Peter Schild and Tobias Riemenschneider from Frankfurt, Germany, on the Dividing Line

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:34

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White and I'm not alone today. How would you say the

00:41

Germans have invaded and taken over? Die Deutschen haben die Dividing Line übernommen. I'm not sure if I announced it or warned you that we are going to be doing a little different kind of a program today.

00:58

We've done a few programs with guests, not too many. And I just sort of figure these guys have put up with me in Frankfurt a number of times.

01:12

We've gone out to dinner together. We went shopping for turtleneck shirts.

01:18

What little town was that? Battenberg. Yeah, yes. And that's when I discovered over lunch that I knew significantly more about recent

01:27

German history than Germans do. We might discuss that at some point. But no,

01:33

I had the opportunity for a number of years to visit with these brothers in Frankfurt, Germany.

01:44

And now I'm not flying anymore. And they're not happy about this. They're trying to convince me to go against my principles and compromise with the nasty airlines who fired my wife and wanted to kill me and everything else and start flying again to come back to Frankfurt.

02:05

But instead, they've come here to the United States. Some of you who watched Apology Radio yesterday already know that Luke and Jeff and all stole them before we could get to them.

02:18

Because Luke and Jeff, is Zach coming this time?

02:24

Or is it just Luke and Jeff? Maybe. Maybe? Not sure yet? Let's start with that first.

02:30

You've got something coming up. You've got Luke and Jeff and Joe Boot, right? Yeah, yes. We have an annual conference in Frankfurt or near Frankfurt, the

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ProRazer conference. And this is the second year we're doing this. And our guest speakers, our keynote speakers will be

02:49

Jeff and Luke and Joe Boot. You would be invited too, of course. Of course. I'm well aware of that.

02:54

I'm very thankful for the invite. But you can just consider me a casualty of COVID at that point.

03:02

Is there a specific topic this year? We're still trying to figure out what topic it should be.

03:09

Well, when you've got that group of guys, something about beards would be appropriate.

03:15

Yeah, that's a good topic. Yeah, yeah. That would be good. It wasn't all that long ago that Luke and Jeff came over.

03:25

Last year. Was it 2023? End of last year. September 23. Wow. See, that's what happens when you get really old.

03:33

You guys don't understand this yet, but eventually it all just sort of squishes down into this. And that's when they were doing something incredibly unusual in Germany.

03:45

Sadly, I was talking to you about abortion ministry. And so one thing we're gonna talk about on the program today is

03:55

Americans. We tend to think that we are the center of the universe and we're the center of the globe.

04:06

And one of the things that I'm thankful from 2000, I think I started traveling internationally in 2003.

04:13

And then I went to the UK in 05. And then I started coming to Germany, I don't know, 12, 13, maybe somewhere around there.

04:25

And teaching in Berlin. And that's when I also started going to Kiev and things like that.

04:32

Some of the things that changed me the most, one of the things that I remember. Not sure if I've shared this with you guys, but I remember sitting in the chapel service in Irpin, which is a suburb of Kiev.

04:47

In a building that was bombed by the Russians, but has been rebuilt. I just found out recently, it's been rebuilt, it's functioning again.

04:53

I'm glad to hear about that. And I was listening to these Slavic voices singing the same hymns that I know the words to in England.

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And Russians know how to sing. Russians know how to sing. And as I sat there listening to that,

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I could not help. I think my mom was already gone by then. And I could not help but thinking about how

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I grew up fearful of these people. And I grew up in a day where we had all sorts of nuclear weapons aimed at them, and they had all sorts of nuclear weapons aimed at us.

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You guys are caught in the middle of all of that, to be honest with you. It never crossed my mind when

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I was a kid that we were aiming our weapons at fellow Christians. You know what

05:52

I mean? And to be singing... Now, I could only sort of hum along.

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At least when I was with you guys, I could sing. I could actually sing along with you. Not pretty.

06:09

I'm not nearly as good as you. But I could at least sing along. But I can't figure

06:15

Russian out for nothing. Even if it's on the screen, I can't figure it out for nothing. But I knew what they were singing.

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And I was just struck by the communion of saints. The fact that the body exists all across the world.

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And to be honest with you, existed there before it existed in my part of the world by a long, long, long, long shot.

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And so that's what I've taken from that travel, which

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I may never be able to do again, but I'm not going to forget it, is that when

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I got off the plane in London for the first time, I'm with brothers.

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We have the Lord's Supper. We're going to sing together. We're going to do evangelism in London. And you guys go out on the streets in Frankfurt.

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And you're proclaiming the same message that the

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Mormon Easter pageant's going on right now. I don't know when I'm going to get out there next week, but Lord willing, I want to be out there, especially my granddaughters are out there.

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You're proclaiming the same message in Frankfurt that we're proclaiming wherever we are.

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And until you experience that, it seems sort of fantastic.

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You can't put a face and conversations.

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And so getting a chance to do that really meant a lot to me. And so when

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I saw what you guys were going through during COVID, and you guys had significantly more pressure on you than we had pretty much anywhere in the

07:56

United States, especially here in Arizona, at least that time we had a sort of pseudo Republican governor. And so we weren't facing the kind of pressure that you guys were.

08:07

And during that time, we were doing the church history class, and I could see it in your faces.

08:14

You're dealing with a whole lot over there. It helps,

08:20

I think, to know people and feel that. And you said when you grew up, you were afraid of the

08:28

Russians. When your father grew up, he was afraid of the Germans. That's true. Oh, believe me, my parents would talk about the

08:36

Germans and the Japanese with much shorter terms. It would be politically incorrect.

