A Church and State Discussion and Romans 13

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We, the

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Christian podcast community of podcasters, gather to discuss our theological differences with love and charity.

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This is a ministry of striving for eternity. All right, well, welcome, welcome, welcome to another

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Theology Throwdown. It's been a long time since we've done one of these. It is where all the podcasters from the

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Christian podcast community are invited to come on and discuss a topic. Tonight's topic, or today's topic, whenever you're watching, is going to be, well,

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Romans 13. I can make it easy for everyone watching. Everyone here agrees with Romans 13 because it's in the

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Bible. But we're probably actually going to may disagree on some of the ways we're going to interpret Romans 13.

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So let's kick off with introductions like we always try to do. I will start with Mr.

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Russo. Just introduce yourself, your podcast, tell everyone where they can find you. All right, hi there.

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Good evening, good afternoon, good morning. My name is Anthony. I am the host, co -host of Grace and Peace Radio.

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You can find me here at the Christian podcast community or at graceandpeaceradio .com. And my wife and I host a weekly podcast pretty much applying

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God's word to everyday life. We talk about topics. It's about 25 minutes. And yeah.

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And it's a good source of really bad dad jokes. Oh, totally. For a guy who doesn't have kids,

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I have the best dad jokes. All right. Mr.

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Brewster. You're up. Yes, sir. My name is Aaron Brewster. And I am the host of two podcasts.

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The first one started back in 2016. It's called Truth, Love, Parent. And it's all about helping parents realize that parenting is not about us.

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It's not about our kids. Parenting really is just a part of our act of worship that we are supposed to give to God.

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So it's all about us, the parents, becoming the people that God called and created us to be, and Lord willing, having a better, more

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Christ -honoring influence on our children. And then the other podcast, which is a little bit newer, is called The Celebration of God, which is all about how, you know, we're in the new year.

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I'm not sure when you're listening to this, but we're recording this. It's the beginning of the year. And we have the opportunity, you know, to kind of look at ourselves and say, how do we need to grow?

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How do we need to change this year? And so The Celebration of God is all about worshiping God better this year than we did last year.

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That's all about using our Christian holidays as well as just the average normal days in our week to learn how to follow

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God better and be a better disciple of his. All right. Eve, you want to introduce yourself, your podcast, let folks know where to find you.

03:20

Yes, I'm Eve Franklin. I am co -host of the podcast Are You Just Watching?

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and we break down movies and other forms of entertainment from a Christian worldview.

03:31

Basically, I go through, pick one movie and talk about how it reflects

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God, how it maybe bashes Christians. We usually try to keep it positive, though.

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We don't like to do fully negative reviews. And my co -host, Tim, is kind of my counter on some biblical issues, so we have interesting discussions.

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Yes. And I should update you, Eve. My New Year's resolution last year to watch all the

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Marvel movies. Well, okay, if it wasn't for the fact that my kids were home for Christmas and they wanted to watch, what was it,

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Thor and Avengers. If you remove those two, I watched no

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Marvel movies at all. So I didn't do very good at that New Year's resolution. Hey, Eve, are you going to do the new

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Spider -Man? Yes, that's our January episode. Oh, I'm looking forward to that. I'll tell you what.

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Oh, man. Best Spider -Man ever, in my opinion. I'm actually thinking of going to watch that just because I heard that what they did with that one was show that it was not woke.

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And they're saying that because it wasn't woke, that's why it did better than movies even before COVID.

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It did well for all the right reasons. Do you know who else wasn't woke in that movie? Me, because I fell asleep during it.

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I did warn you guys. I really did. Expel him. No, I really did. I fell asleep. I was like,

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I'm done. And I just checked out. Did you see the midnight showing or something? How on earth did that happen?

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It was just too boring for me. Okay, so we got two new guests on for those who are regular listeners to Theology Throwdown.

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Two new podcasts we have. So, oh, this one's going to be hard to introduce this guy.

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Do I have to? Okay, Mr. Matt Slick. What were we thinking,

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Anthony? We actually approved this guy? I believe I voted him in, and you were kind of on the fence.

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You and Colleen outvoted me. That's what it is. Matt, why don't you introduce yourself?

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You can introduce your podcast. Tell folks where to find you and why you call me a jerk. I call you a jerk because of total depravity, and you certainly exemplify that.

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And also because you repeatedly beat me to buying lunches and dinners.

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But I did get you royal last year. I got you back finally. But at any rate,

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Matt Slick, ordained minister, seminary graduate, author of karm .org,

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which has had almost 150 million visitors and written a bunch of books and been doing radio.

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Actually, yesterday was 17 year anniversary of doing radio five days a week. And so I do a lot of impromptu debates.

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I've got more debates now being set up for formal debates. What else do I do? Basically, irritate my wife and stuff like that and try and fix people's heresies, which are many all over the place.

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Your podcast is Matt Slick Live. Matt Slick Live from the radio. The name, very, very original.

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Yeah, I actually didn't like that name. Matt Slick is my real name. People think it's a radio name, but it sounds narcissistic.

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But they said Matt Slick Live is perfect for radio. So I go, okay. Okay, wait, side note, but this will be fun.

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You, if I remember correctly, he was a Mormon in studio. And he didn't believe that your last name actually was

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Slick. What happened? Yeah, we're on the air. He's actually in the studio.

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And he thought he could defend Mormonism from scripture. Didn't work out too well for him because it's just not there in scripture.

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And we got talking and so he didn't believe my name was Slick. I said, wait a minute, you don't think my real name is

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Matt Slick? He said, no. So I took my driver's license out and I said, everybody over the air,

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I said, I'm holding my driver's license, got my thumb of my address, but I'm going to show him my name.

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And I held it forward and he's looking at it and the smile drops from his face. And I said, well, folks, let me ask him a question now.

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So what's my name? He said, Matt Slick. And I said, okay, thank you very much. So, you know, it's mild, but it was fun.

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A lot of times people don't believe it's my real name, but it is. But I like, I use it though for witnessing because if I had to fill out a form or I'm with somebody or whatever it is, if it's, you know, semi -appropriate,

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I look for it. I'll say, yep, my last name is Slick and I'm a reverend too, Reverend Slick.

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And I say, it never sounds right. And looking for opportunities to share the Lord with them. And that's what

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I use it for mainly. Yeah. It's not as fitting as like Creflo Dollar for, you know, his ministry.

08:31

But, and then we have another new guest, a Canadian. So are the international podcast now that we have, but Lauren, why don't you introduce your podcast and how folks can find you.

08:48

Yeah. Nice to join you guys here. Thought with the subject being a submission to governing authorities,

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I may live in a proper country. I wanted to at least jump in and listen in a bit. And my time zone that didn't allow me to tune in right away when you guys were starting here, but it's a pleasure to be here with you guys and listen in and join this conversation a bit.

09:08

And yeah, so we just started podcasting about a year ago, myself and our pastor, Mike Hovland. We're in Lacrete, Alberta, way up North in Fahrenheit.

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I believe we were hitting minus 25, minus 30 this last few weeks over Christmas. That's the same temperature as a

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Democrat's heart. Wow. Yeah, no, exactly. So you can tell the beard isn't just for looks. It's, it's very practical, but yeah, no, we're, we're mask.

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Yeah, exactly. Right. It works outside for five minutes and then it's ice. And then it's ice just like a

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Democrat's heart, right? And leftist. Yeah. So, so we did a church plan here in our community about two, two and a half years ago.

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And we joined the Grace Advance program out of, out of Grace Community Church there and ended up hiring pastor

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Mike Hovland and preach for us and teach us. And we ended up doing, starting a podcast just to kind of help promote some hopefully sound teaching and biblical exegesis with, with our listeners and in our community and just a way to reach out to our church goers and more so than just simply on a

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Sunday morning or, or what we can fit in on a, in Bible studies, just to get more doctrine, theology out there.

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And we're fortunate to be accepted onto the Christian podcast community here a little while back.

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And our podcast is the Abide in the Word podcast. Yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing what, what this all is.

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And I'm going to be recording my first, my, the rapper first recording of the rap report this year will be with your pastor.

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And we're going to talk about what your previous podcast talked about, which will be very fitting. Maybe we may have to have you start off the discussion today on what's happening up there in Canada with certain laws.

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So I am Andrew Report. I'm the host of the rap report. And I do the apologetics live every

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Thursday. If you want to ask any theological questions, go to apologeticslive .com.

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And you can join us, ask any, any apologetical question. We do debates on there, things like that.

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And so tonight's topic is Romans 13. Now this has been a topic in Christianity recently quite a bit.

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And so we, we do know that there's been a lot of different interpretations that we, we have, can see with folks when it comes to this.

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And so this, this runs the gamut. I think of when we think about the way that I see people using

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Romans 13 recently has been on the idea of it can goes from anything from whatever the government says, they tell you to wear a mask, they tell you to vaccinate, they tell you to do it, you obey everything they say to the, to another extreme saying that the, the laws we have are unjust laws and should be disobeyed.

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That's the gamut. Recently, up in Canada, Lawrence, maybe you,

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I'll let you start us off with your thoughts on, on interpretation of Romans 13 after I read it, but, you know, you, you have maybe informed folks of the, the law that now went into place there as well.

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So let me read Romans 13 for us. This is what it's, what Romans 13 says, reading out of the new

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American standard. And that's only because I don't have the LSB on, on Lagos yet.

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If anyone out there who is connected with master's seminary, you know, get this going already.

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We need it in Lagos. But Romans 13 says this, every person is to be in subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God.

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Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.

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For rulers are not a, are not a cause for fear, but for good behavior, but, sorry, for rulers are not a cause of fear for the, for good behavior, but for evil.

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Do you want to have fear of authority? Do you want, do what is good and you will have praise from the same for it is a minister of God to you for good.

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But if you want, if, if you do what is evil, be afraid for it does not bear the sword for nothing.

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For it is a minister of God and avenger who brings wrath on those who practice evil.

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Therefore, it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of the wrath, but also because of conscience sake.

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So, looking at that, let me kick it off. Lauren, can you explain what's what's going on up there in Canada, what we can expect coming our way probably in America soon?

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A multitude of conservative immigrants. Yeah, that's what we should be getting.

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Yeah. Yeah. No. So, yeah, in Canada, the law was just passed, was known as Bill C -4.

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And some of you may have seen some of that on online already and social media and passing around as we saw

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John MacArthur calling churches to preach on this topic of biblical sexuality here on January 16th, with the churches in Canada.

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And so this bill was passed, which is called the conversion therapy ban. And so it's in regards to conversion therapy for anyone who identifies as homosexual, as being transgender, really anybody who opposes biblical sexuality or view biblical view of genders.

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And the conversion therapy ban that was passed and comes into official law here this month in Canada would then criminalize anyone who offers therapy to to say a transgender youth, promotes it, advertises it.

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In fact, the wording for advertising conversion therapy is now found in the same place in the

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Criminal Code of Canada as posting child pornography, the same section.

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Right. And so it makes illegal if someone wants to take someone out of the country to seek help.

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That's punishable for up to, I believe, five years imprisonment as well to promote it.

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So really in the language and where the problem comes in is the language is so broad. So there's probably forms of conversion therapy that we've in the past and maybe still go on today.

