Pastor Doug Wilson has just finished publishing a book called "Devoured by Cannabis" and in this episode, he shares some of the profound insights with us about applying God's Word to every aspect of life. On today's episode of Theology Applied, I'm privileged to have as a guest Pastor Doug Wilson from Moscow, Idaho. Our topic was weed, alcohol, and the Christian.
00:00:30.000Today I'm privileged to have on Theology Applied as a guest, Pastor Doug Wilson in Moscow, Idaho.
00:00:36.820We've had Doug before talking about Christians in California, but today we're going to discuss
00:00:42.640another topic. We're going to discuss alcohol, marijuana, and the Christian. Pastor Doug has
00:00:48.740just finished writing a book called Devoured by Cannabis, Weed, Liberty, and Legalization.
00:00:54.600And from what I've been able to ascertain by following his ministry, in the past, it seems as though he was for, or at least okay, had a permissible attitude towards the legalization of marijuana, not the use of recreational marijuana, but the legalization.
00:01:11.120But it seems as though you've changed your tune on that particular topic.
00:01:14.880So, Doug, could you just tell us where you're at on the topic of marijuana?
00:01:18.640um yeah i used to have more in terms of the legalization of it i used to have more of a
00:01:26.040libertarian take where i thought it was sinful i thought it was a sinful abuse of um um
00:01:33.840god's creation to get high and i thought the church should discipline and i thought family
00:01:41.080should discipline, but I didn't think there ought to be criminal penalties. I now think that
00:01:49.540it should be decriminalized, but not legalized. So I don't think that an 18-year-old kid who's
00:02:00.060caught with some marijuana should be sent off to the state penitentiary to live with a bunch
00:02:05.280hardened criminals i i don't think that's a good solution he would survive though if he just says0.73
00:02:12.400that he's a woman then he could be thrown in the female penitentiary probably do okay there's also
00:02:17.340all sorts of options yeah um so uh what i what i propose at the end of this book i i i expected
00:02:27.620some pushback from christians on that question because there's a strong libertarian streak
00:02:34.660among conservative Christians. Sure, it's a sin, but let's not make it criminal. There's a difference
00:02:42.540between a sin and a crime. But I've been surprised since the release of this book,
00:02:50.160I've been surprised at how much pushback I've been getting from Christians who think that
00:02:55.160smoking weed is okay, that there's no sin associated with it. And that's part of the1.00
00:03:01.560reason for not wanting to have it legalized is I'm starting to realize how many people
00:03:07.000take their moral, use as their moral compass what is against the law in an earthly sense
00:03:15.720instead of taking their cues from scripture.
00:03:19.380So I do agree that there's a difference between a sin and a crime.
00:03:25.440Covetousness is a sin, but nobody wants it to be a crime.
00:03:28.420uh lust is lust is a sin but it shouldn't be a crime nobody wants to lust police right so um
00:03:36.220there is a difference between a sin and a crime and what i propose at the end of this book is
00:03:42.820that we have drug courts where if someone is convicted of possession or selling or whatever
00:03:48.120they um they go to a drug court and they either pay a fine or they go to rehab
00:03:55.120right okay and and that's it okay yeah that makes a lot of sense could you just for our
00:04:03.920listeners and for myself as well could you help to parse out the distinction between
00:04:08.020criminalization and legalization you mentioned earlier that one might be okay but the other not
00:04:14.260yeah legalization would be um hey everybody you can smoke pot for whatever reason whenever you
00:04:22.240want, however you want. So in Washington State, right next to us here, recreational use is now
00:04:29.980lawful, which means that the use of marijuana, there are no restrictions on it legally. You
00:04:38.000can't get in legal trouble for smoking marijuana. That's legalization. Decriminalization means that
00:04:46.000You could be charged under another category.
00:04:49.840So a crime would be something like burglary or assault or rape.
00:04:57.080And jaywalking would be a misdemeanor.
00:05:01.580It's against the law, but it's not a crime.
