A MishMash of Topics Today!

Well, I didn't actually watch the confirmation hearings today, I knew they were on, but I had other things going on.

But you can't be on social media without seeing clips coming up. And somebody, once they took one of the, it really is a sign of the judgment upon the

United States of America, that you have these screechy leftist commie women who are senators.

That one from Hawaii, oh my goodness. You folks in Hawaii, do you know who you're sending to Congress?

Do you have any idea? I mean, wow. You guys really need to be embarrassed out there, you really, really do.

San Francisco, we know, you don't have any, you don't even know what embarrassment is. But wow.

Anyway, so somebody took, one of the memes was they just took one of the, was it

Lillebrand, I think is the name? Hillebrand? Something like that. I don't know. Some leftist, what?

Gillibrand. Something like that. And they just, they just made it, just repeat over and over again.

And he's just sort of sitting there watching her. But the one that was really good, they put all the Democratic women around him and sped them up and they're all just going, he's just, he's just sitting there.

It did remind me a little bit, I don't think it was as bad, but certainly what Clarence Thomas went through long, long ago, boy, that come back to bite them, especially

Joe Biden. Of course, Biden wasn't senile back then, so it was a very different guy. But lots of really entertaining stuff came out of that.

You know, I said a prayer for the, I got to, I got to view him as a brother. Okay. He's, he's a member of a

CREC church and a professor of faith in Christ. And so, hey,

I cannot imagine how different it would be to have him in that position of power than the last guy.

I mean, wow. I think the rest of the world would probably sit up and take notice.

The rest of the world had no respect for the last guy. I mean, who, who could, but I think they, yeah,

I think the Chinese would be thinking about the Russians would be thinking about it. Yeah, I really do. So anyways, say a prayer for Pete Hegseth, see if he just survives all of this stuff.

And I won't make any comments about the cross thing. That was pretty cool too.

So anyway, so lots of stuff going on that I think has caught a lot of people's attention.

But wow, how did I cut myself? I'm not really sure how I did that. That's strange. It's fun getting old.

You find things and go, huh, when did I do that?

Sometime in the past and just now catching up, going, ow, what is that? Oh, nice paper cut.

Oh, okay. Well, that is interesting. Anyway, I've had some interesting experiences on a line recently that are worth our discussion today.

I'll go ahead and start with Andrew Tate. I don't even know where to begin, to be honest with you.

You have an individual here who I was actually sitting around briefly this morning trying to think of, is there anything that the

Bible teaches us to avoid that he does not promote or does not engage in?

I mean, every kind of sexual sin, pride, hatred, bigotry, violence.

I mean, he is just the essence of Antichrist. He really is.

Allegedly a Muslim, but man, I think the Muslims are sort of like, well, we're not sure what to do about that.

But just at every point, what

Christ, what the New Testament, what the Old Testament, what God's law, everything teaches us to be, he's the opposite of it.

It's like he's the polar opposite of everything. And yet you see people propping him up and going, wow, what a manly man.

I'm like, have you watched any of the videos? There's a video that I saw recently of him just berating this woman.

And of course, foul language, right, left, and center. And I don't know how the man's not in prison from all the things that he talks about doing and doing to women and treating women.

I mean, just wow. I'm a little surprised that there hasn't been some jealous husband that hasn't taken him out or some crazy woman that hasn't taken him out or something like that.

I don't know. But because he's manly, there are

Christians who are like, yeah, you know, yeah, he's wrong about this, that, but wow, you know, oh, great.

And I'm just like, OK, all right.

So I wrote a, let's see, on January 12th, so two days ago,

I wrote a tweet. And I was writing in response to something

Nancy Piercy had quoted. So I wasn't responding to Nancy Piercy specifically, but she had tweeted this.

A former graduate student of mine now teaches at a high school, and she sent me an email saying, all my male students are fans of Andrew Tate.

They are even including quotes from Andrew Tate in the yearbook. I asked, where do you teach?

At a classical Christian school. Even Christian young men are being drawn in by these online influences if we do not offer them a healthy, attractive biblical model of masculinity.

