Mental Health, Guns and Family with Pastor Mike Jarrell | EP 18

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They've asserted authority as if they know so much more than everybody else. And they've established themselves as the rightful owner of this domain, the psyche or the mental illness department.

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And now the church is fighting to get back the authority that we always had. You remember the little house on the prairie when people have problems?

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They went to see the pastor in the town that used to be. But not now.

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And welcome to Tearing Down High Places.

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My name's Joe Gormley, and always there's something to laugh about. We've got a really fine guest today.

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Pastor Mike Jarrell has come to us over the virtual river and then Pastor Jeff Clearwater as well.

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So Pastor Mike, how are you today? Very blessed. And you? Better than I deserve. Pastor Jeff, how are you?

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Better than I deserve. Wonderful. So let's dig in, guys. Mike, Pastor Mike, can you can you just share a little bit about you and your church and where you're coming from here?

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Sure. I've been a pastor for 40 plus years now. This is my third church.

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Been here for 24 years and our 24th year. We're associated with the

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Evangelical Free Churches of America. We're in the far northeast of Philly, almost out into Ben Salem and Feastville in that area.

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And I'm married and have two children. My son is also in ministry out in the

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Harrisburg area. My daughter is a neonatal nurse practitioner. Five grandchildren and very, very blessed.

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That's great. How'd you guys meet, Jeff? You and you and Mike, how'd you guys connect? We have a cluster group of fellow pastors from the free church, and we've been meeting what, for like four years?

02:10

Longer than that. Yeah. Yeah. For years and years, we meet at the diner and we talk theology and life and ministry and iron sharpens iron.

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So I have learned a ton from this brother. That's why we invited him on. Wow. Wow. That is that is that's a big one, because you are my go to.

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That's great, Mike. You're you're influencing my my my mentor here. So I'm so excited to to make your acquaintance.

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And we talked about a few possible subjects today. And honestly, Jeff, I told

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I told Pastor Mike already. The one that got me the most excited was psychology. Digging into psychology.

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And actually, so we have a Monday night men's group and they asked, you know, what what books might we look at for that?

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And I had suggested competent to counsel, which is J. Adams, first of, I think, 100 books.

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Did he write 100 books? Mike, you probably know. Probably close to it. Yeah. Yeah. So for the audience past pastor, who is

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J. Adams? Why do I bring him up? He's probably the pioneer and biblical counseling and and Christian circles, especially those of us who are evangelical and conservative.

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He saw long ago how the world was trying to strip away from the church and from us pastors, the authority that we have in God's word and therefore our ability to help people.

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So little by little, they've been funneling people away from where they can get the best help, and that is in the spiritual life and from scripture.

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So it's he's he saw that long ago and preached on it pretty hard. And he's someone that I revere very highly.

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So would that be a good book for a men's study, the competent counselor? Is there some another one you might recommend?

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I think it is. I'm terrible at book names. There's lots of good ones out there. He the essence of that particular book is reminding us that the spirit filled

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Christian has more help, more is more used of God to help you with your psychological issues than the unsaved expert with a dozen degrees.

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The Christian has what we need to please the Lord, to live a life that's that's pleasing to him and power filled and able to overcome sin.

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So why are we going to the secular world? I don't know. Pastor, Pastor Jeff, you're training ministers, right?

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You want us all to have ministries, right? Yeah, absolutely. And notice that we don't send you to the local university to their psych department to learn how to do that.

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We just open the scripture and believe that there's power in the word of God for transformation, which seems to be like so lost on our generation.

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One of the areas that I think about is like with the same sex attracted Christianity, Sam Albury and Preston Sprinkle and all of these teachers are now saying that you'll always be gay as your identity, even after you get saved, as long as you don't practice it outwardly and physically, then then you're fine.

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But doesn't the word of God have the power to transform how we think, how we identify, like everything about us from the inside out?

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There's power in the spirit of the living God, in the word of God to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.