00:05:06.400What would you say to the person who pushes back and says, well, we don't, you know, we don't make it illegal to drink Drano under the sink.0.99
00:05:14.860if a person wants to be stupid they can be stupid how would you deal with that0.96
00:05:18.280yeah if if and there's a whole section in this book on that so the the issue is um what it boils1.00
00:05:26.080down to is this principle society has a right to defend itself okay so if someone got drunk
00:05:35.220you know uh bought a bottle of whiskey went home got drunk and stayed home then under a theonomic
00:05:44.280Republic, in Moses' Israel, there would have been no criminal penalties associated with that.0.62
00:05:51.640Okay? Whether it was Drano or Johnny Walker or whatever, if it stays home, then it really is0.84
00:06:00.800none of society's business. But part of the issue is illustrated by drunk driving. Drunk driving
00:06:10.140is a different matter because now all of society is involved right okay so um society has a right
00:06:19.260to defend itself against drunk drivers it doesn't have a right to defend itself against people
00:06:26.440getting drunk because there's no need for a defense uh they can we can have a penalty for
00:06:32.060drunken disorderly or drunk driving but if someone got charged because they drove up to
00:06:39.840their hunting cabin with a six pack and drank too many of them that's that shouldn't be against the
00:06:46.840law right and it and it's not against biblical law so here's this is one of the one of the
00:06:53.580essential uh issues in this whole thing the half-life of alcohol in the body the half-life
00:07:00.700is a matter of hours okay the active ingredient in marijuana thc stays in the system for weeks
00:07:11.100is is it doesn't disappear so if you if you have too much to drink uh at a party the next day
00:07:19.700the alcohol in your system is gone um that's not the case with marijuana okay it's it's it's
00:07:28.320simply not the case so uh if i had a if i were if i were flying delta let's say and uh the pilot
00:07:37.760had had too much to drink two weeks before but had not had a drink since it wouldn't be any
00:07:46.620issue with me but if he had been getting stoned every weekend for a number of weeks before but
00:07:55.300hadn't had anything to smoke for a week there's still a possibility of flashbacks this the drug
00:08:02.780is still in his system okay and that means uh that means that there's no such thing as going
00:08:11.200up to your cabin and you know getting stoned out of your gourd and then coming back unaffected
00:08:17.840If you're dealing with society at all, you're still impaired or potentially impaired.
00:08:28.740The other thing that goes along with this is that because there's been a great deal of pressure from the public to make this drug legal, politicians are following the pressure.
00:08:44.320And that means that certain things, you're not allowed to ask certain questions, all right?
00:08:52.960So, for example, whenever there's a school shooting, everybody wants to know, where did they get the guns?
00:09:07.420Can we make the gun manufacturers liable for it?
00:09:10.260nobody, nobody is allowed to ask what drugs were the boys on? Right. Okay. And there,
00:09:19.540and there are two sorts of things. They could be, they could be on drugs administered by the school
00:09:25.800nurse, right? Legal medications dispensed by the school nurse. What drugs were those? Virtually
00:09:34.480every school shooting in the last number of years, virtually all of them, drugs have been involved
00:09:40.120and that's not part of the public discussion at all, because the public doesn't want to talk
00:09:46.580about drugs. They want to talk about guns, right? At the same time, how many of these school
00:09:54.400shooters, how many of these kids smoke pot? Well, there's a strong correlation, particularly with
00:10:02.300young men, teenage men whose brains are still forming. There's a strong correlation between
00:10:08.600smoking pot and psychotic episodes so when when someone goes around the bend and you know goes
00:10:17.320postal as we say uh one of the reasonable this is not an accusation this is what i would do if i were
00:10:24.640a private detective this is what i would do if i were a cop on the case i would ask was he smoking
00:10:31.700pot all right there's there there are significant statistical reasons for believing that there's a
00:10:40.260connection between pot and psychosis and it's not a one-for-one correlation but it's a strong
00:10:47.480correlation so and this is something we accept with other materials so let's say you have a
00:10:54.560person, let's say you have 100 people who smoke a pack of Camel cigarettes a day, unfiltered
00:11:01.620Camel cigarettes, okay? Now, everybody in the country knows that cigarettes cause lung cancer,
00:11:09.340right? The surgeon general tells you this on posters, on a pack of cigarettes, that this
00:11:16.320increases your risk of lung cancer. But if someone smokes a pack of cigarettes a day and they're
00:11:23.940unfiltered cigarettes, out of 100 people, 15 of them will get lung cancer. 85 of them will not
00:11:32.020get lung cancer. Now, I'm not saying smoking was good for them, but 15 getting lung cancer is
00:11:37.960statistically significant, and we all know that, right? It doesn't cause lung cancer one for one,
00:11:47.840but it causes lung cancer a lot. I think it's a comparable sort of thing
00:11:53.560with marijuana and psychosis okay so um so uh does society have a right let's say 100 young men in
00:12:04.780your town um say hey we want to start smoking pot every day and you know that 10 of them
00:12:13.480are going to go nuts okay you know does does society have an interest in that
00:12:22.820And I would say, yes, there's an interest in that. And it doesn't mean that you lock everybody up forever. It doesn't mean you come down with a heavy hand. It just means that you, you, the corporate society has an interest in the case and can express their views on it without exercising tyranny.
