COVID-19 and The Judgements of God

Non -rockabotas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it!

Are you going to bark all day, little doggie, or are you going to bite? We're being delusional. Delusional?

Delusional is okay in your world view. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional.

So you calling me delusional using your world view is perfectly okay. It doesn't really hurt. Is he hung up on me?

Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Don't go into the world and make homies.

Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck. That's a joke, pastor.

When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

Take an homie's journey so you will never be the same again.

Thus says the Lord, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of hosts, I am the first and I am the last.

Besides me there is no God who is like me. Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me.

Since I appointed an ancient people, let them declare what is to come and what will happen.

Fear not, nor be afraid. Have I not told you from of old and declared it?

And you are my witnesses. Is there a God besides me? There is no rock.

I know not any. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio.

I'm Jeff. They call me the Ninja. That's Luke the Bear over there. What up? You get more at ApologiaStudios .com.

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Do it right now. ApologiaStudios .com. Make it all possible. Here we go. You're stuck at home.

Thankfully, with the order that Doug Ducey gave for Arizonans, we are considered to be an essential religious organization, media organization.

So we are able to move out and about. And most people are, honestly, anyways.

The grocery stores are still full, packed with people side by side. And virtually everybody,

I mean, it's slower, but things are shutting down. I know businesses are shutting down. I'm very sad about that. And so I'll just, let me start this because I already know,

Luke, we've talked a lot about this the last couple of days. We're in a place where it's actually, you're dealing with, you know, the consequences of COVID -19, coronavirus, and all the difficult stuff like that.

You're dealing with that. And that's hard enough as it is. The quarantine, the business shutdowns, people closing family businesses permanently, people who are being plunged into economic just straits.

I mean, they're done. A lot of, I was just telling Luke this morning, I was driving by my house. It was a two mile, two, no joke, two miles.

That is not an exaggeration. It was two miles, single line of cars on one side of the road going the opposite direction from me.

I'm like, what is going on? What is this two mile long stretch of vehicles? And it turns out it was the community, local community going into the

Salvation Army for food. Salvation Army is giving away a bunch of food. So you got that element. But then the other element is that Christians are pretty divided over this particular issue and how to handle it.

Proper role of government, wisdom for churches, being able to apply wisdom in churches for government decrees and commands and those sorts of things.

Should you be able to examine what the government says and say, is that righteous? Is it just? Those sorts of things.

So there's a lot of division within the body of Christ right now. And I've even heard people saying things like, if your church closed, your pastor is a hireling and he has no right to be a minister of the gospel.

If your pastor is still holding services, then you are literally murdering people.

Murder. Murder. So we're going to get to the bottom of some of these principles today.

And let me say at the outset, and Luke, I'm going to bring you in. I'm just going to shut up here. You can introduce our guest. I want to lay this down because of all the conflict between believers and the fact that we just can't seem to hear each other when there is so much vigorous debate and anxiety and there's so much fear.

We've got to confess to that. A lot of people have a lot of fear right now, a lot of worry. And so that just shuts down the ability to hear each other.

We really need to be able to listen to each other, even if we disagree. Accurately represent the other side.

So let me just lay it down. I'm going to do it at the beginning of the episode so that in the comments, if somebody is not paying attention, everybody can say, you need to listen to the first couple of minutes of the episode.

And that's this. COVID -19 is serious. Coronavirus can be very deadly.

People are genuinely hurting from this thing. It is highly contagious. It is not just the flu.

I'll say it again. It is not just the flu. So you've heard me say it now twice.

I'll say it a third time. It's not just the flu. We do not believe that this is just some hoax.

That sort of a thing. It's serious business. But even with a virus like COVID -19, coronavirus, that is serious business.

That is annihilating so many people. We have to ask the question. Do we deal with these sorts of things on an ongoing basis in a fallen world?

And the answer is yes, we do. Is this like the Black Plague? No. Are the numbers of this like Spanish flu?

Apparently not. The numbers globally right now are showing some pretty consistent themes in terms of the mortality rate.

It's not to minimize the very, very sad numbers of people who are dying from this.

It is horrible. The stories of people dying from this. On that end of the spectrum who die from this. It is horrific.

Our heart breaks for them. It is a serious thing. However, it's a fallen world.

And we deal with these sorts of things on an ongoing basis. Do we shut down the economy and plunge the world into a

Great Depression and into poverty and utter desolation as a result of something that has a mortality rate of 1 % or 2 %?

We have to constantly make exchanges every day. We're always doing cost -benefit analysis every single day regarding these sorts of things.

So, what's wise? What's principled? What's righteous? What's biblical? That's what we need to ask.

So here we go. I see Dr. White's joined us in the chat here. Right on. Hello, Dr.

White. He's smacking down the occultist. Oh, is he? Symbol?

Yeah. Oh, every time. Welcome to Apologia. That right there is a very old symbol of the

Trinity. It's called the tricetra. And we have to discuss it every single time because there's always somebody,

Illuminati or something, that doesn't know history and believes internet myths that is always here.

So, welcome to the show, everybody. By the way, killing me right now in the final four.

Over 200 apologists entered into this apologetics, apologists competition. Got down to the final four and it's,

I hate when this happens. It happened to us last time with dividing line at Apologia Radio. Yeah. Same situation in the competition.

It was closer. I mean, we should have won. Yeah. Everybody knows that. I mean, it was, I mean, everybody knows.

It was more of like, everybody go vote for the guy. Just kidding. But of course,

Dr. White should smoke me. He's old. Don't feel sorry for him. He should smoke me. He's my hero. He is the master in apologetics.

Not even in the same category. But we're against each other, final four, and he's smoking me appropriately.

75 % to 25%. I think, though, that all that this competition shows is that you don't have

Twitter. No. So that's why. That's right. If I had a Twitter, maybe things would be different.

We hate Twitter. We love it. I'd rather lose an arm than go on Twitter. It should be called dumpster fire -er.

You got that dumpster app? What's that dumpster app called? Uh -oh. Now he's talking smack. Okay. So I'm excited to have our good friend on today.

By the way, sorry, I got distracted again. Look at the screen. I love this.

What's that? It has the COVID -19 CDC warning, and then right under it is our title,

COVID -19 and the judgments of God. Right under it. Okay. Nice. So I'll introduce

Joe here in a second. I read his article the other day, and honestly, everything that I've been thinking and saying was summed up in one article, only scholarly, with links and Bible verses, and easy to follow.

And I was like, man, this is incredible. So I wanted to get Joe on today. There's a specific section I want to focus on, but brother

Joe, glad to have you on. Welcome. Be on. Thank you for having me, guys.

Yes, we love having you, brother. Dr. Joseph Boot, Ezra Institute. Real quick,

Joe, what's the website address? Make sure everyone has it. Ezrainstitute .ca

Ezrainstitute .ca. Okay, Pastor Luke. Yeah, so the article was, I don't know, when did you actually come up with this?

It was on March 27th. Last Friday. Last Friday, okay. So it's titled COVID Calamity, When the

Cure is Worse Than the Disease. So what I'm going to do is, Joe, I just want to hear a general, like, your feelings on the situation.

We'll discuss it, and then there's a section that I want to specifically talk about where you mentioned the judgments of God I think is very important that no one's really discussing.

Yeah, we like to go through this point. So just give us a general sense of where you are right now. How are things in Canada, and how are you feeling about the situation?

Well, things on the ground in Canada are probably pretty similar to the major cities in the

United States. There's fairly extensive lockdown and quarantine measures. No groups larger than five.

Schools have closed down. Businesses are closed down all over the place.

There are, like you mentioned, Jeff, there are lists of essential, what are called essential services.

Although, if you look at the intricacy of the way an economy works, I don't really know how you identify an essential service.

But nonetheless, we're a farm here at the Ezra Institute, so farming is an essential service.

So we are pressing on. The infection rate in Canada really is a moving target just like everywhere else, but we're not doing anything like the testing that is going on in the

United States. So we really have very little idea where we are beyond the fact that there's just over 100,

I think, right now, deaths in Canada related to COVID -19.

So we're in a very similar situation to major cities in the U .S. in terms of the lockdown.

