THE LIVESTREAM - Aristotle, Multiculturalism, & The UK Riots
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1 hour and 59 minutes
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Summary
Reformed Christians are skeptical of the writings of pagan philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, and Plutarch. After all, these men did not possess the gift of regeneration, the Holy Scriptures, or the Holy Spirit. But as we grapple with the reality of forced multiculturalism, unchecked immigration, and burning cities in the UK, it is time to consider the possibility that the great Western thinkers that our Reformed fathers extensively relied on, quoted, and debated, left us great wisdom and insights for our struggles today. Tune in as we discuss the Reformation tradition, Aristotle, and his writings on the possibility of functional multiculturalism.
Transcript
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Reformed Christians are skeptical of the writings of pagan philosophers such as
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Aristotle, Plato, and Plutarch. After all, these men did not possess the gift of regeneration,
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the Holy Scriptures, or the Holy Spirit. But as we grapple with the reality of forced
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multiculturalism, unchecked immigration, and burning cities in the UK, it is time to consider
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the possibility that the great Western thinkers that our Reformed fathers extensively relied on,
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quoted, and used left us great wisdom and insights for our struggles today. Tune in now as we discuss
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the Reformation tradition, Aristotle, and his writings on the possibility of functional multiculturalism.
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all right all right we're a duo again yep so okay for those of you who are just now
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tuning in uh we the last couple weeks it was just me and michael and uh these two weeks it's just me
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and wesley and then we'll have all three again with without michael here i think i'm gonna start
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telling you how i really feel time to let loose uh no so we've got a nice light topic aristotle
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multiculturalism and the uk riots and they've kind of all blended together this whole conversation
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some of the things that have got me thinking specifically on this topic. They do come from
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social media. However, this live stream, this article that I wrote, it's not intended to be
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a referendum or a response to any thinkers. I would say there's good men on both sides who
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would say maybe we should avoid using these men. There's greater wisdom that can be found.
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And others that would say, hey, they had some good insights. Maybe we should rely on them more.
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So I think there's good men on both sides. This isn't intended to be a response, a hit piece,
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anything like that. But something that we've been thinking about, and I say we more,
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this church here and in Georgetown. We're starting a classical school, and I'm actually not involved
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in it, but you are, Joel. Michael is. Brian Hensley is the headmaster, doing a great job,
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and it's going to be St. George's Classical School. So, it's going to be a Christian school,
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but not just Christian. So, it's not as though it's mathematics homework, and at the top is a
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verse, and there it is. It's a Christian school. It's going to be a classical school. It's going
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to be rooted and grounded in the Western tradition, in Western thought. So, we've been doing a book
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Club, and I know myself, I've been reading Seneca this year, Letters from a Stoic. And what I've
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come to realize, what I've been becoming more aware of as I read them, and then I go and I read
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Calvin and I read Luther and these other guys, is there's a connection between them all that feels
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really foreign to us neo-Calvinists. So for myself, I came into the doctrines of grace probably over
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10 years ago now. But one thing, if you kind of came into Calvinism at that time, was total
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depravity. That man is a sinner, that he is totally depraved, he can't save himself. The heart of the
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sinful man, it says in Romans, Paul, is hostile to God. It doesn't submit to his law, and it cannot.
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But what functionally happened kind of then, I think, and you can tell me if you felt the same
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way, was we put unbelievers in this category of, yeah, they're helpful, yeah, they maybe point out
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some good things, but really everything that maybe you could find in there, we can probably already
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find in scripture. And so, helpful, but kind of the unnecessary category. And we did that. And we
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took Plato, and we took Aristotle, and we took Plutarch and Seneca. We also took functional
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things like weightlifting. We also took things like eating healthy, starting businesses, having
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a vocation. We kind of took a lot of these things for one reason or another. We put them in this big
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grab bag. We said, well, personal piety, devotion. Those are the things that matter more, and they
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do matter and they do matter most but they matter at the cost of these other things and as now as
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we see cities burn in the uk as we grapple with the unchecked immigration that's happening at our
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border i think what some of us are realizing is that we left behind a lot of good stuff we left
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behind great thinkers like i just i can tell on myself aristotle much much much smarter man than
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i am much smarter man than you much smarter man much smarter man than the listener and that doesn't
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mean in areas of salvation, theology proper, but these were men that spoke 10 languages,
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that traveled all around the world, that walked and lectured and debated daily.
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And so maybe what I'm coming to learn is that epistemic humility about where we are, about
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where we come from, and about those that came before us is probably going to go a lot farther
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than having a bit of a reductionistic modern view, that it's me, it's myself, it's my Bible,
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and I'm just going to try to do this politics thing.
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I'm just going to try to do this economics thing.
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And what's funny is you do that and you come up with something.
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yeah, actually, the Westminster Confession just said all of this
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Calvin, Edwards, Augustine, the forefathers that we have in the faith.
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Like I said, I'm reading Seneca's letters from a Stoic.
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He's got some great stuff in there on friendship, on vocation, on being disciplined.
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It talks about affairs that are common to human society and to civility,
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that there is the Word of God and there is salvation, and those are of utmost importance.
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but there are other common things that matter and we should dedicate thought to them consideration
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to them and again not have this this mindset of just it's me and myself it's just these modern
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readers it's just these modern authors i'm gonna do this a la carte right so don't know if you have
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any thoughts on that no i agree um what was the quote do you have the quote that uh eric con posted
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it on twitter last week sometime and then other guys dealt with it james white he had a rebuttal
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and i think he dealt with it on the dividing line yeah what was it just about like um multi-ethnic
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nations and that's not a great idea yeah so um this would be the quote this is from a author
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gulliam is his name and so he said this of aristotle he said a multi-ethnic society is
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necessarily anti-democratic and chaotic for lax philia profound flesh and blood fraternity of
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citizens tyrants and despots divide and rule they want the city divided by ethnic rivalries
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that's the background of the quote that kind of kicked off right use aristotle can we not what
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is he saying here is it helpful for the christian and then what and then what did aristotle say
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uh so aristotle said a couple things so um the ancients they didn't really use terms like
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ethnic race culturalism like we do but aristotle said this for example this is in politics book
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five and so book five is actually dealing with the question of revolution so aristotle's going
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through and he's lecturing through the polis the city state and in book five he deals with
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revolution so what are the things that disrupt tranquility of peoples and of cities and he said
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it is the habit of tyrants to prefer the company of aliens to that of citizens at tables and in
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society citizens they feel are enemies but aliens will offer no opposition to the tyrant
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He also said, dissimilarity is conducive to factional conflict.
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Those who have admitted joint settlers or later settlers of a different race have for the most part split into factions.
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He sent out, I think we were talking about this before, Aristotle, as part of his research,
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actually sent out over 150 of his students to go gather the constitutions of different city-states.
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So he has the students going out all over, gathering constitutions, and they're coming back to him and reporting.
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This happened at this city. This is how this city was underdone. This is how this constitution
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deals with the foreigner, with the citizen, with political affairs. And so he's relying on all that.
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And so when he begins to lecture on division, lectures on the difficulty, lectures on revolution,
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he draws examples and says, this is what happened in this city. These people were expelled by
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foreigners that they let in. This is what it led to here, just a massive wealth of information
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but um this is uh well it's not even a quote from aristotle somebody commenting on it but uh it
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says for aristotle democracy is possible only with homogenous ethnic groups while despots have
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always reigned over highly fragmented societies that's what you said and then it goes a little
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further and says a multi-ethnic society is thus necessarily anti-democratic and chaotic for lax
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philea this profound flesh and blood fraternity of citizens tyrants and despots divide and rule
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they want the city divided by ethnic rivalries the indispensable condition for ensuring a
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people's sovereignty accordingly resides in its unity ethnic chaos prevents all philea from
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developing and eric khan reposted it torba posted that initially eric khan reposted and said
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aristotle was uh right and a bunch of people were upset with him uh kade kdub chris uh he's a
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african-american christian reformed baptist uh who i believe also is like a christian rapper
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and i've uh engaged him in a masters right i think i don't i don't know okay i don't know i
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know he's definitely friendly to uh the john mccarthur camp but uh he retweeted eric so eric
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Like, you know, Andrew Torba posts this thing about Aristotle saying, you know, multi-ethnic society is always, you know, multi-ethnic society that has a democratic form of government is going to be exploited by civil rulers and devolve into factions.
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And so, you know, Torba is the one who posted that.
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And then Eric Kahn reposted it saying Aristotle was right.
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And then Chris reposted Eric saying racist would really hate heaven.
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Now, it's debatable whether or not Chris was saying that Aristotle was a racist or Andrew Torbaugh was a racist or Eric Conn was a racist.
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So there's debate there, I hope, to give him the benefit of the doubt.
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I hope he's simply saying that Aristotle is a racist and won't be in heaven.
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I would say Aristotle likely, sadly, won't be in heaven, not because he's a racist, but because he wasn't a Christian.
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He didn't have the gospel, and he did not trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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But all that being said, you know that Chris, you know, he may not be discounting Eric Kahn and Andrew Torber's salvation by his post.
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But at minimum, he's, you know, giving him the most charitable reading.
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And one of the major reasons why is because of his alleged racism.
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and uh and therefore you would have to assume that chris uh does not think that it's uh it's
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he doesn't see it as a positive thing that andrew torba uh is posting this and that eric
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is posting it saying aristotle was right right so anyway so then i i posted you know get through
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you know my two cents into into the discussion um eric con is a friend and uh and so you know
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But I really feel like he had a point in saying, you know, that Aristotle's right on this because I think Aristotle's right on this.
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And I should say, we're not saying this with joy or glee.
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This is an observation of something that could be true.
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We're saying, maybe even unfortunately, we're recognizing the reality of the fall.
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Like if I said, you know, hey, people who walk off the side of a cliff, they don't sprout wings, they're not able to fly, and they usually fall to their death.
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that's not like i'm not wishing for that to be true i'm just acknowledging that observation
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observation that it is true exactly so anyway so the the whole thing from aristotle saying you know
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uh there's a few components here one is implicit uh but two are explicit um so the three three
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components in total so aristotle is basically saying um i would say three ingredients of what
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aristotle is describing one um a multi-ethnic state many you know a mixture of many different
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ethnicities. That's one. But he's not just saying, hey, a multi-ethnic state won't work because
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people aren't supposed to mix and every ethnicity should stick to themselves. That's not really what
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Aristotle said. It's not even close to what he said. That's just one component. He's saying
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multi-ethnic state, then that's one ingredient in this concoction. The second is multi-ethnic
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state with a democratic form of government with democracy so it's multi-ethnic plus democracy
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where everybody gets to vote or at least you know some of the people most of the people whatever
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um and uh and then the third component those are the two that are explicit democracy is a form of
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government multi-ethnic is is the you know composition the composition the polis that
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makes it up and then third would be um implicit which is um but i think we can assume uh accurately
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from Aristotle, is also being not Christian. So a multi-ethnic state, but a multi-ethnic state
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that doesn't have the gospel, that's not Christian, and that also has a democratic
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form of government. So multiple ethnicities in one nation, that one nation not being a Christian
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nation, and that one nation of multiple ethnicities that are not Christian also having
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a democratic form of government and in that scenario with those three ingredients
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um eric khan is saying i think aristotle's right right and i happily will uh agree with eric khan
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not because he's my friend i love eric and he is my friend but i'm happy to agree with eric and
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saying that aristotle was right in this case because uh eric is right to say that aristotle
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right in this case yeah in a non-christian nation with multiple ethnicities and a democratic form
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of government um factions um from what we can observe throughout human history would be
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inevitable um and none of that making that observation none of that is racist right um
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not only was eric khan not racist and saying aristotle's right or andrew torba is not racist
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by retweeting this quote this uh picture from aristotle but aristotle himself uh now maybe
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he was a racist, but you'd have to demonstrate it from some other proof. In this particular
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thought and concept of Aristotle's, nothing there is inherently racist. Because notice what he's not
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saying that multi-ethnic states with a democratic form of government and then implicitly that are
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also a state that's not Christian are inherently divided and not beneficial. Aristotle, that's all
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says he doesn't go further that and say and also um secondly uh this one race is superior to all
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the other ones and so that one shouldn't be tainted by the lesser inferior really like that's
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that's not in the quote you know like if aristotle thought thought that then great you know then then
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go ahead and show that and and then use that screenshot of that quote from aristotle to say
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that aristotle's racist aristotle was the og too on critiquing democracy because exactly that he saw
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that the rich and the poor, when you gave them kind of this equal standing and to have
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contribution to the democratic rule of the city-state, that they would become factions
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against one another. That the poor would want greater handouts. They would want
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policies that would favor them. And so he was the OG of being negative. He also
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didn't allow women to vote either. He was pretty OG on that. But
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really perceptive in recognizing. It's funny, someone did it. It might have been Andrew
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Isker. But he overlaid a voting map. And he overlaid it with
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the ethnic demographics of the city and of the state what you realize is that um they match
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pretty closely that democracy typically ends up being a bit of a popularity contest between
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different factions well yeah exactly that's and that's all it is the reason why i have grown to
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despise democracy is um because uh it's not we the people it's uh we we the some uh some people
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and who are those people uh non-elected officials uh like what democracy what it uh gives uh lends
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its strength to is instead of having um elected officials uh that have power is um a raw universe
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because that's what we have is a universal democracy um everyone is allowed to vote right
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everyone and just for the record you know yeah i think the 19th amendment should be repealed i
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think that because well first and foremost because i'm a christian um you know and that is that is
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the Christian position. Oh my gosh, you're saying that? Yes, that is the Christian position,
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is that households should not be divided against one another. So it's not just elevating a male
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vote, but it's elevating the household vote. We're saying that society, if you break it down to the
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basic building block, is not atomistic as individuals, but molecular, being households.