OK, all right. So here's Andrew Tate, popular amongst

Christian young men. And so I commented on this.

And I talked a little bit in my tweet about what

I was taught as a young person. I'm, as everybody likes to say these days,

I'm a boomer. I think they cut that off in 1964.

I was born in 1962. And so I'm not totally ancient yet, but I'm definitely in the seventh decade now.

And so I started commenting a little bit about why

I am astonished by the examples that young Christian people are attracted to today, and how different it was in my day.

And commented a little bit on that kind of stuff. And told some personal stories about my background.

And I said, Andrew Tate embodies the absolute negation of true biblical manhood. Self -centered, vain, arrogant, prideful, undisciplined, ignorant, violent, disrespectful to God and mankind.

Abusive to women and proud of it. He is the very epitome of ungodly, unchrist -like rebellion.

The things I have heard coming out of his mouth are astonishing and worthy only of the vilest of mankind. And yet here we have

Christian young men in a traditional, a classical Christian school, finding him to be an attractive role model.

This is a result of the nominalism. It was recently described as therapeutic deism, a mixture of coddled

Western rich kids who have never had to go without, never had to wear hand -me -downs, always gotten whatever they wanted, together with the influx of secular thought that leaves no place for the wrath of God or judgment of God.

It is the result of disciple -less Christianity. No call to self -denial. Instead, the

Jesus will make you healthy, wealthy, and uber -happy everyday message that produces false converts. It's not a matter of offering a model.

It is a matter of directly teaching them that a life lived like Andrew Tate is a life ruined, a body defiled, a soul destroyed, a future eviscerated, and an eternity of just agony is punishment.

If some enraged husband or even rape victim does not blow his brains out first, he will die a lonely, degraded, sad little man, even if God grants him a long life so as to store up for himself an epic mountain of wrath.

Unless he turns from this life, renounces it, sells all he owns to make reparations to all he has harmed, and turns to Christ in helpless abandon seeking forgiveness, he will be remembered as an example like Nero, an example of the worst of mankind.

And to the young man looking up to him, I say bluntly, you will never know true manhood, never know true love, commitment, peace, and fulfillment as long as you live your life between your legs.

You are not a dog prowling the alleyways looking for a 10 -second thrill each night. You are a man made in God's image with responsibilities before him.

The day of your standing in judgment is much, much closer than you think. The decisions you make today will vastly limit the choices you can make in the future.

Do not be a fool. Read the first 10 chapters of Proverbs now before you watch another movie or Netflix program.

Listen, think, ponder, control yourself, in all caps. Recognize the high calling that you have as the creation of God.

See Tate for what he is, an animal enslaved by a hormone rather than a man in control of his body and his mind.

Reject your own destruction. Do not follow him down the dark path to death. Turn and run from Andrew Tate.

Turn and run to Christ. They are polar opposites. Okay, so that's what

I posted. Now, I was stunned by the response.

From self -professing Christians. So, Nate Fisher, pretty well -known guy,

CEO of New Founding, a founder and investor, sort of a guy behind a lot of what's going on in the

Christian world politically and things like that. And he retweeted what

I said and commented, if this is the message from evangelical influencers, young men will keep flocking to Andrew Tate.

Really? Really? So, what

I said, where was it wrong? They didn't bother with that part. None of the people who objected to my strongly worded rejection of Andrew Tate as a role model and Andrew Tate in his life, he professes to be a

Muslim now. That was a fairly recent shift for him. But most

Muslims I know would go, I'm not so sure about that. He certainly doesn't live as other

Muslims do. Well, okay, he does as certain radicals in the Middle East do.

But anyway, the things that he says, the way that he behaves, it befuddles me.

How does any Christian not follow what I was saying? So, if this is the message from evangelical influencers, young men will keep flocking to Andrew Tate.

So, what I said about how to have a long life, the blessing of God, this man's self -destruction,

I was thinking about Romans 1, a few of the other vice lists in 1

Corinthians 6 and places like that in Paul's writings. And he pretty much crosses and checks off all the boxes.