00:12:42.300All right. So what I would like to see is a system where if someone is caught in possession of marijuana, they go to drug court, they plead guilty, they pay a fine, the money goes into an account that helps pay for people going to rehab, or they can pay no fine and just go to rehab.
00:13:06.760And if they successfully complete the rehab, then they owe nobody anything.
00:13:18.340I want to compare now alcohol to marijuana because I think the hypothetical professing Christian YouTube troll might have a few things to say about that.0.68
00:13:29.360And so I'd like us to counter that hypothetical devil's advocate.
00:13:33.540so i i got a little bit written here um that i want to read and then turn it to you so um for
00:13:39.900alcohol the unit of measure i want to get technical because that's what people do they they're going
00:13:44.200to get technical and try to make an argument that allows for recreational marijuana use for the
00:13:49.040christian so for alcohol the unit of measure is uh what's referred to as the standard drink
00:13:54.120uh that is any drink that contains 14 grams of pure alcohol or 0.6 fluid ounces or 1.2
00:14:01.340tablespoons. A standard drink is conventionally defined as the alcohol content of 12 ounces of a
00:14:07.8405% alcohol, such as a beer, or 5 ounces of a 12% alcohol, like a glass of wine, or an ounce and a
00:14:15.200half, a shot, of 40% alcohol, 80 proof. But for marijuana, however, a much lower dosage is needed
00:14:23.800to induce a state of intoxication. Studies show that intoxication would occur at the ingestion of
00:14:30.520less than seven milligrams of THC, which would be the equivalent of alcohol and beer, THC and
00:14:36.940marijuana. And that is approximately the equivalent of four puffs of a marijuana cigarette. So you've
00:14:43.900already discussed that there's much longer lasting effects, but also there's a much higher potency
00:14:49.840that, you know, you and I, you know, with our size and stature and those sorts of things,
00:14:55.960We could likely drink three 12-ounce beers and be completely fine, whereas I have not experienced anyone taking one puff, four puffs of a marijuana cigarette, and you're intoxicated, according to the data.
00:15:15.600And so I don't really know anyone who's taking one puff or two puffs to stay beneath that line.
00:15:21.200So how would you respond to someone who says, well, you can drink and not get drunk?
00:15:25.100Drunkenness is what the Bible condemns, and I'm using marijuana without getting intoxicated, Pastor Doug.
00:22:05.240The left wants me to have freedom and liberty to look at pornography, to smoke dope, to engage in sexual intercourse with whoever I want.0.97
00:22:16.460You know, they want me to have that kind of liberty.
00:22:18.580But all of those liberties that they want me to have, I could participate in in a six by eight prison cell.
00:24:46.320As you were speaking, it just made me think of 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, starting in verse 11 and 12, says, we urge you, brothers, backing up to the second half of verse 10, 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, 10.
00:25:02.260We urge you, brothers, to do this all the more and more and to aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs, your own business.
00:25:09.820So you spoke of business to work with your hands.
00:25:14.060So working, starting a business, starting schools, publishing houses, those kinds of things, as we instructed you.
00:25:20.520And then verse 12 is insightful, as most scripture tends to be, all scripture, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.
00:25:30.440And so I think as you're talking about both the political left and the political right, there are different views of liberty.
00:25:36.140What actually constitutes true freedom? The types of freedom that the political left seem to constantly be wanting to progress in our nation are the types of freedom that ironically cause people to become less independent or rather more dependent upon the state where the kinds of freedom that conservatives and true freedom loving people aspire towards is it's not just the freedom to do what I want.
00:26:03.840It's freedom from dependency on the state. It's freedom from, it's an independent freedom. It's
00:26:10.740the freedom to be able to live on my own, provide for my family, make certain prudent decisions
00:26:17.180without incessant restrictions. And so it's, I think of, you know, the left calls it freedom,
00:26:24.520the right calls it freedom. But I think it's perhaps helpful to talk about independent freedom
00:26:29.840versus dependent freedom, a freedom that only exists
00:26:34.240so long as you're dependent on the government
00:26:36.440to provide for your every whim and need.
00:28:25.960What Paul wanted to do was plant churches.
00:28:30.040Now, the planting of these churches all over the Roman Empire is what resulted in the gladiatorial games being banned three centuries later.
