April 16, 2020 Show with Dr. F. LaGard Smith on “Hoarding vs. Prudent Preparation in Times of Panic”

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Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 16th day of April 2020.

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And I'm delighted to have back on the program an old friend of mine whom I have known going back to the late 1980s and during my employment at WMCA Radio, a

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Salem media affiliate, before I even had my own talk show. I was getting interviews booked with Dr.

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F. LaGarde Smith on Andy Anderson Live and other places. In fact,

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I was instrumental in getting him interviewed on Truths That Transform, hosted by D. James Kennedy at one point.

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And Dr. F. LaGarde Smith is former district attorney in Oregon and a former administrator for the

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Oregon State Bar in Portland, a former faculty member at Pepperdine University School of Law in Malibu, California, focusing on criminal law, criminal procedure, trial practice, and law and morality, former scholar in residence for Christian studies at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee, and former visiting professor of law at Faulkner University's Jones School of Law in Montgomery, Alabama.

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He's the author of some 30 books. And we are going to be addressing today hoarding versus prudent preparation in times of panic.

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And we'll also be broadening that theme to a Christian response to a pandemic.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. F. LaGarde Smith.

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Good to be with you, Chris. It is great to have you back on the program.

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In fact, you know, some of my listeners, my diehard listeners who know that I am a thoroughgoing

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Calvinist might be surprised when they hear about me interviewing someone who does not hold to my positions on those important doctrines.

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But I think that you put it very well when you recently wrote a commendation for my program that I just love.

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It's one of my favorite commendations that I've ever received from anyone. And if you don't mind,

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I'm just going to read that commendation. So those of my listeners who might be more sectarian over these issues and are upset that I might be interviewing somebody that disagrees with me on these things,

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I just love this commendation. Chris and I go back many years discussing books along a broad spectrum of topics, whether biblical, ethical, social, and even law -related.

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One interview was on a matter of doctrine about which Chris and I have decidedly opposite views, giving proof positive credence to iron sharpening iron.

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Despite whatever theological differences we have, our shared faith in Christ and passion for truth has been a blessing and encouragement even beyond the interviews leading to a lasting personal friendship.

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The format of the program is unhurried, thoughtful, calm, and irenic, is uniquely suited to searching for truth.

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Where else can one find the luxury of explaining one's thinking and writing without hype and ego getting in the way?

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And who else has such sheer crazy fun in the midst of serious dialogue?

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It's always a joy to spend time with Chris and his loyal listeners. Always an honor, my brother.

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And I thank you very much for that commendation, which I treasure, Dr. Smith. And the book that you mentioned here, or the topic that you mentioned here, is obviously your book,

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Troubling Thoughts for Calvinists, and I'm so glad that you at least included the subtitle, and the rest of us.

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But thanks for being on the show. And that has nothing to do with our topic today. As I mentioned earlier, we are discussing hoarding versus prudent preparation in times of panic, and we're going to be delving into other matters that involve a

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Christian's response to something like we are experiencing globally. Lagarde, before I do that,

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I want to give you the opportunity to plug a book that I have already interviewed you on, but since it's one of your latest books, if not your latest book,

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I thought I'd give it some more publicity. Darwin's Secret Sex Problem, Exposing Evolution's Fatal Flaw, the

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Origin of Sex. Why don't you let our listeners know a little bit more about that book before we go into our main theme today.

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Thank you for that. The book on Darwin's most obvious and compelling problem is a little bit of a heavy topic in a way, because it discusses

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Darwinism as science more than it discusses

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Darwinism as something that couldn't be right because the Bible says something to the opposite.

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I'm not, in the book, challenging Darwinism because it runs afoul of the

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Genesis creation account, but simply because Darwinism, taken in its own terms, is bad science.

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The reason it's bad science is because it cannot do two of the most important things that would have to be done for the grand theory to be good science.

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The first is to move from asexual replication to sexual reproduction.

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Those two processes are so completely different that no gradual process over time would allow that to happen.

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The main thing being at that juncture that you'd have to go from several organisms that had no separate genders, like male and female, to a process that requires the simultaneous existence of two compatible entities, both male and female.

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Even though there are some organisms that can be simultaneously male and female and reproduce, there is no organism that is distinctly male or distinctly female that could have come about in such a way as to get both of them with on -time, simultaneous delivery of exactly what is needed to get from Generation 1 to Generation 2.

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That's the first problem. The second problem in the book that I tried to catalog in so many different ways that people say the book's a little bit too long,

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I'm afraid, but I wanted to make sure people understood that the way we know what a species is, a distinct species, and even

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Darwin said this, the way we know that it's a distinct species is because of the unique way in which it reproduces sexually.

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And in order for there to be a first -generation bird of any kind before any evolutionary beaks get longer or shorter, you've got to have the bird itself.

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And the very first bird would have to be with a male of that bird species and a female of that bird species because robins don't produce blue -tits and sparrows don't produce hawks.

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They don't even have the same DNA. They don't have the same molecule.

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At times they don't have the same reproductive systems.

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They don't have the same reproductive instincts. They produce according to their kind, and I'm not saying you have to believe that from the

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Bible. It's just the fact that they do reproduce their own species, not a distinct species.

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So evolution could not have provided the first compatible, simultaneous male and female for each of millions of sexually unique species.

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Could not possibly happen. So if you can't make that happen, then you can't make the whole chain from microbe to man work, which is the central thesis of the

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Darwinian theory. And so my book deals in three -fourths of it with that dual problem.

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And in the final section of the book addresses specifically the attempt by theologians to shoehorn

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Darwinian theory into the book of Genesis because they want to hang on to God in some fashion.

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But the theory known today as evolutionary creation, which is being touted by most theologians, including

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Bible faculty at even the most conservative

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Christian universities these days. People listen up. People listen up. You're sending your kids to a

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Christian university, and they're going to be taught that God has absolutely nothing to do.

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No interference. Nothing. No behind -the -scenes maneuvering. Nothing to do with going from microbe to some form of early human being.

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And then at that point, oh, well, God has brought in and sold some humanoid kind of creature that thus becomes what we know as the current human being.

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But that theory is being pressed everywhere in churches and Christian universities these days.

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And that's what's going on in the biology department and the Bible departments.

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So I address that very strange, bizarre, and dangerous new trend in our thinking.

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Well, if anybody wants to listen to the interview, in fact, I think we did more than one on this book, you could go to, after the show's over, www .IronSharpensIronRadio

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.com and click Past Shows Podcast. Type in the search engine

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LAGARD, L -A -G -A -R -D, and the interviews that I've conducted with Dr.