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The way that God sees humanity is He breaks them down to families. And so it's not just
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random individual atoms all, you know, bouncing around together and, you know, 350 million atoms
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bouncing together in one nation on one piece of land, but it's families. And so by repealing the
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19th Amendment, just for the record, it's not just trying to take away a female vote, but it's trying
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to say, no, there's a family vote. There's a household. And it's like, well, where do women
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get their voice. Where women get their voice is from their father, from their husband. If they're
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not married, it's from their father. If they're not married and their father's dead, it's from
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their brother, it's from their uncle. It's the men in their lives that love them. It's the men
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in their lives that love them. And also, it's worth noting that politics is warfare. That's
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what politics is. It's war without the bullets, war without the blood. But politics very often,
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unfortunately, in a fallen world, it is a war of ideas that's a cold war, but often,
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sadly, heats up and becomes a hot war. It becomes a literal war. Many of the policies,
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the people that you vote for and the policies that they put into action can lead to war or not.
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And so it also makes sense that the people who are voting for said officials who may make certain declarations of war or put in certain policies that inevitably lead to war, it would make sense that the people who get to vote are the same people who have to go and fight.
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so the idea that you know that you would have half of the population
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that is now i know that's changing and that that too
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is absolutely wicked and a tragedy that women could
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eventually conceivably be drafted into the military not only serve
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by their own volition but actually against their will be drafted and that's
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a real conversation that wicked nations in rebellion against christ like ours
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are actually having those conversations but traditionally
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women were not serving in the military at least not in combat roles and uh and we you know not
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that long ago wouldn't have even dreamed of ever drafting them and so uh at that period of time
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which is not you know a thousand years ago you know we're talking about just you know a matter
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of a couple decades uh when women could not be drafted uh in these united states and they also
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were not fighting in combat roles it would make sense that the people who are going to vote
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and that vote carrying the power to lend towards outcomes of war where lives can be lost would be
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the same people who would have to back that vote up right so if we're all going to vote for you
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know um president you know president idiot you know uh mr idiot for office and mr idiot's going
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to start world war three um well you know uh the people who are going to go and die in world war
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three are the people who voted into office you know so still a tragedy but at least it's kind of
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fair. It's not fair if a bunch of people who don't own land, have no stake in the country in
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its future, don't have children, aren't, you know, married statistically or are far less likely to be
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married, and also are not going to have to fight in any war or face any of the repercussions,
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in many cases also don't pay taxes, but instead are a burden on the tax system. To give those
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people a vote um you know is uh absolutely um i mean it's just amazing it's it is it's stupidity
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so aristotle called out too like one of the reasons he didn't allow it was slaves women
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and children was also the time for because democracy was more than a vote too it was
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arguing in the public square it was debate it was policy someone called that out in the comments
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that it was much more robust and aristotle also wanted citizens to have the time to actually
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dedicate to it to be able to go there to read to think to reflect on it so if an individual was a
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manual labor worker for the entire day he didn't want those people then showing up and voting for
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the person that's advertising free five hundred dollar checks free citizenship this that or the
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other he identified those exact same problems of people need to have skin in the game and be able
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to do the job well if they want to contribute to the well-being of the polis so i think one of the
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you know, from a strategic standpoint, so I can argue, you know, biblically, it's very easy to
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argue to repeal the 19th Amendment. Strategically speaking, politically speaking, I think, you know,
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probably the more tactful line, you know, line of strategy is just to show the idiocy of universal
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suffrage. So right now, for, you know, all intents and purposes, that's, I think, what a lot of good
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Christian men should be arguing is just showing that universal suffrage is a bad idea. So rather
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than saying, oh, women voting is a bad idea, just say, hey, the idea that we let anyone and everyone
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vote, maybe that's a bad idea. Because with, you know, that kind of democracy, so Aristotle's not
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even, he's, you know, like you just said, he's talking about a form of democracy that would be
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a lot more sensical. But the form of, yeah, the form of democracy we have today allows, you know,
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I mean, think about it. Like, if you go to the hospital, you know, you have to show some form
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of ID. If you're going to drive a car, you know, you have to have an ID. If you're going to get on
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an airplane, you have to have an ID, and, you know, you're probably also going to have to endure
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a cavity, you know, search. And so, you know, but like, in everything that we do, you're going to
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have to show some proof of ID, except for voting. Voting, you can go to a ballot box, and in the
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united states of america uh that has uh even on the box four different languages mandarin and
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spanish you know and like um it's it's i mean it's it's basically begging it's saying hey
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please come and vote in our elections please feel something anything out you who are non-citizens
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yeah um so it's i mean it's absolutely insane what we're doing uh so in that form of democracy
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ultimately um it that a raw democracy which none of our founders had anything positive to say about
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that form of democracy um a raw democracy devolves um inevitably always into an oligarchy
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and uh an aristocracy you know that might work that i think there's there's some merit i'm not
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saying it's the best form of government but there's an argument to be made for that being
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a better form of government and really the only difference between an oligarchy and aristocracy
00:24:12.040
is that an oligarchy is um it's an aristocracy with a bunch of thugs people who are unqualified
00:24:19.260
for the role. And so it's like, well, how do you get that? Well, you get that from a raw democracy
00:24:24.880
because then all of a sudden, if anybody and everybody can vote, then really what you're
00:24:30.820
doing is by elevating everyone, what you've done is you've actually taken the voice away from all
00:24:37.100
the people that matter, all the people who have a stake in the country, they're rearing children,
00:24:41.340
they're planning to have posterity to the fifth and sixth and tenth generation, they own land,
00:24:47.220
they pay taxes, they work hard. All those people, their voice is silenced. And what's replacing that
00:24:55.820
is Taylor Swift, which a poll was recently done, as you know, that 20% of the people who filled
00:25:01.540
out this poll said that they would vote for whoever Taylor Swift was voting for. But she's
00:25:08.780
not an elected official, nor is she qualified for the role. You have a woman who has made
00:25:33.220
founding fathers, you have 13 colonies that are
00:25:40.920
that changes right um i don't like aristotle someone that doesn't even include all the dead
00:25:45.760
people who vote right that doesn't the dead people the people that aren't on the rolls right uh so
00:25:50.840
the city-state even a critique of democracy at that smaller level how much more so when you have
00:25:56.160
people that can be influenced by the internet and social media that can reach out to millions of
00:26:00.820
people instantaneously right versus a small concentrated group of people that are tightly
00:26:05.460
together and that's the whole phenomenon of you know kamala harris right like um i think you know
00:26:12.240
there's an instinct matt wall said something along these lines but there's an instinct you know for
00:26:16.580
people on the right to say like um you know that uh the crowds that are assembling at like harris
00:26:22.000
campaigns that this is ai it's not real like you know you just you you want to deny it you know
00:26:27.340
and it's true that uh there were ai you know photos uh but the ai photos were from um an account that
00:26:34.680
that made them it was a satire account um you know and for every ai picture you know made by this you
00:26:41.000
know this you know anon account um there you know that for every one of those ai photos there were
00:26:47.060
10 real real photos um from multiple different accounts and videos exactly of uh no like so so
00:26:53.680
the the real line of attack i think for conservatives and you know at this point i
00:26:59.040
think it's better just to say those on the right because um conservative is not really a good word
00:27:03.580
Because right now to be a conservative, David French, Warren McIntyre made this point.
00:27:07.120
He's actually a good example of a conservative because what he's trying to do is conserve the status quo, what we currently have.
00:27:14.660
And so for David French, what that means is not getting us back to 1776 or the 13 colonies and even before that in the 1600s.
00:27:22.120
It's conserving the present, what we presently have now, which is giving all of your efforts and all of your fealty to the Civil Rights Act.
00:27:31.980
And so for someone like French, he really is a true conservative.
00:27:41.260
Because voting for Harris is the right move for someone who wants to preserve the god of civil rights.
00:27:50.620
And that is currently, that is what our nation pretty much is.
00:27:56.740
So dissident right or Christian nationalist or something.
00:27:59.300
But conservative, sadly, conservative probably needs to be a term that we don't use anymore.
00:28:07.340
Like the liberal progressives really should be called regressives, because what they want
00:28:11.160
to do is actually regress and destroy everything.
00:28:14.260
We want to get us, you know, push us forward in the direction that God would have us.
00:28:17.960
So all that being said, you know, Matt Walsh was saying the line of attack with Kamala
00:28:21.160
Harris, you know, how do you explain that phenomenon of somebody who got less than 1%
00:28:25.240
of the vote in 2020 in the primaries, presidential primaries?
00:28:28.280
and then now you know has quadrillion billion you know people showing up to her rallies
00:28:33.180
well you don't try to just dismiss it by saying something that's categorically false like this is
00:28:38.940
all made up it's ai there are actually zero people there that well that's not true um no there are
00:28:43.760
tons of real videos and real pictures there are a ton of people there um and and you have to deal
00:28:48.720
with that and grapple with that the explanation is not just to to somehow sweep it under the rug
00:28:53.200
and pretend it doesn't exist the real explanation is to say this is the total state this is what
00:28:59.160
the total state does this is what the media does the media is capable of drumming up sensationalism
00:29:05.500
around anyone uh you know whether it's the hawk to a girl you know or whether it's you know somebody
00:29:11.280
who at least initially appeared to be more conservative like oliver anthony like the media
00:29:15.780
can take anyone uh whether they have uh skills or no discernible skills at all like hawk to
00:29:21.660
and kamala harris right two peas in a pod neither one has achieved anything in their life and yet
00:29:26.940
the media can make both of them a star um that's that the media is powerful and that's my point
00:29:32.760
in a raw democracy uh you really you don't have democracy you have oligarchy and the true oligarchy
00:29:39.180
is the media the media becomes um the true rule and so instead of elected officials you have
00:29:45.100
unelected, you know, journalist just dictating. It's a dictatorship, you know, but just with,
00:29:52.320
you know, a hundred dictators or a thousand dictators, you know, who are in lockstep with
00:29:56.980
one another instead of one. And they determine the course and the future of the entire nation
00:30:00.860
by simply putting pen to paper or getting behind a camera and willing what they want to be true
00:30:06.280
into existence. We were watching Tucker Carlson, he was on Sean Ryan, and he was asked as a viewer
00:30:11.020
question, who is the most powerful group of people right now in America? And he answered,
00:30:15.200
it's the McKinsey, Harvard, Fortune 500 types that run and are embedded in these media corporations
00:30:21.240
that are embedded in influential positions that when they say goes, what they say goes on a policy
00:30:26.400
and an idea on a person, that's what happened. Those are really powerful people because of the
00:30:31.300
amount of people they can influence, the money they have, the reach of legacy media. They are
00:30:35.980
powerful, powerful, powerful. And like you said, none of us elected them. None of us asked for our
00:30:40.540
mackenzie ruling elite we just got them because they navigated and they got in there and now they
00:30:46.220
hold immense power so all those things being said in that kind of democracy and and in aristotle's
00:30:53.060
defense he was talking about a democracy that's uh that's better than our current democracy and
00:30:58.440
what i just described much smaller where you know where kamala harris you know could get less than
00:31:02.840
one percent of the vote and then four years later um become a sensation um that everybody loves
00:31:37.980
like we are importing the third world um in many cases not exclusively i'm not saying that's it but
00:31:43.500
but in many cases we are importing the third world uh doing it illegally but intentionally
00:31:49.380
it like it's by design it is on purpose um and then allowing uh for them to vote not in terms
0.58
00:31:56.780
of policy but by enacting policies that uh that ensure that it can't be stopped right like because
0.79
00:32:03.180
oh it's voter suppression to ask for a driver's license why because well we all know that black
1.00
00:32:07.500
people are stupid and they could never figure out how to get a driver's license right how insulting
1.00
00:32:11.300
is that you know like and yet at the same time it's become a common trope for me to sit here
1.00
00:32:16.220
and say well democrats are the true racist like of course they are but we we've got to have you
00:32:20.620
know that that line of rhetoric we've got to do better as you know people on the right if we're
00:32:24.540
going to win um like could you imagine if the if the uh roles were reversed the tolerant left right
00:32:30.120
back at it like yeah we've been saying that for 20 years no gonna win we don't need to just point
0.99
00:32:34.560
out that the left has no standards and that they're hypocrites. Of course, they have no
0.97
00:32:39.520
standards and they're hypocrites. And how are we going to beat them? By pointing out that they're
1.00
00:32:42.400
hypocrites? No, because they have no shame. They'll just continue to do it. The way that you beat them
0.99
00:32:46.520
is you actually seize real power, and by the grace of God and his loving kindness, you crush them.
00:32:52.880
That's how you do it. You have to win. You have to wield real power and crush them.
00:32:58.120
So all that being said, I retweeted Eric trying to give him a defense and also just say what's
00:33:03.000
true i said um uh this particular quote from aristotle is not racist it doesn't assert the
00:33:08.960
superiority of one ethnicity above another i said here's a you know another point uh eric didn't
00:33:13.740
condemn uh multi-ethnic nations like by saying aristotle was right uh well then he's he's just
00:33:20.380
agreeing with what aristotle said and technically aristotle did not uh explicitly outright condemn
00:33:25.620
um multi-ethnic nations um he's primarily what eric is concerned with by sharing aristotle and
00:33:32.380
I think part of what Aristotle's getting at is not just the emphasis on, hey, maybe multi-ethnic
00:33:36.400
nations aren't a good idea, but multi-ethnic nations with a democratic form of government.
