Satanic Epistemology, Part 2 | Ep. 6

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Romans 8:18-25 (The Spiritual Life, Part 3, Pastor Jeff Kliewer)

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But the point is, the Bible formed the jurisprudence of the country. So you have a development of understanding.

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From Calvin's Institutes in his last section, the last aphorisms, he talks about lesser magistrates interposing when there's tyranny.

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John Knox takes that to Scotland and the Scottish jurisprudence develops from that. You get

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Blackstone and Witherspoon. Witherspoon is the one who trains James Madison, who comes up with the separation of powers.

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You have three branches of government, and in the legislature there's this bicameral situation based on population.

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Where does he get that? He's trained at Princeton by John Witherspoon in the

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Scottish common sense, in this biblical ethic. Listen to this. There was a study done by Donald Lutz, and he went back and traced the quotes of the founding fathers from,

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I think it's 1760 until 1805.

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And it's just this vast study of all the literature of their writing, and he isolated whenever something was cited, quoted from.

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One third of all the quotations came from the Bible in their political writings. One third.

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The next after that was Montesquieu, but Montesquieu had less quotes than Deuteronomy.

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Just the book of Deuteronomy. And then John Locke is after Montesquieu, and John Locke has like half as much as the book of Deuteronomy.

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And then after that is, you know, somebody else. I don't know. I guess Blackstone would probably be the third. But the point is the

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Bible formed the jurisprudence of the country. Yeah. And we've got to be so careful.

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So I think we've got to recognize that in our current cultural state, we are being told the exact opposite of what you were saying.

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And folks are quoting people. They're quoting the same people you are, but they're quoting different things that happened at a different time in a different context.

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And I think also, I mean, so you've got, you brought up Martin Luther. Some people think Martin Luther is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

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They're on borderline idolatry with him. At the opposite end, they want to blame him for Hitler's success in World War II.

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You know, it's, you can't take these people out of context. You can't idol worship them.

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Right. Well, Eric Metaxas in Letter to the American Church, he traces that out as one of the big reasons that German Protestants had started to idolize

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Martin Luther. And they had really become so pietistic and, you know, singing hymns while the boxcars are rolling by to drown out the sound of the

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Jews in the boxcars. They trace, he traces that to an over -emphasis on Martin Luther's doctrine of salvation by faith.

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Read Letter to American Church. It's really about that kind of that theme. I'm guessing right now in certain gray and blue churches, they're saying that taking down that Satan statue is a horrible thing.

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How dare we inflict our beliefs on somebody else? Right. And then you'd have to ask, well, would it have been okay if they erected some grotesque or profane phallic symbol?

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Oh, sure. I guess, wouldn't that, what if that's somebody's religion? If they're worshiping the sexual?

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If they believe, if they're, only if they're being true to themselves, I think. Right. But there has to be some standard, right?

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So, obscenity is outlawed in the country. On what basis? Who's to say that sexuality or the display of sex is not to be displayed?

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Why is it, is that to be kept from the eyes of children at all? Or adults? Do you think it's a good?

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And we know the answer because it's a biblical worldview. God gives us a standard. There's a Judeo -Christian ethical grid underlying this culture.

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Yeah. Do you think it's a good way to get people to think logically about God and his objective law?

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Yes. To explain to them what the plus plus is going to be in LGBTQ plus plus?

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Yeah. Yeah, you have. Because people are not going to like that plus plus. No. That's the logical outcome.

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I mean, it could be anything that you imagine, right? So, any kind of perversion, and there's more and more that just keep being invented.

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But what I love about this Iowa story is because it exposes that. It's like, hey, here's the logical conclusion.

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Right. And what are you going to do with that? Because if you're, if you're not willing to allow the scripture its place that it holds, and I'm not saying theonomy, although there's, there's a, there's an aspect of the, it depends on what you mean by it.

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Of course. Yeah. And that's, we'll do a whole show on that sometime. Yep. Because the law of God does bear on this.

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When, if you don't acknowledge that, then you'll find yourself arguing for Satan literally at this point.

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Like I see God's providence in this thing happening in Iowa. Yeah. Because they're tearing down a statue of Satan.

