Have You Not Read S3:E30 - Roundtable

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints.

Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast. Thank you.

I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Durham, Chris Kiesler, and Andrew Hudson. We've covered a lot of topics this season.

As we come to a close, we'll be revamping how we sort through the questions we received since our first season, season one.

So as we work on that for season four, please look through our episode listing descriptions to see what questions or topics we may have already covered.

That way you don't have to repeat the question and listen to us say it twice. As our season closes, we'll be doing a round table discussion with this last episode of questions that we've kind of been pondering ourselves as we kind of go through life, because we've been given your questions all the time.

We have stuff that we ask, believe it or not, on our own. So we're gonna start off with a question that Michael and Andrew kind of had together.

If you would take it away, boys. Okay, sure. I have conversations with Jehovah's Witnesses who are at the university every week.

I talk with them. I talk to them mainly about the divinity of Christ. And so one of the things that has come up,

I don't know if you know anything about their theology, but they say that Michael, the archangel, was the preexistent state of who we call

Jesus of Nazareth. And then after he left, he assumed that previous glorious situation.

Now, I don't agree with that. That's their position. And they've asked me about this topic before and pointed to 1

Thessalonians 4. And I was like, hmm, I wonder where they're going with this. So in 1 Thessalonians 4,

I'll start at 15. For this, to you we say in the word of the Lord that we who are living who do remain over to the presence of the

Lord may not precede those asleep. Because the Lord himself, in a shout, in the voice of an archangel, and in the trump of God shall come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ shall rise first.

Then we who are living, who are remaining over together with them, shall be caught away in the clouds to meet the

Lord in the air. And so always with the Lord we shall be. So then comfort ye one another in these words.

They say, aha, see, the voice of an archangel. Well, the archangel is

Michael. So Jesus is Michael. Michael, can you tell us what you were talking about previously?

Yeah, I mean Michael Durham, not. Yeah, I got you. And the trump sound. Okay, so there's a lot of layers of things going on here.

It's interesting, because they want to engage at the level of, hey, let's open up the Bible and look at these scripture passages together.

What's important to remember is that their source of authority is not the scriptures. It is the

Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, which is the kingdom of God on earth for them. That's right, and I've talked to them about that, and I've asked them, hey, can you have your own ideas about what's true or not?

They cannot. They cannot have their own ideas of, well, this is what the scriptures say.

Hey, this is what the scripture says. What you're teaching is not what the scripture says. You have to conform to what the

Watchtower says. Yes, so it's important to remember that, because you may think that you're gonna be engaging with them on the merits of the scripture and the interpretation thereof, but they're gonna be required to agree with interpretations handed down to them by others, and often it can be frustrating if you're trying to engage about a particular passage and all they're doing is clicking on their iPad and just telling you what the official interpretation is.

They're not allowed to work in the text on their own. I experience that very often. Yeah, in this way,

Jehovah's Witnesses are much more advanced than Roman Catholics in that rather than leaving their people in confusion about what the magisterium says that they have to believe, they hand all their folks the software to say, repeat after us.

Yeah. So they're much more efficient, and it's the same idea. So we just have to know that when we're talking with them, and then we add in the additional complication that they're using something called the

New World Translation, which is, who was it, was it, I don't know if it was Hank Hanegraaff, or was it

Walt? Martin. Walter Martin. Yeah. It's the most dangerous book ever invented, is to take the scriptures and then slightly modify it and misinterpret it or mistranslate it so as to try to disprove the divinity of Jesus Christ and other things that.

It's a very concerted effort. Yeah. I compare translations all the time because I have their app to know what they're looking at whenever they reference their app.

And so places like in Colossians, they've inserted all other. When it talks about creating all things, they have all other things.

Right. And so this is all because of what Charles Taze Russell found acceptable versus what he found unacceptable, and it was kind of modeled around what he thought it should be, and how he thought it should all make sense in his mind.

He rejected eternal damnation. He rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. You know, he rejected all kinds of things that he felt were unreasonable and nonsensical to his mind.

And he wrote six scripture studies in which he was putting forth his own beliefs about what the

Bible actually said and why everybody else was wrong. And my favorite quote from Charles Taze Russell is that it takes two years to get through his scripture studies, and finally people are in the light.

But if they were to only read the Bible for six months without his scripture studies, they would be back in darkness again.

What a quote. Yeah, that should tell you something. And actually, that's a really great way of summing up how the Jehovah's Witnesses work.

The only way you end up believing what they believe is not by depending upon the Bible, but just being drenched and drowned in their own literature.

So when it comes to this passage, and they say, hey, look, look at this passage here. The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with a voice of an archangel, with a trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

It tortures grammar and any kind of reasonable reading to say, because he has this description, he descends with three things.

He descends with a shout, he descends with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God, this means that he's an archangel.

Okay, you would have to be able to support that from the rest of scripture, which this is just grabbing at straws.

This is just trying to grab at anything to try to prove their point. And as I think we discussed prior to the podcast recording, if we take their claim that the only archangel is

Michael, and we take a look at the archangel Michael and Jude, and how he was very careful in not rebuking

Satan. That's right. We find Jesus, without caution, just straight up rebuking

Satan. And that's very un -archangel -like of him. So this thing falls apart pretty fast, but even if we were just gonna take the strict grammar of things, he possesses a voice.

Well, of course he possesses a voice, but it's described as a voice of an archangel.

So he must be an archangel. To me, this is as ludicrous as it can get. But if you were to say, well, by the same merits of interpretation, the last description says he descends with the trumpet of God, because this is the trumpet of God, he must be

God. Because by the same merits, this voice is the voice of an archangel, so it must be possessed by an archangel.

This is the trumpet of God, therefore it must be possessed by God. That's a logical conclusion with how they're trying to interpret the text.