And as far as the Christian general response is concerned at the moment, there are obviously these kinds of situations bring up fissures and divisions in the way people are responding, of course.

Right now, it tends to be more that sort of banal, vanilla response. Nobody is really that willing to stick their head over the parapet and say something distinctly

Christian, so we've got Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and other evangelical groups signing joint statements of hope with Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus on, you know, turning to our

Creator and hope among people of religious faith, which is pretty frustrating and discouraging.

I noticed, as I was listening to your introduction there, a really insightful point that there's a distinction between the careful and the faithful.

And I would say that right now the Christian community is erring on the side of the careful, so it's very general statements being put out about loving your neighbour means pretty much agreeing with the media.

Exactly, yes. When the whole world is zigging, sometimes you need to zag, you need to raise some pertinent questions and ask what does the

Word of God say first of all, and then try and weigh up what's happening in light of that Word.

So it needs, as Jeff pointed out, it's got to be taken seriously. Maybe we can come on to that in a moment about the dominant narrative.

We certainly do have to take it seriously, and the virus is real, and it can have deadly effects in especially the elderly.

But it's important that Christians are asking serious questions and trying to give serious answers that are based in a scriptural world and life view.

Very good. So it's good to say it again in case anybody's popping in at just the moment. We want this to be so very helpful to the body of Christ.

We want to be principled, stick to Scripture, and really examine this, not based upon our fear or the media, but what does the

Word of God say? What are proper biblical principles and approaches? You've already heard us say a number of times on this episode that COVID -19, coronavirus, is very, very serious.

It can be very deadly. It is not a joke. It is not just the flu. So when this actually gets to a certain part of the population, it's horrific.

And it's a horrific, very sad way to die because people are even saying, a lot of nurses are saying as people come in, and we're on one end of the spectrum of this where they are dying.

They're dying alone without their family because their family can't be in there with them. It's a horrifying thing to see. So we recognize how very serious this thing is.

But with that, Joe, recognizing how serious it is, we've heard numbers of a mortality rate around 1 % or even substantially less, depending on We factor in the fact that this has been here a lot longer than we thought, and many more people have had

COVID -19 and not reported. Many people still have it and have not reported. So the number is actually pretty much higher than what you see in terms of what the media is posting or what's actually right now being tested.

But with that, we're talking about the fact that it is very serious, but let's talk about the media. That aspect of the media and just that fear and the anxiousness and the pumping out of all these different stories.

How should we face that? Because you mentioned the sovereignty of God at the beginning of your article and the judgments of God, but you talk about this whole herd mentality and the media.

I'd like to hear you articulate that position for everyone to hear. Well, you know, the power of the media to shape ideas and also to shape social psychology is well known.

It's been known for a very long time. I was reading recently in a history journal about Albert F.

Porter in 1919 in the United States, who was making predictions about cataclysmic weather events and volcanic eruptions based on a theory he had about the alignment of the planets and its creation of sunspots.

And it's worth looking into because there was a massive hysteria in the

United States. He'd recently blamed the Spanish flu on the movements of Jupiter at that time, and he was making these predictions that within four months, within December of that year, there would be these cataclysmic events.

And media and broadsheets latched onto this and it shaped social psychology and all kinds of hysteria broke loose.

And I've been sort of watching this with interest that the lack of often measured commentary and trying to think, well, why is that?

Why would you have a media desperate to stoke the most apocalyptic grabbing headlines beyond, of course, selling newspapers or attracting traffic to their websites?

Why would you want to drive that? And my view actually is that when there is a lack of measured, careful, reporting, which has already been a casualty of this crisis,

I think there's an attempt going on, actually, a kind of in a increasingly dechristianized

West, you've got an attempt here to re -enchant the world because there's a sort of utopian longing for a rupture in the continuity of history.

This has long been a vision of revolutionaries that utopians require a rupture in the sense of the continuity of history, because that will bring an opportunity about to birth a new world, a new world order, a new hope for humanity.

And I think I do mention in the article that the former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has already been calling for sort of temporary world government structures to stage -manage the world.

You've got radical socialists in the UK talking about this as well.

You've got even, I think, your Mayor of New York talking about how life can't return to what it was before, even after this.

So I think that there's something in the heart of human beings. I mentioned the

Japanese writer who said, you know, deep in their hearts, everyone is waiting for the end of the world to come.

And so there's an element of that, because people are, if they're outside of Christ, wracked with guilt.

And we know we deserve judgment. And on the other hand, there's a sense that I think people almost long for a crisis like this to unite people so that with a rupture in the continuity of history maybe there's an opportunity for a new world to emerge.

And I think that some of that kind of social psychology is going on right now and it has a religious root.

I haven't even had a chance to really talk about this. Did you see the article Joe came out last week,

I think, some liberal nutjob, I think it was like Washington Post maybe or something, said that the nuclear family is at fault for this and it needs to be abolished, the family.

I mean, that's what they want. And when I read that, I mean, the article was just hilariously bad, but that's the mindset with some of these people.

Well, I think we're going to see more of that because I think we are in the West, we're an end stage culture right now.

We're a decadent culture, we're falling off, we're falling away. We're in the grip of all kinds of social decay and massive debt load.

You guys have often spoken about the culture of death and end stage cultures are very susceptible to hysterical reactions to these things.

And I think, Jeff, you mentioned in the introduction there that the reality of viruses and plagues, before the modern era, this kind of thing would happen every 10 or 15 years.

There'd be an outbreak of something. And, of course, we don't have to look back that far to think about the

SARS outbreak and the swine flu outbreak and so on. And this is life in a fallen world, especially a world which violates

God's norms for how we treat animals, what kind of animals we eat. And, you know, when rebellion against God is going on in the culture,

I don't know why we would expect anything different. Very good. Now, I think that's a critical aspect and I think that was helpful in your article that leads us to,

I think, what Luke wanted to highlight. Then I have a ton of stuff I want to ask you here that I think is going to be very helpful for everybody listening.

Really, believe me, you want to stay and listen more to Dr. Boot and his assessment of this biblically, but that leads us into the discussion.

I mean, we have blood guiltiness in the land. We've been slaughtering children in masses for a very, very long time.

We have such an amazing foundation behind us of a biblical worldview, not perfection, not utopia, but Christians who are establishing a

Christian civilization, and through the proclamation of the gospel, transformed hearts and lives, but they are pointing to the law of God and what they did, and it's a basic understanding that history is actually going somewhere.

It has a goal to it. And there was a lot of blessing from the biblical worldview. We're turning on those roots now, and we've abandoned that heritage, and so we're killing children.

We're destroying all of God's described, defined institutions.

We don't want God to rule over us, and so what's that look like in terms of the future?

Yeah, quickly, along those lines, it's, I mean, I want to hear what

Joe has to say about us being under God's judgment, but talking about blood guiltiness and abortion and all that, pretty much every state in the

U .S., and not only Canada, they're saying everything's shut down except for essential services, but Planned Parenthood's still murdering children, and we have faithful Christians that are standing up front trying to save these children that are being arrested for being there under these guidelines, but they're allowing the children to be murdered.

So it just shows the stubbornness of the culture that even under this judgment, they're still fighting and trying to murder children, and actually,

I think the rates are even going up because people are scared, and so yeah, I just want to throw that in there.

Those who hate me love death. That's clear. Well, elective surgeries in most of the

West, Canada, the U .K. included, are supposed to be suspended, but you're absolutely right, abortion is not just not being suspended, it's being expanded, and the

U .K. has just expanded abortion, and New Zealand, in the context of stimulus packages and bailout bills, has just expanded abortion, and there's the using of this crisis to expand, actually, the killing of the unborn.

I was on a podcast call this morning with two doctors, one in Europe, one here in Canada, and we were discussing the ironies that are quite thick right now.

When you talk about abortion here in Canada, we don't just have abortion right up to term.

There is no abortion, or there's no restriction on abortion, but we, as you know, now have euthanasia and assisted suicide,

MAID, they call it, medical assistance in dying, and the government, just a few weeks before the crisis broke, was looking at the expansion of MAID, and also looking at a bill,

Bill C -8, to ban every form of what they were euphemistically calling conversion therapy.