08:41

Yes, they were children of World War II and never really got over that. Though, I'll be honest with you.

08:48

I think in America, we got over the Germans easier than we did the

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Japanese, partly because of Pearl Harbor, partly because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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But you know what the real reason is? You guys look like us. And most of us have.

09:06

I mean, I've done my ancestry DNA. I've got some German hiding in there someplace. And I think

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Japanese look different. And so I think it was easier for my parents to adjust to Germans than it was to the

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Japanese. And, you know, one thing that is not very much known in the U .S. is the fact that the high -ranked

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Nazis had an American military chaplain over in Nuremberg during the

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Nuremberg Trials, and a bunch of them converted, actually. So this is a story that's not known here.

09:40

So because you don't like that, your enemies may be. No, I would like to hear more about that.

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His name is Henry Jereke. So he had German ancestors, so he was fluent in German.

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But he was because of the military in Germany, and he really take a lot of time to shepherd them.

09:59

And, yeah, a couple of them really converted. Wow. Yeah. And, you know, I experienced something similar than you experienced when you came over to Europe.

10:08

When I grew up, I didn't really like America. You know, there are some, you know, some prejudices about America.

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And I didn't like you. And then I came over. And actually,

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I became a Christian through American Christians. I haven't been a Christian before. I wasn't a

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Christian before. But then I came to America, and I met, for the first time, I met born -again Christians. How long ago was that?

10:33

That was 22 years ago, 2002, I think.

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And everything changed. Now, I understood that it's not about nationality, but it's really about being in Christ or out of Christ.

10:48

Amen. Yeah, very much so. Yeah. So we were talking about what are we going to talk about?

10:54

I'm glad you were able to mention the upcoming conference. And you can go see the recordings of what

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Jeff and Luke did are online. What's your YouTube channel? It's just ERB, Evangelical Reform Baptist, ERB Frankfurt.

11:13

ERB Frankfurt. You can find our channel. Okay. Good. And you post your services and stuff on YouTube?

11:22

But they're going to be in German. They're in German. Right, right. Okay. Which, for some of us, we can muddle our way through.

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But most other people, no. In fact, I remember during COVID, you guys would post a quote from a sermon in German.

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And one of the things I did, just for the fun of it, was I translated it and reposted it.

11:43

Just to keep, because Germans learn

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English well in school. They really, really do. And I've always been so impressed with both of you, as far as your

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English capacity is concerned. And our German capacity.

12:05

Yes. But most Americans are monolingual. Yeah. We don't know anything about another language at all.

12:13

You know Spanish. I can say taco and burrito, but yeah, that's about it. And you don't have to, because English is the language of the world.

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Everyone knows English, so there's no real need for you to learn any other language. It's true. But when

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I would come to Germany, like when I started going over for EBTC in Berlin, it was just amazing how my

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German, which I had taken in high school, would come back. And I tried, and I tried with you guys too, and you suffered with me.

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I'm like, please, let me speak as much German as possible. I know you just want to laugh the whole time.

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But if I do that, it really, really helps me. And I was at Christian's house one night.

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I think I told you the story. I was at Christian's house. I remember what the desk I was sitting at the whole night in the audience. And all of a sudden, a word popped into my mind.

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I have no idea where it came from. That brain cell had not been activated in decades.

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But I'm sitting there at his table, and I go, Lieblingsfarbe. Lieblingsfarbe, which means?

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Favorite color. Favorite color. I wasn't reading. There was nothing. It was just, you're immersed in German, and all of a sudden,

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German words start popping up into your mind. But you guys, because of your

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English capacity, have access to all the stuff we put out, whereas you could almost say anything you wanted to, and nobody over here would have a clue what in the world you were saying, except the few of us that follow you.

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So that means America does export its theology, good and bad.

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So with regard to theology, there's not much going on in Germany anymore. Used to be different a few hundred years ago, right?

14:05

In Tübingen or something like that, yeah. Which wasn't really good, but it was something that happened. Yeah, something happened.

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So to be honest, almost everything I learned about theology, I learned from, especially from you, but also from other brothers from America.

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Because here, America is the center of theology. Here, all these discussions take place and so on, and you export the good and the bad.

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It is extremely important to learn English because all the resources, like commentaries and so on, it's even more important than learning

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Greek and Hebrew if you really want to study theology. If you're in Germany, yeah. It's crazy, really. Well, the funny thing is, here in the

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United States, if you want to do, when I was doing doctoral work, you always have to have a foreign language, and the main one you need is

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German, because there are resources that are, especially in textual criticism.

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Munster is central there, so it is vitally important, but I understand, as far as any type of current theological controversy and stuff like that, you've got to have the

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English going, and we were talking on the way over here. You translated for me,

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I think both times when I spoke, and it's difficult for me to be translated into German, but it's not difficult for me to be translated to Russian.

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The reason is, I don't know a word of Russian. I've heard it forever, and I can't remember any of it, but I understand enough

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German to be able to hear what's being said, and I can't turn my mind off.

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It's trying to translate that. It's trying to understand, because that's German. I need to listen to that, and I'm supposed to be thinking about the next phrase

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I'm going to say, and instead, half my mind is running off doing this type of stuff. It actually makes it harder to speak in that way than it does when you're being translated into language.

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You don't have any clue what in the world is going on. And it's hard to listen if you understand both languages, so you always have to, okay, yeah, and this is maybe not correctly translated and stuff like that.

16:15

Yeah, I can imagine that that's the case. It is fascinating to travel and to do that, but talk to us about Frankfurt.

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Frankfurt is a major, major city. It's a major travel hub. I know the airport there,

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I've been through it many, many times trying to get someplace else or getting stranded there or whatever it was.

16:37

How large a city? Frankfurt is the fifth largest city in Germany. Like Phoenix is the fifth largest.

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That's true. So the population is about 750 ,000 people. That's amazing.

16:50

Yeah, it looks much bigger, right? Well, no, what I mean is for it to be the fifth largest city in Germany with 750 ,000 and we're the fifth largest city in the

16:58

United States with many, many millions tells you how big our biggest cities actually are. But during the course of the day,

17:04

I guess you have one million inside of the city. Yeah, many people work there. And of course, you have the metropolitan area, which is about five million or so.

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But the city itself only has about 750 ,000 people. But it's a major, you know, it is the city for banking and finance and most lawyers and so on.

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So it's a... Oh, lawyers. I would never study law. I am a trained lawyer.

17:34

Just so you know. Yeah. So it is a very important city. And you already mentioned the airport, which is the largest and I think still is the largest on continental

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Europe. So it's a major and a very important city. And it is extremely godless.

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So it's all about money and so on, but it's not about God. So what is its history?

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Like post -Reformation? Was it

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Lutheran? Was it Catholic? You got both. So the population was basically split 50 -50.

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50 % were Roman Catholics, 50 % were Lutherans. And I think

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Frankfurt, you know, Frankfurt was always a free city. So what you often had, if your prince, if your king says, well,

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I'm now a Protestant, then the entire country had to be Protestant, right? But Frankfurt was a free city.

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So I think very early you had both coexisting, yeah? Roman Catholic and Protestant.

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The major cathedral is still Roman Catholic, but I'm not sure if that's really the majority. So now what a lot of Americans don't understand is

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European history. Nationalism started arising at the time of the Reformation. In fact, that was one of the reasons the

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Reformation survived, was German nationalism helped to protect Luther against the

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Holy Roman Empire. And the Roman Catholic Church did not move as quickly against him because Frederick had so much power within.

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But Germany did not unite into a single nation until relatively recent times.

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You had Russia and all these loosely confederated nation states and fiefdoms and stuff like that.

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For most of its history, it's been greatly divided. Yeah, I mean, and even if you go back to Roman times.

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So when there was this big battle between Romans and Germans, they were all different little tribes, and they all came together just to fight

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Rome. Is that what we have in Gladiator? You all lost that one too,

19:48

I'm sorry. But the Romans beat you on that one. That was quite the battle scene, though, you got to admit.

19:54

Yeah, but we are the ones who really destroyed the Romans. That's true. So you were the barbarians?

20:00

Yes. Actually, the first national movement started in the early 1900s.

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And because of Napoleon, actually, they more came together to fight one common enemy.

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Does that not bother you that a Frenchman helped to put you all together?

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Because there is no love lost between Germany and France. But I think there's also some stories about the

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Americans coming together. Yeah, well, the French helped us to beat the

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British. So there's been some interesting stuff there. But the idea is that a

20:37

German identity is a relatively new thing. And I wonder, and I don't want to get anybody in trouble.

20:44

But I sometimes wonder if that's not what led to the rise of the

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Nazis in World War II, was there wasn't an already long -term established national identity, so it could be defined by someone who had the power to speak and to tap into the horrific things that happened after World War I, where Germany had been treated so poorly.

21:11

Right, right. And if Germany hadn't been treated so poorly, there probably would not have been a world war. True, true.

21:17

So Germany was first united in 1871 after the

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German -French war, which we won. And yeah, and only a few decades later, we had

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World War II. World War I. Yeah, and then World War II. I'm skipping. But first World War I, then

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World War II. And after World War II, 1945, Germany was split up again.

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So the first united Germany didn't last too long. And I think one major issue was

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Germany being united as one state was extremely powerful. It was the most powerful state within Europe.

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And I think that somehow led to us thinking— And that was because not only of the natural resources, but there does seem to be a— you guys are weird.

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Nothing personal, but not only do you just slap words together to make words that are three paragraphs long, but there is always a—you know, a

22:16

German watch is a well -made watch. And the German rail system runs on time.

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And things that are designed— Okay, all right. Much emotion. Okay, all right, all right. All right, we'll see.

22:29

We'll see. You'll find out pretty quickly. But you see, I know stuff from World War II you guys don't know.

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Y 'all designed some of the most advanced weaponry that the world had ever seen. The 88 -millimeter anti -aircraft gun or anti -tank gun or whatever it was.

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It's just one of the most amazing pieces of artillery ever designed. It really hasn't been enclosed even to this day. And so there's this idea of Germans are really good at analysis, emotionless analysis of engineering and, you know, all the rest of this kind of stuff.

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We are the Borg. Yes, yes. You are the Borg. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're the Borg. You assimilate.

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That's the reason why you took our scientists after the Second World War. We did. Well, we took a few before the Second World War, actually.

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And that's the only reason we won it at the end. That and the fact that Hitler never listened to his generals.

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If he had listened to his generals, it would have been over with. We'd all be speaking German right now. The landing in Normandy.

23:34

Oh, yeah. There was a general, Rommel. Yeah, Rommel, too. Rommel said, that's where it's going to happen. Hitler said, no, it's going to happen there. Yeah, Rommel was right.

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And a few months later, Rommel was dead. Quote, unquote, suicide. Anyways, long stories there.

23:47

So back to Frankfurt. You guys are trying to...

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Is there any other church in Frankfurt that is very similar to you?

24:00

We know of no other Reformed church. Reformed?

24:06

Not even... Let's say Calvinistic. No. Not that we know of.

24:12

So Germany is... We are no longer a Christian nation. I already told that on Apologia Radio.

24:20

But a few years ago, two or three years ago, there was a survey. And for the first time ever, the majority of the population said, we don't identify as Christians anymore.

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And those who still do identify as Christians, most of them are not real Christians. They have been baptized as children.

24:38

And maybe on Christmas Eve, they go to the church. They are part... Almost all of them are part of one of the two big state churches,

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Roman Catholic or Lutheran state church. And there's only a very small portion of real

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Bible -believing Christians. I guess that's maybe about 2%, which you probably would call the evangelical

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Christians. And we would have even issues with many of those.

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There are some... Not all of them are really orthodox. So the... Now, and you guys add into this amazing mix, the state

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Lutheran church is... Completely apostate. Completely apostate.

25:19

And the state Catholic is in rebellion against Rome. Yes. Fundamentally.

25:25

Francis is not woke enough for them. That's... I mean, that's pretty...

25:33

Okay. Go back into the 1800s. And German scholarship was in the forefront of moving away from historic

25:43

Christian positions. There's no question about that. And it's not that there weren't believers.

25:48

Tischendorf, I think, was a believer. You read his stuff, and he really seems to have believed that Scripture was the

25:55

Word of God and things like that. But in general, Tubingen and places like that were extremely negative worldwide, and in fact, had a real negative impact in the

26:05

United States. Not just in Europe, but in the United States as well. Everywhere. So you were exporting disbelief at that time.

26:13

But now you're at a situation where even the Catholics amongst you are less...

26:20

look at the Pope as he's not woke enough for us. Now, I look at that situation, and I look at my own ancestral homeland,

26:30

Scotland. And they're trying to become as left -wing nutcase as they possibly can.

26:39

And there are hate crimes laws coming into expression there, I think April 1st, so just a matter of weeks, that I don't think would allow...

26:48

Now, didn't you travel to... Yeah, to Scotland. To Scotland. I did recently, too, yeah. Yeah, and do you think you'd be able to have the freedom?

26:58

I preached on the street there, and people were very friendly. No police was showing up when I preached at the

27:04

Christopher Street Day in Frankfurt. The police came and took me away. And we have those laws in Germany as well.

27:10

But you're not allowed to... It's a criminal offense if you try to talk with someone about homosexuality or transgenderism and tell them to repent and so on.

27:21

This is a criminal offense now. So when you go out there, do you have people trying to goad you into what they know is going to cause a problem?

27:31

Not yet. I don't think they are... They don't know that yet. Really? Yeah, you know, the church is really...

27:37

It's really not very important in Germany. So, yeah, because there are only so few

27:43

Bible -believing Christians, it's not like you have in the U .S., that you have really atheists who want to fight the church and destroy the church.

27:51

You don't really have that in Germany. Most are just indifferent. Well, they don't like the church, but they don't really make plans to destroy someone or so.

28:00

I think this will come one day, but right now, they just don't really care about you. Wow.

28:06

See, I would just think, especially with what happens on social media, there are already people trying to do that on social media, to get you canceled.

28:14

And I would assume, if you really start making an impact, that that's the only logical direction they have to go.

28:21

Well, actually, there's one church in Bremen that's in the north of Germany, and the pastor there, he reached a lot of people, and he said a few things about homosexuality and transgenderism, and he was actually...

28:39

He was targeted by the Antifa and all the leftists, and they came, and the stuff they did, it's really yucky.

28:46

I don't want to even talk about it. But, for example, they sat in the church and then got up and kissed each other and so on, and much, much worse stuff.

28:54

And he's actually before the courts now, so it can happen. It didn't happen to us so far.

29:01

We're thankful for that, but it can happen, yeah. But you live with the reality that it very well could after the next sermon.

29:09

Yes. It probably will one day. So here's the question. Here's something. When you are...

29:18

How would you describe your preaching? Do you do expositional preaching through books?

29:24

Do you do primarily topical? Do you mix the two together? We have both. You have both.

29:29

So you might do Philippians on a Sunday night, and you're doing topical stuff on a Sunday morning or vice versa or something like that.

29:37

When you are doing sermon preparation, and the text, it's right there, you're applying the same standards of hermeneutics that you normally would, and you know the only way to be honest with it is to say something that could get you arrested.

30:00

That's exactly what we do. It impacts. Yes, but you have to think about it. You can't just ignore it.

30:07

Yes. Just a year ago, I preached a sermon on the topic of homosexuality and transgenderism, and I knew that...

30:17

We talked about that during that time, right? I thought, well, who knows? Who will wake me up tomorrow morning?

30:24

Maybe the police will show up and get me, right? So we are aware that this can happen, and to be honest, what really helped us was

30:31

COVID because COVID taught us to be manly, to be bold, to not fear the state, but rather fear

30:40

God. So this really... Because we were really confronted with a state that wanted to destroy us, to shut down the church and so on, and so this is really where at least

30:50

I learned to be bold, to be brave, and I tried to carry that over and continue to be bold.

30:59

I know this is dangerous. I know something could happen, but this actually encourages me even more to take a clear stance for what is right.

31:08

Well, I know that I mentioned it a number of times. I know I mentioned it to Paula Gia. I mentioned it to the elders and people like that because we had that communication because we've been doing a church history class via Zoom for I don't know how long now.

31:23

We haven't done a class in a long time. We're going to have to go back to the beginning. Sorry. We've forgotten everything.

31:29

When was the Council on Isaiah? Oh, never mind. So literally, we have just recently gotten past Augustine, and we've been doing it for years, so it's not like we've been rushing through this, but I could tell during that time period we would ask for prayer for you guys and stuff like that, but the thing that just really hits me is how alone you seem to be amongst

31:57

German Christians. Why is there such an alliance or a treaty with the state when the state is so plainly opposed to everything that Christ said is good and true and honest and just?

32:18

How does that work? We are pretty similar to the Japanese, I guess.

32:24

That's how we do it. We just bow to everything, and we don't love freedom as much as you do.

32:31

Yeah, Germans always submitted to the state. That's something that's... Cultural. Yeah, that's cultural.

32:36

Absolutely. That's what you do. Is that where German strength comes from, is we're together? Deutschland uber alles?

32:42

No, no, no. No, that's not the together feeling. It's just sticking to the rules and being very accurate in everything.

32:52

But no questioning about where the rules are coming from? No. If there is an authority, you submit to it.

32:57

That's what you're supposed to do. I think that's a reason why the Germans were able to fight so well.

33:05

I don't want to go to the Eastern Front. Mm -mm. No, not mm -mm. That was a meat grinder. That was horrible.

33:12

But again, I think the main issue, at least among Christians, is just bad theology.

33:19

Everyone during COVID... Oh, yeah, Romans 13. It says you have to submit no matter what.

33:24

No, that's not what it says. But that's about theology. And a lot of us had not yet worked through that.

33:31

It didn't matter where. We were all forced to think things through. And I remember...

33:39

I don't know if I should say this live on the air, but I remember someone who said to me when

33:45

I preached a certain sermon on God's hope, my hope for the future, so on and so forth, some

33:52

German friend of mine, and they're both right here, some German friend of mine who will probably put his hand up, just sort of with an air of resignation said, now

34:04

I'm going to have to think this through. And I did. I did.

34:10

And I tried to feel bad about doing that, but I really couldn't make myself do that.

34:17

But yeah, we all had... COVID forced all of us to do that, but you guys were in a much higher pressure cooker, and you're in a different context.

34:26

We had lots of folks here in the United States that were standing with us. Okay, here in Phoenix, you could count on one hand the number of churches that stayed open.

34:37

Apologia, Rich's Church, Desert Hills stayed open. Did we know of any... What did

34:44

King's Church do? I don't remember. Just on one hand, the people that said, yeah, we just don't see this, and the

34:55

Lord's Supper needs to... No, we're not going to do this. I've said over and over again, we weren't claiming to be prophets or being able to see what was coming or something like that.

35:05

It was just, this is worship, and this is how we do worship, and our people expect this, and we just don't see the reason to tell our people that are dependent upon this, we're not going to do this anymore.

35:16

I just wanted to add that you were a great encouragement to us, really.

35:24

You guys said that to me. It was so helpful just to talk to you and hear your perspectives on it, that we are not crazy, and yeah, it was really encouraging.

35:32

When you said that, I'll be honest with you, aside from being deeply moved by it, it also just put a huge weight on me, the honesty, because you don't necessarily think about other people looking at what you all are doing.

35:46

But you all really were willing to say, hey, what do you think about this?

35:52

You were willing to reach out, and I suppose I can really understand it more now that you talk about how alone you guys are.

35:58

So if there was a sense in which we helped to diminish that loneliness and to stand with you, then that's the whole purpose of the body anyway, and it does not know borders.

36:12

So when the first lockdown came, and they told us to close the old church and so on, we knew right away that we couldn't do that.

36:19

We couldn't just surrender the worship of God to the state and stop worshiping God. So we knew that's wrong, but we didn't know exactly why, so we also had to work through Romans 13 and so on, right?

36:31

And no one was, well, of course, you then hear, okay, there's a church who is doing it, but those churches who stayed open were doing it secretly.

36:41

No one was openly saying it or openly opposing the state. And we thought we are really alone.

36:48

And then we read your statement that Apologia Church published, and we thought, that's exactly what we are saying.

36:55

So I'm not sure whether we would have had the strength to continue through three years of COVID if there hadn't been

37:02

Apologia Church and later on John MacArthur and his church. But in Germany, we were and still are really, really alone.

37:11

Really alone. And it's not just in that area. You have talked to me many times about how you've been attacked on numerous different fronts, on a wide variety of theological topics, and it just seems to me, thinking back over what the topics were, that they all had in common really a lack of confidence in the

37:40

Scripture, that the Scriptures speak clearly and they speak consistently, and therefore you can understand what they're saying, and you can come up with a systematic theology.

37:51

And that just makes me think back to German liberalism of the last century and go, I wonder if this isn't the long -term effect of that, that you have destroyed people's confidence in what

38:01

Scripture says. At the same time, they would use Scripture really to support their weird ideas. For example, we had a fight going on because there was a ban on singing.

38:11

You were not allowed to sing anymore, and we argued against that publicly. And the other side, they gave arguments from Scripture.

38:20

Really bad ones. That's the point. They're really bad ones. They're not trying to be consistent. They're twisting Scripture. It's just when it's useful, cite it.

38:28

But they know that that has weight for you, but not necessarily them when it's another topic.

38:35

The Scriptures, that's not their authority. They make up their mind on what authority whatsoever, and then they go to the

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Scriptures and see whether they can somehow cram that in there and say, well, see, it's biblical. So Berlin, all these different places, why don't we see lights popping up?

39:02

Why don't we see others going, hey, we're abandoning something here?

39:10

We actually have hope for Germany. We think it gets so bad that more and more people actually, we feel like the beginnings of a little revival.

39:21

So we are not a large church, so we have around 150 visitors. I mean, altogether, people on Sunday worshiping.

39:29

But we had Sundays now where 70 people, just new people would show up and come, and so we experience that, especially among younger men.

39:41

So they realize something is going on, and they realize there is evil, so maybe there is also good, and by what standard is it good?

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And they just realize that Christianity is maybe the truth, and so on, so on.

39:57

They really seek. So we experience that. But it's hard. When I've been over in Europe, when

40:04

I've been to Norway, Germany, a little time in Italy, it's hard when you have state churches that people have been raised in to make the clear distinctions.

40:19

Or are they able to, when they hear the Word of God being preached consistently, is that something you can just sort of trust the

40:26

Spirit of God to do? I would say it's difficult to talk to them because when you're on the street, when you're evangelizing, and you approach some of those, they're mostly elderly people.

40:38

The younger ones normally are not even part of any of those churches anymore. But you would say, well, we want to talk with you about Jesus.

40:46

And the normal response is, oh, I don't need that. I'm Lutheran. I'm Roman Catholic. I was baptized as a child.

40:52

And they believe that's it. So I'm a Christian, so I don't need to hear about Jesus. I need to hear about the

40:57

Gospel. And that's the problem. But among the young people, they have no church background whatsoever.

41:06

So it's like really beginning from zero. And so we think that the younger people are much more open now for Christianity.

41:16

And it may take the U .S. a lot longer to get there. You may actually have an advantage there.

41:24

Maybe. One thing I would like to add, you know, there are Bible -believing churches in Germany, but I think they got quite a few things wrong in their theology.

41:35

They are often very pietistic. They are dispensationalist, right? And I think all this works together somehow.

41:42

They have a wrong view of church -state relationships, a wrong view of the kingdom of Christ that is just in the church.

41:49

So they would be faithful within their church. But they wouldn't really go out.

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They wouldn't confront the culture. And when we do that, and we do it with a hopeful eschatology, and we proclaim that Christ is actually king over our chancellor and over the government.

42:06

In the whole world? In the whole world, exactly. They just conceive us as troublemakers.

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You're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to be silent, preach in your church, but don't do the rest of the stuff. You're just making trouble.

42:18

And what I believe is that many, especially younger men and women, they see that because we're on the

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Internet, we're on YouTube, so they see what we are doing, and many of them think, well, that's actually great.

42:30

There is a strong and belligerent Christendom, not this weak Christendom we know.

42:37

The Christendom that can actually go out and confront and fight. And I think many of them like that, but then they go to their pastor and tell him, why are you not doing that?

42:46

Why are you not fighting COVID, and so on and so forth? Then, of course, those pastors don't like us anymore.

42:53

We are troublemakers. You know, it's funny. You mentioned the young people. You're starting at ground zero.

43:00

I had a really interesting experience. Back in 2017, we did the tour, which

43:08

I think we actually hit Frankfurt at some point along the way. Yes, we met, yeah. Yeah, yeah. We did the tour, which that's when

43:15

I preached at the castle church. You guys helped me with that. For those who know, I mentioned that when

43:21

I gave those long citations from Luther, I said I asked some of my friends in Germany, I want to know how to make sure that all the pronunciations are right, and I think you read them.

43:31

So there we go. There's your connection there. But when we stopped, where's the

43:37

Gutenberg Museum at? It's in Münster. Is it in Münster? In Mainz.

43:43

Okay, in Mainz. Yes, yes. I didn't go in because we had a

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Muslim bus driver the whole time. And he could speak no English.

43:55

He spoke Arabic and German. And so I had already tried my best to communicate with him and had been able to do some.

44:08

About halfway through the trip, he had realized, wow, you've debated a lot of Muslims, and he had gone home to YouTube and realized, oh, this is really fascinating stuff.

44:17

And so I could tell he really liked me because he brought me a little thing of Cologne.

44:24

And in that culture, that's a sign of respect. And he had said that someday he was going to be able to tell his kids that he had driven

44:33

Dr. James White. So I knew there was an open door. And I've got a beautiful picture.

44:38

I wish I could show it to you. When we went to the Wartburg, not only did we take our group over to Fritz Erba's, where Fritz Erba died, which almost nobody ever does.

44:54

And just talk about, we're 100 meters from where Luther translated the

44:59

New Testament. And here's a man who's in prison for believing what he translated. And Luther knows he's there.

45:06

And I kept pushing that on my people, and it made them very uncomfortable because it is uncomfortable. But I'm like, look,

45:14

I will not take you through this thing and give you a caricature, a cartoon version of the

45:21

Reformation. You need to know what really happened. And the first night in Berlin, I told my whole group,

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I realized most of these men would never extend the right hand of fellowship to me. And afterwards, the people who were leading the tour came up to me and said, that was amazing.

45:39

I said, what's amazing? We have led some of the most popular, big -name church historians ever on this tour.

45:48

None of them ever said what you said. And I'm like, then how can you tell the truth?

45:53

But the point is, we went to the Gutenberg Museum. Everybody else goes in, and I go off looking for a bookstore because I want to give our bus driver a

46:02

Bible in German. You know how hard it was to find a Bible in German? No, the bookstores don't carry them.

46:10

I found one, and I don't even know if it was a decent translation, but it's all

46:15

I could find. And I have a picture of me and him standing outside the bus, and I'm giving him the

46:22

Bible, and he says, well, Dr. White, you know I believe the Koran. I said, yes, I know you believe the

46:27

Koran, but the Koran refers to the Allah al -Anjil, the people of the gospel.

46:33

You need to know what the people of the gospel believe. So I would just really encourage, I encouraged him to read the Gospel of Mark because a lot of Muslims have a, they have been told that John is unreliable.

46:47

So the natural thing for most Christians, go read John, read Mark. Mark is, the

46:53

Mark in Jesus is the real Jesus, of course, but he's so different than what the

46:58

Muslims have been told that as long as they can, if you can get them to read any of the gospel at all, that's what you need to do.

47:05

But the point was, here I am in Germany, trying to witness to a Muslim, and I'm struggling to find a

47:12

Bible in German to give to him. And you were talking about the young people. What's available in the store represents what the young people are looking for to buy and purchase and are interested in and things like that.

47:24

Obviously, it wasn't much as the Bible. Here you can go to Walmart. Oh, yeah. You can find nice King James Bibles, leather bound and so on.

47:32

That's true. That is still an issue here. But anyway, so, wow, okay.

47:40

Believe it or not, we have like 12 minutes left in the program today.

47:46

Rich, I have a feeling that even though I turned the AC way down, that the timer went off on it and it has popped it back up because I'm getting really warm.

47:59

Sir? Peter preaches very well and has been a great blessing to this person and used him to maintain and improve his

48:13

German skills. We probably know him, right? I don't know. What is his name? Elia?

48:21

I can't even pronounce it right. Greetings to Finland. That's wonderful to hear. Yes, yes, yes indeed.

48:30

No, you know, I know God has his people everywhere and God has his people throughout Germany and I don't want to paint a completely bleak picture, but so many of those sheep are wandering around without a shepherd.

48:45

We need to pray that God would raise those men up and give them a heart for those sheep wherever they might be.

48:55

I only got to go to Norway as far as the Scandinavian countries are concerned, but there's a true church there.

49:02

There's a true church in France. There's a true church in Germany, but it's one thing to have a church that's just subsisting versus a church that is seeking to fulfill the commands of Christ as to what they are to do in that country and to be a light, to be salt and light.

49:24

You can't, if you're totally silent and you're just in subjection to whatever the state's doing, you can't be salt and light.

49:30

Actually, that's what we still hear even now after COVID has ended for,

49:36

I don't know, how much? I think they're working on the next variant. I'm sure it's not completely over, but still today when we come to someplace in Germany and preach somewhere at a conference or so, people will come and say, well, exactly that.

49:50

You have been such a light for us during COVID. During COVID, many people would come to our church and they would say, well, we are like sheep without a shepherd, but then when churches were allowed to open again and their church opened again, they just went back.

50:07

So Germans are really, we're not like Americans. We're not really ready to move and to change.

50:12

We want to keep everything as it was. It was an amazing thing to be at Apologia of late 2020 and early 2021 because, now you're preaching at Apologia.

50:30

I hope you don't feel any pressure to preach as long as Jeff does.

50:36

Well, I feel some pressure to not preach as long. He is the one who really preaches.

50:42

I also preach. I preach 90 minutes. Oh, okay. All right. All right.

50:48

Well, then go ahead and preach as long as Jeff does, which is about an hour and 10 minutes. I do about an hour or five anymore, but Apologia has ruined me along those lines.

50:58

But anyways, as you will see on Sunday, there is a little pew.

51:05

It's not even attached to the wall, but it's at a 90 -degree angle and it's over on the side looking toward the pulpit.

51:12

And ever since we went there, that's where I sit. That's Dr. White's place to sit. And so Jeff always knows where to look when he takes shots at me about how old

51:22

I am and stuff like that. That's the apostolic chair. That's the apostolic chair. That's Moses' seat.

51:27

I knew Moses, according to Luke. But anyways, so at the end of the services, very often a little line will form people that want to ask questions, take a picture, sign a book, whatever.

51:44

And one of the things that started happening late 2020 into 2021, we'd have all these people that would come up to us and they had literally traveled from Oregon, Washington, California, because those are the main blue states close to us.

52:03

And they'd have tears in their eyes at the end of the service. And they would say, this is the first time

52:09

I've had the Lord's Supper in a year and a half. And it kept happening and I'm like, well, wait a minute.

52:15

Aren't all the churches opening it? But we're not doing it yet. And it's like, and so we literally, we had,

52:22

I don't know how many families move, sell their house and move to Arizona to be a part of Apologia at that point.

52:30

But you're saying Germans don't do that probably. We have a few, especially young men who moved to Frankfurt to be members of our church.

52:39

But yeah, most people won't do that. And what you said, we experienced as well. People coming during COVID, coming to us and starting to cry just because they saw our faces and we were smiling at them.

52:52

And we were giving them our hands. They hadn't experienced that for years.

52:59

And then we sang even though it was not allowed. So yeah, you could see how, they were sheep that were without a shepherd.

53:06

And now they've gone back to their shepherds. Yeah, that's a sad thing because it certainly, for what it did for us, and I've said this to our people a number of times, you know, when

53:18

California told churches not to sing, that next

53:23

Sunday, at the end of every service, we sing the doxology. We raised the roof because you face

53:32

California from where we are. We raised the roof of that place.

53:37

I had never heard us sing that fully. And you know, for a long time there, there was a special sense even in the

53:46

Lord's Supper because we knew that we might not be able to do this next week.

53:52

This is special. This is special. And that's sort of diminishing because it's becoming regular again, and the threat isn't there.

54:01

And so I really think for a lot of people, not only did we have to think our theology through, but there was also a recognition that, man, we take so much for granted.

54:10

Absolutely, yes. We take so much for granted. It's persecution when really the church grows.

54:16

Theologically, but also in her admiration of what we actually have. Well, I've got to ask a question.

54:23

I'm wearing a ring here that Peter gave me before the program began.

54:29

And when I started looking at it, I'm like, it's got real heft to it.

54:34

It's got some weight to it because it's made of bronze. And it has, it looks sort of like a star -like symbol on it.

54:44

Star of Bethlehem. Star of Bethlehem. So tell me the background here because I'm wearing it so everybody can see it.

54:53

I actually wanted to give it to you so that you find it out through the research. It's around about 1 ,000 years old.

55:03

It's a little bit before I was born. Luke would dispute that.

55:10

So it was, where is it found? Europe. Yes, I figured that.

55:16

I have a collection of old artifacts, so I collect artifacts and find artifacts a lot.

55:23

And I thought maybe you like rings, I know, so. It is possible that this belonged to a crusader.

55:29

We don't know that for sure, but they used to wear those rings. So they would, but they'd only be able to wear them once they had been to Bethlehem?

55:38

Yeah, and they would take it back. Then bring it back. There are different theories about it, so you can also find those rings when you do metal detecting and so on in some areas.

55:46

But this is very well preserved. Yeah, it is in really good shape.

55:52

I mean, that's its natural color now. Was it? Yeah, I think it looked more golden.

55:58

Right, right, right. Yeah, well, I'll tell you, it has got heft to it. That bronze,

56:05

I could see why, you know, they made helmets and stuff out of that until it met steel, and then not so much.

56:13

Yeah, it's funny. You can, we don't, the only thing you'd find in America that's a thousand years old is maybe an arrowhead.

56:23

Yeah, and then pottery and other stuff. Right, right, right. But there was actually civilization a thousand years ago.

56:31

We're only 200 some odd years old. We have cathedrals still standing. That's true, that's true.

56:36

I don't even know that. And that gives you a real testimony as to the quality of workmanship that went into it.

56:43

And, of course, they took a hundred years to build. Yeah, even longer. I mean, when you started the foundation, you knew you were never going to see what this thing looked like.

56:53

And as a testimony to the victory of Christ. Yes, yeah. I mean, you do have to recognize that. That's true, yeah.

56:59

So, getting ready to wrap up here. All right, we've talked about the church in Germany.

57:06

You've got the upcoming conference. You're trying to... Obviously, you want people to come and to be challenged and encouraged.

57:17

You know that people already sort of in ecclesiastical authority positions aren't going to like what

57:23

Jeff Durbin and Joe Boot are saying. Yeah. Okay, I get that. But you recognize that there are young men, especially who are tired of the, as we would say in America, milk toast, real plain

57:39

Jane, never rock the boat type of stuff. And we're not trying to pander to people who just want to make a stink.

57:48

You want to meet people and say, yeah, there is a message here that meets all of humanity and challenges all of humanity and it gives us...

58:05

For Germans, it gives us stability. But it's not the stability of just simply following the leadership.

58:11

It's stability that will be passed on from generation to generation that will actually make each generation fulfill

58:18

God's ordained purposes and plans and therefore experience true full life. That's what you want these people to hear.

58:26

So, we need to pray that lots of folks will find out about the conference, will come to conference, will listen, that the recordings afterwards will not be deleted by YouTube and things like that in the process.

58:38

But then just to pray for you all and your continued faithfulness and seeking to expand the witness of the church.

58:47

And maybe one special prayer request. So, in Germany, homeschooling is illegal, right?

58:52

I know. It's outlawed. I know. And we can't really give our children to the state anymore.

58:59

COVID proved that. So, we want to build a private

59:04

Christian school. We are allowed to do that. Our constitution allows that.

59:10

But it's difficult. And that's really important for us, for our children, because some are already pondering leaving

59:16

Germany to be able to homeschool. So, we need the school. Yeah. If you're watching the sources,

59:22

I think you're watching, you're going to be hearing a lot about homeschooling and homeschoolers and classical education.

59:31

I mean, my... Oh, goodness, we're out of time. We'll talk more about that. But pray for the

59:37

Evangelical Reformed Baptist Church in Frankfurt for Peter and Tobias and for all the people there.

59:46

And pray for them that God would multiply their witness and not only keep them safe, but also encourage them to know that they're not alone in any way, shape, or form.

59:58

And that even if there are difficult times yet in the future, that we are all one body and that we will be praying for them.

01:00:05

They'll be praying for us. And thank you for watching The Dividing Line today. We will be back.

01:00:11

Let's see. No, not this week. Next week, we'll be back, Lord willing. Got some things to share with you about the trips upcoming.