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Things like, say, a shock therapy or something like that, that we would all oppose as Christians, where the conversion therapy that we're in support of is the gospel.

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But the language in the bill is so broad that it doesn't make those distinctions. It really only says promoting it of any in any which way, shape or form is now part of the

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Criminal Code of Canada. And so and again, to be clear, this is only speaking of conversion therapy in going against scripture.

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So someone who wants to convert from biological male to female, then the government promotes it and supports it.

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Right. And so there is there's no defined area,

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I guess I could say right now regarding how this will affect the church. But the language is so broad that it at this point of praying for someone could be classified as a criminal act if it comes to praying for them in regards to their gender identity or sexuality in that regard.

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Okay, so let's start with this because I think this one's going to be the clearest for us. The if the government as is happening in Canada, says you are not allowed to talk to someone to convert them out of homosexuality or transgenderism into a biblical view of, of, you know, male female views and sexual relations.

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What do you if that becomes law? Okay, do we obey that?

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Let me kick it off first. Aaron, I'll kick it off to you. What would be your views that if this comes to America, you're told you're a counselor.

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So you're going to be you're going to end up dealing with this as a counselor, I'm sure the government tells you you're not allowed to talk to someone about converting out of homosexuality.

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Yeah, I am a biblical counselor. I've been doing it for a little over a decade now. And they're Yeah, that's a, that's a big thing.

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So I guess I'm just gonna say something that I'm assuming that all of us agree with you said earlier that we all we all agree with Romans 13.

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Right. So my assumption is that we also all agree with Acts 529, where Peter's being told not to preach the gospel.

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And he says, we must obey God rather than men. Right. And keep in mind, he wasn't just being told not to preach the gospel by a band of hoodlums, right?

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This, the people who are telling him not to preach the gospel were the spiritual authorities in the land of Israel at that time.

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And then in many ways, the political authorities as well. So the reality that we have to acknowledge in this particular situation is the fact that God has clearly said you're not allowed to sin ever, right?

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He's given us ways to escape temptations. And because he's faithful, he's obviously not going to require us to obey someone who is commanding us to do something that is clearly a sin.

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And that is a wonderful, I think, it's refreshing for believers, because we don't have to worry about that being a contradiction in God's law.

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However, I do have to say, though, that the moment we make that observation, the moment that we say, because in this one, it's clear, you know, if a homosexual comes to me, wants to know what

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God's word says about homosexuality, I'm going to tell him the truth about God's word. And we're all fine with that.

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But we have to acknowledge the fact that according to God, it is appropriate to disobey our authorities at times.

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And that's going to be the linchpin, I think, in this discussion is, when are those times? You know, when is, you know, we might think to ourselves, this is clear cut, right?

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You know, obviously, we have to tell the truth about homosexuality. But the real linchpin is going to be then what about the other things that seem perhaps maybe more or what do we do then?

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Yeah. So somebody, Matt Slick, why, you know, this issue, right, the issue of homosexuality, and this is gonna be,

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I think, a clearer issue than looking at vaccines and masks that we'll look at, things like that.

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But why would we as Christians say that we should, we could disagree or not abide by this law, if it was placed in us as it is going to be in Canada?

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Because we obey God rather than man. God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, and we're not to compromise the word of truth, because of social pressure and convenience.

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Truth is not relative, it's absolute. And the more we bend to the relative whims of the left, the more they will oppress.

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And so we'll either have major oppression later, or partial oppression now.

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People need to resist, Christians in Canada and America need to stand up in unity and march and really raise a ruckus and say no more of this, they need to be unified.

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Pastors need to be preaching this from the pulpit. The Christians need to be seeking God's will, and be willing to risk being arrested and the like.

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We Christians are not called to be passive. We're called to be disciples of all nations. But too many

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Christians, in my opinion, are taught the blonde -haired, blue -eyed, Caucasian surfer Jesus is going to come and take you out of the world, everything will be fine until don't do anything in the meantime.

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No, we got to fight now, because we're losing our rights, and crap flows downhill. It's going from Canada down to America.

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Sorry, but that's what it is. And Australia, the totalitarianism that's there, we've got to stand up and resist this.

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And if we don't now, we won't be able to later when they jail us. So that's my comment about it.

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Yeah, it is an interesting thing. Everyone seemed to endorse when people were marching for Black Lives Matter, a terrorist organization in the streets doing $5 billion worth of damage in the cities.

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And everyone just goes, oh, well, we should just expect that. We should accept that. Why? Because they rose up in masses, and no one was willing to go against it.

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It is kind of interesting. I think some of the reasons that Biden right now is backing off of his mandates is because everyone's just going, we're going to ignore it.

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You know, one of the things with this that, and Lauren, you kind of mentioned this, was that in kind of an act of saying, an act of, well, rebellion to this, many pastors, this is going to be illegal in Canada to be able to preach against homosexuality.

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And I learned about this on your show and decided I was going to do this as well, that maybe many of the pastors are going to do something coming this in a few weeks.

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What is it that folks are, many pastors are planning to do at their pulpits and why?

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So there's a group in Canada that was formed kind of through a lot of the pandemic and freedoms were starting to take away and pastors were being imprisoned here in our home province, and they're called the

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Liberty Coalition. And so on there, there was a group that had agreed to when and if this bill passed, which it became very evident it would, that the first Sunday after the bill was officially law, they would take to the pulpits and preach on a biblical view of sexuality.

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And it was basically a stand, you know, here we are, here we stand, we will stick with the truth no matter what, whether the government comes knocking at our doors, whatever the cost may be, biblical sexuality is too important of a topic to back off on, and which any biblical topic is, but especially something like this, which causes so much hopelessness in society, right?

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And as Christians too, you know, we understand that a brave nature of man and where these kinds of sexual thoughts and desires come from, and they're really taking away, especially from the church, the opportunity to provide and offer hope to these people.

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And it's one of those things, again, where the church is basically expected in Canada to not partake in any political side of it, and just kind of quietly step aside and let the government do their thing, and the church kind of, you know, all things for the sake of unity, right?

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The kind of the kumbaya version of Jesus, where we all sit together and hold hands, and if you're going to say something that'll tick somebody off or create an issue, then don't say it.

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And that's really the Canadian church in a nutshell. I mean, there's been, and praise God for the faithful churches that have become evident and clear, and that have stood over the last two years within our nation, but that's kind of where it's been promoted across the board in that way, is to get that word out.

25:18

Here we stand. So January 16th, across Canada and many in America, myself included, we'll be using the pulpit to preach a biblical view on sexuality.

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And so, Anthony and Russo, let me ask you, what do you think the

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Bible's view is, the relationship between church and state? Well, as I understand it from the scriptures, obviously the state, government is an institution of God.

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It's part of creation. It's part of the created order, just like nations and love and all these things that God's given us in creation.

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Part of that is the organizational structure of nations and governments.

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And just like we saw in the text, government is to enforce laws and keep civil society and keep people safe to a degree, punish criminals and that sort of thing.

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But it is subservient to God and to God's laws.

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And so its place is, God is the authority.

26:38

Government is to be a servant of God and enforcing

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God's laws. So, let me kick this over to Matt Slick and ask the question,

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Matt, when we think about the differences, when to obey laws, when not to obey laws, what we see is some guiding principles from scripture for, when is it okay to disobey a law?

27:05

Because as you and I both know, there's plenty of people that will use scripture to try to justify anything they want.

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And so they'll try to find a way to say, well, if I don't like this law, then I'm going to find a scripture to say, well, it's somehow

27:19

I'm disobeying God or something like that. What principles can we find in scripture as far as how we should be treating and viewing government?

27:29

Well, it's actually quite simple. You have to know your biblical theology and know what the limitations of government are supposed to be and that we always follow

27:38

Christ first. So when the government says homosexuality is okay, we don't obey that.

27:44

When it says that abortion is okay, we don't obey that. When it teaches socialism, we don't obey that because the

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Bible does not teach socialism. In fact, it teaches capitalism and go through the scriptures for that. And it teaches a representative form of government as well.

28:00

So the Christians are the ones who are supposed to be led by the pastors and the elders and be equipped for the work of ministry,

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Ephesians four talks about. And so they're supposed to be able to know what is right and wrong so they can stand up.

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But we are to obey the government unless it contradicts scripture. No one would understand what that is.

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It's a study scripture and most Christians don't, unfortunately. So I'm going to kick this out to anyone who wants to answer is, you know, we see that we're supposed to submit to government.

28:37

We have seen the government in recent two years coming up with all kinds of different rules.

28:45

I can't even say laws because there's a difference. We'll get into this more, but there's a difference between mandates and legislature, at least in America.

28:57

But we have these different rules that are coming up. They're being told we have to follow. When we look at the scripture and we're going to examine, do we obey this law or not?

29:08

Or this rule or not? What are the things we want to use as obviously scripture, but we've seen so much of people using

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Romans 13 from everything from you must do all the mandates to know you must stand up against them.

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When you hear people making these arguments, what are the different things? And this is open to anyone who wants to answer it.

29:34

What are the ways we're going to determine whether we should or should not be obeying certain rules?

29:41

If I may just jump in here real quick. As I was thinking about the different examples in scripture of people who disobeyed their governing authorities, one of the people who came to my mind first was

29:53

Christ. And what's interesting is that Jesus was, no one came to Jesus and told him what they told the apostles for the most part.

30:03

They didn't say stop preaching the gospel. They told him a lot of different things. But one of the things that stuck out to me was in Luke 6 where Christ and his disciples are going through the fields and it's on the

30:15

Sabbath and his disciples are pulling grains off of and they're rumbling between their hands and they're eating them.

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This is what we might refer to as a very amoral thing. They're not preaching the gospel.

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They're not even healing on the Sabbath. They're eating food. The reality is though that what they were doing broke not the

30:36

Levitical law as laid down by God in the scriptures, but broke the Pharisaical law that was put up as a boundary, as a guardrail to keep people from getting too close to breaking the

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Levitical law. And by the way, I think we all admit that the basic idea that the Pharisees had weren't really a bad one.

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It's the Billy Graham rule or whatever else. It's not the sin to be alone with a woman in a room, but the sin to do a lot of other things.

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So we see what they're doing. Obviously, the Pharisees made the law their God and that's where the problem been.

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But the reality was they had this law. They had this expectation for the Jews that you're not going to do this.

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And Jesus specifically said he had his reasons for why it was okay. And one of the interesting things that he brought up to justify what he was doing was the fact that David, and he quotes this from 1

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Samuel 21, David went into the temple and took the...

31:29

Actually, it wasn't a temple at the time. Sorry. He went into the tabernacle and he took the consecrated bread that he should not have been eating.

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And actually Jesus used that. And that was actually a law of God, interestingly enough. That was something that he had set forward, but he used that to justify even supporting what his disciples were doing.

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I say all that to say this, where the scripture commands us to do something, we absolutely positively must do that.

31:55

Where the scripture doesn't command us to do something, there is going to be appropriate liberty and interpretation on those points.

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For the Pharisees to say it is illegal for you to pick grains and rub it between your hands on the

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Sabbath day, that was not theirs to do. That was not within their authority structure.

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And Jesus and the disciples did not feel compelled to have to obey them, because that was not a requirement for them.

