Understanding the Modern Polygamy Movement

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We have with us today for the first time,

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Pastor Joel St. He has become a friend. I've known him actually for a few years,

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I suppose, because he started coming to the men's retreats that we do. And he runs the

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Future of Christendom Conference. Futureofchristendom .org is the website if you want to check that out.

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If you live in Pennsylvania, especially, you should definitely check it out. He is the pastor of the

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Independent Reform Baptist Church in Morgantown, Pennsylvania. And we're going to talk about polygamy a little bit today.

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Welcome, Pastor Joel St. Thank you for being willing to talk about this. Hey, thanks for having me. So this is kind of an interesting topic

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I have never delved into in depth, but I'm looking forward to it because I think

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I explained before we started recording, and I want everyone else to know this. When I was in my early teenage years,

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I stumbled across this fringe website that argued that Christians should have more than one wife if you're a man.

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And now I have to qualify that because, well, all the advances since my early teens, they're not really advances, they're regressions.

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But now, you know, who knows, maybe there's a website arguing that there should be multiple lesbian relationships and all kinds of arrangements that we can't even begin to imagine.

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But at the time, I stumbled on this website that said men should have more than one wife. And they made some compelling arguments,

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I thought, that I hadn't heard before, some of them from scripture. And I've since rejected the logic that I came across.

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But you showed me some websites where guys who are advocating this sort of thing are trying to make their way into evangelical circles.

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And this is something I think most of the audience would assume is in Muslim and Mormon or fundamentalist

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Mormon communities. So to start off, you've been working on this. How deep and influential is this thinking?

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Like where, how big of a problem is it in the church, the Christian church? Yeah, John, I think it's a bigger problem than what we think.

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Without going into it too deeply, I found some people who are even slightly prominent in some circles who are privately embracing this idea that the

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Bible teaches that it is legitimate. And this is the key right here. It's legitimate for a man to have more than one wife.

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And they go to certain passages in the scripture in order to do this. But I think we've got a bigger problem here.

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You know, as a pastor, I look out of my congregation on a Sunday morning and I hope and trust that no one, none of the men there or women actually have a porn issue.

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But the numbers, John, say that porn is a big problem in Christian circles.

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And I've been wondering for a long time how this is going to manifest itself. And I think

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I found out how it's going to manifest itself. It's an idea that it's not only...

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Well, what's happening is that the polygamy people or polygyny people, they're attacking the folks that say one man, one woman.

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They're saying this is a made up doctrine by some Christians who, for whatever reason.

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And they say things like, well, God said, you know, be fruitful, multiply, which I find as an interesting argument, because if there was ever a time to have more than one wife, it would have been at the beginning of creation.

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That's the time to really be fruitful and multiply. Hey, Adam, here's a, I don't know what, we have 14 ribs, however many, right?

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God did not run out of ribs. He took one rib. He made one wife for Adam. If there was ever a time to argue, be fruitful, multiply, we need more wives, that would have been the time.

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In addition to that, I mean, pretty much men being born to women is pretty much one to one.

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Pretty much the case. Now, there's some websites out there that are advertising things like polygamy websites like, hey, two girls for every boy.

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I'm not a mathematician here, but if it's one to one, as it was in the very beginning, we can't do two girls for every boy here.

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We can't get our theology from the Beach Boys, which is where it seems to be coming from, the

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Chorus of Aids stuff, two girls for every boy. Now, let's get it from the Scriptures, from the beginning.

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And Christ, when he goes to discuss marriage, he goes back to the beginning,

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Adam and Eve. And for this man shall, and he talks, as Paul did, for this man shall, this man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, not his wife, shall cleave to his wife and the two shall be one.

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And this is a problem for the polygamy people, because how do you, how are you one flesh with all these different wives?

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I don't know how that works. They try to make it work. They can't do it. Now, what they want to do is they want to say, well, it's never condemned.

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Yeah, it is. Kings, for example, were not allowed to multiply wives.

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And also, church leaders were not allowed to have more than one wife either.

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Now, I want to address that a little bit here. And OK, I'm taking off here, John. You can cut me off anytime here.

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That's fine. But I want to address this. OK, let's say you've got a church, let's say

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Titus there in Crete, and he was dealing with some very difficult people, as Paul describes, extremely difficult people.

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And he talks about the husband of one wife for church leadership there. Now, what they say is, well, that's just a couple of things

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I've run into. One of them is that what it really means is a husband of a wife.

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Well, what are you going to be if you're not a husband of a wife? You know, that's a crazy argument.

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He needs to be a husband. Well, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but does that mean that single people can't be church leaders in that, if you interpret it that way?

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I would think it would be. I don't know. That's what some of them try to do. OK. It's that word, mia, you know, so he has to be a husband of a wife.

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OK, well, Paul and Jesus, yeah, would not have would not have qualified there for sure.

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But then what they do is they say, well, that's and this is the bigger argument that I've run into is, well, that's just for the church leadership.

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That means that someone else can have more than one wife. OK, you can't do that either, because if you're going to do that, then you're going to say like like like Paul said, like Paul says, they're not given to wine.

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Well, I guess then if you're not a church leader, you can be a drunk, not a brawler. Right.

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Well, I guess if you're not a church leader, you can pick fights and you can be a brawler. Now, everything that he says there is a qualification for good, honest

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Christian men. So you cannot use that argument. Plus, think about this. If you're trying to build a church, you have a pastor.

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He's a husband of one wife. He's not going to be a pastor there forever. He's going to grow old. He's going to move on, whatever.

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Where are you going to get your future leadership from? Well, you're talking about Crete. You're talking to Timmy.

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You're not you're not talking about a seminary, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, where we can go for a lot of good, qualified seminarians.

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Just right. You've dealt with that extensively. Now, you're going to get your leadership from the church. Well, if everybody's a brawler and everybody's a drunk because they're allowed to do that because they're not church leadership and everybody's married to more than one wife, where are you going to get your future leadership from?

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It's you're just not going to have it. So this applies. It applies as example to everyone else.

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And that's exactly what Paul says to Titus. Be an example. So that the prohibitions that Paul lays out there are an example and they apply to everyone who names the name of Christ.

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You know, there was an article years ago that Nancy Piercy shared. I can't seem to find it now, but it was intriguing.

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It was from, I think, a secular publication. But it made the case that monogamy was the genius of the

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West. In other words, all the energy that men would use in pursuing, you look at a tribal society, let's say, in pursuing multiple women and fathering all these children and that they might have or maybe they don't father them.

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The wives just take care of them. But that that energy was instead in Western societies.

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And we're talking really Christian societies here, right? Channeled into producing beautiful art houses that, you know, inventions and accredited monogamy with the reason for this.

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That was the main difference between societies and Western society having monogamy.

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There was loyalty, commitment. A lot of these nurtured virtues that then built society up instead of left it in sort of a premodern state.

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And so I, you know, I think even secular people at some level, if they're thinking straight, recognize this was an advancement to not have multiple wives.

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But, you know, the guys who are arguing this want to say that we would be better off.

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I even remember Glenn Beck once on his program argued that he wasn't saying for like right now, present day, but he was saying for not that long ago, we're talking the eighteen hundreds, the late,

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I guess the mid eighteen hundreds, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and these guys, that it was good for them to have multiple wives at that point because circumstances were their group was going to die out, their religion was going to die out.

