- 00:01
- Well, worst day of fishing I've ever had. Not only did
- 00:07
- I struggle catching fish, I only caught one small bass, but I actually lost a rod. It fell off the kayak into the water and it's gone.
- 00:19
- I actually went back a little later to the spot and I saw it in the water but it is deep and when
- 00:25
- I went back it was super windy and so I couldn't keep my spot to try to get it up with the other rod or something like that.
- 00:34
- I'm going to go back tomorrow and see if I can get it. The good news is I don't buy expensive gear. It was one of my more expensive rods, but it's not my favorite one.
- 00:46
- It's a bait caster, which they are pretty cool I guess, but I struggle with them, which is kind of how
- 00:51
- I lost it anyway. So, yeah, that kind of stunk, but this is why I don't buy expensive gear because when
- 00:57
- I lose it, since I don't know what I'm doing, it's not the end of the world. In any case, let's finish this.
- 01:05
- Let me do my best to finish this. I don't know if I have enough time, but we're just going to jump right in and I'm going to try,
- 01:10
- I'm going to try, I'm going to try to not interrupt him. But before I do, I just thought of a funny point.
- 01:17
- So the British guy, if you remember, he said that the American government goes to war too easily, which
- 01:25
- I agree with, of course. But think about that from his perspective for a second. So on the one hand, he doesn't trust the government enough at all as far as why they go to war.
- 01:35
- They're obviously going to war too quickly, that's an evil thing to go to war at the drop of a hat.
- 01:41
- So he's saying that he doesn't trust the government, and at the same time, the government's the only one that should have guns.
- 01:49
- It's just, there's just so many inherent contradictions when you're just talking, you know, nonsense and you're not, you're not going with what the
- 01:57
- Bible says. You find yourself contradicting yourself very often. Good question,
- 02:02
- Timmy. Well, I thought it was interesting, Bob, that you started out by saying what he would have to do to, to beat you, basically, and you laid it out.
- 02:13
- And so I'm going to read what you said. You said, to defeat your argument, Andrew would have to show either that human beings do not have a basic right to self -defense, that Christians do not have a moral duty to love their neighbors by protecting that right, or that the right to self -defense does not include the right to bear arms.
- 02:31
- So do you think that Andrew has made a compelling case that the right to self -defense is illimited for the sake of loving our neighbors, which may not include guns?
- 02:42
- Well, of course not, because I won. I'm kidding. I think, obviously, I think his point was aimed at that third point of saying you made a distinction between defense and, and the, and violence, right?
- 02:52
- And I think that is the, it seems like that's the place where he's aiming sort of his argument is to say, yeah, we can draw a distinction between the right to defend one another, but the question of does that necessarily include guns and the right to own guns and the unlimited right to sort of, especially in America.
- 03:05
- He didn't even say that. He said you couldn't even defend yourself violently, whether or not it had a gun. I think that's the, if I were making the counter argument, that's probably the place
- 03:14
- I would aim to, because I think those first two things are more, that's more fundamental to humanity, right? We would say, well, every human being has the right to existence and to protect their existence.
- 03:22
- He doesn't say that though. He doesn't think you have that right. The duty to love one another.
- 03:29
- So I don't think, it seems to me that what I was trying to do is to say that those two things are a little more transcendent.
- 03:35
- That last one is the question that I think applies in a debate like this. So he started out talking about Zelensky and the
- 03:44
- Ukraine and what he's doing now to try and do whatever he can to get weapons into the hands of his people. Somebody noticed this in the comments.
- 03:51
- These two guys have lights going into their brains and, you know, the liberal always sits in this chair.
- 03:58
- And so the way the shot is set up, they've got lights coming into their brains from on high, but the evil conservative, he's wearing dark colors and this guy's wearing a nice light shirt.
- 04:09
- I like to wear this color too. So this is obviously the evil guy. No light at all and dark clothing.