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So we have to ask ourselves this question. The United States government says that we need to buckle our seatbelts.

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Now there's absolutely nothing in the scriptures that would necessarily directly speak to buckling of seatbelts.

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But do we have to obey that law, simply because the United States government has said that we have to obey that law?

32:46

Well, I would argue in part that because God does not necessarily, we could potentially argue principally that, well, there's stewardship of our bodies and so on and so forth, and that this is where all these discussions are going to have to go.

32:59

We're going to have to be able to argue our own convictions from the principles in scripture. But since the

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Bible does not directly address it, the question then ends up having to be, because our authority told us to do it, then do we actually have to do it?

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And this is the last thing I'll say. I probably took a little bit too long on that answer. We have to recognize this, and Matt already brought this up.

33:19

The American government is unique among all the authorities. The American government system did not exist in the time of Christ.

33:26

We have a representative government. And that means something. If you look up representative government, that you find out that the authority figures are actually accountable to the people who put them into authority.

33:38

In America, we are legally allowed to reject any of our governing authorities who defy the constitution. And our authorities are accountable to us.

33:46

And so this is a unique situation that isn't identical to what we see in the scriptures, isn't identical to a parent and a child.

33:54

And we need to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves as we look at this and we discuss it from a biblical reality.

34:02

Yeah, and that brings up a point that I make with this. You know, I was preaching through 1

34:07

Peter or teaching through 1 Peter in our mere week Bible study. And we get to 1 Peter 2, verse 11, it's all about submission.

34:17

Submission to government, submission to masters, submission to husbands. When you look at that, it's really interesting in America, because what

34:27

I would say for America wouldn't be the same as if I lived in China. It would actually be different.

34:33

Now in America, and we could get into this, right? Vaccine mandates, mask mandates, do we obey those things?

34:42

In America, and this is for some Americans, this may get them, they may surprise them, they may not realize this.

34:50

The law of the land in America, if we're going to say we obey the governing authorities, in America, that is our constitution.

34:58

It is not a president. So the president can make all these mandates all he wants, and some of them aren't even coming from him, it's coming from CDC.

35:07

They can do that all they want, that doesn't actually make it law. It hasn't gone through the legislative process through Congress and the

35:17

Senate to actually become something that's a law of the land. And even then it has to be within, you know, that we have a jury system, or sorry, judicial system that would then evaluate is this part of, you know, fitting in the constitution.

35:34

So I say that to say when we look at some of these mandates that have been given, they're actually illegal mandates, and the courts have that way over and over again.

35:44

When you have someone that, you go into a store and someone tells you you must wear a mask to go in their store.

35:51

Well, the laws in the land say that only a medical professional can tell you what to do with a medical device, and a mask is a medical device.

36:04

So you have someone that tells you you have to wear a mask, where's your medical degree from? If you don't, if the person asking that or enforcing that is telling you this, and you now have companies that are saying you must get a vaccine, this is a medical decision, and the laws of the land say that medical professionals make that.

36:25

Now you could argue CDC is a medical, you know, they're in medicine. Okay, you could make that argument there, but we have to recognize what actually is the law.

36:34

I would say the law is the constitution, and so some of the arguments I've made over masks and vaccines has been more because of the fact that we're having illegal laws.

36:44

I would say Joe Biden is the one that's not following Romans 13. He's not submitting to the law of the land.

36:52

So, Daniel Minnick, you came in late, let me let you introduce yourself, your podcast, and then

36:59

I'll throw this question to you. What is your view on the relationship between government and church?

37:07

Okay, well, thank you, Andrew. My name is Daniel Minnick. I'm the host of the Truthspresso podcast, and my wife is kind of recently a co -host with me.

37:19

We talk about a lot of matters of theology, and we've even done two episodes together talking about Romans 13.

37:28

So, I would recommend listening to that to get a little bit of our take on Romans 13, very scripturally oriented, very also liberty -minded series of episodes.

37:45

What was the question, Andrew? What is your view, the relationship between state and church, or church and state?

37:55

And I guess this question probably goes toward also the two kingdoms issue that I know we had on a previous episode of Theology Throwdown.

38:07

I kind of hold to a two kingdoms view, but not a radical two kingdoms view.

38:15

So, in some ways, you might see my view as almost semi -theonomist, but I don't call myself a theonomist.

38:24

So, I do recognize that the law of God, at least the second table of the law, as my wife and I talked about in our two episode series in Romans 13, the second table of the law, or what some of the early reformers would refer to as general equity, the second table reflects general equity, that should apply to every nation, every government.

38:51

And so, in the gospel age, the church is the means by which we, in a sense, implement the first table of the law, worshiping

39:02

God, or vertical relationship with God. And the second table of the law would be enforced by government, and that's what government should be doing.

39:13

And as Romans 13 says, they're not a terror to good works, but to the evil.

39:23

And I know James White talked about the good and the evil is defined by God.

39:30

So, Romans 13, not only being descriptive, but prescriptive of what the governing authorities are, here are the limitations of what government should do.

39:42

And the church should be preaching the truth, but I don't believe that the church and the government are the same thing.

39:51

I don't know if that answered the question. Maybe I might need to drill down a little bit more in that, but okay.

39:57

Let me throw this out for anyone that wants to answer this. I'll just put it out to any of you.

40:03

So, you get someone that says that we must wear masks in church and be vaccinated in church because that's what the government has said.

40:16

What would be our response? Let's see. As you talked about, Andrew, the government, as we should understand it, the law of the land in the

40:27

United States would be the Constitution, and I don't believe the Constitution gives the authority of the government to just make mandates like that.

40:37

You know, the CDC is a bureaucracy, and I would question whether the

40:43

CDC itself, its existence is actually constitutional. If it is, a lot of what it might mandate is not authorized under the

40:53

Constitution for creating bureaucracies that are only to enforce the laws themselves that Congress has passed.

41:01

But yeah, I would say, well, the supreme law of the land doesn't authorize the government to mandate that.

41:10

So, even if, as you said, President Joe Biden or the CDC imposes the mandate, it's just bullying, it's not the law.

41:22

Anthony? Yeah, I just wanted to say also, I think one thing that hasn't really come up yet, if it did,

41:29

I missed it, but to your question about what if a church says you've got to be vaccinated, you've got to wear masks, etc.

41:35

The Christian doctrine of the conscience, where your conscience where your conscience tells you that something is sin, and it doesn't violate scripture, and it's not, you know, it's not a scriptural, you know, it agrees with scripture or whatever, to violate your conscience is sin.

41:56

So, in the case of the church requires masks, requires social distancing, requires and or requires vaccination, if any of those things are against your conscience in this situation, then it is a sin for you to continue going to that church and is incumbent upon you to find another church.

42:22

So, this is an issue, an area in theology we've known as Christian liberty. Correct.

42:28

And so, let me open it up and say to, I don't know who would want to answer this, you know, but what are the principles, what principles can we use in determining

42:40

Christian liberty? So, whether something should or could be done, or should be avoided, what principles get applied?

42:50

Well, to Anthony's point, the very next chapter in Romans is where we find that Paul starts talking about meat offered idols, and he says, he who doubts, in verse 23, is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith, not because his eating is actually a sin, but he who doubts if his eating is a sin, if he eats, it's not from faith, and whatever is not from faith is sin.

43:16

So, in that moment, he is sinning, because he didn't, in full faith, believe that what he was doing was right.

43:24

So, that's a big part of this. I mean, Paul specifically said, it's okay, you can eat meat offered idols, but then he also spoke to the weaker brothers and to the stronger brothers and said that, listen, there's got to be something guiding this overall principle.

43:39

If you, whether it's celebrating a day, or it's eating meat offered idols, you need to be certain in your heart of hearts that this glorifies

43:48

God, because if you're not certain, you better not do it. And I think this touches on all the Christian liberty issues that may be brought up.

43:57

Yeah, I mean, this is an area where you're going to have to deal with as a Christian, right?

44:05

So, there's going to be areas, if a church tells me that I must wear a mask, now, here's a simple reality.

44:14

I have asthma. Wearing a mask is actually dangerous for me. It will reduce my blood oxygen levels to a point where, you know,

44:24

I can have serious health conditions or die. So, this becomes an issue.

44:30

When someone is saying, well, you must do this, these issues are not so clean to just say, okay, a president has said this.

44:39

There's areas where sometimes for someone's health and safety, they have to disobey that.

44:46

And so, churches need to be able to realize that some of these rules, as Matt already kind of said, this is not about medical, this is not medical decisions being made here, folks, for some of these things.

45:00

This is about government control. And so, we have to be aware of that as well.

45:06

So, does it though allow us, and I'll kick this one over to Matt, see his response.

45:15

Just the fact that the government makes laws that we don't agree with, does that justify that we can disobey them?

45:25

Nope. Because they don't like something doesn't mean it's not true, not moral, not right. We need to look at the scriptures. One of the things that's missed about the issue of masks is the right of self -defense and self -preservation.

45:38

Masks are deleterious the way that they're used. And with this COVID stuff, cloth masks are 3 % effective.

45:44

Surgical masks at most are 50 % effective.

45:55

And if they're not used properly, they become infested with germs and you spread them, so it becomes harmful.

46:01

When the government ignores the facts and starts demanding obedience, then it is working against the principle of liberty and freedom, which the

46:13

Bible says that we have. Don't become enslaved again under the law. There's liberty in Christ, 2

46:20

Corinthians 3, 17. And so when the government starts imposing regulations and restrictions that seem ambiguous or gray area, but we have to understand that we have the right of freedom.

46:32

And when we understand the medical issues, I've written 30 articles on COVID related topics. Then we have that educated right to be able to say, no, this isn't good.

46:42

And to resist. And again, I just got to say this, Christians sit on their hands too much.

46:47

They don't do what they need to be doing. I believe that the reason the world's getting so bad is because Christians aren't doing their jobs.

46:53

We need to be standing up and not be looking for comfort. We need to stand up for the truth of Jesus Christ and to follow in his footsteps.

47:04

And look what they did to him. Look what they did to Peter. But nevertheless, we're to promote the principles of self -defense, defense of others, principles of liberty and freedom.

47:16

And when the government stands in opposition of those by enforcing mandates, requiring things that are not constitutional and are ultimately deleterious, then we have the obligation as Christians to resist.

47:28

Passers have the obligation to inform the congregations. That's the job of the pastor to equip the

47:34

Christians for the work of ministry, not babysit them, not comfort them and give them a bottle, but to have them become warriors for the

47:42

Lord Jesus Christ. Get out there in the world. That's what they're supposed to be doing. Okay. So scripture is really clear. We're supposed to submit to the government.

47:48

We're saying there's cases where we're not going to, because scripture makes it clear that the government's saying something against the scriptures.

47:56

Now, here comes an issue is we can do that and still be good ambassadors for Christ.

48:02

Lauren, let me ask you up in Canada, your pastor was associated with Grace Life Church up there where the government came in and fenced them off, right?

48:12

And so there was a really clear, I think a really clear example of two different men,

48:21

James Coates and the other Russian pastor, I think he was

48:26

Russian, but I forgot his name right now. Arthur Pavlovsky. Yes. Yes. And so looking at the behavior of those two men, both of them were refusing to submit to government.

48:40

They wanted to meet as a church. Lauren, you're familiar with those two examples.