You're stepping into it. And they would definitely say, no, no, no, no, no, he's not God. Okay, well, okay.

So if you're gonna be ridiculous, I get to be ridiculous as well. Or lead you to your ridiculous conclusion one step further.

Now, that particular approach, you don't need to be snarky about it, but it's to point out the folly.

Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest you be wise in his own eyes.

And it's a situation where I'm not gonna use the same tactics as they do. They're gonna give me one little scripture passage out of context, we've proved our point.

And then I'm gonna give you my one little verse out of context and prove my point. And then when you quote your authorities, then

I'll quote my authorities. And that's just being foolish. But if they are going to act that way, then let's just show you the reductio ad absurdum.

Let's just take this down all the way and show you how absurd it is if you're gonna act that way. And I think that that is an effective way to like, oh, come on.

Yeah. Really? You know, so. Yeah. And you know, I've talked to them before about the divinity of Christ. And this is along those same lines.

And I talked to them about like, hey, you know, I thought Elijah was supposed to, or this messenger was supposed to prepare the way for the

Lord. The Jehovah himself would visit the temple. And you know, I tried to lead them down that road. Didn't Jesus say that John is

Elijah for those who don't accept it? And who came to the temple? It was Jesus. So you know, I'm trying. The witness, the whole body of scripture says one thing.

They have to translate it differently. And they have to have this other set of authority or interpretation to point to to try to obscure the divinity of Christ.

Yeah. So again, when these discussions come up and you're in an apologetic moment, an evangelistic moment, obviously it's going to cut back down into the authority.

And I was in a conversation with some Roman Catholics this last week. And as I shared with them,

I said, you know, there's the kind of authority where you're looking to find a really qualified authority if you have to have like a very complicated surgery and you're going to be talking to the doctors and getting their records and seeing if this guy's really legitimate.

Is this, and you'd be very careful, but that's just your body. And Jesus said, I mean, it'd be better to go into heaven without an eye and without a hand and without a foot than going to hell with everything intact.

I said, so your soul is far more important than your body. Your body will be raised again. But, you know, this kind of authority by which you're basing whether or not you're saved, your everlasting destiny on this,

I would say that this authority has to be immaculate. And I'm using the term immaculate because I want to, you know, get the attention of a

Roman Catholic. Exactly. Okay, so I'm saying this has to be immaculate. And so when

I'm talking about the scriptures and the inerrancy, infallibility, the trustworthiness of the scriptures and so on,

I contrast that with the ways in which the Roman Catholic Church has seen fit to contradict themselves and they're all over the place and nobody can agree about what anything means anymore and so on and so forth.

And I say, you know, on what am I basing my eternal salvation? How many different good news have they had across the centuries?

Oh yeah. Right? Yeah, and I said, you know, some guy in the 600s believed stuff that today, based on the later councils, would have anathematized him out of the church.

So is he saved or not? You know, and if so, based on what? And who gets to say?

And again, if it's a group of men somewhere, whether they're the Watchtower Tractant Bible Society or whether they are the living interpreters of Roman Catholic dogma today, you know, or the

Mormon elders or whoever it is, they're not immaculate. Amen. Right? They're not dependable.

But everywhere in the scriptures, the Father speaks to the Son by the Spirit and we're given the word of salvation here. Amen. Well, Chris, do you want to move on to your question that you have?

Sure. So this is something I've been pondering over, coming out of kind of a crazy time during COVID.

Are we allowed to say that? Or are we back to where we can say - We'll have to put - If it were up to them, COVID would never end.

Yeah, yeah. The state mandated emergency. We might have to put the E for explicit on this point. Oh, you meant the

C word. So there was all of that craziness and I'd found myself constantly falling into anxiety, just being anxious over it.

And I think God was sanctifying me and putting me in touch with people who could point me to scripture and further ground me in who

Jesus is and my hope for the future. So now people are kind of come past that a little bit and people are trying to get back to normal.

I'm kind of thinking, and this is maybe within the church and within the world, what are some things that could make you anxious?

Things that you see that need to be addressed or are on the horizon that are things we should be praying for or addressing, things that might cause people anxiety, but we know that we are to give those cares to the

Lord. But nevertheless, there's still things that have to be dealt with. Michael, we'll start with you and then

Andrew, then me, and we'll go back to Chris. Well, I see there's a lot of uncertainty in the world with wars and rumors of wars and natural disasters and stellar phenomenon.

And people get really upset and they forget this happened five years ago or three years ago and so forth.

Things can get really stirred up and you can feel anxious about the level of violence and warfare in the world around you.

I think that there's also a lot of concern about tyranny, deception from leaders, a lack of trust in anybody who has authority in a public office, and then a lot of lack of trust in people that you see around you, even in your neighborhood and so on.

You have no idea what they're gonna do in the loss of Christian culture and the influx of other cultures, not normal American cultures.

You just have a lot of uncertainty. You don't know what kind of values people are using to assess any particular situation.

This is not a world in which we live where you can trust the word of your neighbor, make a deal on a handshake, proceed with a sense that everybody is interested in keeping their good name and having good integrity.

So a lot of distrust of neighbor, a lot of distrust of leader, a lot of distrust of news, and just nobody seems to know what really is going on.

And in that sense, there can be a lot of anxiety, I think, and anxiety because we live in an age of information, but we don't live in an age of truth.

And the confluence of both of those causes a great deal of anxiety with a lot of people. So there's information overload, but there's no understanding or certainty that what the information we have is any good.

So you might call it fiat information. There's just so much of it everywhere, but is it worth anything?

So I think I see that around the world today, and I think it impacts the church in that there is a lot of desire for some people who have a lot of influence in the

Western evangelical church to try to ride herd on all this dissent, shall we say, amongst the churches and pastors and so on.