So, on the one hand, we've got a country here in Canada which is very happy to kill the elderly with euthanasia, and is now talking about, you know, you've got a lot of, suddenly, the piety on display is remarkable, that we'll do anything it takes to save any life, and all of a sudden, apparently, the elderly matter.

How much is driven, in my view, by actually fear and self -preservation rather than love of neighbour is a question that I raise in the article, but there is blood guiltiness on our hands for sure, and it's interesting that the younger your population with this disease, the better off you are.

So, children actually really matter. Having children matters. Families matter. It's the older populations in Europe, especially

Italy, for example, which is struggling with higher mortality, where the average age of a population is younger because there's been less death and abortion.

People are getting through this. Those countries right now are suffering from much less mortality.

That's a powerful thought. Wow. I love the insight. Thank you, Dr. Booth. That's fantastic insight. Do you have more questions related to...

Well, I think the thing that's been the most discouraging to me through this, and you touched on this a little bit earlier,

Joe, is just we're the weird ones right now. You know, if you want to zag, like you said, then you're just immediately ostracizing.

Even if you just raise a question. If you question the narrative. Even if you say, time out. That's all it takes to say time out.

You're immediately vilified. You're murdering people. It's like, hold on. Can we just talk about this for a second? Can we just try to logically think through this?

Even within Christianity, within the church, just seeing Christians turn on one another, just the snap of a finger has been incredibly discouraging and sad to see.

I keep saying that this is... We're under God's judgment. I really truly believe...

We're post -mill, right? So we're thinking long -term. I truly believe that this is God cleansing

His church and growing it. I think that we're going to see that come out of this. And when you see

Christians... When you get a chance to talk with us, and judgment just turns on one another, you see that. I think it's

God cleansing us. Even being blinded to truth at times because of the idolatry of fear.

Yeah, and also an improper and unbiblical view of the state and its role in power. It is powerful.

You're right, Luke. That's the main thing. If you just say, hey, can I just ask a question? Agree on the virus.

Deadly serious. We've got to love our neighbor and protect one another. Wash hands. Keep proper social distancing that would make sense.

All that. I'm affirming everything you're saying. But I have a question about the consequences on a global population that will far outweigh the mortality of coronavirus and COVID -19.

So, I just have a question. And it's just, no! Obey the government. Submit.

Quarantine. Till when? September? Wait, hold on. We're going to be out of work for the whole summer?

How will we feed each other? Well, we just need to stop people from dying. Question?

Won't that create more deaths? Like, long -term economic disaster means deaths. I love what one of our friends, and Joe, I want you to jump in here.

I love what one of our friends recently said. He said, when people say, in a context like this, people over profits!

Such great insight. He said, that's like saying people over food. People over water. You only have people if they're capable of producing for themselves and others.

Otherwise, they're dead. So, all right, Joe. I've heard people talking about the need to save lives, and save, say, in Britain, for example, save the

NHS, the National Health Service. Now, of course, any of us who are serious

Christians are concerned about our frontline healthcare workers, and we must be. But they are not the only ones at the tip of the spear.

In terms of what's going on right now, fortunately, in Canada thus far, we've had no deaths of frontline health workers that I've been able to discover.

And, of course, we want to be supportive of all those who are working at the bedsides of people who have been infected or are succumbing.

But the economies are built around people.

I mean, God alone can comprehend the complexity of how the economy of life works.

And you've probably noticed that one of the phrases I use in my article is that what I'm appealing for is a non -reductionist approach to the response to the virus that Christians need to think through.

What is a non -reductionist approach? What do I mean by that? Well, I mean that you cannot reduce human health and well -being to the prevention, biologically, of infection, because biology, or the biotic aspect of our lives, is only one aspect of our lives.

I was listening to something a recent study conducted about what prolongs your life, and it's known that even if you can articulate clearly, you have a sense of and can articulate the purpose of your life, you expand your life expectancy by a number of years.

So, in other words, the kind of faith that you have, the kind of religious root of your life, has a profound impact upon your life expectancy.

We know that things like anxiety, loneliness, these things and social interaction have a profound impact on people's life expectancy.

So, the notion that you can shut down the world and save people's lives is to reduce human life and health to the biochemical aspect of reality and the way a virus might interact with it.

And that's unacceptable. And to not be allowed to raise questions about that for fear of censure or ostracism shows the state of groupthink and lemming -like kind of mindlessness that I was talking about that we're being exposed to now in our culture.

Now, the good news is in Canada, I've seen there was a National Post article which is a major newspaper here just a couple of days ago that did start to raise some of these questions openly about what is the truth behind the death rates, what really is the mortality rate, because you have the issue of the denominator and the numerator.

The denominator is how many people are dying, but the numerator is how many people are actually infected.

And until you know both of those, you cannot possibly give or offer an accurate fatality rate.

In fact, a study just came out from the University of Oxford for researchers from the

University of Oxford saying that it's quite possible that over 50 % of the population of Britain has already got the virus.

And if that's the case, then the fatality rate could be as little as 0 .1 to 0 .9.

So, to not be allowed to raise questions like that, to not be allowed to bring that up in discussion, and therefore to ask whether the response is proportionate or to ask how long that response can go on, to me is an expression of a collective delirium.

Beautiful words. Collective delirium. Very good. So, Joe, in your article, you have a section where you talk about a cure worse than the disease.

I think that's very important to discuss because people have asked.

It's amazing. The last week and a half, we've tried to be extremely balanced and to affirm both aspects of this issue.

Number one, the seriousness of COVID -19. Take it very seriously. Make sure you're taking appropriate steps.

Obey the governing authorities where they're using wisdom. And you're saying, that's righteous. And that is loving my neighbor. I'm going to do all those things.

So, do those things. That all makes sense to us. But then the other aspect of this is thinking about actually the larger segment of the global community.

Not just your parents and your neighbors and your loved ones, but the whole global community that's going to be just dramatically impacted by this.

I mean, we have people talking and this is not conspiracy theory. It's just the numbers. You shut down business for five, six months, you're plunging us into a

Great Depression. And maybe worse than we've ever seen before in at least modern Western history.

Who knows what this is going to look like. But you ask those questions and we need to deal with both those issues.

People are saying, okay, well then what's your solution? What's your solution? And I'd be happy to talk about that. And we're going to be getting to that.

But let's talk about this aspect, Joe. The cure worse than the disease. President Trump brought that up.

And he was vilified for it. Essentially, Joe, it's been this.

Shut up. Shut up. We need to save lives. Don't talk about the future. Right now we're saving lives.

Don't say things like a cure worse than the disease. Right now we need to save precious lives.

Lockdown. Everything down. And you even mention, is this cure worse than the disease itself? Oh, you're talking about conspiracy stuff.

And somebody accused me the other day of saying that I believe this is a hoax. I thought, who's ever said that?

I never have. I'm asking a question as a minister of the gospel. As a Christian, how should we really be addressing this in a consistent way?

So the cure worse than the disease, Joe. Well, I'm seeing in the last, it's a great point,

Jeff. I've seen in the last few days take the British magazine, The Critic has been raising some very important questions like this now.

When you factor in, which is often not discussed, the issue of comorbidities in those who are both getting the disease and dying from it.

When you look at differences between the various countries, which are considerable. Take Germany or Sweden, for example, over against, say,

Italy. When you look at the question of excess mortality. So just to set up an answer to that question of is the cure worse than the disease in Britain that I'm using

Britain because this is something I was discussing with a couple of doctors today. 150 ,000 people die on average in Britain every between January and March every year.

150 ,000 and the Imperial College professor who,

Neil Ferguson, who's been doing a lot of public statements on this and has been advising the government, has actually said that a half to two thirds of the people in the

UK who will die during this outbreak would have died anyway.

Okay, so that's not being uncaring. This is the person who's been advising the government and they went and locked the country down in the

UK. When you pose questions like that, the issue is we don't really know ultimately the course of this.

All the models that you see talked about are just computer models. They cannot predict the future because the variables are so wide and so top professionals at Stanford like John Ioannidis, for example, is called the data utterly unreliable.

Rosalind Smythe in the UK, professor of child health at UCL has said that the data in Britain is so misleading it shouldn't even be used.

So, when that's the issue, is it possible, you're asking, that could the cure we've got on offer right now be worse?