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And I think that's what biblical counseling does, whatever the issue, that particular one or any other issue of sin in our lives.

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The power is in God and he's given his word to instruct us.

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So that's the bottom line for me. I agree. Yeah.

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How would you compare Pastor Mike? How would you compare, um, psychology's purpose versus biblical counseling's purpose, uh, you're talking about secular psychology,

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I assume, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I guess, should I use a different term? I mean, how do I, I, you know, how do

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I do that? How do I speak about it properly? As a Christian, you're saying it, right. But we have to be careful because I even find myself many times we start talking and I'm narrowly thinking of the biblical counseling field and other people are thinking of the broader field, but even there, the word psychology and psychiatry, which was the staple for so many years now has, as the, as the world does the secular left, they constantly are working on changing terms.

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So now it's mental illness, but psychology and psychiatry comes from psyche, which is a

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Greek word in our Bibles, where it tells us what to love the Lord, our God, with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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Our soul is our psyche. Uh, so psyche is originally a correct term and I'm not,

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I don't have a problem with the mental word either, but, but why, why did, why are they changing it?

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Why the emphasis on mental illness? And the reason is because they want to divorce it entirely from the spiritual aspect of man or the immaterial aspect of man, because they are entirely

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Darwinian and materialistic and, and we're animals and that's it.

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So, so they're trying to strip it away and it's just a mental process and the problem is there.

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And then the illness of course, is to emphasize you're a victim. We're all victims. Uh, you can't help who you are.

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You can't help how you act. Uh, and therefore we should let everybody out of prison and, uh, so forth and so on.

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So it just, it has all these reverberations and ripple effect, but, but that's the problem.

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So I don't have a problem with psyche. I don't have a problem with dealing with the mind. The Bible talks about that as well. Uh, but the, the thing is they don't want to talk about the spirit.

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They, they're, and I have a list of questions that I always encourage our people to ask if you're going to go to a secular counselor and I can't stop you.

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I'm going to ask you to talk to them and ask them a certain number of things. Is there such a thing as sin or evil?

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Uh, where does faith and Christianity, what role does that have to do in my spiritual life? And usually they see themselves as some kind of mental illness, surgeons, and the church is like a multivitamin.

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That's, that's, that's how they see it. And I see it the opposite. I see it the entirely the other way around.

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Um, and, and they are the founding fathers of psychology were almost all.

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Atheist or agnostic, even the one, uh, that's most championed as self described as a

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Christian believed he was a little God. So that what kind of Christianity is that? Which one's that?

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Um, young. Yeah. Yep. So these guys were way, way out there.

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And even to today, I think it was a 2007 or so I was brushing up on some of my notes, uh, that they did a study of how many psychiatrists and psychologists, uh, claim to be atheist today.

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And it's over 50 % and some studies and well into the thirties and others. Uh, and, and it's stunning.

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They, they do not believe in God. They do not believe in the authority of scripture. They do not believe in the immaterial man that we're spirit and soul.

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Uh, they, they don't believe in eternity. So these are important questions to ask along with many others, but it's usually very interesting.

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They never talk about sin because there's no God to answer to. So therefore, what do they think about homosexuality or transgenderism?

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Now, why are we going to these people? If they believe those things are normal and acceptable, which the

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American psychiatric association didn't used to believe were normal and acceptable. So were they right then or right now?

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Uh, and they've made major changes. And why are we going to them for expertise?

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If, if we can't trust them on those matters, uh, like a Supreme court justice, who doesn't know what a woman is, why are we listening to them for anything else?

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But that's what Christians do. Uh, these people are quote the experts.

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One of the, uh, people you just brought up is Carl young. Jordan Peterson is entirely young Ian.

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That's his biggest influence. A lot of people think Jordan Peterson is great. And yeah, he has a lot of wisdom when he sticks with what the

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Bible says and just upholds just conservative, conserving the biblical worldview. Great.

