RLL.Ep.45: An Appeal to Heaven

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You're listening to Radio Looks Lucid. I'm your host Steve Matthews. Thanks for joining me for episode 45. The title of today's episode is

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An Appeal to Heaven. And I think this is about my third take trying to get this podcast started.

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So I apologize to anyone that's watching this on live stream. I keep coming and going because I keep finding

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I'm having technical difficulties. I guess that's what happens when you start to do a podcast too late at night. You know, it's one of these things

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I always say, you know, I'm gonna get this done early and here I am. It's about quarter after one local time in the morning and I'm doing a podcast.

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So maybe I'm a little bit sleepy or, you know, whatever. But anyway, so here we go with with episode 45.

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And I wanted to start out by saying, you know, tonight we're actually getting a little bit of snow here in Cincinnati.

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And it's really about the first snow we've had. You know, I've got a friend of mine that lives in a very warm place and he thinks

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I live in the Arctic Circle. But actually, we don't really get super severe winters in Cincinnati compared to a lot of places.

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Yeah, I was talking to a client this past week at work in Flagstaff, Arizona, and she told me they had 33 inches of snow.

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And I think that was maybe in a 24 hour period or maybe a little bit longer. But but anyway, it was a lot of snow in just a very short period of time.

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I've never seen 33 inches of snow at one time. I think maybe we've had 33 inches on the ground in some really extreme circumstances, but that's after several snowfalls have built up.

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We've never just had that in one one snowfall. And I also had some colleagues in Lincoln, Nebraska, that got quite a bit of snow this past week.

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I think they said about 14 inches or something. So we don't have anything near what they did. And, you know, as far as I'm concerned, they can keep that stuff, too.

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You know, winter was more fun when I was a kid, because, of course, winter. It always meant the possibility of a snow day.

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Now, when you're a kid, I mean, there is nothing better in all the world than kind of getting a surprise random day off of school because of snow.

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And when I was was growing up and I'm going to sound like a dinosaur from probably the last century, which

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I guess I kind of am a dinosaur from the last century. But when I was growing up, we didn't have the

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Internet. And so if you had a day where you thought there might be school called off, what you had to do is you had to put the radio on.

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You had to go to a certain radio station in town or there are a few radio stations that did this. And they would start reading off alphabetically the list of all the schools that were called off.

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And you would just wait in eager anticipation, just praying that your school would be called. And oh, when you when you heard your school district called and it was closed, that was rejoicing.

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That was that was the thrill of victory. Now, what was a real really, really upsetting was really crushing was when they passed by and you hear all these other schools getting off and you had to go to school.

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That was the agony of defeat. And sometimes that happened or sometimes you get something that was kind of lame, like you get like a one hour delay or something like that.

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Well, you know, how come the school district one one, you know, one city, one district over, how come they're closed and they get a day off?

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They get to go sledding and sleep in or whatever. And I got to go and I got to go to school. All I do is just get a get an hour hour delay.

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Big deal. I mean, that was that was kind of a kind of a raw deal. But yeah, this is what we would do.

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Of course, now, of course, it's all handled online. You can just go online, check your check your the status of your school.

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But back then, boy, you had to wait for that that announcer. And there were a lot of schools and something. It seemed like it took forever for them to to read through the whole list of cancellations and delays.

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And you just remember just that anticipation of just waiting, just praying that that that your school would be called.

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Now, that was what made winter fun. You know, when you get to be an adult, on the other hand, it's just a drag and there's nothing fun about it.

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I mean, it it makes it hard to get in your car. You got to fight driving to work. Of course, now, with everything, all the work from home stuff,

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I don't have to drive to work. So it really doesn't affect me much at all. But yeah, that was we had some really pretty severe winters when

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I was a kid growing up. And in fact, it was kind of interesting just this past year, they celebrated or marked the 44th anniversary of the

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Ohio River freezing up. Now, if you live in Cincinnati and you're age 50 plus or so, that's kind of a legendary thing.

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You talk to people around here and they'll tell you, oh, do you remember when the river froze up? Did you go down and see it? Did you walk across it?

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Yeah. You know, the the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Ohio and Kentucky, it's a pretty substantial river.

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I mean, it's a navigable river. You can go down there, you can watch barges and that going up and down the river.

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So it's a substantial river and it just doesn't freeze up. In fact, that's the only time in my life, 50 plus years that it's frozen up.