And I think that the, as my article suggests, I think that the answer to that, especially as we look at the picture globally, could be yes.

Just think about some of the things we're doing, just off the top of the head here. The immediate implications of the 2007 -2008 crash in the markets led to two years of a massive increase in suicides.

So, studies have proven that somewhere between 4 .8 and up to 6 .8

increases in excess mortality through economic suicide during that period.

You've got the mental health crisis that's created through anxiety, debt, home foreclosures, all of those kinds of things.

You've got the loneliness and isolation of the elderly which shortens their life expectancy. By the way, in the

UK, the average life expectancy is just under 81 years of age on average.

And the average age of those dying with coronavirus at the moment in the UK is 79 .5 years of age.

So, you know, when you look at that purely in terms of the broader picture, these measures are being taken for a small extension of, a very small extension of average life expectancy among some of the elderly.

Perhaps 1 % if you look at the Diamond Cruise ship as a quarantine vessel is a good example of how many people, what the morbidity is likely to be, what the death rate is likely to be, the mortality rate.

So, when you look at suicide, you look at mental health, you look at the consequences of poverty, you look at the consequences of debt.

So, your country is just loaded up, is it an extra $2 trillion? $2 trillion.

$2 trillion onto the mortgaging of the future. And here in Canada, it's something like $1 .7

billion we've just added to the debt, and that's just for starters. The consequences of that, the consequences of unemployment and poverty, it's known to kill millions of people.

And what's happening, it leads to the death, an early death of millions of people. And what's happening in parts of Africa right now and Asia, the developing world, some of the

Asian countries which are actually handling this better are not moving in this direction, but some of the developing world countries, take

India for example, are copying the West and imposing these lockdown measures.

And you've got the migration of hundreds of thousands of people going on, walking hundreds of miles because they've been thrown out of their town.

Out of the city, back to their villages. Out of their cities. You've got people, my parents had phone calls even today from people in Pakistan where they were missionaries for 17 years saying that they simply do not know what's going to happen.

They're saying they're done for. People have got no food. That people in these countries live day to day to go to the bazaar with their small amount of money that they have to buy food.

They're shutting everything down. So you're looking at starvation. You've got people being beaten, trying to get to a health facility with the police enforcing curfews in these places.

So the global suffering that's unleashed when we don't take the broader picture into account with these mass lockdowns and basically the destruction of the world economy and possibly as you said moving into some kind of depression.

If some of these things aren't lifted soon I actually believe that the devastation will far outweigh possibly the 1 % and I think that's high based on what

I'm hearing from doctors and the data that I'm reading. 1 % of the population largely from the elderly and those with underlying serious health conditions to sacrifice the young, their education, their future on this and the health outcomes, the well -being outcomes of people around the world.

I put it this strongly Jeff. I have a moral problem with it. I have a moral objection to it.

That has been and it's amazing. This is the first time you and I Dr. Boot have spoken in a little while and that's precisely the point that I've been making.

But you just care about money. It's interesting because the same principle

I think applies. What's being wielded as a sword Dr. Boot and I'm sure you've seen this is people say love for neighbor.

God commands us to love our neighbor you're not loving your neighbor. When you question this when you oppose this in any way complete lockdown, destruction of the global economy you're not loving your neighbor and I stop and I say did you just hear what you said?

Isn't it contained in everything you're saying? It's okay to shut down businesses, the global economy, plunge people into poverty because I love my neighbor?

It's the absolute opposite. To raise the questions is to love your neighbor and to bring this discussion

I think to the front of the queue right now is the essence of what it means to love your neighbor, especially in the midst of what

I would call cynical and nefarious moves on the part of totalitarians and Marxists to advance their agenda under the cover of this crisis and that's a serious issue in the courts, it's a serious issue in parliaments and senates around the western world.

And what needs to be understood Dr. Boot when you say that, this is not tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist stuff.

That's not what it is. If you have read Marx, if you know about the neo -Marxist worldview, if you've listened to these people if you've read their books, if you've read their articles, if you listen to how they respond to these sorts of things, that's part and parcel to their worldview.

There are moments like this that are seen as the catalyst to get to that new amazing world that they're looking for.

I mean you've even got the governor of California just saying openly, we see this as a tremendous opportunity for a new progressive society, an opportunity now to reshape how we do business and how we have government and all the rest.

Listen, this isn't conspiracy it's a tragedy but listen, I'll prove it to you and I hope if you disagree in any way with asking any questions right now, you just say, we need to hole up in our homes we need to stay away from one another six months is just fine, destroy the economy we need to save lives.

I just want you to consider our $2 trillion stimulus package, you're like, oh for coronavirus, right?

Read the bill isn't it interesting? A coronavirus bill has stuff in it like a raise, millions of dollars in a raise for the politicians.

$25 million for cleaning supplies for the Capitol. You've also got the

Kennedy Center $35 million Yeah, and you've got all this stuff too.

All these different things that literally have zero to do with coronavirus. There's nothing nothing.

This was an opportunity to squeeze stuff in that was their dream list we've always wanted this, we wanted this and so we'll make concessions, we'll give money away to these poor people over here but you know what,

I really want the raise myself and I really want this, and we've been fighting for this thing, let's squeeze it into the bill

That's how you know that this... And here in Canada it's not stopping our

Prime Minister saying that a 50 % hike in carbon taxes is nonetheless going to go on, it's going to be necessary, it's going ahead as planned

How can you, on the one hand, be offering $107 billion dollar bailouts because government is shutting everything down, and on the other be going ahead with throwing a mindless carbon tax a 50 % hike on the carbon taxes of your population.

Now that's ideology. You're absolutely right, this has got nothing to do with tinfoil hats and spacemen and conspiracy theories and everything else.

This is to do with what's being said, it's being written about. You're absolutely right in identifying a

Marxist agenda that, look unless you can bring down the free market, you can never install socialism.

You can never install a socialistic, communistic or Marxist world and life view.

You can't. So there will be those who are rubbing their hands right now at the possibility of extending this out these quarantines beyond any previous

Western precedent, despite the fact that there are many viruses and diseases that have a far higher mortality than this one that we've not locked down for and I would add without, from a

Christian standpoint without support from scripture. Scripture does talk about the necessity, interestingly enough, for the quarantine of the sick, but not the mass quarantine of healthy populations.

This is not, let's remind our listeners a global outbreak of Ebola. This is not biohazard level four.

So I just want to see an adequate justification for projections of shutting down Western economies and people's lives and businesses while they scratch around trying to pay their mortgage and foreclosing on their houses and going into debt and losing their livelihoods if that's being motivated in part, not across the board let's be balanced about it, but if there are nefarious actors out there who want to expand this for ideological reasons.

That's right. So, so very important to ask these questions and you know, it's interesting,

Dr. Boot we, it's you get thrown a bone but we're so ignorant of our history.

We're so not educated properly today. Christian education systems are smaller.

The public education system is larger. Those are indoctrination centers. We don't even know in my own country,

Dr. Boot, we don't even know the constitution what it means, why the principles are there, what these things are supposed to stand for what they're supposed to guard against because we don't know.

We're not educated properly. We don't know the issues of worldview related to law, those sorts of things none of that.

And so what we get is a bone thrown at us. We go hey everybody, we're going to close your businesses down.

We're going to shut down family businesses that have been around for generations. We're going to destroy the economy completely.

So when? Maybe two weeks. No, no, no. End of April. No, May, June. No, July.

And then someone's courageous enough to say September. And then everybody goes, oh my goodness, how am I going to survive?

And then they go, don't worry we've got your back. We've got about, how big is your family? Well, I've got about, I've got a wife and two kids.

Fantastic. We're going to give you, get this, about $2 ,500 bucks. And you go, man I'm getting $2 ,500 from the government.

And then all of a sudden you go, but wait, how much is my mortgage over four months? How much is food over four months?

How much is this? How much is that? You realize two grand? I mean it costs two grand to have a shack apartment in Kauai where we have a church plant.

How's that going to settle you for two months, three months? We talked last week on the island of Kauai where we have a church plant annihilated.

I mean, businesses shut down their one movie theater they had left couldn't make it past the two week mark.