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But if anybody thinks he's become a Christian, he's still not. Right. And, and he's not trustworthy because of that young Ian philosophy that under kind of undergirds most of what he says.

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Yes. Boy, we can pray for him though. Boy, maybe getting closer. Yeah. I mean,

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I think that would be, that would just be such a blessing if God would just save him and, and because he's got such a following and, you know, he's already preaching out of the

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Bible. He's just not, he's always trying to teach. He's not preaching. Right. Yeah. Right.

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I didn't know him too well, but the little bit that I do, he has a lot of common sense or awareness of the dangers of the left for sure.

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Sure. So how, how does that, how does a Christian deal with psychology? I mean, psychology is dealt.

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I don't think, I don't think most people are really aware of how entrenched psychology is in our schools and our colleges, all these things like pastor

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Jeff was just bringing up. I mean, how do we fight against psychology's influence in the culture?

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Oh, it's a pervasive. It's every, it's everywhere. Uh, even in the language that Christians use when they talk about things like, well,

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I'm hard, hardwired to do this and, and, uh, I'm programmed to do that and talk about, uh, in electronics terms or technological terms, uh, those are borrowed from psychology.

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Um, there's, there's so many things and these days, even, even people who are selling cookies or hiring psychologists to know how to be more effective at doing that.

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Right. So it's, it's really tricky, uh, how they work and we need to be careful about how they use the tools of Satan.

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Why shouldn't we fight for Christians to be exempt from psychological analysis? Well, we should, uh, this, this is a major problem.

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Uh, in fact, so much so, uh, you know, Christians are always wanting to keep the spiritual world from invading the secular world.

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And to some extent we agree with that after, uh, our escape from Europe and all of the wars between the

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Catholics and Protestants and all of that. Uh, but now we've become so divided and broken down and what the secular world wants to do is keep stripping away the spiritual and the moral away from the church so that we have nothing left to talk about.

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And then they commandeer it with certain authority. But in California, for instance, governor

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Newsom, uh, has passed laws that strip authority from parents over their own children concerning puberty blockers and having, um, reassignments, surgery, parents have no authority.

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So if we don't wake up soon, they are going to take everything from us. Everything, everything they're, they're in the process.

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Now, uh, the governor in Illinois has just passed a law that it's, you, you will be considered an abusive parent if you do not aid your children in those things, that, that wickedness.

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So they, they are coming after us hard and we're, we're just on the cutting edge of some of that, but it's, it's going to start hitting us hard and it's already hitting some people in some families where their kids are being taken away from them.

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I, I hear that, know all about it personally, actually, actually met a guy in, uh,

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D .C. who spent $1 .2 million in Texas trying to prevent his, uh, pediatric wife, um, from transgenderizing his eight year old.

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After about four or five years, she was able to convince a judge to move to California and we're waiting to see what happens.

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Well, and, and that's how the world works. Everyone thinks, well, that's just a rare case of a situation

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I don't know much about. I'm too busy to get involved in all of that, but this is, uh, um, what, what

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I call being a worldview squatter. Uh, we have a problem with that too, these days, right?

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Uh, people leave their vacation home for a few weeks. Somebody breaks in. Now they own the place and you have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get them out.

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But, but that's what's happened with psychiatry and psychology. They've asserted authority as if they know so much more than everybody else.

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Uh, and they've established themselves as the rightful owner of this domain, the psyche or the mental illness department.

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Uh, and, and now the church is fighting to get back the authority that we always had. You remember the little house on the

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Prairie when people have problems, they went to see the pastor in the town. That's what it used to be, but not now.

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So worldview squatter, tell me what that is. What is a worldview squatter? Well, uh, it's, it's like what happened this past week with the

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Roman Catholic football kicker. Uh, he speaks truth that this country has always believed for hundreds of years.

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And they're going crazy. How can he talk like that? We need to suppress this kind of thing.