But there's good reason to distrust people who are just trying to maintain power and funds and don't trust what they're saying because you see that there's a lot of compromise.

So there's a big split going on. There's a new fundamentalism going on, neo -fundamentalism in a

Christian sense that people are saying, no, we're done with this project called neo -evangelicalism.

We're just kind of done with it. The old -timey fundamentalists were right. Evangelicalism was just liberalism in slow motion.

And the slow motion has brought us to this point. And there's a big split that has been occurring and is occurring in the church.

And so there's a sifting going on. People are ending up in different camps and that kind of thing. And I see a lot of disunity and I see a lot of people ready to fight.

And so to me, that's a concern for the health of a local church where sometimes the greater uncertainty and anxiety and the fighting mood of the larger issues can sometimes soak into the life of a local church.

And that's not really the venue to be hashing that out, right?

There needs to be unity in the local church where we are here to serve and edify one another. If there's an issue that we disagree on, this is an opportunity to grow, go to the word, help one another.

But it's not time to, you know, fist to cuffs, you know. Andrew? I don't know if I can follow that.

You know, I think about these very things. My mind dwells upon the possibility of a worldwide conflagration that's greater than it's been.

And what I think in my lifetime with successive foreign wars that have no end in sight and backing organizations or nations that are obviously opposed to Christ and it's just not being able to, like you said, trust politicians or you feel like you're really represented as a believer.

Who speaks for me at the state level? Who speaks for me at the nation level? There's not a single man

I want to vote for. But I do want the truth. I have a hunger for the truth in this day and age of, like you said, information without truth.

I have a hunger for the truth. I am driven to the word so many times. I thank God for that.

That's what I see in me. As far as in the congregation, there's the ability to have conflict with brothers and sisters.

You know, I'm an only child. I didn't grow up with brothers and sisters. So in my household,

I have three children. Two are closer to each other in age and they tend to have conflict. You know, the other day,

I realized that I had missed out on the ability to resolve conflict in the

Christian way with a brother and sister. I missed out on that. I am learning now what it's like to have brothers and sisters in Christ in the congregation where you don't believe what they believe or you think that you should go a different way and it's like, but how are you gonna handle that?

It's not like the world handles conflict, right? I'm supposed to be forbearing, forgiving, serving these people that I have problems with.

You know, it's like, Jesus, you're amazing. Just say my name next time, Andrew. Just say my name.

I saw these eyeing you the whole time. No, but I understand that.

I grew up with brothers, so I got to learn how to not handle those situations in a

Christianly manner to my brothers, right? I saw how poorly I did it for so long and we have

Christ to fill those gaps, right? Like, if we didn't have the examples, then he's our example now and we've got it in full and we've got it immaculate, as we might say.

Are you okay? Yeah, I'll just say, you know, along those lines, how often do we actually thank

God for showing us how to deal with conflict and then giving us an opportunity to exercise our faith?

You know, like, okay, I believe what the word says, but hey, this is an opportunity. What are you gonna do with it? So, I kind of see things just a little bit differently than everybody else in the room.

As far as in the world goes, the things that I'm seeing that should set off some sort of alarm bells or some sort of at least awareness for us, you guys, you're seeing all the chaos, you're seeing all the disorder, you're seeing all the stuff that doesn't seem it's going to end and I see unsustainability.

I see a lot of, so much debt racked up in the world that cannot go unanswered and it will be answered for to where I actually don't see,

I see an end in sight, if that makes sense. It has to come to an end, doesn't it? It has to come to an end and it'll come to an end in a way that will be awing.

It'll be awesome for us to see, both in the most terrible and probably the most glorious way. So, I'm seeing a lot of instability because of debt.

I'm seeing a lot of instability in reactions from the world, which I would say we need now to recognize that we have loads of enemies in the world.

We can't have a commandment in the church of, not just thou shall be nice, but thou shall have no enemies because I think we do and we need to recognize who they are, we need to point them out and we need to treat them with love as we were commanded to do, but we need to say that we actually have them.

I think some of the attacks that we're going to find from the world on not only just the church, but the rest of the world as well are privacy issues.

I think it was Sun Tzu that said all warfare is deception. I find most of the cacophony, most of the noise as that distraction, as that deception.

Is it the fog of war? It's the fog of war. And I know in the art of war, he basically says that at some point, the enemy is going to make his plan.

It's going to be clear. They're going to overstep a bound. You don't overstep first. He's going to show you what he's going to do.

The deception is going to fade away. And I think in certain privacy issues that have come up of recent, especially the ability to exchange freely without intervention or, yeah, intervention in your own private life is the thing that's going to be attacked hardest and quickest because that's the way they get to uphold the debt.

So if that falls, then their debt comes due on them and on their heads.

And I think that's what we're going to get from the world and all the other people who are being affected by the fog of war will be tools that they'll use in that war.

So I kind of see an unsustainable path. I see calamitous things as well, but I'm pretty hopeful on how there are tools, there are stones in the brook, if we will, to knock down all the giants in the land.

And there will be a path on the backside to all of that stuff within the church specifically. Michael, you mentioned a sifting earlier and there's a camp here and a camp there.

I'm not really worried about the other camp at this point. I see it, right?

But I'm just like, all right, you guys are going to go, you're going to do your regime evangelical stuff and you're going to hang out over there and that's fine.

But what I'm kind of seeing within what we might call our camp or like a neo -fundamentalism is a generational divide and a generational argumentation that's going on of certain things, certain areas that cannot be either questioned or crossed by the old guard and then a pompousness that comes from the younger guard wanting to press those things, sometimes to an extent that is just unnecessary, especially with the time that we're given.

So I think in that neo -fundamentalism, especially within the US context, there's that generational issue is going to pop up and I think that just needs to be dealt with from the scriptures.