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And so to advance the religion, they needed this. I'm wondering if that's the same argument being brought up now is like the

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Christianity's going away there. We're losing it to the left. I don't know if these guys are arguing from the right side of things politically, but hey, if we have more kids, then the math works in our favor.

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Is that the main draw card or what is it? That is that is certainly one of them that I've run into. But that that just doesn't work at all either.

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First of all, I've read a little bit about Joseph Smith. Some people believe that at one point he had as many as 70 wives.

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Now, what kind of religion do you have if you if you have to multiply wives in order to sustain it?

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And again, think think about the math again here, John. If if men and women are born pretty much one to one, and let's say he has half that many, let's see.

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Let's say he has thirty five wives. Are there not thirty four men who are not going to have a wife at all?

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And in the end, what you're going to have is you're going to have to have wife swapping. You're going to have to have women sharing.

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You're going to have to do that. If one guy is marrying tons of women, what are the other guys going to do?

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Think about it. Now, there's another flaw in this as well that I just want to point out. And that is,

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I mean, again, that not to not have anybody's eyes glaze over here.

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But but think about this. Let's say one guy marries five women.

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And they each have five children, let's say. And so one guy says, look, I have twenty five children.

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Wow. Is it this one? Well, what's the difference between four other guys?

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Let's say they all marry one, one to one. It's in other words, it's the amount of women.

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They can still have twenty five children. You are not adding anything, marrying multiple wives there at all, because the other guys that could have married them doesn't have any children.

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Yeah. And they argue this all the time. And I don't know if these folks are like that. John, I don't know if they're that seriously mathematical.

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The production of children does not change in this scenario. Yeah, I see what you're saying. It doesn't.

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But they'll make that argument all the time. OK. And you can't and you cannot do it. You can't.

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And I don't again, I don't know if it's a math problem. I these are some of these are pretty smart people.

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I don't get it. But they make the argument all the time. So what about the patriarchs, because I know they're the ones brought up the most because you don't have examples in the

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New Testament, positive examples of people that were authors of scripture or leaders in the church who were polygamists that I know of.

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But if you go back to the Old Testament, then you find Moses had multiple wives. So did

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Abraham. So did Isaac. So did Jacob. What do you do with them? Yeah.

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So let's start here with what Moses is an easy one. There is no way you can prove or demonstrate that Moses had multiple wives.

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It cannot be done. He married a Midianite woman. And when you for Calvin, for example, studies this and Calvin, what he does is he because they say the

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Kushite woman there, I think in the numbers, number 11. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a couple of things going on there.

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First of all, we don't know if his first wife was still alive at the time or not. We just we just don't know.

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We do not have any positive statement that he had more than one wife at the same time. But getting back to Calvin, John Calvin, what he does is he quotes a scholar who's really studied it.

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And he makes a connection between the Kush people and the Midianite people and saying this could have easily been his original wife.

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So, again, you don't have a positive case here at all for Moses having more than one wife at a time.

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You could try, but you can't do it. Well, you often hear, especially in the social justice circles, that he added.

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And they say Ethiopian woman who was black. And this is their argument for,

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I guess, interracial marriage. And the nations are more than just monolithic people, groups and that kind of thing.

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And well, and then actually, you know what the main argument they make, the main reason they bring it up is that because Miriam, I think, is right.

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And Aaron, too. They're they're chastised for condemning this, that they were just a bunch of bigots.

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Right. Didn't want Moses in an interracial. But I don't see that in the text. But if what you're saying is true, it's definitely not in the text.

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No, no, it's not. And if if you want to go ahead and say, well, look, it was it was a

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Kushite woman and therefore he shouldn't have married her. Well, if if the

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Kushite woman and the Midianite woman are the same person, then you can't that then you

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Midian was also a son of Abraham, for example, through through Kachura.

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So you can't even make that argument that it was this. Yeah. Use a different text.

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Don't use that one. Go someplace else. That's that's not the right one. Yeah. Now I want to talk about I want to talk about Jacob is always always the big one.

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People come up with Jacob all the time. I want to talk about Jacob and I want to talk about Abraham. First of all,

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Jacob and Abraham were both one woman men. When it came to having relations with other women, it was never their idea.

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It was not Abraham's idea to take. That was that was Sarah's idea to take her.

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Never Abraham's. He was not this lustful guy checking out Hagar. She's pretty nice. No, he was a one woman man.

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Same way with Jacob and the polygamy. They really hate it when I say this. But Jacob was a one woman man.

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He loved Rachel. He never, ever. We know this from the text.

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He had no interest in poor Leah. Now, Laban, the father of the father of polygamy is a really bad guy.

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And it's Laban. Laban is the guy. You know, and Laban was into money.

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He was he was just a bad person. You remember, for example, when you read the without going into it too deeply.

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When Abraham's servant goes to get a wife for Isaac, Laban is it appears as if he's not really all that into it, but then he sees how wealthy how all these gifts that Abraham's servant has.

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Right. And Laban is really interested in this. Now, now he's interested.

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Laban is the guy who introduced Jacob to polygamy. Now, we see that we have some problems with conception and so forth.

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And then Laban, Jacob goes into the, you know, the handmaids and all this kind of stuff.

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Never his idea, though. He ever we only know he ever only wanted one woman.

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And that was that was Rachel. And some people, you know, there's some people who say, well, that was I've seen some symbols like like Jacob's tent.

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Right. And it's a symbol of a roof, you know. And there's Jacob in the middle.

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Right. And there's two women on each side. Right. Read, read the passages.

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It was war. It was battle. It was it was women trading mandrakes out in the field for Pete's sake, for Jacob that night.

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You know, and you want to think like you're going to be in charge, you know, Mr. Polygamist, you know, you get to do whatever you want.

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Well, that's not the picture that we see there with Jacob. We see Jacob and Rachel and Leah negotiating over who gets

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Jacob that night. And not only that, I want to get back to Laban for a second, that really bad guy, because he chases you.

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Remember, he chases Jacob down. Jacob realizes that he has a problem with Laban. Jacob collects all of his all of his children, all of his wife, everything, both wives, handmaids, and he takes off.

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And a lot of people don't realize this, but when Laban and Jacob get to yelling each other, Laban's like, why did you leave?

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And Jacob says, you changed my wages ten times. Laban says, well, if you ever abandon my children or if you ever take other wives.

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Oh, look who's against polygamy now, all of a sudden. Mr. Mr. Polygamist himself.

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OK, so he's he's introducing polygamy because it's an advantage to him. But when it's not an advantage to him now, he hates it.

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Laban is your original polygamy pusher and he is a really bad person.

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Yeah, that's fascinating. And it is when I have seen positive depictions, it is like they're all in harmony and peace.

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And obviously that's not true at all. And I don't know of any example from the Bible where that's true. But but yeah, what about Abraham?

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Yeah, in the case of Abraham, of course, things really went south there as well, because he never he again, it wasn't his idea to to have to to to go into Hagar.

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It was Sarah's idea. And, you know, even even that being the case, he loved

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Ishmael. And he said to God, you know, oh, that Ishmael would would stand before you because he loved

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Ishmael. Well, why why not? Why did they why did why did they get thrown out? Well, it's because and we know the reason why they had a party for Isaac.