00:33:41.620
And so I know, knowing Eric, that Eric's primary, primarily was condemning not multi-ethnic nations,
0.53
00:33:48.120
but our current democracy, which plays off of ethnic differences to garnish further power for
00:33:53.200
the elite ruling class. And then another point I said, Aristotle is generally correct, in my view,
00:33:59.280
He's generally correct in this particular point, that a multi-ethnic nation with a democratic form of government is going to bring about bad results and division.
1.00
00:34:11.400
I think Aristotle is mainly correct in that.
1.00
00:34:14.440
But then I said, however, in a Christian nation, I would like to believe that Aristotle would have been proven wrong.
0.71
00:34:20.440
However, all of you have spent the last two years assuring us that we can't have a Christian nation.
00:34:26.540
um and then lastly i said oh by the way because you know k dub said you know racist won't be in
00:34:32.260
heaven i said and by the way i'm looking forward to seeing jonathan edwards and rl dabney in heaven
00:34:36.980
and worshiping with them for eternity so my point is saying uh it's just funny to me that all the
00:34:43.520
people who are objecting to this quote from aristotle not all of them um i would disclude
00:34:49.720
James White from this, but a lot of them, like Chris, K-Dub, and many others of like
00:34:55.760
the MacArthur camp and that kind of thing, like Calvinistic Baptists, like guys who aren't
00:35:01.800
really Reformed but are Neo-Calvinists, like what you said earlier.
00:35:07.660
That camp is balking at the idea that Eric Kahn, who is a pastor, a Reformed pastor and
00:35:17.000
claim to love Jesus would positively retweet Andrew Torba, and God forbid, you know, and who's
00:35:25.580
tweeting Aristotle, you know, and Aristotle, what's the big point that Aristotle's making?
1.00
00:35:30.740
That multi-ethnic nations are a bad idea. And so Eric Kahn, you know, like, this is terrible. I
00:35:35.160
can't believe you're doing this. Well, all the people who are balking at that, and so greatly
00:35:38.920
offended by that, are the people who literally spent the last two years, I can show you all the
00:35:43.980
receipts, just what they said to me over the past few years, these are the people who were
00:35:49.580
absolutely, utterly insistent that there's no such thing as a Christian nation, and you can't ever
00:35:55.200
have a Christian nation. You can't legislate the first table of the law, and you can't, you know,
0.99
00:35:59.900
all these, like, you must have a nation that, yeah, it honors God in some sense, and maybe the
00:36:05.920
second table of the law, you know, you pull from the Bible as it pertains to our love for our
00:36:10.180
neighbor, but you absolutely can't have blasphemy laws or blue laws or Sabbath laws, and the nation
00:36:16.860
absolutely cannot prefer one religion like Christianity above other religions, and the
00:36:21.460
nation absolutely cannot self-identify in its own documents, like a preamble to the Constitution,
00:36:28.700
having the Apostles' Creed. It can't identify as a Christian nation because the only thing that can
0.98
00:36:33.460
be Christian is an individual. You can't have a Christian family. You can't have a Christian nation.
1.00
00:36:37.680
you can't have a Christian school, you can't have a Christian anything. That group, the you can't
1.00
00:36:43.780
have a Christian nation and Christian nationalism is the devil. That group is the group that's
1.00
00:36:49.340
balking at this. And that's the irony, the hypocrisy, is that I'm saying, no, I think
00:36:56.960
Aristotle's right, given those three components, two being explicit, one being implicit. The two
00:37:02.380
being explicit is multi-ethnic being uh the what compromises you know the population of a nation
00:37:09.400
being multi-ethnic democratic form of government which i've already you know we've spent weeks
00:37:15.400
talking about how we think that's probably not a good idea but then also implicitly the third
00:37:19.420
component that's implicit is for aristotle is uh an absence of christ that it's not a christian
00:37:25.300
nation in that scenario aristotle is right if you have a democratic form of government
0.97
00:37:30.880
which i think is stupid and um you're importing the third world and throwing a bunch of people
0.97
00:37:37.160
who have very little in common um uh together in in some milieu a soup uh and uh you top it off
0.99
00:37:45.320
uh by saying oh and there's uh christian nationalism is the devil and christian nationalism
00:37:50.040
is is uh that's just the third reich and hitler and that's a cult and um yeah okay well then
00:37:55.620
then you're just proving aristotle's point yeah uh but if you would let us have some christian
00:38:01.220
nationalism and stop being insufferable and and do a little you know do the reading as stephen
00:38:06.700
wolf would say and you know just just grow up a little bit and read a little bit and educate
00:38:11.100
yourself read some calvin read some you know uh some some luther read you know if you looked into
00:38:17.020
some of these things and realize oh we can have a christian nation because not only uh is it
00:38:22.100
theoretically possible, but we could have it in the future because we literally had it in the past,
00:38:26.460
and we didn't just have it a thousand years ago. We had it arguably 150 years ago, and we didn't
00:38:30.960
have it on the other side of the world. We had it here. So we've had it before, and we've had it
00:38:34.500
here, and if God would be so kind, we could have it again. So if you take that approach and say,
00:38:39.080
one, we can't have a Christian nation. My bad. I was wrong about that. Sorry for being a troll
00:38:42.820
the last two years. I'm on your team. Let's work towards a Christian nation. Let's honor God.
00:38:47.060
And then two, we've got all these different ethnicities that are already here, and those who are illegal should be deported, but for everybody who is a legal citizen, we're going to have to learn how to figure something out, and so let's emphasize the Christianity, and also as we emphasize being a Christian nation with an inter-ethnic population, let's also maybe work on our form of government and make sure that we actually get back to representative government
00:39:15.360
and more of a republic or some other kind of form.
00:39:20.760
Or original constitution, the civil rights one.
00:39:23.200
Exactly, rather than the Civil Rights Act as a de facto,
00:39:26.360
as Christopher Caldwell argued a de facto constitution
00:39:32.860
So let's try to get back to the actual constitution
00:39:34.940
instead of this de facto civil rights constitution
00:39:37.200
that replaced it, because for all intents and purposes,
00:39:41.000
So let's get rid of the imposter constitution of civil rights.
00:39:44.420
um let's also get rid of a raw democracy where um not only can everyone vote but we're actually
00:39:51.260
um we're actually going out of our way government officials are going out of their way to make sure
00:39:55.640
um that the least vested uh members of our society have a vote that criminals have a vote
00:40:01.780
non-tax-paying citizens have a vote non-citizens have a vote uh democrats what think about like
00:40:07.540
what what is a democratic party uh what is their stance what's their their platform when it comes
00:40:12.220
of voting they want to lower the age of voting right so they want children voting um they want
00:40:17.880
single uh women without children voting uh they want uh non-citizens voting so like what what do
0.65
00:40:25.040
they want like to sum it all up um what they want is destruction yeah that's what they want they
00:40:31.280
they absolutely because they know in terms of their policies their policies are not good for
00:40:36.020
the most outstanding citizens of these united states i just saw today for any committed member
00:40:40.880
of the united citizen of the united states who pays taxes works hard and is virtuous
00:40:44.840
the democratic policies are his enemy so then what do they have to the only way they can win
00:40:50.420
elections is to make sure that that the bad guys get a vote that's what they've always been about
00:40:56.520
married men married women and unmarried men are the three groups republicans typically carry
0.93
00:41:00.860
and it's single women the democrats that's that's the group holding them up and there's other
0.99
00:41:05.600
factors in there that somehow hold them up right because what do you call a married woman right
0.97
00:41:12.500
Like women are liberal until they get married.
0.68
00:41:14.800
And it's like, well, what changed their mind?
0.83
00:41:16.480
Like, well, a man, that's what changed their mind.
00:41:24.220
and you want to deny that that's what's going on.
00:41:26.820
But what happens is you come into a relationship
00:41:33.360
and commitment towards you and towards your children.
00:41:35.540
If God would be so gracious as to open your womb
00:41:38.560
spring you see that man provide for you provide for the children and then that man says this is
00:41:42.720
what's good um and this is what's best for our household and the average woman in that kind of
00:41:48.660
scenario she says okay i trust you and children to bring men to the right i think torva and jd
00:41:53.640
vance as they got married and had children then that's right like oh i'm rethinking these things
00:41:58.400
right if you're a young man and you want to be radicalized get married and have a kid have
00:42:02.400
daughters yeah have oh my gosh i've got my fourth daughter now on the way and uh there are two
00:42:07.660
things in life uh that that make me you know the meme come come to life where it's like after a
00:42:13.040
careful consideration i've decided to become worse like what what makes me become more and more
00:42:16.680
radicalized are two things uh with every daughter that i get i get like 10 times more radicalized
00:42:22.000
and every trip to costco i was about to say and every time i smell weed i just get another 15
00:42:27.720
more there's a few things yeah you smell weed and it's like i'm gonna christian nationalism even
00:42:32.740
harder i went to costco and i i don't even think i'm in america anymore and now i'm more of a
00:42:38.080
christian nationalist and i've got my fourth baby girl on the way and uh there's no brakes on this
00:42:42.920
train at that point with the fourth girl on the way at that point it's like all right i'm gonna
00:42:46.460
become you know the christian uh franco i'm gonna do it myself i'm gonna do it myself gonna pick up
00:42:52.540
the team put them on my back you know and here we go so um but my point is commercial break yeah
00:42:56.800
we'll go to but real quick to just to land the plane my point is just to say that um eric khan
00:43:02.040
and andrew torba were not being racist by sharing this concept of aristotle and for the record we're
00:43:07.340
not sitting here and saying well aristotle is infallible of course he's not and we're not even
00:43:11.060
saying that he's as good as calvin or something like calvin had some some strong negative things
00:43:15.440
to say about aristotle but also positive things that we'll get to um as well but uh but we can
00:43:20.660
recognize uh that that aristotle as as a human being made in the image of god um was able to
00:43:27.860
look to the light of nature and discern accurately some things that God has baked into the fabric of
00:43:32.420
the world. And I think this is one of those things. Aristotle realized that if you take people who
00:43:37.920
are strangers to one another and have very little in common, they don't have religion in common,
00:43:41.560
they don't have culture in common, they are strangers and aliens to one another, and you
0.86
00:43:46.800
put them in the same place, and then you give all of them a little piece of the pie. You give every
00:43:51.960
single one of them a vote over the future direction and decisions of that nation, they are naturally
00:43:58.920
going to be played upon by corrupt, you know, overseers and rulers in order to go against one
00:44:05.640
of them. Like somebody's going to be running for office and they're going to want to get more votes
00:44:10.280
and so what are they going to say? If all the white people are voting for the Republican, then
00:44:15.260
then the democrat candidate is going to say well you know for all you black people uh what i promise
1.00
00:44:21.660
is that um we'll do a bigger welfare checks and uh and also you'll be able to murder your babies
0.98
00:44:28.340
all the way up to 40 weeks and for anyone who's like oh man that one was too real um well yeah
00:44:34.520
it's real that's that is what democrats have been doing for a very long time in order to get the
00:44:40.900
black vote and i'm not saying every black person sees those things as virtuous they don't but
00:44:45.220
sadly a lot do yeah a lot do and that's just that is the current state of of our nation and we're
0.97
00:44:51.480
not going to get out of this mess if we can't even say it if we can't even acknowledge this is where
00:44:55.280
we're at and if we're going to fix it one let's be a christian nation and for all people who love
00:45:01.520
jesus and claim to be christians who keep telling us and insisting we can't have a christian nation
00:45:05.680
maybe just sit a few plays out. So first, let's actually try to have a Christian nation from top
00:45:11.520
to bottom. And then secondly, let's figure out how to get along with the different ethnicities
00:45:18.920
and how the gospel brings reconciliation for everybody who's already here. But maybe let's
00:45:22.900
stop importing by the millions more people from other countries that are incompatible,
0.77
00:45:29.060
currently incompatible with these United States like Somalia. And so let's stop the immigration
1.00
00:45:35.560
uh let's try to be christian and then also uh let's maybe not have a raw democracy which our
0.99
00:45:42.380
founders abhorred but actually go back to some of the forms of government that were less democratic
00:45:47.800
um that we originally had those sound like really good ideas and i think that's that's all you you
00:45:54.460
could read what aristotle said in that quote and um and and that be your takeaway and say you know
00:46:00.340
what? Aristotle was essentially, for all intents and purposes, he was right. And anybody who's
00:46:05.460
retweeting him and echoing his sentiments and saying, yeah, I think Aristotle was right.
00:46:09.620
If you're going to respond by saying, that's racist, then you're just, that's great, but just
00:46:16.400
put out another rap album. But don't speak to politics because you're just, you're not,
00:46:21.600
it ain't for you. All right, let's go to our first commercial break.
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00:48:53.620
And one thing that helps with the algorithm, as you know, is hitting the like button.
00:48:57.140
So if you could go ahead and give us a thumbs up for this video, if you're watching right
00:49:00.840
now, or even if you're not watching live and you watch this a little bit later, hit the
00:49:07.120
In our last segment, we're going to try to address some of the comments, especially if
00:49:11.480
you pose your comment in the form of a question.
00:49:13.580
So if you've got a question, we've got one more segment here, then we're going to go
00:49:17.000
to our final commercial break, and then our final, we'll come back for one final segment
00:49:21.420
for the show today, and we'll try to address, engage with the comment section, especially
00:49:26.780
So help us with the algorithm by liking the video and also leaving a comment, especially
00:49:30.920
a question if you want it to be addressed at the end of the episode.