And there's a simple solution to that, quit being a young hothead and don't be an old curmudgeon. I mean, and that's not like from the text or anything, but there is a certain wisdom to that to know your frame.

If you're young and you're energetic, dial it back. And then if you're older, use the wisdom that the

Lord's given you and understand that wisdom can come from younger men in the faith as well, younger brothers.

Those would be the ways that I see the concerns in the near future for us in the church and out in the world.

What about you, Chris? I think for me, going through all of that turmoil, things going on, anxiety and things like that, the ability for people to talk to one another, that that has been lost.

And so you can talk about all kinds of political, economics, health, education, you name it.

Down to the food. Down to the food, how do we get our food, all of it. But everyone has these ideas.

And as we move away from Christian foundation, you get some weirder and weirder ideas.

But then to be able to talk to people that, no, you're in that camp,

I'm just here, we're not gonna talk. I think there's gonna be a lot of conversations that need to be had about all of those different topics because of the, you mentioned the generational divide.

Things are done a certain way for a long time and then you've got younger people think, well, here's a different way or we know better.

Or that way didn't work. Or that way didn't work. And there's a lot, I think there's a lot of, the Bible talks about older men teaching younger men, older women teaching younger women, specific things.

And then gender roles, all of that different stuff. So I think the ability to talk and that's gonna come through the gospel.

I think it was so difficult for me because the disagreements I was having was not with unbelievers.

It was with people that were Christians, that were professing Christians and I felt betrayed by them.

I was like, well, I just wanna talk. Like even if we don't agree, I just wanna talk about it.

And it was all kind of shut down. Off limits. Because priorities, you've got presuppositions. If health is your highest goal and you're putting people at risk, then you don't believe in this, then

I can't talk to you, right? Because you might not be, and then so then your salvation is called into question. So I think in the

Christian world, where we're supposed to be about grace, we know there is eternal life.

We believe in the resurrection of our physical bodies. There is more than what's happening right now and yet we are right now and we do have to talk to people right now.

So I think being thoughtful about all of these different areas, we didn't have to think very hard.

We were kind of complacent and comfortable and now we're having to think about, what about our healthcare?

What about education? What about politics? What about all of these different things? What about Christianity over all of those things?

What does Christianity have to say about those things? And then applying it.

And I think just being able to listen and have the conversations. Knowing what you believe, knowing right and wrong, knowing the word, because there are some things that are just evil.

I've heard a lot of discussion about the Overton window and everyone gets a seat at the table and we all have our own opinions and you just need to listen to them and they just need to listen to you.

There are some things you just have to call evil, a spade a spade. And then there's other things like, I can understand where you're coming from.

I can understand why you're anxious about X, Y, or Z. But what does the word say? Maybe I can help you in this.

Maybe you can help me in this. And I think that's kind of my concern going forward because it seems so multifaceted and it's like, well, where do

I focus? Okay, I'm gonna focus here. Well, now this other thing's blowing up. I think it comes down to the

Christian being able to not just listen, but to give grace and then be grounded in the word, regardless of what others are saying.

So you have to be the one to bring order to the conversation, even though the chaos and the babble language is coming from somewhere else.

Right, I think being grounded in Christ, we talk about our identity in Christ, but then all of these other aspects that we have concerns about, if I know he's sovereign over all of it, not just parts of it, he's sovereign over the healthcare, he's sovereign over education, he's sovereign over economics and politics.

So what am I supposed to do as a Christian? Let me trust in him. And then when someone tells me something that's distressing or won't listen,

I can trust God. Okay, I can pray for them instead of I have to fix this now because my world is turned upside down.

Man, just going back to what the master said, right? What do you say about it? It's so amazing that literally everything in life, we can just, what did he have to say about it?

You know, and just trust that. What you were talking about reminded me, you were talking about overplaying your hand. Yeah.

I believe like so much of this is the hand that was overplayed in 2020. We saw what happened.

I know exactly what they're gonna do, right? They're gonna overreach again and again and again to get whatever they want.

It's interesting. I used to listen to This Year in Prophecy, which was like a false prophet review.

And they were talking about reviewing what happened in 2020. No one was calling for that. No one was calling for that.

But you know what they were calling for? That it would be a year for 2020 vision.

We'd see clearly. Well, you know what? Okay, maybe I'll give you a pass on that because I saw clearly in 2020 what's going on.

They lifted the veil. Yeah, and I think it's interesting to talk about some of the things that have been happening lately in terms of we do not have to be tossed to and fro by every new wind of doctrine.

We can't ask the Lord for wisdom who gives generously and be grounded in the wisdom, which is in its fullness in Christ.

And that false teachers go from bad to worse and their folly becomes obvious to all.

And so there are, we're watching as various false teaching, various false teachers very quickly over the course of just a handful of years move from bad to worse and then their folly becomes more and more obvious.

I remember five years ago, some of the rising stars of the church woke movement, okay?

And how they were hedging and using equivocations and trying to grab a big audience and so on.

And then, I mean, some of us knew there was like massive problems with this and we're calling it out and other people were like, oh, well, you know.

But now those same people, the things that they're saying makes them sound like unhinged lunatics.

They proceeded from bad to worse and their folly is becoming more and more obvious. And I've seen that in the church and I've seen that at a wider scale where you have people whose ideologies are getting worse and worse and becoming more and more obvious how ridiculous it is what they believe.

And so it's like a wildfire that burns itself out. It's gonna do a lot of damage in the meantime but wildfires kill themselves.

They burn themselves out. And the fact that there's wildfire over and over again, what follows it?

Regrowth, regeneration. New growth, new opportunity. And there's opportunity to say, you know, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.