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They act as if they have been in the driver's seat from the beginning. Right. They were never in the driver's seat, but, but people go,

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Oh, yeah, we better listen to them. You know what else they do is they borrow the capital from our worldview to make sense of theirs.

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So in their atheistic worldview, Darwinian evolution, there is no justice. How could there be a standard of justice when there's no

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God and there's all that's going to be a million years from now in their worldview is just the,

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I guess the sun would have swallowed up this earth and there will be nothing, just nothingness.

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So how would there be a sense of right or wrong what they do when they claim they're advocating for justice for the oppressed?

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All of that is squatting on our worldview because we have the image of God and man.

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And so each individual has value. Only they're taking what is our concept of human rights and individual rights and the image of God and man, and they're twisting it for something that's completely contrary to the word of God.

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Yeah. So they're squatting on our worldview that way, too. I see. I see a T -shirt coming out soon. This is a

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T -shirt for sure. Well, they talk as if they are the authority. They know what they're talking about.

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This has always been this way. Right. And people are so ignorant and forgetful that they don't even speak up to that.

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They just accept it as truth. And we need to be thinking we need to be speaking out.

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We need to say that's not the way it is. That's that's wrong. You know, that guy, did you guys either did you notice any of the squishy church commentary on the guy you're talking about?

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I didn't know he's Catholic, but the guy that spoke the city chief, what's his name? Butcher. Butcher.

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Butcher. Butcher. Did you notice any of the great church commentary? Like they said, well, he's not really uplifting women the way that they should.

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I got a couple of comments where they're pointing to to Proverbs 31.

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And and I'm like, even our own Christians, you know, a big chunk of our Christians don't understand.

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He wasn't where he comes from. No, he wasn't using enough nuance. Yeah. Yeah.

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I give him a lot of credit for speaking out, but people are screaming from ESPN to all the bobbing heads on TV that to have the

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NFL sanction him and kick him off the team. And, you know, they're not just worldview squatters.

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They're stormtroopers. It's it's awful. It is awful.

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And and it's all steeped in. I mean, psychology is one of their big weapons to to to to take the worldview.

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I mean, the only time psychology does a good. I mean, they're they're like a broken clock. They're right twice a day or when they quote the

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Bible, plagiarize the Bible. That's kind of bad. I'm not sure about that, because usually when they quote the

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Bible, it's out of context and twisted toward a particular goal that I don't agree with.

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Judge not unless you may. There you go. That's the one that that always comes up. We just talked about that recently at church.

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But and and I agree with you, Jeff, entirely. You know, they're constantly stealing biblical concepts and then twist them.

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But this is the same crowd that said there is no absolute truth. But now they're telling us that there is absolute truth and it's not what the

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Bible says. So who said there's psychologists saying there's absolute truth? Tell me more. Well, they're saying every time they say that homosexual is born this way, even though their studies disprove that.

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So but, you know, we're always putting forth a theory as truth, whether it's evolution or monetary theory or whatever else it is.

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And it's contrary to scripture. But you can't argue it. And you're wrong and you're oppressive and and you're judgmental and you're hurting children's images of themselves and their self -esteem and on and on it goes.

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They just say it's settled science. It's settled. Yeah. Yep. So not good.

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So, yeah, so what are the other so we're tearing down high places, psychology, completely a high place needs to be torn down.

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I personally think if we could just extract that out of the culture, that would be horrible. What are some other high places we want to tear down?

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Because we had a little email conversation back and forth and you guys were chatting about a couple other high places.

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I yield to your interest. Well, I'll tell you what.

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So one of the things they do with psychology, you know, we were talking about the family court where I personally was forced to use a psychologist against my will and they would have taken my gun away if I had one.

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But I didn't at the time. Amendment. I knew you're going Second Amendment, Joe. So, Mike, tell us what tell us what the problem is.

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Why is that a high place? Why should Christians care about the Second Amendment? Why should we care?

