The Sacraments of the State

So looking at the stuff that automatically gets my attention right before the program starts, there's a picture on Twitter.

It's Kingman Septic. And this is real.

This isn't a one of those made -up things. You know, I can tell it's real. First of all, it has a real

Arizona license plate on it. Secondly, in the background, it happens to, you can see what road it's on.

It's the I -40. So that's where Kingman is. And then it says,

Kingman Septic Pumping LLC. And along the back of the truck, it says, this truck is loaded with political promises.

That also would fit Kingman, if you've ever been to Kingman. Kingman is, yeah, definitely flyover territory, shall we say, as far as its political perspectives and things like that go,

I would imagine. But just saw that. And that was right below a poll a guy put up.

Has 21 ,000 votes so far. Who do you trust more about COVID, Anthony Fauci or Joe Rogan?

99%. 99 % for Joe Rogan. This is not a scientific analysis, but it probably is far more accurate than we would like.

I don't know this guy. I don't know what his background is or anything, but I read this thread this morning and I just thought, you know, let's read on the program today.

Abortion was the first sacrament of the modern church of the state, which later incorporated global warming, critical race theory, trans extremism, and most recently, coronavirus hysteria.

Abortion is the rock upon which it was all built. The faithful go berserk at threats to it.

Roe versus Wade was crucial to the rise of government as a religion for several reasons. It was an act of raw judicial power.

It was of transcendence over democracy. It was and the constitution by the elite priesthood.

It's hilarious to hear everyone who defends Roe blather about defending democracy. With Roe, the elite priesthood declared that something it wanted was good and therefore must be made lawful.

It worked backward with comical clumsiness to cobble together a legal rationalization for opposing its will using religious terminology, like penumbras and emanations.

Roe versus Wade is a religious document, the first gospel of the church of the state, not a logical legal decision.

It was a bureaucratic miracle conjuring new rights into existence from the ether, transcending both democratic popular will and republican constitution.

Roe also established the primacy of the church of the state above traditional religions. Today, we accept the ruthless cleansing of traditional faith from every corner of public life while adults and children are forced to chant the gospel of the state and perform its rituals.

Today, it's unthinkable to make policy based on faith, impose moral judgments, or question science unless your faith says there are 57 genders, your moral judgment is the inherent evil of white people, or you defy science by treating babies like tumors.

That all began with Roe versus Wade and its elevation of a new, bizarre, anti -human state religion forged by elite consensus, raised above popular will, traditional morality, republican institutions, and the science of human pregnancy by an act of pure judicial power.

The long -term social effects of abortion on demand were vital to the growth of church of the state as well.

The crisis of illegitimacy fed the welfare state. Marriage was mortally wounded and bled to death over the following decades, eliminating a rival to state power, and the family is.

When intact families are passing values of independence and responsibility to children along with intergenerational wealth and opportunities, it's hard to stampede people into accepting socialism.

Broken families living to spare on rented property are much better. Abortion became a huge money -laundering system for left -wing politics, creating many acolytes of the church of the state.

If you're old enough to remember the left railing against big business, you'll know abortion was the one titanic industry whose wealth was never questioned.

Perhaps most crucially, the first gospel of the church of the state enshrined the ideal of collective over individual responsibility.

Individual men and women were no longer to be held responsible for their choices. Everything was now society's collective problem.

That's an incredibly powerful and destructive intellectual virus injected into the American operating system at such a potent point of vulnerability, the beginning of life itself.

Many other collective responsibility arguments were built upon that foundation. Consider it's treated like sacrilege to argue a man and woman are equally and individually responsible for the actions that led to the conception of a child.

It's the original heresy against the church of the state. There are now many others with more added constantly.

Walk in with the chips that I bought and say, these things were made in 1962.

They were so stale. They were so bad. And they were like, yeah, we just discovered that.

We're really sorry. The oil wasn't hot enough this morning when they were making chips and then they made all, but it's not the first time it's happened.

And even when they gave me a quote, unquote, fresh bag, it was still like, so I don't know why, but I love their chicken quesadillas.

But other than that, it's a pain. Anyways, I was listening to Fox news and they had

Jen Psaki on and, uh, they were of course, lamenting the, uh, horrific actions of the

United States Supreme court, which I have discovered upon, uh, listening past the headlines, listening past three sentences.

Um, if you're all excited about the Supreme court, allowing the

Texas law to go into effect, please moderate your excitement. Um, it was once again, an exceptionally narrow technical issue had nothing to do with the merits of the case had nothing to, um, that law is just as subject to coming before the

Supreme court as it has ever been. Um, that five before was not an overturning of row, had nothing to do with row.

It totally had to do with, I think it was a judge and one other person were the only people that were involved in bringing the request for the injunction.

And basically it was saying, you're not the right people to be doing this. So it was a completely technical thing.

But if you notice the results, um, not only,

I mean, hopefully we have all come to recognize that the entire discussion of abortion in our land, once it is allowed to stand upon the foundation of secularism becomes a complete charade.

There, there is, there is no argument that cannot be brought forward at that point, no matter how absurd, no matter how ridiculous.

Um, so it, it, it's been obvious to me for decades that the one that, that last thing that I read there is the fundamental truth.

Here it is. Again, it's treated like sacrilege to argue a man and woman are equally an individual responsible for the actions that led the conception of a child.

It's the original heresy against the church of the state. There are not many others with more added constantly.

So when it comes to, and this, when you listen to Jen Psaki and all of her responses, and, and of course the purposeful, uh, agreed to utilization of absurd language like women's healthcare, even though 50 % of the subjects who die in abortion are women, um, and a woman's right to choose forced pregnancy.

What they're ignoring is that 99 .9 % of abortions are in reference to, to individuals who decide to engage in sexual intercourse and conceived a child, um, within or without a marriage.