Here's the good news. It's not chaos forever. It's not uncertainty forever. Here's the supremacy of Jesus Christ.

He's in every way and everyday savior king over everything. So it doesn't matter what's happening.

We can talk about it in the light of his authority. Amen. Well, speaking of opportunity and regeneration or rebirth from a sort of like nation death or empire death, what are our long -term goals around the table?

That's what I've been thinking about a lot personally. It's probably been since 2020, around that time.

What was that? That was our first year of marriage. So I had our first son and we had our first son and I was struggling to find employment and I'm trying to make long -term plans.

So instead of appealing to other places for work,

I started trying to make my own way through things, learning different technologies, learning financial speak first of all, so I could even enter into it.

That way I could do something for my family because I had been on the outside of things for so long and I got to thinking about long -term things and what things have lasted throughout time before me and will last after me.

And then I got to thinking about my long -term plans with my wife and for the glory of God and for the benefit of my children.

What am I gonna pass down to them? What kind of inheritance? What does inheritance include altogether?

I mean, what am I gonna give to them and what's our plan moving forward? I'm always curious when

I come across other Christian men, what's your long -term plans? Michael, start with you. Yeah, I've had to drop a lot of things.

When we were in Tennessee for about nine years, portion of that on the latter half, I did not have a really positive outlook on the world or the things that were going on.

So I do enjoy gardening and I was raising some meat rabbits and so on and did a lot of hunting and I enjoy all that.

And I brought that with me when we came and moved here almost 10 years ago now. And I've progressively dropped off several of these homesteading hobbies as I'm trying to not let good be the enemy of best.

What do I need to really invest in? And as my children are growing older, it's becoming more and more clear that where I have limited options and I've got to try to figure out what

I need to do. Becca and I, we are thinking long -term thoughts. I am hopeful for what is to come.

I think that in the wake of the very bad fruit of worldly families, of fleshly living, of lazy, self -centered,

God -denying, Christ -hating character, that Christians are gonna be the most desirable people in a variety of fields, including the trades.

And where I think that college education has come to the point where a lot of it, not all of it, but I'd say a lot of it is a fiat scam, money laundering scheme.

It was understood that my brother and I were gonna go to college. And I'm glad I did. And I went and got my Master's of Divinity as well.

I saw a lot of wasted effort in higher education. Man, shouldn't there be a more profitable way of doing this?

And I got in trouble at my seminary for saying that I was learning more through my internship at my local church than I was at my classes at seminary.

I got pulled aside and talked to about that. I was just trying to encourage guys, go get an internship somewhere.

Get some practical training, because this is not gonna cut it, guarantee you. And I'm saying that as a guy who grew up,

I'm a pastor's kid. Every day I pastor, I'm drawing on my father's 40 years of pastoral experience.

I'm just blessed like that. And those guys didn't have that. But I see a lot of need for practical training, practical experience.

And so we're encouraging our sons to do that and training our daughters to be good wives, mothers, and homemakers.

And if there's other ways that they can bless their families through some additional training, we'll look at that too.

And we are not trying to paint a hopeful future with the tropes and the -

The world's palette? Yeah, we're not using the world's palettes. So no, we're not gonna send our kids out to go get college education credentials and then go work at a corporation somewhere.

No, if you're gonna work for a big company, that's fine. My son's working for a really big company right now. But we want to see them trained.

And so we're thinking a lot about that. Now we have a two -year -old and we have a 17 -year -old and everybody in between.

So trying to think those thoughts and trying how to train them. And each kid is at a different stage, but we're always thinking about what is to come in their lives when we're training them.

So we're in control stage with the two -year -old. We're in coach stage with the older ones.

And soon we're gonna be just a counselor to our oldest and learning how to transition through those phases.

But we're also thinking about, we want to start thinking about three and four generational family life. And we just watch bad example after bad example of the elderly and their elderly children trying to take care of them.

And it's just a madness because none of them were discipled and trained to think this way.

And nobody knows what to do. And it's just a car wreck. It's just a car wreck. It's awful. And then

I see some good examples. Some good examples, particularly among the elders of our church.

I've watched them do very good things. And I am encouraged by that.

So we are working now with our children. Try to set up a legacy in which we want to see three and four generational households progressing so that we're going to be living with each other, taking care of one another.

We are doing everything we can to set up our children for success, knowing that at some point we're gonna be dependent on them.

My retirement guy has no idea. My tax guy's bum -fuzzled. What do you mean?

You should have $3 .5 million in your IRA when you retire if you want to live comfortably, blah, blah, blah.

You have no idea. At some point, and I'm already trying to teach and train and encourage my son to do things.

And I'm progressively, every incrementally getting out of his way. I'm getting beside him and behind him, pushing him, prodding him, encouraging him.

Because at some point, my wife and I are gonna be saying concerning our children, they must increase, we must decrease.

And at some point, I'm not gonna be the man of the house. If God lets me live a long, long time, I'm gonna be like my papaw living with his son, my uncle

David. And my papaw is diminished and he is living a diminished life.

And his son has become greater than he is. But my papaw still lives a meaningful life.

And he's blessing other people. He's encouraging other people. He's doing wonderful, good things. I know at some point

I am going to be taking the lesser role and I need to be training my son to make judgment calls and take the lead and do things.

And I gotta entrust things to him and not second guess him and so on and so forth. Eventually, at some point,

I'm gonna have to be in the humble background. There's my rocker in the corner. Son, it's your household.

But those are my books. Yeah, yeah. I wanna be a resource,

I wanna be a counselor, I wanna be encouraging my grandchildren and my great -grandchildren that the Lord would bless. But I do not plan,

I am not planning on my wife and I living in a retirement community or a nursing home.

If I die early because I didn't have protracted, extended care through pharmaceuticals and life support machines, praise be to God.