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And the Republican Senator is arguing that that shouldn't have been done.

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Yeah. And that this should be allowed just like any other display. Which is crazy. It's insane. He's not looking at his epistemology.

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He's not looking at how he came to that conclusion. Right. He might be, he's, he's being faithful to how he was taught.

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Yeah. I'm presuming that I would give people the benefit of the doubt. Yeah. He was probably taught that in a church.

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To be, put it in. Yeah. Blue or gray? Who knows? Right. But, but that faith, but you've got to question, how did

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I learn this stuff? Right. You know. Well, how about this? So when Paul goes to Athens, he sees that Athens is filled with idols and he's provoked in the spirit, in his spirit.

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He doesn't tear them down. Why didn't he? Why? Yeah. Why didn't he? Average Joe?

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Yeah. Why didn't, why didn't he tear down the statues? Yeah. Well, he wouldn't, well, one, he wouldn't have been able to finish his thought that would have killed him.

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Would have killed him. Right. So, so you probably, if you want to be persuasive, you got to come alongside people a little bit.

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Right. Don't give them spiritual food. Right. Until they, until they've had some spiritual drink.

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Yes. Right. Give them the soft stuff. Now, that's a tricky one. And I got to ask your advice on that.

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Sometimes you're, you're, I feel like I'm, I'm withholding information, but I want to see where they're at and what they can, right.

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They can understand. I need to know their perspective. You got it. And that's epistemology, right? Their perspective. Like I will say the context, there's things that I being saved at age 35, there were a lot of incorrect, unbiblical things that I had to unlearn before I could understand things in the

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Bible. And I think that's what we've got to do. We've got to be honest with ourselves. Right. When we're learning this stuff.

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Yeah. Like, like we talked in one of the other episodes, we said, we know some of this stuff is going to offend people.

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Right. Right. And it's not just the gospel. We know the gospel's offensive to those who are, are perishing.

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Right. But so it's a lot of other stuff in the Bible. We've got to be able to defend all of it.

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So if Michael Cassidy had not driven up to Iowa, we wouldn't say he was in sin for not doing it.

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Sure. Not everybody is called to that, right? You can't tear down every idol in the culture. You, you'd just spend your whole time.

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But what's different about Paul in Athens and Michael Cassidy driving up to Iowa?

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Well, the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed and it starts as the smallest of seeds and grows to become a tree that fills the earth and that the birds can find rest in its branches.

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Or if the kingdom of God is like leaven, a little bit of leaven that eventually leavens the whole lump, right?

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When Paul is preaching in Athens, this is a pagan culture that as soon as he laid hands on that idol, they would have killed him.

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Yeah. So what does he choose to do with wisdom? He does the right thing. He evangelizes and he, he does tear down that idol.

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It just takes him 300 years. Wow. I thought I was impatient.

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Yeah. He, but he sows the seeds of the gospel and that works like leaven in the culture over time.

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Yeah. Would you also say, why didn't he tear down the institution of slavery? He should have just left it alone.

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Well, when you're reading Titus, you think maybe he is, but no, when you study what Paul did in Corinthians and in first Timothy and in Philemon, he actually destroyed slavery.

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The slave is your brother, Philemon. Yeah. But I, I, slavery under King David in a theocratic state,

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I'd sign up for that in a heartbeat versus some of the justice. Very different. Yeah. Our culture refusing to, to abide by two or three witnesses, which

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I believe Joseph Story would probably say was the founding of the fourth amendment. The reason they had the fourth amendment due process.

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We don't have that in our culture anymore. We've destroyed that. Right. So I take that slavery. Oh, we got it.

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There's a difference. There's a big difference between the kind of slavery that was in Israel. What are you talking about, Joe?

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That's slavery you're talking about. But that's different than man stealing. Right. So if somebody indentures themselves for a certain period of time or then takes that mark in their ear and all that, that was very different than man stealing or even babies born into slavery or something like that.

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That's very different. Well, biblical slavery, correct me if I'm wrong. Now you had to be a Jew so it didn't account for slavery with people.

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There were two kinds of slavery allowed in Israel. You had people who were Jewish that went into debt.

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And then you had people that were prisoners of war that you brought in. You weren't allowed to take people who were stolen, people who were kidnapped.