I mean, arrogance, pride, every kind of,

I mean, he proudly talks about pimping women and raping women and choking women.

And it's just, you're just like, wow, what on earth?

Well, but he does say this over here, and he does say that over there. And it's like, so stinking what?

We literally have so few examples that you have to go, yeah, just skip over all the rape stuff, but he's got some good things to say here.

What? That's how bad things are now? Seriously?

I'm just left stunned.

Now, part of it just shows how little modern Christians know about church history.

There's nothing. You can't look through history. I have mentioned to a number of people over the past two days, we do have great men that we could direct our young men to who lived self -sacrificial lives.

I'd like to use Adam Naram -Judson. I've talked about his story.

There are plenty of books that you can read, but here's a manly man, a godly manly man.

Not a manly man like we're talking about today. We're not talking about someone who spends two hours in the gym each day, and has got some roids going, and can really get those pecs going.

No, we're talking about a godly man. We're talking about a man who was imprisoned for his faith, and they would put his feet in stocks with the other prisoners.

Then they would raise the stocks up so that you had to sleep with your shoulders, and your head on the ground, and the rest of your body lifted up in the air, with everything that that would then do to you.

Imprisoned in that way. Gave up on all the easy things of life to learn a foreign language, translate the

Bible into that language, and to live a life seeking to direct people to Jesus Christ.

Lost wives to death, lost multiple children to death, lost almost everybody who worked with him traveling to and from.

They'd get diseases and die, and death was all around him, and he remains faithful to the end of his life.

We don't have examples? We've got to go, but look at Andrew Tate?

Seriously? I'm just left going, oh, okay.

So Nate Fisher tells us, reads, quotes my...

I just read you the stuff that I... Everything I just said about the young men, self -control.

All the rest is stuff. If this is the message from evangelical influencers, young men will keep flocking to Andrew Tate.

Well, you know what, Nate? Apart from the Holy Spirit of God, you're right. But you see, we're Christians. And we recognize that following after people like Andrew Tate leads to eternal destruction, and destruction in this life as well.

Because I can assure you, time is passing for Andrew Tate, just like it is for all the rest of them.

And God has determined the date of his death. Now, if you want to pray for Andrew Tate, pray that minimally.

God will take him earlier so he can stop adding to the punishment he will already bear for all that he has said and done.

The man just detests God's law. And he lives in a fashion that is just condemned by scripture at every point, from pride onward.

So the worst thing that could happen for him is if he were to live to 90 and to keep a high level of physical fitness and health, and then use all that time to just build up the judgment.

That would be the worst thing for him. Really would be. People don't even think about that.

It's like, oh, I don't think most Christians even really believe in judgment anymore.

I think most Christians are like, God's not going to worry about it. I know that Bible stuff, but yeah, it just seems to be the way it is.

So, anyway, I was pretty stunned at a lot of the takes that I saw in response to what

I said about Andrew Tate. And then this morning, in the midst of all this,

I'd said a number of stuff, I had a back and forth with some

Christian people, and I may talk about that in just a second.

But this morning, I saw something and I'm like, why did that guy respond to me on Twitter?

I don't understand. And I started scrolling through it and guess who had seen my tweet?

Andrew Tate. And so, let me,

I'm trying to, there's been so much stuff that has happened here. Now, this is interesting.

So, he says to me, seems like I win.

Seems like I win. And so, my response to Andrew Tate was, if by win, you mean die alone, degraded, empty, a symbol of a wasted and ruined life, that is up to you.

Shortly after you close your eyes in death, which may come upon you at any moment, especially given the number of people you've abused and used for your own pleasure in your life, you'll stand before the

Holy God. He has already warned you and given you more than sufficient time. And then I quoted from Acts chapter 17, verses 30 through 31.

Having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now commanding men that everyone everywhere should repent because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom he determined, having furnished proof to all by raising him from the dead.

That's actually a text that I have. That's the text I have scrolling on my, what do you call those things?

The really cool things that you can scroll messages on. I've got one in the back window of the truck. I've got one in the back window of the

RV. And when the RV is set up, Acts 17, 31 is what's scrolling back there.