They've talked about now shutting down the hotels on Kauai. They're not opening them until June. How are you going to survive as people live off of the tourist industry?

We had plans to go to Kauai. I have no idea how to go help them right now because we have to go and be subjected to a two week quarantine.

Even getting there, the flights are canceled. So no one's coming in. Then you have the issue of all the businesses shut down there.

The question is how are our neighbors going to survive? And again, this is maybe for some of us right now when we're thinking like you're going, in theory, this could get bad.

I just want to point you to the fact that just in my own experience today two miles, right by my house, two miles of cars coming to get food from the

Salvation Army. It was incredible to witness. And then you've got the fact that we're pastors.

We're already dealing with the fallout of people who are going to have to be taken care of financially. When you think about it, part of the issue and it's certainly going to be a big part of the issue here

I think one major bank in Canada just one major bank has been getting 80 ,000 calls a day a day to get mortgage holidays.

Like for people who say, I can't pay my mortgage. I need months off of paying my mortgage.

And of course the interest isn't going anywhere. They're still going to have to pay that back. You've got people who are so leveraged financially.

Everything's on the never -never. The cars are on the never -never. The house is on the never -never. The sofa's on the on credit.

The stove's on credit. Everything's on credit. We've got a debt -driven culture and money's been cheapened and of course that's why interest rates have been so low.

And what happens when you pump two trillion dollars in printed money that's backed by nothing into the economy is that everybody who's been provident and saving and trying to be responsible and put less burden on the state, their savings get devalued.

Money gets devalued again. So it's why would we not,

I mean think about this, and I do respect the way the US has been approaching this with trying to do mass testing, but in Canada we've done very very little testing at all.

Why would we not take a fraction of that 107 billion dollar government bailout and actually get some test kits and start testing or build some temporary hospitals or invest in the ventilators or do something a little bit more creative that engages the private sector more because all the doctors know, the specialists know, that the best way, the very best way is testing and then quarantining the sick.

It's containment. It's not this mass quarantining of entire populations. Now some will say, well,

Europe was behind the eight ball, America was behind the eight ball and this is all we could do.

Well, I think the jury's out on that. I think the jury is very much out on that, but we could take a fraction of that government bailout, which don't forget, people don't realize, the government doesn't have some massive pot of money somewhere as though they're just throwing out candy floss and sweets to everybody during a crisis.

That's your money. Yes, and your kids' money. And your grandkids' money. From the future, being paid forward, as it were, and indebting the next generation and our grandchildren.

And that, what people don't think through, is that that represents increasingly a shift in the balance of power and of influence globally from the

West to the East. That's right. And this matters as well.

So, it's so important that people, as you say, don't just think, oh, look, I've got a check to tide me over from the government.

I've got friends who own small businesses who've already had to lay off a third of their workforce.

And if something doesn't change soon, they're finished. They can't pay their staff. They won't be able to pay their mortgage.

And what are they going to do for a job? Because everybody's shut down. The state, then, is going to have to say, well, the state's going to step in and save you with more welfare.

More and more welfare. I've tried to tell people, look, you love your National Health Service in Britain, or you love your socialized medicine in Canada.

And I'm a Canadian citizen, and I'm a British citizen. Okay. There will be no socialized medicine if the economy is driven through the floor.

Yes. That's a good point. There will be no who's going to pay for it. So, trying to help people understand the way human society works, the way economies work, that the complexity only, as I said before, only

God has a grasp on the complexity of human culture and how it operates.

And there's a reason that the Western free markets have flourished the way they have for generations because of the influence of Christianity.

Yes. And when you remove that, and when you start to destroy that, we have not yet fully comprehended the consequences.

As I say, the unemployment, the poverty, the life expectancy, and the deaths that will ensue if this thing is prolonged will be,

I'm sure, catastrophic. And so, I think we have to go back to Scripture and say, well, what does the

Bible actually say about disease? What does it really say about quarantine? And how can we be an influence in this regard, in this situation?

Well, that's the thing, Dr. Booth, that really needs to be examined by all of us, and that is that the

Bible, God gave His law in the context of human civilization and societies, and in the context of disease.

And so, when we have the law of God, the Word of God given to us, we have not just some ancient record of some stone -aged kind of people, but we have people who were living in a society, flourishing, there was an economy, there was business, there was trade, those sorts of things.

And, guess what? There were things like leprosy, and leprosy is a term used actually to describe, I think, a multitude of different communicable diseases there, but you have the issue of leprosy, communicable diseases, and what you don't see

God doing in the context of a fallen world and an economy is saying, quarantine the entire population.

The idea is you quarantine the sick from the healthy, and God doesn't say, annihilate families, property, savings, and everything else because of this case over here.

Now, of course governments have the duty to wield the sword of justice, to punish evildoers, they're supposed to be

God's servant, and to protect the righteous. But, I like what our friend Toby said the other day, yes, they have a right to protect the righteous, and to protect and save life, but at a certain point it is appropriate for us to look at the government and say, and now you've gone too far, and now you've lost your mind.

Because when you say, I'm protecting human life, we go, hey, I love that idea, love you neighbor, right?

So, what are you planning on doing with that? What do you guys say about a global crash of the economy in six months quarantine?

You guys like that idea? That's how we'll protect society. At a certain point, Christians need to raise their hands, and say, no, love of neighbor demands that I care about the sick and the ones that you're going to make destitute.

I care about both. I care about both, and what we're saying is that you can't say one -sided, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, love them, love them, and, and excuse the terminology here, but this is how it comes across, to hell with everybody else.

And to hell with the future, and to hell with our grandchildren. That's not loving to neighbor. And so that brings me to this,

Dr. Boot, people ask the question, fine, I got it, guys. You guys are making sense.

You have to show a commitment to biblical principles, you've got to use wisdom, and you've got to love both groups.

The potential sick, potentially sick, and then also the everybody else. Everybody else, literally everybody else, and our grandchildren, and all the rest.

So what would be wise and biblical steps in a context that we're in today with COVID -19, coronavirus, because we're saying you can't shut down the society for this period of time and plunge us into global poverty.

So people say, okay, well, what's your idea? So I got some ideas myself in terms of, like, these are principled, solid, workable, consistent things, but what would you say,

Dr. Boot? Well, first, I think you've hit the nail on the head with respect to the responsibility of government.

Their concern is with public justice, and with the harmonizing of public interest.

And that's a key, that word there, harmonizing of public legal interests, that's what the state is there to do.

Civil government is there to, and of course the state is a municipality or a territory, and within a given territory, the government in that territory has the responsibility to harmonize a public legal interest.

And the risk right now is that we're losing sight of the harmony.

We're losing sight of what it means to harmonize public legal interest. A lot of what's happening, Jeff, is being driven by, especially in,

I would say, European and here in Canada, those countries which has very strong socialized medicine, is the big concern is the overwhelming of the healthcare systems.

And the concern that there won't be enough materials, there won't be enough doctors and nurses there to cope with if we don't flatten the curve,

I'm sure you've heard that language, if we don't flatten the curve, there won't be currently enough.

And of course, we can appreciate that argument that just like in a very bad, it's happened in Italy before, in Spain, when they've had very bad influenza seasons.

I mean, when you have a bad influenza, in Canada, this flu season, we've had 42 ,000 people infected, and usually between 500 and 1 ,500 people die during that flu season.

That's 10 to 15 times more than we've seen die currently in Canada from this.

Now, of course, I'm not suggesting that this is just a flu virus at all, I'm just using that as a comparison that health services are often, in socialized medicine systems, on the brink of being overwhelmed.

And that's been the concern. And so I have given thought to what does it mean to offer an alternative response, and the professionals who are infectious disease specialists totally agree that the answer, the real answer to understanding denominator and numerator, and to containing this whole thing in a measured way, is testing and isolating of the disease.

And then if possible, testing after the fact, for those who now have, already in the population, have antibodies, they're not susceptible to it, because they either have it, or they already had some kind of immunity.

And I, as I mentioned before, I think with all of the massive public spending that's going into trying to save small businesses and families, and there's just not enough money to do that, realistically, why not let's react, as we would in a military crisis, by if necessary, temporary hospitals putting private manufacturing to work, as I think is going on in the

US right now, to make the equipment that's necessary, to have reasonable, rational social distancing measures, although I should add, social distancing is a luxury of the rich.