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And I don't know, maybe I'm sure it probably has frozen up at some other point in the past. But, you know, here we are.

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It's it's 44 years and it hasn't happened since then. And who knows when it might happen again? But that was a pretty severe winter that we had in nineteen seventy seven.

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And and it did freeze up. And it's kind of interesting because there's all these pictures of people walking across between Ohio and in Kentucky.

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And I guess that wasn't really the smartest thing, but it was it was pretty tempting for a lot of folks.

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And I can understand why they might think that was think that was fun. Well, anyway, with all that said,

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I wanted to kind of dive in to talk about today's segments here a little bit. And one of the things

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I want to talk about, one of the stories and this is kind of falls under the heading of calling good, evil and evil good.

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There's a story out and here's a headline. I'll just read it to you. It says Army chaplain is under investigation for saying transgender soldiers are mentally unfit and unqualified to serve.

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After Joe Biden overturned Trump memo barring them from the military. And on Monday, President Joe Biden reversed

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Donald Trump's ban on transgender people serving in the military. On the same day, Army chaplain Major Andrew Calvert wrote comments on Facebook saying transgender soldiers were unqualified to serve.

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He implied that soldiers, that the soldiers were mentally unfit and compared them to flat earthers because they denied biology and science.

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And it says Calvert's Facebook page has now seemingly been disabled. The Security Forces Command says it launched an investigation into the incident.

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So, you know, here's somebody who's an army chaplain. Now, my great grandfather was an army chaplain in World War Two and also in the

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Korean War as well. And I don't know, I can't imagine what he might think of the situation here today.

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But I mean, it's a case here where this chaplain raises some objections.

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And interestingly enough, he really doesn't even appeal to the Bible. I mean, he he simply talks here about about biology.

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You know, and that, you know, that someone who is transgender, that is a male, a biological man who thinks he's a woman or a biological female who thinks that she's a man and identifies as a man.

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That criticizing these people is really, in fact, there's probably no quicker way to get yourself in hot water today than to question this type of thing.

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But, you know, as Christians, of course, you know, we can have compassion on people because they're struggling with sin.

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You know, we all do struggle with sin in one way or another, but this type of thing has been normalized now.

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And what we're told is that. We have to go along with this, and to me, it strikes me a bit as as someone saying two plus two equals five.

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Well, you know, two plus two does not equal five, two plus two equals four. You know, and somebody might be out there and be very, very, very insistent that two plus two equals five.

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And again, you might say you might try to correct that person. You know, you might. You might have you might wonder about them, maybe why they're thinking what they're thinking, but you certainly don't go along with them and say, well, yeah, you're you're right about that.

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But we've gotten to a point in the world where if you have somebody who is a biological male who claims to be a woman, you can't question that.

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And if you do question that, you get in a world of trouble. And so this this this army chaplain finds himself there and he says,

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I'll just read his full quote. He says, how is rejecting reality, biology, not evidence that a person is mentally unfit, ill and thus making that person unqualified to serve?

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There's little difference in this than over those who believe and argue for a flat earth, despite the overwhelming evidence of the contrary.

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The motivation is different, but the argument is the same. This person is a med board for mental wellness waiting to happen.

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What a waste of military resources and funding. And and and I would, of course, I would add to that.

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I mean, it's it's God dishonoring. I mean, when when God makes us, you know, he make you know, he created man. He created the male and female.

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And and he created us with a certain biology. You know, every I mean, if if you want to talk about science,

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I mean, every cell in our body. Is either male or female. You know, it's it's either a, you know, an

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X and a Y or two Y chromosomes. Every cell in our body testifies to whether we are men or whether we are women.

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If you want to appeal to science, I mean, I would simply just appeal to scripture and say, I mean, there's nothing in scripture that says anything about, you know, someone who's a biological male, but who's actually a female.

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I mean, the old the old word, I don't think they they describe this or use this particular way of speaking anymore.

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But previously used to be, they'd say, well, it's a man, a woman trapped in a man's body or a man trapped in a woman's body.

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Sometimes you hear people talk like that. I don't know that they use that kind of language anymore. But but no,

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I mean, that's that's not the case. And and there are some people out there who who generally struggle with this.

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And I mean, we can have as Christians, we can have compassion on them, but we cannot agree with them.

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You know, there's there's nothing in the scriptures that support that particular assertion and the people who do claim that if if they are sincere, they're very troubled individuals.

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And of course, there may be people who are are taking that stance for for reasons other than sincerity. I don't know.