Anyway, the empty tomb in Jerusalem is the proof God the Father has given to all that the day of judgment is coming.

The judge will be the risen and enthroned son, Jesus the Messiah, and he will judge in righteousness. By your own confession, you have no righteousness.

You have rejected God's law, dishonored your own body, and abused others' thousands by your own testimony. You are guilty of every form of rebellion before your maker and have no excuses.

Islam offers you nothing. The only hope you can ever have, the only hope anyone can ever have, is in repentance, turning from your evil and rebellion, and turning to Jesus, the powerful

Savior. He can take out the heart of stone you now rejoice in and give you a heart of flesh.

He can teach you, despite how scarred and torn your manhood is, to be a true man, a true servant.

He could even show you how to love, but not until you turn from your rebellion. You want to know what winning is?

I've been married to the same beautiful woman for almost 43 years. My daughter is pregnant with grandchild number six.

My oldest granddaughter, if she marries and has a child around the same age as my wife and I did, will give me a chance to hold a great grandchild.

That, Mr. Tate, is winning. Joe Butz said,

Amen, James. Listen well, Andrew. Some guy, don't have any idea who it is.

You know, some of his fans, Tate always wins. Talk about a cult leader, and talk about a cult leader that leads people into destruction.

I'm not sure who that was addressed to. You can hardly know what a lot of this stuff is, because once his followers start getting involved, wow, what can

I say? I'm not even sure how many... Don't bet against Tate.

I guess he's running for some office someplace. I don't know. I don't know.

But anyway, so that was my response.

Whether he would even see it, know anything about it, don't know.

But I did find it rather fascinating that he had seen at least the first comment that I made.

And it is amazing how many people, how many

Christian people are going, well, but, you know, our young people need role models.

Okay, you think he's a role model? Do you have any idea what this man's morality is?

Of everything that scripture tells us, every godly attribute that a man is supposed to have, this man has none of them.

None. There's no self -control. Oh, but he lifts weights.

Okay, that's great. What does he do with those muscles?

Beat up women? Treat them? I mean, I can't even,

I can't even quote the vast majority of what the guy posts. I mean, he's an embarrassment to Islam, if that tells you anything.

But I just, I don't understand. Part of it, okay, part of it is a complete ignorance of church history.

You don't know who you could point to. You don't know about Christians who have suffered for the faith, given their lives.

You can look up to them and honor them and go, that's the direction

I want to go. That's kind of self -discipline, self -denial.

This man is not a picture of self -discipline and self -denial, okay? Not by any long shot.

So it really has astonished me how many Christians are like, oh, well, yeah, you know, 90 % of his stuff is bad.

Yeah, but, but, I mean, that's like going, well, you know,

Hitler once helped a little kid across the road, so he's not all bad.

Okay, all right. Don't even know what to say. Don't even know what to say.

Look, I understand that this guy is adored, but all that tells you about is what our society is, where our society is right now.

That's all it's about. And I, you know, it would be wonderful if God would be gracious to Andrew Tate and raise him to spiritual life, and he would use the money he has and the influence he has, which would not last very long, to make reparations for all the things that he has done.

That would be wonderful, and we can pray for that. But till then, look, you know,

I read that thing in a Christian school. This guy is a hero, which means in that Christian school, there is very little understanding of holiness,

God's law, what it means to be Christ -like, because he is the very antithesis of Christ -likeness in everything.

So if you've got somebody who's going, oh, man, I just, whoa, Andrew Tate. You're like, let's start with the basics of what godliness is.

Okay, can we talk about self -control? Can we talk about humility? Can we talk about a quiet spirit?

It's not a quiet spirit. Can we talk about modesty? Can we talk about what

God's law says about how we are to live, how Christ lived, and how we're to live a

Christ -like life? Let's talk about that. And astonishingly, people do not want to talk about it.

It's like, oh, hey, you know, I just absolutely,

I don't know. So, anyway,

I, you know, a lot of people, you know, Chris online, great guy to follow,

KW Drew, men flock to men like Andrew Tate because of their own simple desires.