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Sarah looks over and sees Hagar mocking the whole thing. And says that Abraham, hey, we can't have this.

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And then God goes to Abraham, goes to God and God says, yeah, you got to cast out the bond woman and her son.

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Yes, you got to do this. Where did this start from? It started from rivalry. Yeah, this this is not a good beginning here.

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And but but the polygamists are going to do better. They're going to do better than Abraham and Isaac and Job, for example.

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And this is another thing to bring up here. I I've interacted with some of these folks and they have they seem to have a problem with the idea of what let me back up a little bit.

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Their idea of adultery is relations with another man's wife. In my experience, they seem to have problems with the idea of relations with another woman who's not another man's wife.

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And I've challenged some of them on this point, and they seem to be confused on it. Some of them seem to believe that relations with a woman who's not another man's wife is not actual adultery, might be some sort of fornication, something like that.

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In fact, in a podcast I did recently, I challenged him on the idea that Paul is saying that don't you understand that if you if you have relations with a harlot, you're one flesh with a harlot,

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Paul. Yes. In Corinthians, right. And doesn't one of the the only one to respond to that when

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I when I brought that up said that Paul's not talking about adultery. That's that's not adultery. All righty, then he's talking about sexual relationships broadly and.

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Huh. Clearly, it's adultery, but that's what they have to do. And that's I mean, another person interacted with me, said, you know, it doesn't really matter what

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God did at the beginning. You know, one man, one that doesn't matter. And my response is that's the kind of attitude you have to have if you're going to be a polygamist.

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It doesn't matter what God did. That's got nothing to do with anything. There you go. There you go.

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You're probably a more holy man than I am. I don't know if you've ever seen and I don't know if I've ever seen a whole episode myself, but have you ever seen a portion of like one of those those shows where it's like it's a contest like the

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Bachelorette? I think used to be one. Yeah. Yeah. So I have to qualify this for my audience.

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I've never turned that on or had any desire to watch that. But I I'll just throw my grandma under the bus here.

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My grandma used to watch one of those shows when I live with her. And I walked in a few times more to mock it.

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This is the most crazy, ridiculous thing I've ever seen. But I remember this one little clip of of this girl.

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I think it was the Bachelorette, I think was the show. Right. And it was multiple guys. And she and they film this over the course of,

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I think, like a few days. It's not that long of a time period. And she says to the camera, I never thought it was possible to love multiple men.

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But now I know that it is. And I'm thinking. Love, I mean, you've been there 48 hours.

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I mean, what is this, a week tops? And you're now saying you love multiple people.

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Obviously, the word to her is much more shallow than it is to me. I don't think it is possible.

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I don't think like I think you can care for people. Sure. But the one flesh that Paul's talking about, the the union that's supposed to be accompanied by sexual intercourse and so forth.

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But obviously, it's much more broad than that. It is its emotions and its responsibilities and obligations.

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It's there's a complementary nature to this relationship. There's things we don't even understand that Paul says are mysterious.

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I don't think you can have that with more than one person. And maybe that's just my gut speaking there.

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But I know I couldn't conceive of my wife having that with another man, what she has with me. And I know she couldn't conceive of me having what

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I have with her, with another person simultaneously. You know, you can have a sexual union,

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I suppose. But that's not that that could be very shallow that that doesn't accompany all these other things that are supposed to accompany that covenant relationship.

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So anyway, I bring that up to say these polygamists who want to tout the fact that they have two or more wives,

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I just don't I guess I'm saying I think they're liars. I don't think that they can love them equally because I can't even think of examples in scripture where that's the case.

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Now, that that hasn't happened. I mean, this this woman who wants to love more than one man, she sounds like, you know, one of these love is love department.

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You know, what is love? Why is whatever I say is in the moment, which is one of the craziest, goofiest things in the world ever.

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Yeah. You mentioned honesty here. And this is something that I've I've run into a little bit here.

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I'm I'm very familiar with a case where a man was trying to convince his wife that he should should go out and get another another wife.

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And I'll tell you, John, it was really hard to watch, because while he's talking to his wife and trying to convince her that it's legit for him to have another wife, he's alienating the wife he has.

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I mean, think of the irony here. And I and I saw I watched it. And John, it was it was hard to watch.

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I mean, as a pastor, you see some as you as you as you know, you see some stuff that you'd rather not see.

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And this was certainly one of them. And I want to talk about the honesty here. There were a couple of interactions that I that I observed.

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One of them was this when the wife asked the husband, you know, why why do you want to do this?

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I'm not kidding here. He came up with some reasons. Well, help around the house.

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And companionship for you. And, you know, just just generally help help with the kids.

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And she goes, oh, it's all about me, right? Nothing, nothing for you. It's all about me.

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Oh, come on. Oh, come on. Yeah. Well, stop it. You can made, you know.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pay a maid. Filipino maids. I mean, there's all kinds of there's all kinds of maids you can get.

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You don't have to go to even the Philippines. I mean, come on now. It's all. And she said that she called him out. She said, oh, it's just all about me, is it?

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Now that's just that's just dishonest. Come on now. We know exactly what it's about here.

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But that. Yeah. But he was willing to say that to his wife as if, well, I need another woman around here for you.

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It's all for you, sweetheart. And how's that going to work?

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I mean, think about it. How's it going to work? Another woman bossing your kids around under the same roof.

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That that's that's going to work out, is it? If you think that, you know, nothing about how women look at their own children and who gets to tell them what to do and who does not get to tell them what to do.

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Yeah. Well, that is a justification. Every man uses when they bring home a toy or a toy, you know, or anything that they know their wife isn't going to like.

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They always try to frame it like, don't you want me less stressed so I'll be more accommodating to you?

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Well, this will help me. This new, you know, F -150 or new gun or whatever it is. It's it's for you, sweetie.

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Yeah, it's for you. And in a in that same interaction, you know, the wife at a different point asked her husband.

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He said, what? You know what? And this this was even more painful. Asked to ask her husband, what what what what what do you want?

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What do you want in a wife? He said, well, I want someone who loves me, loves the kids, is going to support me.

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And she says, well, hello. Here I am. I'm here now. And he had nothing to say because we know what this is about.

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And for a lot of these I've run into, it's like, well, I'm a real guy with this great sex, you know, sex drive.

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And, you know, I'm I'm I'm like the man here. And I I want to address that a little bit.

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I think there's two guys in scripture. I mean, there's a lot of like real men in scripture.

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Yeah. But there's two guys that I I just respect an awful lot.

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And these are I mean, I just think they're huge guys. One of them is Mordecai. Mordecai was willing to go up against the king.

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Most powerful man in the world at that time. Not the king so much, but the king's guy, Haman, over not bowing to a guy who was a

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Haman, who was an agagite. Now, God had said he was going to have war with Amalek from generation to generation.

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And we're told that Haman was an agagite. And I believe that's the reason why Mordecai would not show him respect.

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We're specifically told he was a descendant of Agag. Mordecai put the entire and entire nation there in Persia at risk, if you will, over what we would call a technicality.

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But he he was he was a real man. He was a real man of God. He believed God and he was a man.