48:46

What is the difference and why do you think, which of those should Christians follow in your mind?

48:53

Well, in my mind, I think it would be quite clear to follow the example of Pastor James Coates and Pastor Tim Stevens, who was also arrested down in Calgary and in a similar fashion as Pastor James was, where the local law enforcement showed up at Tim Stevens' home and knocked on the door and he walked out and submitted to their arrest in that way.

49:17

He didn't submit to them. And just like Pastor James, he didn't submit to the call of the government to shut down the churches, to regulate church worship, to regulate what the worship looks like, to limit the singing, to limit the interaction, to limit the

49:33

Lord's Supper, baptism, all these things were illegal, right? And so for James and the same as for Mike Hovland, our pastor, and yes,

49:41

Andrew, you're correct, Pastor Mike, before he came up to pastor, our church plant was the associate pastor at Grace Life Church in Edmonton with James Coates for four and a half years.

49:52

So we're quite familiar with that situation there. And while this was happening, Mike was still an elder at that church as well.

49:59

So it was kind of in that transition period. So he was quite involved with that whole process there as well. And so the difference, main difference that I think we see there is in James Coates, a conviction to stand on the word of God, his conscience dictated that the word of God called him to pastor his church, to lead his church, and that the government had no right to dictate.

50:20

In fact, the government oversteps their God -given bounds when they try to dictate matters of conscience or worship, things that we've mentioned here.

50:29

The government has never given in Scripture, including Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2, the government has never given the right and responsibility of authority over the church, over matters of conscience, over matters of worship.

50:43

The church is Christ's bride. It is his church. And we follow in the direction that he gives.

50:51

And so in that conviction, James Coates stood firm. And then when the government came, he submitted in the sense of the punishment.

51:00

The punishment was his arrest in jail. So there was still a level of willing submission in that, though I'm sure he would have rather been home.

51:07

But we also see the powerful testimony of how he was able to share the gospel in prison for 35 days.

51:12

And so we praise God for that. And then we contrast that with Artur Pawlowski down in Calgary, Alberta as well, where he was arrested.

51:24

And as much as his video clips made their rounds on social media of him yelling out to the law enforcement and Alberta Health Services to get out of his church, reminded me of the

51:35

Walt Disney Friar Tuck scene where he's booting the sheriff out of the church, right, out, out, calling them the communist

51:44

Nazis and being very vocal. And even ultimately the arrest, where him and his brother

51:50

David were arrested. They stopped in the middle of the freeway, got out of their vehicle, crouched down on their knees, and forced the law enforcement to lift them up by arms and legs and carry them off.

52:02

And so we see two very different examples of how these men ultimately submitted to the government.

52:08

While I believe both were right, and their biblical rights violated in the government's trying to shut down and control and mandate their churches, we see a very different example in the character of Pastor James Coates and Tim Stephens and how they submitted to the authority when it was time to submit in that regard for breaking the law, for breaking the mandates, compared to Artur Pawlowski, which became a bit of a sideshow, almost a distraction in that way,

52:37

I would say to the witness of Price in that way. And that's an important thing.

52:43

I think when we look at it, it is about we're still ambassadors. Aaron, what do you think?

52:50

Well, this is a tough one. We're talking about self -defense, for example, that was brought up.

52:55

We were talking before we started here, the various forms of self -defense that each of us has or have learned or studied or whatever the case may be.

53:04

And so in one way, we'd have no problem defending ourselves from a thug who is trying to do harm to us or those we love.

53:14

And then on the other hand, we say, OK, but if that thug is now not a thug, but a supposed representative of the law, well, now we need to defer to that individual and allow them to do whatever thing that they're going to do to us, legal or not.

53:31

And I don't think it's necessarily cut and dry. And I'm not going to speak to those two gentlemen.

53:37

I'm familiar with the scenarios, and part of the reason I'm not going to speak to those two gentlemen is that I won't get the second one's name right.

53:43

But it's a subjective thing, for sure. I mean, in the Scriptures, one of the things that we see is that oftentimes

53:49

God's people fled from the government, which, let's be honest, if your government's saying to do this thing and you're saying no and I'm leaving, you're not submitting to the government.

54:02

That's just not happening. Whether it's in the end times, fleeing to Petra or the

54:07

Great Dispersion that God used to spread the gospel all over the globe, God's people running from government is an appropriate thing.

54:14

So had a third pastor been involved who went into hiding, we probably would have had people criticizing him and other people saying that he did a great job.

54:24

And I think this goes back to what Lauren was saying earlier. You were talking about unity.

54:29

What's that phrase you use, Lauren? It's not on the tip of my tongue. We all have to do this thing for unity.

54:37

Something for the sake of unity. What was that word? Oh, I can't remember. He doesn't remember either. Yeah. Well, the idea is that they're not really pushing for unity.

54:46

They're pushing for uniformity. Because human beings, we are comfortable when everyone looks like me and talks like me and does what

54:52

I do, the way that I do it, I'm comfortable that we're all okay. You're okay. I'm okay because we're uniform.

54:58

And we struggle with Christian liberty. We struggle with unity within diversity.

55:04

And that is the hard part where I'm just saying, it's difficult to point a finger at the second group of men who made it hard for these police officers who were not doing their constitutional,

55:17

I guess I have to speak ignorance about the Canadian form of government. Canada has a constitutional charter of rights and freedoms.

55:25

Exactly. Who in theory are going against that or doing things that they shouldn't be doing. They're definitely not obeying

55:30

God's word. And these gentlemen made it difficult for them to do their evil deed. Is that wrong?

55:37

I'm going to have to say that. That's hard. That's hard for me to get behind to argue. Because one of the things we forget about Romans 13 is the fact that Romans 13 is just as much written to the governing authorities as it is to us.

55:50

It says rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. But what if the government is a cause for fear for good behavior?

55:59

What if they're rewarding evil? God's setting it very clear here that the government is not allowed to do that.

56:06

In fact, if we look at the scriptures of what God created government to do, honestly, mask mandates and deciding whether or not we should wear seat belts and all these other different things really were never created necessarily to be within the purview of government.

56:23

Government was there first and foremost to punish sin, to be an extension of God.

56:29

And so these quote -unquote government officials were actually a cause of fear for the righteous.

56:36

It's gonna be very difficult for me to say that we need to, as Christians, quote -unquote submit to that where I have to be pensive and I have to be sovereign.

56:46

I have to go, you know, I have to willingly give myself up to these authorities in that type of a way.

56:54

That's gonna be hard for me to argue because we do see in scripture, again, people doing the exact opposite.

57:01

Obviously, you know, whether it's in battle, I don't have to lie down and allow the other force to trample all over me.

57:11

And it's okay for me to run. And I believe as a martial artist that it's also appropriate to utilize

57:17

Christ -honoring methods of self -defense. But I also am gonna say that I'm gonna be the first person to say the level of subjectivity in each individual case is beyond my ability to declare uniformity.

57:31

Yeah. If I can just, sorry, am I interrupting here? Go for it. I was just gonna say, you know, in Artur Poblowski's defense as well, you know, here's a man, a pastor who grew up in Poland under communists behind the

57:44

Iron Curtain. His reaction was definitely more out there.

57:49

And I'm not condemning that per se. And I agree with what you were saying. You know, there's gonna be differences in how people react.

57:57

And it's gonna be hard to judge those things, especially because in that case, too, where the Alberta Health Services and the officials marched into the church trying to shut him down.

58:06

And there was an over, a big reaction, a loud reaction that came from him. Just to clarify on that note, too, you know, living in the province where these things did happen,

58:17

I just know it almost came off, and this is my perspective, what happened with the

58:24

Poblowskis almost came off as a bit of distraction. It seemed to be more kind of wake up to the political rebellion, right?

58:35

Like the, let's speak out against the politics and stuff like that, where what we saw with James Coates and Tim Stephens, where it was a lot more subdued and quiet in that sense, it just seemed to really bring a wave of courage to the churches and to a lot of believers within our province.

58:51

And so in that sense, I definitely lean on that, on that example as being what probably pushed the sake of Christ more here at home locally within the context of our province.

59:04

But definitely by no means in my judgment condemning what the

59:09

Poblowskis did, I wasn't in those shoes, I tend to might get a little more emotional than what

59:14

Pastor Coates and Pastor Stephens did as well were to happen, right? Yeah, I'm amazed sometimes more with seeing like the arrest of Tim Stephens with his, you know, they do that at his home with his kids there.

59:28

Like I was amazed how he kept his composure, you know.

59:34

But I think a lot of this comes down to this, and I'll put this out to anyone that wants to answer this one.

59:40

What is the difference? We're talking about submitting to government. What is the difference between submission and obedience?

59:49

Yeah, I'd like to address that, because as I mentioned, James Coates, you know, he submitted by willingly being arrested, but that doesn't necessarily indicate agreement with the policy.

01:00:03

And I think that's somewhat of what we're talking about here, because as Christians, we hold the truth, we want to proclaim the truth.

01:00:12

And, you know, so we recognize that the governing authorities don't necessarily today recognize what is true.

01:00:20

So there are ways that we can, while not agreeing with a lot of the things the government is doing, submit by being a willing being willing to get arrested, and not compromise what's true, because James Coates didn't just say,

01:00:38

Oh, you know, well, says the government doesn't want us to meet for church, then that's a good thing that they're saying, you know, he also didn't take up arms and start, you know, shooting people, you know, he by the testimony of how he handled it, he submitted while also resisting tyranny at the same time.

01:00:59

And I don't think those two are mutually exclusive. And I see like, for example,

01:01:05

I just want to bring up a verse. And first, Peter 216.

01:01:10

It's sandwiched between verses talking about submitting to government, the government and verse 17 says, fear

01:01:18

God and honor the king, but verse 16 says as free, not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as servants of God.

01:01:27

So we recognize that in the process of submitting to governing authorities, we as Christians who hold the truth who know what

01:01:37

God's law is God's desire is, we realize that we are free as citizens of heaven.

01:01:46

And we but we use this liberty in this world, not to be malicious about it.

01:01:52

We're servants of God, we want to proclaim the liberty even while we submit to governing authorities.

01:02:01

Even if we don't agree with them, we can submit in certain ways. That's also complimentary with resisting tyranny.

01:02:11

Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, use a an illustration.

01:02:17

You can have a little Johnny sitting there in school, and teacher tells little

01:02:23

Johnny to sit down. Now, little Johnny can sit down. Because the teacher told him that would be obedience.

01:02:31

But if little Johnny says, well, I'm sitting down, but I'm standing up and inside. Well, see, that's not submission, right?

01:02:39

So there's an act of obedience. And many people think submission means obedience.

01:02:47

And they're not the same. Submission is an attitude we're going to have.

01:02:53

And I would argue, in the example that we just talked about with James Coates, and Tim Stevens, they submitted to government, even while disobeying government.

01:03:07

In other words, you look at their behavior. And I mean, if I remember correctly,

01:03:12

I think James James Coates turned himself in, he knew what he was doing. He preached a message actually on Romans 13.

01:03:20

And I believe he then went on Monday to the police station, since they were looking for him, and turned him to save them the trouble.

01:03:29

And that is, I think, the issue that we would have to address is the fact that submission doesn't mean obedience.