We don't need the Christianized Tate. Our example of manhood should be first what scripture says manhood says, and what manhood is.

It's exactly right. But the fact that there's so many people who call themselves

Christians, it's sad. Okay, anyway, got some other things here to look at.

But that was just, it still really makes me sad.

How many self -professing Christians can look at someone like that, and you know what?

They are not in a position to be used to be light in that man's life, because they won't tell him the truth.

They are intimidated by him or whatever. No reason to be, no reason to be at all.

A couple other things here. Well, there's actually a number of things here.

Let's see here. I'm just looking at what's available here.

Oh, Dr. Owen just retweeted.

It's sort of weird when you see you pop up in the, ah, right now actually.

Back to the Calvin Robinson issue for just a moment, not for long. As far as I can tell right now, he is still speaking.

I'm in April at the Trash World conference. I don't know if that's going to say that way or not,

I don't know. But he had, not retweeted,

I think retweeted, someone had posted a section of my sermon from Sunday.

And on Sunday, I brought together a number of different themes.

And one of the things that came into that was the Calvin Robinson thing, and the whole

Trash World conference coming up in April and all that kind of stuff. And so I had mentioned that in passing.

I also read some other stuff that, just trying to help people to understand the various attacks upon the gospel that are out there and how to have peace in Christ.

So anyway, Calvin Robinson had posted, Oh dear me,

Whitebeard is sermonizing against mine and Anthony's Twitter banter now.

It was a bit weird that he spent weeks talking about us on his ex -YouTube channel. But now it has reached his pulpit.

I am a little concerned. Has anyone checked in on him? Is he okay? To which

I responded, Notice how Calvin Robinson reduces the addition of Marian intervention and salvation itself to mere

Twitter banter. Because that's what I was talking about. I was in the sermon, I talked about,

Well, remember what sort of turned the light on about Calvin Robinson was this other fellow had tweeted about how

Mary, how the thief on the cross was saved through Mary's intercession.

And I mean, that's not official dogma or anything like that at all. And Calvin Robinson had said,

Based and Mary pilled or something like that. He had agreed with it, but it was great.

And so I had talked about that. And because I was talking about Marian devotion and things like that from a biblical perspective in scripture.

And so he says, Whitebeard is sermonizing against mine and Anthony's Twitter banter now.

No, it wasn't Twitter banter. It was the specific assertion that the thief on the cross was saved through Mary's intercession.

And I don't know how much Calvin Robinson actually knows about Roman Catholic theology, because he would say that he's not under the specific authority of Rome and the

Roman bishop, but he must have some knowledge of it. And so I'm like,

I'm dealing with people who literally believe that Mary is the neck that turns

God's head of mercy. And I read in the sermon a number of statements about Mary's intercession, her role in these things, all that kind of stuff.

And so I responded to his, has anyone checked in on him?

Is he okay? I said, it is plain he wants to focus this all upon him.

The victim card mentality is so rampant today. But anyone who has read what I have written or listened to what

I have said knows the issue isn't Calvin Robinson. It is the utter undermining of the sufficiency and perfection of Christ's work through the affirmation of an unbiblical, non -apostolic tradition of men.

Robinson could never, ever defend this kind of teaching in a debate, and he well knows that.

Which is true, but why would he feel like he needs to stick himself in there?

To which thoughtfully Catholic responded, just so you get an idea of how that went over.

If Christ being sufficient means that asking others to pray for us is pointless, then why did

St. Paul recommend the practice? And if Christians on earth can pray for and with us, why should

Christians in heaven not do so also? Or are they not alive to God? To which I responded, of course, it's not a matter of asking someone to pray for us.

It is elevating Mary to queen of heaven, queen of mercy, and entrusting our souls to her. It is saying she is the neck that turns the head of God's mercy and that all grace comes from Mary.

But you knew all of that, right? Here is a good example of what you would need to defend rather than this anemic, oh, we are just asking someone to pray for us stuff.

And then, wow, it didn't format well. Sometimes when you are typing the post and you paste something in, looks a lot better than when it comes out the other end.

