The American Churchman: Hurricane Helene's Destruction

It is our lowest income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme conditions.

And so we have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality, but we also need to fight for equity, understanding not everyone starts out at the same place.

And if we want people to be in an equal place, sometimes we have to take into account those disparities. You're filling gas, right?

How much a gallon? $10. $10 gallon. Okay. Honestly, I don't know how you did not have a formal, a formal press conference or something from either

President Biden or Kamala Harris. I mean, how do you not say anything for four days?

They've been stranded for four days and this is the first we've heard from them at all.

FEMA is not on the ground there at all. They are not in these cities, not in these towns and not in these villages.

There's no water in some of these communities. We have neighbors in North Carolina with no water.

And all I can say is this, the government ain't coming to save you. Not now, not ever, because they don't care about you, the people, anymore.

I've heard you and Vice President Harris here in Washington commanding this. I command this. Call the telephone.

People in Western North Carolina were drowning in their houses this weekend. Others were losing everything.

President Biden was at his beach house and Vice President Harris was hosting political fundraisers on the

West Coast. Is there any reason that they could not be here? The president did exactly what a president in this moment needs to do, which is directing his team to take action.

Welcome to the American Churchmen podcast. I'm John Harris.

This is my co -host, Matthew Pearson, and the American Churchmen podcast is brought to you by TruthScript.

We are dedicated to inspiring Christian men to embrace their divine calling, exploring a range of topics such as theology, culture, politics, economics, and other issues.

Today we're obviously going to be talking about the hurricane, as well as continuing our study on the attributes of God.

How are you doing, Matthew? I'm good, John. How are you doing today? I mean, I know we started this with a very somber tone, but my day is going well.

I'm pretty saddened by what's been happening due to the hurricane, but we'll be getting into that.

Yeah. How are you doing? Same, same. Well, you live in Florida, so you're no stranger to hurricanes, and normally, well, not normally, but often when the hurricane comes through,

Florida is the one that gets hit more than other states, but not this time. No, I was very surprised.

We did still get hit pretty hard. Nothing like what we've been seeing there, but there's been quite a bit of stuff, but Governor DeSantis has been cleaning it up pretty well, which

I'm very grateful for that we have the capacity to do that as a state due to where we are, but yeah, it's heartbreaking seeing what's going on in states like North Carolina and all that.

Yeah, well, I just came back from our men's retreat over the weekend, and that was really good in the Adirondack Mountains.

We did have one gentleman from Florida who could not attend last minute because of the hurricane, and a few others from Georgia, I think it was mainly from Georgia, at least two people from that state who said that back home,

I think power had gone off temporarily and some other things. My brother,

David, actually is living in Tennessee, and so he wasn't in the affected areas, but he was close enough that he's going to go up there this weekend, which

I think to get to the affected areas, it probably would take him, I think, about an hour. He's near Maryville area, so anyway, a lot of people that I know live down there and are at least close to where the disaster zone is, but the disaster zone is more in the mountains themselves, not where high concentrations of people are, maybe with the exception of Asheville, that was a major city, and it's half destroyed.

And living in North Carolina, as I did for a few years, we would go to places like Boone and Asheville and Marion to hike, to go to events.

I mean, it was kind of the vacation spot for people in that state and a beautiful area. And to see these pictures, it is so dystopian, so our prayers are with them.

Let's keep praying for them, and we're going to get into that later in the podcast.

Before we get there, though, I just want to remind everyone that TruthScript is a 501c3 organization.

If you want to donate to TruthScript, you can go to truthscript .com, scroll to the bottom. There's a little donate tab at the bottom.

If you want to contribute articles to TruthScript, you can also do it there. And of course, they sponsor the American Churchman podcast.

There's an article that we're going to get to from TruthScript soon. Before we get there, though, let's talk a little bit about the attributes of God.

We've been going through that on the American Churchman podcast. And Matthew, I actually don't have access to the spreadsheet because I cleared the catch on my browser.

I was having some trouble getting the program started, and so now my password is not coming up. So I'm going to rely on you right now to take it away a little bit, and then

I'll join in. Yeah, that sounds good. Well, today on our spreadsheet for this episode, we are going to be going over arguably a very controversial attribute, especially in light of a lot of people from late 20th century and even today, but the concept of divine simplicity.

So the way that I'm going to tackle this is going to be pretty similar to how we've done some of them in the past. It's a very heady one.

There's going to be a lot of quotes. We'll be talking about it, breaking it down a little bit. But just for the sake of time, we can't get into all the details and all the particulars, and this one always does bring up a lot of questions.

So divine simplicity. Let's begin. It should first be noted about divine simplicity that this attribute of God is, we would say it's a negative attribute, meaning not negative as in it's a bad attribute as if God were to have any bad attributes, but more so this is a claim about what

God is not, what is not in God or what is not, you know, if we want to really not be good at divine simplicity, what is not part of God.

But as we'll learn soon, God does not have any parts. So as I kind of just gave it away there, even though divine simplicity is a what we call a negative attribute, we can make a positive assertion about it and a negative assertion.

So our positive assertion concerning divine simplicity is this. All that is in God is

God. Very simple, very straightforward. All that is in God is God.

All of God's attributes are can be said to be his own divine essence.

So the positive assertion, all that is in God is God. Our negative assertion is this. God is not made up of or composed of parts.