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But it has caused real problems and it's continuing to cause problems and it's not something that's going to go away.

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And in fact, with the current administration, the current the Biden administration, it's probably going to get even more encouragement than it's had in the past.

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And so we can expect this kind of thing to become increasingly a problem.

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Now, another thing we're talking about calling good, evil, evil, good gets to this whole thing with with covid and and the covid lockdowns.

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I mean, the the folks that are doing this stuff in the United States, of course, we have the governors are really the ones that are taking the lead on this.

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And they want to tell us that they're doing this to save lives and such like. But I mean, they have caused enormous damage to the liberties of the

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American people and and to the health of the American people, to the economy of the

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United States. And I get so frustrated with this. I mean, this has been something

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I remember when this we first started hearing about this. It's been almost a year now. What did they say?

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You know, we're going to lock down with 15 days to flatten the curve. Here we are almost a year later and we're still substantially locked down.

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We're still substantially masked up. And many, many people have been hurt, really devastated even by the decisions of of governors in the

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United States. And unfortunately, I mean, this is something that even even Donald Trump, to a large degree, encouraged either either directly or maybe indirectly.

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By just not. By by he had an opportunity, he could have refused to go along with these things, but he didn't.

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And, you know, he he kind of set the stage for the governors to do the kind of work that they have done here in Ohio.

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We were probably better off in some places, but we're worse off than other places. I'm very thankful that I don't live in California and I feel very bad for anybody who does live in California because they're having their state destroyed by Gavin Newsom.

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And he's somebody who needs to be recalled. Now, we've talked some about the whole covid thing in the past and how how governors have posited this.

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And they're saying, oh, well, we we have to lock down because if we don't lock down, you know, that that terrible things are going to happen.

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Well, they have locked down and terrible things are happening. You know, and here's the thing. I mean, there's a lot of evidence out there to suggest that lockdowns do nothing to stop the spread of the virus.

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And what they do, though, on the other hand, is to destroy people's jobs, to destroy people's businesses.

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It's caused apparently from a number of studies I've read about a lot of mental health problems with people.

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And you can understand that, right? I mean, you know, we all want to be able to go out and and do things, whether it's go out and, you know, whether go to a movie, go to a restaurant, go out to a sporting event, go visit friends, go visit family, go visit maybe even people in the hospital, you know, who are sick.

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And you can't do these things, and it's very hard on people mentally, and it's also very hard on people physically. I mean, the interesting thing is,

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I mean, when you lock people down, that makes it harder for them to get to the doctor to get treatment for other things.

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And there have been a number of people who have made the point that, you know, there's you're going to see increased deaths from other types of diseases because people aren't able to get the treatment that they need.

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Because of all the difficulty it is that has been been put in their way, all the roadblocks have been put in their way because all the

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COVID lockdowns, you know, and I think that this has just been a complete disaster for Liberty.

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It's been a disaster for our economy. I mean, thankfully, in my case, my job that I have translates pretty well into work from home.

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So it hasn't been, you know, by God's grace, a big burden on me. But even at that,

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I'm just I'm outraged by the suffering that has been created by the governors and their decisions.

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And in what I think are really very, very high handed and arrogant type decisions to to continue to pursue these lockdowns, especially now that more and more evidence is coming out to say that these things are wrong.

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Now, of course, they should have known this before we before they even jumped into doing it. And we've covered this before in past podcasts, but it's probably worth mentioning here again, that if you look at what the

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Bible has to say, the basic principle is you don't lock down healthy people. You don't quarantine healthy people.

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You quarantine sick people only. And you can read this. You can read about this in some of the the

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Old Testament laws, the Levitical laws and how you deal with how you deal with people who had leprosy.

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You didn't lock that, you know, the priest didn't lock down all of Israel in order to prevent somebody from from getting leprosy.

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What they did is they identified people who were leprous after they went through a a pretty detailed diagnosis.

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And at that point, yeah, they would quarantine them. I mean, I think there is a biblical warrant to quarantine people who have serious infectious diseases.

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But the the idea that you have to quarantine healthy people, that you have to lock down healthy people to to prevent them from from getting sick or spreading the disease there, there is no precedent for that in scripture.

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And the people who who have done this thing should have known this ahead of time.

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And so they can't get off by saying, oh, well, you know, the the the studies didn't come out until after the fact.

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I mean, they should have had this information before this happened. They had the opportunity, but they ignored it.