Now, I'm not going to read all this because I read it in my sermon on Sunday. Toward the end of the sermon, so you can look at that.

I gave an entire quotation from Glories of Mary, Alphonsus de

Liguri. I'm not recommending this book to you.

Man, how old is this? Why can't we make paper that lasts anymore?

I mean, look, this was... Okay, it's got my little library of James Robert White things.

That's probably the 1980s in it, okay? So, all right, it's getting up there. Did you hear that crack just there?

That's what happens to paperbacks when they... The copyright's 31.

That's not when this was printed. I don't see one in here.

But just look how... This is a fourth reprint revised. It just...

We don't make books that last any longer. I mean, it's just, okay, paperback, cheap. All right, I get it.

But anyway, that's what I was quoting from.

So, as far as I can tell right now, he's still going to the

Trash World conference. As far as I can tell. Could something come up? I have a feeling probably something probably will.

That's true. Okay. That's interesting.

That would get in a lot of trouble if you say that out loud. Okay, let me see here.

What was the background of that? Well, I named this coverondl .jpeg.

So, that must be why I put this here. You know,

I have to... Let me see if I can... We didn't test this, did we? I don't need sound.

So, it doesn't really matter. But is that able...

Oh, yeah, I have to go full screen on that. Notice what you've got down here at the bottom.

You see that? Oh, yeah, right there. A guy named Jacob Joy has...

Okay, hear me out. Holy tradition is the mortar that holds the bricks, scriptures, of the building

Christianity together. So, if you look carefully, you know, this says scriptures, scriptures, scriptures.

So, the bricks are scriptures. And then holy tradition, holy tradition, holy tradition is the mortar that holds all this together.

Okay. And so, the statement up here is when you remove over a thousand years of history and oral tradition from Christianity, you destroy the very basic foundation that keeps the faithful on the right path.

Any one person could take the Bible and use it however they please, turning personal interpretation into damaging cult mentality.

Educating yourself about church history in the very beginning of time is crucial to prevent yourself from being swayed by what feels good to you.

We need holy tradition. We need the church. Okay. So, you can go ahead and put that down.

Well, it's fine over there or whatever. Either one, doesn't matter.

So, this is a very, very common perspective. And for a lot of people, this idea, you know, the scriptures, holy tradition, the holy tradition is the mortar that holds the wall together.

So, when you remove over a thousand years of history, all right, first thousand years, oh, there were some great men.

And there were a lot of less than great men. And there was a lot of doctrinal development that went the right direction.

A lot of doctrinal development went the wrong direction. But what's the touchstone to determine all of that? We see where all this is going now, 2 ,000 years down the road.

We look at the Pope in Rome today. And my goodness, where has he gone?

If the trajectory continues the way that Francis has aimed it, where is that going to take even

Roman Catholicism? Do we have all sorts of weird stuff out there?

Yeah. And do we often lament the foolishness of where people are going?

Yep. But it's simply not true that any one person could take the Bible and use it however they please.

Not properly, not in its original language, original context.

Is it, if the Bible can be used that way, if the Bible, if there's nothing in the language of the

Bible that can actually tell us what it means, then why do you think there's something in the language of canons and decrees of the

Council of Trent that tell us what it means? I mean, I've seen Roman Catholics using the exact same magisterial statements to say the exact opposite of each other.

So has that proven an insufficiency of the magisterium? I mean, you look at where Francis is going today in comparison to a

Pope 70 years ago. Are they a part of the same church? How could you even tell?

So turning personal interpretation into damaging cult mentality. I've seen a whole lot of personal interpretation of every single

Roman Catholic document ever produced. Right? Yep. So educating yourself about church history from the very beginning of time is crucial.

Well, yeah, and if you do that, then you know that what has developed in Roman Catholicism is light years.

Light years from the early church. The entire Marian trajectory, light years.

I mean, the stuff that was defined in the past few centuries, unknown in the early church.

And don't give me the old acorn thing. That ain't going to cut it. We need holy tradition.

We need the church. Well, you don't even get to define what holy tradition is. The guy over there right now gets to define it, and he's defining it very differently than the guy before him.