So when I say God is not made up of parts, this is what I mean. So when I say parts, this can be in reference to physical parts.

So we can say that God does not have a body. Now, of course, in light of the incarnation, we would say our Lord Jesus does have a physical human body.

To this day, he is seated in the heavens and he is seated in a human body. But nevertheless, the divine nature itself,

God, according to his own divine nature, is not composed of physical parts, but he's also not composed of rational or logical parts as well.

So someone can fully concede, OK, conceded God does not have a body, but a part of God can be said to be a joy.

A part of God can be said to be justice. A part of God can be said to be his invisibility, his impassibility.

And all of those things, when you put all the parts together, you get God. That's not what we're saying either.

So in light of our positive and negative assertion, I'm going to go through a few quotes from people who are much smarter, wiser, more well -read than myself to help us define what divine simplicity is or to elaborate on what it is.

So our first person is the Puritan Thomas Cartwright. He says in his book,

I have it right here, a treatise of the Christian religion. He says in chapter three, question six, what is simplicity or singleness in God?

And his answer is, it is an attribute of God whereby is noted that everything that is in God is

God himself. And therefore he is uncompounded, without parts, invisible, impassable, all essence.

Once it is that he is not only called holy, but holiness, not only just, but justice, etc.

So as some of the viewers may have picked up on or as you may have noted, I have not yet quoted scripture, so that may be a bit of a concern.

And we'll get into that in a little bit. But so because of that, someone who can help us a bit on this topic is actually a reformed theologian,

Herman Boving. Boving says about simplicity, he says the oneness of God does not only consist in a unity of singularity, however, but also a unity of simplicity.

The fact of the matter is that scripture to denote the fullness of the life of God uses not only adjectives, but also substantives.

It tells us not only that God is truthful, righteous, living, illuminating, loving and wise, but also that he is the truth, righteousness, life, light, love and wisdom.

And following this, he quotes various passages from Jeremiah, the Gospel of John, first Corinthians, first John.

And then he concludes, hence, on account of its absolute perfection, every attribute of God is identical with his essence.

I have another quote here from Richard Muller, but I think we're going to skip that for the sake of time, though, if there's any questions

I could get back into it. But modern theologian today who I really enjoy a lot,

I quoted him actually our last episode, Dr. Craig Carter, he says of God's attributes, he says they are multiple from our creaturely perspective, but one in God himself.

God is each of his attributes, each are identical with his existence. So to conclude from all this information, we can say that because God is self -sufficient and he possesses aseity, as we discussed,

I think it was last episode of Comprehensibility, but two episodes ago. Yes, because God is self -sufficient and possesses aseity, he cannot be dependent on anything else for the ground of his own being and thus is simple.

While divine simplicity, like the word Trinity, is never explicitly stated in scripture, it follows by good and necessary consequences in light of the other attributes of God and how scripture speaks of God, God's attributes in relation to himself.

So that in a very brief nutshell, as I can say, is divine simplicity. One of the controversies in the last few years revolves around regarding this attribute, revolves around the book

Gentle and Lonely. I said lonely, low, lowly. I think it's lowly by I think it is a

Dane Ortlund. It is. It's Dane Ortlund. Yeah, not Gavin or Ray or the other one who

I forgot. They've all been in the news, right? But Dane Ortlund is the one who wrote that one. And the accusation was that this violates divine simplicity somehow because it focuses on this one aspect of God that Jesus says he is gentle and lowly.

And this becomes the primary attribute that almost trumps some of the other ones.

It's the there should be a greater emphasis on that one over, let's say, the holiness of God or the wrath of God.

And so pitting attributes against themselves or prioritizing one attribute over another.

And this was the accusation. So what do you have to say about that? Because I think that might make it more concrete for people when they go out there in the wild and they see these things said about God.

God is love. God is. And the Bible says that God is. Jesus says he's gentle and lowly.

But these are nice sounding things. We like to think about God, but they obviously can't take away from his other attributes.

Yeah, I've actually never heard that criticism of gentle and lowly.

I've heard various criticisms from many corners. But in regard to that one, I would say

I don't really think that it would be a violation of divine simplicity to emphasize the gentle and lowly nature of Jesus.

We have to realize that Christ is because God has all these attributes. He and all of these attributes are

God. You know, God is not just loving. God is love. God is not just a just God.

He is justice. I think that it's perfectly permissible for the Christian to, for particular devotional reasons, maybe focus in on one attribute of God and extrapolate something for someone because the book

Gentle and Lowly, I read it and it wasn't the worst thing in the world. It wasn't my favorite either.

I didn't get it. It is really funny how I have it. I have a very third way approach to it. I didn't really get all the hype and I didn't really get all the hate because it just seems to be a very standard standard explication of the nature of Christ being that he's gentle and lowly.

So I don't think that's a violation of divine simplicity to emphasize particular aspects insofar as you also emphasize that Christ is gentle and lowly to those who are his.

While he is he is a just God who will come back as a flame of fire to judge living in the dead.

He will cast all the wicked into hell to those who have done wicked. He will cast it and cast into hell and to those who have done good, he will admit into eternal life.

Those are very standard things. So I think that what you need to do is read Gentle and Lowly if you want, but also remember the other aspects that the other ways in which

God presents himself in scripture. But John, if you have any of those articles about that contradicting divine simplicity,

I would be interested to see because I know that his brother Gavin, he himself does a lot of apologetic stuff and he has publicly defended divine simplicity.