00:28:43.300Okay, so Paul was in a very different situation than we are in, all right, because the existing authority, when he wrote Romans 13, and someone said, what are these existing authorities that you're talking about?
00:29:00.480he would say the emperor the senate the here are the laws this is what i'm dealing with and
00:29:06.840these laws are all fundamentally pagan they're built on wrong assumptions but these are the
00:29:13.440people you should pay attention to right now okay now a christian in the 21st century
00:29:20.920when a christian asks who are the existing authorities what are the existing authorities
00:29:27.680right now yeah when the christian responds well the emperor is these you know whoever the guy on tv
00:29:34.780is telling me what to do fauci is the existing authority or um you know uh i've saw a great
00:29:42.940meme where it says you know i believe the science and the retort is no you believe the television
00:29:49.120All right. So there's this talking head on television telling you that this is the law.
00:29:57.360The governor comes on and says, everybody has to stay in the basement or you all have to stand six feet apart or you can't go out without wearing a mask.0.81
00:30:07.040OK. OK. Now, when the Christian talks that way, as though the governor of Illinois or the governor of Michigan or the governor of California
00:30:18.100is in the same in the same relationship to him that the roman emperor was in to the average0.88
00:30:26.320inhabitant of rome what they're doing there is they're ignoring the actual existing authority
00:30:32.580the actual the actual existing authority is the constitution right okay so we have since the
00:30:42.140apostle paul wrote those words we've had 2 000 years of christian history church planting
00:30:48.140civilization forming bringing our laws and our customs and our constitutions into closer
00:30:55.440conformity with scripture all right that means if the if the president of the united states
00:31:03.460or the president of some intergalactic thing came on the television and said everybody
00:31:10.860everybody has to wear a pink beanie tomorrow because i said so okay now the reason i would
00:31:20.460disobey him is not because i think it's okay to disobey the existing authorities it's because i
00:31:27.160don't think it's okay for him to disobey the existing authorities that's right yeah right
00:31:32.320so the president the president has no authority to tell me to wear a pink beanie
00:31:37.920he has no authority um it's a shame because you would look fantastic in a pink beanie
00:31:44.780i think i think it'd be a good look for you it'd be fabulous yeah fabulous so um when
00:31:53.540when someone says you must do thus and such the response ought to be by what standard are you
00:32:03.440what authority are you appealing to when you you're telling me to do this so when our governor
00:32:10.320when the governor of idaho declared an emergency and and declared a lockdown on the basis of his
00:32:17.340gubernatorial powers to declare an emergency i went and read the idaho code and he did not have
00:32:25.860the authority to require what he was requiring of us okay now so here's the just to make it
00:32:34.260make the problem a very simple one and to stay with the illustration of the pink beanie if the
00:32:40.860president says you must wear a pink beanie and i go look at the constitution and i see that james
00:32:46.640madison had the foresight to include and under no circumstances made the president tell you to wear
00:32:53.100pink beanie okay i can read i have a copy of the constitution i read this and then i look at the
00:33:01.820declaration the president just made right okay now my objection to him is that he is disobeying romans
00:33:11.82013. If I go out without my beanie, I'm not disobeying Romans 13. He is. So the thing that
00:33:23.520Christians don't recognize is that we have a highly developed constitutional system,
00:34:17.160The existing authority that is established in our system has been spread thinly and pushed into every nook and cranny.
00:34:27.740And if the president suddenly stands up and says, I am the king of the universe, and I'm going to require you to start doing these bizarre things,
00:34:39.120He has no authority to do that, has no authority to say that.
00:34:50.200Now, when he tries to do them, if Christians stand by and let him do those things, then they are the ones disobeying Romans 13.0.97
00:35:00.420Because they are the ones disregarding Paul's instruction to obey the existing authorities.1.00
00:35:09.120I completely agree. Put another way, you could say that, you know, when Paul's writing in his letter to the Romans, it's one big difference is, you know, we're not we're not subjects of a monarchy, but rather citizens of a democratic republic, at least for the time being.
00:35:28.400And so that's a massive difference. And so you're saying all these human officials, because the highest civil magistrate in our land is not a human official by design, but rather a document.
00:35:39.740All these other human officials in our land are actually lesser magistrates that ultimately are called to submit to the highest being the federal and state constitutions.
00:35:50.740And so when they're not obeying Romans 13, when a lesser human civil magistrate is in rebellion towards their authority, namely the Constitution, then our rebellion to that lesser civil magistrate is actually submission to the higher authority and righteous.