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We don't know if he was married at all. But another guy that I he was a man and that's

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Daniel. There's a man. There is a man and I'm describing a man now as a man who does the right thing at the cost of his own life.

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He's going to do the right thing no matter what. And Daniel did that on more than one occasion. Now, Daniel was a eunuch.

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Daniel can't have a wife. And yet he was a real man. So these ideas of, you know, well,

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I'm a real big man and I can I can handle more than one wife because I'm I'm this real sexy guy.

31:07

Now, you know nothing about real manhood. Now, if you think it's sex, you know nothing about manhood.

31:16

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe the James Bond version of what a man is that you can just fulfill sexual appetites and then leave in the next minute and never see the woman again is is influencing people to think that that's.

31:32

But but behind that, I think there is likely a Darwinian type idea here, because I know

31:37

I've heard I don't know how many times I've gone to museums,

31:42

IMAX theater, places where you watch like a science show, and it could even be about animals.

31:48

But often I've heard it described to humans that men are built in such a way or designed.

31:56

Well, they would. It's funny because evolution can't design anything, but they always ascribe these personality traits to this force that's chaotic.

32:04

But supposedly, evolution has designed men to have multiple mates and for women to nest and to not do those kinds of things.

32:15

And so they try to take cues from the animal kingdom wherever they can and then bring them into the human world.

32:24

And and maybe sometimes they'll say things like we've civilization has tamed and advanced men.

32:31

And and that's maybe a positive or negative thing. But it does strike me as something that's very evolutionary.

32:38

Like the whole foundation of that thinking is that we're basically animals and the slave of our desires, our our impulses,

32:48

I guess, our vices even. And that women just have a different set of vices than men.

32:55

But as we've degraded more, I don't know if you've noticed this. It seems to me that women, women seem pretty open.

33:02

Like the more they go into the direction of depravity, they're very open to multiple men, you know?

33:07

Like, yeah, put that in your evolution's pipe and smoke it. It doesn't seem to match. Now, I mean, we're kind of off on a bad start here when we say we're the most advanced, we say as human beings.

33:19

Right. We can talk. You know, we enjoy music, enjoy humor. We're the most advanced. All right.

33:25

How about us most advanced people go back to the people that are not or the beings that are not advanced to try to figure out how to be advanced?

33:35

That's a good point. Yeah. I want to do a Homer Simpson. Don't I mean, yeah. What are you what are you doing?

33:43

And that's a mess anyway. I mean, I I I miss my tail that I supposedly used to have.

33:50

I mean, you know, you got you're holding two bags, right? Right. Where's my tail? Come on.

33:56

That's advanced. I want my tail back. OK, I never had a tail. All right. Yeah. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth in seven day, six day or whatever.

34:05

That's why I don't think the carnivore diet is right either. I mean, that's because that's a whole evolutionary thing of, you know, in the beginning, we used to just eat meat.

34:12

And then we got to civilize and started eating berries and fruits and like good grief. It's the opposite, actually.

34:19

Yeah. Yeah. You were you were in a garden where there was trees. I had to take off the pluck off the fruit or whatever.

34:25

Right. But but now the thing of it is, is that, you know, the sex drive in men is a building drive.

34:34

If if we will do, as God says, and not fornicate, then we will build a man will build.

34:42

Look forward to his wife. He'll build a house. He'll build a business looking forward.

34:47

And that drive is there for a reason. And to control that drive is a great and godly and good thing.

34:54

And what the polygamous will say is, is that, well, that drive is there.

34:59

It's meant to be fulfilled. No, there are times when that drive is meant to be controlled. And I I can't see the polygamous saying that at all.

35:09

Yeah. Yeah. Real man actually can control his. He's a master of it, as Paul said. He mastered his own body.

35:17

And I think of it like a dam in a way like what do dams? They generate hydroelectric power. There's so many benefits from having a dam.

35:26

And and that's, I think, our social mores for the last. I don't know how many thousands of years, at least, you know, centuries in the

35:34

Christian civilization in Western European countries. We've we've been able to harness that energy.

35:41

And now the dam is breaking and it's breaking because of homosexual marriage.

35:47

It's breaking because of general infidelity. Just recently, I don't know if you saw you probably don't care because you're in Pennsylvania, but New York last week,

35:53

I think it was or the week before. I did see this. Did you see it? Yeah. They decided to it was kind of an archaic law,

36:00

I suppose, just because it wasn't enforced. But they had a law that adultery was still illegal and you could be punished for it.

36:08

The last person, I guess, who I think they got off on a technicality. But in 2010, there was some case in New York where someone tried to impose that.

36:16

And they just the legislature voted to eradicate that law. So we don't have that law.

36:22

That protection doesn't exist for women anymore. Good job, New York. Now, adultery is perfectly fine. It doesn't matter the circumstances.

36:28

I mean, it's bonkers, but that's breaking the dam, in my opinion. Yeah. And what happens?

36:34

The city gets flooded. You don't have any hydroelectric power anymore. Everything's a mess.

36:39

It's muddy. It's chaotic. And and look around you. And that's what society is becoming. So, yeah,

36:46

I mean, we're of the same mind on this. I wanted to ask you, though, because the most powerful justification and it's not

36:52

I don't think it's actually a justification because nowhere in scripture do I see polygamy argued as a positive thing nowhere.

36:59

But the idea that the defensive measure that, well, it's not technically a sin. That's the strongest argument

37:05

I can see that the polygamous have to try to justify what they're doing. It's not which is you never want to be there, by the way.

37:12

Like, I never want to be like, well, it's not technically a sin what I'm doing. Like that's you know, that's not an affirming standard.

37:18

And we're called in Philippians four to put our minds on affirming things.

37:24

Good, right. Truthful. So here's the question. When Nathan was at Nathan, I think when he comes to David and he confronts him in the second

37:32

Samuel and he says, if you didn't sin with Bathsheba, God would have given you more horses, more

37:40

I think money, more there's a bunch of things and more wives. What do you say to that? Because it sounds like he's saying it's not

37:46

God would never grant something to someone that's not that sinful. Right.

37:51

He's not the author of sin. Right. Right. Yeah. A couple of things. You know, Paul says there in the

37:58

New Testament there, he's talking to Marcel. And he said and he's saying that there are certain things that God overlooked.

38:04

But now commands all men everywhere to repent. Well, what are you repenting of?

38:11

You're repenting of sins that God said, all right, I'm going to overlook this for now, but I'm not going to overlook these things anymore.

38:17

So that that type of thing exists. And I believe that Christ is actually talking about that.

38:22

Those types of things. When he said, look, from the beginning, it was one man, one woman going back to the very beginning.

38:31

However, that still leaves us with with David. And that is and there's one website out there that says the best argument, the best argument for multiple wives is

38:43

Nathan's talk there with David and saying that he would have been would have given him more.

38:49

Well, more of what? Well, of course, David had committed adultery with another man's wife, killed the husband with the cooperation there of Joab.

38:59

And then here, as you mentioned, here comes Nathan to confront

39:05

David. Now, let's listen to what exactly what he says. He says,

39:11

You're the man. Thus says the Lord God of Israel. I anoint you king over Israel. I delivered you out of the hand of Saul.