So I would I wouldn't think that I almost wanted to say, Ray, I meant Dane. I wouldn't think that Dane would be against that, but that is an interesting point that you make, though.

It was a while ago when I read it. It was, I think, Jeremiah Johnson, who wrote an article for Grace to You, and it was deleted right after that.

I was told, I remember, that it was going to come back. I don't know if it ever actually came back.

I think it was deleted for more political reasons than because they actually disagreed with the content of it.

But he tried to make that case. And I don't remember the ins and outs of all of his argument on that point.

I think it was along the lines of what I just said, though, that this book presents a very partial view of who

God is and that it saw that partial view as somehow taking away from divine simplicity, emphasizing one attribute above another and not an emphasis of, you know, we're going to focus on this and study this like we do in a

Bible study, like we're doing now to understand who God is. But an emphasis in that his character is somewhat fragmented.

And this one attribute is the chief attribute and other attributes.

They may come and go and they're not as consistent or something along those lines.

So, yeah, it was a little while ago. I did do a podcast on it, but I can't remember everything

I said or what the exact argument was. We do have an hour or a question here, though, from Dr.

Bob. What about the Eastern conception of the essence slash energies distinction, the idea that there is a distinction between God's working and his being example?

There is a distinction between God's love and his hate because there are these are God's energies, not his essence.

Yeah, that's interesting. That's I don't know what that is. No, no, no. So that's rooted in like the

Eastern Orthodox conception, which you can see a bit of a trace of in some of the Cappadocian fathers where there is sort there seems to be an argument against something like absolute divine simplicity, which is taught by much of the

Western church, whereas the Eastern church has the distinction between God's energies whereby he interacts with the world and versus his essence.

So they would deny that each of the attributes of God are God or identical with the essence of God.

However, I am not well read enough at all to sufficiently answer the question. So my apologies,

Dr. Bob, but I that's that is not my wheelhouse yet. But I do have a lot of Eastern Orthodox friends.

Maybe I'll press them on it and they could help me out there. But yeah. Yeah. But you did know the phrase

Cappadocian fathers, so I think you should get some points for that. Yeah, I don't know,

Dr. Bob, I'm really sorry. And I'm not the well -versed on Eastern Orthodoxy.

I do know that, you know, I don't know if you visited that Eastern Orthodox church,

Matthew. I went to an Eastern Orthodox church years ago just to kind of see, you know, what was it that people are attracted to?

Maybe we should do an episode on it at some point because it made sense. I understood why people were attracted. I disagree, but I understand,

I think. And one of the things is there is this emphasis on mystery in the

Eastern Orthodox church. And even if you try to get into discussions about something as basic as sanctification and justification, you know, they don't see those things as so separate from one another.

They see it as one process called theosis. And there's a lot of concepts in the

Eastern Orthodox church that seem that way to me. Like they reject the

Western categorization and they want to give more up to mystery,

I think, than the church in the West, meaning the Catholics and the Protestants would want to give up to mystery.

We look in the scripture and see that there are some things that seem very clear to us.

And as you just said, actually, you phrased it perfectly, by good and necessary consequence, we can come to an understanding of some things.

And I just in talking to the priest there, I got the impression that they don't think the same way.

We're actually like operating on very different planes. So, yeah. Anyway, Dr.

Bob says, according to the ortho bros, it is the one true church trademark, copyright, all rights reserved.

Yes, I realize that's true. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right. Let's not get more into Eastern Orthodoxy now.

Now, that was a good explanation of divine simplicity. If people have questions, you can contact us.

Actually, you know, I haven't ever said this, but right now, probably info at truescript .com will be the best place if you have suggestions for the show or you want to contact us about anything.

With that said, let's get into this article, Matthew, you read this article, I believe, from actually my brother,

David Harris, wrote this. Yeah. And it is on the the flooding that's going on right now in East Tennessee and in Western North Carolina.

Heartbreaking. We started the episode, if you guys are streaming and haven't seen it, with a cold open that showed some of the devastation from this area of the country.

And I'll just summarize some of this. My brother tries to make the case in this particular article that this is not the gospel doing relief efforts there.

And so and he says that's intentionally provocative. And I thought, well, that that kind of is potentially provocative.

But he says post -disaster physical relief is not the gospel. It's not the same as Sunday morning exposition.

It's not the same as leading a Bible study on Wednesday evening. It's not planned. It's not neat. It doesn't involve air conditioning and a

Keurig. It's messy. It's dirty. It involves blood, mud, tears and sweat. It involves praying next to people who are dying, urging them to put their hope and trust in Christ before they leave this world.

It involves explaining to five year olds why dad isn't coming back. But it is necessary. And the church ought to be the institution at the center of this.

Mm hmm. He says towards the end of the article, he talks about these scriptural charges.

We have Acts 11 talks about a specific monetary collection that was made by saints in Antioch for saints in Judea who are suffering in a famine.

Talks about James two, which says if a brother or sister is without clothing, clothing and in need of daily food.

And one of you says, go in peace, be warm to be filled. Yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body.

What use is that? Romans 12, be devoted to one another and brotherly love, give preference to one another in honor, not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the

Lord, rejoicing in hope, preserving in tribulation, devoted to prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality.