The sad thing is when that's done within marriage, that's the real sad thing. And that happens a lot, but especially outside of marriage, um, the number of baby mamas and baby daddies and the number of guys who have 10, 15, what was that one guy?

26 children by 26 different women, something like that. Um, we are no longer since the 1960s allowed to go.

Well, that's the problem, right? Right there.

You're engaging in adultery, fornication, whatever terminology you want to use, depending on what the situation, the context is you're breaking

God's law. You're acting like animals in the woods instead of human beings who understand what the ramifications of their actions are.

And the point is that if you conceive a child that is a unique human being that will never be conceived again, that it doesn't matter if the same two people can have 10 children and all those children are going to be very different from one another.

They have different sets of, of capacities, abilities, and, and artistic capacities and musical capacities and everything else.

And so that's the issue. The issue is the living human being that is conceived through sexual intercourse.

But for the secularist, the ultimate right is feeling good, physical pleasure.

This is the ultimate right. And therefore to say to a woman that once you have engaged in that act, you don't have the right to murder the results of that, which you knew were the results of that when you engaged in the act in the first place.

Uh, they just, it's just like, but no, you've got your priorities all wrong. Um, my physical pleasure is far more important than anything else.

Uh, that, that child just, and of course we see the absolutely astonishing videos now on social media of women celebrating abortion or saying that if it ever happens to me, this is how

I'm gonna get rid of this thing inside my body, et cetera, et cetera. It's such a horrific perversion of the beauty of motherhood, utter abnegation of being human.

I mean, this is just animalistic evil. And so this is,

I mean, that individual are equally and individually responsible.

No, you can't have that. Um, mistake, mistakes of evolution, ugly bags of mostly water, physical chemicals are not equally and individually responsible for anything.

There's no, there's no grounds for responsibility to begin with. And especially in the religion of state, individuals can't be responsible for anything.

It's the state. And it was well said long ago.

It continues to be true today. The bigger the state, the smaller the citizen, bigger the government gets, the smaller everybody else becomes.

And what's amazing to me is how many people are like, I like this. Just take care of me.

Give me a subsistence. Give me just enough to have, have the food that I eat.

And I can, I can watch my TV and give me my little one room apartment and lock me in there and I'll be fine.

And I'm just like, what were we fighting wars for, for so long for freedom and liberty and the ability to be more than a caged lab animal really makes you wonder if there isn't something in the water because people who know, even the ones that know the history of their own nations and the sacrifices that people in previous generations made so that we would not be controlled by fascist governments, by totalitarians that wanted to tell us what to think and where to go and when we could go.

And I mean, it was, it was after World War II, at least in our nation, the, the line, your papers, please was well -known as an example of what we do not want and what we defeated and what we sent our boys off and hundreds of thousands of them died to defeat this.

We dropped an atomic bomb, two of them, one only, one was a bit of a squib, but anyway, a squib atomic bomb is still a big bomb.

We, that's why we fought those wars. And now the grandchildren of those people are so cowardly.

And that's the only term I can use. I'm sorry. If, if you literally will sell your grandchildren into slavery to a totalitarian government out of fear of a virus with a 99 .9

plus percent survival rate, you're a coward. You're not brave. You don't care about other people.

You care about yourself. Oh, I'm just showing love for neighbor. What about your neighbors who aren't born yet?

It just, it just astonishes me when Christians go, you're not showing love for neighbor, James. I think warning people about the evils of totalitarianism, when that kind of governmental system killed 125 million people last century is the best way to show love for anybody.

And if that means I have to look you in the eye and say, would you grow up? I mean, this, this, this childish religion of safism, you don't even live consistently with it.

I feel sorry for the people. There are a few people that do. There are a few people that do. I mean, when you see those guys, they never drive.

They, they, they live life hiding in a basement.

We used to look at people like that and say, man, ooh, that's, but now we want an entire society of that.

Um, no, no. Um, if that happens, the only way

I can understand it, the only way I can understand it, that's, that's judgment. That is judgment coming down from on high, big time, big time.

So yeah, um, that was a great thread. I very rarely do you see things on, uh,

Twitter where you go, wow, I'm glad that I spent seven minutes scrolling through that one and reading it because it's true.

It was very, very, very true. I, uh, still having problems with the cordons and, uh, uh, that really bothers me because, um, accordance is what

I use, but I was thinking this morning about how very, very, very, very sad it is to be a

Unitarian, how very sad it must be to be a

Unitarian. And let's be honest, that's not the most popular word in, in our vocabulary, even amongst

Christians, even if you know exactly what it is or it's technical meaning or things like that. Unitarian has carried a much broader spectrum of meaning over the years.

Um, there's the Unitarian Universalist church, for example, that I don't know if there's almost any of them left, but is your standard, uh, slightly religious social club type thing.

I think there's one over on, there used to be one over on Northern, not sure if it's still there, if they've closed up shop or I think it was

Northern and 15th Avenue, if I recall correctly on the South side of the road. But, um, but there's just, you know, normally it was viewed them as strange leftist, social clubs and things like that.

But obviously the term Unitarian had a specific theological meaning for a lengthy period of time.

And it crossed my mind this morning, I was thinking again about something that a

Unitarian had said, and then made a connection to something else is going on.

So let me, let me look at a scripture passage and just remind you of what I'm referring to. I'm referring to Philippians chapter two.

And we all know the Carmen Christi Philippians two, five through 11, very, very well.

So I won't belabor the point. Um, by the way, if my eyes look puffy or something today, we've got the room next to our offices is, is being painted.

So I have an excuse for any minor heresies that slip out today because it's like,

Ooh, yeah. Okay. Paint fumes that, that'll give me a headache.

It actually is working on doing exactly that. Anyway, um, Philippians chapter two,

I was thinking about this phraseology where speaking of the exaltation of Christ's interesting.