39:17

I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into thy bosom. We're going to come back to that.

39:23

Into thy bosom. This is King James here. And some some translations will say into your protection.

39:29

We'll come back to this and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah. And if that had been too little,

39:36

I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things. And some people say that means more things.

39:43

Some people say that means similar things. And and my point is, let's go back to what he gave him.

39:51

He gave him the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Well, you can't give him any more.

39:57

He already has the house of Judah and the house of Israel. He can't give him any any more there.

40:02

Right. So when it says in the end, I would have moreover have given him such and such things or more things.

40:11

Well, that has to mean I would have given you similar things. Because, again, he had all of all of Israel.

40:19

He had all of Judah. There's nothing more to have there. Now, I want to talk about that phrase into thy bosom.

40:27

That the polygamists will say, yep, now he has Saul's wives. Right. This is like a thing they did back then.

40:37

You conquer your your your your your neighbor or whatever. And you take his wives. Well, let's take a look at this.

40:45

First of all, that phrase into thy bosom does not necessarily mean a sexual relationship, for example, in the same passage.

40:54

This is Second Samuel 12, still same passage. Nathan is talking to David and he's talking about the poor man who had just one little lamb.

41:04

Right. This is the analogy that he gave. I'm going to read verse three of Second Samuel.

41:09

The poor man had nothing save one little lamb, which he had bought and nourished up and it grew up together with him and with his children.

41:16

It did eat of his own meat and drank of his own cup and lay in his bosom and was unto him as a daughter.

41:24

Now, unless we're going to do bestiality here, he wasn't having sex with a lamb.

41:30

OK, it was under his protection. This is the same phraseology that's used later on in the same passage.

41:38

And we know the context is everything. Right. So not only that, we have first kings.

41:46

Now, we recall that David, when he was very old, he couldn't keep warm.

41:52

So a woman was sought out for him to lay beside him, apparently, and keep him warm.

41:59

And the phrase is once again, we have we have the phrase. Let me find it here.

42:07

Let her stand before the king. OK, here it is. First Kings one, two. Wherefore, his servant said unto him,

42:13

Let there be sought out for my lord, the king, a young virgin and let her stand before the king and let her cherish him and let her lie in thy bosom that my lord, the king may get heat.

42:24

Now, that sounds like a sexual relationship, right? So now we can say that, well,

42:30

I guess David did have relations with Saul's with Saul's wives. Not so fast, because a little bit later, we we we see here.

42:41

It says in verse four, two verses later. And the damsel was very fair and cherished the king and ministered to him.

42:48

But the king knew her not. So you cannot say when when when

42:57

Nathan says to to David, hey, I gave you your master's wives into India, but we can't say that that was that was a sexual relationship.

43:06

He he apparently had them under his protection. Not only that, but we have different lists of David's children and David's wives.

43:15

We have various lists who his wives were. Guess who never shows up as any wife that David ever had.

43:25

Saul's wife or any of Saul's concubines are never listed as as having had relations with David.

43:33

So your strongest case falls apart entirely under context and under comparative versus and under the history of who

43:44

David's wives were. That's interesting. I actually didn't know that. So that helps me because for years

43:50

I've been thinking I told you before the podcast we were recording,

43:56

I've been under the impression that, OK, it technically wasn't a a sin necessarily, but this is something that always is negative.

44:05

It's great that we've advanced Christian true advancement, not evolutionary. It's great that Christian civilization has advanced to the point of socially restricting marriage to only to to one man and one woman.

44:20

So I didn't realize and it really was this passage, you know, that was my main problem. I didn't realize, though, that when you look at it, it sounds like from what you're telling me, this is a very general thing

44:32

God is saying. This isn't specific. And it doesn't have to be like it's not necessary for you to interpret that this is

44:41

David having a sexual relationship with another man's wife. So, yeah, no, that's that's interesting.

44:49

And so I'll just ask you straight up, though. Do you think polygamy is a sin then? I think I know the answer.

44:55

But just for the audience, do you think it's a sin in and of itself? I do. I do believe that it is. It certainly is a sin for, let's say, a church leader.

45:05

I mean, that we can't we cannot argue about that. It's a sin for a church leader. Well, the sin for a church leader.

45:10

Why is it not a sin for those who say they want to they want to be spiritual?

45:16

They want to love Christ, et cetera. And I'm going to talk about another man who saw as a sin in the

45:22

Old Testament. And that's Job. Now we know I want to talk about Job here for a moment, but because there's not that many guys in the

45:31

Bible that are called blameless. I can think of two of them. One of them is Zechariah, who again,

45:37

Zechariah. This is the Christmas season, of course, here. Zechariah, the mother of John the

45:43

Baptist. There was a man whose wife was barren. Come on, Zechariah, become a polygamist, right?

45:50

Do the right thing. Go get another one. No, he had one wife. He's called blameless.

45:57

He's a he's a great man. I love Zechariah. I just love him. But there's another guy I love, and that's

46:03

Job. And Job was also called blameless. And Job said this.

46:08

He said this. He said, I've made a covenant with my eyes. Why then should I look upon a young woman?

46:15

He said, I am not going to do that. And he he said in another place, you know, if I if I have lusted after someone who is my wife, let my wife grind for another.

46:25

Let let someone else bow down over her. Job. Job put a a curse on himself, if he even lusted after someone who wasn't his wife.

46:39

But of course, he was called a blameless. Job was a really good guy. Job was a good man.

46:47

But you know what? The polygamists are better than Job. They're better than Job. I'm sure they would argue that at the end of his life, you know, he had more kids and that.

46:56

But it doesn't ever say that he got another wife. He presumably had the same wife, right?

47:01

I have things with her. You have to like, yeah, ship that one in from from afar.

47:07

Oh, I must have had another wife. Yeah, actually, it doesn't say that. Right. Right. Yeah.

47:12

So they're grasping at straws to try to justify everything they're saying. Now, I have two questions here that I'm sure are on everyone's mind.

47:20

Why is it that scripture then doesn't explicitly in more clear terms in multiple places condemn polygamy as a sin?

47:28

And maybe you could you could think of other like cannibalism. There's other things that are sins that I suppose scripture doesn't do that with.

47:35

But why? Why with this one? And then secondly, why did the

47:41

Mosaic law regulate it instead of just an outright ban completely? And I have a third one, but I don't want to overwhelm.

47:49

OK, with questions. So those are the two. Yeah, I'll go the second one first. I'm not convinced that the

47:54

Mosaic law does regulate it. There there are certain things that it says that, you know, if you find yourself in this position, for example, one of the ones that someone brought up to me was if a man have two wives, one loved, one hated.

48:10

And that was that was an argument for polygamy. Believe it or not, it's like, oh, this is this is great.

48:17

Great. That's what I want in my life. Two wives, one I love and one I hate.

48:22

Are you kidding me? Well, the Oak Ridge boy said you're trying to love two women is like what is the song go is like something shame anyway, it tires your mind is how the song goes.

48:33

But anyway. Yeah. And it seems like that's that's what he is is addressing there for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

48:39

The thing of it is there is how did how did we get two wives?

48:46

In other words, it was someone who came into the into the covenant of Israel that already had two wives.