- 04:17
- Because of what's going on there, obviously with Russia invading. In World War II, from what I understand, reading of history, one of the
- 04:24
- Axis powers were very concerned about how in the world you would invade the United States because of how many private citizens owned guns and ammunition.
- 04:35
- How does that part of the debate land with you? Because he made that argument. It's one that's circulating now.
- 04:40
- I'm curious how you respond to that. Yeah, I think World War II is the closest thing we have to a genuine war of good against evil.
- 04:52
- There's bad men on both sides, there's good men on both sides. I think when you have Hitler and Nazis and wanted to steamroll everybody, you'd go, okay,
- 04:58
- I think we're as close as we can be to saying that's a very, very bad man and a lot of very bad things are going to happen.
- 05:04
- Yeah, he was a bad guy. I'll give him that. And so as that sense, it follows us. It's like the reduction, I'd observe him, of the pacifist position.
- 05:10
- And I think as a pacifist, you basically swallow it and you say, yeah, that might mean Britain had been invaded.
- 05:16
- I might not be speaking German, maybe. I think the world would be... I have to trust the providence of God. I have to ultimately say, this is exactly what
- 05:23
- Romans 12 is doing, saying you don't do these things because vengeance is mine. And it's mine to repay. And I think...
- 05:29
- You are... I got to calm down. I got to calm down.
- 05:38
- I almost, I almost blew it. I almost blew up. Yes, he does say that, but he says that in a context and the context, he says, vengeance is mine, says the
- 05:50
- Lord. Don't avenge yourselves. And then he says that the civil governing authority is his avenger.
- 05:58
- It's the revenger. He doesn't just leave us figuring out, well, I guess it's just, it's a mystical revenge that we're...
- 06:03
- No, he says, don't, don't, don't avenge yourself. Vengeance is mine, says the
- 06:08
- Lord. It's his. And then in the very next sentence, I think, maybe one sentence in between, he says that the civil governing authority is an avenger of God, a revenger, and it bears the sword for that purpose, which you said
- 06:22
- Christians can't do that. So in your fantasy weirdo universe, God is like, yes, vengeance is mine.
- 06:30
- And I give it to the civil governing authorities. Oh, and by the way, it's always going to be pagans in charge because Christians obviously cannot bear that sword.
- 06:39
- This is his position is so insane. It's so insane. This is an insane position to take.
- 06:45
- I'm not saying he's an insane man because I don't know him, but this position is insane. It's insane.
- 06:51
- That's it. That's all I'm going to say. On the mountain, again, I think if you read the sermon on the mat and say, what does this say
- 06:56
- I should do with Hitler, you'd go, yeah, I think that means you might have to say, I don't resist. Go ahead, Hitler. Just go ahead and kill anyone you want.
- 07:03
- Yes. If you want to have the kids, go ahead and have the kids as well. You just whatever. I mean, listen, Jesus said,
- 07:08
- I can't defend anybody. I can't even defend my own life. I can't defend my kids. I can't defend my neighbor. That's how we love our neighbors.
- 07:15
- Don't you get it? You love your neighbors by letting evil people kill them and destroy them. That's how you love your neighbors, guys.
- 07:22
- He figured it out. Andrew Wilson figured it out. The Brit from across the pond figured out how to do it.
- 07:27
- We finally know you don't do anything for him. Just let the evil people just run roughshod.
- 07:32
- That's what you do. This is insane. This is a fantasy world he's living in.
- 07:38
- You might say, oh, that's cowardice. It's not cowardice. Oh, man, I just like my cowardice.
- 07:47
- It's not cowardice. It's evil. That's the thing. Well, I guess it is cowardice, too, because cowardice is evil, but what you're promoting is actually evil, right?
- 07:56
- You don't let evil people take your neighbors to the slaughter. You actually save people that are going to the slaughter.
- 08:04
- This is from the Bible, and there's nothing in the Sermon on the Mount that contradicts this, but you have to understand also that we have an entire book.
