Ezekiel Part 36

All right, let's pray, and then we'll get into our text. Lord Jesus, as we open up your word, we humbly come before you asking that you would help us to rightly understand what is revealed in your word, that we may benefit from it with a sound doctrine, with our minds being transformed through your word, that we, through the power of the

Holy Spirit, would walk out what you have commanded us and continue to abide in your word. We ask all of this in Jesus' name, amen.

All right, now a little bit of a note. I'm gonna give you a little bit of a road map as to where we are going in Ezekiel.

If you've ever read the book of Ezekiel, the last part of the book, which we're not to yet, but I'm trying to prepare you now for it, is a lot of architectural detail.

And it, I mean, it's as exciting as reading an Excel spreadsheet. And it's worse than reading blueprints because you don't have any blueprints in front of you.

So when we get to that portion of Ezekiel, rather than me creating some kind of audio that would put people to sleep, we will look at the highlights and kind of what that temple is kind of representing and things like this.

And you are free to read the details, the architectural details, if that's your thing. So I wanna prepare you now that there is prophetic significance regarding those architectural details.

I will not be reading them in detail, okay? Because I just, it just doesn't lend itself very well for a good

Bible study. However, knowing what it means is important, okay? So we're still in the section of Ezekiel where God is giving oracles of judgment against different nations and ethnicities.

And because I'm old and I can't remember anything correctly anymore, I have to ask a weird question.

Did I teach you guys the lesson about Moses having an

Ethiopian wife? I may have mentioned it, but okay.

All right, and I think we're getting feedback from that. Hang on a second here. Let me see if I can kill my own audio.

Let's see here, sound, that should be muted. There we go, that'll do it. All right, so okay, good to know.

All right, the word of Yahweh came to me. This is Ezekiel chapter 30. Son of man, prophesy and say, thus says the

Lord Yahweh. Wail, alas, for the day, for the day is near.

The day of Yahweh is near. It will be a day of clouds, a time of doom for the nations.

So you'll note that over and again when the Old Testament describes the day of judgment, it does not describe them in triumphal terms, okay?

And I would note here, this is where we're gonna have to deal with a bad bit of eschatology, all right?

Have y 'all ever heard of post -millennialism, okay? Post -millennialism is the belief that Christians continue to pervasively take over the planet and basically make all the nations nations under Christ, okay?

If y 'all remember that song from the Beatles, I got to admit, it's getting better. It's getting better all the time.

It can't get no worse, right? That's kind of post -millennialism in a nutshell. And I would note it is a supreme twisting of God's word and oftentimes you'll note that within the ranks of people who call themselves

Christian nationalists, there's a notable sizable number of them that are post -millennial, okay?

But here's the deal. I'm just gonna ask the obvious question and that is is that here

Yahweh is describing the day of judgment, the day of the Lord, the day of Yahweh.

If all of the nations had been conquered by Christianity and submitted to Christ and all the nations became his, why would it be a time of doom for the nations?

I'm making too much sense. My apologies, okay? I will seek to not do that anymore.

All right, but you'll note it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make a lick of sense at all.

And so over and again, when you look at the consistent theme of eschatology and eschatology is not merely taught in the

Old, in the New Testament, it's also taught in the Old, the day of the Lord is described in horrifying details.

And I'm not making that up when I say horrifying. I would remind you of the picture that we get in Joel and on the day of the

Lord in Joel, I said chapter two, let me find it real quick, the day of the Lord, all right? So here we go.

Here's Joel's description of this. Blow a trumpet in Zion, sound an alarm on my holy mountain.

Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble for the day of Yahweh is coming, it is near. A day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness.

Like blackness, there is spread upon the mountains a great and powerful people. Now, this little detail, and you'll see where we're going with this here,

Joel is describing the angel army of Christ that accompanies him on the day of judgment.

And pay attention to the details because it's nightmare inducing if you are an impenitent sinner.

Their like has never been before, nor will be again after them through the years of all generations.

Fire devours before them, and behind them a flame burns.

The land is like the Garden of Eden before them and behind them a desolate wilderness, nothing escapes them.

Their appearance is like the appearance of horses, and like war horses they run.

As with the rumbling of chariots, they leap on the tops of the mountains like the crackling of a flame of fire devouring the stubble, like a powerful army drawn up for battle.

Before them peoples are in anguish, all faces grow pale, like warriors they charge, like soldiers they scale the wall, they march each on his way, they do not swerve from their paths, they do not jostle one another, each marches in his path.

They burst through the weapons and are not halted. Why would there be weapons marshaled against the angel army of God if the nations are all

Christian? I get, sorry, I'm being logical again, my apologies.