If you're in Pakistan or India, and you've got 15 people living in a one -room or two -bedroom house, and that may be putting it generously, in many instances hovel, you don't have the luxury of social distancing.

So let's just remember as well, that when we in the West talk about that, as we cope with our end of the problem, that we've got the luxury of social distancing.

But we could maintain limited social distancing measures, like recommending against handshakes, and so on and so forth, and hugs for a period of time.

There can be reasonable measured things that are done to try and limit spread and overwhelming the system, and we can put more resource into the system.

And that means then getting people back to work. I mean, look, take Sweden as an example.

Sweden's primary schools are largely open. Restaurants are still open.

Businesses are still operating. They've put certain restrictions in place to try and limit spread, but there are other countries who are handling it differently, and I think we could do that.

And then there just comes, and I don't want to sound in the least bit cold about it, because we've already caveated, I hope, enough times.

So many times, yes. I've done it half a dozen times. But there also is going to come a point, as we've said, with the fallout of this, politically, socially, and health -wise for people, that it will get to the point where it doesn't matter if it spreads, and we end up just getting herd immunity, and 1 % or less succumb, because the destruction of not just getting back to work will mean 3%, 4%, 5%, or more globally succumb to the consequences.

Yes. Man, man, man. Powerful. I don't need to add anything else to that. That's all I need to say.

And it's interesting, because Joe, we've continued to have worship, but the very first thing we did is try to examine the situation, not out of panic, fear, worry, but wisdom.

What are the numbers? What do we have right now? What's this look like? We're dealing with this sort of thing on a regular basis, and we're not suggesting that we destroy everybody's lives in the future, nor are we shutting down worship in Arizona every year.

We've got all these people dying from the seasonal flu. It happens all the time. Not saying this is the flu.

Not saying that this is not a big deal, and it doesn't hurt to see people die. It's just in terms of, it's a fallen world, and people are constantly having to engage with this sort of a thing.

But we said, okay, we need to be wise. So what do we do? We said, everybody, make sure, if you're sick, you are not coming to church.

We told people, you need to stay quarantined, to love your church right now.

Don't come to church right now. We love you. We're here for you. We'll meet with you. We'll meet with you face -to -face or even over the phone, whatever.

We're still gonna minister to you. Just right now, stay away. We've got everyone. We're coming to church. Nobody touch each other.

Nobody shake hands. Nobody hug. If you are sick at all, or you have been sick, stay away for an appropriate period of time.

Do not come in here coughing or sneezing. Make it very, very clear. We're not gonna be happy with you if you're coughing around us right now.

And we've taken measures in terms of using hand sanitizer. All that we possibly can even before and after church.

Look, guys, don't hang around in the sanctuary. Don't be hanging around talking to each other face -to -face. Let's come in and do worship and let's get out.

And the sick need to stay away. And that's how we've managed it, and we're still doing worship. We're still gathering together, because at the same time,

I'm looking at this as a pastor, and I'm saying, you know, everything that all the experts are saying on both sides of this issue, whether they think it's the catastrophic end or whatever the case may be, this is not the

Black Plague in Phoenix. And so, based upon that, we have to use wisdom about how we love

God, love one another, do worship, and actually open up for commerce. Yes. I would add that we can recommend the isolation of the elderly for a limited period of time, the very elderly, and those with pre -existing conditions who we might call the vulnerable.

And we can find ways to serve those people, keep them connected until the worst of that crisis is over, so of the

COVID -19 crisis is over. So we can, those kinds of measures could be taken. And I would say, probably some would say, well, that's what we're trying to get to.

But that comes back to the issue of, well, for how long, and in terms of what consequences.

And I am concerned about civil liberties. In Britain, a social critic called

Peter Hitchens, who was the brother of Christopher Hitchens, he's a Christian, actually, Peter Hitchens, and he's written a recent on this about the surrender of civil liberties that are going on right now.

The Liberal government here tried to smuggle in a, and failed, a bill that would have given them two years of carte blanche for tax raising, borrowing, and spending in this crisis.

You've got police drones in parts of England flying over the countryside to catch people who are out walking.

You've got snitch lines everywhere for people to snitch on other people. That's true here in Canada as well, in case they're seen in a group that's slightly too large.

You're getting powers of curfew. There's been a Catholic church here that's been fined for a gathering that was considered too large.

So, the surrender of civil liberties is also an important issue.

It's not getting much air time. It's getting very little air play. What happens is, when governments give themselves temporary powers to do certain things, and we've seen this before, especially in wartime, these precedents and even sometimes these powers hang around.

So, even when there's a sunset clause, and they say, well, this is only going to last a year, and then that bill will just automatically fall off the books.

Yeah, but you've now got precedent. And some of these powers don't always disappear.

You look at the result of what happened after World War II in Britain, and the country was changed forever by the new powers that were accorded to the state.

And I'm genuinely concerned about that, because unless you have a, what

I would call it, a worked -out Christian view of society, which I would argue is given to us by Abraham Kuyper in the idea of sphere sovereignty.

I think it's a creational principle that there are different spheres of life and authority that are given different areas of responsibility and authority and jurisdiction.

Totalitarianism means the swallowing up by one area of life all the other areas in a parts -to -whole fashion, so that the family and the church and private business and everything else just becomes a part of, a subsidiary part of actually the state.

And if you take Germany as an example, with their massive bailout or stimulus plan, the

German government is going to end up owning huge portions of private businesses across the country.

Banks are going to be owned by governments. Businesses are going to be owned by the government. That is a genuine threat to freedom.

And so what we're asking, Jeff, what I guess I'm asking is, what price tag, what is the price tag politically, socially?

And I think there probably will come a point when communities and nations will have to ask, okay, has the civil government now gone too far?

And there may come a point when people have to draw a line in the sand and say, well, actually, we're not doing this anymore.

And we've got people here, I was speaking to a lady today in our community who said that she has a grandmother isolated with Alzheimer's and her husband, that is her grandfather, is not even allowed to visit anymore.

And they're having to phone her in the home to tell her, have you gone to the dining room for breakfast?

Have you changed your clothes today? Because these things can get pushed to such a degree, eventually, that families will be denied access to one another's deathbed.

Now, is there a violation there of the jurisdiction of the state?

Possibly. I'm raising it as a question. Yes, you may need temporary quarantine.

Yes, we may need social distancing measures. Yes, some of those measures initially, briefly, might seem to need to be drastic.

But is there a line? And I think more and more critics, more and more people will start to ask that question if this thing is extended in an open -ended way.

At what point do we say the state is now no longer balancing a harmony of legal interests for people?

At what point are they infringing on the right of people to gather for worship, or the right of a family to get together with their own parents?

And that's an important question to ask. I'm raising it as a question. Yes, and all of them are related to loving neighbor.

Loving God, loving neighbor. And not just thinking with a one -track mind that just goes one direction. This is back to the word reductionism that I was talking about.

We need a non -reductionist approach to the crisis, which doesn't just look at human life and well -being in terms of biology.

We're not just biochemical machines. That's exactly right. And as people talk about only essential services, only essential, only essential, well, in reality we have to be honest and have integrity to just raise our hand for a second and say, well, everybody's business is essential to them.

Everybody's business is essential to feeding their kids and paying their bills. Everybody's business is essential ultimately to a flourishing, thriving economy where we can have good medical hospitals and we can have technologies growing.

You understand, government didn't build that. That's right. An economy is not just money.

That's where people make the mistake and think, oh, just about money. No. Economy is life.

Economy is an integral part of everybody's life. It involves everybody in their vocation, in their work, in their activity, in their productivity, not just their income.

And so everybody is affected because the economic aspect of life is integrated with all of the others.

It can't just be separated out and say, well, we can put an entire aspect of life on hold as though you can abstract it, pull it out of the rest of life.

You can't do that. It's impossible to do that. So that's why looking at all of the consequences and then asking questions and posing them and promoting public discussion about them should not be seen as the new sin that Christians are condemned for in a secular world.

Yeah, and a critical aspect of this, too, is how people view government and all this. They're like, well, this is really bad.

