Gold and Gabe Rench's Publicity Stunt

Alright, well I hope you had a good weekend, and I'm looking forward to another week of videos. But before we begin today, I've got a couple things I want to talk about in terms of the content. But before we begin, I just want to ask for prayer, and for you to consider helping out a brother.

So the first thing is, Friday night was a weird night. There's actually two bits of sad news that I got on Friday night before I went to sleep. The first one is that an elder of my church, it's a very small church, you know, small group of elders, and all of that, he passed away suddenly.

And nobody was expecting it, it wasn't like he was sick or something like that. You know, he's an older guy, when I say older I mean older than me. So definitely not of the age where you'd expect him to just pass suddenly.

So he's leaving behind a wife, two kids, very very sad situation. So obviously the Lord's Day on Sunday was very somber. But of course, you know, we're in grief right now, but we understand that he's in a better place.

It doesn't make it any easier for us. So we just want to lift his family up in prayer, and all of that kind of thing. His wife, the church in general, he did a lot of things for the church. And so obviously there's a lot of logistics to be figured out, and all of that kind of stuff.

So please, prayers for him, very very sad situation. My pastor, it was his closest friend I think, locally. So just very very sad situation, please pray for them. Now the other bit of sad news is one of my internet friends, Matt Travis, and I say internet friends, but I consider him a friend, you know, internet friends are real.

Matt Travis, he does a podcast, a really good podcast that you should definitely take a listen to. He had a stroke on Friday night as well, and this is a younger guy, this is a guy probably my age. Now, it looked like there was an update here that I didn't quite understand the update, but it looked like maybe he was about to have a stroke, but the ER medicine had subsided it.

I didn't really understand. But either way though, they're raising money for him. One of my other friends, Cody, is raising money for him because he's not insured, and so this is going to be a very unexpected medical expense.

So whether he had a stroke or not, he's going to have the expenses. And as I think about this, probably the last thing that you want to be worrying about when you're recovering from a stroke is money, because money is very stressful and stress is probably not good when you're recovering from anything, or especially a stroke.

And so I would just, number one, pray for this family, again, a young guy, probably not expecting this in any way. And also, if you're able, please consider donating to help him cover some of these medical expenses.

I'll put the link to this GoFundMe in my description so you can consider doing that. But yeah, so two bits of really weird, sad news and all that kind of thing, so I would just ask for you for prayers for these two families and for my church in general.

Also before we begin, let me just say this, I know a lot of you guys have been praying for me and sort of business situations and things like that. Well, Friday, we got word that we closed our first larger deal in quite some time.

And so that felt really good, everyone's pretty excited about it, and so thank you for your prayers there. And we're just going to move forward, we're just going to pretend like that never happened. But anyway, thank you for your prayers there, I do appreciate it.

Gold, Beauty, and Why Precious Metals Endure

Two topics today, and I don't know if you care about these topics or not, but I just find them interesting. One of them is about gold. And I've been taking a look at gold, and it's so funny, I was calling my bank to do a bank wire to a gold dealer, and he asked me what it was for, because they ask a lot of questions to make sure you're not getting scammed by a call center in India or something like that.

And I said, oh, you know, it's precious metals, and he goes, oh man, and we started talking about it. And he couldn't really say much because he's working for the bank, you know, obviously, but he was like, yeah, you know, with all the stuff that's going on in Congress, like, you know what I'm talking about.

And I was like, yeah, I definitely know what you're talking about. And he was telling me about his investments and stuff like that. It's a very interesting conversation. We also talked about Bitcoin a little bit, which I thought was super interesting that this guy would just randomly talk to me about Bitcoin.

But we actually have the same opinion on Bitcoin, where it's like, all our friends that are investing in Bitcoin, they look like geniuses right now, because how ridiculously the bull market has grown with Bitcoin.

But we're both not sold. I told him, I said, if we knew each other in real life, we'd be best friends, because we have very similar mindsets on this. It was just very interesting. Anyway, so I was looking at buying some gold.

And I was just thinking to myself, you know, why is it that gold has withstood the test of time so much? Why is gold so desirable? And I was looking at some content from a variety of different people that I follow, some of them Christians, some of them non-Christians.

But the Christian guy that I follow is a guy named Gary North. He talks about gold. And he made a great point that I just thought was so interesting, because typically when you talk to someone about gold, they say a couple things.

They say, well, it's very rare, which makes it very desirable. And, you know, there's a consistent supply of it. You know, the production of gold, it takes a lot of effort, a lot of work. So you can pretty much gauge how much more gold is going to be in the market any given year and stuff like that.

And they're like, well, then that's what makes it good money. And while those things are definitely true, I don't know that that's enough to really describe what makes it good, what makes it desirable.

Because there are lots of things that are rare that aren't that desirable. Peter Schiff likes to talk about Beanie Babies, right? Like there are certain Beanie Babies that are very rare to this day. But nobody's using them as money.

I know nobody's like, nobody cares about Beanie Babies anymore. Well, maybe people do. I don't know. But they don't care about them the way they used to. But gold, for some reason, is just desirable, right?