01:03:38

I don't know if any of you want to touch on that. You know, I would think maybe Matt, you might have some ideas with those with the differences there.

01:03:46

Yeah, I think you touched on it pretty well. Obedience implies a requirement, not, and it often excludes real examination and proper moral basis is just obey.

01:03:59

But submission usually is voluntary, and often is based more on an intellectual, in our case, biblical examination, and is more internal.

01:04:11

So obedience is kind of, you do it, but because it's forced on you, but submission isn't forced upon you, you're choosing to do it.

01:04:19

So there's a difference. And the government wants obedience. Yeah. Anthony, what are your thoughts?

01:04:26

Uh, I don't have a thought, per se. I have a question. And it's a question

01:04:32

I've kind of wondered for a long time. And this is a good time to ask it. Based on what you're saying, submission, obedience, etc.

01:04:40

Where, where does that fit with, should a Christian have been involved in the

01:04:46

American Revolution? Yeah, they should have. Because the right, the biblical form of government, which

01:04:55

I just released an article three minutes ago, on Karm. What is the biblical form of government?

01:05:01

Three minutes ago, which tells you what he was doing while the rest of us were talking. Okay. Yeah. Next Theology Throwdown, we're going to be talking about should

01:05:08

Christians be multitasking? I'm always multitasking. But representative form of government, we're obligated to have and self governance, property rights, the principle of liberty and freedom and promotion of those things, the principle of self defense, defense of others, capitals, principles, witnesses, fair trial limits on government.

01:05:28

And I could expand on the limits later. But the Revolutionary War was necessary to break free from those who were opposing biblical representation, biblical self governance, biblical rights of private property, etc.

01:05:45

So they were breaking biblical laws. And it was right, I believe, in my opinion, you guys disagree, that's fine.

01:05:51

It was right for them to stand up and say no, because the principles of government governance were derived out of scripture.

01:05:58

In fact, a lot of people don't know that the Puritans, they actually when they were here, in the early 1600s, they actually got the ministers to go through the scriptures and extract out of the scriptures, a biblical form of government.

01:06:16

And this was woven into the culture and fabric of our society and our Constitution. But these things are here.

01:06:24

So the crown was limiting and did not have a representative form of government was not allowing self governance, was restricting property rights, was restricting personal freedom, etc, etc.

01:06:37

And was oppressive. And so it was time for Christians to stand up, because the

01:06:42

Christians have the right of self defense, but they also have the right of the defense and the obligation to defend others.

01:06:48

So that this puts Christians in a tough bind. They don't want to become violent, but we have the right of self defense, but not a vengeance.

01:06:57

And I've written an article on this as well. But so they have that right to defend others and themselves.

01:07:04

And so I say, yeah, they were right in resisting the crown at that point. You know,

01:07:10

I just I just noticed this real quick, Matt, you know, a new article just went up on karma. What is the biblical form of government?

01:07:16

Huh? So do we all get do we all get credit on this article, since you're probably taking what we're saying?

01:07:26

Well, the second article will be the heresies that have been taught, particularly with the ones that you said, and we'll go through that.

01:07:34

No, this is information I've already had. Definitely blame me for it.

01:07:40

I'll take full responsibility. Well, I do want to bring up an interesting passage that every martial artist,

01:07:45

Christian martial artist has to grapple with. And that's the one where Jesus specifically said, if anyone strikes you on the cheek, you know, you turn and you offer him the other.

01:07:55

I have my own understanding. To say my own is really unfair. I believe that it's that it is what

01:08:02

Christ was teaching in this passage. But I think that has to play in a little bit to this as well.

01:08:08

And somebody may even turn around and even throw it back at me and some of the comments that I've made. I'm going to throw it out there, though, and just see what you guys do with that.

01:08:18

Because, you know, we're talking about the reality that we're. And I agree with Matt 100 percent that we do need to stand up and we need to we need to protect ourselves and those whom we love from those who would simply take advantage of us.

01:08:35

But how does that jibe with what Christ said? And you're the one who knows about that cultural thing, but turn the other cheek.

01:08:43

It was not about not fighting. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's I mean, the idea there.

01:08:50

I'm gonna get water while you're talking. Same with walking, you know, walking a mile. OK, each of those, you know, you're looking at the fact that there was a you're.

01:09:02

You know, you have a government that can can ask you, say, to go for a mile, you go to you go above and beyond is the idea there.

01:09:11

But, you know, there's a difference with, OK, someone's going to strike me. Do I have to strike them back?

01:09:18

Now, some would argue, well, tooth for tooth, eye for an eye. Again, that's a limitation that says that's how far you can go.

01:09:26

You cannot go beyond with someone. So someone if someone strikes me, you know,

01:09:31

I can only strike them back. I can't go killing them. This is the idea, unless, of course, there's a threat that they're trying to kill me.

01:09:39

The the the thing, though, I think of is people try to use and this is what I said earlier on. Right. People try to use the scriptures to justify whatever they want.

01:09:48

And I think that's where we get into a problem with it. Wasn't there an escalation?

01:09:53

It was tugging the beard, spitting in the face, then physically striking. And it was a challenge.

01:09:59

It didn't necessarily mean they were going to come to fisticuffs, but it was a deep insult. And Jesus says at that point, turn the other cheek then to return violence for violence in that situation in the

01:10:11

Jewish culture. What was going on? So so in other words, if if, you know, I'm challenging,

01:10:17

I'm going to challenge Matt and I'm going to challenge him. He has a choice of just ignoring the challenge.

01:10:23

What buying lunches? Well, you didn't you decided not to skip that challenge. It just took you.

01:10:29

I've all I took it. I just lost all the time. It only took nine years.

01:10:37

But but I mean, there is a thing there where I think there's a mistake that often people make when it comes to interpreting scripture.

01:10:45

Aaron, I know you're aware of this. I listen to your podcast, but people do not take the time to interpret within context.

01:10:54

And that doesn't mean just the context of the book, but also historical context. What's going on in that cultural setting?

01:11:01

You know, people will sometimes because they don't take that time, they read the

01:11:07

Bible and say, well, this is what it means to me. Mistake. I don't care what it means to you. It only matters what it means to God.

01:11:16

What did he mean by what he wrote? The other thing people do is when we don't understand something, we will try to fit it into our 21st century understanding of things and then put that in.

01:11:28

And that's where I think there's the mistake there is you have to understand what that phrase meant at that time, not looking at it, what it means today.

01:11:40

If I use that phrase today, does that mean the same thing as it meant back then?

01:11:46

Well, you know, the word gay doesn't mean the same thing as it meant 50 years ago. Okay. So, you know,

01:11:54

I always use this as an example, but, you know, we had Roosevelt was referred to,

01:12:00

Franklin Roosevelt, that is, President Franklin Roosevelt was referred to as a gay man when he was president.

01:12:07

That did not mean he was a homosexual. It had totally for me, it meant he was happy. People can understand that.

01:12:13

And so, when people make the arguments, we have to look at what it meant at that time in that culture.

01:12:20

Here's the reason I bring it up. And I agree a hundred percent with what you guys said. I just, I wanted to, I wanted the people listening right now who are thinking, if I could only share that verse,

01:12:28

I'd love to hear what they said. I wanted to give them a chance to be able to hear that. But, you know, obviously the, the verse demarcations and the chapters in the

01:12:38

Bible were not inspired. It was put in later to be helpful, but I do believe that the ideas that follow from what you read earlier have a big part to do with this passage, because right after he says, rendered to all what is due them, tax to whom taxes due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.

01:12:54

Right after he says that, clearly referring to the governing authorities, verse eight comes in. He says, owe nothing to anyone except to love one another.

01:13:03

For he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. And he goes into talk about not committing adultery, not murdering, not stealing, not covening.

01:13:10

And it's all summed up in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

01:13:17

And this is one of the biggest issues that I took with the mask mandates, because a lot of people in the quote unquote church were saying, love your neighbor, wear a mask.

01:13:26

But as you said, Andrew, you know, there are people who medically, it is not loving to force those people to wear a mask.

01:13:36

And unfortunately, Christians were not being discerning. Christians were saying the mandate says this.

01:13:41

And so they're, and, and because, you know, this, this group of unredeemed individuals are telling us, this is the way to be a good citizen.

01:13:48

This is the way to love our neighbors. Very, they lacked discernment and they just plunged forward saying, well, of course this is the only way to show love.

01:13:58

Somebody recently on Twitter, I can't remember who it was and I can't quote them, but basically it was just saying something very similar.

01:14:04

If you're not going to get vaccinated, this is anti -unloving, it's un -Christian, it's all this other kind of stuff.

01:14:09

But the reality is, is that that is a very narrow perspective and we need to ask ourselves, what does it truly mean, biblically speaking, to love an individual?

01:14:19

And to love somebody is to want and to work for, toward God's best interest for that person. And in the same way that it would not be in your best interest or my wife's best interest is a perfect example, to choke her, to use a martial arts move and choke her out.

01:14:34

It's also not in her best interest for us to slap a mask on her for an elongated period of time, which is why my family just canceled our

01:14:43

Orlando trip to Universal Studios. We were going to be leaving this Friday, but last week, Universal decided that they were going to be totalitarian.

01:14:50

They're going to be our doctors and they're going to say, hey, if you're going to be inside, you have to be wearing a mask.

01:14:55

And so plane tickets, Airbnbs, thankfully we had not bought the season passes yet.

01:15:02

It's just, we couldn't, we're not going to do that because that's not how I love my wife. And I think one of the things that we're hearing a lot is this idea of discernment.

01:15:11

Christians are not being discerning. They're not asking the difficult questions they want. They feel comfortable with uniformity, but they're not comfortable with true unity around what

01:15:20

God commands us to do. So I brought up that passage about striking on the other cheek or whatever else, because the governing thing in all of that, and there's a level, there's a huge subjectivity in Christian liberty, but the governing thing that comes down to is what truly is loving for the individual standing right in front of me.

01:15:38

If you want freedom from all that, move here to Idaho. Hey gentlemen,

01:15:45

I've been enjoying the discussion, but I have a point I'd like to make. Well, I was, I actually had a question

01:15:50

I was going to specifically target toward you, because you've been so quiet all throughout, but go ahead. Everybody else is speaking.

01:15:57

So I'm just letting the discussion roll around. I want to take us to a different part of scripture, and I think it's something to maybe leave the

01:16:06

New Testament for a little bit and go into the Old Testament, because I think there's a really great example of a person who has to stand up for God against a totalitarian government, and that is

01:16:20

Daniel. If we go into Daniel 6, we talk about King Darius, who actually liked

01:16:26

Daniel. Daniel was somebody who was very important in his government, and he had administrators who convinced him to pass this law about not praying to anybody but him for 30 days, and he passed the law without thinking about Daniel.

01:16:41

And Daniel learned of the decree. He knew it had been published. He knew what it said, but he went ahead, and with his window open, he went up and prayed like he was supposed to in disobedience to the law, and then he graciously suffered the consequences for that, and then

01:16:58

God protected him. And I think that's a good example for us as Christians in a government where, you know, they're passing laws, and I think a lot of times, especially as we see in the situation of Canada right now, these laws are targeted at Christians.

01:17:14

They know they've got you, and they're just waiting for us to slip, and I think it's that when laws are passed like that, then we take our confidence in God.