00:49:33.680
and uh that being said uh last uh little um item of business is you just saw the commercial
00:49:39.480
for our conference and uh our early bird registration uh we don't say exactly the
00:49:45.700
date and the time that that's ending uh in that commercial so i want to make it uh really plain
00:49:49.740
to everybody who's watching right now that's going to be over at the end of this month i believe
00:49:53.380
august has 31 days right 31 days nathan says yes so we've got 31 days in the month of august so i
00:49:59.620
think it's going to be um 11 59 p.m central time is that right nate all right so that's the close
00:50:07.420
11 59 p.m on august 31st central time so 11 59 p.m central time on august 31st which means you've
00:50:17.520
got whatever that is it's like two and a half weeks something like that so you don't have much
00:50:22.140
longer uh the price is going to go up right now it it really is incredibly cheap this is affordable
00:50:33.160
That's just been our gig for the last couple of years
00:50:50.720
We've got like 15 speakers without any exaggeration.
00:50:57.020
you've got jeff durbin you've got warren mcintyre you've got all the augen boys you know you know
00:51:01.940
ben and brian and dan and uh eric and you've got um dusty deavers you've got uh david reese you've
00:51:08.860
got uh contra mundum you know with uh uh andrew isker you know boniface option he's coming out
00:51:14.320
so it's it's gonna be a fantastic uh conference we're gonna have eight main sessions and those
00:51:20.140
are each going to be about 50 minutes to an hour uh but eight main sessions uh traditionally we've
00:51:24.880
done the last couple of years, seven. So we're adding another main session. And then the big
00:51:28.380
thing that we're adding is panels. We're going to have 90 minute panels and not just one. Traditionally,
00:51:33.800
we've done one or two. We're going to have four. So we're going to have four main panels, each one
00:51:38.680
an hour and a half long. Some of them might even go a little bit longer where we're going to have
00:51:41.680
Steven Wolf. He's one of the guys I forgot to mention. He's going to do a main session, but
00:51:45.680
he's also going to be on the panels. We're probably going to set up a little bit of an
00:51:49.940
informal or friendly in-house, but debate between some of the more natural law, Christian
00:51:56.820
nationalist, Stephen Wolf types, and some of the more theonomic types like David Reese or Jeff
00:52:03.000
Durbin or Dusty Devers. And I find myself in the theonomic camp, but very friendly and sympathetic
00:52:08.340
to the Stephen Wolf crowd. And so, I might moderate and be somewhere in between. Me and
00:52:12.740
Iska would probably be very similar in that regard. Iska, he went to Greyfriars and loves
00:52:18.240
Doug Wilson and kind of cut his theological teeth with Rush Dooney and the Reconstructionist
00:52:23.980
and Van Til and all those kinds of things, and now he finds himself still very much agreeing
00:52:28.420
with a lot of those things and still comfortable with the term theonomic, but maybe not quite as
00:52:33.340
proud of the label as he might have been a few years ago, and more open to, okay, I think that
00:52:43.080
there's something to this protestant magisterial reformed tradition that uh that calvin held to
00:52:48.420
and and you know this this natural law christian nationalist position that you know most notably
00:52:53.400
in term in recent years has been outlined by stephen wolf it seems like that's kind of if
00:52:58.000
you're looking for the ark it's like what what it you know it just seems random you know guys are
00:53:02.080
you know they're switching teams and like what's what's the pattern here here's the pattern um
00:53:05.700
libertarian theonomic and then christian nationalist yes that's pretty much the pattern
00:53:11.700
is uh it's like um who i can't remember is this saying has been attributed to a ton of guys um
00:53:18.740
i think even uh thomas jefferson i don't know if he said it but it's been attributed to a lot of
00:53:23.460
guys it's the old saying that says uh if uh if you're not a liberal when you're young you don't
00:53:27.740
have a heart and if you're not a conservative when you're old you don't have a brain uh likewise i
00:53:32.320
would say for uh for men um if you're not uh a libertarian when you're young right if you're a
00:53:37.660
man and you weren't a libertarian in your 20s and you didn't absolutely love ron paul
00:53:41.680
then you know then i question uh whether or not you really are a conservative christian
00:53:45.440
you know so like when you're 22 years old um and if it was eight years ago uh you should have been
00:53:51.040
uh ron paul maxine and and libertarianism will save the world um but now that you're older if
00:53:57.780
you're in your 30s now that your brain's fully developed right if you're in your 30s and you're
00:54:01.320
still libertarian right like you know like a little bit of friendly fire here these are friends
00:54:07.720
that i'm not going to name but everybody will know who i'm talking about um if it's 2024 and
0.95
00:54:12.160
they're trying to chop off the genitals of children and uh and we're underpopulated and
00:54:16.460
not even hitting uh the uh the the levels needed in reproduction in order to sustain our own society
0.67
00:54:24.040
and you're demonizing uh tax child tax credits which is just reducing the amount you pay not
00:54:29.800
giving you money exactly they're not giving you money it's not theft they're not taking from the
00:54:33.020
rich and giving to the poor. Because you know who has children? People who pay taxes ordinarily.
00:54:38.220
And so they're actually, what the government is doing, and is the government tithing? I'll even
00:54:42.020
argue it from a theonomic perspective. Anything that rivals the tithe is theft. If the state
00:54:47.320
rivals God, God takes the tithe, that's 10%. If the state is asking for the same amount or more
00:54:51.980
than what God asked for, then it's theft, which means taxes, all taxes combined should be 9% or
00:54:56.740
less. 9% or less. Are you being taxed more than 9%? Yes. Do we have certain officials who are
00:55:03.800
saying that if I come into office, if you vote for me, and you have four children, then you will
00:55:09.380
get this amount of money? Well, did the government take more than 9% of your money? Then they're
00:55:14.980
giving your money back. They're not taking someone else's money and giving it to you.
00:55:20.380
What that policy does is they say, we're stealing from you, and we're still going to steal from you,
00:55:24.860
but we're going to steal less from you because you're doing something virtuous that helps all
00:55:29.200
society. You're saying incentivize is good? A government could do that?
00:55:33.240
So if you are, if your libertarianism under the, under the, you know, the guise of theonomy,
00:55:39.300
you know, like theonomic libertarianism is, is causing you in 2024 when they're castrating
00:55:45.220
children to, to stand in the way and make theological arguments against a tax child
00:55:50.440
credit then my goodness you just uh god bless you uh you'll always be friends you'll always be
00:55:55.560
brothers but you have lost the threat so the arc is libertarianism the theonomy you know and then
00:56:01.360
christian nationalism and i think i can hold on to my general equity theonomy and still be a
00:56:05.300
christian nationalist and appreciate natural law because honestly let's be honest for calvin for
00:56:09.200
all the reformers natural law was synonymous with the decalogue that's what natural law was it was
00:56:13.500
the ten commandments the ten commandments were simply uh god's specific application of natural
00:56:18.780
law so i don't i actually don't think that they're incompatible but anyways um that's that's what if
00:56:24.600
you're wondering like why are these guys changing because uh by god's grace we're growing up that's
00:56:28.660
why all right so anyways all that being said you want to see a debate you know see that but fleshed
00:56:33.340
out with other guys and maybe get heated you know maybe i don't know maybe we even get to maybe we
0.79
00:56:37.520
can rile jeff durbin up enough to see some of his uh kung fu you know that would be a good battle
00:56:42.000
like an older martial arts you know he's kicking steven wolf in the face you know like that i mean
00:56:53.160
So Jeff Durbin, he's got the fighting skills, but Wolf might have a handgun on him.
00:56:57.960
So if you want to make sure that you don't miss some high-quality theological entertainment
00:57:03.460
and political and cultural commentary, then you are not going to want to miss this conference.
00:57:11.380
Feel free to stick with us for the 6th, for that Sunday, the Lord's Day.
00:57:14.220
uh but you've got three full days plus you know three and a half if you count the lord's day
00:57:18.440
the third the fourth and the fifth of april 2025 and uh you got two weeks two weeks and then uh
00:57:24.860
we're done with the early bird registration and we've never done we're adding a full day
00:57:29.280
we're doubling the speaker lineup we're we're quadrupling the panels and um and yet we are
00:57:35.200
offering the lowest price we ever have we've never offered uh this price it's a hundred i believe it's
00:57:39.400
140 bucks i've been everyone and that is absolutely true so it's 140 bucks but it's
00:57:43.520
going to go up a good bit because honestly it's too cheap and we're going to we're not trying to
00:57:47.460
gouge people uh but we're also trying to we have a a duty to practice good christian stewardship
00:57:53.920
with the resources that people give to us and the form of donations and supporting this ministry and
00:57:58.580
all these kinds of things and uh we will lose money if uh if we don't raise the price because
00:58:03.120
140 is too cheap the venue alone and flying out 15 different guys and trying to treat them well
00:58:08.600
giving them honorariums and all these different things um the conference will probably cost us
00:58:12.880
about uh we've done the math because a lot of guys i'm just doing this because a lot of guys
00:58:16.740
are not forthright about money especially with conferences uh so i want to shoot you straight
00:58:20.760
the conference is probably going to cost us about 85 grand is what we're projecting and um and if
00:58:25.800
we have you know 800 to 1000 people which is what we had this year uh we had 850 people and we do
00:58:31.960
it all at uh the 140 rate and that's only for adults and then we do super cheap for kids and
00:58:37.080
if you're under 10 you're free um and so uh if we do that rate um we we will barely uh just a little
00:58:44.160
bit above breaking even for uh what we're predicting as the cost of this conference so
00:58:48.220
we have to raise the rate but you still got two weeks to get in at a buck 40 and uh you can watch
00:58:53.460
jeff durbin and steven wolf get into a boxing match yeah all right it'll be great all right
00:58:57.800
we'll go to questions soon but i want to give a modern example right talking about aristotle
00:59:01.400
multiculturalism so you've probably heard about the riots in the uk so it's this little town it's
00:59:15.100
stabbed like 10 people and killed three children.
00:59:30.020
How long, how many more are you going to let in?
00:59:36.220
so that happened it actually turns out the man wasn't muslim and wasn't a first generation
00:59:41.220
immigrant his parents were from rwanda but he had moved to southport in 2013 but what i think this
00:59:47.000
illustrates is right now these riots are ongoing it's funny because you had the aristotle debate
00:59:50.640
and then you have simultaneously in the uk enjoying the blessings of multiculturalism
00:59:56.000
of people sharing a space together such a blessing how horrific is it to like i feel like i hear and
0.94
01:00:02.800
this happened just in the u.s this week about a terrible thing an immigrant or a migrant does
01:00:06.620
to girls specifically every single week it just it almost desensitized this just happened up in
01:00:13.140
massachusetts a migrant tried to do something terrible to a 15 year old girl was let go
01:00:17.620
on 500 bail 500 bail and it's funny i was with my grandma so i was on vacation and she was talking
01:00:24.420
about she grew up here in the east coast and she was talking about how five six seven years old
01:00:28.860
she would just go to school she would go and play in the playground her parents didn't have
01:00:33.080
a second thought she would go to the corner store buy cigarettes for her mom at six years old they
01:00:37.820
were a close-knit tight society but but what they had is is they shared something and when you see
01:00:45.400
people reacting like a muslim immigrant yeah of course they must have done this people know that
0.72
01:00:50.120
it's not close people that have shared space for decades on end that know one another that go to
1.00
01:00:55.580
church that do terrible atrocities. What you're witnessing is, for one, a breakdown of law,
01:01:00.900
of God's law in society that restrains evil. The gospel also, the UK is rapidly apostatizing. The
01:01:06.660
Church of England is dying. So those things are happening. You're losing the Christian religion,
01:01:11.460
you're losing the restraint of law, and then you're observing what happens when people try
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01:01:16.900
to share a space. You're literally watching it. Go watch the fireballs, go watch the arrests.
01:01:21.080
uh there are people now the uk has declared war none of the immigrants doing these terrible things
01:01:26.060
the ones that are actually criminals on the native britons themselves yeah i saw arresting them
01:01:30.520
it's like uh some kind of um you know civil servant runs into the office of the prime minister
01:01:35.980
of england and says uh sir they're rioting in the streets and burning down buildings you know and
01:01:41.580
and hurting women and children and he's sipping his coffee casually and he says oh i'm sure they
0.92
01:01:46.520
have a reason for their grievance and he says no sir i mean the white people he spits out his
0.97
01:01:51.760
coffee the prime minister he's like arrest them all off with their heads there's a 61 year old
01:01:57.600
man sentenced to i think 18 months in prison i saw for a facebook post for yeah for saying who
01:02:03.000
is all law yes there was that i mean there's so many of them well that one was different i'm sorry
01:02:07.280
that wasn't facebook that was a guy who shouted like who the f is all right um i wouldn't have
01:02:12.600
had the f word in there but a fantastic question who's all along the answer of course being uh he
01:02:17.440
is no god at all but exactly um but but the fact that you would go to jail for 18 months for that
01:02:21.880
and i think we're these are two separate accounts that we're both referencing another one facebook
01:02:25.540
one yeah 20 months insane insane and so sorry all i was gonna say is if you don't want a christian
01:02:33.040
society this is what you get and and i don't know about you but but i want high high trust society
01:02:38.320
i i want a people that share a space that share a religion and um i i think greg bonson he asked
01:02:46.720
in a in a sermon how many times can a man see what's in front of his face and still pretend
01:02:51.960
not to know the answer yeah how many times can you see and hear about these horrific stories
01:02:57.580
not even to men and women that are old mature that have lived life to children to children and
01:03:03.120
to teenagers death and other terrible things done to them how many times can you see this happen
01:03:07.940
and not think, we need some borders and we need strong rule of law.