Apologia, we just, we're, we're doing, um, we always do catechism questions and we did the humiliation of Christ and what that, what, what that was made up of.

And now we're talking about the exaltation of Christ. And of course it is his resurrection from the dead, his ascension, the right hand of the father.

Um, and so in that context of his ascension, you have, for this reason, also

God highly exalted him and gave to him Ta -Anima

Ta -Huper -Pan -Anima. So Anima is name, Huper above, upon all.

So Ta -Anima, the name, Ta -Huper -Pan -Anima, the name that is above every name.

And this has been given to him as, and as the mechanism of his exaltation due to his obedience.

Well, I wasn't planning on putting that up, but, uh, I would have made it much larger so people can see it.

Uh, due to his, uh, self -humiliation and obedience to the will of the father, he made himself of no reputation.

He became a being at the point of death, even death on the cross. And so through that suffering comes exaltation.

This is the biblical pattern. But I was thinking about this phrase, the name, which is above every name in order that at the name of Jesus.

So Anima is used three times in three lines there in order that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow heavenly and earthly and under earthly.

I guess it'd be one way of translating those phrases and every tongue shall confess that.

And then you have the Christian phrase, the

Christian identifier, maybe it might be the way to put it. Lord, Jesus Christ, Jesus, the

Messiah is Lord, but it's to the glory of God, the father.

So there is no, there's no, uh, diminishment of the emphasis upon monotheism or anything like that.

Just as in John five, you have the same beautiful balance that you find there. But what does every tongue confess?

Why does every knee bow? The substance of that confession is

Kurios Jesus Christos. And that term Kurios, of course, any

Greek speaking Jew, well, new that comes straight out of the

Greek septuagint, that is the term that was used for Yahweh. That's the trend, not the, not the transliteration, but the terminology it's used in the

Greek septuagint to render Yahweh. So what, what ends up being taken from Christianity when you deny the deity of Christ?

Everything. Unitarianism has always, no matter how fervent it was at its beginning, led to the death of every denomination it was a part of.

It fundamentally collapses because you no longer have that, which makes

Christianity unique in world religions, no longer have the mediator.

You no longer have the God man, no longer have any way of understanding what

Paul says when he expands the Shema out in first Corinthians eight. And there is one God, the father, one

Lord, Jesus Christ, it all becomes empty.

That's why I say, I feel sorry for Unitarians because they, they have a, a, an empty, dry substitute that has no, no essence to it.

It's, it's a sad thing. Now, what made me think about that and sort of connect the two together was

I was listening to a well known commentator. Well, everybody, everybody over the past, well, even

Tim Keller, even Tim Keller commented. I was just noticing a tweet where Tim Keller congratulated the new head of the chaplains at Harvard University.

And of course, that individual is an atheist.

And so the whole, the whole world, well, you know, actually

I was thinking about that too. If this had happened, say 20 years ago,

I would suggest that it would have been something that people would have been talking about for a long, long time.

But you know how the news cycle now works? Nobody will be mentioning this a month from now other than maybe a little example of something somewhere down the line, someplace,

I don't know. But today having an atheist unanimously elected, unanimously elected as the head of the chaplains at Harvard.

Yeah. A lot of us sit here and we, we, we, we go, how is that possible?

But I don't even remember how long ago it was. It was probably maybe even been in the nineties that we had an atheist.

We had an Anglican community in England protesting that when their vicar came out as an atheist, that the church was going to remove the person from their position.

And their people were like, no, we want to keep him. We want to keep our atheist vicar to lead us in, in what?

Well, being a social club, basically. So it wasn't the first time that we've already been exposed to this kind of dissonance, this type of contradiction, but it was a reminder of how

Harvard and Yale and Princeton and all these

Ivy League schools were founded, endowed, built by Christians.

And they were built to honor the word of God and to train men to minister the word of God.

And today they hate the gospel. They hate the

Christian faith. They express that hatred through a perversion of it. Obviously that's the best way to do it, is to keep all the money, keep all the endowments, keep all the buildings, but then pervert the message.

That's best way to express your detestation of something. And so all of these institutions have just thrown any type of Christian orthodoxy on the scrap heap of history, and then seemingly are intent upon doing constant penance for ever, ever, ever having once been associated with that horrible thing called

Christianity. And so why did that happen?

How did that happen? Did it happen overnight? No, of course not. When you sadly look back upon the history of theological education in the

West, said it many times before,

I think every professor, every university president should have to read the first two chapters of Paul's epistle to the

Corinthians, 1 Corinthians, every three months, maybe more often.

I was reminded this morning that the scriptures in Deuteronomy 17 say that the king should write out the law himself, not have somebody else do it for him, but he should do it himself and have his own copy so that he has that intimate knowledge of what the word of God says to him and that it's his ultimate authority, and he's under that authority.

Man, can you imagine the difference that would make in a governmental system?

But for the Christian scholar, reading that intense warning about how the

Christian gospel is foolishness to the world, that contrast between the wisdom of the world and the foolishness of God, which obviously is meant to communicate just the opposite, that God's wisdom is not to be identified with the wisdom of the world, and that when the world attempts to promote its wisdom at the expense of God's truth, it becomes foolishness, and that we should never be seeking a place at any table where the lordship of Christ will be mocked.

We should never be seeking a place at any table where the lordship of Christ will be mocked.

If the grave was empty, then we must live in light of that empty tomb and the reality that that necessitates.

And so it doesn't matter what field you're in, Christ is lord of your work in that field, and you can't just hide that.

And so what happened is that men, and back then it was just men, became embarrassed by what was necessary of an

Orthodox Christian confession, and that would include, especially once Darwin came along, but this happened well before Darwin, but that would include the inspiration of Scripture, the consistency of Scripture, the historicity of certain events.