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Well, the Bible doesn't speak a whole lot to that by means of a numerous amount of scripture, but it does speak to that in prominent ways.

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Let's think of Esther. Esther, in a time when Haman wanted to destroy the

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Jewish people and God worked in their behalf. And do you remember the last couple of chapters in the book of Esther when she spoke up for her people, the king said,

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I can't remember the law of the Medes and Persians. You couldn't change it, but you could make another law.

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And so the law was given permission to exterminate the Jews. But then he gave another law that the

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Jews could fight for themselves and defend themselves. And they did. They came together and they vanquished their enemies and by the thousands and saw a great victory.

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A lot of people forget about those last two chapters. We're just excited that Haman dealt with. But that was just the beginning of the battle.

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The battle then went into the hands of the people or the psalmist

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David saying, Lord, you have prepared my hands for war. It's not something we desire, but Ecclesiastes reminds us there's a time for war and there's a time for peace.

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And we don't want to fight a war, but what are you going to do if someone comes into your church wanting to shoot up people?

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You're just going to stand and say that's wrong or are you going to fight to defend them? Why does a shepherd have a staff?

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Why does he deal with the wolf and the lion and the bear? Why? Why? We're told.

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And then even to the point of Jesus telling the disciples as he's about to leave them, you've had it pretty easy now.

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You haven't had to worry about your meals or where we're going to go. And people have hosted me and therefore they hosted you.

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But I'm leaving and you guys need to make sure that you are thinking about your own pocketbook and making a way to live.

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And you better have a sword or two. And they said, well, we have two. And Jesus said, that's enough.

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Let's go. And we need to be careful to make too much of that or too little.

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But he didn't tell him to get cheese graters. He didn't tell him to get butter knives. He told him to get swords. Joe, pull that up.

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Luke 22, 36. People got to see this right from the Lord's mouth himself. He said from Jesus's mouth as he's going to the cross without any protest or battle because he had to win the spiritual battle first.

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But he was reminding his disciples, you need to be ready to defend yourself.

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And that's always been biblical. That's always been right. So why do you think there's such an attack coming from the left against the

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Second Amendment? What what's the danger that we're facing with that? What is the danger?

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Well, our founding fathers in America were God fearing men, even though many of them were not

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God, godly men or are true Christians. They they believe the Bible had authority over our lives and had much to say.

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But they also saw, practically speaking, that through most of history, most of the world, there's always been some kind of weapon control because that gives them tyrannical power.

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And we see it in the scripture. Before David, in some ways,

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I think that Jonathan was perhaps an even greater warrior and man than David was.

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But do you remember the scripture tells us in Samuel's second Samuel, maybe that no one in Israel had a sword except Saul and Jonathan and that they would not allow the blacksmiths to make weapons for the people.

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Why? Because it kept them subjugated and controlled and surrendered.

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There wasn't much they can do. And then even in that text, it says that they came with their mattocks and their hoes and their farming equipment.

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They were fighting battles with farming equipment while the Philistines had chariots and swords.

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And so that's what makes those early battles especially astonishing. When Jonathan climbs the cliff, which falls right back into the second

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Corinthians 10 passage, you guys are championing for the name of this, tearing down high places.

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And he fought the entire Philistine army with only his shield bearer with him. I love that story.

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When the whole army goes running, I can almost imagine that the entire Philistine army and chariots are running downhill.

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And here comes Jonathan swinging his sword behind them. That had to have been one of the funniest moments in history.

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But but it reminds us the Philistines knew then the devil knew then and he knows now if you disarm people, then you can control them.

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And that's why they want to take our weapons away. Amen. So it's love of neighbors, the bottom line.

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I mean, the Japanese said that they they weren't going to attack here in World War Two because there were too many guns.

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That's exactly. You never win a land war in America. That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah.

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Do you think that there's going to be instant replay in heaven? Like, do you think we'll get to see Jonathan chasing the

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Philistines? I can't understand why we wouldn't. Why would the Lord not let us see it?