- 08:13
- The whole Bible is not just the Sermon on the Mount. That's perfect and holy and good, and we love that, but we have to have the whole
- 08:20
- Bible. We're supposed to be saving people from the slaughter, not just letting them go to it. In fact, love your neighbor.
- 08:28
- Hitler, please don't do it. Please, please don't take that innocent Jew. I have courage to hold that position, but it is very costly, and it has been.
- 08:38
- The thing to bear in mind for me is that it's not hypothetical, even for people who lived in Israel -Palestine in the first century.
- 08:45
- They themselves had terrible ... You were talking the era of Caligula and Nero. This is how they died.
- 08:51
- This is how Paul died, how Peter died, these guys. Then, Jesus himself, of course, crucified, but as an example, to be humiliated as an example of Roman state power.
- 09:01
- I don't think World War II is the conversation ... I'm not saying you're using it this way, or you are, but I don't think it's the conversation stopper it can seem.
- 09:08
- Well, obviously, you had to kill Hitler, didn't you? Then from there, we reason out to owning AR -15s or whatever. I think, no,
- 09:14
- I'm not even going to accept that, because I think that in the early church, there is society ... Notice he didn't talk about Ukraine, and I think he kind of answered the question without answering the question about Ukraine, because he knows that he's supposed to be flying the
- 09:26
- Ukrainian flag and sending them weapons. How do we respond to an oppressive, malevolent empire who is forcing us to worship false gods and so on?
- 09:34
- They said, yeah, we don't fight and kill them, which is ... I think it'd be interesting to get to the Constantine thing, actually, but I think that's one of the ...
- 09:41
- In the era of state persecution of the church, it's fascinating that that's just not the argument the church ever made.
- 09:46
- Either way, I think this has to be my last episode. It sounds very weird in our world to say, let Hitler invade, bring it on, and trust it to God, and who knows what would have happened.
- 09:55
- But also the question turns around, what would have happened if German Christians hadn't picked up arms to fight their French, Polish, Russian, British brethren?
- 10:04
- And so I think you can turn it on its head a bit like that. All right. I am going to go to Constantine in just a minute. I love that you now can't ...
- 10:10
- This is ... I'm going to take a minute and change it in a minute. Well, you talked about what ...
- 10:15
- You said it was this way and something changed. And so we'll go there, but I want to ... I really don't want to do the
- 10:22
- Constantine thing. I really prefer not to keep this in the theoretical. It has to be in the real.
- 10:27
- That's one of the tactics, I think, that a lot of people that want to subvert the biblical teaching is they keep things in the theoretical instead of the real world.
- 10:37
- When people do that, just watch out for that. Watch out for that. But this guy, what he's promoting,
- 10:43
- I don't want you to get the wrong impression because cowardly, the way we understand cowards, it's almost like it's a passive thing.
- 10:56
- You can't blame someone for being a coward. That's kind of how we think of the word coward, and it's a perfectly good word, but that's actually not how the
- 11:04
- Bible looks at the word cowardly. Being cowardly is actually evil. Make no mistake, what
- 11:10
- Andrew Wilson is promoting here is abject evil. He's saying, I know the
- 11:16
- Bible says save people that are being taken to the slaughter. Don't do that. That's not the way of Christ.
- 11:22
- If somebody comes and is going to take a kid on the street, you see them, the pedo van rolls up and they're offering candy and they're taking them, and you're there and you could do something.
- 11:34
- You could knock that guy out to save that kid. What he's telling you is to not do that.
- 11:39
- That's not the way of Christ. And he's saying it with a British accent and a straight face, dressed prim and proper, being protected most likely by people that are willing to take up arms and fight for him.
- 11:52
- He's in a cushy house, in a cushy room, in a cushy chair, and all of this, and he doesn't have to worry about anything because there are people that are willing to do what needs to be done to defend the innocent.
- 12:05
- And he's sitting there with this smug smile, just like, telling you evil things, vile, wicked things, and saying, no, that's the way of Christ.