There have always been those who read the Hebrew Scriptures, the very Scriptures that Jesus gave absolutely complete fidelity to, and have been embarrassed by the things that took place therein, partly because they're so brutally honest.

And so what they did is they found ways of getting around that high view of Scripture, and once you abandon the highest view of Scripture, the first thing that must go consistently.

Now, if you don't care, if you're willing to use empty words and keep repeating religious traditions, but then completely redefining them, then you don't have to worry about getting rid of the

Nicene Creed or whatever else. But remember the crazy, wacky

Canadian lady we talked about just a few weeks ago? And we've talked about her once before, too. Ultra -heretic lady, where it came out she was talking about the

Nicene Creed and then, God forbid, the Athanasian Creed. Why? Because the

Athanasian Creed is so clear in differentiating divine persons. It's the doctrine of the Trinity, and if you're actually going to be consistent, if you don't believe that the

Scriptures are God speaking, if you don't believe this side to this side, not just sola scriptura, even though that's what's on the front, but tota scriptura, then you have no basis for believing the doctrine of the

Trinity. That's why all these philosophers who play games and get published picking away at the various elements of the doctrine of the

Trinity, I'm just like, go get a life. You don't believe this. If you don't believe this, why bother?

Go get a life. So, Harvard, early on, far earlier than you would expect,

Harvard moved left, and if you know the history of New England, you know that the virus, the virus of heresy that infected and destroyed so many churches in New England was the heresy of Unitarianism.

It was a recognition that without the consistency of the entirety of the revelation of Scripture, you cannot have the doctrine of the

Trinity, and you cannot have a truly divine Savior. And so Harvard started moving that way a long, long, long, long time ago.

Other schools came along to try to correct that, but they too eventually fell into the exact same sinkholes of liberalism.

And so, while there was still, you know, the external religiosity of churchianity, the heart was gone from those places a long, long time ago.

It's not that there weren't true believers that came to those places and tried to shine a light and tried to do something positive or anything like that, but there is a trajectory.

And it's no matter how you slice it, that is the trajectory of Christian educational institutions.

Down through history, I mean, even if you go back into the medieval period, most of the monastic movements were

Reformation movements because the old monastic movements had gone stale and had become lifeless and had become institutionalized and had fallen in love with the things of the world.

The faith, and okay, let's look at Europe. Let's look at the nations where Reformed theology flourished after the

Reformation. They are the most secular places in Europe today.

Why? Look at Scotland. Oh my goodness. My poor, dear

Scotland. Talk about a place that just lives in the middle of buildings that have the claims of Christ chiseled in the walls and hence seems to drive them to even wilder flights of frenzy, of rebellion, and self -loathing, and secular insanity.

Why is it? Because the faith is not something that is passed down genetically.

It's not passed down genetically. Israel proves that to us.

Look at the lines of kings. You find faithful, you find unfaithful. You find faithful, you find unfaithful. God has his purposes.

You find faithful people, it's because of God's grace. It's because of God's grace.

And yeah, God can even redeem people who start off wrong and then others can go wrong later on in life.

Got all sorts of examples no matter which direction you look, no matter which direction you look. But there are strands of Reformed theology that unfortunately fall into the trap of thinking that the faith is something that is passed on genetically, and it's not.

And if you want the clearest example of that, just look at Europe. Just look at those nations where once they were incredible.

Look at the Netherlands for crying out loud. I'm glad I got to go there at least once. Probably never get to go again, but glad I got to go there at least once.

And there are still believers there. But sadly, many of the evangelical, alive, witnessing, evangelizing, standing up for truth believers may have been raised in quote -unquote

Reformed circles, but they got saved outside of those circles because the gospel had become a formalized thing you do rather than the work of the

Spirit changing the heart. Don't get me wrong. I myself was the recipient of the gospel message as a very young child in a

Christian family, but that's because they said to me, you need to know who

Jesus is, and you need to confess your sins, and you need to follow him. And I understood that it was,

I was not a Christian simply because my mommy and daddy were Christians. So all along, it doesn't matter where you are, there is a constant need.

Ever heard of Semper Reformanda, always reforming? There is a constant need to be being called back.

And Christian scholars just have to realize that it's a beautiful and good thing that in the wisdom of God, the world, its wisdom did not come to know

God. There are a lot of people that just bugs them to no end.

I know some of you. I have given, I'm old enough now, you know,

I was telling my wife this morning and last night about how it's impacted me that, and I'm sure he watches, the young Indian man who came over from India, met him in Las Vegas, and he said to me,

I've grown up listening to you. And I'm just like, you know, when an adult tells you they grew up listening to you.

In another country, first of all, I was just rejoicing that, I mean, you hadn't heard about that?

Listen to the entire Hebrew series in India, Sermon Audio. I mean, that's awesome.

But it also reminds me that time is passing.

And as I think about, you know, eventually

I'm not going to be here. And I have said to people over and over and over and over again, the day after I go, the kingdom is just going to keep moving on.

I'm thankful that as a young man, I saw a man in my field.

I watched Bob Larson melt down. Most of you don't even know who Bob Larson was or is any longer.

But when we first started this ministry, he was huge. I mean, he was on all the radio stations and back then that's really all you could do.

There was no internet when we started, obviously. But I watched him melt down and I watched him fall into the trap of thinking that if you don't give to his ministry, the kingdom itself is going to come to a screeching halt.

I mean, it got bad. And right when it got bad, he got weird.

And I think last I knew he was in Scottsdale someplace doing exorcisms.

Yeah, that was 10, 15 years ago. That was last I heard of him. But he and his daughters, I think, would travel around doing exorcisms and stuff like that.

It was, oh, I didn't even know about that.

Yeah. Anyway. So I saw someone not finish well. And so it was burned into me that never, ever, ever let yourself think that everything's dependent upon you because it's not.