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F. Lagard Smith will come up. And you can also find out more about the book at Lagard's website, www .lagardsmith

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.com, L -A -G -A -R -D, smith .com. That should be easy enough for you.

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Well, these are some really weird and crazy times we're living in, as you know.

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And seeing the grocery stores with barren shelves reminded you of a trip in 1972 to what was then

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Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, behind the Iron Curtain. If you could tell us about that. Yeah, you're drawing this off of a blog that I did.

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I started doing a series of crisis -related blogs. I put them out every

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Saturday for the weekend on my Facebook. And that's when

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I was talking about are we dealing with hoarding or prudent preparation?

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And I do start off saying that the first time I saw empty grocery shelves was in Leningrad, now

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St. Petersburg, in 1972. There were long lines waiting to get in to get whatever meager supplies were available in that communist utopia.

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And then I couldn't help but relate that in some of the more remote areas of the

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U .S .S .R., I discovered a novel supply of scarce toilet paper. And the only way

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I can say this discreetly is pre -owned. How do you get away with selling pre -owned toilet paper?

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Well, it wasn't sold that way. It was just that's how they used it. They used it and placed it in buckets beside the toilet.

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And it dried out. The next person that came along used that. Yeah. Yeah. So we think we've got a problem.

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And then I got to thinking about, because about the same time all this was happening, Ruth and I watched

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The Pianist, the movie The Pianist, that talked about the privations of the Polish Jews during the occupation.

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It's just a fantastic movie. Yes, it is. It's a poignant reminder of how quickly our comfortable world could become a living nightmare in which hoarding, outright hoarding, becomes a matter of daily life and death.

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And, you know, we sit here comfortably and talk about that. Even in the midst of this crisis, we're not anywhere near that.

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And it's kind of mind -boggling to think what unimaginable things you and I, our listeners, might do to survive.

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So I got to thinking about the word hoarding. And initially, of course, it means secretly storing.

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You have a hoard of gold. You dug a hole and put the gold in it or something. And even biblically, we talk about laying by and store on the first day of the week and so forth.

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Well, laying by and store is a proper kind of hoarding. But those early definitions of hoarding have morphed into an act of selfishly taking more than one needs.

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And so, you know, what's the difference then between hoarding and prudent preparation?

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Well, my answer is in one word, timing. If you store up before a crisis, then your lives,

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I think the word these days is prepper. You're good at preparation, and you're wise to do that.

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But do it during a crisis, and suddenly you become some mean -spirited hoarder.

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And, of course, that's how I've justified my stocking up, where most of the bricks sense the impending danger.

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I got ahead of the curve, and I like to think I was following homespun advice.

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You know, gather your rosebuds and canned goods while you may. The early bird gets the, what, toilet paper.

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Put away for a rainy, self -isolating day. And we made a hasty retreat from the

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Cotswolds to come back to the States. We knew we were going to get stuck over there if we didn't. Cotswolds in England.

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Yeah, in England, where we live about five months a year, and I do most of my writing. But I think

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Ruth even got on to me for this initially, but has thanked me afterwards. I always bring back an empty suitcase, because we're taking things over there.

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But I always bring back an empty suitcase. So I filled it with all the toilet papers that I could put in there from the cottage, which they call loo rolls over in England.

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So you suspected that there would be some kind of shortage of toilet paper before anything even happened?

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Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had it there at the cottage. You know, what we had at the cottage, we weren't going to be using that.

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So I brought all of our cottage toilet paper back. And I had this vision that the customs agents were going to be looking through the bag and seeing the toilet paper.

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It would be as valuable as gold, of course. So I fully expected to open it up and find it completely empty, having gotten into the hands of customs agents.

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But I guess the good news was, they probably weren't inspecting it too closely because of fear of touching something that had the coronavirus.

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So we got it home, and I think Ruth was thankful that I had done this silly thing.

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But you know, it got me to thinking, Chris, about the spiritual angle on this thing.

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We've got this parable of the five wives and five foolish bridesmaids, or virgins, in Matthew 25.

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And Jesus is urging the wisdom of timely preparation before the

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Son of Man comes, dispensing judgment. And this follows immediately after Jesus, in Matthew 24, likens his surprise second coming to the days of Noah, when everybody was reveling, having a jolly good time, totally oblivious to the catastrophe of the flood that was about to hit them.

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And so Jesus' point was that when he comes again, it's going to be too late for the unprepared to get prepared.

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And those who have to go back to the five wise bridesmaids, those with oil in their lamps, won't be able to share with those who didn't appreciate the importance of being ready.

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Spiritually speaking, heaven is for preppers. And so what's the difference between the saved and the lost?

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In that analogy, again, it's timing. Because, you know, we're told today is the day of salvation.

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And on one hand we think, well, yeah, seize the day then, you know, grab hold of salvation.

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But the carpe diem expression, unfortunately, comes from Horace, who had in mind that we eat, drink, and be married, for tomorrow we die, taking little or no thought of eternal consequences.

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Well, that sounds really good when the shelves are full, but not so good when they're primarily empty as we've all seen them.

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It sounds really appealing until we stop to think that the very reason that we are all self -isolating in our homes is because, as the

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Bible refers to it, this very night our lives might be required of us. So that's serious business.

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You know, people are dying. And, you know, I think we're tempted, Chris, to sort of minimize or dismiss the whole idea of Christ's second coming.

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Because it's been so many centuries now and he hasn't come. And it's kind of like, well, if he hasn't come in all the previous generations, he's not going to come in ours.

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Well, maybe not. But here's the thing. Whether he comes in our generation or not, our world individually is going to end.

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And it could be, particularly given the deadly virus, it could be any day now.

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So when we think in terms of our personal world ending, regardless of whether Jesus comes in our generation, our world will have crashed before we mentally schedule it to happen.

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So I'm just thinking that the favor of the

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Lord might be found, actually, in this global timeout, giving us a quiet moment to reflect on how well our souls are prepared for the death that awaits us all whenever it's going to happen.

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Whether it's from the pandemic, whether it's from old age, that's what we need to be prepared for.

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So if you want to hoard something, that thought is worth hoarding.

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Yes, in fact, when I was speaking, interviewing our mutual friend

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Dr. Latane C. Scott yesterday, Joseph in the Old Testament, not the husband of Jesus' mother, but Joseph in the

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Old Testament, now he was an example of a prepper, wasn't he? Yes, he was.