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Yeah. Yeah. If he writes to us about it and that technology was not there then, why would he not let us see it?

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Yeah. In the future. Well, I think a lot of Christians and myself included think I wouldn't want everything

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I've ever done to be available for the whole world. No, no. Scripture. Certainly not.

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Why not scripture? Right. But Second Corinthians four seventeen says these light momentary afflictions are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory.

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So the things that happen here, even our sufferings accomplish something there. So it's connected.

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Hey, Tim, what's up? How are you doing? We got to take a moment and greet this guy because he's getting married in two days.

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Yes. Three days. That's right. Your mic there, buddy. I could hear him from the other room.

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He said better late than never. All right.

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Mike, Mike Jarrell's on the show. This is probably a great show. How are you, Tim? It's been good.

27:36

It's been good so far. Sorry to interrupt. Pardon the interruption. No problem. Not at all.

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We're just excited for your wedding coming up, buddy. Yeah. Thank you so much. Hey, real quick.

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Here's the bride right here. Tell her

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I'll be praying for her. Thank you. Thank you. That's good.

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Just like taking a little sidetrack that I brought us down about whether there's instant replay in heaven. And me and Mike both think there very well could be.

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I hope there is, because the things that happen here matter. They're not just a race and you start new. But what happens here matters for there.

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So I think that all of these things matter. We're probably going to be able to see it. But there won't be any shame because everything will be covered by the blood of Jesus.

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And we'll recognize how even what was evil in this world has worked together for good.

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And it'll bring more glory to God. So we'll we'll delight in the glory it brings to Christ. But I do think we're going to get to see the the reruns.

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Maybe there'll be a maybe there'll be like a God center top 10. Yeah. Eternity is a long time.

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And I think we're going to get to see the full glory of God and all that he did throughout history. Yep. Yep.

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So it is just opinion, but it's hard for me to imagine why he wouldn't let us see it. And it'll be better than virtual reality.

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You know, for sure. The Omnimax, we'll get to see it. And and it's amazing about the stuff that we already got from him in the word.

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Yes. So I think that we got to be interested in that before we're interested in, you know, thinking about the instant replays and stuff.

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People should really if they're interested in that, they should be interested in what God's word says now and get to know who

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God is. You're 100 percent right, because too often people who want to watch biblical history, it's merely entertainment.

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But when you read it and study it, it's for application and for life. And I mean, you know, a lot of people are entertained by biblical stories.

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But I know when we sometimes when there's a movie out like Samson a few years ago or whatever, we'll take a group of people to go see it.

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But it's it's worthless if we don't discuss it afterward. What is it saying? What is it not saying?

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Where was it biblical or unbiblical? But more importantly, how do we talk about Samson's life and what that means for us?

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So it's but I'm stunned how many people do not debrief or evaluate or discern or look at things by means of application.

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We've been so channeled to be entertained. And that's the danger of tick tock and all that stuff for our kids today, because I even know of them.

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I used to drive my kids crazy because even when they were growing up, they're in they're around 40 now.

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But growing up when we'd watch a movie, I would often pause it and say, whoa, that was big. And they'd go, can we just watch the movie like, whoa, there was something important that just happened.

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Did you see it? And it's important that we are learning, that we're studying, that we're thinking, that we're discerning.

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So I'm thinking, Mike, out of the topics that you talked about that were high places, there's probably two you could go to off of what you just said.

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You could either go down the work ethic route or the parenting route or parenting your children to have a good work ethic that, you know, any of those would probably work.

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Absolutely. And and we should. But we are in a very strange, very strange time.

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And it's not hard for the world to steal the parental authority from the church because most

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Christians have abandoned it in the first place. How many parents are teaching their children in the home instead of punting it to the church to do with children's ministries and junior church?

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Those are supplemental. Those are support. Parents are supposed to be training their children.