Is this the doom and gloom coming soon? This is doom and gloom coming soon, all we need is a Casio, and we can really, really bring this in properly.

Yes, sir. Yeah, which kind of begs the question, why would

Christian nations then submit to Satan and rebel against Christ? Okay, none of their eschatology makes a lick of sense.

I mean, it just doesn't make any sense at all, and why would Christ come and rule over sinful humanity for 1 ,000 years?

Well, then comes the Great White Throne judgment, and then you have new heavens and new earth. So in premillennialism, premillennialism teaches that there's a 1 ,000 year reign of Christ, a literal 1 ,000 year reign of Christ, where Christ will, at his second coming, he'll rule from Jerusalem for 1 ,000 years,

Satan will be loosed at the end of that to deceive the nations, and enough of them will fall for it that it just doesn't make a lick of sense.

But the basic premise then behind postmillennialism is that Christianity legitimately conquers the world.

Christ says, make disciples of all nations, and we succeed in doing so, and they ignore the cross -references.

And as a result of it, so I would note postmillennialism, when I was growing up, and in my early years after graduating from Concordia University, most postmillennialists were liberals, all right?

And the postmillennialism was the eschatology of the emergent church movement. And I always described it in these terms.

The emergent church movement basically described, using Juergen Moltmann's version of postmillennialism, a way in which

God's concentric circles of love and inclusiveness, like when you throw a rock into a pond, the ripples just go out farther and farther.

So they describe Christ's death on the cross as being like the pond being hit by the rock.

And then Jesus's ripples of love and inclusiveness then fully envelop the world, and the whole world becomes a place of love and peace where poverty is eliminated.

And once we do all of that, then Jesus descends from heaven and goes, oh, good job, well done, well done, now

I'm king. And it's just nonsense. Postmillennialism in the Calvinist sense isn't quite as sappy, but it still has this idea that we somehow will conquer as Christians, and as a result of that, they have to come up with weird explanations as to why the day of judgment is such doom and gloom, okay?

Right? Because apparently, the nations being Christian only lasts for so long, and then everything goes to hell in a handbasket really quick.

And then Jesus has to, well, this is it, that's it, we're gonna put an end to it. This doesn't make any sense. Now, let me explain to you why this doesn't work, okay?

So, since I'm the one who brought it up, I guess I've bunny -trailed myself here. Shh, don't draw any more attention to it.

Okay. So, here's the text that they take out of context. The Great Commission in Matthew 28.

All authority in heaven on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So, make disciples of all nations. They reinterpret

Jesus's words is, make the nations mine. And so, in Christian nationalism, there is a very strong, strong post -millennial stream within that group, and they believe that they can make the

United States a Christian nation, and were commanded by Christ to do so. But here's your problem.

When Jesus says, make disciples of all nations, you'll note that this is a pretty terse statement.

There's not a lot of detail. So, context, context, context doesn't help us exactly, because the question then is that, what is he saying here?

He is not saying that we are to go and make all the nations Christians. That's not what he's saying, and how do

I know? Because of the next set of exegetical rules. That's cross -references.

So, the idea then, when you read in scripture, when you're dealing with biblical texts that talk about the same topic, okay, then what you're looking for are the clearest texts, and the clearest texts will always govern the unclear texts, or the texts that don't have enough context, that the meaning may be obscured, okay?

And then the clearest text then becomes what's called the sedes doctrinae, the seat of the doctrine, the one that governs the rest.

And I would note that this here, taken out of context, without considering the other passages that deal with the same topic, makes it so that this error is then possible.

And I would note that the Lutheran confessions specifically deny post -millennialism.

And what's really interesting is that the denial of post -millennialism comes as a result of the fact that post -millennialism was the primary eschatology of the

Pharisees. And so it is rejected as a Jewish opinion, rather than a biblical statement.

I'll show you that in a second here. But so what is our cross -reference to this? If we just back up four chapters, okay?

And I would note this comes still, four chapters is still pretty much in the immediate context.

And because this comes first, how we understand Jesus's statement in Matthew 28 has to be governed by what he said in this chapter, okay?

So when Jesus is questioned regarding the end of the world and his coming in the end of the age.

Jesus answered, see that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name saying, I am the Christ. They will lead many astray.

I would note that's happening now. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. That sounds like now.

But see that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation.

Kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. Now I'm gonna just ask a logical question here.

Nation will rise against nation. Kingdom against kingdom. If all of the nations belonged to Christ prior to his return, why would they be fighting with each other?