01:03:13.320
And if you put your head in the sand, no, no, no, we must welcome all.
01:03:16.260
I just saw today an LCMS, so this would be the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod,
01:03:21.060
a Lutheran pastor saying, well, having kids to grow the church,
01:03:26.660
But immigration is the real way that the Great Commission comes to us.
0.98
01:03:33.840
It's a lack of love for your people in many ways.
01:03:36.820
to welcome their destruction, to do nothing about it,
01:03:45.540
I don't know that I have words for that level of
01:04:03.420
how long can it be right in front of your eyes?
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01:04:05.680
You know, like, you know, your neighbor's children, your native neighbor, like you're a Brit and has lived there for, you know, 10 generations and a fellow, you know, Brit, 10 generations, you know, heritage, you know, Great Britain, their little girl gets raped and stabbed, right?
0.61
01:04:28.260
so um it wasn't your little girl and uh and you know that it could be next time it could be but
01:04:34.620
you're you're just you're you're weighing the risks right so you're saying yeah it could be
01:04:38.960
but still statistically it's uh it's an unlikelihood but what is is not unlikely but but
01:04:43.740
rather a guarantee is that if i speak out against this um even if i speak out against it charitably
0.84
01:04:49.440
on facebook i can go to jail yeah like the reason so i don't think it's just stupidity and i don't
0.98
01:04:54.860
even think that it's apathy i think that um the rulers are so sinister and wicked uh that they
0.97
01:05:01.200
have made it they basically said like if um if you don't speak out uh rape and pillaging from the
01:05:08.300
third world on your doorstep will continue um but it might just be your neighbor and your family
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01:05:13.800
might be okay but if you do speak out um we'll rape and pillage you by putting you in jail and
0.97
01:05:20.040
taking everything you have uh so it's really just a cost-benefit analysis um if i don't say anything
0.99
01:05:25.960
then uh my daughter might get raped by a somalian if i do say something um then my daughter will
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01:05:32.760
grow up without a father because the prime minister of great britain will put me in jail
0.97
01:05:36.660
yeah that's that's your choice i know those are strong words but we just need to say it like it
01:05:41.980
is that's the choice and that is i think why still a lot of people it's right there in front
01:05:46.680
in their face and has been for decades and you're quiet and and unchecked that's coming here in 10
01:05:51.120
years you're going to face the same dynamic if things don't change um i feel like we're going
01:05:55.780
to be up against exactly that the the department of justice showing up your doorstep up sir that
01:06:01.820
facebook post was a little racist and we're going to take you here and you're going to have to do
01:06:06.220
some re-education you spoke out against this you didn't want so and so freed you you wanted this
01:06:11.840
that or the other i i don't feel like we're that far away it would have been unthinkable i'm sure
01:06:15.780
in great britain 2015 we're not gonna be arrested for facebook posts they're not gonna take our
01:06:19.520
knives away right we're not gonna have literally i saw i think it was in ireland it was a small
01:06:23.880
town of 200 people or i think it was about 100 people and they dropped off about 150 migrants
01:06:29.300
at a hotel there and said they will be housed here do not stop it don't say anything against
01:06:33.540
it or we'll arrest you again 10 years ago you wouldn't they would never the government wouldn't
01:06:38.040
show up and do that oh yeah they will and it could happen here too um all right so what final
01:06:44.660
points do you want to make and then uh we'll go to our last commercial and get to questions but
01:06:48.980
what what final things on our topic today do you feel like maybe we left on said um
01:06:54.380
we were talking about a little bit the gospel's primary mission is not um ethnic reconciliation
01:06:59.640
but that is an effect of it that the gospel reconciles man to god first and foremost that's
01:07:04.480
to reconcile sinful man to a holy god absolutely because the gospel the word literally in greek
01:07:10.020
means good news. It is the good news of the life, death, resurrection of Jesus. Jesus reconciles us
01:07:15.020
to God primarily, but individuals, so a husband and wife, also through the work of the gospel,
01:07:19.860
help are reconciled to one another, have a home rightly ordered. So it is the gospel. It can help
01:07:24.820
create ethnic unity, but also the law does. The law helps us. It restrains evil in one of its
01:07:30.720
functions. That can also create a commodious, harmonious society for people to share. So it's
01:07:37.160
not just gospel, because you'll hear ministers do this. They'll get up and they'll talk about
01:07:40.460
the work of the gospel, ethnic unity, and all these things. And it does, at some level, help
01:07:44.560
reconcile people, but also what law does, where evil is restrained, where people know what's
01:07:49.760
expected of them. There's a societal, cultural expectation that's enforced, some of it explicitly
01:07:54.820
in law, but then some of it's getting into the hearts of people where they say, there's nothing
01:07:58.660
against this, but you still can't do that. Yeah, one thing that helps my kids get along really well
01:08:03.320
um is the fact that uh that they know that their dad will discipline them if they don't get along
01:08:10.160
yeah right like that that really helps you know so like we have you know i mean there's still
01:08:15.220
fights and factions in my home because i have a six-year-old and a four-year-old and a three-year-old
01:08:19.500
and one-year-old and another on the way you know so like i've got little little kids um and little
01:08:25.000
kids uh sometimes they're not perfectly behaved you know but um but by and large with children
01:08:31.400
as young as mine are um they they do really well and and are growing in consideration of one another
01:08:38.040
and preferring one another and sharing and all these kinds of things um but they're doing that
01:08:42.460
not just because of the gospel um they're doing that primarily because of the law they're doing
01:08:48.200
that because exactly because because by god's grace and i don't do this perfectly because i
01:08:53.920
too am a sinner but by god's grace their mother and i are doing our best to legislate as parents
01:09:00.440
in our household god's law accurately and fairly for our children in our home and um and i think
01:09:07.880
you know for our oldest um i think that she's showing the the most signs of maturity and
01:09:12.840
preference of others and selflessness and all these kinds of virtues and fruit of the spirit
01:09:16.800
because uh she's got law in the form of mom and dad's discipline but she also i believe has gospel
01:09:24.900
I do believe God alone sees the heart, but her mother and I, we believe that she is regenerate,
01:09:31.000
that she belongs to Christ. I don't think that all my children are regenerate. I believe that
01:09:35.540
all my children are elect. I do believe that. And I believe that you can have that view,
01:09:40.460
even as a Baptist, that we can affirm covenant succession. But I don't believe that they're all
0.87
01:09:44.860
regenerate from the womb. So the majority of my children, as far as I can tell, God alone sees the
01:09:49.860
heart. I look at the outward appearance and measuring fruit and those kinds of things. But
01:09:52.800
as far as I can tell, doing my best as a father to exercise discernment, the majority of my
01:09:57.640
children are unregenerate. In other words, the majority of my children, the gospel has not yet
01:10:03.020
changed their hearts. And yet they're still growing and improving in their outward behavior.
01:10:09.220
Their heart is still totally depraved and needs the gospel of Jesus Christ. But in their outward
01:10:12.560
behavior, there is day by day great improvement. Because you know what? The law of God revives the
01:10:19.280
soul. I don't like that. I don't like that. I don't like that interpretation. That's not
01:10:23.280
an interpretation. That is a literal quote from the Bible. It's so incredible. It says makes wise
01:10:28.080
the simple. You could take a simple person as little to offer society. Like a two-year-old.
01:10:32.260
Like a two-year-old. The law of God that sets them straight. So we'll go to our final commercial
01:10:37.820
break. I think we had a couple of questions. We'll look for them. Leave any more in the comments and
01:10:41.480
we'll get to them in this final segment. All right. Are you desiring to change your financial
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I'm going to have Nathan, our assistant, scroll up to it.
01:13:24.000
He says, does your congregation pretty much align with your views, Pastor Joel, or is
01:13:31.720
I know that that doesn't exactly pertain to our topic today, but it is something, a
01:13:36.980
common question that i receive from time to time because anybody who watches our show right if
01:13:41.380
you're not a member in our church and wes i'll let you speak to this too because you you would have
01:13:44.760
you know an insider point of view as a member of our church but anybody who's not and on the
01:13:49.000
outside looking in and they're just maybe watching the sermons online or watching you know the live
01:13:52.640
stream or the friday special you know or theology apply the interview that i do on mondays they're
01:13:57.080
watching the podcast they're on the outside looking in and they know that um joel webin uh
01:14:03.440
is um you know he's he's nothing if not opinionated right he has you know he has strong
01:14:09.780
views right he holds strong views he has convictions and so it might surprise the listener
01:14:14.120
i appreciate the question coy uh to know that uh we actually have a fairly wide array and i would
01:14:19.840
argue wider than i wish it was but uh but we're not going to just bludgeon people over the head
01:14:24.240
we're going to take time and shape people over time uh through properly dividing the the word
01:14:30.300
of God, teaching the word of God and shaping, discipling people. But our church, I think a big
01:14:34.660
part of it is just the context of our church in terms of the timing that it was planted. We planted
01:14:39.860
our church in my living room with 12 adults, including my wife and I. It was like 20 people,
01:14:46.140
including kids. We did it in our living room, putting out our dining room chairs and using our
01:14:51.020
couches and kids sitting on the floor. It was in the living room of our home. And we started the
01:14:55.500
first sunday which happened to be an easter sunday of april 2021 april 2021 and so uh and we had just
01:15:02.880
a couple months prior you know um moved uh from california to texas which for me for the record
01:15:08.600
was actually not going somewhere where i was not native uh but actually coming home texas is where
01:15:14.080
i was born and raised um it was the choice to go to california that was actually the outlier and so
01:15:19.340
so all that being said you were still on the heels of covet yeah and texas did better than
01:15:24.440
some states, but not great. Greg Abbott was pretty much just, he didn't really have any
01:15:30.960
courage or spine. He just, whatever Ron DeSantis would do, he would just mimic that a few months
01:15:35.720
later. And so Texas got rocked, not as much as California, but it got rocked by COVID as all
01:15:43.220
the nation did. And then of course you had the summer of love and mostly peaceful riots burning
01:15:49.040
down half the country and so uh so i was just you know on those two things among other things but i
01:15:54.520
was outspoken about those two things um and we you know so i'm just preaching to my friends my wife
01:16:00.280
and kids and some of our close friends who moved with us you know from california in the church
01:16:04.040
that i pastored there and uh but we were recording the sermons and putting them online and people
01:16:08.080
are watching it and uh and it took off because they saw you know strong stances on covid and
01:16:14.360
and wokeness yep strong stance against you know the branch covidians and wokeology and so uh but
01:16:22.100
then my point is what does that get you because there's a ton of people who hate wokeness and
01:16:25.940
hated the the covid tyranny but are not necessarily 1689 second london confession you know uh reformed
01:16:33.280
baptist post-millennial like and to be honest a lot of the people that we got initially and still
01:16:38.780
to this day continue to get um we're staunch you know dispensational pre-mill guys right so they're
01:16:44.700
like they're like we see the writing on the wall like we're with you joel uh no vaccines uh no mask
01:16:50.740
uh stand up to covid tyranny and uh wokeness is a virus and also um this is these are the signs
01:16:58.360
the end times are upon us and jesus is coming back you know to rapture the church but you know
01:17:02.800
i'm different than all those you know all those uh normies out there and i'm like oh you're different
01:17:07.700
like you're you're post-millennial you know or you're you're reformed all-millennial like no
01:17:11.720
i'm different i'm a post-trib uh you know i'm a mid-ax dispensational exactly so like with like
01:17:18.920
that was most of the church initially um so to answer your question cory uh eschatology most of
01:17:25.000
the church uh was not post-millennial at this point i would say over half of the church is
01:17:28.920
post-millennial because they've been shaped over time through the preaching and discipleship um and
01:17:34.140
and then also just on their own reading and studying the word of god for themselves and
01:17:37.540
coming to that conclusion but initially a lot of the people who really took a stand were the salt
01:17:44.340
of the earth and who's the salt of the earth dispensationalists honestly like let's just be
01:17:50.400
honest i hate i despise dispensationalism but dispensationalists the people are some of the
01:17:57.660
the sweetest people on on the planet like i remember doug wilson said you know like stephen
01:18:03.240
wolf when he had you know his his infamous tweet you know a year ago whenever it was that uh why
01:18:07.520
white evangelicals are the lone bulwark, you know, against the moral insanity of America.
01:18:11.620
And he's right. He was making a statistical argument, not each and every individual,
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01:18:15.740
but in a group dynamic in general, white evangelicals are the most conservative
01:18:20.020
voters in the nation. And by that metric, you know, therefore, they are the main dam
01:18:28.120
that is holding back the floodgates of moral insanity. So Stephen Wolfe, I don't think he
01:18:32.440
did anything wrong. I think that that was fine. But Doug Wilson said, you know, well,
01:18:36.860
if we're going to say that then it's also fair you know steven wolf i would i would ask you
01:18:40.600
request that you say another set of 11 words that um dispensational pre-millennials um are the lone
01:18:47.400
bulwark um and now i don't know why doug was trying to get steven to say that to me it doesn't
01:18:52.020
make any sense but uh that's not the point the point is steven wolf was right about white
01:18:56.260
evangelicals but so was doug wilson and so anyways all that being said uh dispensationalism i despise
01:19:02.160
because i think it's a bad doctrine it's led to endless wars in the middle east and you know
01:19:05.920
and zionism and all these different things that i i think yeah i despise because i think the lord
01:19:10.020
jesus despises but uh aside from that dispensationalist the actual people um they have
01:19:16.500
stood up against lgbt and they stood up against covet a lot of like i'd like to sit here and say
01:19:21.400
it was all the reformed guys who have a historical grammatical literal and also typological
01:19:27.300
christological typo you know typology you know hermeneutic of the word of god and can track their
01:19:32.720
you know theological traditions back to calvin and luther and zwingli they their theology was
01:19:39.800
tested and tried and it proved through its fruit to be the true doctrines because in 2020 it was
01:19:45.820
the reformed that took a stand against covet nope i wish that was the case that guys like let's just
01:19:52.400
be honest that was not the case calvary chapel kicked most presbyterians butts in terms of
01:19:59.220
Courage, spying, and just raw instinct of knowing the times.