00:36:15.060Because you can watch the new president on television, put his hand on the Bible and raise his hand and swear to uphold an authority that's higher than he is.
00:36:28.260Right. That's that's fundamental. That oath means something.
00:36:32.460yes sir yeah that's right um so this is the way that so so that so then we could say that you know
00:36:39.520christians you know the way that they say the law of the land first um it sounds like we're saying
00:36:44.520well it's wrong-headed because it's it's wrong in its face because um the first problem is that
00:36:49.100many christians in our nation today don't even know what the law of the land is so so what we've
00:36:53.820basically ascertained thus far in my assessment is um many christians who are going around and
00:36:59.260incessantly quoting, well, the law of the land, the law of the land. They're not even submitting
00:37:03.320to the law of the land because they've forgotten or perhaps never learned that the law of the land
00:37:08.460is actually a higher authority than their governor or their president or anything like that, namely
00:37:13.180the constitution. That said, what happens if America falls? I know you're post-millennial and
00:37:20.380so am I, but that doesn't mean America is going to last, but the kingdom is going to continue to
00:37:24.740advance and um but it may advance through other nations and so if if america falls and we find
00:37:30.940ourselves in this dire scenario where where we don't have um a constitution as beautiful as as
00:37:38.780the one we have today and and those freedoms are not there and with the highest civil magistrate
00:37:43.860um it no longer is is the constitution of the united states but it is a human official it is
00:37:48.900monarch and we we are subjects and he is a tyrant and abusing his power um then at that level right
00:37:55.900because we've already i think uh thoroughly discussed the law of the land at one level
00:37:59.900but what do you do if you're a christian in china for instance um and and you know there's one child
00:38:05.860policy you know that they held for a long time and now uh everybody all the nations are starting
00:38:10.140to wake up and realizing uh-oh we actually are kind of have um the opposite problem than we
00:38:14.860thought we're not going to have enough people and so you know now there's incentives and different
00:38:18.500nations for people to have two or three kids but let's say it's you know it's it's the good old0.94
00:38:22.760days of china with the one child policy and there's forced abortions and all those kinds of0.90
00:38:27.000things and that is uh in a very real sense the law of the land because there is not a higher
00:38:32.420civil magistrate earthly authority to appeal to that has righteous laws then what right all right
00:38:39.360so then you're back uh let's say there's a re-establishment of paganism so we're back in
00:38:45.800the state of, right now we have a Christian heritage, we have Christian structure of our
00:38:50.560laws, there's a great deal of residual Christianity in our legal framework. But let's say we
00:38:59.220apostatize fully, and we are back in paganism, a resurgent neo-paganism has taken over,
00:39:08.320okay? Well, then we're in the same position that Paul and Peter were in, and this is where you
00:39:15.640You go and say, okay, the Apostle Paul, who wrote Romans 13, was executed by Rome.
00:39:41.520So Peter escaped from King Aretas, Paul escaped from King Aretas by running a roadblock.
00:39:47.620He was lowered from the city wall of Damascus, evading arrest.
00:39:54.260So basically what I would do in that situation, what I would encourage other Christians to do,0.92
00:40:01.780is maneuver yourself to the point where your resistance is fundamentally revolving around the worship of God,
00:40:11.520And secondarily, around issues involved with the Ten Commandments, forced abortion, God's moral law.
00:40:21.100So I wouldn't want, in that circumstance, the battle to be about some tertiary or further down the list constitutional right that you would have in a free republic.
00:40:40.120I would want to insist first and foremost on our right and obligation to worship God and to preserve and protect life.
00:40:48.780So that's where I think that not so much standing up for you can maybe categorize it like this.
00:40:54.000Not so much resisting to preserve your own personal comforts and liberties, but rather more so resisting the state to preserve your freedom to be obedient to Christ.
00:43:52.940So I think that's – so first, we live in America.
00:43:56.580We're not subjects of a monarchy, but we are citizens of a democratic republic.
00:44:01.080Secondly, if America falls and we revert back to a pagan state, even in that scenario, we're ultimately called to do what God commands.
00:44:11.800And this isn't saying, you know, would you have no fear of the one who rules over you?0.64
00:44:15.080then make him happy by doing whatever he says, whether it's in accordance with God's law or not.
00:44:20.180That's not in the text. That's not Romans 13.
00:44:23.460So even if we weren't in America, so we'd say point A, see the Constitution.
00:44:27.980And in a worst case scenario, then see the Bible.
00:44:32.460And point A, we should see the Bible also.