If I end up dying five years early, quote unquote, because I die in my bed instead of in a nursing home,

I think that honors God. There is a world to come. Yeah. Your hopes aren't here.

And it's like, well, anyway, so those are my thoughts. Despite finances or whatever, what matters?

Training my children for what's to come. I wanna start something now and put into place now something that is really, really gonna benefit my great -grandchildren.

That's what I'm thinking about. Amen. That's why I also bought Bitcoin, but that's a whole other thing. Chris, follow that up.

Bitcoin. I know, it's all they need this time. Oh, man. So, same thing on parts of that.

The narrative was college, get the degree. You can't get a job without a degree to do it.

So, okay, well, I did that. I did, God was gracious enough to give me a good job, but it makes you think about things past versus things now, family structures, generational structures, and now the household has just been attacked from all these different angles and you take the man out of the home and it's not a family cottage industry.

It's, well, he goes to work and then war happens and then the mom has to go to work while the man is at war and then the children are in the factories and then, well, child labor laws, we can't take them home.

Let's do a school system and everyone is away from everyone and it just continues.

What I'm working on right now is working on ways to break that. I feel so separated from my family.

I miss them when I'm away from them. Just my temperament and personality, desk jobs are difficult for me.

I'm more of a people person. I like working with people or being a resource to people and helping people, and so then being away from my family and not being able to teach them.

I would love to be able to teach them. That's just not possible right now, but what I would like to work on is a secondary stream of income, some land and raising food, not just for my family, but to be able to bless other families, to feed other families and help them with that.

Talking about the economy, I think families and churches helping each other,

I mean, we see that throughout scripture. So right now, I'm not at a point where I can do a whole lot, but I can do some and I can grow that and I can be that example for my children.

I have to be gone a lot, but if I make it a priority, this is important to me, even though my time is limited and I just have these so many hours in the evening when

I get home and I'm around you and I'm gonna make the most of it. And this is what I want you to know and this is what I want you to do from scripture.

That's kind of my priorities right now is to work on that. And then we'll see where the

Lord takes that. Ultimately, I'm looking for more time with my family, but I tell people a lot,

I'm looking for work. I don't wanna be lazy, but a job and work are not necessarily the same thing.

And so learning how to look for work, that I think that's been a struggle because all throughout public school and college, you're told do these steps and this will be the product.

And so you just follow the steps, do this, do this, do this. And you learn just to do the things that you're given instead of looking for, well, what are needs that people have?

What are things that I can do that someone's not telling me but needs to get done? And so I'm trying to work on being more mindful of those types of things.

And I think that's ultimately going to help because then I'm not being so selfish, which

I'm prone to do. I'm prone to want to be comfortable and sit and I've worked a long day and now

I'm done because I put in my eight hours. Now there's more work that could be done. There's more things that could benefit other people, whether it's me studying and being a resource in that way or learning a new skill.

So that's kind of what with a goal to the future and then teaching my children, the importance of marriage, three daughters and then a little boy, maybe teach them, you don't have to go to college.

That's not the way. And there are all of these other options available to you that'll let you live a freer life than what

I got to start out with. So that's kind of my goals. Amen, Andrew. I run with my wife.

Reflecting on this question, I was thinking, man, what am I really focused on? And I think in word pictures, metaphors and things like that quite often.

So I want to run the race well. That's like everyday faithfulness to me. Like in the middle of your runs, there are good days on your runs and there are bad days on your runs where you're battling the inner thoughts to stop running or to just slow down and take it easy.

Just walk for a little bit, it'll feel better. I'm in a season of life where it's really tough. I would love to be with my family a whole lot more.

There's so much that they're learning. The other day I taught my son how to push mow the backyard.

You know, and it's like, it was such a blessing to be able to do that. There's nothing like being able to pass something down to someone.

And thinking about an inheritance, the time that I spend in the military, man,

I have been compensated for it. But whenever I'm gone, my family doesn't get any of that. I have to be building for them in a way that up until here recently,

I was very me focused. I was thinking about what's best and not laying down my life for my wife or building up an inheritance for my children.

I don't know what the path is, right? But better is a little with righteousness than vast revenues without justice.

And a man's heart plants his ways, but the Lord determines his steps. So I know which direction

I wanna go. Every single day stuff may deviate. My plan may not, oh, well, you know, that didn't happen.

But I know to be faithful every single day. One day I'll hand off the baton.

And that's like the inheritance to me. All right, it's time to run with it. Part of that is seeing dad do life, do life in the

Christian way. Maybe the major part of that. My family talks about like there's more that's caught than taught.

Your children, everyone in your household, they see that. So that's what I think about whenever it comes to this situation.

Long -term plans. Yeah, I know which direction I'm going. I wanna be faithful in the run right now, knowing which direction

I'm going. I have plans. I'm carrying this baton. I want that baton to keep growing so I can hand it off one day.

Because it's coming rapidly. I've got a 14 -year -old, a 10 -year -old, and a two -year -old. And at one time

I had none of them. Life changes. That wasn't long ago, was it? It seems like a blur to me.

Where did 14 years go? Where did the last 20 years go? They were all put into sleepless nights.

All of those years. I will say having a two -year -old in your 20s is a lot different than in your 40s.

Much different experience. Physically and emotionally and mentally and spiritually.

Yeah, but I laugh more. That's great. Stuff is way more, less intense.

So I remember with our first one, her learning to get out of the crib. That was not funny.

With the last one, it was a little funny. It is, it is. He snuck out and put his, he got out, put his toy in the crib, got back in the crib.

When did you do it? You just started doing that? Yeah. No harm, no foul. So cute.

Well, long -term thoughts for me is I think this is going to be a century for beauty moving forward.