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That's the direct challenge of the Shema, right? Fathers, raise up your children in the nurture and admonition of the

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Lord when you're walking along the road, when you rise up and lie down. And yes, it's to be on your mind and you're to be talking about it with your children.

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And if you don't love the Lord with all your heart, what are you going to teach them? So it needs to be a part of you first.

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But that parenting of parental authority can't just be kicked away or punted to the school systems, to psychiatrists, even to the church.

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But that's what most Christian parents do, unfortunately. But we hire Christian schools to teach our kids, the church to teach our kids.

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But they're watching your life even more than all of that. But the world, like we said earlier,

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California, Newsom and the guy in Pritzker is his name, I think, in Illinois, they are passing laws literally stripping away the authority of parents.

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And I don't know, would we let somebody walk up to our yard and take our kids away?

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That if there are a few things that will make me more willing to fight tooth and nail, physical fight, grab a weapon than that.

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But we're letting our government discern and determine what we can and can't teach our own children by means of our faith and that they can behind our backs, take them to abortion clinics.

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We've been letting them do that for years. Now Planned Parenthood is championing behind our backs, giving puberty blockers to our kids.

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And now if you stand against it, you can be arrested for child abuse in Illinois.

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That's what they're trying to pass. So they are coming fast and hard. And there's talk in some circles where they want to eliminate all home schools and Christian schools, too.

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So it's coming. I think we have a front runner for red pastor of the year.

33:51

Joe, he's on the wrong side of the river. I know. Yeah. Well, it's a

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New Jersey initiative. We're like the prayer of Jebez. We're going to enlarge our tent pegs and bring it.

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We can have them. We can have them speak at the Red Church summit. He could be a speaker for sure.

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But he's a guest regularly on this show. Yeah, yeah, I know. But I'm confused,

34:14

Mike. I mean, shouldn't we let the government take our children because of Romans 13? I mean, what if they really want them and they claim authority?

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They say they're in charge. You got to submit. Got to submit, Mike. You have to obey

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God rather than men. And God established the home before he established the government.

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And that's good. That's that's the essence of it all. It's all right there. And we're going to we're going to answer to the

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Lord for how we raise our children. And you can't be a pastor if you don't manage your household well. That's how important that parental authority is.

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And not just authority, the authority is there because the responsibility is there. Are we taking care of them?

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Are we providing for them? Are we teaching them? Are we being an example for them? Are we protecting them?

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And that's what gives us that authority. But, you know, the government wants to take them and tell them what they can do and say and learn and and stand against us.

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But those are fighting words. I don't I don't know. That that's going to be a real struggle if I ever come to that point, what

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I have to do. But that that's that's I've been called to be a father before an

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American citizen, that's for sure. Yeah. So so I was sharing with you earlier,

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Mike, over here in New Jersey, we've got this this rule that says when, you know, child abuse is suspected, we're not allowed to tell our pastors.

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If we say we had children's church and you're talking about that, we're not allowed to tell the pastor, we're not allowed to tell, you know, confront the person, like it says in Matthew 18.

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We've got to call Child Protective Services toll free number right away. What do you think of that?

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Well, I think that's dangerous, but we also have to be aware of the other extreme. We have a a detective for the state attorney general's office in Pennsylvania just lives around the corner from me.

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He's a Roman Catholic, not not a Christian by our standards and terms.

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But he and I have become very good friends. And he was on the task force going after all the Roman Catholic priests.

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They, of course, took that to the other extreme where they didn't even report what they found to be true.

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That that's absurd. So you have the one extreme. But we should be practicing biblical principles of going to each other and talking to each other first.

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The church, I believe the church is above government ultimately. But there can be times where we should be able to work together.

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And we have for years by means of marriages, for instance, and certifications.

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And we talked about that a few weeks ago at our cluster. Did you say we have a marriage license or should we get rid of it?

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Does the church does it does the government have the authority to say you can't get married?