48:53

And here's here's Moses now saying, if you if you have two wives and you love the one and you hate the other, this is how you have to deal with the inheritance.

49:02

We know there was a lot of people that came into the covenant of Israel. I mean, one was one was

49:08

Caleb, for example. Caleb was a Canaanite. He got adopted into the tribe of Judah.

49:16

But he was originally a Canaanite, excuse me. So so the question there is,

49:23

I'm not so sure it was regulated. There is a passage there where one of them says that if a man puts away like a concubine, a lot of people translate that that she heard her marital rights shall not be diminished.

49:38

Once again, John Calvin and I've looked at that passage up, and that's the only time that that type of language is used.

49:46

And when you look that up and so it makes it a little bit of a challenge for us.

49:52

John Calvin believes that that's not talking about marital sexual rights there at all.

49:58

It's talking about general support. So there's a there's passages that people use to say that it was regulated.

50:06

I'm not I am I myself am not convinced that Moses actually regulated it in any positive way at all.

50:14

And some people say, well, certain things weren't condemned. Well, you know, the king was not allowed to multiply wives, for example.

50:21

Now. Whatever else you want to say about Solomon. He multiplied wives.

50:28

OK, yeah, I think we can pretty much say, but, you know, God never actually condemns him for multiplying wives.

50:37

He never does. He says your wife's turned your heart away. But he never says, I told you not to multiply wives back in Deuteronomy.

50:43

And you did it. So I am I am of the of the view, if you will, that let's look what

50:51

God has said for the best possible way for us to live.

50:57

And he doesn't have to condemn every single time if he doesn't get Samson goes down and he's marrying a woman who's not he he's clearly violating

51:06

God's law, well, doesn't say that that he violated God's law every time he goes after one of these women, they ruined him.

51:14

But we have enough evidence from other passages. And if kings are not supposed to multiply wives, what what what gives me the right?

51:25

So I don't know if this would be a complete parallel, but I'm thinking of tribes where missionaries go in and they already have a polygamous culture present.

51:35

And, you know, the missionary is in a position of like, do I what do I do? This guy, do

51:40

I tell him to divorce all his wives, but but the first one or what do I do? And I know it's a struggle if if the context is such that in that region, at that time, the children of Israel were already in a situation where they had this practice going on, then is that a possible explanation for why at least it's not as restrictive as our laws today are against polygamy?

52:09

Because our laws have until three minutes ago were very restrictive on this. Yeah. And still

52:15

I think it's technically illegal in every state still. Not that it's enforced, but they have whole shows on like Lifetime about polygamous relationships, which is just bonkers to me.

52:28

But yeah, so is that that's in my mind has been the explanation. What do you think? Is that the reason behind why it's maybe not harder hit legally?

52:38

Yeah, bigamy is still a crime. And and I think I think you're right. Never every state on the books.

52:45

Yeah. And we have a modern, well, sort of modern example of this. The missionary

52:51

David Livingston. Had real problems here because he felt that he felt very strongly about about monogamy and he he would deal with chiefs.

53:04

He was a man who dealt with an awful lot of folks across Africa, and oftentimes he had to negotiate with chiefs.

53:09

And there were times when they turned to Christ. But he had a problem because he felt that if they really did turn to Christ, that they would put away their all their wives except for one.

53:20

Other missionaries had a different view of that, you know, that now you don't have to you're already married to him.

53:26

It's not going to be helpful to to put away all your wives. So it seems to me that it's it's a problem even to this day.

53:34

So we have two two choices here. We can either recognize it as a problem and cut it off in future generations or we can throw our hands up and say, well, we know it's got all kinds of problems, which it does.

53:49

You know, I got I got, you know, the very beginning Lamech. Right.

53:55

Lamech telling off his two wives. You know, I hey, hey, ladies, listen, listen to me.

54:01

Migrant warrior. Yeah. I just killed somebody, ladies. So don't you mess with me.

54:07

Right. So and this is I'll explain this. One of the guys that challenged me, he said this.

54:17

He said, well, you know what? If your wife isn't happy with you getting another wife, then you're not the man of the house.

54:24

And I'm like, thank thank you, Lamech. You know, I knew I knew Lamech was going to was going to revisit us again.

54:32

Thank you ever so much. You told your wife off, didn't you? And if if she doesn't like you have another wife, then she can go pounce.

54:39

Well, no wonder you're looking for another wife. I mean, she's not going to give you anything. If you're treating her that way, that's right.

54:45

Treat her like like live with your wife in an understanding way. That seems understanding. Yeah. Yeah, really.

54:51

Now, what the funny thing was, was it's just kind of a funny thing that one of one of one of the particular guys that took it.

54:59

One take me on is all about polygamy. Look, look them up. Right. And his his oh, my word is his

55:09

YouTube channel is he is a gamer. That's that's a

55:14

YouTube channel. It's all about gaming. Right. Like there's a guy who should have more than one wife.

55:22

That's oh, man. OK. Well, that's not associated with healthy doses of maturity. Not hardly manliness.

55:30

But yeah, that a lot. I mean, that's just that's just one guy. There's other people you run into.

55:36

It's kind of like that. Yeah, I wonder. Go back to the Livingston thing. I wonder whether it's so like if there's a difference when it comes to contextualization and missions of those who would see those marriages, those multiple marriages as actual marriages, they're legitimate, even if they're wrong, where maybe someone else approaching it says no.

55:56

After marriage, one, all the rest are adultery. They're not actually legitimate marriages because it seems to me in Scripture it does treat these polygamous relationships as marriages.

56:07

I don't know if you disagree with that or you have any illumination on that. Well, you have you have statements that this other person is is their actual wife is their wife.

56:18

Yeah. So you have statements like that. Sometimes that's also said of concubines. Also, there are times when concubine and wife are somewhat interchangeable.

56:27

I have always wondered how the concubine thing works. It makes no sense to me. Like, but there's a difference between them.

56:33

But like, I guess they have they don't get to call shots. They're like almost like slaves,

56:39

I guess. Yeah. Did you still have sex with them? It's weird to me. It's just so foreign from our context.

56:46

Yeah, the concubine thing is something I've looked into a bit. And I think we've really misunderstood that, especially in the modern way.

56:53

I believe what was happening with the concubine was was a wealthy man was was choosing a a woman, perhaps from a from a not wealthy background for his son.

57:08

And when it says when it's if she becomes displeasing at that point, then he still has to support her because he took her out of the marriage pool.

57:17

And then if he says, you know what, I don't want her for my son anymore. That's why he has to support her.

57:22

And that's where Calvin's coming from in the support for the concubine. I don't believe there's ever a case where God actually approves of a lesser wife type.

57:32

And that's what they call the concubine, kind of like a wife, lesser wife, like a junior high wife. She doesn't get as much.

57:37

And a lot of people do that. Actually, I think when you see the context there, he's actually choosing someone for his son, which would have been a good deal for everybody around, because if she comes from a poor background, now she has a much better future perhaps, but he hasn't married.

57:55

She no marriage has taken place yet. What if something happens when the marriage, if the marriage doesn't take place?

58:01

Now he has to support. You have just in about 60 seconds turned me from being against concubines to being for them.