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In fact, he stored up through the fat years, the lean years, a classic case of being a prepper.

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But again, that's for a crisis on Earth, and the more important need is to be prepared, obviously, for what's going to happen on the other side of this world.

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By the way, I can't resist telling you this joke. I don't know if you've heard it, but a man says to his wife,

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Honey, the way the world is going these days, I've got some news for you.

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We're going to sell all of our furniture and earthly possessions. We are going to turn all of our cash and savings into gold bars.

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And we are going to exhaust all of our financial resources otherwise into building a bomb shelter.

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And we are going to stock that bomb shelter with all of the material and items that we will need to survive for at least a decade once the nuclear holocaust or whatever peril awaits this planet surpasses and we are able to emerge eventually from this bunker with having survived all those years, unlike many of our neighbors.

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And the wife says, Well, suppose this calamity, this nuclear holocaust never happens.

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And he says, Stop being such a pessimist! I want it to happen.

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I want it to happen. And I have friends who are preppers.

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And a lot of folks make fun of preppers. And I think that is a sad thing when they do.

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But at the same time, just like with everything else, a lot of it has to do whether something is obsessive or bizarre or sinful.

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Doesn't a lot of it have to do with the motivations and the manner with which one takes on an endeavor like that?

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If you are overrun, if you are overwhelmed and ruled by paranoia and fear, that is not the state of mind of a

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Christian, is it? Or it should not be? No. And, you know, the fool whose soul was required in that night was someone who was tearing down barns and building bigger barns.

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The trust that he had was in his economic security. And of course, that is something, whether or not you have a bomb shelter or food saved up for two years, ten years, whatever, that is not what is important in life.

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What is important in life is that we be able to have our souls prepared for whatever eventuality comes along.

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The irony is that a lot of people who would take wise caution, wise preparation for eventualities, you know, their lives could be cut short in a heartbeat by a car accident or a heart attack.

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And what will have been the worth of all that caution in those circumstances?

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So, Jesus himself, I think, would not be adverse to someone being wise and cautious, but he certainly would be to people who would think of material and economic caution, but be so incredibly foolish about what is really important, and that is preparing a soul for the life to come.

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I think that some of the dilemma lies in this whole topic when it comes to hoarding versus preparation and being a prepper.

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It has to do with when one crosses the line between a rightful priority in one's life to put your own wife and children in top priority and your neighbors second.

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I think that that is a right thing to do. If someone were to give away all their earthly possessions and empty their bank account to give to the poor, and yet his own wife and children were starving, that would not be appropriate.

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In fact, the Bible, I believe, condemns that kind of a thing. Not that that exact scenario is in the

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Bible, but if you are not providing for your family, you are worse than an infidel.

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But at the same time, there is a fine line between compassion and generosity and selflessness and humility and putting your neighbor first and then crossing that line.

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I want you to address some of those issues when we return from our first break.

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If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Dr. F. LaGarde Smith, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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38:36

Fridays, 1 p .m. Pacific, 4 p .m. Eastern, to hear what the Bible has to say about pandemics and how we should respond.

38:45

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned in, our guest today for the full two hours, with a little less than 90 minutes to go, is

38:51

Dr. F. LaGarde Smith. And we are discussing not only hoarding versus prudent preparation, but we have a broader topic basically involving

39:04

Christians' response to a crisis like the one that we are experiencing globally with the coronavirus pandemic.

39:12

If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

39:19

And before I continue with my own thoughts and questions for you, we do have an anonymous listener who wants to know, when do you think you have crossed the line from sinful obsession into sinful obsession when you started perhaps just with a prudent understanding of preparation?

39:41

Well, you're asking a lawyer a black -and -white question. I think the thing to do is to look at the various factors that would answer that question.

39:56

And one is, to go back to your own suggestion here that it has much to do with motivation, what are we acting out of when we go to a shelf that has two rolls of toilet paper left and we know that everyone is desperate to get toilet paper?

40:20

If we reach for one, I don't think anybody is going to have a problem with that.

40:27

That seems to be a good thing to do. If you reach for that second one, which would be the last one, the question

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I think you first have to ask yourself is, are you being selfish knowing that someone else could also be in the same situation you are?

40:48

Does not the golden rule come into play that you should do for them what you would want the previous customer to have done for you to leave an extra roll?

40:59

Are we acting out of selfishness? Even more serious, I think, has to do with, are we living out of fear?

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And it's odd that toilet paper should become the focus of the kind of angst and panic that is so endemic of the pandemic.

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Are we living out of fear? Fear that God is not going to provide, whether it be toilet paper or food or other really essential items.

41:39

If we don't think that we can rely on God to pull us through these situations, then that's more problematical than anything at all.

41:54

And then this insecurity. Fear is one thing, and insecurity is a slightly different motivation.

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When the Lord taught us to pray, taught his disciples to pray, what we now call the

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Lord's Prayer, give us this day our daily bread, it is a way of saying that we acknowledge that all things come from God.

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Our sustenance and our ability to survive depends upon God's grace in every way, ultimately.

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And so if we think that we have to manufacture our security rather than depend upon God, then that's pretty basic, too.

42:44

And there's a very specific illustration in Scripture that relates to this, and that is when

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God gave the children of Israel manna from heaven, he was very explicit in his guidelines.

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He says, take only so much as you need for yourself and those for whom you're responsible.

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Take only so much as you need, because I'm going to provide that manna day after day after day.

43:15

He says don't save it up, except on the sixth day, because on the seventh day they were to do no work, they were not going to be collecting the manna that day.

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So, as it were, on the Friday, they would have a double portion, and there's the preparation part, preparing for the next day when they would not be able to gather the manna.

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But other than that, they were not to take more than they could use each day.

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And you know what? Some of them decided they couldn't depend upon the

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Lord to provide. And so what did they do? They went out and gathered more than they needed and kept part of it until the next morning.

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But what they discovered was that it was full of maggots and it was stinking. God had a built -in regulator there to say, uh -uh, you weren't depending upon me, and so it doesn't work.

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So where is the line? I don't know where the line is, except I have a sneaking suspicion that each one of us would kind of know that.

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When we get to that shelf and there's those two toilet paper rolls left, I think something inside of most of us who are believers would say, the

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Lord wants me to take one roll, but I'll bet he wants somebody else to have that other roll and just leave it.

44:46

I did this very practically the other day when I made one of the rare shopping visits that Ruth and I make to the grocery store, all covered up with my mask and so forth.