So I think about all that and I think about where we're going in the

West today. And now what I think about is how often

I thought about this without thinking far enough ahead. And again, once you become a grandfather, a lot of that changes.

You start thinking about your grandkids and your great grandkids. What about my grandkids' kids?

What can I do to sow faith into their context when if their parents tell them about their grandfather, their great grandfather, what will they tell them?

What can I provide to them? What can I do for them to encourage them in the way?

I can't know what they're going to be facing. I mean, I think of my great grandparents.

I think of a picture that I have, I've actually shown on the program of my great, either my great or great, great grandfather being held by his parents who have just come from Scotland in Broken Bow, Nebraska, out in the middle of next to a sod house out in the middle of nowhere, horses in the background, digging an existence out of the ground.

White privilege. But how could they have even begun to imagine the issues

I would be facing if they even thought of me? But how could they have known?

They couldn't have. So the best you can do is seek to communicate faithfulness, steadfastness, a depth of commitment to Christ, service, gratitude, thanksgiving.

Now we get right now until the CCP finds a way to infiltrate all of our computers and wipe out all digital stuff, we can try to communicate stuff to them in that way.

That's why I literally have been saying to people, get yourself some of these little boogers.

And I mean, you can get, it's just astonishing the size. I think

I've seen one terabyte digital cards now. I mean, it's just absolutely ridiculous.

Hide those suckers in lead line boxes in static envelopes under the floorboards someplace.

Seriously, I'm not making that up. I mean, I just read this morning about how the

CCP made one of the biggest Chinese rock stars of the late 1990s, made her disappear.

I mean, like she never existed. I mean, like 1984, like Winston sitting there editing the newspaper and changing names and pictures, very same thing, but much more effective now because you can do it digitally.

And it just happened this week, made her disappear. She no longer exists, which

I really, I had never heard of her. Obviously I'm not really into the Chinese pop star stuff.

But she had hundreds of millions of fans and now she doesn't exist.

What are they left thinking? I wonder about reality around them. What's real?

What isn't real? I honestly pray God uses that. I mean, I think one of the most awesome things that could happen would be the explosion of Orthodox sound

Christianity in China. Maybe China will take over and then

Christianity will take over China. Who saw that one coming? That'd be awesome.

Yay, do it. Wonderful freedom going out over the world. That would be great.

And if it wasn't stodgy old Western society that brought it along, who cares?

But notice I said sound Orthodox Christianity. There's a lot of Christianity in China. But a lot of the

Chinese Christians understand that and they want more. They want the sound stuff, the stuff that lasts.

They realize the importance of that. It has to go from generation to generation under pressure. Important stuff there.

But anyway, so the point is, I want to sow that seed.

I want to build that foundation. I want to send that message of faithfulness. I'm thinking down the way.

And that changes all your priorities. That changes everything. And we've got to be thinking along those lines ourselves.

So anyways, I'm not sure how I got on that from feeling sad, bad for Unitarians, but there you go.

Just real quickly, it's been a couple years since I've even really talked with Brother David down in Australia, David Old, who is in the

Anglican Church. Now again, down in Australia, you have the Sydney Anglicans, which are considered to be conservative.

I've pointed out many times in going down there, wonderful times of proclaiming the doctrine of justification by faith alone and high view of scripture and everything else.

And that's been wonderful. There is a declaration that some folks down in Australia have put together.

I'm reading from the Cauldron Pool, which is a very interesting news source.

The Ezekiel Declaration, Watchmen, it's time to speak. And it's addressed to the

Honorable Scott Morrison. They even put the extra U in for Honorable, so he would understand what it was about.

If you've not read about that, don't worry about it. As Christian leaders, you should be aware that in accordance with scripture, we regularly pray for, and all who are in high positions, that they may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

First Timothy 2 .2. We do write, however, to you regarding a matter of significant concern, namely the proposed introduction of vaccine passports into Australian society.

For many Christian leaders and Christians, this is an untenable proposal that would inflict terrible consequences on our nation.

We should initially note that we are not the first generation has been confronted with the question of vaccine passports.

Writing in 1880, aware of the challenges that a smallpox epidemic brought to society, the Christian theologian

Abraham Kuyper wrote, vaccination certificates will therefore have to go. The form of tyranny hidden in these vaccination certificates is just as real a threat to the nation's spiritual resources as a smallpox epidemic itself, end quote.

Between 1901 and 1905, Abraham Kuyper would hold the office of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

He evidently understood that a vaccine passport represent a measure that was equal to, if not worse than epidemic itself, through the oppressive control over people's lives.

Now, I just stopped for a moment. They had no tech then. They had no technology.

What amazes me is how people can live today recognizing the, you know, some of you just aren't even old enough to know this.

I mean, we've got 9 -11 coming up in, what, nine days? How many people today were not even alive then?

It's just astonishing. Oh, we have forgotten. Oh, yes. We always said, never forget, never forget.

No, we forgot. We've forgotten. And I knew we would. But so many of you have never driven down a street where there were no cameras watching everything going on.

You've just always had it. And so you've become accustomed to it. But you need to realize the time frame they're talking about here, early 1900s, they could not exercise 1 ,000th the level of control over a population that the

Chinese Communist Party does today through social credit scores, through computers.

And of course, in China, there are more cameras than there are people, which is an amazing thing, given it's

China. And we're getting that way ourselves. The tech and the fact that this thing will become your papers, it has become your papers, and that there are literally, there have already been people, there were people in South Korea who were arrested for turning these off last year.

It's moved from an indispensable, super helpful, nobody knows how to read a map anymore anyways, assistant to Big Brothers means this is the screen.

This is what they call it, viewing screen. Is that what it was in 1984? It was called the viewing screen. This is what it is now.

It's right here. And I say as a person who uses it, but am obviously sitting here very often thinking about how

I will survive when I have to stop using it. And will it be too late by then? I don't know.