01:17:28

We go ahead and do what God has ordered us to do, and in the case of Daniel, he knew that he was not supposed to pray to the king.

01:17:35

He's the only person that he prays to is God, and he didn't hide it. He didn't change his behavior.

01:17:41

He did what he always did, and he went ahead and graciously suffered the consequences for breaking the law, and yet God protected him.

01:17:53

And the same thing happens with, you know, the other gentlemen, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, as we all know the story about the fiery furnace, that they were ordered to bow to a statue, and they stood and were given multiple opportunities to succumb to that law, and they refused because it was against God's law that they had written on their hearts, and so they suffered the consequences, and God protected them, and so I think that as we're seeing what's going on in Canada, we have

01:18:26

Christian ministers who know what they are supposed to do, and they are standing against the law, and then they are graciously suffering the consequences, and I think

01:18:34

God will uphold them through that, just as we have brothers and sisters in China and in India and in other parts of this world who are living their

01:18:45

Christian faith in amazingly oppressive regimes, and God didn't say we were going to be safe as Christians, so I think when we look at it from our

01:18:57

Western perspective, yes, we should stand up. We have a government by the people for the people.

01:19:02

We have a constitution that protects our rights, and we should stand up to that. That is an obligation of us as citizens to uphold a proper government, because it's formed by us, but we should always consider that God never promised us safety, and we will probably graciously have to accept the consequences for our actions for standing up for the

01:19:24

Lord. By the way, I just got a phone call from medical.

01:19:32

I have an appointment on Wednesday. Please remember to follow CDC guidelines and to wear a mask, blah, blah, blah.

01:19:41

So are you going to do it? We've got a couple minutes to write an article up as well here.

01:19:47

Hold on. I'm going to play something, and I'm just going to say this up front.

01:19:57

I'm sorry. This is the New York governor. This is a minute and a half.

01:20:04

You know, something you've said, Eve, made me think of this, because you're right. This is targeting

01:20:09

Christians. I remember when the lockdowns first occurred. I know a pastor in Jersey where he was inside his building.

01:20:18

He was the only person in the building. They were broadcasting through FM radio with people that were in their cars.

01:20:27

Their cars were even, they even had their cars distanced from one another. So it was family members that would be in the same house in their own car.

01:20:36

The police actually arrested the pastor, who was the only person in the building, and ticketed every single car.

01:20:45

Now, that was how far New Jersey went. But you know what? During that same time, I was driving around to the mosques, and the parking lots were full.

01:20:57

I remember in New York where they shut down churches for Resurrection Sunday, and yet New York City was set up 75 places where people could get halal food.

01:21:07

Now, wait a minute. You could still cook. There's nothing that prevented with COVID restrictions preventing people from cooking. They actually went into mosques to tap the government employees to tape out the distances so people can pray.

01:21:20

Now, they were allowed to, but I think you're right, because as we watch this clip, it's a minute and a half.

01:21:26

I'm apologizing up front, because it's going to get, especially if Matt Slick has not seen this, his blood is going to boil.

01:21:34

But this is how they try to use Christianity to push their agenda.

01:21:41

This is the governor of New York. Oh, wait. I got to make sure. The one thing

01:21:46

I do have to make sure is that you can hear her, because that would help, right? So, let's see.

01:21:54

There we go. All right. I prayed a lot to God during this time.

01:22:01

And you know what? God did answer our prayers. He made the smartest men and women, the scientists, the doctors, the researchers.

01:22:09

He made them come up with a vaccine. That is from God to us. And we must say, thank you,

01:22:16

God. Thank you. And I wear my vaccinated necklace all the time to say, I'm vaccinated.

01:22:21

All of you, yes, I know you're vaccinated. You're the smart ones. But you know, there's people out there who aren't listening to God and what

01:22:28

God wants. You know this. You know who they are. I need you to be my apostles.

01:22:34

I need you to go out and talk about it and say, we owe this to each other. We love each other.

01:22:40

Jesus taught us to love one another. And how do you show that love, but to care about each other enough to say, please get vaccinated, because I love you.

01:22:49

I want you to live. I want our kids to be safe when they're in schools. I want you to be safe when you go to a doctor's office or to a hospital and are treated by somebody.

01:22:57

You don't want to get the virus from them. You're already sick, or you wouldn't be there. We have to solve this, my friends.

01:23:05

I need every one of you. I need you to let them know that this is how we can fight this pandemic, come back to normal, and then start talking about the real issues that we have to, fighting systemic racial injustice, which exists today.

01:23:20

And if there's a denier, I will take you on any date, because I've seen it. I know it exists, and we are not going to have a blind eye to this ever again, any longer, under my...

01:23:29

Okay, so I don't know who's going to want to respond first. I will say... Every time

01:23:35

I play this clip, the challenge is open. She said, if there's anyone who denies systemic racism,

01:23:41

I'm a denier. I'll debate you any day of the week. Come on. I got another point real quick, and then

01:23:48

I'll give it up. So I heard her say that God gave us the smart men and women.

01:23:54

So she's saying there's only two genders, right? Well, okay, you picked up on that. What I picked up on was, if you watch that clip, she caught herself, because she was saying, if you go to the hospital where everybody's vaccinated, you don't want to get...

01:24:09

And she stopped, because she realized, wait, that's right. The vaccine doesn't prevent you from actually getting

01:24:16

COVID and passing it on. She caught herself like, oops. But that clip,

01:24:23

Aaron, you got your hand up. I mean, other than make our bloods boil, what is your response?

01:24:30

Well, okay. So I need to be... Oh man, this is so hard. So my mom has been researching vaccines since I was born.

01:24:41

I can't remember if I ended up getting one of them when I was born, if I didn't get any of them. I can't remember exactly how it was.

01:24:47

I'm going to go out there and say my children have never received any vaccine for anything. I have very strong scientific, moral, and what

01:24:57

I believe to be biblical reasonings for what I believe to be the fact that any and all vaccines are foolish.

01:25:06

In part, because I, in my medical research, recognize the fact that there are way better substitutes.

01:25:15

Here's what a vaccine can do. And I recognize that vaccines, some actually semi -decent ones, can accomplish this.

01:25:22

But there are other forms of medicine, maybe it's called alternative forms of medicine, that are able to do this.

01:25:29

Now, the moment I say that, some other people start to get all cringey because they're like, oh, you know, alternative medicine and whatever else.

01:25:37

And they're, you know, whatever that conjures up for them, voodoo and lotions and potions and so on and so forth.

01:25:42

But this is, again, where we're coming back to this thing. So I have Christian friends who believe that the vaccine is good and it is wonderful and that it is stewardship of their bodies to take the vaccine.

01:25:54

Right? I could not disagree with them more. But I have to, as a brother in Christ, I've got two things

01:26:03

I need to do. Number one, I've got to love them. And number two, when the opportunity arises,

01:26:08

I can speak the truth to them to try to share with them what I know. But when it's all said and done, I'm not allowed to not love them.

01:26:16

That's a period. Now, this woman, I actually have known nothing about her. I don't know if she, does she claim to be a

01:26:21

Christian? It kind of seems like she would almost have to say what she said. I don't know. But I believe she's wrong, across the board, totally wrong.

01:26:32

I believe that she was baptizing all of that ridiculousness in God's name to her own detriment.

01:26:42

It does bother me. It does, as you said, make my blood boil. But the reality that I have to come face -to -face with is this, that I don't owe her anything other than to love her and to love people like her.

01:26:55

But I would say to the Christian, and maybe there's one of you sitting here, more more of you sitting here, I could be the odd man out here who would say that, no,

01:27:02

I'm all for the vaccine. I think it's wise stewardship of our bodies to take the vaccine. And if you believe that, I want you to feel comfortable to be able to say that.

01:27:09

And I want you to know that I'm going to love you. I would totally disagree with you. I think you're a fool for doing it, but that doesn't mean that that's going to be the source.

01:27:17

The only thing that we're ever going to talk about, we can't have coffee, and I won't invite you over to my house for family game night, though you probably won't want to come because you know that we're not vaccinated.

01:27:26

But the reality is we Christians have to acknowledge this fact that the vitriol and the antagonism and the hatred and the unkindness is categorically not allowed.

01:27:41

Again, as a martial artist, if some person were to come and try to hurt me and or my family, it's completely appropriate for me to defend myself.

01:27:48

It's completely appropriate for me to beat them up. But listen very carefully. It's not appropriate for me to hate them.

01:27:54

It's not appropriate for me not to love them. In fact, to be completely honest, I am stopping them in their sin because I love them.

01:28:01

I love my family. And I love this person. And because I love you,

01:28:07

I'm not going to allow you to commit to this heinous act. And so even my own self -defense has to be motivated by love.

01:28:13

And so I think that's just one of the things that needs to be a guiding principle in this broader discussion. And I think that if Christians just got this into their heads, that again, the unity and diversity is a

01:28:26

Christ -honoring thing. And we got to stop hating on people who don't see things the way we do. Yeah.

01:28:33

Anyone else? One thing I picked up on from that, it sounded like an altar call, medical altar call, political altar call.

01:28:46

One thing I did want to follow up with that Eve said earlier about giving the example of Daniel, Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego.

01:28:56

And as we're talking about Romans 13 here, we should also not forget who wrote it and other things he said and did because he also said in Philippians 1 .29,

01:29:09

it is given to you behalf of Christ to suffer for his sake, which would mean the government's punishing you for doing right.

01:29:18

He also is the one who said, let's see, I haven't okay.

01:29:24

Second Corinthians 11 .23, where he's comparing himself to other ministers.

01:29:30

He says, are they ministers of Christ? I speak as a fool, I am more. So, and then he elaborates what it means by he's more of a minister.

01:29:39

He says, in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths often.

01:29:47

So, the one who wrote Romans 13 is one who faced prisons a lot for, you know, disobeying the government.

01:29:57

So, we do have to understand that that is a lens by which we view what he meant by submission to authority in Romans 13.

01:30:07

And yet he also knew when to use the law when he as a Roman citizen was arrested, and they wanted to just let him go.

01:30:15

And he was like, no, I'm a Roman citizen. They suddenly went, oh, wait, we're not allowed to do that. He knew when to use that as well.

01:30:22

So, you know, he knew how to use the law. What I love about what Eve brought up was the fact that Daniel could have easily continued praying in secret in his quote -unquote prayer closet.

01:30:32

But he didn't even see the need to do that. He flung the windows open, which wasn't, it's not necessary in prayer, but he flung the windows open and he did that, which

01:30:42

I think is really beautiful because that I mean, because you could point that and say, well, you know, that one's easy, you know, obey

01:30:47

God rather than man. Well, God wasn't commanding Daniel to throw the windows open and we could say parade or make it known to everyone what he was doing.

01:30:57

But that was still an appropriate thing for him to do. But the scripture says why? Because that was his custom, right?

01:31:03

So, he didn't, he wasn't going to change any of it and let the consequences be as they may be, you know.

01:31:09

Matt and Lauren, I see you guys unmuted. So, I don't know if you wanted to go first. Yeah, I was just going to say, you know, in regards to the reference of Daniel praying with his windows open and, you know, that was kind of the same principle that we employed here in Alberta when churches were shut down and pastors were being arrested, you know, there was a lot of pushback kind of from a lot of Christians, right, to just stay quiet and to kind of ease into the background, to avoid media attention, to avoid attention from the law.