44:59

I saw some things that looked like they were in pretty scarce supply, and part of me wanted to say, you know, it's there,

45:09

I better grab it while I can. And another part of me said, no, somebody else is in the same boat, don't take that extra one.

45:17

And I didn't. So I think if we will just take a little scrutiny of our motivations, that we'll probably know where that line is in most cases.

45:34

Well, thank you, Anonymous. And we have Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who says, how do you respond to the one who may rebuke his prepper friend by using

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Matthew chapter 6 and 25 through 34?

45:55

Therefore, I say to you, don't worry about your life, what you'll eat or what you'll drink or about your body.

46:01

And what you'll wear. Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothes?

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Look at the birds in the sky. They don't sow seed or harvest grain or gather crops into barns.

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Yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you worth much more than birds?

46:30

So basically, you get the gist there from that portion of the text. How do you respond?

46:36

Well, concern is one thing. Worry is another thing. Worry is crossing a line from being prudent in preparation.

46:51

Because, again, the worry thing goes back to the fear factor and the insecurity factor where we're just saying, it's all up to us.

47:01

It's all up to us. And, in effect, we're praying to ourselves, look out, give me this day whatever

47:10

I need because God ain't out there to help me. That's part of what's being said there.

47:19

And the idea that if you took it to its extreme,

47:25

God takes care of the birds so he'll take care of you. If you took that to the extreme, you wouldn't work at all.

47:32

Really. Right. You know, well, God's going to provide. But that's not the point of that particular lesson.

47:44

That particular lesson is trying to get us away from worrying about things and being a worry warp about things.

47:52

But it doesn't call us to be fools and to say we have no role to play in providing for our families and providing for contingencies and circumstances that might come along.

48:07

Because that really goes back to the other parable of being prepared with the oil in your lamp.

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And, you know, that's kind of an interesting thing, too. When you get back to that parable, Jesus does not rebuke the five wise maidens or bridesmaids.

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He doesn't rebuke them for being selfish at that point. The foolish bridesmaids said, share with us.

48:39

We don't have enough oil. And they said, no, we're not going to share with you. Well, that seems counter to what

48:45

Jesus is teaching as well. We just have to remember that parables have limited applications.

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And Jesus does not always prove of the actions that he has described in his parables.

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He just gives that as an example to get us to the point he's trying to make. And the point that he's trying to make is that preparation is a good thing and that when he comes again, it's going to be too late to prepare.

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So we don't want to get too narrow in our understanding of what's going on in a parable.

49:30

He's talking about worry in one context. In another context, he's talking about you need to be prepared.

49:38

Thank you, Harrison. Let's take a shift here since I want to make sure that we make use of the legal mind that God has given you.

49:52

These are some frightening days because we are seeing the government flexing its muscles.

49:59

We are seeing particular politicians especially doing that.

50:07

Even though the first person that I heard about, first minister so -called that I heard about, who was fined for refusing to enforce a ban on public gathering in his church was a renowned, notorious, infamous heretic,

50:29

Rodney Howard Brown, which kind of softened the fear for me when I heard about his problems with the law over that.

50:38

We have to remember that secular governments aren't going to be favoring one group over another over theological differences.

50:47

They're not going to be saying that all these Christians are more biblically orthodox than Rodney Howard Brown, so we're going to cut them some slack.

50:57

Are you as concerned as I am witnessing some of this?

51:04

Well, I am probably for different reasons. Let me put my law professor cap on for just a moment.

51:15

Let's talk about police powers that every court in the land has always given approval to.

51:23

When we talk about police powers, we're talking about the government's responsibility to maintain the health and safety of the citizenry.

51:35

Those powers are broad, really, really broad, but they're not unlimited either.

51:45

Let's talk about how broad they are for just a moment. Classically, historically, from the common law until today, one of the best examples and most often used situations for police power is the power of the state to quarantine in cases just like we're talking about, where there's infection going around.

52:15

The enforcement of health laws and quarantine are historically within the purview of the state, and when it deems it necessary to impose the will of the state in order to protect the greater good, then absolutely the law is justified in that direction.

52:39

In fact, LaGarde, we're going to pick up right where you left off on the quarantine when we return from our midway break.

52:46

Folks, please be patient with us because the midway break of this show is always longer than the others because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because of the

52:59

FCC regulations of localizing their programming to Lake City, Florida.

53:05

So therefore, please be patient with us as we take this longer break. Use the time wisely by writing down information provided by our advertisers because while they air their own local public service announcements and other things, we air our globally heard commercials.

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So write down as much of the information as you can that our sponsors provide so that you can patronize them more successfully and more frequently, and therefore they will stick around,

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God willing, and enable us to remain on the air. Also, write down questions for Dr.

53:38

F. LaGarde Smith regarding Christians' response to the pandemic. And our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

53:46

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. F. LaGarde Smith right after these messages from our sponsors.

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01:05:40

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about an hour to go, a little less, is

01:05:49

Dr. Efflegard Smith. He is a former faculty member at Pepperdine University in the

01:05:57

School of Law, and he's an author of approximately 30 books. Before we return to our discussion on hoarding versus prudent preparation and other

01:06:09

Christian responses to something like a pandemic that everybody in the world is facing right now, before we return to that discussion, we just have some important announcements to make that we hope that you take heed to.

01:06:26

First of all, we are still planning to have our Iron Sharpens Iron radio free spring pastor's luncheon right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on Friday, May 29, 11 a .m.

01:06:39

to 2 p .m. at the Bongiorno Conference Center. This is a free event for men in ministry leadership, men only.

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God willing, we are going to move forward with this unless there is some unforeseen continuing on bans on public gatherings.

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I have great confidence by that time we will be able to conduct the luncheon, but obviously only

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God knows for certain. But this is going to be an exciting event because this is the first time ever that I have had the privilege of having a dear friend of mine, who

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I've known since 1995, be the keynote speaker at the luncheon, and that is

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Dr. Conrad Mbewe, pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and he's also a lecturer at the

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African Christian University. So not only will you be able to hear Dr.

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Mbewe preach, and by the way, I think he is the most powerful preacher alive on the planet

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Earth, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that, at least that I've heard, of course, but not only will you hear him preach for free, you're going to be fed a sumptuous lunch by the

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Bongiorno Conference Center for free, and you're also going to be leaving that luncheon with a heavy sack of brand new books selected by me personally from Christian publishers all over the

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United States and the United Kingdom who have donated these books and have been doing so for many years, going back to the 1990s, whenever I have these luncheons.