Don't worry. The government's going to save us. The government's going to handle this. And you have to say, can you just take a breath for a second and realize that all the hospitals that are caring for people now, all the doctors and all those things, that was created by private industry and individuals and all the technologies.

The government isn't doing that. And also, when you talk about the food and supply lines and chains and trucks, you understand the government didn't do that.

That's private industry. That's private business owners, large corporations. So people are like, don't worry. Just give it all to the government.

Understand something. The government doesn't own any of this, didn't produce any of this. They're supposed to basically wield the sword of justice, protect the righteous, but it's the people that produce what actually gives money into the hands of government, whether they're going to be faithful with it or not.

And so we have to understand is that, ready? Government isn't God. It's not your Messiah. It is a very bad

God. And the government will produce ultimately nothing when it comes to all this.

And so they're a very bad savior in this situation. So the question has to be asked, how do we get going the very thing that's going to actually pull people out of this crisis?

Because it isn't government giving them more power and more position and more time.

It's to say, look, this whole segment over here of the private sector and individuals and all these private businesses, they're the ones that actually will get the actual economy going and healthy and the world healthy again.

So you need them to keep moving. And so whatever you decide to do, it needs to be not reductionistic.

It needs to actually take all of this into account. And it's interesting here.

This is how people just can't hear you. They can't hear you. I even saw in the thread back here, someone said and I love them and respect them, but they said, you know,

I don't agree with Jeff still having services and quote, ignoring all of this.

Ignoring. I wonder how many times we say, how many times do you need to say it? Almost people go, come on, you're being excessive.

You said it three times in a row, because it doesn't matter how many times you say it. They're still going to say, if you don't see what the one track they are, they're still going to say, you're ignoring it.

What's been said about how we're doing worship and how we're handling this that's ignoring. No, we're taking it all into account, but we're saying this, consistency matters.

Because I could actually turn around and accurately say, well, based upon your presuppositions and how you're handling this, you're ignoring the seasonal flu.

Why aren't you talking about that every year? And why aren't you talking about this disease and that disease and everything else all year long?

These things are impacting and killing way more people and you're ignoring, really ignoring those.

I think it's an important area of inconsistency that needs to be addressed. It's basically saying, in part, the state is not society.

You cannot reduce society, human society, to the state. Any notion that the medical profession is going to save us and be our messiah, or that the government is going to save us, well, if you look at that historically, that's a very poor bet.

Neither governments nor actually doctors, whether they're paid privately or by the government, is going to save us.

We're thankful for doctors, we're thankful for medicine in improving quality of life, in helping us avoid unnecessary medical risks, and so on and so forth.

Part of all of this, Jeff, I think, is driven by the grip of the fear of death that is over a culture that increasingly lives in unbelief as well.

I mean, I have the privilege of working with doctors, the Christian Medical and Dental Association, both here in Canada and elsewhere, and they've got some wonderful people doing fabulous work.

I've written extensively on doctors as having a priestly function in the social order, in a different way to the pastor.

They're ministering to the health of the body, and that's important.

But neither the government per se, i .e. the civil government, nor medical professionals can save us.

In the end, society and life is in the hands of God, and culture and life are not run by governments.

People make up society and culture, and the government is only a differentiated public anyway.

They're just ordinary people trying to do their best with the information to hand. I mentioned in my article that some of the panicked response,

I feel, has an element of self -preservation, not love of neighbour in it.

I mentioned another motive among some of the ideologues, which I think is, let's rupture the continuity of history here, if we can blow certain things up beyond proportion.

But another element, I think, is that a dechristianizing culture is gripped by the fear of death, and they don't want it to come anywhere near their doorstep.

And we have a sense that we're owed 90 perfectly healthy years. Well, where do you see that in the

Bible? Where is it in Scripture that God owes me 90 years of perfect health, or 85 years of perfect health?

And if I'm not going to get it, we have to shut the world down. So I can be given the best chance of getting that.

I think I have a moral problem with that, too. And I think if we had greater faith and trust in God and not government, we'd have a less reductionist and more balanced approach to the crisis.

We're getting ready. I'll say this quickly, I know we're getting late here. We're actually getting ready to start going through Gary DeMar's God and Government next week.

So I'm teaching first, and so the first chapter is on the different spheres of government, right?

And so, our good friend Toby, something he said was, if God's not your father, then the state is going to be your mother.

And my point is that this has to start with self -government, right?

I know, Joe, you've been touching on this. There are different spheres of government. Government is not just one sphere of the civil government.

That's one jurisdiction. But this has to start with self -government.

Gary made a point that if society does not have good self -government within the people, then they're going to need nanny states, if you will, to govern them.

And the only way to truly have a good society and a good culture is to have self -governed people, and they have to be self -governed according to God's standards.

And if not, then we have what we have now. And in the meantime, maybe we could encourage the world to stop eating rodents and other unclean creatures that are carrying these bugs.

I read a very interesting piece in History Today, a

British history journal, looking at the origins of the plague. You mentioned that on the program already,

Jeff, the Black Death, the plague. And it's

Yersinia pestis, I think is the Latin name for it. But that's also what came out of we've tracked it now, specialists in the field are looking at the genealogy of infectious disease, that it can be traced back to central

China, and the eating of rodents.

And I know this is not a popular point to discuss, and I'm certainly not saying there aren't bad eating habits in the

West. There are. But the clean and unclean distinctions of the Bible, I'm not suggesting anyone sinning to have a bacon sandwich.

But make sure that bacon has been properly prepared, at least cooked sufficiently well.

I enjoy, like you gentlemen, I don't know whether I'm even allowed to say this, a glass of wine, a pint of beer, and a cigar periodically.

But I'm aware as a human being, as a free agent, that there are potential medical consequences to smoking a cigar.

And alcohol consumption, or eating fast food, or going to McDonald's or whatever, or being overweight.

There are all kinds of consequences to that. Now it's not a sin to have a Big Mac and supersize me on the fries.

It's not a moral offense against God. And I would say in the same way, chowing down on your bacon sandwich is not a sin.

It's not going to affect your salvation. But the clean -unclean distinction in the Bible which long predates

Moses and goes all the way back to Noah is a meaningful one.

And God wants us to be healthy. And so there is wisdom in the dietary laws of Scripture.

Who would have thought that centuries before microbiology, the people of Israel would have an understanding of quarantine and of testing and of destroying with fire the clothes and even the homes of those who have died of infectious disease.

Because we now know, of course, that certain temperatures destroy those microbes. So there's wisdom in all of it.

And if we would stop eating some of these animals raw and eating unclean animals, it would help us a lot with some of these viruses.

Because the coronaviruses have this same origin and the plague had that same origin.

Rodents and flying rodents. Well, Dr. Boo, we love you, brother, and thank you so very much.

Hey, I think that it is just a lovely, lovely thing of providence, brother. I'll just say it here.

You have a farm. I think that that's lovely and amazing because it's essential. And I think that's awesome.

So praise God for that. So, Dr. Boots, for the listeners and viewers that just popped in, where can they go to get more from you?

So if they go to ezrainstitute .ca, they can see one or two articles and listen to one or two podcasts on this issue.

And hopefully that would be an encouragement to them and at least provoke some thought. That's really what we're trying to do.

And if you like what you're hearing today and you want to get more, more, more and actually read the book that Dr.

White just couldn't wait to get signed because he loved it so much. And he bought a crate. And he bought a crate full of them,

I think. Mission of God. Mission of God is a must -read.

I would encourage you, actually, if you're locked down right now, get Mission of God. If they're still delivering in your area right now, it seems stuff right now is actually even a week out or two weeks out.

But get Mission of God by Dr. Boot and pick it up. Read through the entire thing. Make a commitment to read it.

It'll bless your life. It'll transform, I think, a lot of how you think about the kingdom of God, the

Christian message, the world itself, just how big it is, how awesome it is, how all -expansive it is.

So, Dr. Boot, we love you, brother. We will hopefully have you on again sometime soon. Well, we love you guys, too.

Thanks so much for having me on the program again. It's great talking to you, and it breaks the monotony of some of the isolation, so it's great having the fellowship.

Well, we have lots of time now. We're on lockdown. We can do all that we want all the time. All right, Dr. Boot, brother. Talk to you soon.