01:31:39

And it was kind of that same idea, you know, why would we stop doing what we've done all along, especially when the

01:31:46

Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada protects it in theory, that we have the right to gather together in any religious service and to conduct that.

01:31:57

And in fact, it's against the law. It is also in the Criminal Code of Canada that once a religious service has started, for anyone to interrupt or disrupt it, that is a chargeable offense.

01:32:09

And so, it's kind of along the same lines, you know, just like Daniel, when he continued as was his custom to worship

01:32:15

God, and that was kind of what drove us. That's what we did as a church, and I know many others as well, including the churches where the pastors were arrested, right, and ultimately gated and shut down.

01:32:27

That's why they did that to Grace Life Church in Edmonton, because they were continuing to meet. And in fact, that church doubled over that time, right.

01:32:35

I've visited that church multiple times and was fortunate enough to be out there this summer again, before a lot of the vaccine passports were implemented.

01:32:44

And we visited there again, and it was twice as full, well, including the tent set up outside, from what it's been in the past.

01:32:54

And God has really blessed people from all across the city of Edmonton, driving out there to hear the gospel preached, and praise

01:33:02

God for men like James Coates, who preach the gospel consistently and constantly, especially through times like this.

01:33:10

And just on a note too, on that video clip that you showed there, Andrew, you know, as she's talking about loving our neighbors and all that, and it's been something that's been really pushed again as well in our province here through all this, where a premier, who's a professing

01:33:21

Christian—I say professing, he's a devout Roman Catholic—but he's constantly using that as well.

01:33:29

The Bible tells us to love our neighbor, love your neighbor, and a lot of Christians are falling for that. And I would make a plea to Christians to stop going to pagan governments to define what these biblical terms mean.

01:33:40

The Bible teaches us to love our neighbors. Let's go to the Word of God, and if anything, go to faithful ministers of the

01:33:45

Word to find out what loving our neighbor looks like in a biblical context, and stop going to the pagan world around us to try to define what loving our neighbor looks like.

01:33:55

And too many seem to be more than willing to lend a willing ear to that, because it'll make life easy.

01:34:02

So is it loving for a church to tell me that for me to go to church I should wear a mask when it could kill me?

01:34:10

Right? I mean, is that really loving? I mean, if it is to spare the rest of us from some of your facial features, right?

01:34:18

That I can understand. That's not the case here, and I totally sympathize with you. I have a natural mask for that.

01:34:25

Yes, yes. Some people wish that I would, you know, practice Halloween every day and keep a mask on.

01:34:33

I thought you were still. I find it interesting that, you know, you were just speaking about that the churches were increasing, you know, that the churches that were standing up, that God was blessing them with people coming in, and I saw that a little bit here in the state of Kentucky.

01:34:53

Our governor closed the churches as well, and there were pockets of churches who responded by just ignoring the mandate to stay closed, and they just went ahead and met.

01:35:06

The bigger churches obviously came under the radar and were, you know, targeted.

01:35:11

My church observed the shutdown until they were, I guess there was a court case that said that the governor couldn't speak against the churches, and we immediately reopened, and I found it very interesting that our church ended up bringing in a lot of people that went to other churches, but their churches didn't reopen, and so they wanted to meet with the fellowship of the body, and so they started going to whatever churches were open, and I think in a way that was

01:35:39

God blessing the churches that went ahead and opened and met the way they were supposed to meet, and for the mask mandates, you know, they basically said, you know, it's up to you, you know, we're not going to come and police it, so, you know, the government that has requested that you wear masks would put that out there, but, you know, it's up to you and your conscience what you want to do.

01:36:02

We're not going to go around and tell people to put masks on, so, and I think God blesses the churches that stand up for the fellowship of the body, and that however those blessings may look.

01:36:15

Well, I think, I mean, our church, you know, we saw a similar thing, and I really think that what it comes down to is there were a lot of good

01:36:25

Christians in bad churches, and they stay in those churches because they've had friends there, they grew up there, whatever it is, they know the church is bad, but they just stick it out because of the friendships and all that.

01:36:38

I really think that COVID, with people having church online and all that, it gave people an opportunity to go and check out other churches, especially when some were open and some were not.

01:36:48

We had a lot of people that came into church because their church wasn't open, and they wanted to be in church, and then they stayed, you know, and I think that you end up seeing that with all this stuff.

01:37:02

So, it really, I think, and this may sound controversial, but I think the

01:37:08

COVID restrictions actually strengthened good churches and weakened bad churches, because a lot of the bad churches, they lost people, and they lost the people that were the conservatives, the ones that were more spiritually mature, and that's only going to be to their detriment, and then for those mature churches, they grew, you know, like we were saying there with Edmonton Canada with Grace Life.

01:37:34

Just an example, if I may, regarding Grace Life. Before all this happened, their sermons were getting several hundred views after being posted, and I just checked here again now, some of the sermons that Pastor James preached during that time, once the media started pouring attention on, the one that kind of started it all for them there was a sermon from December 20, 2020, has 36 ,000 views.

01:38:02

The sermon that you referenced to earlier, Andrew, that he preached the two days before his arrest, before he went in, has over 130 ,000 views, and it's just really drawn a lot of attention, and even in there,

01:38:19

I had a friend, a friend of a friend call me from Edmonton, and they were wondering while Grace Life was having their services underground, how he could get in touch with them, because, you know, he said they'd gone to a different church there, and through this time their church had been shut down, so they'd been seeing all this tension around Grace Life, and so they'd started listening to these sermons, and he said his teenagers were asking, like,

01:38:41

Dad, we need more of this preaching. They were used to, you know, 15 -20 minute sermons, and now they're sitting here, he said too, it just blessed him that his 19 -year -old son was sitting listening to an hour -long sermon saying,

01:38:54

Dad, I want more. We need to go ahead and check this out. Matt, go ahead.

01:39:01

Just jump in a little bit. I love what you're saying. It's great, and I don't think we've broached the topic yet, but it's understood that persecution strengthens and purifies the church, and one of the things

01:39:13

I've been telling people is, you know, get ready, you know, pray and ask

01:39:19

God to use you in spite of yourself. Ask him to use us to preach that gospel, you know, as this time becomes more difficult.

01:39:29

I believe it's going to get worse and worse. That's just my opinion. I'm a pessimistic all -millennialist, so, you know, there you go.

01:39:38

Okay, what is it you refer to your view of end times theology? Deprescotology.

01:39:48

You're very depressing. That is, because I believe in total depravity, and I believe in the consequence of sin, and I believe what

01:39:56

God says, the day that you eat the fruit, you will die. He's speaking to all mankind, and Jesus is going to come back and stop the self -destruction due to man's sin with a gigantic celestial,

01:40:07

I told you so, but in the meantime, the Holy Spirit is sent out through persecution.

01:40:14

I think it's because it relates to Christ and his persecution, and as we emulate him and the sufferings, there's something spiritual about it that God blesses, and we as Christians and pastors and elders need to teach this to the congregation to be ready, to be prepared, but in the preparation, they often have to be pruned, and it's not fun.

01:40:36

Oh man, it's not fun, but this, you know, but it's good, and we need to be available and willing to be used by the

01:40:43

Holy Spirit to preach and teach that word, because I believe that the persecution coming to the church is, first of all, because Christians haven't done their job, and second,

01:40:54

God's ordaining it, and he grants that we have suffering, Philippians 129.

01:40:59

It's his work upon us, and it'll bring an expansion and purification of the truth.

01:41:05

As I'm listening to the Canadians talk about their pastors, what they're doing, my heart is warmed.

01:41:12

I'd love to meet those guys and just say thank you. Thank you for standing for truth and risking so much.

01:41:21

Just thank you. It's an encouragement, and people need to hear it, and Christians want to hear it. We need to be ready. It's coming.

01:41:29

Yeah, I agree. Let me, you know, as we get close to wrapping up, I did have a question that we tailored for Eve, because I figured, you know, we got to get her talking earlier.

01:41:38

And, you know, Eve has not missed a single one of these. This is the 16th Theology Throwdown, and she's made all of them, and a lot of times she's the only female here amongst a bunch of guys that talk a lot, but Eve, you know, let me ask you this.

01:41:54

You know, with what we're seeing, I know your podcast deals with movies, so you review movies, and so Matt should start following that one, because he's a movie hit.

01:42:04

I love sci -fi. Oh man, I couldn't. But, you know, when we look at this, how much of a play do you think the movie industry has done in trying to get the culture to buy into some of the agenda that we've been talking about?

01:42:25

The whole view that our culture has, how much do you think is coming from the movie industry?

01:42:34

I think a lot of it comes more behind the scenes. The platforms, because of the popular movies, are the ones that tend to speak up, and everybody follows them because they're celebrities, and I've never quite understood that, because they're people who play to be other people for a living.

01:42:54

They basically lie for a living, and you're going to trust them on issues that they're not experts in, just because they're popular, and, you know, know that, or know them.

01:43:05

But as for movies themselves, it's very interesting. Our December movie that we talked about was the Ghostbusters Afterlife, which is a sequel to a very old movie that came out in the 80s, and when

01:43:17

I was watching it, the original movies came out when I was a child, and I really didn't watch them critically at the time, and I hadn't seen them in a long time, and it was really amazing to me how they were putting science up on a pedestal.

01:43:31

It was like science was basically using science to solve a supernatural problem, because ghosts, if you believe in them, are a supernatural problem, and they were using science and a very humanistic science to try and solve what they saw as the apocalypse, and that's one of the things we discussed in our episode, was that this is, you know, putting science up on a pedestal, man's opinions, and making man stand out as his own salvation, and we've seen that in a lot of movies recently, where they're always putting man forward as the means of his own salvation, and I, you know, they're not speaking directly to the issues that we're seeing in politics and social networks and stuff right now, but the overall philosophy of the world is that man is his own salvation.

01:44:27

We don't need God for that, and when you watch movies, when you watch entertainment, you're being indoctrinated with the world's views on such things, and that's the whole point of our podcast, is to encourage people to not necessarily divorce yourself from it, if that's what you need to do, like the whole concept of not eating food that was offered to idols.

01:44:51

If it bothers you, then you shouldn't do it, but if you're going to do it, then you should do it with your thinking cap on and your

01:44:59

Bible open, because otherwise you're just allowing yourself to be indoctrinated with the world's ideas, and that is the philosophy that is going to, you know, help children, or help people,

01:45:13

I should say, kowtow to a government who's just going to dictate to them how things are going to be, and if you're not able to think critically about it or practiced at thinking critically about it, then you just succumb, because you don't have any other way of knowing how to handle such things.

01:45:34

I remember seeing Ghostbusters when I was a kid. I didn't think anything, until I listened to your episode,

01:45:39

Eve, and then I went, I'm not going to go re -watch that, but I obviously, as an unsaved kid, missed a lot of things in the first Ghostbusters.