Again, I'm being logical, right, okay? And there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All of these are the beginning of birth pains.

Then, listen to this, they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death.

And you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake. Well, wait, if we make the nations

Christians, why would they hate us? Okay, and here's kind of the funny thing. When you listen to the rhetoric of these people in the

Christian nationalism, they'll say things like, you know, you don't need to listen to those pastors who say we lose down here, but we win when

Christ returns. No, we need to believe that we win now. We win down here.

And you sit there and go, you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake.

Okay, what am I missing here? Okay, and many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another.

And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. Because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.

Well, if that isn't today, I don't know what is. Okay, but watch this. The one who endures to the end will be saved.

And now here comes the governing text. Notice how much clearer this is. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations.

And then the end will come. So note, Matthew 24, 14 does not say that the nations become

Christian nations and that we conquer the world. The Matthew 24, 14, which is a clearer passage than the

Great Commission, says that the gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all the nations and then the end will come.

So I would note, where hasn't the gospel reached yet? Few, if any, places.

Few, if any, places now. Which of the nations of the earth have never heard of Jesus Christ and his death on the cross?

So you'll note, as the church has done what it was told to do, it's preached the gospel as a testimony to all the nations.

Well, Christ has chosen for himself some who will believe and those who persist in sin and unbelief, well, they're gonna persist in sin and unbelief.

That's why there's conflict at the end of the age. So at no point do

Christians take over the world, nor is the Great Commission a commission to say that we somehow win.

That's just nonsense. And so they'll say, well, we believe in a victorious eschatology, you believe in a loser eschatology.

No, I just believe what the scripture says, okay? And the reality is this, is that Jesus has told us ahead of time that all of this is going to happen so that when it does happen, we aren't sitting there going, what's going wrong, okay?

And I would note post -millennialism is one of these things that kind of waxes and wanes depending on how things are going in the world.

Post -millennialism was really embraced and then World War I broke out, okay?

When World War I broke out, how were they describing World War I? The war to end all wars.

How did that work out, okay? And the horrors of that particular war basically sobered up a bunch of people and they began to abandon post -millennialism.

Well, it started to make a resurgence during the interim between World War I and World War II. World War II came along and that knocked the socks out of post -millennialism again.

And now it's been a long time since we've had a good knockdown, drag -em -out world war and so post -millennialism is on the rise again.

But we as confessional Lutherans are bound by scripture and the confessions that we hold to, they reject this out of hand.

Now, let me show you the passage, but I gotta find it. And whenever I'm doing it on this, I have to look really closely because eyeballs are old.

Okay, all right, mm -mm -mm. Okay, so in the Augsburg Confession, Article 17 regarding the return of Christ to judgment,

Lutheran Confessions state, it's also taught among us that our Lord Jesus Christ will return on the last day for judgment and will raise up all the dead to give eternal life and everlasting joy to believers and the elect, but to condemn ungodly men and the devil to hell and eternal punishment.

Verse five, rejected to our certain Jewish opinions, it was the

Pharisees who invented post -millennialism and just being blunt. And that's part of the reason why

Jesus was very careful about saying that he was the Messiah because they wanted to make him king by force and both the belief that the

Messiah was gonna get rid of all the evildoers. So they were very post -millennial, if you would.

So rejected to our certain Jewish opinions, which are even now making an appearance in which teach that before the resurrection of the dead, saints and godly men will possess a worldly kingdom and annihilate all the godless.

Well, if all the godless are annihilated, then who are these people waging war against Christ when he returns?

Why are all the nations hating us? Okay, I would note what they say doesn't make sense.

So let's go back into Joel and continue now. Yes, Steven. An interesting note that the belief, they weren't combined.

Yeah, but they're the same. Those are synonymous terms, yeah. Okay, so walking through Joel now here, we're talking about this angel army that's unleashed on the day of Christ's return.

They do not jostle one another. Each marches in his own path. They burst through the weapons. They are not halted. They leap upon the city.

They run up upon the walls. They climb up in the houses. They enter through the windows like a thief.

Does that sound familiar to you? The earth quakes before them. The heavens tremble.

The sun and the moon are dark and the stars withdraw their shining. Yahweh utters his voice before his army for his camp is exceedingly great.

He who executes his word is powerful. For the day of Yahweh is great and very awesome. Who can endure it?

If Christianity takes over the world and annihilates all the godless, then basically everybody should be cheering and really excited when

Jesus and his angel army shows up because they got nothing to do. Post -millennialism is to be rejected.

It's an eschatology that sends people on a quest that's quixotic.