And he asked some practical questions, who needs the relief, where are they? The pattern in scripture is to consider proximity.

So right now there's this controversy over these National Guard troops in North Carolina who they're being, they're ready to be deployed to Israel or the

Middle East somewhere in defense of Israel. And many of them have families they can't get in touch with and they want to go home.

They want to and they're not they're being prevented from doing so. And so this is why would that be a controversy?

Why would that be a problem? Well, it's very simple. Israel is across the world and is in much less proximity to them than their own families.

What do you have to say about this? I mean, you read the article and there is some provocative stuff in here.

But, you know, this whole this whole idea of going to help,

I have so many friends who are in North Carolina, in Tennessee, who text me and message me even today saying,

I'm going up there today. I'm going up there this weekend. We have some mutual friends doing this, even though I've heard that some of the government officials are saying, don't go.

Yeah, yeah, no, I very much enjoyed this article, especially the end with the questions to consider him bringing up the conception of Ordo Amoris and especially there's been some controversy.

This was probably like a week ago on Twitter about the idea of, you know, ordered loves and things like that.

And I was posting, I was reading through Matthew Poole and Matthew Henry on their commentary on the

Good Samaritan and how part of who is my neighbor comes down to just it doesn't matter whether there's shared kinship or national bond or religious bond, but the person in your proximity and that factors into an

Ordo Amoris. Now, of course, a mother whose daughter is off at college, if she's in dire need, even though there's no, it may be there is no proximity there.

There's a proximity by bound blood, by the fact that that is her daughter. There still is a sense in which anyone you come across within your proximity who needs your help, it is part of your

Christian duty to assist them. And this doesn't just come down to individuals by any stretch.

The magistrate, the prince, the king, whoever you have, they have a duty to help those that are within their sphere, that are within their order.

And I think that it's very good that so many people are going to go up or down to North Carolina to help out the people there, because I'm in Florida, actually, which did get hit by the hurricane.

Not this Saturday, but the next Saturday, me and a few buds of mine, we're going to go up to Treasure Island where the hurricane, it didn't devastate the island nearly to the effect that North Carolina did.

But it's something close by. My parents had a condo there and so many people at their condominium are without power now.

Their cars are destroyed. So we're going to go up there, just help out, cook food. And we're not going to cook food.

We're going to cater some barbecue for the people and just help out as we can. And I think that's really important because we could go up to North Carolina and that would be good.

But we did get hit. And so I bring this up not to be like, look how cool me and my friends are.

We're so pious. We just love people so much. I bring it up to demonstrate ordo amoris, order of loves, so we don't sound pretentious using

Latin, order of loves in regard to proximity and people. It's so important that you do that.

And part of the chief error is the fact that so many of these people are being told not to go to North Carolina.

These soldiers are being told not to help out their own family when they're stationed in North Carolina because they have to be on guard for conflict in the

Middle East. Look, there's in principle, maybe I'll make some some paleo conservatives upset. There's nothing wrong in principle with seeking to preserve

American influence and dominance and saying maybe we should have control over the

Middle East, yada yada yada. There's nothing in principle wrong with that. You may disagree for prudential reasons.

You may say that this isn't good for X, Y, Z. But in principle, it's fine. What in principle is not fine is neglecting your own people, failing to help your own people, because Florida, we have the benefit of dealing with a hurricane every year, basically every time around this year.

I'm always like, OK, when's the hurricane going to hit? When am I going to get a few days off class? Yada yada yada. What do

I need to do to prepare? And so Florida, our state government just is always on standby for that kind of thing.

But a lot of these places like Asheville didn't really have that. They don't go through stuff like that a lot.

And so that's where the role of the federal government should be involved. And the fact that there's not enough of that and people are actively being discouraged, it's a disgrace, really.

It's very, very sickening to see. And but, yeah, I very much

I know quite a few people who will be going up to North Carolina to help out. And I think that's great.

And if the federal government's not going to do what their job, what their job demands them to do, then that's when it comes down to the people to step in and to do, as Christ says, to love your neighbor, be a you know, be a good

Samaritan, I guess. What Charles Spurgeon said about this of the Good Samaritan is he said when he saw the wounded man on the road to Jericho, he felt that he was in his neighborhood and that therefore he was his neighbor and he was bound to love him.

And I think that's interesting coming from Charles Spurgeon, because it's oftentimes people who say they really like Charles Spurgeon and a lot of social justice types.

Actually, he really seemed to like Charles Spurgeon. They use this passage to justify things like the migrant crisis we have now and why towns in Ohio should be overwhelmed by Haitian immigrants who are asylum seekers and that kind of thing.

And the Good Samaritan is the analogy that always comes out. And Charles Spurgeon here is saying that the justification or the rationale for even helping the

Samaritan isn't because he's a Samaritan, which is the basis, I think, that many of these social justice types, they want to use the difference, the lack of proximity to be the justification, as if the more distant you are to someone, the more obligation you have.

And Spurgeon saying, actually, it's because you're in your neighborhood and if you're walking around your neighborhood and you see someone in your neighborhood, i .e.

your ownership, that's where you have a responsibility and jurisdiction.

And it's on that basis that you help. And in this case, what could be a closer proximity or basis for helping than your family is trapped in the mountains and you are down in the valley unable to help them because you need to be ready for a war potentially,

I guess, on the other side of the world or in the case of those who aren't even in the National Guard, which is more people, they're being told by the government, don't go up there.