01:20:10.600
Which that one actually isn't shocking because it's R. Scott Clark.
01:20:16.980
So the point is because we planted our church in that context,
01:20:25.380
on the heels of COVID and the heels of wokeness,
01:20:28.500
and that's kind of where we kind of that was our our rise to stardom we're not stars you know we
01:20:32.800
got we're we're little little fish you know like but we've got a youtube channel with a hundred
01:20:38.500
thousand people and you know and plenty of other people have a million so we're not a big deal by
01:20:43.880
any stretch but the little bit of accolades that we did gain uh came from taking a stand on those
01:20:49.840
issues at in a timely manner uh when when they were that was what everybody was wrestling with
01:20:55.480
what do we do do we close our churches do i do i get the 14th booster do i you know should i wear
01:21:00.160
three masks in the shower alone by myself you know like that that was you know um it uh should uh
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01:21:06.520
should i give black people all of my stuff am i terrible for being white you know like that like
01:21:10.420
that's what was going on yep and uh we took a stand but the reality is my point is that stand
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01:21:15.940
appealed it did not just appeal to people who have theology like mine it appealed to pre-mill guys
01:21:21.320
dispensational guys we have a ton still to this day we still have maybe not a ton but i'd say we
01:21:27.020
have uh at least a dozen maybe two dozen arminians yep in the church um so most people are calvinist
01:21:33.720
and and reformed in their soteriology um but i'd say it's probably 80 like i'd say 70 percent is
01:21:39.580
post-millennial at this point in the beginning it was less than 50 um i'd say 80 85 percent are
01:21:45.040
reformed in their soteriology but there's a good you know 12 to 25 people adults that are arminian
01:21:51.300
and uh and they know and it's and i'm not being shy about that ever and so they know exactly what
01:21:57.180
i believe but they're willing to be there also here's another one uh baptism we have a ton of
01:22:01.920
people this one i can't say ton uh who are of the persuasion of pedo-baptism that is their um that's
01:22:08.380
their position and uh but they love our church and part of the reason they don't go to a presbyterian
01:22:13.520
church is because the opc church down the road and the pca church down the road uh closed for 15
01:22:18.360
months during covid you know and uh and then if they did open up uh they had two services and in
01:22:24.900
one of the services it was you know masks are optional but the other one they're required
01:22:28.880
and uh and they wouldn't even sing and uh the pastor his wife and their kids uh which service
01:22:34.700
do you think they went to the non-singing we won't obey ephesians colossians when it says when
01:22:39.540
we gather to address one another with songs i was on an opc website i was looking for someone who
01:22:44.280
came from it we're gonna go to that service in 2024 still we're advertising masks and covid
01:22:48.980
requirements like as in two weeks ago right a current church obc church still meeting right so
01:22:53.740
i have i have presbyterians in my church why because presbyterians uh they think that i'm
01:22:58.940
wrong about baptism they're kind and charitable and respectful towards me as a pastor holding
01:23:02.880
the view that i do but in the you know but that is their position they think uh joel's wrong about
01:23:07.060
baptism but he's the most covenantally minded baptist we've ever met and so we appreciate that
01:23:12.340
But we would rather go to the Baptist church that knows what time it is than the Presbyterian church that is sitting in the garage revving the 12-cylinder engine, the V12 engine of all the great riches and theological treasure of Voss and Gahardus Voss and all these Reformed treasures.
01:23:39.120
But they never take the car out of the garage and never drive it.
01:23:43.140
And so Joel's over here with his little six-cylinder Honda Civic,
01:23:48.880
but he's souped it up as much as you possibly could.
01:23:54.900
Yeah, and doing jumps with his little Baptist Honda Civic.
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01:23:59.200
And the Presbyterians, what's the point in being a titan of intellect and theology
1.00
01:24:04.500
if at the end of the day, you're a freaking coward?
1.00
01:24:09.120
And that's not all Presbyterians, but it's a lot.
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01:24:14.860
And so to answer the question, good question, Corey,
01:24:17.740
the answer is that we have a vast array of people of different positions.
01:24:22.460
And the way that I preach, and this is the last thing I'll say,
01:24:25.260
the way that I preach is different than the policies that we hold
01:24:28.620
in terms of for unity and membership in our church.
01:24:32.220
When I preach, it's like, well, man, for a guy who has people
01:24:35.220
of all these different positions, that actually surprises me
01:24:38.040
because you speak so matter-of-factly you don't speak uh you don't you just don't sound that
01:24:43.300
charitable when you're speaking on your podcast or when you're preaching you make it sound like
01:24:47.760
it's you know this is the only way it can be and blah blah blah and this is why that that too comes
01:24:51.900
from a conviction theological conviction peter says in his epistle that there are multiple different
01:24:56.880
gifts and he talks about the one who speaks and he's referring to a gift of teaching and oration
01:25:01.840
the one who teaches the word of god he says let the one who speaks speak as though he's speaking
01:25:06.100
the very oracles of god in other words uh when a minister of the gospel gets into the pulpit and
01:25:12.520
begins to preach he should preach uh from the standpoint not of i think or maybe or perhaps
01:25:20.260
but thus saith the word of god yeah and so when i speak um i the reason i speak a matter of factly
01:25:27.340
is not because that's my personality because if you talk to me in any other setting if i'm not
01:25:31.400
sitting behind this table in a podcast or behind the pulpit in a sermon you know this west because
01:25:35.680
with friends in any other context i'm just like hey you know like all right let's you know let's
01:25:40.380
have a whiskey let's go watch a movie or like yeah i've got a an opinion on this or an opinion on
01:25:45.140
that like i'm a lot more laid back yeah um but the reason i'm not in the pulpit isn't because it's my
0.66
01:25:50.400
innate personality to be so sure of myself and that really i'm just a narcissist and arrogant
01:25:55.220
uh no i actually kind of have to uh intentionally work myself to be that way um and i do it because
01:26:00.720
i'm trying to be obedient yeah i believe that the word of god actually commands the preacher
01:26:05.760
to preach as though he is heralding the oracles of god and not as though he is softly and quietly
01:26:12.160
sharing his opinion so so that's why i preach that way but in terms of pastorally outside of
01:26:18.600
the pulpit the way that i shepherd sheep and the and our policies and requirements for membership
01:26:23.460
are actually um if anything maybe more accommodating than they should be and allows for
01:26:28.940
all different kinds of theological persuasions to feel at home and loved in our church.
01:26:33.560
Yeah. I would add, so that's theological. I'm not sure if maybe Corey's question related to
01:26:37.720
theological or political. So theological, we have somewhat of our diversity, and it's not our
01:26:42.160
strength. It's not like, oh yeah, we have Baptists, Presbyterians. We have some theological diversity,
01:26:47.420
but I would say politically and socially, we have little. As in, every single person would be in
01:26:51.200
lockstep against the left. We will not have a single Kamala Harris voter anywhere in our church.
01:26:56.200
We have some that wouldn't vote for Trump, but we will not have a diversity of political thought, like, eh, the left, not so bad.
01:27:02.580
So, a bit of a diversity theologically, but politically, I would say the church is pretty strongly aligned.
01:27:07.460
The roles of men and women, the importance of children, the need for a Christian nation.
01:27:13.260
On those, I would say, I don't know, maybe you could say differently, I think of the members, we would all be right there in lockstep.
01:27:20.240
Yeah, we would want to see a Christian nation again.
01:27:23.760
We would want to see homosexuality banned again, things like that.
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01:27:27.940
I'll do a drive-by, just two minutes on a question,
0.99
01:27:34.220
I've heard a lot about immigration, but what about the refugees?
01:27:41.240
There are legitimate refugees, I think, of the apartheid in Africa.
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01:27:45.660
Imagine you're a white farmer, and they're literally coming to take your farm.
1.00
01:27:50.240
to butcher you. The stories of what we've done there are just absolutely terrible, again,
0.93
01:27:53.720
to white families, to children. You fleeing is legitimate, and a nation can, although it does
0.99
01:27:58.980
not have to, accept refugees. But one word of caution on that, even if you would be doing a
1.00
01:28:04.580
good thing, if it comes at the risk and the detriment of your own people, and you perceive
0.99
01:28:08.840
that there could be a possibility, I think a nation has the right, a Christian nation, to say,
01:28:12.720
we understand you're in a tough circumstance. We can't, however, help because of the risk it
01:28:17.360
would introduce. And a good example of this was in World War I, the island of Sicily off,
01:28:21.440
it's actually World War II in the Civil War, island of Italy, Sicily, the U.S. removed their
01:28:28.720
restriction, uncapped immigration from there on the refugee status. There was war going on,
01:28:33.480
people wanted to leave the region and the island, so they let them in. And that's actually what
1.00
01:28:36.920
precipitated the mob crisis that gripped the nation for the next three decades and led to
0.55
01:28:41.520
the creation of the FBI, was unchecked immigration. And then these groups of subversive actors came in
01:28:47.120
and began establishing within the ports of New York.
01:28:49.440
You can read, it's Bill O'Reilly Killing the Mob.
01:28:53.040
But it was all precipitated by this group that claimed,
01:28:55.940
we're just fleeing this war, we just need shelter.
01:29:16.100
that are going to come in and do terrible things to our nation,
01:29:22.900
Or if they have the resources and they can vet,
01:29:27.040
we're going to welcome in on a limited basis, on a limited number,
01:29:30.320
some of you legitimately fleeing, especially religious persecution.
01:29:33.760
I would say a Christian nation can have even above and beyond
01:29:35.720
to say you're a Christian fleeing Islamic persecution.
01:29:38.760
That's a valid category, but it's not required for us to take the refugee
0.66
01:29:42.580
if it would do detriment to our own people and to our own family.
01:29:46.100
well said um let's do this uh so euclid has uh some great points that he made but i want to read
01:29:52.680
from striker i did euclid a couple weeks ago and euclid i think this striker is getting a similar
01:29:58.040
question that you do too um striker and euclid are very concerned about my uh my um my compassion
01:30:06.920
towards steven wolf your friendly north carolina exactly yeah so uh striker says this a question
01:30:12.320
for Joel. Do you understand that even Wolfe, Stephen Wolfe, has stated his natural law position
01:30:18.420
is incompatible with theonomy? Why specifically do you think that you can ride the fence between
01:30:23.440
the two? So this gets, you know, it's Thomism versus, you know, it's Thomas Aquinas versus
01:30:30.740
Van Til. Part of it is their epistemology, how they arrive at the truths that they arrive at,
01:30:37.740
how we can know what we know. Um, but one thing I said this a couple of weeks ago, but maybe it
01:30:42.620
bears repeating. Um, it's probably important for people to know. And I, and I've been consistent
01:30:46.620
with this, uh, believe it or not. Uh, I, so I have been a classical theist, um, for, uh, at least I
01:30:53.520
think six years now came into those convictions. It was either 2017 or 2018. Um, I remember having,
01:31:00.400
you know, some staunch arguments with, uh, my elders at the time. And we were, you know,
01:31:03.820
because we were all still kind of trying to figure out our theology of god um you know our
01:31:08.060
theology proper and uh and so you know god is the most uh most pure spirit without body parts and
01:31:13.400
passions um uh the impassibility you know so like even like sam renahan and uh some of the the
01:31:18.880
reformed baptist guys from arpka um who was it dolezal who wrote all that is games yeah there's
01:31:25.000
some you know some divine simplicity right so that god without parts philosophical theology
01:31:29.320
um and uh and then uh renahan did you know dole is always handling the divine simplicity
01:31:35.840
god without parts and and renahan was uh handling uh god without passions and at at root you know
01:31:41.880
passions is you know the divine cannot suffer right the latin you know so he you know god
01:31:46.200
doesn't die god doesn't suffer those kinds of things and making sense of that without getting
01:31:50.480
into the nestorian heresy um you know but uh but still making sense of the two natures in you know
01:31:55.480
the hypostatic union of one person of uh the son uh the second member of the trinity uh god the son
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01:32:01.520
and that uh that it's true to say that jesus died that's a perfectly theologically true statement
01:32:05.840
and it's also true to say that god has never died and it's also true to say that jesus is god
01:32:10.780
and always has been and there was never a single moment that he ceased being god that he paused
01:32:15.940
being god so um and i don't have time to get into all that but so in that sense uh everybody can
01:32:20.980
affirm God is without passions in that sense, if you're orthodox and not a heretic. But I do think
01:32:26.860
that Sam Renahan and the Reformers, I think most of the Reformers would adhere to this, that God
01:32:32.340
without passions isn't just that he doesn't suffer, but that when the Bible speaks of God,
01:32:36.800
in terms of theology of God, understanding him, theology proper, it speaks underneath the banner
01:32:41.220
of analogy. Under the banner of analogy, we have two primary subcategories. We have anthropomorphic
01:32:46.060
language and anthropopathic language. Anthropomorphic language is speaking of God in
01:32:50.320
physical terms while recognizing, John chapter 4, God is spirit. And those who worship him must
01:32:55.180
worship him in spirit and truth. It is true that the second member of the Trinity has taken on
01:32:59.040
flesh and he is forever now the God-man. He has a body, a now glorified body, where he's seated at
01:33:03.840
the right hand of God the Father Almighty. But the Father and the Spirit have always, and the Son
01:33:07.940
previously before the Incarnation always, did not have a body. He's the most pure spirit without
01:33:12.800
body, parts, and passions. And so, God without body and without parts, divine simplicity,
01:33:18.580
in philosophical terms, doesn't mean God's simple and that we're complex, speaking, you know,
01:33:23.400
trying to, you know, insinuate that God's inferior. Of course, that's not true. But simple
01:33:27.900
in philosophical terms, meaning that God is not divisible. You know, even the, you know,
01:33:32.680
the Reformers and the Puritans, especially, when they would speak of the attributes of God,
01:33:36.420
they preferred to use the word the perfections. And attributes or perfections of God isn't
0.76
01:33:41.080
something that god possesses uh it's not that god has attributes or that he has these perfections
01:33:46.460
but that he is his perfections and that he's not the uh the comprise um or the uh the sum of all
01:33:54.340
it's not uh you know like the captain planet thing you know heart uh winds you know it's not uh you
01:34:00.700
know justice you know equals captain god you know it's that's not the way it works um no uh if you
01:34:06.780
If you were to separate or somehow detract merely one of the attributes or perfections of God, then the whole thing falls apart.