00:44:34.400And the Constitution is the attempt was to mirror the Scripture and God's moral law
00:44:39.000and the Ten Commandments on the courthouse and all that.0.81
00:44:41.260If we don't have a Constitution, we're in a pagan state, see the Bible.0.51
00:44:45.080So my last question, I guess, on this topic would be, okay, so we're going to prioritize, we're going to do some theological triage, some civil resistance triage here for the Christian.
00:44:58.780And we're going to, first, we're going to hold to worship and God's moral law.
00:45:02.860That's where we're going to resist the strongest if we're in that pagan state that's telling us to, you know, forced abortions and those kinds of things.0.70
00:45:09.040um at what point like like our own nation and and our history at one point um is it is it0.66
00:45:16.740appropriate um to resist with things like taxation to say no that's you know the state
00:45:23.780has as far past you know competing with with what god demands in the 10 percent and and i know that
00:45:29.220i've i think i got this from you that anytime the state rivals you know how much should the state
00:45:33.520tax will probably less than than what god requires so less than 10 percent um and we're you know
00:45:38.220depending where you live in the nation, you know, 30, 40 and what, you know, what, what economic
00:45:43.040bracket you fall into. At what point can Christians resist righteously? It's still in submission0.89
00:45:50.260ultimately to God's law and not just being rebels without a cause. Can they resist righteously on
00:45:57.240things that don't impede worship? Or maybe they do by way of implication. Maybe that's the answer,
00:46:02.240but they don't directly impede our worship and obedience to God's 10 commandments, the Decalogue.
00:46:14.560So what I would urge Christians, whenever it gets to the point of resistance, to whatever extent possible, submit yourself.
00:46:27.280You don't want to function like an isolated, atomistic scofflaw, as though you're the only one that makes any decisions.
00:46:35.900um in calvin's book four of the institutes calvin begins reasoning um begins laying out
00:46:46.960the framework for the doctrine of the lesser magistrates so i would much prefer if i'm going
00:46:53.100to engage in tax resistance i would much prefer to resist the federal government by submitting
00:47:01.080to the governor of my state or submitting to the mayor. The governor and the mayor are lesser
00:47:07.480magistrates. So if the governor of Idaho said, for example, we believe that you're collecting
00:47:15.700taxes for unconstitutional and immoral purposes, and I'm urging all Idahoans not to send in their
00:47:23.500forms this year i would be right there okay now there when when the situation is dire
00:47:32.300uh sometimes and let's say it's a matter of survival um if you if you give the midianites
00:47:40.520all of your grain you're going to you're going to starve um and you need to feed your family0.96
00:47:48.220that's why Gideon was in the wine vat threshing threshing his grain in there he was threshing
00:47:56.380his grain in hiding okay so I think it's a it's appropriate to resist to conduct tax resistance
00:48:06.060on your own authority if it's a matter of survival earlier than that earlier than that
00:48:13.500If it's a matter of convenience or convenience is not the right word, but preference, I would only organize together with other believers, ideally under an established governmental authority who's willing to defend you against the higher encroaching authority.
00:48:36.280yeah that's really helpful so it's not it's not christ church uh going up against it's no it's
00:48:43.140it's let's let's get in the right sphere here with the spheres sovereignty and and that um let's
00:48:48.840right do we have anyone in in our church community who fears the lord who's a christian brother who
00:48:54.000um also has who's also in the civil he is a civil magistrate he's he's in the state in that sphere
00:49:00.760let's work through that avenue. And sometimes, as in the case of Gideon, Gideon was a private
00:49:06.860individual when he was conducting the tax resistance, but he became the leader.
00:49:14.980He became a judge when the Spirit of the Lord came on him.
00:49:19.960That's really helpful. So, okay, concluding now, any other further thoughts on
00:49:25.900weed alcohol legalization theonomy the whole nine yards yeah i i do i believe that
00:49:34.160societies ought not to make laws ought not to do anything coercive including with weed
00:49:40.040simply on the matter of convenience or preferences or things like that i think we coercion for the
00:49:48.220christian is a big deal and so i i think that no one ought to be coerced into anything unless
00:49:55.240a scriptural case can be made for it and that's what i attempt to do in in this book that's great
00:50:03.160yeah the freedom of the conscience amen well doug thank you so much for coming on the show
00:50:08.040it's um an honor to have you and i've benefited so much from your your ministry so thank you very much
00:50:13.800thank you um pleasure to be with you as a special thank you for your gift of any amount we'll be
00:50:20.040And thank you for your generous support.