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These luncheons were the brainchild of my precious late wife, Julie, who recognized that I had more friends who were pastors than the average

01:08:26

Christian because of my work in Christian radio, and she suggested one Christmas that we forego giving gifts to each other and that we use that money to treat my pastor friends to lunch.

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Well, that began in the 1990s, and it grew to be so large we required corporate sponsorship for it, and we conducted those together every year, once a year, during the

01:08:53

Christmas season, until my precious wife went home to be with Christ for eternity. And then, after a several -year hiatus from doing the radio show and after moving to Pennsylvania from New York, I relaunched the luncheons and have been doing them twice a year now, one in the winter, one in the spring, every year since 2015.

01:09:18

So I hope that you can attend. It's absolutely free of charge. Send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com

01:09:24

and put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line. It's absolutely free of charge. And even if you're pessimistic that we're going to be holding this due to the hysteria going on,

01:09:35

I would strongly urge you to send me a registration anyway, because even if we have to move the date, we will have your contact information to let you know the new date and so on.

01:09:48

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com And, by the way, folks, tomorrow,

01:09:57

Pastor Joe Jakowicz, the founder of First Love Radio, who live -streams this program, and also a pastor of Christ Bible Church in Pleasanton, California, he is going to be joining us again, as he does every

01:10:13

Friday, to give us an update on the coronavirus and to give us some thoughtful biblical reflections on this situation.

01:10:23

So make sure you tune in tomorrow for Joe Jakowicz's return to the program.

01:10:29

Also, folks, even though I really dislike doing this, it's something that I have to do, because we are in urgent need of your donations.

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As many of you may have heard me say before, during this pandemic, we have lost, at least temporarily, two of our largest advertisers, because their businesses were hit very hard by the hysteria going on, and, therefore, they had to temporarily withdraw from financial support until they get back on their feet.

01:11:04

So I'm asking you, if you love this show, to help us recover from that financially. If you love the show, of course.

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So send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com. You don't have to believe exactly as I do, but you need to be promoting something that is at the very least compatible with what we believe.

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That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. I put advertising in the subject line. That's also the email address where you could send in a question to Dr.

01:13:49

F. LaGarde Smith, and we are discussing not only hoarding versus prudent preparation, but the more general theme of a

01:13:57

Christian's response to a pandemic or global crisis. And that's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:14:03

And before the break, LaGarde, you are just starting to get into the very appropriate and lawful and right duty and role and power of the secular government to be involved in quarantine for the greater good of the population.

01:14:25

Well, it did not escape my attention, Chris, that you took a long, long mid -program break because of FCC regulations.

01:14:38

And therefore, you quarantined me. Oh, there.

01:14:49

Yeah, we were talking about police powers and each state inherently.

01:14:55

Inherently. This is from history going back to Adam and Eve, I think.

01:15:01

But the government has police powers relative to health and safety, and particularly when it comes to quarantine and circumstances like we have currently.

01:15:12

Three questions have to come to a lawyer's mind in implementing the police powers inherent within the state.

01:15:22

The first one is, does the law or regulations serve a genuine health purpose?

01:15:31

In other words, you can't, I started to say, trump it up. That would probably not work. But you can't promote something as a health regulation when it's truly not.

01:15:46

No one is going to be arguing in this situation that we don't have a serious health situation.

01:15:53

The second question is, is the regulation or the law, is it the least restrictive means possible?

01:16:02

In other words, is the government being onerous in mandating whatever rules and regulations it promotes out there?

01:16:12

Is it going overboard? Or is it doing that which seems to be reasonably required given the circumstances?

01:16:22

The third question is, has something that was brought in on a temporary basis, has it gone on too long?

01:16:32

When the reason for the rule ceases to exist, so ought the rule, we often say in law. So if, for example, if we were to see no more cases of COVID -19 and the government said, yeah, you know, but we think you ought to stay in your homes anyway because, you know, you just never know.

01:16:53

You just never know. Well, no court in the land is going to uphold that. So these are questions that have to be dealt with.

01:17:03

Now, if all those questions are answered in the right way, then the state has an absolute right to quarantine or do whatever else is necessary for health and safety.

01:17:17

Let me give you something outside of an infection situation to show you the picture. It's a classic case, a classic, classic case.

01:17:26

Let's say there's a raging wildfire that's threatening a community. If the fire department decided that the destruction of one or two homes would prevent the rest of the community from burning down, they can torch those two homes.

01:17:43

They can bulldoze those two homes. Obviously first by making sure that they're empty. Oh, no, no, no.

01:17:50

We just leave people in there. It's just a price we're paying.

01:17:55

No, obviously. We get the people out. But you can actually, by force of law going back centuries, you could destroy those houses to preserve the greater good.

01:18:12

And that's sort of another situation that will illustrate the police powers in emergency circumstances.

01:18:20

Now, when it comes to regulations that inhibit or prohibit the worship that normally would be going on, now you're butting heads with another constitutional power, and that is, of course, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of movement.

01:18:43

And these First Amendment, in particular, these First Amendment constitutional guarantees have to be balanced against the police powers we've just been talking about.

01:18:56

And in that case, the government has to proceed far more gingerly than it normally would.

01:19:06

And one of the issues that's coming up in some of the lawsuits that are being raised by churches that insist on assembling is that they're being treated differently from essential businesses like grocery stores or child care or courts going on and functioning.

01:19:29

And they're saying that spiritual health is as important as physical health.

01:19:36

So why are churches being singled out when you can go to the grocery store? Well, there's a case to be made there, certainly, and it's going to be a balancing act and a rule of reason.

01:19:49

The courts are likely to be split on this. Some of them are going to say, we think that the church has every good reason to bring this case, and that goes back to their right of assembly.

01:20:07

Other courts are going to say, no, no, they cannot practice social distancing in the same way that grocery stores can.

01:20:19

You'll note that at most of the big box stores now, people are lining up six feet apart, being admitted a few at a time, one -way aisles being used in these big box stores and so forth.

01:20:33

Whereas if you have a large church congregation, if the auditorium is full, there's no social distancing there.

01:20:44

And so you've got a double problem. The dual problem is the constitutional right to worship.

01:20:49

And the second one, though, is this police power that the state has to keep people from being so close that they could infect one another easily.

01:21:01

The thing that is going to have to happen is that those who enforce these regulations are going to have to use the rule of reason.