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And this kind of brings me talking about the the whole transgender thing, talking about the whole

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COVID stuff. Oh, one last thing about the COVID. You may have seen this last week that Anthony Fauci is out there saying that it's common sense to wear two masks to stop the spread of COVID -19.

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And then there was another doctor that same day or within or maybe the next day, Scott Siegel, I guess he's does some work for NBC News.

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He came out and said that Americans should consider wearing four masks. You know, I guess breathing is highly overrated for these guys.

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So it's just common sense to wear two. And really, maybe you ought to be wearing four. And I don't know, maybe why stop at four?

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Let's go to six or 10 or 20. You know, I mean, I say who actually needs to breathe?

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Yeah, I remember. And of course, every you know, if you paid attention to this stuff, I mean, a year ago, Fauci and these other people going around saying you don't need to wear a mask.

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You don't need to wear a mask. Don't wear a mask. In fact, they told people, you know, that it was harmful that that, you know, that most people, unless you had an

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N95 mask, that it wasn't going to do you any good anyway. But somehow all of that changed, you know, and then the mask became this this great symbol of the

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COVID lockdown. And, you know, a lot of people have posited that the whole purpose behind masks is obedience.

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It's not that they're actually effective in stopping the spread of COVID, but to get people to obey.

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And it's kind of hard to to deny that. I mean, I do think that that's what it's about.

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I think that's principally what it's about. In fact, that may be entirely what it's about. You know, we've created this almost cult of the mask and it's it it needs to stop.

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It really does. I mean, they've gotten people so worked up about this. And I just this whole thing needs to stop and it needs to stop yesterday for the for the sake of the country, for the the mental health of the country, for the economy.

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this stuff needs to stop, and these governors, they need to remove these restrictions. But anyway, all of that kind of leads up to a final point that I wanted to talk about tonight, or really the main point that I wanted to get to.

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And that is an appeal to heaven, a cry for divine justice. Now that's the title of a book by a gentleman by the name of Dr.

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John Diamond. And I had an opportunity, I didn't even know about this book until earlier today, but it really grabbed my attention.

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I actually saw an interview where Dr. Diamond was interviewed by Alex Newman.

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Now if you're not familiar with Alex Newman, he does a lot of work for the New American. He's got his own website called

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Liberty Sentinel. And I like his work, he's very smart. He's a young guy, I think he's in his early 30s.

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And he does some really good work, some very compelling work. He's a good researcher, good speaker. And he had this gentleman on, this

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Dr. John Diamond, interviewing him about his book, An Appeal to Heaven. And the basic idea about the book is that Christians should not despair when they find the rulers of this world are working against them.

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Christians can appeal to their father in heaven, both to rebuke evil rulers and to ask God's intervention on their behalf.

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And this is a very timely book because this is sort of the situation that you and I face as Christians.

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There's a lot of bad things going on. And you look at some of the policies that have been instituted by the

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Biden administration. I mean, again, the whole transgender issue and bringing that back into the military.

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The canceling of the XL pipeline, the garrisoning of Washington DC with the

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National Guard. There's a lot of bad stuff going on and there are a lot of threats. I mean, maybe you've noticed this, but there are a lot of threats from a lot of people.

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There are a lot of corners against the people whom top

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Democrats perceive as their enemies. There are a lot of people in Congress screaming that certain people should be thrown out of Congress if they question the election results.

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There are moves to create some domestic terrorism laws that can really be aimed at political opponents.

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And some of the rhetoric that you hear from TV stations and from politicians and from people in academia and even in corporations, they want to make it a crime.

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They wanna talk about the need to deprogram people. There was Katie Couric was being interviewed by Bill Maher this past week, or maybe it was the week before that.

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But she was talking about, you know, wondered how Trump supporters are going to be deprogrammed.

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Now, I mean, Trump supporters are not necessarily Christians and not all Christians are Trump supporters. I don't mean to say that, but a lot of Christians are

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Trump supporters. You know, I supported Donald Trump. I voted for him twice, not because I think he's perfect, not because I agree with him on everything, but I think he does get some big high level issues right.

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And I think he was a better option, certainly than Hillary Clinton. And he was a better option by all means than Joe Biden.

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I personally believe that he won the election. I think the election was fraudulent. I think that Joe Biden is not a legitimate president.