01:45:48

Aaron, what do you got? I had to cancel my Amazon order for the Ghost Ray Gun. Thanks. Well, Eve, what you said was so incredibly important and right on point, because one of the things that we're seeing, and this started decades and decades ago, is that we started to hand over to doctors, right, specifically medical doctors, scientists, the ability to legislate our, the supernatural, legislate spirituality, and as a biblical counselor,

01:46:20

I fight this all the time, you know, medical community believing that they have the answer for depression, they have the answer for anxiety, they have the answer for quote -unquote mental disorder, and all these different types of things is part of this, and we referenced the new

01:46:35

Spider -Man movie, and I won't give away any spoilers, but one of the things that you said about Ghostbusters is also true in Spider -Man.

01:46:43

It's this idea that we can fix your, that you're a bad guy, right, and we can fix you.

01:46:51

We can cure you of your badness using science, and as long as we take away your, you know, whatever, your tentacle arms, or we take away the fact that you have too much electricity in your body, or whatever the case may be, as long as we take that away from you, you will now be a good person, and science can fix you, and they so desperately miss the fact that that is categorically not true.

01:47:19

In fact, one of the arguments that I make, I try to teach parents this all the time when they approach entertainment, especially for their children, you know, if there's no swearing, if no nudity, no sex, no violence, you know, it's okay, like, my little pony's okay, and Care Bears are okay, and, you know, whatever else, that's fine, because all those things are missing, but really, the single most destructive element in our modern -day entertainment is its godlessness.

01:47:44

My little pony, they all make friends, and they save the forest creatures, and they have a wonderful day, and everything's great in a completely godless environment.

01:47:53

They're not attacking God. They're not saying God doesn't exist, but they make their friends, and they go to school, and they do all of these things without a single thought whatsoever to what

01:48:02

God would have me do, the help that I need from him, that my very existence is dependent upon him.

01:48:08

They do that, and that has always been the reality, and so I think human beings, the reason they need to replace that element in there, they need to make, you know, the power of friendship, or science, or whatever it may be, they need to put that up there as the thing that's going to help us fix our problems, because human beings were created to be worshipers, and if we're not going to be worshiping

01:48:31

God as we should, we're going to always stick something else in there, and what's sad to see, to bring this back to the discussion,

01:48:37

I think what's sad to see is that Christians are turning to a lot of sources other than God and his word, and putting their faith and trust that these masks, or these mandates, or this vaccine, or whatever, this is going to be the thing that saves us, this is going to be the thing that protects us, and obviously,

01:48:56

I buckle my seat belt when I get into the vehicle, because I think it's safe, you know, we do take steps that we need to be wise, we don't just step out in front of buses, but we need to really ask ourselves, how important are these things to us?

01:49:10

If these things get stripped away from us, is my faith going to be shaken? I'm not a historian, maybe some of you know how the church has historically responded to plagues and the like, and I can tell you,

01:49:22

I didn't grow up during Black Death or anything like that, I've never read anything which gave me the impression that God's people didn't meet together, but I do know that I've seen the pre -COVID average church nursery, and I'll tell you, man, runny noses like crazy, hacking coughs like crazy, we never as a church, never, ever, ever had people standing at the door saying, you're sick, you need to go home.

01:49:46

Whether the person was spiritually sick or physically sick, if they wanted to come to church, we invited them in, and it's just so interesting that because science, quote -unquote, has told us that that's a bad idea, now we're abandoning that practice, it's so sad, easy, hit the nail right on the head.

01:50:03

Well, now it's even, we've gone a step further, so right, it's the idea of, because we're really where we see it is, it was trust the science when it came to the evolution debate, and that's where it started, right, is the whole argument of we do science, we know better, this is true, the

01:50:18

Bible's wrong, and they tried to pit science versus the Bible, so if you believe in a literal six -day creation, you're just crazy, that's just,

01:50:27

I mean, that's foolishness, that's fairy tale, right? So everything coming from nothing makes more sense to them than a creator creating things, but what we end up seeing is they use the science then, and they said science is a thing, now what do you have, now you have

01:50:43

Fauci saying, if you criticize me, you criticize science, now he is science, right, you can't criticize him because that's criticizing science, no, you're a politician,

01:50:53

Dr. Fauci, I mean, he's acting in a role of politics, you know, we saw this, you guys may not remember it, but there was a hack, they basically hacked into all the research labs in the

01:51:05

UK where they did all the research for what was called global warming, they can't call it that anymore, now it's, you know, they went to climate change and all these other names because it's not warming anymore, and they basically showed that the guy who was running it was purposely withholding certain evidence, making up certain evidence to push a political agenda, and then when it got exposed, he said, hey, hey,

01:51:30

I'm a scientist, I'm not a politician, no, you're not, once you gave up the science and pushed a political agenda, you're no longer acting as a scientist, same thing with Fauci, but what's the argument they're now making, if you criticize this, their political agenda, then you're criticizing science, so now it's a thing where what

01:51:52

I think you're going to see is to argue against what they call is the science is going to be an argument to start arresting people,

01:52:00

I mean, they are saying, just figure this out, hospitals are saying, if you're not vaccinated, you shouldn't get care, okay,

01:52:10

I know someone or know of someone, a friend of a friend who lost a finger because he went in to a hospital and tested positive for COVID, you have a limited amount of time to reattach a finger that was cut off, he had a limited amount of time, but the first thing they need to do is test him for COVID and because he tested, they had to wait for the result, oh, false positive, they had to make, they wouldn't care for him, they took another test, oh, it's negative, oh, but it's too late, so this guy lives without a fingernail, because there was a case that I saw in New York, because a guy was having a heart attack in a nursing facility, they wouldn't go in, the paramedics wouldn't go in, because there could be someone in there with COVID, the guy died, okay, this is what they call science, it's not science, we have to make sure we differentiate what science actually is and we were talking about this before we went on the air, right, is that Aaron, you and I were talking about this, right, science, there's, so we know what science is, it's following a scientific method, but now only certain people are called scientists, right,

01:53:19

I find it interesting that when we're out on the street evangelizing Dr. Anthony Silvestro, who works with us at Striving Fraternity, he's a doctor and they'd be like, oh, oh, you're a doctor, because he talks a lot about evolution, they go, oh, what do you have your, you know, what kind of doctor are you, he goes, well,

01:53:35

I'm a dentist, they're like, oh, you're not a real doctor, he's like, no, I actually got a real doctorate, like there's a lot of different disciplines you can be a doctor in, so.

01:53:45

See, the issue is not the scientific method, as we've stated, the issue is the fact that we're foolish enough to think that our use of the scientific method has given us all of the answers.

01:53:55

I love right now that the radical left is now starting to say, hey, we're shortening the time which you need to quarantine, masks don't really work, they're saying all of the things that medical professionals who were, you know, not being political were saying at the very beginning, and they're now saying that, but that early on, they were saying, we know this is the science, well, the thing is, the science isn't a replacement of God, the science is not absolute truth, claiming science does not mean we know this, because if that were the case, then the world is flat, and daily bathing is a bad idea, and the earth is the center of the universe, and all the other things that scientists quote -unquote knew isn't true, and I think that's the, if anyone's listening, please understand,

01:54:38

I don't think anyone here, no one here is anti -science, because all truth is God's truth. The reality is that we are anti -human beings being so foolish that because they've done a couple tests, they think they know what is the absolute truth for all people at all times, and that's why we've got to be getting back to the scriptures, stand firmly on that, deny, disobey the government when they contradict that, but in the other areas, we've got to show grace to each other, we've got to be discerning, we've got to be able to research both sides, we've got to be able to try to, as much as possible, to come to the truth as close as we can, and still do it in a loving way.

01:55:16

Yeah, because that was the point we made in our podcast, that science is man's describing what he sees in God's creation, and man is not, does not have the full knowledge of God, and so it's his description of what he sees of God's creation is always going to have an element of fault to it, because we're always going to be wrong, it's like we can't know everything, and there's always the thing that we don't know that could completely reverse what we think we know, and so we're never, we can't trust the scientists who say this is the truth, we have proven it, it is scientific, this is what you have to do, and then you have to go, well you're a fallible human being affected by the curse, so how do you know that you're actually true, and I'm not anti -science,

01:56:04

I know a lot of good people who are scientists, but the true scientists will always admit that what they are doing is limited to human understanding, and that they can't know all truths, that's for God to know.

01:56:21

Yeah, so and as we wrap up, I mean let me just, I'll wrap up with what you guys just said, because it's not that we're, it's against science, we're against the religion of science, called scientism, scientism, yeah, because that's what you see, when you see

01:56:33

Fauci saying you disagree with me, you disagree with science, the thing there is, is what are they saying? They're putting up what they call science as an ultimate authority, the way we would say is

01:56:45

God's word, and that's what we would be against, it's not science, we follow science, it's the fact that, because science is the study of the natural world that God created, as Eve said, but we're against those that use this as a religion to then convince people, so with that, oh, go ahead,

01:57:07

Lauren, I'll let you, sorry, I was just going to say that these last few weeks, especially, I do have to be honest and say

01:57:14

I wish the scientists that were with us about global warming had been at least a little bit right, it's still cold up here, a little bit of global warming would have been welcome, but I'm just reminded of all this talk about anti -sexuality and all that, and here's the preamble from the

01:57:31

Bill C -4 that we referenced early on, and this is from the criminal court of Canada, whereas conversion therapy causes harm to society because, among other things, it is based on and propagates myths and stereotypes about sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression, including the myth that heterosexuality, cisgender, and gender identity, and gender expression that conforms to the sex assigned to a person at birth are to be referred over sexual orientations, gender identity, and gender expressions, you know, such an anti -scientific statement, myths and stereotypes of gender identity, you know, these people are some of the most anti -scientific, some of the most anti -science rhetoric comes out of the quote -unquote science field in this regard.

01:58:19

Well, in that regard, what you end up seeing is they say that we're just chemical reactions. Well, if that's true, then there shouldn't be this whole discussion of gender, because if I'm biologically male, then

01:58:29

I should be, that's what I should do, just what my chemicals are, and so the whole argument undermines their whole underpinning without them even realizing it, you know, like what

01:58:37

Aaron said with the whole mask thing. Suddenly, it goes from 10 days to 5. For a scientific reason, no, because they need to get people back to work, so it's amazing how it changes.

01:58:49

This is just the tip of the iceberg that we could have covered. I mean, there's a lot of things, folks, that we probably could have addressed.

01:58:56

We even previously did address Romans 13 in a previous Theology Throwdown regarding race relations, so I'll link that in the show notes, but, you know,

01:59:05

I hope that this has been helpful. I hope that you guys learned something. We'll be here next week, next month, for another

01:59:12

Theology Throwdown. Don't know what the topic will be yet, but we'll have something, I'm sure. Prescottology?

01:59:18

Yeah, we could talk about that. We could talk about something that gets under Matt's skin. That would be good.

01:59:24

The need to buy others a meal, to let others be blessed. That would be a great...

01:59:30

You know, it's still on, buddy. It is still on. So, folks, we're glad that you listened.

01:59:37

This is just another Theology Throwdown, which is part of the Christian Podcast Community. We encourage you to go to ChristianPodcastCommunity .org.

01:59:47

Check out all of the, I think, 45 podcasts that are out there. So, it's a growing number.

01:59:53

We're continuing to grow. Go to ChristianPodcastCommunity .org, and you can check out all of the podcasts we have there.

02:00:01

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