01:21:13

I think unreasonable, for example, when they ticketed people and gave fines for a drive -in

01:21:20

Easter service where everyone remained in their car. Well, how is that different from a drive -in food establishment?

01:21:29

You know, what they should have done is said, we're going to have a drive -in food situation because we're giving out communion.

01:21:38

We're giving out bread and wine. Maybe they could have gotten around the regs that way.

01:21:44

Especially since wine seems to be a priority with the government being a necessary thing.

01:21:51

Yeah. In many states, drive -in liquor stores were considered essential businesses.

01:22:01

So they should have just said, well, that's what we are. We are a wine store today and bread.

01:22:08

We're a grocery store and a wine store with bread and wine. But in any event, the other way to look at this, though, from a

01:22:17

Christian standpoint, I think of our little, Ruth and I go to a small rural congregation of 30 -something souls.

01:22:27

And we sometimes kid that to be a member at Jones Chapel, you either have to be over 60 or have underlying health issues.

01:22:37

And so, you know, we would not want to put any of our vulnerable brothers and sisters in Christ at risk, of course.

01:22:44

But, you know, we're torn. Everybody's torn. Can it be right to abstain from gathered worship week after week and, who knows, month after month?

01:22:54

Is this what God would have us do? Isn't this the very time we most need to join in mutual worship and prayer and fellowship?

01:23:05

You know, and that's been the position, Chris, of a number, as you know, a number of large urban churches, as you referred to a while ago, getting a lot of media attention for defying government guidelines.

01:23:18

Here's what I, I just find this ironic. None of these large urban churches have been more vocal than churches that engage in faith healing.

01:23:27

And it shows them, you know, and they say, well, why worry?

01:23:33

Because, you know, we have access to a power greater than the virus. And part of me wants to say, amen, you know, yes.

01:23:40

But another part of me wants to say, you know, faith healers of the world unite. March into the world's hospitals and heal the dying.

01:23:49

Jesus and the apostles, they had the power to heal on command and even to bring the dead back to life when necessary.

01:23:56

You know, if these faith healers made that happen, then we could all return to assembly, not to mention dramatically get the attention of a world of unbelievers.

01:24:06

And so we get back to this phrase I keep hearing over and over again, well, we need to obey

01:24:11

God rather than man. I understand, and I agree with that. But we're not talking here about, say, worship being in defiance of official persecution.

01:24:23

No, fellow humans are suffering and dying. Potentially, potentially from those who insist that ordained worship ritual has no exceptions.

01:24:34

And surely that can't be, because there's biblical precedent for suspending normative faith obligations.

01:24:43

And we know that from Jesus himself, who healed on the Sabbath drawing the ire of the pious

01:24:49

Sabbath police. And elsewhere, of course, Jesus said the

01:24:54

Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. He was pointing to spiritual priorities in which human needs, again, may trump religious exercise.

01:25:08

So we're dealing here with mercy over rule, with the spirit of the law rather than the letter.

01:25:16

And if I could kind of put it this way, the priest and the Levite insisted on going to church despite the risk to the vulnerable, whereas the good

01:25:25

Samaritans stayed home to protect the vulnerable. I don't know if...

01:25:30

Did you ever hear the phrase providentially hindered? Was that ever used in your fellowship? Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah.

01:25:37

When I was growing up, you heard it a lot. And it was kind of a catchphrase, justifying absence from worship.

01:25:43

And it included everything from auto accidents on the way to church, and tornadoes or whatever, to sniffles and weak in company you weren't expecting.

01:25:53

And I always wondered why God got the blame, because providentially hindered means sort of, well, that was

01:25:58

God's doing. But if there's ever a case for being providentially hindered, I think that this virus shutdown is it.

01:26:06

And it's not that the virus itself is God's doing. It could be, but we don't know.

01:26:13

But that the work of God is being done. The sermon that we're proclaiming when we meet is that we're giving up something extreme, or when we don't meet, is that we're giving up something extremely precious so that others might live.

01:26:32

And, of course, that's a sermon we've heard before in John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that He gave

01:26:38

His one and only Son, something precious to Him, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

01:26:48

So, I don't know, but it couldn't often be the case, perhaps only once in a century, that to sacrifice worshipping in this way is better than to worship.

01:27:02

And I would argue that actually, because it's doing a godly purpose during this crisis, our simple loving sacrifice is a form of worship.

01:27:13

So I think, while we're sitting at home doing this to protect vulnerable brothers and sisters in Christ, that we should lift up our separated voices together in singing,

01:27:24

God be with you till we meet again. Well, I'm going to play, it's a very good segue here,

01:27:31

I'm going to play a clip from my favorite program on the

01:27:37

Fox News Network, although I don't always agree with Tucker Carlson. I don't even know why

01:27:44

I was amazed when I heard this, because I don't really expect much of elected government officials.

01:27:51

But this is a clip from Tucker Carlson's interview with the governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy.

01:28:00

Here we go. That decision, as I noted before, 15 congregants at a synagogue in New Jersey were arrested and charged for being in a synagogue together.

01:28:10

Now, the Bill of Rights, as you well know, protects Americans' right and shrines their right to practice their religion as they see fit and to congregate together to assemble peacefully.

01:28:24

By what authority did you nullify the Bill of Rights in issuing this order? How do you have the power to do that?

01:28:31

That's above my pay grade, Tucker, so I wasn't thinking of the Bill of Rights when we did this.

01:28:36

We went to all... First of all, we looked at the data into science, and it says people have...

01:28:43

So there you go. An elected government official who reached the position of governor of an entire state wasn't even thinking of the

01:28:53

Bill of Rights at all because it was above his pay grade. That, to me, is fairly astonishing.

01:29:01

Yeah, it's sad. Even if he's right about what he did, he's wrong about having not considered the priorities involved in terms of faith and spiritual needs that are essential.

01:29:26

I just think that the issue for Christians is not so much whether the government is requiring us not to meet.

01:29:38

I think, as I said a while ago, to me the issue is government or no government, whatever the regulation is, if we perceive that assembling together is putting certain ones of our brothers and sisters at great risk, then why would we do that?

01:30:04

I don't understand why we would do that because it seems counter to what Jesus would have us to do.

01:30:10

I mean, when he says, I know it's the Sabbath. I know the rule.

01:30:16

The rule is that you're not supposed to work on the Sabbath and so forth, but this man has a need that's greater than the rule, and I'm going to attend to that need.