I saw, I included in the montage, a helicopter operator who was told after trying to rescue people who are on rooftops and that kind of thing, avoiding the flooding, that he was not allowed to go back and get his friend.

He had actually left, I think it was his copilot, with a family to keep them safe and comfortable.

And he was going to return. And he was told that if he made that trip back to grab them, that he would be arrested.

And that's just crazy. It's absolutely insane. Yeah. So so I would

I'm just telling you personally, I'm not obviously I don't want to get shut down by YouTube and I'm not giving you advice and saying you have to do this or this is what you even should do.

I'm just I'm putting myself in that circumstance. I would just I would just go rescue the people. That's the right thing to do in that situation, especially if no one else is rescuing them.

If time is of the essence, many of these areas don't have water there. It's not a good situation.

So. So, yeah, that's on the proximity issue.

I want to talk a little bit and maybe you and I aren't the most knowledgeable in this area, so it would have been good if we have a guest.

But I want to at least acknowledge and touch on it. Matthew, you had said, you know, hey, the federal government should be coming in there.

And I think a lot of people have said this. Why isn't the federal government here? Where are they? Do you know?

Out of curiosity, you're a smart guy. I wanted to know if you do this. Do you know when FEMA was created?

What year? I don't know what year is created now. Take a guess at what decade.

Yeah. What do you think? What decade? Maybe I'll say, hmm, I'm going to sound really stupid.

I don't know. Nineteen eighty two. I'll just guess that. You're very close. You're very close. Nineteen seventy nine.

OK. Oh, there we go. Was apparently when Jimmy Carter gave an executive order consolidating several federal agencies to streamline disaster response efforts.

Now, throughout the 80s and the 90s, FEMA actually did not have a leadership role in hurricane disaster relief.

They weren't the primary institution that people look to when a hurricane came through.

It was still state governments. If it was really bad, National Guard units that are state. In fact, Florida now,

I mean, you guys still kind of operate this way, I would say under DeSantis. Not that you don't accept

FEMA help, but FEMA is not the leader in these things. It was after Katrina that things changed. And FEMA before that had been

I believe it was in the Department of Homeland Security. And now they're their own separate entity with more funding.

And the expectation is that they are the ones who ought to be first on the ground and directing the whole operation.

That's fairly new. That's within my lifetime that that has actually taken place.

And I think it's interesting because I remember there was an article Doug Wilson had written years ago about how and it really stuck with me, how the during a time of natural disaster, people cry out to their gods.

And it used to be and I remember this from President Bush, that there was a lot of talk about praying to God in after 9 -11.

I think he did something similar after Katrina. Now, I haven't heard anything from Kamala Harris or Joe Biden along those lines, first of all.

But now people cry out to FEMA and we have an expectation.

And I'm not saying whether or not FEMA, like if we set the precedent and we're at the point where our tax money is going to FEMA to do this disaster relief.

And that is the understanding and that's the precedent. And obviously, President Biden and Vice President Harris have done a their optics are very bad.

They have done not what we would expect them to do, not even sharing a lot of concern till four days later.

You know, I understand that. I get that. But it's just fascinating to me that this has become a such a political football disaster relief.

That wasn't the case when I was a young child. It was always like this is a tragedy. We're all Americans tended to be standing together.

We didn't notice as much as I remember, at least the demographic makeup of an area that was hit by a storm.

We just were Americans and we prayed for them. Now it's politics every single time. And I think that started with Katrina because Kanye West famously said,

I remember why I watched it live on a. Oh, it was. And you probably see the clip because it's somewhat

I've seen the clip. Yeah, yeah. I think I was like four years old at the time, though, so I don't remember it. Wow, that makes me feel old.

Well, I was watching because I think Tim McGraw or some country star was was going to play.

And, you know, I wanted to see that. I was a teenager. And then Kanye West comes up there and says

George Bush doesn't care about black people. And it was shocking. We all thought that's absolutely shocking.

Why? How could he say that? And now I actually think that Biden and Harris, based on their response and obviously their track record before what's happened now, they would be reacting different if it was an area with demographics that I think were more heavy

Democrat supporters there. I don't think there's any doubt about that with a lot of people.

And it just shows the mistrust. So. So anyway, I wanted to acknowledge that.

And just, you know, if you have any thoughts on the government's responsibility in situations like this, namely the general government, because this is fairly new and maybe as a zoomer, it's interesting that you you kind of just automatically assume that, yeah, this is the government's job to come in there.

And when I was young, that wasn't the assumed thing. Well, I say that because it seems as if they have the means to do so.

It seems that a lot of these states are struggling to be able to assemble like an actual force.

And so if you're in a government where you have a federal government, you have state governments, you have like these local governments and all those are failing and you know that that's the case.

So that's why I say that. I think that's kind of that makes sense. Even if you want to say, oh, it shouldn't be that way.

Yada, yada, yada. It's like, sure, conceded it's better for local. And I say that as a Floridian who has that kind of thing.

So I'm even speaking from that perspective. But, yeah, you made a lot of good points. It really is sad to see how little like, you know what?

I'll be the new Kanye. I'll just say it. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don't care about white people. That's what

I'll say. I don't think that'll get you demonetized. But no, I'm being dead serious when

I say that these people like just they just don't care. They really. And because it's just gotten, as you said, it's gotten so politicized.