01:34:18.320
So, when the Bible says, you know, because that's some of the lousy theological arguments that people make.
01:34:24.000
And so, therefore, you know, like, yeah, God is just.
01:34:30.400
But, you know, that one attribute, namely love, trumps all the other ones.
01:34:36.460
and how do you arrive there? Well, God has these other things, but he is. That's an ontological
01:34:42.040
argument of what God is. His very essence is love. Well, one, that's just a bad hermeneutic of reading
01:34:47.800
the scripture. Two, even by your bad hermeneutic, using that argumentation, well, if God is love,
01:34:53.760
the Bible doesn't just say he has holiness, but he is holy, holy, holy. The Bible never says that
01:34:59.080
God is love, love, love. So God is then, therefore, by your own logic, three times holier than he is
01:35:03.600
loving. And so, my point is, you know, you just shouldn't do it that way at all. Instead, all the
01:35:08.660
attributes of God are not things that He possesses or has, but God is. And so, when the Bible says
01:35:14.540
God is love, that is a phenomenal verse of the Bible and a wonderful thing that 1 John tells us.
01:35:18.860
But it's just as theologically true to say God is justice, God is love, God is mercy, God is,
01:35:24.820
you know, all these things, God is truth, God is, you know. And so, all that God is, God is. All that
01:35:30.060
is in God is God. So that's divine simplicity. And then without passions, that's anthropopathic
01:35:35.420
language. So when the Bible speaks of physical terms of God, his eyes roam to and fro, his right
01:35:40.360
arm is mighty to save, it's analogous language. It's saying, it's not a lie. It's saying something
01:35:45.360
true about God, but in a way that human beings can understand. It's true, but it's not literally
01:35:50.240
true or physically true. So too with anthropopathic language. The Holy Spirit is grieved, right?
01:35:55.860
That's emotional language, but God does not emote in the literal sense.
01:36:00.240
God was, his wrath was kindled against Israel, you know, because of this or because of that.
01:36:06.760
That's emotional language, but it's meant to be emotional language interpreted underneath
01:36:12.980
the banner of analogy, it's anthropopathic language.
01:36:15.700
It's saying something true about the character and nature of God, but not literally true
01:36:20.880
God is not fluctuating on a dime, turning back and forth this minute and then back the next
01:36:26.740
in his emotional state. God is not a man that he should change his mind. Behold, I am the Lord,
01:36:32.780
I changeth not, so that you, the sons of Jacob, are not consumed. God knows the very end from
01:36:38.220
the beginning because he ordained it to come about. And so, God is not fluctuating and changing. He
01:36:43.500
does not change, and that includes a state of mind. That includes even his emotional state.
01:36:48.160
god does not change so here's my point striker and euclid uh my point is um that's tomism now
01:36:54.700
i'm not saying that's all of tomism tomism goes further than that but that's tomism as it pertains
01:36:58.720
to the doctrine of god that is uh tomism theology proper that is classical uh theism and i have been
01:37:05.580
a classical theist for six years so i've been you know charitable in the way that i engage with
01:37:11.180
others and very much in the theonomic general you know equity theonomy camp uh so i love moscow and
01:37:17.440
I love Doug Wilson, I love James White, you know, and I love these guys, but I have disagreed,
01:37:22.140
and you've probably never heard me say it publicly, but I'll say it today, I have disagreed
01:37:25.000
with Doug Wilson, who I love and respect, and James White, who I love and respect.
01:37:28.180
I have disagreed with these great men who are better men than me, on the whole, I've
01:37:32.400
disagreed with them about doctrine of God for at least the last six years.
01:37:36.720
And Owen Strand, he, I feel, far less of an obligation to be charitable towards, so I'll
01:37:44.020
his doctrine of God, his theology proper, is borderline heresy, if not full-blown. It's just
01:37:51.520
atrocious. And so, yes, I am a general equity theonomist, and I love Van Til, and I appreciate
01:37:57.760
95% of Rush Stuney. I think he's the best of the Reconstructionists, even better than Bonson,
01:38:02.400
although I also appreciate Bonson. But I have been swimming in the Thomistic waters, at least
0.98
01:38:09.320
in my theology proper for quite a while. And so, no, I don't think that Van Til and Aquinas are
01:38:18.420
compatible in every way. I wouldn't make that point. They're not. They're not. But I think that
01:38:25.200
the battle royale that will eventually need to be held and hosted—I'd love to host it—the
0.70
01:38:32.700
battle royale, you know, that will eventually need to be hosted between the Thomists and the
01:38:37.040
antillions um in terms of epistemology uh because it's not really so much you know
01:38:43.100
soteriology we're holding to the you know we we're all calvinist guys um and uh but but in
01:38:49.720
terms of epistemology and and then especially as it applies to the law of god and how it's applied
01:38:55.580
you know all of christ for all of life and these kinds of things uh that you know to whether it's
0.93
01:38:59.780
no nobody's you know nobody in our camp is a uh r2k you know uh radical uh two kingdom guy but
01:39:06.060
But whether it's classical two kingdoms or whether it's more of a Kuyperian view, those things will need to be settled eventually.
01:39:15.040
I just do not think that that is—I don't think that that's the moment that we're in right now.
01:39:21.660
I do not think that that is the greatest need of our current cultural, political, and even theological moment.
01:39:28.640
I think that we have been fractured enough already.
01:39:31.040
um i think steven wolf uh needs to cut it out from time to time and play nice with the theonomist
0.90
01:39:38.580
and stop yeah and stop you know being a jerk towards us because sometimes and i've told him
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01:39:43.680
that offline you know there have been times where i'm like dude come on man like i i know i know you
0.70
01:39:47.520
don't really have much respect for theonomist and i understand um you know because 90 of them today
01:39:54.380
are uh theonomy i don't think it has to be this way by necessity but theonomy has become sadly
01:40:00.980
synonymous with libertarianism from a political standpoint, and boomerism from a cultural
01:40:06.040
standpoint. What does it mean to be a theonomist? It means to be a libertarian boomer. And boomer is
01:40:10.480
not, in the same way, you might say, blank is not a state of mind. It's not this, it's a state
01:40:17.100
of mind. Boomer is not an age, it's a state of mind. You can be a 30-year-old boomer. And I've
01:40:22.680
met plenty of them. And so sadly, right now, that is how theonomy keeps presenting itself. I don't
01:40:27.900
think it's supposed to be or it has to be uh but a lot of theonomy currently is just um it's just
01:40:33.700
the boomer post-war sentiment uh with you know uh kind of some uh libertarian political structure
01:40:42.400
that uh that's going to counter signal uh child tax credits right you know and so uh so long is
01:40:48.860
is that's uh how theonomists continue to present themselves then steven wolf you know i still
01:40:53.740
think steven wolf should exercise a little bit more charity but he's going to continue to
01:40:57.820
he's going to eat that for lunch he's going to see that on twitter and and slap it down
01:41:03.180
very easily because it's it's laughable you know it's very easy to slap down so um but i just don't
01:41:09.040
think that that's the war that we need so i i'd like to see steven wolf uh play nice and uh and
01:41:14.040
i'd also like to see the theonimus not be insufferable and um and then yeah we can have
01:41:18.180
the battle royale between uh you know the tomist and the vantillians uh when the orcs aren't at
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01:41:24.980
our front door uh trying to get inside to chop off our kids genitals yeah but right now you just
01:41:31.760
that that's where we are and and and yeah so i i just i think that's what i'm going to say you
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01:41:37.840
would say on a long enough timeline there is an antithesis that is going to have to be reconciled
01:41:42.340
so it's not indefinitely baptists and presbyterians and the same elder board will never have problems
01:41:47.080
but for the moment right now there's compatibility because you're working towards the same overarching
01:41:51.680
goals is that a good summary of your position because the question was how do you not is isn't
01:41:56.120
there an antithesis here you're saying you're straddling the line but these two seem mutually
01:42:00.020
exclusive how could one hold both it sounds like your answer is you recognize that at a future
01:42:05.420
point in time that will come to a head that moment is just not right now is that accurate yes that's
01:42:10.240
what i'm saying and i'll leave with this striker says unfortunately i think joel demonstrated he
01:42:13.800
doesn't really understand wolf or wolf's position i do i've read wolf's book and i've also talked to
01:42:17.880
personally um one of the so this is one of the things that the theonomists don't like all right
01:42:21.700
so i'll just say it out loud so so that we can go there um one of the things that wolf expresses
01:42:26.480
the christian prince the civil magistrate you know is appointed by god he's basically the vicar of
01:42:31.100
christ in the political realm and um almost a popish view but but outside of the church you
01:42:37.420
know not not within a ecumenical you know standpoint but a civil one and one of the
01:42:42.220
things that wolf does is um he believes that you know that christ is king of both of these two
01:42:46.820
kingdoms there's the common kingdom you know and then there's the sacred um you know that's only
01:42:51.080
the church and then that's which is common it's not that that belongs to satan that too belongs
01:42:54.800
to christ christ is ruling both of them but he rules by two separate agencies or means so he
01:42:59.380
rules the church you know predominantly through special revelation and with the state through
01:43:03.260
natural revelation and in comes natural law uh wolf has explicitly said he says it um in the case
01:43:08.840
for christian nationalism he's also you know said it in multiple lectures and panels and to me
01:43:12.520
personally on the phone uh for wolf uh natural law is synonymous with the deck law so when wolf
01:43:17.840
talks about natural law uh he means thou shalt have no other gods before me do not take you know
01:43:23.280
you know don't make any graven images don't take the lord's name in vain uh he means both tables
01:43:27.120
of the law and uh and wolf whether he's right or wrong uh he believes that that is calvin's position
01:43:32.000
that calvin uh when calvin references natural law that he's viewing that as synonymous with
01:43:37.140
the deck log and so you guys can disagree with that uh but that is wolf's position um so he
01:43:42.080
believes that the civil magistrate um is supposed to legislate god's law um but but that god is
01:43:47.280
speaking to him and and uh that uh you know the god above him is is natural law rather than all
01:43:53.740
66 books of the inspired text it's not special revelation but natural revelation but natural
01:43:57.980
revelation uh inso facto it gets you to the 10 commandments it gets you to the decalogue now
01:44:03.500
here's here's the problem that i think the theonomists have and and i'll be honest i'm
01:44:08.220
this is something that i'm wrestling with it's a problem that i have and yet at the same time
01:44:11.980
uh the alternative i have a problem with that too um wolf believes that there is inherently vested
01:44:18.120
in the civil magistrate uh power and authority wolf at some level right like so he appreciates
01:44:25.520
rutherford and you know and the puritans you know the reformers and all these guys uh but at some
01:44:30.000
level wolf kind of does deny lex rex that the the law is uh the highest authority and that there's
01:44:36.940
a law above the king and the king just follows the law um he would say that yes natural law is
01:44:41.520
above the king, and the king should submit to natural law. And submitting to natural law is
01:44:45.340
a submission to Christ, because Christ is a king of both kingdoms, and just ruling through two
01:44:49.600
different sets of agencies, not even two different sets of standards and morals, but the natural law
01:44:55.680
is synonymous with the Decalogue, but it's just another agency, another means. And so he would
01:45:00.240
say, in that sense, the civil magistrate does need to submit to King Jesus. So there is a law,
01:45:04.380
you know, there is a king above the king. There is a law above the king, Lex Rex. But it is
01:45:10.160
intentionally that God does this in the common kingdom, which includes the civil realm and the
01:45:14.080
Christian prince. He does this through a different set of agency that is far less specific. It's
01:45:18.560
natural law instead of special revelation, 66 books of the Bible. And he sees this as intentional
01:45:25.200
on God's part. And this is his design. It's good and holy and perfect and right. God does it with
01:45:29.540
intent on purpose. And it's so that the civil magistrate would have this inherent vested power
01:45:35.540
from jesus from god vested in him to where he can make certain laws that are not anti-biblical but
01:45:41.120
extra biblical so for instance here's you know to throw out here's here's a hypothetical case for
01:45:46.160
you and it's not that crazy hypothetical because it's something we're dealing with as a nation
01:45:49.900
right now so is every nation in europe immigration so for steven wolf and the christian nationalist
01:45:56.860
crowd you know who's more domestic they're going to say um that uh our civil rulers in america um
01:46:04.480
let's say that we achieve christian national status you know we become christian nationalists
01:46:09.020
and we've got christians in office and we've got christian princes and for wolf to be fair it would
01:46:13.260
be plural it wouldn't just be one to be christian princess so we've got christian princes you know
01:46:17.000
filling congress and you know the senate and the house and you know the oval office the whole nine
01:46:21.300
yards and governors and you know sit all the way down to city counselors and dog catchers and so
01:46:25.880
we've got you know christian princes and we are a christian nation uh distinctly so um okay so on
01:46:32.480
immigration, the theonomist is going to say, well, all you can do is what the law of God says.