Anyway, as Christian ministers, we would also agree with Kuiper's analysis in such a measure and for several reasons.

First, the government risks creating an unethical two -tiered society. That's for sure. While some individuals receive the vaccination with thanks, others may have good and informed reasons for declining.

Boy, is that for sure. One such reason is highlighted in the statement of Health Minister Greg Hunt, the world is engaged in the largest clinical trial, the largest global vaccination trial ever, and we will have enormous amounts of data.

Now, David and others said that that's not a proper use of that quote.

Well, I don't know. As it stands, it was a clinical trial.

It continues to be a clinical trial. If it was a clinical trial of any means, it would last minimally for five years, and hence we would be at the beginning of it.

And it is an experimental methodology that has a very bad history.

And all of the databases, when people even keep databases around the world, of negative effects demonstrate these have more negative effects than any other vaccine that has ever been rolled out, that wasn't immediately withdrawn anyways.

Which should make somebody go, huh, free citizens should have the right of consent, especially when the vaccine rollout has been labeled as a clinical trial.

Imposing a vaccine passport when the nation is already divided on the matter risks the creation of medical apartheid.

While that is absolutely true, I simply have to point out the utter truth, and it's being verified in every single paper that comes out and then gets censored.

That's the best way to find out what the best information is. And if you're sitting there going, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It has to be in these sources. Think with me, dear

Christian friend, please. The love of money is a root of all sorts of kinds of evil.

The hundreds of billions, nay, we should say trillions of dollars globally that are now changing hands and going into big pharma and big tech.

If that doesn't make you go, wow, that's a huge temptation to create a narrative to keep that money flowing, then you are one of the most naive people on the planet and you need to grow up.

Why is it that only one side gets censored? Why is it that only one side gets fired? Why is it only one side gets called all the names?

And if you can't account for the trillion dollars, you should, you really, really should.

So the point is we are vaccinating for last year's virus. The current vaccines are collapsing in effectiveness.

The numbers are clear. The Israeli numbers are clear.

And while others are, and while there's been clearly people trying to say, no, no, no, it's just the unvaccinated that are getting sick.

It's not possible. The numbers don't work. And more and more people are being honest.

Well, yeah, most of the people in our hospital actually are vaccinated. Yeah, right.

The narrative is being propped up. And so already the

Lambda variant is in South America. It will be here before long. And in essence, the current vaccines will do nothing for it.

And then the Mu variant is now being whispered about. And the big danger is, will those rip through the vaccinated population?

Because we didn't do this right. And we knew it from the start. Many people tried to warn about it from the start.

And who can you trust when it comes to the numbers? Again, once you throw...

Remember when a million dollars was a lot of money? Most people just can't even imagine the difference between a million and a billion and a trillion.

It's beyond our experience. And so the impact of that kind of money on the willingness of people to change numbers with the inevitable disastrous results should never be underestimated.

I just hope history allows us to record what actually ended up happening as a result of all that.

Anyways, the result being that those who declined the vaccine are ostracized and alienated from aspects of public life, all of public life.

History has never reflected well for those who promote segregation, as there has been no discussion that the precautionary measures will be retracted once the pandemic has concluded.

There is a real concern that many of these measures will remain permanent. And I would just simply say, in a government where totalitarianism is now considered to be a public good, an unwillingness to submit to irrational demands from the totalitarians is what this is all about.

They'll find out who the recalcitrant ones are and who the ones are who will just simply submit and do whatever they're told.

A vaccine passport would therefore represent the dangerous precipice of a therapeutic totalitarianism that does not promote liberty and human flourishing, but would rather only dehumanize and control its citizens, all under the cloak of personal health and safety.

Exactly. Exactly. Second, a good portion of the population are already burdened to the point of despair.

Granted, we understand why our leaders felt compelled to lock down in March 2020. The threat was unknown, our ability to withstand it untested.

However, it is now 2021, and the adverse effects of perpetual lockdowns are now being revealed. We understand needing to respond, but we are concerned with heavy -handed approaches that exceed people's capacity to live a normal life.

We are compelled to speak out on behalf of struggling people, the needy, the destitute, those being harmed by such strong measures.

Proverbs 31, 8 through 9. Well, I thankfully have not lived in a place like Melbourne.

I don't know if I could, I'll be honest with you. But that's understating things, from my perspective.

Understating things, big time. The adverse effects of lockdowns are especially highlighted in the rise of people considering suicide.

The Journal of Psychiatric Research published a paper in July of 2021, based on research done on Melbourne's extended 2020 lockdowns.

Some of their findings are as follows. I'm going to skip over that for now, other than just simply saying there was a great upsurge in suicides and things like that.

1 in 10 people considering suicide is a tragedy. 1 in 10. As these lockdowns continue, it is evident that people are getting more desperate, with many people considering suicide as their means of escape.

People are inherently social creatures, meant for human interaction and contact, not long -term isolation. But these policies are causing many people to feel lonely and increasingly isolated.

Well, that's because you're basically putting the entire populace in prison. It may be your house is your prison, but it's still prison.

In Japan, according to Japanese research, during the second lockdown, suicide rates increased by 49 % among children and adolescents and 37 % among women.

The reason this information from Japan is relevant is because it shows that their second lockdown was far worse than their first on people's mental health.

We have been in cascading lockdowns for about 18 months now. This will be taking a toll. This psychological effect is not theoretical.

Another recent ABC News report documented the effects of lockdown on alcohol consumption. 1 in 5

Australians increased alcohol use during the lockdowns.

We know the statistics. We know that 93 % of hospital admissions at the weekend are alcohol -related. We know domestic violence is hugely related to alcohol consumption.