I know that there are a lot of people that are like, oh, with the rise of Trump, everything's gotten so political. And honestly, I think

Trump has been good for exposing our current iteration of liberalism for what it is.

And I think it's actually good that he's made politics political again. And what that leads, what some of these people are doing is just horrible because you would expect them to be on it like that to not just not to make this political.

Like this doesn't have to be what the assumption should be is that the government or Trump or whoever wants to help simply on the basis that they care about the people.

Now, I do think that Trump going there is there's definitely political brownie points involved. And like,

I don't fault him for that. But just seeing how everything that Trump has gone through and sacrificed as someone who didn't need to go into politics, who had plenty of money, but it wasn't hated by everyone.

I do think that Trump genuinely cares about these things. But I mean, you're absolutely right that if this hit an area with a different demographic,

Kamala and Joe Biden or whatever consciousness is left in that head of his, they would be on that very quickly.

And this also brings me to this point is we can say, yeah, they don't care about these people there.

But another thing we need to think of is just the fact that a lot of them are just incompetent. That's one of the things is,

I mean, when I think of politics and I think of elite theory and things like that, one of my biggest objections to a political understanding of something like elite theory is, are our elite smart enough to do that or are they just incompetent?

And I think at the end of the day, a lot of the times these people are just incompetent. They just they're all over the place.

There's so many jobs out there where you just give someone the job so that they can get paid and they really do nothing. Take it from me.

I worked in construction as a gopher. You really think I had a lot to do that on those days? Some days

I did. But I mean, a lot of the times it was me just kind of waiting around, trying to find something to do, basically, under my superintendent who he'd be like, hey,

Matt, go pick this up from Lowe's or Home Depot or sweep that up. But I didn't really do much. That's the point.

And I think that that serves as a good illustration of how so much of our governments in the

West operate today. It's just incompetent people that don't know what they're doing because at the end of the day, they just they don't care.

They just they like the idea of being in these positions. And it's incredibly sad.

But yeah, the politicization of the whole situation, the lack of competence in the government, it's it's very frustrating when real lives and real people who you are bound to because they are your people, when these things are at stake and your government's incompetent, it's heartbreaking.

Yeah, most people listening may not know this. I have worked actually in government in two separate jobs in local government, not as an elected official, but doing things like, you know, tax receiving office work in one town and another town.

I was doing more outdoor stuff, grounds and maintenance. And there was a lot of dysfunction in both roles that I was aware of, a lot of gossiping, a lot of just really inefficient activity.

And I remember there was a guy that I I worked for in one of the towns and he was a good guy.

He was upstanding, had come in from the private sector and he said, look, John, if you're frustrated by this, he goes, it gets worse at every level.

So you're at the lowest level, at the most efficient level for government to work at because it's the most accountable.

You have elected officials who actually have to live in the neighborhoods that they create policy for.

They're not in separate gated communities. Their salaries won't allow that. They also have a scale at which they operate, where it's less people that they're representing, which means there's more access.

They're also local. They're not in a faraway town or city and their budgets are smaller. Now, you take all of those things, you increase or I should say you decrease the proximity, increase the distance, and there's less accountability, less efficiency, more corruption, and that's government.

And I know that I talk to the men on the men's retreat and I say this a lot.

I encourage Christians to get involved in government or any kind of influential institution, but know what you're getting into.

You are getting into institutions that are very influential, that do a lot of damage, that can also have the potential for good, but there's a lot of decay and managerial elitism that leads to the kinds of things that you're describing in the private sector, which they exist there, but they're much worse when you get to the public sector.

And that includes disaster relief, unfortunately. And I agree with you. I don't know that it has to even be a nefarious intent, although I'm sure there is nefarious intent.

But I think it can be just incompetence that, you know, for why

Kamala Harris is fundraising and Joe Biden is on the beach when this hits and they their reaction is so slow and frankly, just embarrassing that they're showing their distaste and their lack of care in the stupid photo op, the little snide comments, the having a press conference.

I think he had one four days later, something like that, which this level of devastation is just it's it's off the charts.

In fact, someone had put down and I started the comment, I think, where he said hundreds are still missing.

My understanding is it may be over that it may be over a thousand people that we don't even know because we haven't even discovered what's happening in some of these towns.

We have I believe it's getting close to 200 confirmed deaths. People in some areas have said there's dead bodies in the trees and it's they're smelling now.

And I mean, awful stuff. I don't know if you read Matthew. Maybe you sent it to me. The guy who he walked,

I think it was like 13 miles or so. He hiked up the mountain because he didn't know if his parents were alive and what he found along the way, just roads that are gone and people that are starving, kids walking around without clothes.

One of the reports said, but it's bad. And I would encourage anyone in that area get involved.

I would encourage if you want to give to an organization, I don't want to give to NGOs that are going to use your money for nefarious purposes.

I think that Samaritan's Purse is a trustworthy organization and I saw something that they're on the ground there.

In fact, I think their headquarters is in Asheville. And I know a number of friends who are just going there who said, hey, if you got any money,

I'm buying water. So if you know people, that's the most, I think, effective way because people need water, they need food.

That's how you can help them more than giving it to an NGO or to a government organization.

Yeah, so any any more on that before we move into God's sovereignty in this and how to interpret events like this?