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Because God said, if you kidnap someone, you get stoned. That was the law. And then you had to teach that person to trade.

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So you got to teach them to be a competitor to your business. And then six years in the seventh year, you had to let them go free and you had to give them enough money so that they could set up their own shop and now they're your competitor across the street.

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Wow. That sounds great. Yeah. Very different from what was happening in America.

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It's like giving someone a college degree. And what happened in America was different than other parts of the world.

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But the point is the scriptural teaching on freedom and individualism and individual rights.

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These individual inalienable rights come from the creator. And that is enshrined in the

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Constitution and Declaration of Independence. But it's a Christian worldview that undermines slavery in time.

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So it's like leaven in the lump. Right. It's like the mustard seed growing to become a tree.

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God took what was evil. Yeah. And he set Israel apart separate and gave them a different way.

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Yes. And with regard to like this Cassidy thing and the Iowa thing, Iowa has in their

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Constitution a recognition of God. And in the Constitution of the United States and in the

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Declaration of Independence, all of these things are are governing this land. Sure. We're so much farther downstream where the evangelistic work has been done.

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Discipleship has happened. And there is a Christian foundation for our ethics. Sure. Because there has to be some kind of standard.

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And that's that's the standard here. So here we're saying Iowa is not a pagan state.

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Right. We don't worship the devil. Right. And anybody who tries that is being lawless.

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Right. And that's very different than Paul in Athens, when all of that paganism was devil worship.

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I think it was John Adams who said this Constitution was made for a holy and religious people.

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And it is suitable to none other. I might have butchered that a little bit, but I'm pretty close. Of religious people.

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And it's wholly inadequate for the government. He was the third president. Yeah. Or second president of the United States.

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And so the president of the United States acknowledges that we are our whole system is designed on a religious and moral people.

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That's right. Religious and moral. OK. No one else. Yeah. So that's why people want so much.

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Yeah. Authority. They want so much tyranny because they're because they're no longer. Right. Following God.

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If God's not in charge, I mean, if I can't, if I don't have a big God, I need a big government. Yeah.

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But the whole point about government when with this limited government, it was the scripture that told us to pray for governors.

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Yeah. That we would live a peaceful and quiet life. And Paul says in Thessalonians, I think it's first Thessalonians, chapter four, that people would live a quiet life, mind their own business, mind their own affairs and be dependent on no one.

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So this Christian worldview gave us all this freedom that we enjoy, where you can mind your own business, do your work, be dependent on no one, have the freedom to practice your your version of religion.

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So long as it's within not worshiping the devil, you know, not worshiping some murderous false prophet from Saudi Arabia.

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Right. But within the the basic ethical grid there, there was a freedom because government's role was not to do what

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Martin Luther and those guys, well, Luther wasn't doing it, but the civil magistrates to Fritz Erba. That's not for that's not a first Peter chapter two.

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That's not Romans 13. The role of government was much smaller than that, but it took time in the the church's history and in the unfolding of Christian history to come to that understanding.

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And so in 1776, you've advanced just like Martin Luther pushed the ball forward on justification by faith.

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Okay. In the same way, the United States, the revolution helped us understand what the

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Bible had said all along about freedom and giving liberty. So you had different states that had different rules and such in their constitution, but all of them were free.

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They would all allow a Quaker to be a Quaker or a Baptist or a Methodist and without trying to impose any religion, let people freely practice what they want in the privacy of their own home.

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The point is that's all that liberty is Christian. It came from the

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Bible. That's how we got this liberty. But later on in the 1950s and following, they made liberty an idol and took it to the point of liberalism, same root liberal liberty.

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But what they're doing there is they're they're giving right to things that are fundamentally unethical, immoral, which is not the meaning of liberty.

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There has to be there still has to be a standard of right and wrong. So it's the French Revolution versus the

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American Revolution. How do we get our politicians to stand up for these truths? Because none of them are.

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Yeah. Maybe a few. There's a guy down in Texas.

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I forget his name. Chip Roy. Chip Roy. We probably heard him through. I heard him through Steve Dace.

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Yeah, I watched some of that. That guy, he seemed like he knows what he's talking about. He does. He's good. He's good. There's a few.

