good and necessary inference. You're right. Because even when we say reasonable, we usually

01:07:39.660 mean um preferable yeah no and so so this idea that the rules of logic are found in the scriptures

01:07:47.500 themselves you can find jesus arguing with the sadducees using syllogisms you can find the

01:07:52.100 apostle paul using syllogism after syllogism connected together using the prior conclusions

01:07:56.380 as a premise in the next one that's called the serites right and so you find the laws of logic

01:08:00.280 in in scripture itself that god uses the law of identity to define himself i am that i am

01:08:04.600 And so God is the logos, right?

01:08:08.780 And so reason is an attribute of God.

01:08:13.880 But what you reason from, what axiom are you using?

01:08:19.900 What presuppositions are you reasoning from?

01:08:23.360 And so we must have our presuppositions made plain.

01:08:27.520 And I think the Declaration of Independence, which is the founding covenantal document for our country,

01:08:31.880 makes explicit that there's is the christian god and the declaration of independence is is is

01:08:38.680 ignored as the charter and the founding covenantal document of our nation because of the fact that

01:08:47.120 it is laid out that when people want to emphasize thomas jefferson as a deist

01:08:50.640 he helped to found a local church called the calvinistic episcopal church

01:08:56.840 Um, so, you know, whether he, you know, his heterodoxy that we know about, he was professing to be a Calvinist, you know, like, so a Calvinistic Episcopalian, right?

01:09:11.340 And so the idea that at least externally, even the guy that's like the poster child for being heterodox was professing publicly for a large portion of his life to be an orthodox Protestant man.

01:09:30.020 And so we have those things.

01:09:32.240 And I think that the recognition that we do have an explicit legal Christian base for the country.

01:09:39.380 and yet it wasn't done well enough. And so we need to remember that constitutions like

01:09:45.580 confessions of faith need to be tied back to scripture so that we understand the constitution

01:09:51.400 is an effort to systematize the teaching of scripture about the way that good governance

01:09:56.960 works in the civil sphere. And we want to defend that by saying the true authority is the word of

01:10:01.540 God. Here's our effort to make it plain and make it easier for the citizen to judge the magistrate

01:10:06.600 And to see who's keeping their oath and not.

01:10:09.240 And so that's one thing there.

01:10:10.780 And I want to simply say that the Word of God is sufficient for every good work,

01:10:16.820 to make the man of God complete for every good work,

01:10:20.180 to be thoroughly furnished, not partially furnished,

01:10:22.500 thoroughly furnished for every good work.

01:10:24.680 And that includes the good work of ruling in the state.

01:10:28.580 And so I want to encourage Christians to have confidence in the Word of God

01:10:32.660 for civil authority.

01:10:35.020 And I want to remind you that there's really only six options.

01:10:37.620 We talked about this in the last episode.

01:10:40.400 Anarchy, where there's no legitimate basis to exercise power.

01:10:44.140 Realpolitik, where you say authority, power comes at the end of a gun,

01:10:47.780 and so just might makes right.

01:10:49.860 There's this idea of social contract where you say,

01:10:52.440 well, by agreement we can form governments, and we can make them do whatever we want.

01:10:56.500 And that's contrary to Scripture.

01:10:58.340 And then there's this idea of natural law that you can, from man's observation,

01:11:03.460 or reason apart from Scripture be able to come up with what the state should do,

01:11:07.840 and that's not the case.

01:11:09.400 And then we have this idea of divine right of kings,

01:11:11.940 that just some people have blue blood and they should be able to rule,

01:11:14.920 and that we just need to generally obey them.

01:11:16.820 And that's something that the Puritans fought vigorously against.

01:11:20.140 The English Civil War was basically a war against the divine right of kings,

01:11:24.080 as were the various Protestant resistances that occurred across Europe.

01:11:27.660 And so that English tradition that we have of limited government

01:11:32.220 is the Protestant tradition of limited government

01:11:34.960 and viewing the covenant and law word of God

01:11:38.420 as the sole basis for human authority,

01:11:42.520 one man over another, 0.94

01:11:43.660 and realizing that the state depends upon God

01:11:46.840 for its authority,

01:11:48.040 or else the state is claiming to be God.

01:11:51.720 Amen.

01:11:52.460 Well said.

01:11:53.880 All right.

01:11:54.380 Well, thank you to the listener for joining us.

01:11:56.740 And thank you, Mr. Rees, for joining us.

01:11:58.600 And we hope it's been helpful.

01:11:59.520 and we will have more conversations like this

01:12:02.700 in the future, Lord willing.

01:12:04.100 We'll see you next time.

01:12:05.320 God bless.

The NXR Podcast - November 18, 2024

THE INTERVIEW - Does Theonomy Have A Mechanism For Mitigating Immigration？ with David Reece

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