I think you I think you said it all. We can we can get into that. OK, so this is something that I saw

C .J. Angle got in trouble for because he said something about Asheville. I don't know if he was being cheeky or what it was, but something along the lines of like God insinuating

God's judging Asheville because Asheville, as people know, is pretty blue. I remember that happened with Jerry Falwell, right?

Jerry Falwell did something similar, I think, after 9 -11 and said this is God's judgment and people freaked about that.

And so I think to have a discussion on this, there's a few things we need to remember.

One is that God is just. He does judge. He judges, obviously, in the eternal realm, but he can also judge in the temporal realm.

And I think the first example of this after Adam and Eve is a flood, literally, right, that he judges the world with.

And since then, you have the plagues of Egypt, you have at Revelation, obviously there's a lot of descriptions of what appear to be natural disasters that are essentially judgments.

This happens throughout the Bible plagues. You have, you know, foreign armies and things like that.

But God uses not just human activity to judge his people.

He and of Israel specifically and not just Israel, he judges for foreign nations as well.

He uses natural events to do those kinds of things. So that's the first point I want to make, is that God actually can.

And it's not out of the realm of possibility to think through that. It's probably a healthy thing to wonder whether or not

God does that. And Christians of the past did this all the time. They would call days of prayer and mourning and repentance because they interpreted those events as potential judgments.

So I know you're pretty knowledgeable on some of the historical stuff in those regards, at least

I would assume among the Puritans and other groups, if you have anything to comment on that.

I don't have any historical observations in regard to historical theology to make, but I do have a few points that I wanted to go through.

First thing, the reason why so many people are very opposed to any speculations about things like that is, aside from the main point that I want to make,

I will just say, as humans, we're very emotional people and that's not a bad thing.

That's fine. And so if you have family there or if you live there and you hear something like that, it's obviously going to hurt to hear something like that.

And it makes total sense to react and be like, how dare you say something like that? But of course, there also is another reason people react against that, especially

Christians. That's because many of us in the modern age are functional deists. Basically, God, like Orthodox, quote unquote, deism is basically

God wound up, God created all things, set all things in order and then peace out, left, and then he lets the world do its own thing.

But I say functional deism because a lot of people have this understanding that the only time God ever intervened is in Bible times and that the earth kind of just does what it does.

And God kind of just sits and watches and is like, oh, sorry, that sucks. Pray to me. Maybe I'll help out a little bit.

Oh, that one was bad. Oh, ouch. That's kind of how they view God almost. And so many people are functional deists in a lot of these regards.

People don't take into account that God is sovereign, he is providential, he is providence.

So God upholds all things, sustains all things, all things that occur happen under him.

And so what we need to realize with some horrible catastrophes like this is that we can mourn about terrible things.

We can look and see tragedy and disaster and say, this is horrible, this is a result of a fallen world.

But there are various things that we have to keep in mind. Judgment. God can have certain disasters occur for a variety of reasons.

And so one of those can be judgment. God does judge. God has judged. God continues to and will judge, not just as the final judgment, but even through temporal means, as you stated,

John, because God is providential and sovereign over all things. So there are various reasons such as judgment in regard to people affected by this that are

Christians. We don't know everything around it. We mourn that they have to go through things like this.

We pray for the day where this no longer happens. But God does use these things to test people's faith.

He gives people trials for the purpose of growing them. That's why Christians under the under great persecution in the first 300 years of the church, you read like the martyrdom account of St.

Polycarp. And in his last words, Polycarp mentions the providence of God and orchestrating this to occur, saying this is for your greater glory.

Now, I don't think Polycarp was enjoying his martyrdom. I really don't. I don't think he was a masochist.

I think that he probably hated it, but he underwent it because he knew it was a trial. So God uses all these things for various purposes, one of which can be judgment.

And then we look at the book of Job. God took everything away from Job, his children, his property, all his animals.

Now, did Job do something to have this happen? No. And did Job ever really find out why this happened?

Well, I mean, unless Job wrote Job, then probably not. Whoever the divine author of Job was by immediate divine revelation got a brief glimpse into heaven to see why this was occurring.

But we don't all have that privilege. So what we have to do is just rest in God's providence.

Know that if you're a Christian who is impacted by this, you don't have to suppose that God is judging you.

You don't have to rule out that God may be judging the broader area. But we can't make any definitive statements,

I would say. But I don't think that testing around with these ideas is necessarily wrong.

There obviously is prudence in who you say it to, whether you want to say this publicly, especially to people that are hurting.

So, you know, if somebody undergoes a terrible event in their morning, you don't want to be like, well, maybe

God's judging you. Like that just may not be the wisest thing to do. In regard to the theological realm of possibility, it certainly is permissible,

I would say. Yeah, and I think of when Jesus talked about the Tower of Siloam, when it fell, he said that it wasn't these men who sinned.

But if you do not repent, you will all likewise perish. And so there are disasters that take place that we in our limited view, we can not tell necessarily whether or not this is judgment or if this is something else.

But I think it's important to be open to the idea that, yes, this could very well be judgment.

And also not so, at least I have operated, not so clinging tight to that, that I am definitive and letting people know that this specific, you know, it's a one to one.

This happened and that's because your sin in Asheville. In fact, this particular incident makes that a little hard in one way.