God bless you all. God bless you. Hey, guys, thank you guys so much for watching today, for sharing the episode, and I hope that you can, as a brother or sister in Christ, I hope you can take what we said in this show and say,

I'll give them a hearing. If you've sort of just said, here's what the government says, here's what the media is saying, here's what

I'm seeing, and I'm going to see it just like this, I'm not going to even listen or consider all these other principles and things that really we need to consider.

I hope you'll at least graciously listen to this episode. Maybe listen to it twice, listen to some points we've made, and say,

I want to examine that, and at least hear their side on that. Rather than say, just go with, if you leave your house right now, you're murdering your neighbor.

If you don't shut down for three or four months, you're killing your neighbor. If you're holding church services right now, you're killing your neighbor, even without context of proper social distancing, not even touching each other.

You can even say, if everyone comes in with a mask on and gloves on, we're still going to gather together for worship. Whatever the case may be, give a hearing.

Give a hearing to the biblical principles, the wisdom, the thinking about love for all neighbors, not just one potential segment of neighbors.

Just to try to at least bless somebody here, I saw you ask another question. Juan had asked, he had essentially said, let me just get back here, he said, where is it?

While you're looking for that, I just want to mention that I did link Joe's article in the description, so if you haven't read that, please, please read it.

It's not a short one. It's not super long, but it's super in -depth, and there's a lot of links in Scripture, and it's incredible, so please take time to read that.

A question came up to what we were saying in terms of we disagree with us still having worship at the moment because we're ignoring all of this.

What I said in response was, if you listen to what we said, you'll hear that we actually say we take it very seriously.

COVID -19 is deadly serious, and you heard us say that it is not just the flu, and we need to be very serious about it and take proper steps to love our neighbor, but we are still having church, and when we have church, we take proper steps at church to have appropriate social distancing, no hugging, no shaking of hands, no gathering before service, after service, in the sanctuary to hang out and to talk to each other.

We're just doing worship, getting away from one another. We do hand sanitizer, all the rest. I mean, no one's touching each other.

Everyone's trying to keep distance from each other, but we're still gathering together to worship God together, so there's no ignoring going on, and the challenge that came back was ignoring the asymptomatic cases.

There are people who are carrying coronavirus that aren't showing symptoms, and my response to that, and it never has been addressed as we're asking, as we're having these back and forth and engagements, it's not addressed, that that's something you deal with on a regular basis in this fallen world.

It's like we're forgetting we're living in a fallen world with viruses, diseases, communicable diseases, and it can't be addressed from that perspective in terms of lockdown, get away, people are asymptomatic, so you just should stop doing worship and shut down all industry and plunge everyone into global depression.

It's worth it because there are asymptomatic cases. Stop having worship, those sorts of things. I'm going to say, I'm going to challenge you as a brother or sister in Christ.

Take it humbly. Take it humbly. Are you consistent? Just think about it.

Don't try to resist and defend yourself just yet. Are you consistent with that? Because when you look at the mortality rates for COVID -19, for coronavirus globally, look at these mortality rates, what are you seeing?

You're seeing not that it's the same as the flu or this thing, it's very different, and it affects people differently, but you're seeing mortality rates in a fallen world that are pretty consistent with the things that you have to face on a regular basis, annual basis, and you know what you don't do?

You don't do it. I've never seen these people saying it. You don't suggest that worship is shut down because there could be somebody coming into worship who has the seasonal flu but isn't showing symptoms yet or maybe they didn't know that it was the flu and they decided to come to worship anyways and they brought it into service.

You don't tell everybody shut down worship, shut down industry, shut down commerce. Why? Because some people could potentially have this thing that kills people.

Know that? You know that the seasonal flu kills people? And if somebody says, yeah, but we've got a vaccine for the seasonal flu, sorry.

Vaccine isn't foolproof and we all know that even with the vaccine and even with people getting the vaccine, we still have people dying every single year by the truckloads of the seasonal flu, and you know what you're not suggesting?

You're not suggesting plunging the world into a global depression and plunging people into poverty and killing literally killing people because of the economy because of something that has a mortality rate of say 1%.

This isn't the black plague. It's not. It's not the black death. And also, this needs to be considered and it's so serious.

And you know what's amazing? Luke, did you see this? I don't know if you saw this. Did I mention the comments to you? We just mentioned in passing like really?

You're saying that it's a moral obligation for Christians just to yield to the government no matter how unwise something must be or is.

And you're saying just to yield to them, it's a universal yielding. So I'm in the state of Arizona and say I'm in one of these towns that's way off the main path and the closest gas station is 35 miles away and say there's 50 people in that town or whatever, 100 people, and they all gather together for the same fellowship.

No one's come really in or out. They're just out in the middle of the sticks. They're supposed to shut everything down in quarantine too?

Really? And one pastor, I was like, hey, I'm so glad you announced that. That's my situation. I'm supposed to be lost.

And so we don't consider that. Context matters. And what

I mentioned last week is if your context is your entire congregation is say 80 year olds to 90 year olds or they're in their 70s or whatever, have a ton of health problems, and you're next to an offloading ramp from cruise ships from Wuhan, yeah, maybe reconsider how things are being done in that moment.

But I say love for neighbor is going to consider, I like how Joe puts it, without reductionistic mindset, it's going to consider the whole picture, consistency, wisdom, love for neighbor, sick, potentially sick, also everybody that's going to be utterly decimated by this economically, and that was powerful.

You and I didn't even talk about that, and I'm so glad that Joe brought it up. That issue of India, have you heard some of this stuff?

I hadn't even heard that. That's terrible, I didn't know that. I keep my eye on it, not only do you have these police officers beating people in the streets of India, they're just walking up to them with these long sticks.

I saw Tony Baker with these, I didn't know that's what that was. No, no, it's serious, they're beating men, women, children, because people are trying to get out of the city or get to get checked or whatever the case may be, get food, and they're getting whipped by the police officers because they're copying the

West in India, but this was the other thing, because I was like, oh, that's a horrible situation, because like Joe says, they live day to day, and they've got to go to the market every day just to get the food for the day, and now you've cut off supply for food, and like you're saying, you can't go out and work, and you're stuck in these things.

Now there's this mass migration out of the cities back to their original villages, but they're almost dying on the way because they don't have food, and they don't have food, so one guy was interviewed, and he had walked so far, he should be dead, and the interviewer was like, this is a long walk, he's like, what choice did

I have? The only place I can possibly survive right now is back at my village, so I had to walk from the city, like I don't even know how far it was, it was forever, because it's about survival now, so you copy the

West and the heavy handedness that we're handling this in so many different ways, India copies us, because they do in so many ways, what's gonna happen to India?

What's gonna happen to India? And so you gotta see, like, love for a neighbor requires us to think about this in a holistic perspective, and, brothers and sisters, to take into account the fact that we live in a fallen, fallen world, and we gotta face this stuff all the time, and you do have to ask questions that are hard questions, like, do

I destroy the entire future because of potentially sick people over here? It's sad, it hurts, it's terrible, it's ugly,

I understand that, but we have to, in a fallen world, to account for the fact that we have a future, and neighbors, and children, and grandchildren, and houses, and food, and all the rest, we have to account for all of that, and we should.

Love for a neighbor means we should. So we good? I think so, it was a long show. Alright, very good, glad to have

Dr. Bhutan again, if you guys haven't, if you haven't read Mission to God, go get it. Go read Mission to God, and I wanna encourage you guys, you're on YouTube right now, why don't you just take a look through Apologia Studios, if you're not subscribed yet, subscribe to Apologia Studios so you get the ding every time that we put something up.

Take a look through, watch some evangelism videos, watch some apologetics videos, watch some videos of us doing stuff for End Abortion Now globally.

Sign up with your church for EndAbortionNow .com, let's continue to save lives. None of us should really be on vacation right now, right?

We have plenty of opportunity right now to get closer to our family, get closer to God in terms of our fellowship and communion, and we have plenty of opportunity now to serve

Jesus and preach the gospel. So, that's Luke the Bear. Peace out. I'm Jeff the Calm Inner Ninja, and we'll catch you next time right here on Apologia Radio, the gospel heard around the world.

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