58:07

Because when you know, if at some point I have sons, I would love the opportunity to choose the best girl for my son and say,

58:16

I got we got tabs on that girl. She's got good character. She'll make a good wife. And no,

58:22

I'm just kidding. But I understand when my parents, when I was dating, this is so off topic, but not really what

58:29

I was dating, courting, whatever you want to call it, looking for a wife, my parents would make jokes like that, right?

58:35

That they wanted to choose the and I always thought that was the weirdest thing, like, you know,

58:41

I should be able to make that decision. And what kind of a parent thinks that way? That's just so odd that that's.

58:47

And now that I'm a parent, I'm like, oh, yeah, I totally get why parents think that way. You got a little more life experience.

58:55

We can see what makes good character. We can see what would make for a happy, productive life.

59:01

And yeah, if you had the opportunity to choose who your son or your daughter would would marry, then, you know, it

59:08

I don't know, there there is I get the arranged marriage thing, even though I'm not doing that with my kids, but I do get it.

59:14

So so off topic. Sorry. Well, actually, it's not off topic so much. I would say this.

59:20

I'm not attacking polygamy so much myself as I'm defending marriage.

59:26

That's that's that's really what I'm doing. I'm defending marriage. And I don't know the whole arranged marriage thing.

59:32

You know, I have it's something I thought this was the thing that I said to my own children when it seemed like some of them were getting were a little slow to get married here.

59:45

My my thing to them was, if you guys can't figure it out, your mom and I are going to figure it out for you.

59:52

Oh, come on, Dad. Yeah, you do this right. I said, look, here's the thing.

59:57

At this point, let's say my my wife and I were maybe 40 years married.

01:00:03

OK, let's say it's more now, but 40 years at a time. I say, look, here's the deal, guys.

01:00:09

Your mom and I, we have combined marital experience, 80 years of marital experience.

01:00:18

And you geniuses have how much? Zero. I think we're the ones more qualified.

01:00:25

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, on that note, I think I don't know if you want to reveal this, but the people who make the argument that we need to populate the planet or whatever, have more kids and polygamy is going to do this.

01:00:39

You have quite a few kids and you're monogamous. I don't know if you want to reveal how many. But no, that's OK. Yeah, we have

01:00:45

God has been gracious to us. Give us nine children, my wife and I and 30 grandchildren so far.

01:00:52

We're actually expecting another one coming up here soon. And no,

01:00:58

I mean, if again, it's possible to populate the world with one wife.

01:01:07

Adam and Eve would have some information for us on this point. Yeah, yeah.

01:01:13

OK, so that's good information. And that hopefully encourages people.

01:01:20

I think this can be done. I think I asked you when I was with you, how did you pay for that? And the

01:01:25

Lord provides. That's how you pay for it. But yeah, you know, and as far as that's concerned, you know, the the whole welfare thing is a different topic or whatever.

01:01:37

But I argue that the church and the family are the best welfare agencies.

01:01:43

Oh, yeah, by far. And there were times when I needed some welfare help from some of my family.

01:01:51

And God, you know, because I had a godly family that happened. And I remember, for example, one time one of my children was having trouble reading.

01:02:03

get back on topic here real quick. You're good. This is good. Trouble reading. Right. And we it was just too much for us.

01:02:11

The children are very little. We had to put them in a Christian school. Well, I had help from my extended family in order to get that done for one year.

01:02:19

At the end of that year is one of the situations where he was like 10 years old till he could learn how to read.

01:02:25

And then in like two weeks he caught up to everybody. And and now you can't tell that he was slower, slower to read.

01:02:34

But that was the family jumping in there. Now, by God's grace, we're a little bit different position financially.

01:02:40

We have some situations within our family where some people need some help. And you know what? I got help.

01:02:46

I'm happy to help this particular family. They have an awful lot of children. It is a pleasure.

01:02:52

It is an absolute pleasure to help them in their family and to do for them what someone else did.

01:02:59

That's beautiful. Yeah. Amen. So the question

01:03:05

I asked before, maybe we've been going over an hour, maybe we'll end with this. Why do you think in the

01:03:10

New Testament, the only regulation that I know of against polygamy is for leaders in a church?

01:03:16

Why don't why isn't there something more explicit? Is it because that wasn't an accepted practice?

01:03:23

Because it seems like, I mean, if you had to give it to the regulation to the church leaders, it must have been on some level.

01:03:30

Yeah, I think there is a very specific prohibition, which we talk about too much, and that is who owns your body.

01:03:40

My wife. Your wife owns your body. That's right. My wife owns mine. And and that is that's very specifically stated.

01:03:51

My wives don't own my body. My wife owns my body, Paul. And I don't think you get more.

01:03:58

I don't think you get more explicit than that, quite frankly. And I know some polygamists will go and say, well, there's a couple of different words they use for owning and so forth.

01:04:06

No, it's clear the point that Paul was making. And if my wife owns my body, then how how can

01:04:14

I go adulterate with anyone else? And and you know, one of the things we're missing here, I would argue,

01:04:20

John, is what adulterate actually means. What does it mean? Well, we adulterate money.

01:04:27

For example, we adulterate silver when we mix another another copper or nickel, whatever we mix with it.

01:04:35

And thus it loses value. That's what adultery adultery is. And we know that adultery is when you take what just belongs to your wife.

01:04:45

It's hers and give back to someone else. We have committed adultery against our wife, against our wife, because we've taken something that belongs only to her and given it to someone else.

01:04:57

And it doesn't matter if that person is married or unmarried. And I want to get on this point again, just real quickly. These polygamists have real trouble with the idea of of having sex with someone who's not another man's wife there.

01:05:11

Their thing in adultery is only if it's another man's wife and they have real trouble with this.

01:05:17

And I've dealt with some of them and they don't quite know what to do with it. Have your interactions been more online or do you have people, real flesh and blood people, like showing up at your congregation or in the local area who are doing this kind of thing?

01:05:31

I'm just curious. Yeah, I've dealt with a real flesh and blood situation. Really? OK, very, very close to home.

01:05:40

And it's it's I got to tell you, John, nothing good is happening with this with this situation at all.

01:05:48

And, you know, when I became a I sort of backed into the pastorate.

01:05:54

I became a pastor when I was fifty five years old. I had been a youth pastor before that for a little while.

01:06:02

But when I became a pastor, you know, with with another man who's who's now an elder, who has been so supportive of what we've done, one of the things we said together was we are not going to sit around while a family gets destroyed.

01:06:16

In other words, if there's a family in our fellowship that's in trouble, we're we're going to do everything we can.

01:06:23

We're not just going to like wash our hands, say it's your whatever. And I still say that the hardest thing to watch is a family in train wreck.

01:06:35

It's it's a slow train wreck and you just see it happening and it's so hard to watch.

01:06:44

I'll just say that. That appears to be happening here.

01:06:49

I'm so sorry to hear that. Well, everyone out there, when you hear of this, we don't know the names of the people, which is fine, but just pray for that situation.

01:06:57

I mean, I I yeah, I'm just I'm surprised because I've never come across anyone who believes it's it's almost like the you know, the idea that there's all these neo -Nazis out there.

01:07:09

I can see them online sometimes, like guys who have that ideology. But in my own personal life, I'm like, how many have

01:07:14

I met? Right. It's like it's like this rare bird that you, you know, you hear about, but you don't actually see.