- 12:18
- Like, yes, of course, sometimes you're martyred for Christ. That has nothing to do with whether or not you rescue someone who's being taken from the slaughter if it's in your power to do so.
- 12:28
- It has nothing to do with defending your wife. It has nothing to do with preventing a robber from taking your wife or your children or stuff like that.
- 12:36
- He's sitting there smiling at you, and he thinks he's got the moral high ground, and he's preaching evil.
- 12:42
- It's not just cowardly in the sense like, oh, you're a coward, you're afraid, you feel bad for them.
- 12:48
- He's promoting evil. And I think we need to really just, we need to embrace this and come to terms with it.
- 12:54
- These liberals, it's not just that they're a little wrong, a little off. They're so often promoting evil and putting it in the words of Jesus.
- 13:03
- And it's just, it's beyond the pale so often. And this guy,
- 13:09
- I mean, this is one of the worst gospel coalition anythings that I've ever seen.
- 13:14
- This is really, really ridiculous. I'm going to press play. I really don't want to do the Constantine thing, but if it's interesting, we'll keep going.
- 13:21
- But if it's not, we're just going to stop. I want to take, I want to pull on this thread just a little bit more.
- 13:26
- You mentioned that there are weapons that can kill everybody in this room. Recently, at least in the
- 13:32
- United States, that's my context. There have been videos circulating of somebody showing up in a church or elsewhere with a gun intending to kill a lot of people.
- 13:40
- But because someone else had a gun, it was stopped. Does that seem like an argument for people to be able to bear arms to you?
- 13:54
- Obviously, he's going to say no, like, that's a fine question, but I mean, you only have 50 minutes.
- 14:01
- You got to ask better questions, I think. No, it doesn't. And I think for two reasons.
- 14:07
- I think firstly, if the camera was to pan back from that encounter with, you know, and of course it sounds heartless.
- 14:14
- I've never been in this situation, praise God. And I know that some have, and there may be people watching this who have seen that or people close to them who have.
- 14:23
- But I think if the camera was to pan back from that specific situation to the entire nation and you said, actually, the freedom to do this, that applies to this guy defending these people, when extrapolated to all of these 350 million people, means a lot more innocent people die, which
- 14:39
- I think is what statistics at least suggest. Then that changes the moral calculus somewhat, I think at a pragmatic level.
- 14:44
- And I also think at a theological level, this is basically exactly what Peter was doing when he picked up the sword and chopped the guy's ear off is what the disciples were saying they were going to do.
- 14:52
- It's cool down far from heaven. No, it isn't. No, it isn't.
- 14:59
- This guy is this guy's clueless. I mean, I don't think I have to go in this audience, go into the difference between defending an innocent, you know, a child or something like that, you know, defending your wife from being raped or killed and stuff like that.
- 15:13
- I don't think I in this audience, I have to explain the difference between that. And when Peter was trying to stop
- 15:18
- Jesus from going to the cross, and so he chopped and when and when and when and when they called down fire from heaven and all that,
- 15:25
- I don't think that that this audience is that theologically clueless. And this guy's a pastor and he sits there smiling at you, lying to you.
- 15:34
- It's not the same thing at all. And I think he knows this. I mean, I hope he knows this.
- 15:40
- Actually, I don't even know. Is it nicer to assume he's just clueless or is it nicer to assume he's evil?
- 15:47
- Like I don't know. I honestly don't know how to do that calculus. When Christ engages with Christians raising that question, and it only happens three times, but each time it does, he's pretty direct.
- 15:58
- He says, no, you don't do that. And so I think at that point, I think Christians, as we all do in many other fields anyway, is we have to choose the way of the cross to choose to suffer rather than to take up arms and kill.
- 16:09
- And I think that's, yeah, that's essentially what Christian pacifism is, that's my position.
- 16:16
- I know that it's in that room at that moment, it looks like a very strange moral decision.
- 16:22
- And I would say, I think sometimes Christian morality does. But I also think if you were to take the wider view, you might say, well, hang on, would a
- 16:30
- European, Australian, Swiss approach to weaponry in the overall actually save more lives than it costs in that one situation?