And, you know, one of the things that people say is, well, it's just intrinsically, it has value in and of itself. It's just intrinsically valuable. And that doesn't really work so much for a Christian because really the only thing that is valuable in and of itself is God himself, right?

He's valuable because he's valuable. He's God, right? But God can put value into things and he can put it into our minds that we want to acquire certain things. And some people will say, well, gold is one of those things.

And maybe, maybe there's something to that. But then what Gary North commented on, I thought this was so intriguing. The first time gold is mentioned in the Bible, it comes at a time where scarcity was not an issue.

Scarcity was not really an issue. It wasn't really at play. Now, maybe it still was scarce at this time, but, but, but this is the garden of Eden. Like God provided us everything we could ever need. And it was there.

You just pick the fruit off the tree and you didn't have to like toil and the sweat of your brow wasn't going to be frustrating to, to, to, to, to cultivate the garden. It was going to be a joy, a pleasure.

Frustration came later. Frustration was part of the curse. And so the first time God mentions gold, he mentions it in a situation where scarcity is really not even a consideration. He, he creates man out of the dirt.

He creates man. He creates the animals. He creates the plants and all this stuff, the sky, the firmament, all this kind of stuff, right? He puts the moon and the stars within the firmament. And it's just like, he does it all right.

And then in chapter two, it's talking about the rivers in the garden of Eden. And this is what it says. It says this in chapter two, verse 10. Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden. And from there it parted and became four river heads.

The name of the first is Pishon. It is the one which skirts the whole land of Havilah where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good. Delium and onyx stone are there. And it's like, it's mentioning these minerals and these metals and these metals are really, they're only good for beauty.

Like they're only good for making things beautiful or making, you know, not trinkets, but like, but like things that people like, like to look at, right? Like gold is beautiful, right? Like you, you get a gold ring and because it's a beautiful thing, you put, you know, jewelry on your wife because it like adorns your wife, that kind of thing.

And it's a, it's a thing about, it's about beauty more than anything. And so God puts these stones there, onyx stone, delium, gold. And he puts it there at a situation where we're really not worried about scarcity, right?

We're not worried about frustration. We're not worried about that kind of stuff. But God calls it out that he put it there for us. And so gold is desirable and will always be desirable because God made it.

So that's how he made it. He made it there to be beautiful. He made it to be useful for us. And so we can use its usefulness and we can admire its beauty. If you've ever held a gold coin, Gary North talks about this and it's definitely true.

Like I, I always felt this way as well, where it's like, it's, it's almost like if the weight that you feel in your hand, when you see the gold coin, you're always kind of impressed by it, right? You're always, it's like, wow, this is, this is, there's something, there's substance to this, you know what I mean?

It's just, to me, it's just very, very interesting that it's just like, gold has always been a desirable thing. And God uses the gold as a metaphor for many, many, many good things. Obviously our hope is not in gold, right?

You know, you can't, you can't trust in your gold in the time of trouble, right? That kind of thing. But, but there is a desirability to gold that I think that God put there, you know, and it's there and he's not taking that away, right?

And there's not that same desirability when it comes to something like Bitcoin. I'm not saying Bitcoin is bad and I'm not saying Bitcoin's a terrible investment and I'm not saying Bitcoin won't be useful in the future.

But what I am saying is that God put gold in the garden because he knew that we would desire it. He knew that we would want to make beautiful things with it. And he put that desire in our hearts, I think, intentionally to make the world beautiful.

He put this beautiful metal in the dirt and we're tasked with digging it out of the dirt, processing it and making beautiful things. Like that's part of the whole thing, right? You can't really do that with Bitcoin.

Again, not saying Bitcoin's horrible, but it's really not anything like gold at all. And so I just thought that was so interesting. It's there and it's beautiful and you can adorn your wife in gold and this is a beautiful thing.

Paul’s Publicity Stunts and the Gospel Going Forward

Now, let's go to the next thing. And if you disagree with me on gold, you know, that's fine. Anyway, the next thing I wanted to talk about was the Apostle Paul. And I was thinking about the Apostle Paul when I saw that the brother from Moscow, Idaho, Gabriel.

Gabriel Wrench, I guess, is suing the people who arrested him or I guess the entity that arrested him for singing Psalms. And I say good for him, right? I say good for him. But then I could hear in my voice, in my head, the voices of some very upset women, very hysterical women that would say,.

Oh, here they go again. Those Muscovites, they're just causing, they're just doing a publicity stunt.

I just heard them and it was just so grating on my head. And I was like, how are you in my head? But I could hear them saying, it's just a publicity stunt. And they were hysterical. Did I mention that they were hysterical?

Anyway, so I wanted to think about that for a little bit because I couldn't get it out of my mind. But it's just interesting to me because people are often, they hear that it's just a publicity stunt and they want to defend the Moscow people and say, it's not a publicity stunt, right?

And that's fair. If you want to defend it and say it's not a publicity stunt, go right ahead. But actually, I take a different approach because I think that there's really nothing wrong even if it was just a publicity stunt.

Like, what would be the problem with that? A publicity stunt, right? Because I think if you read the Book of Acts in a certain way, you can see Paul, the apostle, engaging in a bit of a publicity stunt.