01:07:20

And the fact that you've seen this is yeah,

01:07:25

I can understand why you're motivated now. And you see this as such a problem and you've studied it and you hit hard against it and why you're seen as a threat by the people who advocate it.

01:07:36

You know, you mentioned at the beginning and we've come full circle now, the pornography connection that you see in this and and I don't doubt that I'm sure pornography is the vehicle for many different forms of sexual degeneracy.

01:07:52

But I can't help but think with polygamy, this would appeal to Christians who want to obey the technical legal terms without, quote unquote, sinning while doing all the stuff they want to do.

01:08:08

Right. They're sinful inclinations. But it wouldn't end there because once you start going down this path of justifying your sin, you're going to start justifying other sins.

01:08:20

And if you have two wives, why not three? I'm bored with these two. Right. I don't see a destination for this.

01:08:27

I just see this train running and running and running downhill. I'm assuming you see the same thing.

01:08:33

But that's one of the concerns I have is that legalistic mindset doesn't contain sin.

01:08:40

Never. No, it doesn't. You know, I live here in Amish country.

01:08:47

And the Amish, of course, they're wearing long dresses and stuff and everybody's like really covered up, but in some

01:08:54

Amish circles, there are real problems with adultery and fornication. Big problems. Hey, you can you can put as many layers on as you want.

01:09:03

If up here, if you're listening up here, guess what? It's going to come out. And the pornography thing is so is so dangerous.

01:09:13

We have we have someone in our church, in our congregation, that he and his wife put together a

01:09:20

Bible memory program. Right. And there's five different levels.

01:09:26

And last year, the top level was Memorize Hosea. The book, the whole book, the whole book.

01:09:33

Yeah. Memorize. Wow. Yeah. Right. And so now, you know, what a dope

01:09:39

I am. Right. I said, you know what? I'm going to memorize Hosea. Oh, man.

01:09:45

And so I know. Right. My wife was like a Bible memory widow. That's what he put her for a couple of weeks there.

01:09:54

Like, I got to do this. Right. I'm a pastor. I can't fail. Right. And so this year it's

01:09:59

Romans one through eight. And now I'm tempted. But anyway, I said I wasn't going to do it again.

01:10:04

Anyway, the book of Hosea, when I memorize it all together, that book puts together what lust does to you.

01:10:14

And there's a there's a there's a phrase in there that says the spirit of whoredom has caused them to err. And and when you if you get a chance to read that book right through, it is lust that is crushing these people.

01:10:28

They can't think straight anymore. They're making all the worst possible decisions. They keep on running away from God every time they get a chance.

01:10:36

And lust is at the bottom of it. And you mentioning porn. I got into one website where a guy is selling up.

01:10:44

He he's he's all about polygamy. And I don't know if you've ever seen John.

01:10:49

Have you ever seen on the back of I see it mostly on the back of a trailer, mudflaps, these silhouettes of women?

01:10:59

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, this particular polygamy guy, he's got those exact same or similar, essentially similar icons, icons, yeah.

01:11:12

Silhouettes on T -shirts, as I recall, and certainly on mugs.

01:11:17

OK, yeah, we know this is about. Yeah, OK. You know, stop with your hey, I'm going to get another wife because it's going to be better for you and help around the house and help.

01:11:28

Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. This is lust driven. And the polygamists are selling lust.

01:11:36

And this cannot end well. And what's happening is in our churches, I'm going to argue this,

01:11:42

John. I wish it wasn't true. But we don't hear that much about adultery and fornication in our churches anymore. It's becoming slowly acceptable, it seems to me.

01:11:51

Well, when that happens, what's porn? You know, we can start to make excuses for that.

01:11:57

And to your point, this train, it's going to keep on going. Yeah, yeah.

01:12:02

Right to hell. I I think that I noticed this during the social justice controversy and I still see it sometimes.

01:12:11

And I've even wondered myself, what should I weigh in on? What should I talk about? Maybe I don't always make the right decision with content.

01:12:17

But, you know, I try to to be even this video. This is content I think is helpful for the believers.

01:12:24

But there is this emphasis on sins that aren't really the problem. Like is is this racial animosity?

01:12:32

I mean, OK, let's talk about it. Right. But is that really the thing that is the main problem in 2020?

01:12:40

Was that really the thing that Christians were so in sin about? Or were there huge iceberg level sins that were being ignored?

01:12:49

Yeah, I thought this many times that the true sins that are sinking the church as a whole and rotting people's souls are the ones least talked about.

01:12:59

And the ones that aren't sometimes even sins themselves, but just things that the world thinks are egregious.

01:13:06

That's what we try to talk about more. And I think that's the reason we're doing this podcast so people know, because I know some of you might even ask in the audience, why talk about polygamy?

01:13:16

I don't need polygamists. It's not really about polygamy. This is about marriage. It's about lust. It's about this is just one justification people are using to try to lust.

01:13:26

And whether it's polygamy or adultery or fornication or homosexuality or beast,

01:13:32

I don't care. All of it is going to rot out the church and rot out your own soul in the process.

01:13:39

And pastors need to be aware on Sunday morning what their people are dealing with and that's what they're dealing with.

01:13:45

And so with that, I appreciate you coming on to illuminate this topic and give us some good resources.

01:13:53

Is there anything else you want to plug where people should go, including your own website?

01:13:59

Yeah, I don't know, John, you might you might. I don't know if you Mike Winger did a couple of videos on this and and he dealt more with some of the arguments they make on the

01:14:15

Greek and this kind of thing. And he dealt with it very, very thoroughly. And so that I found as a pretty good resource.

01:14:22

I did preach three sermons that are on sermon audio on this topic, three sermons,

01:14:28

I got to tell you, John, that were not fun for me to preach. I felt like I want to take a shower after after talking about this.

01:14:36

But again, I do as a pastor every once in a while, I have to mention the P word porn. And that word itself is like I just want to wash out my mouth.

01:14:45

I mean, it's just like a type type. But but it's here and it's it's ruining things.

01:14:52

And it's just one more thing about porn. I'll just say this. Porn is so bad because and thinking and lusting because it turns a protector into a predator.

01:15:05

It's so good thing. The protector becomes the predator. It's the worst.

01:15:12

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's an excellent point. It is generational, too. And the young guys and girls now

01:15:20

I talk to some Gen Z guys that, you know, I growing up, I didn't have a cell phone, you know,

01:15:27

I'm sure. And you definitely didn't have a cell phone. I think I'm on safe ground saying that you didn't really.

01:15:32

Yeah. You know, I didn't even have a telephone. Just yeah, you had to smoke signal everything.

01:15:38

But, you know, I I didn't have the access. The opportunity wasn't even there.

01:15:44

Right. Where was I going to go if I wanted that? And the kids today,

01:15:51

I can't even some of the conversations I've had with people at church who are Gen Z, I can't even understand.

01:15:56

I'm a cartoon pornography. I don't even get it. I don't even understand what the appeal is. But they've gotten so hooked.

01:16:03

And once you're hooked, man, it's like a drug. Don't do it. Just don't start. It's like any other drug.

01:16:09

Don't start. Anyway. All right. We got to end the podcast. But, Joel, it was great talking with you.