Think of Don Quixote. They're now going, they believe that our job is to take over the world.

No, our job is to preach the gospel, to make disciples, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and the

Holy Spirit, teaching all that Christ has commanded. And they're going to continue to the end of the earth, be those who reject

Christ and those who God gives faith to. This is how this works. And so the way things are right now are the way things are gonna be when

Jesus returns. And it really sounds like Christ is trying to prepare us for the fact that with the increase of lawlessness and the effectiveness of the gospel waning right before his return, that we should expect a bumpy landing, right?

Rather than us taking over and slaughtering the godless, we need to be ready to be slaughtered.

And they sit there and go, well, that's an eschatology of losing. You just don't have an eschatology big enough to make

Christian nations. How big should my eschatology be? Should it be a liter, two liters?

Should I have a five -gallon jug of eschatology? How big does my eschatology need to be and what kind of nonsense is it talking about it being too small or not big enough?

Okay. Right. Yeah, that's exactly right, though.

So you'll note that everybody who believes that they're going to conquer the world for Christ and conquer the nations for Jesus, they are stone -cold theologians of glory.

Self -glory, right? Not theologians of the cross.

Yes? Yes. Yeah. Well, the thing is is that this is like a band of robbers at this point, you know, and they're taking people.

Okay, one will be taken and another left, the scripture says in 24. So Jesus uses this imagery and the word thief is describing the end of the age, right?

So that being the case here, I just call me a loser if you want to.

Well, sure, okay, I'm a loser. But scripture's prepared us not for victory, not us experiencing victory, but us basically having our teeth kicked in until Christ comes and he wins, he and his angel army.

And the details are actually quite terrifying, okay? Don. Yeah, I would note there are some notable sects within Christianity that embrace what's called

Kiliasm, which is basically premillennialism. And that camp quickly fractured into multiple versions.

So like Michael Brown claims that he's historic premillennial, okay? Which is something that's different than like, if you guys remember the

Praise the Lord Club and the TBNers and all that kind of stuff. These people were rabid pre -tribulation rapture premillennialists and stuff like this.

And it's just crazy stuff. And by the way, the Lutheran confessions also overtly condemn

Kiliasm, okay? It may even be in this right here. No, that's not the one.

To do will not suffer eternal. Okay, I would note here. The Lutheran confessions do reject in Article 17 something called conditionalism.

If you've ever heard of this. Rejected therefore are the Anabaptists who teach the devil and condemned men will not suffer eternal pain and torment.

Conditionalism teaches that people who are punished by God in the lake of fire will at some point cease to exist.

That's conditionalism, otherwise known as annihilationism. So the Lutheran confessions reject conditionalism slash annihilationism.

They reject postmillennialism. They also reject Kiliasm, which is premillennialism. And the church historically has been

Amill, which I think is a terrible name, okay? It's like, who came up?

We need to talk to the marketing department who came up with that because it's just a bad way to brand biblical eschatology as amillennial, okay?

Because ah means no and millennium means no millennium. It's like, no, we're millennialists.

We're in it. We're millennium nowists, okay? It's the best way

I would put it. We're in the millennium. And you sit there and go, well, how do you figure? Roseboro, it's been 2 ,000 years since Jesus.

Well, the reason why it has to do is just a simple thing called grammar, okay? Let me explain it to you.

So when you look in the book of Revelation regarding 1 ,000 years, okay?

So let me think, it's 1 ,000. I'm gonna look for 1 ,000 and I want it in the epistles which is gonna put me in the book of Revelation and I'm just gonna point something out, okay?

The only time that the 1 ,000 years is mentioned is in Revelation chapter 20, okay?

This is the only place. And I'm gonna just point the grammar out to you and it kind of will make sense.

So you'll know it says the 1 ,000 years and I take issue with those who translated it this way.

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain.

He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil, note dragon and serpent go together with Satan, right?

Who is the devil and Satan and bound him for 1 ,000 years. Here's your problem.

The Greek bound him for 1 ,000 years. This is bad grammar.

Why is the 1 ,000 years plural in the Greek? Bound him for 1 ,000 years.

So I would note the 1 ,000 years itself is kind of up in the air and I would note that being the case,

I think that this is referencing the fact that this is not a literal 1 ,000 years.

The 1 ,000 years, the thousands years, sorry, let's go with the biblical thing here.

The thousands years began when Christ ascended into heaven and the thousands years will end when he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead.

We're in the thousands years and it's bad grammar when you say it that way but if you sit there and go, well, it's been 2 ,000 years,

Rose, we're right. How many thousands are in a thousands years? More than one, right?