Now, he was doing it not to promote himself, of course, but he was doing it to get an audience with the leaders of Rome so that he could present the gospel of Jesus Christ to many, many people. And it worked perfectly for the apostle Paul.

And I think that the situation with Gabe Wrench potentially could work as well. Now, obviously, they need to be careful to use it to their advantage as much as possible for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But it can be done, and I think it will be done. God's gospel will go forth to many, many people that it potentially would not have gone forth to had he not engaged in this publicity stunt. But let me read Paul, the apostle's publicity stunt.

So if you remember, Paul was captured and he was beaten. And so they were interrogating him, blah, blah, blah, for preaching the gospel, whatever. And so this is what it says in Acts chapter... Is this chapter 22?

And starting at verse 22, it says this in the word of God,. And they listened to him until this word, and then they raised their voices and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he is not fit to live.

Then as they cried out and tore off their clothes and threw dust in the air, very dramatic, these people, the commander ordered him to be brought into the barracks and said that he should be examined under scourging so that he might know why they shouted so against him.

So they bound him with thongs. Paul said to the centurion who stood by, Is it lawful for you to scourge a man who is a Roman and uncondemned? So you see Paul saying, Hey, you're gonna beat me. I'm a Roman citizen.

And what crime have I committed? Is that something that you can legally do? In other words, he's threatening a lawsuit here. He's saying, look, this is not lawful. And everyone's gonna know about it. And you're gonna be in big trouble.

And so the centurion heard that. And he told the commander saying, Take care of what you do for this man is a Roman. Then the commander came and said to him, Tell me, are you a Roman? He said, Yes. The commander answered, With a large sum, I obtained this citizenship.

And Paul said, But I was born a citizen. Then immediately those were about to examine him, withdrew from him. And the commander was also afraid after he found out that he was a Roman and because he had bound him.

So you see, you see, Paul is making, it's like he's making a federal case out of this. Right now it's a private matter. And it's just between them and I guess the local magistrate and stuff like that.

And it could have ended here. But he's saying, Look, I'm a Roman citizen. I got rights. I got my rights. And so he's appealing further. And actually what ends up happening is it ends up going to another magistrate ends up going to Felix, that ends up going to King Agrippa.

And eventually he appeals to Caesar. And they say, OK, you're going to go see Caesar if that's how you want to do this. And really, so every step of the way, Paul is just making this a bigger and bigger case.

And the reason he's doing it is not to save his own skin, because the text makes it very clear that he could probably have gotten out of this in a much easier way. In fact, one of the governors was hoping that he'd be offered money and Paul probably could have gotten some money together to give to him to get out of the prison.

But he instead, he does a publicity stunt, right? Instead, he makes a big deal out of this. And because he does this, more and more people hear the gospel. By the way, I'm not just making this up that he's doing this because he actually did this before.

In Acts 16, he is imprisoned with Silas. And the reason he's in prison is because there was a girl that was possessed by a demon that used to do fortune telling and stuff like that. Paul cast the demon out of the girl.

And then the master of the slave girl was really upset because now she can no longer do the fortune telling. And they end up putting him in jail. And they're in jail. They're singing praises to God. The Philippian jailer is saved.

His whole family is baptized. His whole family, even the babies. And so all that happens. And then the magistrate says, okay, we'll let you go now. We're just going to let you go. You didn't do anything wrong.

And Paul's like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm a Roman citizen. Again, he's making a federal case out of this. He's threatening lawsuit. He's saying, I'm a Roman citizen. You can't just let me go out secretly.

You can't just beat me and jail me and then just say, okay, you're on your way. No, no, no. We're going to have to make a case out of this. And they get terrified. They get terrified of this. And they just say, no, get out of here, right?

So Paul tried this kind of thing before. It didn't work that time. I mean, he got out of the situation, but he didn't get to go see Caesar. And now in Acts 23, he's got this whole plot and it ends up working.

He sees Felix, the governor. He sees King Agrippa. And eventually he's sent to Caesar because what does he do? He's doing, this is a publicity stunt, right? This is a publicity stunt. It's not a Paul publicity stunt.

It's a Jesus Christ is Lord publicity stunt. He's trying to get the gospel to more people and it actually works. People are converted. The Philippian jailors converted all of these kinds of things. And so even if it were just a publicity stunt, that would be fine.

You see, that's the thing. If you want to defend the Moscow guys and say, well, it's not a publicity stunt, blah, blah, blah. I'm not going to say that that's wrong. I'm not, I have no beef with you. You see, I just take a different approach.

It's like, okay, and it's a publicity stunt. Stop being hysterical. What's the problem with that? You know what I mean? But please, please stop being hysterical. Yeah, so I don't know. It strikes me as Paul is drawing attention to the message of Jesus Christ by making a federal case out of something that was really a small issue at first, a local issue.

The Moscow issue is a very local issue. And now it looks like Gabe is making a federal case out of it. Good. I say good. I'm glad he's doing it. I'm glad it's going to get attention. And I just pray that God would use this to the advantage of the church and for the message of the gospel of the kingdom of God.

I hope you found this video helpful. God bless.