You actually need something from God that doesn't change called the scriptures. Yeah.

So from their perspective, the scriptures are just like this guy's perspective. The scriptures are just, you know, the bricks and you need the mortar.

Mortar is the holy tradition, which gets to be reinterpreted by every bishop of Rome, I guess.

And they can just do their own thing from there. Now, this is interesting.

And boy, we could spend a lot of time on this. But Samuel Holden, one of the white boy summer guys, published this on the 10th of 2023.

People are always like, I love Martin Luther, but it's a shame he had such a bad view of the Jews. I love

John Calvin, but it's a shame he had such a bad view of the Jews. I love St. Augustine, but it's a shame that he had such a bad view of the

Jews. I love St. Ambrose, but it's a shame he had such a bad view of the Jews. I love John Chrysostom, but it's a shame he had such a bad view of the

Jews. My brother in Christ, perhaps it is you that has a bad view of the Jews. That's what

Samuel Holden said. Now, there are obviously differences between each one of these individuals that if we were careful and examine these things, you'd see where the differences are, but there is a long history of anti -Semitism in the church.

It goes back a long, long ways, and Luther, for example, two very different phases in his life.

Early phase, where he had hope for the power of the gospel to have impact in the

Jewish community, and then 1525, the watershed, it's one

Luther, then another Luther, the tale of the two Luthers. One of the saddest things about Luther's life is that the last few sermons that he preached, and it looks like he had already had maybe a mini -stroke or something like that.

I mean, obviously, they didn't know about these things back then, but his health was failing, and the irony is he was born in Icelaven, but never really lived there, and was speaking in Icelaven when all this happened, and he dies there.

Strange. But yeah, those last sermons that he preached, not a glowing end to a life, sadly, and certainly the second half of his life, not a powerful thing.

Sort of sad. But this is the kind of stuff that the white boy summer people are putting out there, and it is true that a sadly anti -Semitic, anti -Jewish attitude developed early on in the church.

You can see its development over time, and it became established, even amongst people that, you know,

John Chrysostom, talk about someone who could preach the doors down, and not, he was a biblicist.

He really was in the sense of his preaching, when you listen to preaching, but on that subject, you know, you can definitely find the kind of stuff that you'll get there, but there's

Samuel Holden, you know, pushing that stuff out there that other people are dealing with.

I've got a bunch of these screens up here. So, Gabriel Hughes had written, you will not get just laws without changed hearts, and only the gospel can do that.

If you change the law without changed hearts, they'll either not follow it, or just change the law back.

To which Jay Chase Davis said, is this how you parent? And Joel Webben quoted the both of them and said, flawless victory.

Here's a good example of how Twitter does not necessarily bring out the best in everybody.

Gabe's point is pretty obvious, and it's a basic Christian understanding that if you don't change someone's heart, their obedience is going to be surface level, and it's not going to be from the heart.

And there's something in scripture about, you know, true obedience to God needs to come from the heart.

It's, you know, if it's just an external type thing where I don't want to get into trouble, that kind of stuff.

Okay. But then when

Jay Chase Davis says, is this how you parent? He's completely changed in the context of what

Gabe's talking about. Gabe's talking about God's law, and that there needs to be a gospel change of the heart for someone to actually want to follow

God's law from the heart. Right? I mean, that's, isn't that sort of a basic thing?

It is. And so when he says, is this how you parent? That's just a massive category error.

You're not saying that I, as a parent, have an unchangeable, eternal law, and that I know all things.

And as a parent, you wish you could change your children's hearts. You pray that their hearts would be changed, but you can't bring that about yourself.

And I think some of the greatest damage that parents have ever, has ever done is they wanted that so badly that they sort of pretended it happened, and treated their kids as if it had happened, and then closed their eyes when they saw all the evidence that it actually hadn't happened.

That's some of the worst of Christian parenting right there. And we're all tempted to do that.

But it's very different things. And so I was like, well, here's a basic statement from Gabe Hughes.

You will not get just laws without changed hearts, and only the gospel can do that. If you change the law without changed hearts, they'll either not follow it or just change the law back.