So this is not referencing a literal 1 ,000 and everyone gets hung up on that literal 1 ,000 thing and I just point out why, why, why is this neuter plural?

Why is it a plural? Now granted, it's indefinite. It's an indefinite neuter plural accusative noun here in the

Greek but I would note it's still plural. It doesn't say a thousand.

It says a thousands. So if you were to make a big theological to -do about this and base an eschatology on a passage that isn't nearly as clear as you thought it was, then you gotta get this.

So we are in the thousands years now and Satan has truly been bound, okay?

You don't believe me? What happened to the Greco -Roman pantheon of deities after the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Christ?

They got waffle -stomped by the gospel, right? Does anybody, any sizable, notable number of people still worship those deities?

No. What happened to the pantheon of deities of the Egyptians?

They got waffle -stomped by the gospel. What happened to Zeus? What happened, oh, what happened to Thor and Odin?

What happened to those guys, okay? Thor's hammer was nothing against the cross of Christ.

They all got waffle -stomped, okay? So much so that Europe became primarily

Christian and as a result of it, they talk about Europe as being

Christendom, okay? All of these pagan idolaters who worship false gods of the pagan

European variety, those deities have vanished off of the face of the earth and rather than those pagan deities being worshiped, there was a whole time within Christian history where a large swath of Europe was called the

Holy Roman Empire. Don't tell me

Satan hasn't been bound. Satan and the demons got waffle -stomped by the gospel.

Full stop and how many billions of human beings have now been brought to faith in Christ?

And oh, by the way, the gospel is waffle -stomping the demons all over Africa right now.

I mean, you wanna talk about what's going on in Madagascar? Right, and I'm not talking about the movie.

I'm talking about the actual place, okay? Do you understand that confessional

Lutheranism has taken over Madagascar? In fact, it has grown so rapidly, they don't have the infrastructure in place to put enough pastors there, okay?

There are so many of them. If we think that we're a large population here in the

United States, we're really not. I mean, they almost completely outnumber us like a bazillion to one.

It's like 200 million now that are confessing Christ in Madagascar. It's a huge number.

That may be too big, but you get the idea. So the gospel has just taken off like wildfire.

And so you'll note that even the Apostle Paul in 2

Thessalonians talks about the fact that Satan has been bound. Not will be, but presently was bound at the time he wrote it, okay?

So he says, the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he's out of the way.

And then the lawless one will be revealed. So you'll note, Paul here is talking about the fact that Satan himself is already bound, he's been restrained.

All right? So you get the idea. The gospel's gonna keep doing what the gospel's gonna keep doing.

The word of the Lord keeps spreading. Yes, sir? Yeah, so, yeah,

I like the reference there. African angels. That's right, because Paula White had called the angels from Africa.

And they were being sent to overturn the election. Boy, that didn't age well, did it?

And so no, I like to think that they got lost in Albuquerque, but that's an old reference to Bugs Bunny.

You know, I took a wrong turn in Albuquerque. But I think your theory makes more sense.

They just stayed put, and the gospel has been spreading, right? Okay? All right.

So let's come back, then, to our text, okay? So, wail alas for the day, for the day is near, the day of Yahweh is near, a day of clouds, a day of doom, a day for the nations.

A sword shall come upon Egypt, and anguish shall be in Cush, when the slain fall in Egypt, and her wealth is carried away, and her foundations are torn down.

Cush, and Put, and Lud, and all Arabia, and Libya, and all the people of the land that is in league shall fall with them by the sword.

Now, little excursus. Again, I like bunny trailing myself. Here's an important word. Cush. Who are the

Cushites? Ethiopian. Now, a little bit of a note here.

Have you ever heard white supremacists claim that black people are under the curse of Ham?

Okay. Let me explain. So, excuse me while I twist some scripture for you.

Okay? To kind of make the point. So if we go to the book of Genesis, okay? Remember when

Noah and his family got off the ark. Remember that? And then God basically set up a covenant with Noah and his family.

And, well, there's this odd account here. Noah began to be a man of the soil.

He planted a vineyard. So what did Noah do after the flood? He became a winemaker, okay?

He drank of the wine, and he became drunk, and he lay uncovered in his tent. He had a little bit too much to drink and forgot to put on his underwear, all right?

And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside.

Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backwards and covered the nakedness of their father.

Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness. Now, I'm not gonna get into the details of it.

There are some very overt homosexual overtones in what happens here.