01:46:38.780
The theonomist has, I think, a bad habit of the regulative principle, but not applied merely to
01:46:43.780
Lord's Day worship on the Sabbath with the church when it convenes, but to every second of every
01:46:48.840
day. And so the theonomist is going to say, well, there's no mitigating principle in terms of putting
01:46:54.500
a particular percentage or statistic or number on immigration. Instead, all the theonomist can do
01:47:00.580
is he can say well uh by god's law what we can do is we can uh take away uh wicked incentives so
01:47:05.980
what we can do is we can uh the theonorist would uh disassemble welfare which wolf would do that
01:47:10.440
too but he would disassemble welfare uh because that's theft that's stealing um from one person
01:47:16.860
and giving it to another person um so uh the theonorist would say okay so you're going to
01:47:20.640
have less people who want to immigrate if they're not getting free checks and that's true that is
01:47:25.360
true but what that misses um and they would also say of course no illegal immigration so there's
01:47:31.000
going to have to be certain standards and you're going to have to do it legally um uh and oh and
01:47:35.760
to be fair to the theonomists they would uh could also make an argument uh that america is going to
01:47:39.660
be a christian nation so you also need to be at least um outwardly professing to be a christian
01:47:44.020
so here's so what are the guidelines for immigration uh one you're not going to get any free money
01:47:48.560
um so you're going to have to want to work hard the gimme's are over right exactly you're going
01:47:52.660
have to work hard. So that takes it down from a bunch of people want to immigrate to still a
01:47:56.820
bunch of people, but less people. Also, you can't be a Muslim, and you can't be a Jew, and you can't
0.86
01:48:01.800
be this, and you can't be that. You can't be an atheist. You need to be, but I repeat myself,
0.91
01:48:06.920
I already said Jew. So atheist, Jew, secularist, you need to be a Christian. So that's going to
0.96
01:48:12.960
limit it even more. And then you've got to come through the legal process that's been established,
01:48:18.300
and so that's going to limit it even more. So you need to be a Christian, can't be illegal,
01:48:22.660
And, uh, and it's not going to be a free handout. You got to work.
01:48:31.540
And I'll say a little bit stronger than that. Um, that's naive. Uh,
01:48:38.140
that that will take you down from 7 billion people wanting to immigrate to
01:48:41.480
maybe 4 billion. That's all that does. Because here's the deal.
01:48:45.200
People don't want to just immigrate to the United States to get free money.
01:48:50.920
and even if we required a profession of faith and some kind of proof of being a Christian in
01:48:55.380
terms of outward behavior, you know, or adherence, you know, affirmation to, you know, the Apostles
01:48:59.840
Creed and the Nicene Creed or however we did that. One of the reasons people want to immigrate
0.99
01:49:04.980
is not just because they can get free checks. If free checks stopped tomorrow, but we were a
01:49:10.100
Christian nation, you'd have less free handouts, but you'd have more safety, more safety. And a
01:49:17.240
ton of people, they want to leave their nations not just because they're poor, but because they're
01:49:21.580
being ravaged, because they're being slaughtered, because there's crime, because there's danger,
01:49:27.720
because there's threats. Having a safe nation and a Christian nation, if it was a Christian nation,
01:49:32.540
you would punish evildoers. So you'd stop stealing and giving free checks, but you also
0.92
01:49:37.940
would stop allowing criminals to go free. It would be the safest place in the world.
01:49:42.580
And guess what? The safest place in the world, half of the world, and I would argue over half
01:49:46.400
of the world would want to live there. And over half of the world that would be wanting to live
01:49:51.600
there would be willing to go through your legal process to be a legal citizen and willing to
01:49:55.640
profess faith in the Lord Jesus Christ outwardly, even if it never changed their hearts. So, here's
01:50:00.560
the deal. What do you do if you have a Christian nation today that, in the theonomic perspective,
01:50:06.180
you've gotten rid of the prison system, you're flogging people for lesser crimes, and then you
0.93
01:50:14.060
are uh dealing out capital punishment for capital crimes and uh and then you're doing double
01:50:19.420
restitution for theft and if the person can't pay indentured servanthood right that's the theonomic
01:50:23.900
but you're doing that and it's and it's done well it's dealt with crime well and you have virtually
01:50:28.540
a crimeless society well here's the problem you're going to have five billion people that want to
01:50:32.720
live there even without the welfare because just the safety alone it's a flourishing place with
01:50:37.640
opportunity and all that there's still going to be five billion people who want to live there and
01:50:40.840
you say well wait a second before before you think you want to live here you're going to have to uh
01:50:45.200
outwardly you're going to have to pledge allegiance to the lord jesus christ and and uh agree to not
01:50:49.440
break the law and guess what five billion people are going to say yeah we we still want to live
01:50:53.380
there i'll do that yeah i'll do that oh my goodness well you're going to have to go through
01:50:56.580
our process okay we'll do that too so then how do you accommodate right so let's get out of peter
01:51:02.180
pan never ever land and let's come down to the real world for a second how does a country of
01:51:06.960
330 million people accommodate 5 billion immigrants you don't so i'm sorry theonomist
01:51:15.920
like i am a general equity theonomist but i'm sorry we don't have an answer to that we just
01:51:21.600
have to admit the theonomist we like we don't have an answer to that stephen wolf does and he
01:51:26.100
might be wrong but his answer is that the the christian prince prince is the civil magistrate
01:51:31.340
actually has real vested authority from the lord jesus christ by virtue of his position and yes
01:51:36.760
it is still a sense of lex rex, law above the king, that law being natural law, which again
01:51:42.080
is synonymous with the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. It's not just migration patterns
01:51:45.420
of herds of antelope or whatever. It really is God's moral law, the moral law of God found in
01:51:50.700
the Decalogue, Exodus 20. But beyond that, beyond that, a natural law, he has a freedom so long as
01:51:57.560
he's not violating natural law, which is the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. So long as he's
01:52:01.660
not violating that. He does not have to find a general equity civil code and say, well, Israel
01:52:07.280
limited, because here's the thing, you can't find it. And that's the point that the theonomists are
01:52:12.300
going to make as a counter to Stephen Wolf. They're going to say, well, you know, I can find
01:52:16.120
from the civil law in the Old Testament with Israel, thou shall not steal, you know, and things
01:52:21.660
against welfare. And I can find things against, you know, the sojourner and the stranger, the
01:52:26.660
alien. Well, these were immigrants, but they weren't illegal immigrants. So, I can mandate
01:52:32.600
there must be legal immigration, there must not be welfare and theft, and I can also mandate that
0.94
01:52:38.640
you need to pledge some kind of allegiance to Yahweh, you know, a Christian. You can do that
0.59
01:52:42.520
as a theonomist. You can do all those things. But what you can't do from the Old Testament
01:52:46.320
is find a verse, a civil law, that said in Israel, we would only allow 5% annually immigration.
01:52:56.660
to back you up so there's no numbers prove you're not straw manning this is i was talking to a
01:53:00.140
friend james b jordan from 1998 talking about pat buchanan and james b jordan he says uh we don't
01:53:07.600
believe in nationalism we believe the international catholic universal community the church there is
01:53:12.500
no christian justification rare jim l here go ahead for using the power of the state to prevent
01:53:17.920
foreigners from selling their wares wherever they wish so his view could have changed from 1998
01:53:21.840
but this is not like you're not straw manning or setting up a position no one has real thing
01:53:26.700
items do say that immigration should be based on religion uh not upon sharing language culture
01:53:31.780
religion and morality you need to abide by god's law and you need to profess uh faith in jesus
01:53:37.500
christ and you need to go through legally and not just swim across a river you know and hide out
01:53:41.320
so like that but that's it if you do that and here's the deal five billion people would be
01:53:45.400
willing to do that especially and here's and they try all the time um and and here's the deal um i
01:53:50.340
would argue that there actually would be more people who would want to move to the united states
01:53:53.940
without the welfare but uh if we also got rid of the crime and it became the safest place in the
01:54:00.160
world we'd be flourishing we'd be flourishing we'd have clean okay i don't get a check but uh
01:54:03.880
you've got the richest economy in the world uh the safest uh society in the world houses big houses
0.66
01:54:09.640
and this and that and the other and like nobody's pooping on the beach you know india's hardest hit
01:54:14.520
like so like you know like that that's and these are all just statistics and facts and like people
01:54:19.260
would want to live there. Not just some, billions of people. And there's no mitigating measure.
01:54:26.220
There's nothing for Israel that said, after all the moral constraints or restraints, there's
0.84
01:54:32.400
nothing beyond that that said, oh, and by the way, immigration annually cannot exceed X percentage
01:54:37.460
of the total population of Israel. There is no such verse.
01:54:40.800
There's no such principle. So there's no particular for sure, no verse, but even the
01:54:44.600
principle necessarily capped that's right to help the nation isn't there in principle either
01:54:49.300
stephen wolf is simply doing he's saying yeah but that um to add that principle is um is congruent
01:54:55.780
with natural law uh which is part of how christ is ruling his agency and it is not anti-biblical
01:55:03.500
it's extra biblical but it is not against the law of god it is not against the scripture and um and
01:55:09.700
if we're going to live in reality and not la la land um you're going to have to have that rule
01:55:15.200
you're going to have and the theonomists uh don't have an answer that's just one i could give example
01:55:20.400
after example but that's just from immigration um that is that is one arena and that's why guys
01:55:26.480
like andrew isker who love doug wilson and were trained at gray friars and you know hardcore
01:55:31.640
theonomists and like that's why uh the guys in ogden ryan silvey and all that like you know if
01:55:37.120
it was 2021 2022 their theonomy this and theonomy that and like yeah theonomist and you know waving
01:55:42.240
the banner and they don't say that but you don't hear that as much anymore um them you know raving
01:55:47.560
about theonomy and so um because uh we we're trying to solve problems right real problems and live in
01:55:56.680
the real world and uh and i think general equity theonomy is still wonderful because i think it's
01:56:01.940
the confessional position both the westminster and the 1689 so whenever the civil law does address
01:56:06.740
something in the Old Testament, I'm going to extract the general equity and apply it
01:56:11.020
to our world today. And I think that that's what the founders did, right? They cited Deuteronomy
01:56:15.560
more than any other book, you know, in our founding documents. And that's how our case
01:56:20.560
law system was developed. And I think it's wonderful. But I don't think that it's anti-biblical
01:56:25.560
or sin or wrong to also, when civil law to Israel doesn't address something, but it is
01:56:31.580
a pertinent issue relevant to our culture and time today to say, all right, we're going to
01:56:37.600
appeal to natural law and reason. And we're going to say, yeah, we need Christians when it comes
0.79
01:56:44.020
to immigration. We need legality when it comes to immigration. We need no theft and no criminals
01:56:48.780
when it comes to immigration. So no welfare, no checks. And also we're going to need a percentage
01:57:05.740
It is not permissible to import billions of people.
01:57:11.720
because the law, word of God doesn't expressly,
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01:57:18.280
And so if theonomy is going to just become increasingly silly,
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01:57:21.880
then i guess i'm going to have to stop being a theonomist but i would like to not have to stop
01:57:26.140
i would like to continue to say yes i am a general equity theonomist who agrees with the vast majority
01:57:30.640
of rush journey and appreciates um van till immensely in his epistemology and the way that
01:57:35.880
he deals um with um with uh with the scriptures especially romans and especially when it comes
01:57:41.500
to apologetics i love presuppositional apologetics although i appreciate you know not so much
01:57:45.960
evidential but classical apologetics as well um i i would like to i think that we can get along
01:57:51.760
and that doesn't mean that there aren't any contradictions and that we don't need to have
01:57:54.900
a battle royale and a showdown eventually but right now the orcs are at the door they want
01:57:59.280
to trans the kids and uh and we just we can't afford this infighting and so and and i again
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01:58:05.920
i'll be fair here and say um the theonomists stop being silly and uh and stop being you know
01:58:11.360
insufferably boomerish um and and then but then for steven wolf also brother you know i love you
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01:58:17.780
but stop being a jerk and try to be a little bit more patient and especially on twitter and uh i
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01:58:25.300
know that you think their arguments are silly and maybe they are but you know but try to be a little
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01:58:28.940
bit kind of because we're freaking trying to win stop making one way or another stop making us
01:58:34.660
lose so all right that's it uh my family i heard the garage door opened their home we got to go
01:58:38.180
but uh love you guys thanks for tuning in i hope we engaged at least enough with the chat today
01:58:43.040
to make it worth your while and we're committing to trying to do this every week great all right