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We reject your application for a license. Well, we're coming to that fast because they're going they're going to start probably.

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I can't say this for a fact, but I believe it's just a matter of years before they strip pastors of their their ability to do wedding and marriage licenses if you're not willing to marry homosexuals.

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And the next big thing coming is polyamory. So now you're going to be marrying three or four people at the same time or five people.

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And that's already starting to happen in places. It's already happened a couple of places. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's two there's two cities.

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I believe there's one up in New England that's got polyamory. And did you guys see what happened in Germany?

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Recently, I saw you texted something. I didn't get a chance to read it, but you can tell us. Yeah. So Germany decriminalized.

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Child porn. Now that now

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I got I already I already got arguments from the left, they're saying, oh, but they're still putting people in jail for a minimum of 90 days.

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Well, it used to be a minimum of a year. So it's it's their progressive design to I mean, knock it down a peg.

38:27

OK, great. You're still putting them in jail. But for 90 days. Listen, you get six months for for missing a child support payment.

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You're going to get nine 90 days for, you know, for for child porn, really?

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So, you know, this is this is something to watch out for. This is what we all have been saying for the longest time.

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This is the plus on the end of the alphabet soup. Right. It's alphabet soup. Plus, plus.

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Yeah. What do you think of that? Well, it's already happening.

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And there's there's some college and university professors who are teaching that this should be accepted now.

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And they've renamed it. I can't think of the name right now. The acronym that they have for it.

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That's like Minor Attracted or something. Yes. Yes. Minor Attracted person. They have legal organizations.

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NABLA. Yeah. You ever heard of NABLA? Yeah. Yes. Yes. Psychology has been saying that for some time now.

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And there there is a move of not a well -known movement, but there's a movement of people trying to make that mainstream and normal.

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So it's down the same path as homosexuality and transgenderism and polyamory.

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I mean, everything goes. Which takes us back to Second Corinthians 10 and tearing down high places.

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I'm sure you guys have seen pictures from Corinth to the Acre Corinth. I've been blessed to actually visit

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Corinth years ago. And when it talks about high places, the city of Corinth is down close to sea level, but right above it is a sheer cliff.

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And at the top of that is where the temple prostitutes would service the people of the city.

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And so people would go up there to have sex as they worshiped pagan gods.

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And that's interesting picture, isn't it? They've elevated sexual immorality above everything else.

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And it's an incredible thing. And so I've been at Corinth and I've been up at the top at the

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Acre Corinth. And I don't know how anybody could have scaled that mountain and won a battle, but the scripture tells us we can, just like Jonathan, to make full circle.

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Just like Jonathan climbed that cliff and fought the entire Philistine army with our weapons are not worldly.

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Ultimately, we're not trusting in pistols and rifles to win. We're trusting in the

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Lord. Amen. Wow. That's a great place right there to finish it, Joe.

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You can't beat that. Oh, gosh. Have we gone that long already? I was having so much fun minutes, bro.

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But right there, that that sums it up. We we're trying to tear down high places, but we can't do that in our strength.

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It's not by life or by by power, but by the spirit of God, by the spirit of God, says the

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Lord of hosts. So we have to fight a spiritual battle with spiritual weapons in our right hand and in our left.

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Yes, I'm encouraged to go out and do it because it's not our effort, but God is with us and we are fighting for the children of this country.

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And the the stakes could not be higher. Yes. Let's get in this battle and let's keep fighting until the battle is won.

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Even if we have to go scale the Accra Corinth to set some some children free. Yeah, let's do it.

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Do a Google search on Corinth and Accra Corinth and look at the pictures. It's it's pretty impressive.

41:58

Wow. Definitely. All right, guys. So we're going to teach Mike the exit exit here. So if you see a see a brother down at the bottom of the

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Accra Corinth, lift them up, pick them up. If you see high place at the top of the

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Accra Corinth, tear it down. And then you're going to lift them up.