It's very clear in the Hebrew, but I'm not gonna go into any other detail than to say it's there. So when

Noah woke from his wine and knew that his youngest son, what he had done to him, he said, cursed be

Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers. And so you're gonna note here, what white supremacists argue is that because Ham did this, they call this, quote, the curse of who?

Ham, they call it the curse of Ham. And so their argument is that the curse of Ham, the details of the curse of Ham, is that Ham's descendants are gonna be the slaves of the others.

So this is why blacks are to be slaves. But I covered up,

I told you I was twisting the scripture here, but darn it, James, you caught me. Okay, who was cursed?

Was it Ham? Let me back up. Canaan. Cursed be

Canaan. Isn't that interesting? And by the way, y 'all remember

Robert Byrd? Some of you are not gonna remember him, but Robert Byrd was a senator from West Virginia. He got his start in politics as the

Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in West Virginia. And during one particular debate in the

Senate as it related to legislation that would have resulted in the end of segregation, he and other

Democrats engaged in a very long filibuster. And during that filibuster,

Robert Byrd got up and argued that the blacks had to be slaves because of the curse of Ham.

It's just crazy when you think about it. But does the

Bible say that Ham was cursed? No, who was cursed? Canaan.

It's the curse of Canaan, it's not the curse of Ham. And unfortunately, within American Christian history, there is a theological strain that you can kind of follow of people who tried to justify not only slavery of blacks, but ongoing segregation of Africans due to what they called the curse of Ham.

And there are people today, white Christian nationalists, who argue similarly today that because the blacks are under the curse of Ham, they are therefore required by God to be our slaves.

That's their argument. But again, God didn't curse Ham, he cursed Canaan. And he didn't curse all of Ham's sons, only

Canaan. So keep that in mind. And where were the Canaanites, by the way? Northern, northern, northern bits of Africa, not in the southern bits.

So this then leads us to talking about the descendants. These are the generations of the sons of Noah.

Shem, Ham, and Japheth. They were sons, sons were born to them after the flood.

The sons of Japheth were Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras.

The sons of Gomer, Ashkenaz, Riphoth, Togarmah, the sons of Javan, Elisha, Tarshish, Ketim, and Dodonim, and from these the

Coastland people spread to their lands, each with their own language by their clans. The sons of Ham, here we go.

You ready? Here are the sons of Ham. Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan.

Only Canaan was cursed, Cush was not. And historically then, the

Cushites are the ones who become known as the

Ethiopians. It's a fascinating thing. Now, a little bit of a note here, okay?

I'm bringing all of this up because you guys need to be up to speed on the false doctrine that's running around the planet right now, or especially within Lutheran circles.

Those claiming that there's such a thing as the curse of Ham are twisting scripture. It's the curse of Canaan. Cush was not punished by God, or cursed.

It was Canaan that was. And you'll note the Canaanites were wicked. And God dealt with them very severely, okay?

Absolutely the case. But Cush then, let me find something really quick here.

I don't think you guys are ready for this. All right, hang on a second here. I'm gonna go to OperationValkyrie .group,

and we are going to look for an article, Moses' Ethiopian Bride, okay?

All right. Love generative AI. Okay, so let me read part of this out so that you kind of get this.

In order for something to be sinful, so here's the topic that's at hand. Not only do white

Christian nationalists argue that blacks are under the curse of Ham, which doesn't exist, it's the curse of Canaan, but they also claim that interracial marriage is sinful and forbidden by God.

This is what they claim. And their rhetoric even gets to the point where they'll say things like, anybody, any white man who marries an

African woman is engaging in white genocide. And you just sit there and go, what are you even talking about?

And so they'll claim then, their claim is this. God made the races, plural, and God intends for those races to stay the same.

They're not supposed to be changed. And you're somehow, you're going against God's will if you engage in interracial marriage.

And you sit there and go, where are you guys getting this? Where are you guys even coming up with this idea?

Yes, James. You know, that would be really embarrassing for them.

But you know, you're right, because, yeah, right? Okay, so here's the issue.

How many races are there in humanity? One. There is only one race.

The current definitions used by people when they talk about race, they don't exist in the scriptures.

They don't exist in our confessions. And the current views on race are legitimately the quack ideas of some weird

French guy from the 19th century who claimed that the idea that race, that there are basically three primary races, you know, whites and Africans and the

Asians, okay? But the scriptures know nothing of this, know nothing at all.

In fact, one of the things that I'm now doing, you know, whenever those stupid census things come around every 10 years, when

I ask what race I am, I don't play their game because it's using these definitions that actually divide us.

And so I will put my ethnicity as Irish and German. Okay, these are my ethnicities.

Okay, these are, and ethnicities are kind of like big super families, if you would. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with your racial color.