We know it's bad, and people are realizing that. By changing the goalposts from the original objective, remember this, have to have a degree in ancient history, two weeks to flatten the curve, to now requiring a proposed vaccine passport in order to live a normal life, the government is putting immeasurable pressures on ordinary people.

If the ABC is correct, and 20 % of Australians are drinking more during lockdowns, what will be the societal cost of adding a vaccine passport, which will potentially alienate already desperate

Australians and turn them into second -class citizens? Jesus tells Christians to count the cost for which you designed

Luke 12, 14, 28. Jesus is using a secular principle to make a spiritual point, and whether you are making a spiritual or secular decision, you must count the cost.

There are many people in our communities, not just in our churches, who are facing the cost of these policies and growing increasingly concerned about them.

Much more can be said on this point. The effects on missed cancer diagnoses and other illnesses by people staying home from the doctors, the effect on children's missed and inconsistent education, youth graduating into a closed economy finding it difficult to find work, poverty is leading cause of poor life outcomes, and these lockdowns are pushing people financially to the brink.

The additional vaccine passport into Australian society may be the nail in the coffin to many people who are already at the point of desperation.

Third, the conscience should never be coerced. The conscience is one of the innermost expressions that animates an individual, and that allows them to worship

God as well as obey a legitimate governing authority. The conscience is the immediate contact of God's presence in a person's soul, and so an individual forced to act in a way that is objectionable to conscience will never be at peace either before God or before the state.

A government that endeavors to force or coerce an individual who is striving to honor God will find they only encounter resistance regarding need for free conscience.

Kuiper writes, conscience is therefore the shield of the human person, the root of all civil liberties, the source of a nation's happiness.

A government should never coerce conscience, but rather respect the important function that carries in aiding a person to worship

God freely and live obediently before the state. As we have noted, Jesus commands Christians to count the cost, and many believers do not feel that we have all the information necessary to make a decision on this vaccine at this point in time, or,

I would say, have very real reasons to believe that we have been lied to, and that there is a tremendous amount of data indicating that when people say these things are safe and effective, they are lying to us, or they themselves have been deceived.

One of the two. We respect that many people have made this calculation and decided it's best for them to get the vaccine, and that is their right, and we do not seek to abrogate it, but those who are not ready or hesitant are so for very valid reasons.

I think it would have been good if they had included more of those valid reasons. Their conscience binds them to wait, and their

Savior advised them to not make decisions before they have counted the cost, and I would simply point out that none of this needed to be said prior to 2020, because the time frames that would have been involved in testing these vaccines would have been years long.

Years long. This is a principle wisdom that everyone applies to many aspects of their lives.

We would therefore ask the government not to coerce the conscience of many Australians for the use of a vaccine passport.

Fourth, making vaccination a basis of participating in normal life would make no logical sense in terms of protecting others.

A CDC study shows 74 % of people infected in Massachusetts COVID outbreak were fully vaccinated, especially noting that four of those who were vaccinated were admitted to a hospital.

As we have said, we respect people's right and choice to be vaccinated, but this type of data published by America's leading body of disease experts, and I would just simply point out to those of you overseas, here in the

United States, we happen to know the CDC is a political body. That's one of the things that's been a struggle for us, is

I was one of the many people who were taught to simply trust the medical community. The Hippocratic Oath, they are the trustworthy people.

And again, the transfer of money into this field has been so massive that any

Christian who's read Romans 1 should sit back and go, that is a reason to doubt the sincerity of the people that are pushing these things.

They are being deeply enriched by this. Money, a root of all kinds of evil.

But this type of data published by America's leading body of disease experts causes people to wonder about the effectiveness of the vaccine along with concern about coercive measures by which to have it administered.

As it is evident that vaccines do not prevent infection, to restrict a person's access to society based on a medical choice is questionable.

Not only that, the evidence is now overwhelming, and the CDC admits it, that the vaccines massively increase the amount of virus that a person will carry in their body, making them super spreaders.

That's why they started the mask stuff again, though they know that that will do nothing. Fifth, we as Christian leaders,

I'm almost done here, sorry. Fifth, we as Christian leaders find it untenable that we would be expected to refuse entry into our churches to a subgroup of society based on their medical choice.

Only our precious Savior Jesus Christ has the authority to regulate the terms of corporate worship. These terms tell us that we are to make it no distinction between those who call out in faith, neither on race nor medical choice.

We are also under the obligation to proclaim the gospel to all men. Our strongest conviction is that this gospel message is the greatest news ever to be pronounced and includes nothing less than God's free gift of saving grace and the offer of eternal life to all who would respond in repentance and faith.

To refuse people access to this message would betray our Savior and everything he calls us to uphold. We cannot imagine a situation in which we would refuse someone whom

Christ has welcomed. May you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and then, I guess, some of the primary people who started this, which

I noticed the first three that are listed were all Baptists. Now, I think that was great.

I think that's, obviously, there's a whole lot more that could be said.

That's why I kept stopping and saying, and I would add this, and I would add that, etc., but I think it's wonderful.

The real question I have to ask to my Australian brothers in whose churches

I have spoken, where do you draw the line? When are you going to draw the line?

I mean, if they literally say you cannot meet without requiring vaccine passports, knowing that it's a lie, knowing that someone who can come into your fellowship who is fully vaccinated, who now has 300 times the amount of virus in their nose because they're vaccinated, so they can pass it around wonderfully well, and you get breakthroughs right, left, and center.

So, you know that it's an empty promise. It was not what they said it would be. It's not doing what they said it would do.

This is not how we have dealt with any respiratory virus in the past ever, and there's a reason for it.

When do you finally say enough is enough? How far can the government go?

I mean, I was just looking at a thing. They're talking about mandating apps on your phones that are not just vaccine passports, but they also facial recognition, full access to all your contacts so you can do contact tracing, all that.

Where does it end? Isn't that what the CCP does to destroy home churches?