He's talking about human laws, and that if you're going to have justice, it has to come from God's actions.

And so putting the parents in place of God isn't the same thing. I don't know why these guys were taking a shot at that, but I thought it seems so strange, so odd.

It really does. Is it really 353?

How'd that happen? Sometimes I wonder if the clock on this computer just runs fast or something like that.

Same as yours? Okay. What do I do with this?

Well, let me just sort of give you an idea of where we're going to be going in the future.

A number of times over the past four or five years, I have talked a little bit about Second Nicaea.

Now, you know, I love church history, teach church history, and I've taught church history for years and years and years.

And we've talked about this in the past, but especially church history lessons seem to have to be repeated regularly.

And there's some interesting stuff that does really have relevance today in regards to conciliar authority, church councils, where Protestants stand in relationship to authoritative church council statements, and especially in dealing with Eastern Orthodoxy.

There's a real, I don't know how long -lasting it's going to be.

I think part of the reason this is happening is because Francis is just so wishy -washy and everybody sees these wishy -washy.

And so when you have these waves of people becoming tired of wishy -washy evangelicalism, and they start looking for something more with a more as more of a historical pedigree to it, they used to look to Roman Catholicism because that is what is predominant in the

West. But now all of a sudden, Eastern Orthodoxy is cropping up and you see people talking about, you know, converting to Eastern Orthodoxy and stuff like that.

And look, the vast majority of our people don't have a clue about Eastern Orthodoxy.

Eastern Orthodoxy is, in its native form, very different from Roman Catholicism on many topics.

And it's difficult for Western thinkers to think like the people of the

East. They do not think in the same categories that we do. And the results, well, just think about how many books there are out there on Roman Catholicism from a

Protestant perspective. How many books are there on Eastern Orthodoxy? Just a few that I know of. And the reason is, and people said, well, why don't you write one?

The reason is trying to put these things into the ordered thought process of the

West when the East eschews that kind of very thought process is very hard to do, especially in written form.

We've tried it in the past. We've talked about various aspects of it. And it's really challenging.

But one of the things that I do want to address, and I was going to get into it today, we're not going to have time to do it, is the issue of the

Second Nicene Council. The First Nicene Council, we've talked about it before.

We've talked about Constantine. We've talked about how important it was, how it was really a, it was the starting point of what would eventually be the state church in the

West. There's no two ways about that. But between 325,

First Council of Nicaea, and 787, Second Council of Nicaea, man, a lot happened.

I mean, when you think about it, that's 460 some odd years. It's almost half a millennium.

And when you compare the two councils, you can see that, yeah, half a millennium has indeed passed.

But I think there's some really important lessons to be learned.

Because, I mean, the Second Council of Nicaea is one of the last places where East and West still agreed about certain things.

And the primary thing they were focused upon was called the iconoclastic controversy, icons in worship.

And it is a fascinating topic that really should not be tacked onto the end of another program with all sorts of stuff happening right now, going on in the news and things like that.

But it is something that I want to get into, because I think we're going to have to do some basic historical authority study.

Because more and more people in the West are adopting a, they're converting to Eastern Orthodoxy, but it's a sort of a mutant form of Eastern Orthodoxy.

It doesn't flow from the thought of Greece or Russia or Ukraine or where East Orthodoxy is state religion, things like that.

It's sort of mutated into something that can be understood by Westerners, but still has enough mystery in it to be really attractive type of thing.

But I think there are some really important lessons that we can learn and be warned of in our day by looking at this subject.

So we'll get into it. I was going to, you know, I have the book here. I was going to get into some of the stuff, but spent too much time on all the rest of this stuff first.

Sorry about that. We will get to it probably next time around, I would imagine, since that's what

I was going to do today and got distracted. But sorry about that. That's how things go. Thanks for watching the program today.

And we will, I think we've got, we're good on that? Okay. Next, when are you gone?

Next week? End of the month? Oh, oh, okay. I thought it was earlier than that.

Okay. Anyways, so we'll pick up with that. We'll pick up with that topic next time around.