But it just so happens that the Kushites are mentioned in scripture as having dark skin. This is most certainly true.

So here's kind of my argument. In order for something to be sinful, there must be a clear command of God that prohibits it.

Stealing is sinful because the scripture says, thou shalt not steal, Exodus 20, 15.

Adultery is sinful because God said, thou shalt not commit adultery, Exodus 20, 14.

But do the scriptures teach that marrying someone of another ethnicity, notice I didn't say race, another ethnicity is sinful?

Answer, no. The scriptures are clear, and this is Romans 4, 15. Where there is no law, there is no transgressions.

Let me give you an example. Jehovah's Witnesses, they'll sit there and go, you cannot celebrate birthdays if you are a follower of Jesus.

And you go, how do you figure? Well, we know that this is the case because the only two times that birthdays are mentioned in scripture, somebody got killed each time.

You have Pharaoh's birthday and the bread maker, he was killed. And then when

Herod had his birthday, John the Baptist lost his head.

Therefore, we can deduce that celebrating birthdays is forbidden by God. And if you know your

Bible, you sit there and go, well, Romans 4 says where there is no law, there is no transgression.

You wanna celebrate a birthday? Go for it. Oh, well, the angels and the shepherds did celebrate

Christ's birth. Now you're being biblical again. Stop, stop making sense. Okay, okay.

So many of today's alt -right Christian nationalists and practically all of today's fascists and Nazis add to the scriptures in order to make it appear that God requires people to marry a spouse who shares their ethnicity.

They do this, they do so by adding to the scriptures as well as twisting the scriptures. The name of their racial theology, by the way, is known as kinism, okay?

You are required to marry within your kin, okay? So here are two examples of kinist rhetoric used by alt -right

Christian nationalists. So first one, Cory Mahler. Listen to this quote. This is from May 1st of 2023.

The goal of interracial marriages in the modern context is the destruction of nations.

This is very explicit. Those who are advocating for interracial relationships, multiracial, biracial, whatever it happens to be, the explicit goal is the destruction of the distinct nations.

In particular, the goal, of course, is the destruction of whites and the white race. And the reason for this is because historically,

Christendom has been synonymous with Europe. Whites have been the bulwark of Christendom in the world for millennia, and Satan knows this, and he hates us, and he wants to erase us.

I thought Satan wanted to do that to anybody who's a Christian, right? And then listen to this.

Stephen Wolf, he's had some gaffes. He says, if they didn't separate and they married each other, then nations, peoples, and ethnicity would cease to exist.

It would turn into a mass monoculture. We are all drawn to similarity, as Aquinas said, which is therefore part of our nature and so part of our good.

And thus, while intermarriage is not itself wrong as an individual matter, groups have a collective duty to be separate and to marry among themselves.

So he just did it as a race. Right, yeah. So through rhetoric like this, many

Christian nationalists and their lunatic Nazi counterparts like Corey Mahler are deceiving young men to not only believe that God wills for them to only marry a spouse from within their ethnicity.

And I would note Corey Mahler isn't married. Okay, I can't imagine why he, his hat would have difficulty getting a date, but anyway, you know, because most women are not into the

Heil Hitler thing, but that's a whole other thing. Okay, God wills for them to only marry a spouse from within their ethnicity, but that those who have married a spouse outside of their ethnicity are sinning against God, participating in a satanic agenda and are guilty of murdering their own ethnicity.

But what none of them can produce is a clear commandment from God to back up their kinnerest rhetoric.

Even worse, there are passages in the scripture that flat out contradict their rhetoric. Most notable among those biblical passages is

Numbers chapter 12, which informs us that Moses married an

Ethiopian woman. Not only did Moses marry an Ethiopian woman, God did not condemn him for it.

So here's the passage. Numbers chapter 12, verse one. Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the

Cushite woman, the people of Cush are the Ethiopians, of a Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a

Cushite woman. That's Numbers 12, one. Now it takes a little bit of research to be able to understand who the

Cushites are. Cush was the oldest son of Noah's son, Ham. The sons of Ham were

Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan. Already this biblical fact disproves the claim of many of the alt -right that God forbids marriages between two peoples of different ethnicities.

Moses was a descendant of Noah's son, Shem, and by the time of Moses, the

Shemites, or the Semites, and the Cushites were two very distinct ethnicities.

Very distinct, with their own cultures and their own languages and things like this. The Cushites are the people who inhabit

Ethiopia. In his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus explains the connection between Ethiopians and the

Cushites. Here's what Josephus wrote. For of the four sons of Ham, time has not at all hurt the name of Cush.