We talked about things that we're going to give as an inheritance, things that we're building up as an inheritance, the way that we live as an inheritance.

I look back at the way I grew up and I don't see many beautiful things around.

Many beautiful products, much that has been produced that was literally for beauty itself.

And when I say that, I mean the transcendental that we know that comes from the Lord himself. So I see such a lack of that, and I saw such an abundance of it in my wife.

When we first got married, I knew she was all about artistic stuff and photography.

I just didn't know how good she was with it. I didn't know how simple it was for her, how easily it came to her, and how much

I wanted it. Now, the more that I have studied her, studied the

Lord, and studied men of the past who treasured beauty, how much it means to me to produce beautiful things in our household on a day -to -day basis to give to my sons and say, that's beautiful, and not give them to a school system that says, this is beautiful.

And they're pointing at something absolutely, it's an abomination. Or to put a set of headphones on them and say, that's beauty.

For somebody else to give that to them on a school bus somewhere, and say, no, this is beautiful.

Those moments are things that I want to be there for and producing for them.

First, for my family. I see it in our church as well. We can look back at church history and see vast amounts of the

Lord's blessing on beautiful things, on beautiful works, on beautiful preaching, prayer, song. I want more.

It doesn't end with the turn of the last century, like people think.

And it doesn't have to come from record companies or major publishers like Zondervan.

It can come from here. It can come from where we sit. And I would like to be a little spark plug in that engine.

As well as in our state. I'm a sixth generation Oklahoman. There is quite a lot of beautiful story, quite a lot of beautiful song, quite a lot of beautiful tales, and even art and works that have come from the state.

It looks like it stopped somewhere. It sounds like it stopped somewhere. When I read current works from here, don't know where it ended, but it stopped somewhere.

I heard, I hear stories from my dad. I heard stories from my grandfather. There's not many other men that were like that, that have that bank anymore.

I want to give that to Oklahomans around me. I want to give beautiful things to those who are around me.

I want to make grown men cry like they were able to make me cry. And by giving me those things, not by taking something away from me.

There's a whole world out there that wants to make you cry from all the things it wants to take away from you. And I've had men in my life who've made me cry by what they've given to me.

I want to be like those guys. And that's my long -term goals as far as conceptually goes.

Practically, I'm going to plant as many elderberry bushes, as many peach trees. I'm going to try and start a company with how many of my family members are going to come along with me.

I'm going to do it, but they're welcome to come with me. That's going to be something that I'm praying and hoping

I can give to not just my sons and daughters, but maybe my nieces and nephews, maybe three, four generations out, like Michael was talking about earlier.

And something that's not just about my family, something that's about, that helps the church around them, that helps the state around them.

I have lost all a sight for any glitter that I ever had on this nation.

I haven't lost it for Oklahoma. I don't want to, I could. I'm never going to lose it for the church.

I'm never going to lose it for my brothers and sisters. So I'm starting there with my family and my church family, but I'm really hoping to be able to bless by my hands, by my mind, the most local bodies that I possibly can.

And so that's for all the economic reading and thoughts about time preference and time that we talked about earlier.

Those are the places where I always go. And I think it's just where the Lord pushes me. I don't think it's any sort of logical conclusion that I should actually get to from those thoughts, but that's where I'm pushed all the time.

That's where my heart's always going. And I praise the Lord for it. Well, at the end of this episode, why don't we go to our recommendations,

Michael? I recommend a couple of books. One is Durable Trades. I forget the name of the author.

Maybe you guys remember, but Durable Trades is a great book. It's not something you read from beginning to end.

You read the first part to understand the matrix the guy's using to talk about the trades.

And then he profiles 25 of the most durable trades ever and then proceeds to give a lot of one -page summaries on it.

That really helped me to think about what I wanna encourage my children to engage in and to consider values.

And his matrix includes things like family time, something that a whole family can be involved in where the parents and the children are all together.

And how many other, like, hey, what type of occupation should I look into? How many other people even talk about that?

Exactly. I took a test once in high school. Did it ask you how often you wanna be with your family so they can learn from you?

Yeah, exactly. So Durable Trades, I think, is a great - It looks like that's by Rory Groves. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The number one durable trade in there was being a shepherd. So I was happy to see that since I'm a pastor. The other book is by Doug Wilson, Productivity, where he talks about technology as wealth and being good stewardship of your wealth and taking things in a long haul, bite -size, everyday kind of thing.

And that was helpful for me. That was encouraging to me to rethink some of the ways that I do my projects and how do

I approach things. So those two books were really helpful, Durable Trades and Productivity. All right,

Chris. And my recommendation is, talking about family time, is just reading aloud.

Get some time with your wife. Maybe read just to your wife. Maybe read to your wife and your kids.

Find something to read to them, and it's blessed me greatly. Just finding something that you can do together.

Maybe it's a book you've already read and you wanna share with them, or maybe it's a new book that you've always wanted to read, but redeem that time.

I know I listen to a lot of things on the way to work. I get like 15 minutes on the way to work.

Listen to things at double speed so I can fit more in. But then if I can read something with my children, well, that'll produce conversations that I can have after that, and we're on the same page.

So it produces, instead of me just consuming, it produces conversations that beneficial.

I found that to be true, too. Andrew? I recently listened to Tucker Carlson interviewing Doug Wilson.

It was interesting. It brought up lots of questions about the terms they were using, what are you even talking about?

It was totally outside my paradigm on some things, and it led to a discussion about, well, what does he mean?

Take the time to understand what he means. When you're reading authors, when you're listening to podcasts, look at the works that these people that you're listening to are producing to see what they're actually saying and what they're not saying.

Words have meaning, and words have different meanings. So take the opportunity to listen to people for what they are saying.

In today's age, conflict abounds. Not being able to have a conversation about what you meant.