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I know those are very dangerous things to say. And some people think that I've been programmed. I mean, that's, you know, but I mean, when

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I look at the evidence, when I see what happened with that election in 2020, back in November, I am convinced that that was a stolen election.

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And I've talked about that in some other places and I don't intend to go into a big long spiel on that at this point.

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I've made my point and I'm sure I'll have an opportunity to talk about it again. But the only reason I bring all of these things up is that simply having an opinion now that doesn't go along with the narrative that you're supposed to get out of the, you know, whether the mainstream press, you know, the current administration or the

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Democrats that are in charge in Congress, if you don't go along with that, you're very, you can, you're almost, you're kind of like right on the verge of treason with some of these people.

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There was an interview just last week with George Stephanopoulos was interviewing Rand Paul, Senator Rand Paul, Ron Paul's son.

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Senator Rand Paul's from Kentucky. And I think he may be the best senator that we have.

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I mean, he's someone who I think has been pretty consistent in standing up for the Constitution, for individual liberty, and he deserves high praise for that.

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But George Stephanopoulos really went hard after him and he started the interview off. And this isn't an exact quote, but he said something like, will you state plainly that, you know, that the election was, you know, was not stolen.

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And I don't think those were his exact words, but he was trying to get Rand Paul to say, yes, the election was legitimate.

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It was a perfectly decent election and there's no reason to question it. And Rand Paul wouldn't give into that.

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And it was, I think George Stephanopoulos was a little bit frustrated because he actually came back and asked him this a few times and Stephanopoulos was just very aggressive with his questions, his questioning of Rand Paul.

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And I think at one point he said that, you know, the people that denied that Joe Biden was a legitimately elected president, that they were believing lies.

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Well, you know, I don't think that those are lies. But anyway, this is kind of the tenor of the political discourse in our country right now, where if you have the quote, wrong opinions, you know, you can be fired from a job, you can be publicly shunned.

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And I mean, there are some people, I think very much like to see you in some kind of re -education camp. I guess apparently Katie Couric does, or you at least kind of get that sense.

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So this is the kind of thing that we're facing as Christians. We're in this position where it really does feel like the entire structure of society is against us.

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I mean, certainly much of government is hostile to Christian ideas.

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Corporate America is hostile to Christian ideas. The universities and the schools are hostile to Christian ideas.

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Certainly the media is, the entire entertainment industry is. It's a little bit easy to feel intimidated.

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It's pretty easy to even, you know, go into despair. But we're not called to despair, and we're not called to fear.

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And that's one of the things that really impressed me about some of what Dr. Diamond said, because his remarks in this area really echo a lot of the things that I've been saying for some time here.

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And so I wanted to take just a couple minutes to read through a few things that he says here, because I think he makes some very good remarks.

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And I'm actually gonna just quote from a few paragraphs out of his book. I got a

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Kindle version. You can actually get this on Kindle. I think it was maybe $7 .99 or so on Kindle.

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So it's actually not that terribly expensive. And I think, I haven't read through the whole thing, but just from what

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I've seen so far, I think there's some very good points that he makes in here. And one of the points, let's see.

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Oh, goodness. I'll just start reading here. God's people are commanded to stand up and defend those who are too weak politically, socially, or economically to defend themselves against those who are using their political positions of power and authority to oppress their fellow man.

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This duty to rebuke the oppressors even extends to our political leaders. Jesus was telling his disciples that because the

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Gentiles did not know God or his ways, they did not understand God's directives in this area, and therefore must be admonished by those who did have this knowledge.

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And he quotes in here, he's talking, he has a few quotes. One of the things I like about this book is he actually cites the

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New King James version, which is, I think, certainly the best of the modern translations, and one that I use quite a bit.

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But yeah, you look in, there's the account where the disciples, they were arguing among themselves, right, about who was the greatest.

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And Jesus rebuked them, and he said, he talked about the distinction between what leadership looks like among the world, among the

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Gentiles, and what leadership is supposed to look like in the church. And he talks first about the rulers of the

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Gentiles. He says, the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them. They act like their lord and master. And those who exercise authority are called benefactors.

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So you've got these people that are very authoritarian in their approach to government, but at the same time, they're oppressing people.

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They like to hold themselves forth as though somehow they're great guys, and they're benefactors.

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They're benefiting the people with their oppression. Although they don't publicly say it's oppression, of course, and they try to pass it off as like, well,

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I'm doing you good, but they're not. And if you look at most countries and most times and most places in history, big governments have been very oppressive.