- 16:37
- So that's a more pragmatic way of doing it. You got to keep this in mind, too, like he's obviously now he's just talking about guns, which is good because that's what this debate is about.
- 16:47
- But in his weirdo universe, he's not just talking about guns, like you can't defend your wife with your fists.
- 16:56
- You can't defend your children with your fists and your fingers. I know the Bible says he trains your hands for war and stuff like that.
- 17:02
- And I know there's so many examples of people rescuing people that are being hurt or whatever, you know,
- 17:11
- Moses and David and just so many examples of violence that is affirmed and good and holy and right.
- 17:18
- But he's saying you can't even do that. It's so radical, guys, it turns
- 17:26
- Christian morality on its head. And he's sitting there smiling at you and telling you this is
- 17:31
- Christian morality. This is what the woke church does. This is what the liberal church always does.
- 17:37
- They always invert Christian morality. If you get right down to it, it's the anti -Christ, the anti -law.
- 17:46
- It's the opposite. Everything's opposite. It promotes stealing. It promotes covetousness. It promotes gender bending.
- 17:53
- It promotes adultery. It promotes murder. And it really literally does promote murder very often.
- 18:01
- And it says that this is the true authentic way to be a Christian is to invert the law of God.
- 18:07
- And it's just amazing how we let them have the moral high ground.
- 18:13
- What he's promoting is pure, unadulterated evil. He's promoting evil.
- 18:19
- He's trying to get you to not defend your family, to not provide for your family, to not defend your brethren, to not defend the innocent, to not defend those being led to the slaughter.
- 18:29
- He's trying to get you to say, you don't resist the evil one. How much you want to bet this guy is telling, is promoting a lot of the woke nonsense as well, you know, and social justice and things like that.
- 18:39
- You know, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, he didn't only mean you don't resist the evil one violently. Don't resist him at all.
- 18:45
- I mean, what, I mean, could you think of a better way to promote white supremacy? I mean, look, look, whiteness is wicked, right?
- 18:51
- And whiteness is wicked. Just don't resist him. Just give him everything. He wants it. Give it to him. Give it to him. Just think, think this through.
- 18:58
- It's just totally insane. I think I'm done with this. I don't want to do any more. I don't know. Would the danger have presented itself in the first place, is what you're saying?
- 19:07
- Correct. Or would it present itself in more rarely overall in the nation than it does?
- 19:13
- I think it would. I think that's what the Australian experiment, as well as, I mean, you could use lots of European examples as well.
- 19:18
- It's just, I know that, you know, we're Europeans. No, there would be a lot less killings if there wasn't a pharmaceutical industry as well.
- 19:26
- You know, I think that if you really think about it, that's probably more responsible for a lot of the murder than the guns themselves.
- 19:34
- So I guess it's the way of the Christian to never use a pharmaceutical product ever, ever. Hey, that actually doesn't sound like a bad idea.
- 19:43
- You got asthma? Don't take an inhaler. You know, that's not the way of Christ because these pharmaceuticals can be very dangerous.
- 19:51
- I know he wouldn't say that because he would say that they have good uses as well. I would argue that guns have good uses as well.
- 19:57
- So there you go. Here we are. He's differently over there. But I do think it would suggest that there's a broader moral calculus than simply what's happening in that space.
- 20:06
- When someone comes in here with a gun, that's a very different thing. When you panned back at a national level, you might say, yeah, some of those innocent people might die in that situation.
- 20:14
- But the legislation required to limit this guy from defending them. Yeah, I'm out of gas. I'm out of gas.
- 20:20
- I'm not going to do any more of this. I can't take it anymore. This is the last gun control debate review and all that kind of stuff.
- 20:27
- And we're going to do something different going forward. I do want to still do the racial justice, good faith debate thing and all of that.
- 20:36
- But yeah, we'll jump into something else and we'll take it from there.