01:30:26

It seems to me that he set the bar. He's the one that, you know,

01:30:33

Bill of Rights, Civil Rights, Constitutional Guarantees, notwithstanding, it seems that our concern really ought to be a spiritual concern for the welfare of others.

01:30:45

I mean, if we are using that as an excuse in some way or another because it's a good excuse, well, we shouldn't use it as a good excuse.

01:30:55

But genuinely, if that's our motivation for not meeting, I think it's a very worthy motivation for not meeting, regardless of what the state is saying otherwise.

01:31:07

And, of course, when Jesus healed on the Sabbath, he was not in reality violating any law of his father.

01:31:15

These were added restrictions that the Pharisees came up with and so on.

01:31:21

He did not sin when he was healing someone. But the issue is further complicated because it also gets involved in is what the government is telling us actually true?

01:31:37

Is the severity of what is going on strong enough to perpetually refrain from corporate worship?

01:31:48

And how long are we to, as Christians, allow this to continue?

01:31:54

It's not as if, and I don't mean to undermine the seriousness of what's going on, and I don't mean to be callous or indifferent about the lives that have been lost and so on.

01:32:05

But at the same time, we're not talking about the Black Plague or something as severe as one of those catastrophes from the past where many, many more times people suffered and died than what the globe is experiencing now.

01:32:23

And how long are we supposed to, if they were, I don't believe this will happen, but I could be wrong, and it could happen in the future.

01:32:34

What would we do if they just perpetually said, in fact, to prevent further spread of disease, we think it's best that no churches gather on Sunday, especially in large numbers.

01:32:49

I mean, where do we draw the line with that? Well, again, we lawyers can't draw lines like the rest of you.

01:32:58

And we can't, because they're judgment calls, and you've got to factor in all the circumstances that can be known, possibly be known, at whatever time you're actually making that judgment call.

01:33:14

I think what's going to happen, and this is just my being a novice prophet,

01:33:22

I think what's going to happen is that there will come a point in time when people, wholly apart from the worship issue, will say, you know, we have minds as well, and we can make some calculations on our own.

01:33:40

And from all that you've told us, government, from all that you've told us, we've been very willing to voluntarily comply.

01:33:49

But from what you've told us at this point, voluntary compliance no longer seems reasonable.

01:33:57

And at that point, the government can issue all the edicts that it wants to, but the people are going to rebel.

01:34:06

There will be civil disobedience if it goes beyond a mutually reasonably understood point.

01:34:15

And I guess I'm saying that if it comes to that, that would be the point at which probably most

01:34:23

Christians would say, not only are we no longer going to stay in our homes, but we're going to go to another house on Sunday, and that would be the house of the

01:34:31

Lord. We have CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says, well, how would you respond to the argument that the first century

01:34:42

Christians put the lives of their members at great risk just by sheer virtue of existing in worshiping because of the

01:34:51

Christian church being outlawed eventually? Yeah, that's an easier question to answer,

01:34:58

I think. And that's where we get back into we obey God rather than man.

01:35:03

When it's persecution involved, sure. I mean, we worship at the risk to all of us.

01:35:11

If it puts others at risk, we are also at risk. But that's different in the sense that there is a regulation that man has no justification whatsoever to make because it flies in the face of God's commands to worship.

01:35:35

It doesn't mean that you couldn't hide out in caves to do that, which they did in the first century and second and third and on down through history.

01:35:45

The catacombs and so forth, they hid out in the catacombs to worship. They sought out places.

01:35:50

That didn't mean they had to be in the face of the civil authorities when they worshipped.

01:35:58

They too kind of had a way of social distancing for worship.

01:36:06

But when you have a virus like this that's so indiscriminate and that there are people who are vulnerable because of health issues, that's not the same as persecution issues.

01:36:25

And if we lose our lives worshipping and honoring Christ, that's one thing.

01:36:33

But if we're putting others at risk of losing their life when we could save their life by not meeting, we have to do that.

01:36:47

I'll tell you, I think you have to envision a hypothetical to appreciate this.

01:36:56

And the hypothetical is that if you knew that walking into a church building was going to result in one of your brothers and sisters dying because of the fact that you walked into that building,

01:37:09

I don't know how any Christian could justify doing that. Whereas if you and all the other

01:37:16

Christians are meeting in that building and the powers that be come in and arrest everybody or shoot everybody for defying the law, you know, you could live with that.

01:37:29

You could live with dying in that circumstance. But if I knew that just by my mere presence some one of my brothers and sisters could die from a health issue, no.

01:37:43

To me, that is an exception to ordained

01:37:48

Christian worship. Should Christians view this as discrimination or is the law acting legally and without partiality?

01:38:20

It's overreach. There's no question in my mind as a former district attorney and law professor teaching criminal law and constitutional law, it's definitely overreach.

01:38:33

And you know that because of the parallel kinds of circumstances that are permitted.

01:38:38

As I say, you know, you can have, you can go to McDonald's and get a burger, stay in your car, and that is considered social distancing that meets with the guidelines.

01:38:52

But for some reason, somebody had a bee in their bonnet about Christians worshiping in their cars.

01:39:01

And you know, it's kind of ironic. I don't know if you ever, do you remember

01:39:06

Reverend Shuler out in California in his Christian Cathedral? Unfortunately, yes.

01:39:13

Yeah, Robert Shuler. I used to live in an apartment building right across the street from the

01:39:19

Christian Cathedral, so I'm pretty close to this. Wow, you lived across the street from a lot of people, even Shirley MacLaine.

01:39:26

Yeah, I just avoided you because I have better taste. But you know,

01:39:37

Robert Shuler, that whole church started in an abandoned drive -in theater.

01:39:46

And people would drive in and put the microphone on the window there like they were watching a movie and Shuler did his thing on a stage kind of thing.

01:39:55

But that's how it got started. So, you know, there's precedent even way before a pandemic for people coming together and beating in a drive -in situation like that.

01:40:10

So when the police take it on themselves to ticket people doing that when it's certainly okay to go to McDonald's and Burger King, no,

01:40:23

I'll take that case to court any day. Well, thank you,

01:40:29

Johnny, in Queens, New York. And keep listening to Iron Trip and Zion Radio and spreading the word about the program in New York City and beyond.

01:40:36

We have to go to our final break. This is much more brief than the last break, so don't be worried.

01:40:44

And if you have a question, I would submit it immediately because we're rapidly running out of time. It's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:40:52

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And as always, please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

01:40:58

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away. We'll be right back.

01:41:05

The coronavirus pandemic has rapidly changed our way of life, bringing so many uncertainties.