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And it really wasn't after the, or until the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, when you really began to see the biblical idea of the government as servant begin to be applied in society at large.

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You know, and we have this wonderful heritage in the West of this thing, you know, dating back to the

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Reformation, but we're losing it. And we're losing it because we're turning our back on the

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Christian faith. You know, the Protestant Reformation was fundamentally about justification by faith alone.

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You know, that we're acceptable to God, we become acceptable in His sight, not based on anything that we do, not based on our works, but our faith in Christ and in His finished work.

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And because of the widespread preaching of and belief in the gospel, then you began to see the ideas of Christianity begin to spill out in a larger society.

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And one of the effects of that was the government was limited in its power and the idea of government as a servant of the people, rather than a ruler lording it over them, began to take effect.

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So let's go back and continue reading here in Dr. Diamond's book. He says, rebuking the oppressors must be done by those who understand from the scripture that we are all

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God's creation, and that it is contrary to the will of God for the rich and powerful to suppress, control or subjugate the weak and powerless.

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And he quotes here from James. Listen, my beloved brethren, has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which

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He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts?

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Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called? In a practical sense, this rebuke can occur only when a person or a group of people who are in possession of both faith and courage rise up and declare to the powerful oppressors, just because you're rich and powerful does not give you the divine right to treat people who are weaker than you in this way.

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There is no group of people, and this is really the key here, and this is maybe one of the key statements here. There is no group of people with a greater capacity or the faith, courage and a divine authority to take the lead in this endeavor than the church of Jesus Christ.

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So, I mean, if there's ever gonna be any effective pushback on overbearing governing authorities, on government overreach, it's going to have to come from Christians.

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I mean, this was something that is, a lot of people find that surprising.

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A lot of people might think that, oh, you know, that what's Christianity have to do with freedom? But it has everything to do with that.

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You know, what did Jesus say? He says, the Son of Man makes you free. You should be free indeed. Yeah, and of course, you know, he was talking in the first place about spiritual liberty, being free from sin, but free from bondage to sin, free from death, free from the judgment of God.

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But that also has wider application. It has an application in terms of political freedom. It has an application in terms of economic freedom.

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And we've seen that in the flowering of Western civilization over the last 500 years.

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But unfortunately, as we have turned our back on faith, we've turned our back on the gospel, we're falling back into the darkness of almost of a feudal society.

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You can see it coming. You really can. And I'll continue here reading Dr. Diamond. He says this, unfortunately, the

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Christian church has lost its place and seems to have abdicated both its political and its divine authority.

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This divine authority was given by God the Father to his son, Jesus Christ, who in turn gave it to the church.

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This is what it means to be salt and light. Until now, we in the church have lost the idea that we've been given this authority to exhort and rebuke with all authority or have been too timid, reluctant or complacent to operate by this authority.

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So there's a lot of great points that he makes in here. Now, he equates the idea of being salt and light with speaking out against oppression.

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You know, I had a Sunday school teacher years ago, he talked about salt and light being the job description of a

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Christian. And I think that that's a pretty good way of thinking about that. We're called to do this. We're exhorted to do this.

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We're commanded to do this. And yet, so oftentimes, we don't do it. And he makes the point in here that we in the church have lost the idea that we've been given the authority to exhort and rebuke with all authority.

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Well, I mean, when you think about that, look through what it says in the word of God. You know, there's that statement in Ephesians, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

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Now, of course, you know, that verse can be applied in a number of different ways. I mean, you can apply that to say false teachers in a church, and certainly that's one application of that.

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But it also extends to rebuking people in places of political authority.

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And Dr. Dimon, he goes on and he makes a, he cites several different examples of men of faith rebuking political leaders for their evil doings, for their evil deeds.

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He cites Moses here. He says, Moses rebuking Pharaoh is an example of a government leader being rebuked.

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And he quotes here. He says, afterwards, Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, thus says the Lord God of Israel, let my people go that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.

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And Pharaoh said, who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will

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I let Israel go. Another example he cites is

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Elijah. He says, Elijah rebuking King Ahab is an example of a government leader being rebuked.

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Then Elijah said, as the Lord of hosts lives before whom I stand, I will surely present myself to him today.