If you are going to judge the United States for some of the obvious sins, certainly regions like Appalachia have their sins.

But in comparison to some other very evil regions in the country, Appalachia is not the place that I would choose to hit.

I would say, hey, the really bad guys are in some other places if that if this is judgment. I wrote about Appalachia in Christianity and social justice and talked about the fact that, hey, this region of the country, seven of the ten most deadly diseases have the highest per capita incidence in Appalachia.

Appalachia has the least access to a number of things, including medical medical resources, including educational resources.

They really do get the shaft. And historically, I mean, if you want to make a case for discrimination, anti -government or I should say government sponsored discrimination against a region,

Appalachia really gives the rest of the regions a run for their money because this is a region that was torn up many, many parts of it, at least by the

Civil War. This is a region that has lost through imminent domain many of their lands.

This is a region that undergoes the war on coal. This is a region that was told prisons are going to bring back your economy, which wasn't true.

It brought vice and a whole lot of other things that have made it bad to live in certain parts of Appalachia.

Appalachia has really gotten a rough deal in many ways. And so so now with this hurricane response,

I think many people in that region are just kind of like, yeah, figures, you know, we're kind of like forgotten.

And yeah, I have a heart for them. I mean, I really do feel for them in the predicament that they are in.

But they are also, in addition to all the things I just mentioned, one of the most heavily

Christianized areas of the country. Mm hmm. They're they're, you know, they're very white and they're very

Christian, and that makes them, with the exception of perhaps Asheville, a political enemy of the regime, despite their poverty, despite all the other things that the regime says they care about when it comes to minority populations.

Appalachia having those things doesn't make a difference. And so I think that we have to be careful with the whole this is judgment necessarily, but I'm not

I'm not closed off to yes, God judges for sure. And God could be using this means at the very least it should get our attention and make us think of eternity.

So, yeah, I hope those going up carry the gospel with them, not just water, even though, yes, it's not a gospel work in the sense of it's not an evangelism outing that doesn't need to be for it to be worth it.

Yeah, yeah, but we only have a few minutes left. Maybe the good thing now is if there's questions, get them in.

We're going to just go through a few of these things that people have talked about here.

I'm worried of fellow YouTube channel AOT. They are in North Carolina. Yeah, I'm not sure.

Pray for them. If you know who that is, I'm not sure who that is. I'm Betty says I'm thankful that Governor DeSantis steps right in, goes to the area in need, starts the recovery.

As am I. Matthew is enjoying Governor DeSantis. We don't we do not have

Governor DeSantis. We have Hochul in New York, which is let's not talk about it. Anita Smith says,

I heard there are hundreds of people unaccounted for. Banner Maller says Conyers, Georgia, also being impacted with a chlorine gas plume from a chemical plant explosion days ago sheltering in place.

Still, I saw that. That was insane. Yeah, that's horrible. Was that the hurricane? I don't even know what caused that.

No, I think it was a malfunction at the actual plant itself. I don't think it was related. But man, the timing.

Yeah, they used to say, you know, nuclear power is safe. You know,

Chernobyl was just incompetence because of the Soviets. And I'm starting. I think nuclear power is efficient, but I'm getting to the point where I don't trust people's competence anymore.

Yeah. Unit two, three, nine. Thank you for talking about this. My area in South Carolina upstate was hit hard.

Yeah. We haven't talked about South Carolina, but that corner of the state is very mountainous. Yeah. One of my friends who lives there still is without power.

So really? Yep. Travelers rest area or, you know, where I don't remember where he's at.

But yeah, he's without power right now. I used to I worked in Nashville for a little bit and I would drive into Greenville to to do repair work.

And so I did that commute, you know. I'm dumb. He lives in Greenville. He goes to Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

I have no idea. I forgot where he lived. But yeah. Oh, great. OK, so yeah, like outside of that area, it's pretty mountainous.

Betty says Dupes donated three large generators to a YouTuber Pinball Preparedness, as he has also collected 80

K and is taking supplies everywhere in Tennessee. I would just caution people with who you're going to give money to.

Yep. Make sure it's someone you trust, because I'm sure there's going to be YouTubers and others who want to take advantage of this.

So just be careful with that. And then I don't know if we want to.

So we have a comment about the government altering the weather, and we're pretty much out of time. So we're not going to be getting into that.

But I would just be careful of what you believe, too. I I've seen some of those reports and I don't think

I I don't think that's happening. At least let me just say this one thing is one point.

If the government was going to alter the course of a hurricane, right, because they want it to drop its load in Appalachia or something like that.

Don't you think the Harris Biden administration? That's right. I said Harris Biden. Don't you think that they would have been prepared for everything that was about to happen, including sweeping in there as the superheroes they are, or at least making it look like they're superheroes because they got an election that's coming up?

I just don't buy this. It's obvious to me that they were not expecting this level of damage.

And that's what they got. So have you seen that that conspiracy theory?

I've heard. I've not looked into it. I don't know if I plan on it, but. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's

I I mentioned it to my dad today. I was at my parents' house and I was like, yeah, they're saying sound waves can alter.

He just looked at me and I was like, I don't even need it. This guy just looked. I was like, yeah, I know. I know. I'm not saying I believe it.

I'm just saying some people on the Internet are saying it. That's funny. Anyway.

All right. Well, hey, God bless everyone. Thanks for coming and being part of the discussion here on the