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Yeah, there's a few. But yeah, there's not a lot. But still, they're like Paul in Athens.

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Yeah. And they're only pushing as far as they think they can be successful. Right. Yeah. So I watched

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Steve and Chip. They talk and they're like, hey, brother, you know, the high five, you know, that we're both

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Christians, we're on the same page kind of thing. And and then but then they talk about what they can accomplish versus and that's this.

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But that is that the right? Is that the right way to do it? Well, there has to be some like prudential question in that, like, should we go to downtown

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Marlton in June and tear down every pride flag we can find? No, I don't think it would be prudent.

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No. If somebody felt called to that and and they did that on their conscience and I'm not going to be the one cheering against them.

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Yeah. No, it's it's a tough that's a tough question. I think it's better to operate within the the rule of law.

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But when the rule of law becomes lawless, there may come at some point, you know, if it gets so bad.

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Some other solution, who knows what do you think people are thinking right now? Yeah. That haven't been exposed to epistemology or the history that we're talking about?

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What's their what's on their mind right now? Well, you begin to worry like, well, where's the line that are we just lawless?

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The question then is, how do we know what is a just law? And at what point do you disobey law?

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And that that man, that's a can of worms right there. It's something that I don't think either one of us would say, oh, we've got that all nailed down and figured out.

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But I think we can say some things like if there's a statue to Satan built.

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Sure. That's over the line. And we have to oppose that, you know, and somebody being willing to go to jail.

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I guess they probably arrested this Michael Cassidy guy. Kudos to him that he's willing to go suffer that way for the sake of the gospel.

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And that's what it takes. It takes some suffering. We have to be willing to suffer. And you've got to be willing to send in questions too, because we need to know what you're thinking right now.

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So the email address is off the cuff at CornerstoneSJ .org.

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And I brought that up because I was reminded of a question or a comment that I received about some of our, one of our other podcasts, the fourth one, where we talked about schools.

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And some people were like, well, hey, that's a good school. Oh, no, there's some other really good schools that have great

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Christian programs in there. And I'm thinking to myself, you know, you're just too comfortable with mud pies, right?

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Because you talked about mud pies. Yeah. We're far too easily pleased just making mud pies in the slum.

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We don't know that there is a holiday at the sea. Right. Yeah. Right. And that's a C .S. Lewis quote.

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Weight of glory. Weight of glory. Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, we do. We just love our mud pies. Yeah. In a lot of cases.

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Well, what was this person arguing for? What kind of school is he talking about? Like a public school that has a Christian program or?

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Well, he specifically thought that, you know, well, I just don't think he understood the, he's a big

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Liberty fan. And you criticized the one person from Liberty. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But you also said that you would be sending your kids there.

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Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I think the point you were making was, and correct me if I'm wrong, was that none of them are really safe.

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Right. You've got to have your ears up, your eyeballs out. You got to be looking at everything.

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Yeah. And also with your children, maybe you send them there or maybe they commute from home, but you've got to be able to regularly help them discern stuff because they're going to get challenged.

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Yeah. They're going to get challenged. Yeah. And the bigger the organization is, the more likely there's going to be some infiltration.

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So you can't have a school of 30 ,000 people at Liberty and not have some bad apples.

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You're going to have some social justice warrior teachers sign the statement of faith, the doctrinal statement, and then teach exactly opposite at some point.

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And who knows when, who knows when the heresy starts? Right now, when did heresy start at Harvard, which was instituted to make pastors?

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Right. Or when did heresy start at Princeton? Right. And I think Yale was started because Harvard had gone too woke.

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Yeah. Right? I think you might be right about that. Yeah. Okay. Well, you know what?

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So I think we did, we had more than two episodes here, but we'll chop them in half and hopefully you enjoyed this topic.

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I'm going to call it maybe Epistemology and the Devil or Satan's Statue.

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That's clickbait right there. You throw the word epistemology in there. Everybody's going, what's that? So, yeah.

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So epistemology is a very good clickbait. You don't think? I wonder if that domain's yet.

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Epistemology .ai. Yeah. Can you get that still? Anyway, thanks again for coming out to Off the