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So Abadiah went to meet Ahab and told him. And Ahab went to meet Elijah. Then it happened when Ahab saw

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Elijah, that Ahab said to him, is that you a troubler of Israel? And he answered, I have not troubled

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Israel, but you and your father's house have, and that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and have followed the

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Baals. And he also goes on, he cites John the Baptist, and he cites Jesus rebuking the

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Sadducees and Pharisees as well. I won't read through those, but I think you get the idea that as Christians, we're called to reprove, rebuke, to instruct those who are the civil magistrates as well.

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When they do evil, we have an obligation to do this. And it was interesting, I wrote, there's a blog piece

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I wrote a couple weeks back on Augustine and some of his comments in The City of God.

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And what Augustine said is very similar to what Dr. John Diamond says in his book here.

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And that is that when Augustine, the thing that prompted him to write his biggest work, his most famous book is called

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The City of God. And he wrote that book beginning in AD 412.

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And he wrote it in response to the sacking of Rome. Rome was sacked for the first time in many, many, many centuries, in AD 410.

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And in Augustine, he was a bishop in North Africa, Bishop of Hippo, and a lot of people had come across the

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Mediterranean, kind of fleeing the invasion by the Goths. And one of the questions people were putting up to him was, well, if Christianity is so great, and if your

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God is the true God, how come Christians are suffering in this collapse, this calamity that has taken place in Rome?

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You know, the collapse of the empire and all of the dislocation and suffering that went with this.

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And one of the things that Augustine says is, he didn't say this is the only reason, but one of the reasons he says that Christians suffer is because he said, because we're too easily, we're too easily satisfied with just going along to get along.

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You know, okay, we're Christians, we're saved individuals, but we're afraid to do our job of rebuking and reproving and correcting people, because, well, that's inconvenient, right?

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And it's hard to speak up and to speak out against popular movements. I mean,

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I talked before about the issue with the transgenders. I mean, you know, the whole transgenderism, the whole

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LGBTQ, the whole homosexual agenda that's out there is sinful. And the people that follow those particular ideas, they will not inherit the kingdom of God.

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They're gonna spend an eternity in hell because of that. I mean, that is going to happen.

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And yet, I mean, they're being put forth in the media, they're being put forth in entertainment, they're being put forth in universities and companies, et cetera, as, oh, well, these are special people, and you need to respect them, you need to go along with these things.

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And as Christians, lovingly, we have to say, no, you know, these things are wrong. You know, these things are sinful, and we need to rebuke this.

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But that's very difficult to do, and I get that. It is hard to do, it's hard to talk about those things, it's hard to speak out about those things, because you're gonna become a very unpopular person, or you certainly have the, you're kind of set yourself up to get some blowback.

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But as Christians, we are required to do this. I mean, this is something we're required to do this, not because we think we're perfect, not because we, you know, we're without sin, but because the word of God requires us to speak out against this type of thing.

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And like I say, though, it's so easy sometimes to be intimidated, to not have the faith enough and not have the courage to do the things that we need to do.

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So I would say, you know, this book, the book is titled An Appeal to Heaven, A Cry for Divine Justice, it's by Dr.

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John Diamond, spelled D -I -A -M -O -N -D, just like the gemstone.

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So it is available on Amazon. You can get a hard copy, you can also get a Kindle copy, which is what

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I have here. And it's a very reasonably priced book, and it looks like it's quite good. Like I say,

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I haven't read through everything on it, but what I am gonna do here, I'm gonna put a link up to the interview that I saw with him.

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It's only about a 15 -minute interview, so it's not a great big, long, huge thing. And I really would encourage you to take a look at that.

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I think it's quite good and well worth your time. Well, that's about everything I have here for the day.

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I just wanted to say thanks so much for joining me. Thanks to everybody on the live stream, on Twitter and on D -Live.

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I finally got set up going on D -Live this week, so I was really happy with that. Thanks for joining me,

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I really do appreciate that. And for those of you listening on the podcast as well, thanks so much for supporting the program.

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I'm gonna go ahead and get this posted out to the blog, and I'm also gonna get it posted out to, my blog is luxlucet,

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L -U -X -L -U -C -E -T, that's two words, it's a WordPress blog, so it's luxlucet .me

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is the website for that. And I'm also gonna have this posted out to Thorn Crown Ministries, that's also a website, so if you go to Thorn Crown Ministries and look at that, not only will you get that podcast, but there's a lot of other great stuff out there.

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There's articles, there's blog posts, and there are a number of other podcasters who post to that group and are well worth listening to, so I would encourage you to check those out as well.

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So again, thanks so much for joining me today, I really do appreciate that. And until we talk next time, may the