Well, what did you mean? And just assuming what someone meant. Man, that's immediately like a zero to 100 fight.

Not being willing to just be charitable and listen and patient. Maybe I didn't hear that right. It was a good opportunity to hear what someone who wants what we just talked about.

All of God for all of life. Doug Wilson, he's a good brother to have in this fight and in this labor of love, for Christ's sake.

Amen. Not to belabor the point on Doug Wilson and words and meaning, but I'm gonna recommend his book,

Wordsmithing. And this is actually in conjunction with what I just talked about with beauty. I would say that his bibliography alone in that work, that small little work has done so much to form my view of beauty through language and how to bring meaning through language, even other languages,

Latin, Anglo -Saxon, and all those others. And try to read broadly and read deeply and have so much grist for the mill, as he always says, to where you do have a way to convey beautiful things correctly to your sons and daughters.

Wordsmithing by Douglas Wilson will do a number on stretching your brain in all dimensions, but I think it's worth it.

So what do we think before, Michael? Well, trigger warning. Why are you looking at me?

I'm really listening to you. Oh, okay. Just for everybody who has Doug Wilson derangement syndrome,

I'd like to say I'm thankful for Doug Wilson. I disagree with the man so much, and yet I find him to be a more stalwart ally than others who

I may be more doctrinally in line with, but they do not hold the line in that doctrine.

And so I, you know, the more I've listened to Doug Wilson and the folks from Moscow, the weirder they get, the more

I disagree with them. And the more finer point I can put on it, and then I can finally just appreciate the fact

I know exactly why we disagree and where, and that's very interesting. But I am thankful for a man who will stay in the trenches.

He does not let the pitch go by. He does not foul the pitch off. He swings.

And some things I think he misses. And when he connects, I wish he would have maybe hit it a little differently, but at least he's swinging.

And that is why I'm thankful. So folks like him and Ken Ham, who also, like, you know,

I agree with him a lot of things. And the other things I think, my goodness, why he, what? And I'm thankful for Ken Ham, and he's going to be also have his very ardent detractors as well.

But once again, here's a guy who's swinging at the pitches. And I appreciate that.

I've got a piece of paper over my door. I had written the words on, the words of a quote, be of good comfort,

Master Ridley, and play the man. And that's over my pastoral office door.

It's the sign that I tap on the way out. And I just appreciate the guys who swing at the pitches.

Amen, Chris. I am thankful for the awe of children and the things they notice, the things that they're just amazed by.

And I'm like, oh yeah, that's a thing. I remember that. I used to like that.

No, look at that. You know, and they notice it. And then you can bring things to their attention and they're just in awe of it.

You're teaching them something new that they hadn't thought about or hadn't seen or something in the world. I can remember walking down the street and pulling apart a dandelion.

You can find the ones that are white and you can just blow and they blow in the wind. And then you pull apart one of the yellow ones and oh, all these different little pieces.

And this is what it looks like before it goes to seed. And look, there's bugs in here. And what are they doing in there? All this stuff is happening that you're not aware of while we're inside and God's doing it all.

But then they notice things and point them out to you. And it's like, man, that's just amazing. And it rubs off.

And I'm just grateful for the awe of children. Amen, Andrew. I usually, or I used to, attend services on Wednesday and Sunday and Sunday night and do

Timothy school here with the brothers. And I goofed up. I took too many classes this semester.

But talking about good being the enemy of best, God was gracious to show me like, hey, you're not doing what's best.

You're not doing what's best. What are your priorities? So I take that correction. May the Lord remind me of these things going into the future.

But I am thankful for the fellowship of the King that I have with the brothers here that I can ask questions, search the scriptures to see if they're so, reflect upon what the other brothers are talking about, being able to bring some scriptures to the table and talk about them and engage with the text.

And what are the ramifications of all that? The communication channel that the brothers here have, we are all like -minded.

We want to serve Christ. We want to be right about what the scriptures say in the sense that I don't want to go down the wrong path.

I want to do what's right. I want to believe what's right. I want to do what's right. I want to exhort other brothers to do what's right.

And it's all because we love the same master and it comes out by loving each other. So I'm thankful for the fellowship of the

King. Amen to that. You might've heard me mention earlier how long my family's been in Oklahoma, how long they've been telling stories to one another and passing all those things down.

I'm thankful to God for my fathers. I can be thankful, obviously, to God for my fathers in the faith, but my earthly fathers have given to me something that I didn't think

I had growing up. I was told that I didn't have, or that the one that I had, that heritage that I had wasn't worth much.

And it was worth less than the other peers that I had around me. And I believed it. I swallowed the lie for a long time, but it was a lie.

And that was revealed to me. And I don't think lies last and they're unsustainable. So the truth being brought to me,

I understand the value of the inheritance that my grandfather and my father gave to me and their fathers before them just to be here, just to exist because they decided to love one woman and raise children with her.

And the Lord sustained all of that to allow me to exist and for me to do the same with my sons and to hopefully do better than all of them.

Because that's what we want for our sons, right? We want that for our sons and daughters. You should be better than me. Killian, Cohen, Charlie, Meadow, all of you should be better than me.

I know that's what my fathers wanted as well. One of the things that they gave to me to make me better were the stories that they had about family, about stupid times, great times, hard times.

They gave it to me by word of mouth. It's kind of a Scots -Irish tradition to pass that down, rarely ever write it down, but everyone remembers it largely the same way, maybe with different names and places.

A little bit more exaggerated as the generations go on, but we remember it. And I didn't realize what

I had until I realized all my other peers didn't have the same thing that I did. But man, it's a wealth and it may not be something from the church or directly inside the church, but the

Lord gave it to me anyway. And I'm so, so very thankful for it. And that wraps it up for today.

We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read?