For the Ethiopians over whom he reigned are even at this day both by themselves and by all men in Asia called

Cushites. And the scripture makes reference to the skin color of the Ethiopians in Jeremiah 13 .23.

Can an Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then also, you can do good, you also can do good to who you are accustomed, when you are accustomed to doing evil.

All right, so the Hebrew root for this text for the Ethiopian is Cushi, and this is the same word for the

Cushites. So what do we make of Moses' marriage to an Ethiopian woman? The scripture mentions

Moses' marriage to an Ethiopian woman in the context of a dispute that he was having with Miriam and his brother

Aaron. Moses' marriage to an Ethiopian woman upset Moses' siblings, which then they used as a pretext to call

Moses' authority into question. Here's what the Crestman Commentary says in regard to Moses' marriage.

Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses. They also became infected with the virus of discontent because of the

Ethiopian woman whom he had married, for he had married an Ethiopian woman, a Cushite, his first wife,

Zipporah, apparently having died in the wilderness. Here is the note from the

Lutheran Study Bible. Spoke against, occurred at the next recorded place of encampment at Hazaroth, for he had married a

Cushite woman. It seems to suggest a rather recent event. Moses' sister and brother attacked his leadership, hiding their sinful claim to his position by finding fault with his marriage to a

Cushite woman, an Ethiopian woman. On Moses' family, the Lord did not forbid the marriage of an

Israelite man to a foreign woman, except in certain cases. So if you think of it this way, what was the limitation regarding marrying women of other nations that was given to people who were

Israelites? Answer, they had to be believers. Okay?

If you were a believer and not a pagan idolater, you could marry.

I would note, I'll talk about this here. In fact, I talk about this now. It's important to recognize, as the

Lutheran Study Bible correctly notes, that God did not forbid Israelite men from marrying foreign women. Deuteronomy 7, 1 through 4 forbade them from marrying women who were practicing idolaters and who would turn them from the one true

God. In fact, two very notable foreign women are recorded in Christ's own genealogy.

They were Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute of Jericho, and Ruth, the

Moabite. Okay? Those women are prominently mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus, and women aren't normally mentioned in Jewish genealogies, right?

So you get the idea here. Now, I'm not gonna go on too much further, but the idea then is when you read the church fathers regarding Moses's marriage to the

Ethiopian woman, the Cushite, okay, that this was then seen as a type and shadow that God would bring the

Gentiles into Israel. In fact, here's what Ambrose of Milan wrote.

"'The prophetess, Mary, Mariam herself, "'who crossed the straits of the sea on foot "'with her brothers, did not yet know the mystery "'of the

Ethiopian, the Cushite woman, "'and murmured against her brother, Moses. "'She shuddered at the white spots of leprosy, "'which she would hardly have been freed from "'if

Moses had not prayed for her.'" By the way, God punished Mariam for doing this by making her white.

I mean leprous. Same, isn't it, right? "'That murmuring stands very much as a type "'of the synagogue which daily murmurs "'and does not grasp the mystery of the

Ethiopian woman, "'that is, the church of the Gentiles. "'She envies the people by whose faith "'even she herself is freed from the leprosy "'of faithlessness.

"'According to the verse of Scripture, "'blindness had stretched through part of Israel "'until the full number of the

Gentiles shall enter, "'and thus shall all of Israel be saved.'" So the idea then here is that when we...

Did I do this wrong? That looks like Tim Allen, you know? Hipster beard.

Yeah, so the idea here is if interracial marriage were forbidden by God, what's

Moses doing marrying an Ethiopian girl? Yes. Oh yes, he did.

Yes, he did. And his wife was the daughter of the priestess of On. All right, so.

And he's not condemned for that either. Yes, ma 'am. I don't know.

Gay birth to twins? Yes This is true Yep, this is true this

I in fact I posted a link to that last year But there is I think are there a British couple.

I think they're in the UK But there's a couple a mixed a mixed ethnicity couple

Well, no, they're both black aren't they? Yeah. No, I'm sorry. They're not a mixed ethnicity they're both black and they conceived and the woman had twins and one of the twin girls is as white as the wind -driven snow in Oslo, Minnesota in the middle of January and the other one is

African all the way through and through Hmm. Yes, sir That's a fair question, that's a fair question

Don I think he should okay, you know Yeah, not that he would post the results right, you know, he seems to think that he is pure of pure Aryan whatever nonsense so But I would note that many maulers were

Killed in the Holocaust as because they were Jews, but that's a whole other story So, all right, this is where I'm going to leave off today and Lord willing