How obvious does it have to get before you go, okay, wait, we do need to stand up.

We finally need to say no. There is in the history of Anglicanism something called the via media, the middle way, and it's genetic.

It's genetic to Anglicanism. It was how king or queen, queen initially, tried to hold, from our perspective, and not a very diverse population together, but back then it was considered to be diverse, hold

Puritans and others together in one nation, in essence, and it was the middle way.

It was you always look for compromise. Is there a way for us all to live with each other?

And that may sound good, but where has it led the Church of England? Where has it led the

Church of England? I'm just going to say this, love in my heart,

I love those guys, probably never get to go there again, but love those guys, pray for the best for them, but you've got women bishops because the via media, and I'm sorry, the

Bible doesn't allow that, and you all know that the other side never stops, and when they go cranking it over to the left a little bit more, what happens to the via media?

It comes over to the left as well. It never goes the other direction.

That's how that kind of thing works. We see it in politics all the time. And so what are you doing with same -sex unions?

What are you doing with homosexuals? Eventually, you just have to go, no, here's the line, that's it.

The problem is if you've been moving incrementally all this time, it's hard to say, okay, this is absolutely it because you go, yeah, well, yeah, you probably thought about doing that back at that point and that point.

You've been coming along all along. So if you allow the

Australian government to coerce the consciences of your people, when you, guys, you have no idea what the long -term impacts these vaccines are.

You don't know because they don't know. You don't know because they don't know.

You do not know what the impact of these vaccines are on fertility.

So are you going to tell an 18 year old, go ahead? Do you know what the result of that's going to be?

You don't know. And there have been plenty of people who've gone, there's some really, there's reasons for being concerned here because they initially told us this spike protein is only going to be in this area, but actually we've found it all over the body now.

And it has some really negative consequences. And I'm hoping none of that stuff happens.

I hope that ADE doesn't just explode in the population resulting in horrible consequences, but we don't know.

And so hesitation is not rebellion. It's common sense. It's simple common sense.

And now it's common sense that has to have a backbone because the government is putting pressure to try to get rid of common sense.

You've got to have a certain level of bravery to be willing to sacrifice now to maintain common sense, but it's got to be done at some point.

And here in the States, you all say, but look at how many people have died up there.

And we're trying to go, guys, there's a difference between dying of and dying with. And we changed our death certificate reporting in March of 2020.

Don't know why that happened. But now if you have

COVID and if your blood's tested two weeks after you're dead, and it said you had

COVID, COVID death, you might've died. You may have been a terminal cancer patient.

You may have been given six weeks to live. And this is only four weeks in, you didn't even make your six weeks.

It's still a COVID death. And you guys are on an island. Okay. It's a big island.

I get it, but it's still a very different situation, very different situation.

And yet it seems to me that Australia has just gone, fine, lock us up.

Freedom, liberty, don't need it. Just keep us safe. Well, they're not even gonna be able to do that.

That's the problem. They can't even do that. The virus is going to virus. It's going to get there eventually.

It's going to get there eventually. And now you can't protest in the streets unless it's for Black Lives Matter.

You can protest for the right stuff that the government wants you to protest for. So I'm personally thankful for those who are willing to stand up and say, hey, government guys, there is an authority above you.

If anything, it should have said that. There is an authority above you.

And you can't do this kind of thing, especially given the actual numbers, if we even know what the actual numbers that we can trust are.

We should be able to, the very fact that there is any dispute about whatsoever demonstrates there's something else going on.

There's something else going on. All right.

Well, there's all sorts of other stuff. I started a list last year of medical papers on the foolishness of masking.

It is getting huge. It is so unwieldy now. It is so big.

But there have been a number, to be honest with you, I sort of forgot to add a couple. Well, maybe more than that for a while, because it's just so huge.

But there have been a number come out recently. And I'm not sure how to list

Anthony Fauci personal emails. But it would fit because he knows it.

He well knows it. He well knows it. That man, oh, talk about responsibility. Wouldn't want to bear that responsibility.

I was going to get into some comments from Dr. Scott Atlas, the fellow who you may have, you remember, may have seen him in the, remember when this all started?

There was daily news briefings from the White House. He was one of the guys with Trump. But there's a article, science killed itself over COVID -19.

And he makes some really good points about censoring the scientific process, destroying its own credibility, foolishness of lockdowns, et cetera, et cetera.

And maybe we'll get into that next time around. So anyhow. All right. Thank you so much for listening to the program today.

And I think looking like a pretty normal week next week. We got about two normal weeks next week, starting next week.

And then I need to get you the all the details for road trip number two, road trip number two, because yeah, because we've got some there's some big stuff that's developed.

The mini conference isn't gonna be all that of a mini conference when you got Owen Strand and Jeffrey Johnson and me doing the solos.

That's not a real mini. It's mini as in being short. But we've got that.

We've got the stuff down in Florida. Who knows whether a debate will come out of that.

I'm sort of doubtful of it, but still hoping. And yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway. So yeah, lots of stuff coming up in that.

And of course, G3. Pray for our health. Pray for my health as I'm traveling.

I mean, I'm glad handing with everybody. And even in the olden days back in before COVID, you could get sickness as you were traveling, especially when you're traveling the way

I'm traveling. So actually, I'll take that back. Traveling in a hermetically sealed tube with 300 people, a lot worse than traveling in the truck.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's how that's how Rich is getting there. And I'm like, that's because that's how I don't do that kind of thing.

You've got a car. Yeah, but I'll be wearing my nosh mask on board. Oh, that'll be fun. I'll get a little attention, you think?

Um, yeah. Yeah, I probably would. I probably would. The Darth Vader thing.

There you go. It's a mask. Why not? Hey, you got to be careful. I've been told that, especially if you're flying

American, some of those flight attendants have become pretty power hungry.