01:41:12

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01:41:19

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F. LaGarde Smith and Johnny in Queens, New York has a follow -up question. Should those Christians consider taking legal action, possibly class action suit, as a stand for righteousness?

01:49:21

What would be the likely outcome? All right, all right.

01:49:28

I'm a lawyer. But I hate lawsuits and I don't really like lawyers all that much.

01:49:38

I've tried thousands of them. No, no, no. No, let's just, let's just do what we think is right as best we can do it.

01:49:51

We'll get through this crisis. I just don't see why we're in such a litigious mode as Christians.

01:50:05

You know, what you end up doing is creating more problems for yourself when really we could just spend all that time and effort ministering to other people, evangelizing other people and encouraging each other.

01:50:19

No. You know, if you get a favorable outcome, what do you want, and particularly in this particular crisis,

01:50:29

I don't encourage anybody to be filing a lawsuit. It's not, you know, if it went on and on and on, yeah, maybe so.

01:50:39

Maybe collectively we need to get the Christian Legal Society involved and allow somebody like that to bring a case on behalf of all who are being affected by some governmental regulation.

01:50:56

But for one congregation or group of congregations or individuals, no, no. Just, we can work around this thing.

01:51:06

Thank you, Johnny. And we have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who says,

01:51:12

I was of the understanding that the government could not prohibit gatherings of church congregants without violating the

01:51:22

Constitution itself. Well, that's just not true, unfortunately.

01:51:28

What they can do is say, if you meet, keep your social distancing, and if you don't do that, then we can intervene to shut you down, but it's not because of the worship aspect as much as it is because of the threat to health, the lack of social distancing.

01:51:57

They can put a requirement on group limits, number of people in groups.

01:52:07

They can do that because of the health concerns. To just say nobody under any circumstances can meet to worship, well, no, they can't do that.

01:52:19

They can't do that. But they can certainly put limits on how that worship is conducted and the number of people involved.

01:52:29

They can do that under health concerns. Perhaps, what if the church was being treated unreasonably and they did follow the guidelines that everybody follows in grocery stores, like remaining six feet apart and so on, because not every church is a megachurch with thousands of people.

01:52:51

In fact, I would think that they would be in a minority, those very large megachurches where people are packed in like sardines.

01:53:00

So what about that, where the government is really, as you were saying before, overreaching when it came to the drive -thru?

01:53:06

Yeah. They've got a case for...

01:53:13

Again, I wouldn't bring it, but I would certainly say you have a good case where you're not talking about a megachurch.

01:53:20

You're talking about, for example, our little church of 30 people. We could spread out six feet apart easily in our little building.

01:53:28

And the government shouldn't and probably isn't really enforcing that.

01:53:33

It's these big megachurches where there are just hundreds or thousands of people crammed into a building, and the government knows that there's no social distancing.

01:53:44

The government knows it's a hotbed. And we have experience in South Korea where a megachurch was the epicenter of the coronavirus in South Korea.

01:53:56

I mean, we have demonstrable illustrations of what happened or what potentially could happen in those kind of circumstances.

01:54:05

And in those circumstances, again, my concern is not the law and the regulations.

01:54:15

My concern is the lack of concern on the part of followers of Christ. Lack of concern for the vulnerable among them.

01:54:26

Yes, that's very understandable, obviously. But there is a certain...

01:54:35

I hate to use the word fear, but that those who are in secular authority over us are having their own litmus test of determining what is safe and healthy.

01:54:52

And I'm talking about beyond the obvious, where life is threatened because of a real situation with a pandemic or plague.

01:55:01

But if this just gives way or sway to the government flexing its muscles even more, it is a matter of concern to me and people that I know and love.

01:55:14

Yeah, Chris. Here's the thing. If we are in a position of authority, making these judgment calls is really, really tough.

01:55:31

Because if you get it wrong, then a lot of innocent people are going to die.

01:55:37

If you're overstating the case, you wreck the economy, and a lot of people are going to lose their lives in all sorts of strange ways.

01:55:48

So you're caught between a rock and a hard place. You don't have the kind of information that you'd like to have.

01:55:54

It's not like even the Spanish flu that killed my grandfather a century ago.

01:56:01

Wow. You know, we're dealing with an unknown in a way that other plagues and viruses were better known, and we could get a handle on it.

01:56:17

But with such little operative information available, for us to say, sitting back in our 20 -20 hindsight or in our sideline coach box, saying, well,

01:56:34

I'm not sure the government's got this right. They may not. And I'm sure there are a lot of things that they've gotten wrong.

01:56:41

But as Christians, maybe this is the only time I would say, think about Romans 13.

01:56:47

It's the only time I would say that, because Jesus wasn't making a case for if the government says do it, you better do it.

01:56:56

What he was saying was that God authorizes government. They have authority. There's a role for government, even the most corrupt government, even the most misguided government.

01:57:08

God instituted government for the reasons that are like church governance, that somebody has to make some decisions, and usually it's hard decisions.

01:57:21

And so he puts that authority out there. And so for us to sit back and second guess and kind of, you know, sideline quarterback, 20 -20 vision, yada, yada, yada,

01:57:35

I don't think that exhibits really an attitude that as Christians we ought to have.

01:57:45

You know, if they get to the point where collectively there's enough mental reasoning among the citizenry to say enough's enough, the government's got it wrong, they've overblown the case, you know, then we deal with that.

01:58:02

Here's the other irony about all of these things, though. We can always say they overblew the case, but had they not done what they've done, then the case may not have been overblown at all.

01:58:17

And we'll never know. We'll never know. You know, if they get it right, then they were wrong.

01:58:23

You know what I mean? Yes. And so I just think we need to cut the government some slack and say we're going to try to submit to the rulers because that whole concept is ordained by God.

01:58:43

We're going to try to submit to them as long as it seems that we can give them the benefit of the doubt.

01:58:51

If we get to the point where we can no longer give them the benefit of the doubt and they're just getting power -hungry and loving this control over the masses, then that's the time that we stand up and we say, okay, enough's enough, let's go on with this thing.

01:59:09

Well, old friend, we're out of time. I'm looking forward to having you back at some point in the future, and I want our listeners to know that Dr.

01:59:16

F. Lagarde -Smith's website, again, is lagardsmith .com, L -A -G -A -R -D -Smith .com.

01:59:23

Thank you so much for being on the show, and if you could hold on, I want to give you a proper goodbye off the air.

01:59:29

I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater