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The coming surveillance state, ongoing Covid crisis and a Christian response, the economy in collapse.
Hi everybody, this is Steve Matthews. Thanks for joining me for Radio Luke Solicit, episode 44. The title of this episode is Joe Biden's Inauguration. Yeah, we had a little bit of a big deal this past week with the inauguration of a new president, and we're going to talk about that in a minute.
But before I kind of dive into that, I almost feel like I have to apologize to you in advance here a bit. I don't feel like I'm as prepared for today's show as I'd like to be, and I almost thought about not doing it.
But then I thought to myself, yeah, you know, I missed last week, and I really hated to miss last week. But it's one of those things where, you know, it's like life, right? You know, life has a way of getting in the way.
And when you work a day job and you try to do some podcasting and try to do some writing and that kind of thing on the side, well, you know, sometimes stuff doesn't always get done. Sometimes life gets in the way.
So I did miss last week. And I wanted to get something out, and it actually kind of highlights a couple of things about blogging and podcasting and doing videos and this kind of thing. And maybe it's something I thought would be a little bit worth mentioning.
Number one is consistency is super important. You know, a lot of times we think that we have to, you know, we can just do this occasionally, you know, that it's something, you know, make a video every now and then when I feel like, but that's really not the way that you're ever going to develop any kind of success, you know, in pretty much in anything, right?
I mean, what do they say, practice makes perfect? Well, you know, when we're doing social media types of type of work, like I say, whether it's doing something like this, doing some podcasting, doing some live streaming, and hi to everybody on, on Twitter and Periscope and D live tonight, I'm not, I'm not streaming on Facebook and on YouTube, because there's some things I need to say here tonight that I probably would get would get zapped on on Facebook and on YouTube.
So I'm not going to, to live stream there tonight on those. And because I want to be able to speak freely about some things. So anyway, consistency is a big point whenever you're doing podcasting, or blogging or anything of that sort.
The other thing too, is don't let the the perfect be the enemy of the good. You know, I know, I'm probably not as prepared tonight as what I should be. But I want to go ahead and, and do a podcast anyway, I want to go ahead and do a live stream anyway.
You know, and just just get ideas out there. I've talked to some people, you know, I've tried to encourage them sometimes, you know, hey, you know, I think you ought to ought to be doing a podcast, or I think you ought to be doing a blog or something.
And they're like, Oh, well, you know, I've got to got to wait around till I get everything perfect. And in this type of thing, well, you don't have to get everything perfect. I mean, sometimes you just need to get your, get your ideas out there.
And I think that's pretty important. But sometimes we think we have to have this, this perfect, perfect standard before we can can even begin something. I mean, when I started blogging, it's hard to believe I, I started writing the Luke's Lucid blog back in, in March of 2009.
So almost 12 years, just a couple months shy of 12 years. At this point, I didn't know what I was doing. I mean, I just sat down and I started to write and nobody, nobody showed me how to set up a blog.
Nobody told me how to how to write a post or anything like that. I kind of had to figure it out. And, and I bring those two things up consistency and, and just getting started, you know, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good because I want to encourage people to do this.
I mean, this is something I think is super important. I think as Christians, I think that we need to be, be active in talking about some of the events that are going on because there's, there's a lot that's going on these days and a lot of it is not good, you know, and, and as Christians, you know, we have, we have the truth, you know, we, we're, we're all about declaring the truth.
We know the truth about how can a sinful man be justified before, before an all holy God. But even beyond that, we have truth about things such as politics. We, we have the truth of, of economics, you know, politics and economics are both taught in scripture.
You know, as, as Christians, we're not free to just pick and choose and decide on our own, you know, what kind of a, of a political or economic system we're going to, to defend or to, to advocate. You know, the Bible teaches us, I mean, the Bible teaches us that the government should be limited and that, that economics should, should be free.
We're, you know, the, the Bible teaches both political and economic freedom and, and John Robbins called that constitutional capitalism, which is a system that we had in the United States of America when our country was founded, because we had a substantially Christian population in the United States.
Now that has, has changed over the ensuing, you know, what are we going on, almost 250 years now. And, and because the beliefs of the people have changed, so too has our government, you know, so too has our economic system and they're becoming less free all the time.
But as, as Christians, you know, we are, we're advocates for liberty, you know, on the Liberty Bell, I think a quote, it was a Leviticus, I can't remember which chapter, but it said, you know, let liberty be proclaimed throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereunto.
That's a quote from, right out of Leviticus on, on the Liberty Bell. You know, people were very well aware at the foundation of our country, the intimate connection between faith in Jesus Christ and in liberty, political and economic liberty.
But that's something that we've forgotten. And I think it's something that as Christians, we need to learn for ourselves and we need to learn to teach others. And I think there's a, you know, this, this opportunity that we have to be bloggers, to be podcasters, to be, you know, YouTubers and live streamers and this kind of thing.
It's a wonderful and amazing opportunity. And I would just, if you ever thought about this, and I'm really speaking to my fellow believers here, you know, if you ever thought about doing this, just do it, just jump in with both feet and do it.
And don't let, you know, don't let yourself get intimidated. Don't think that you have to have everything perfect to just get started. Just get started. You'll learn, you know, as you go through things, you'll learn, you'll get better, you'll develop.
You know, we all do. So anyway, enough of that, enough of that spiel there. I'll get down off my soapbox and then I'm going to get back up on another soapbox here. Because I want to, the first thing I wanted to talk about, of course, is kind of what the, the title of this, this episode is Joe Biden's inauguration.
You know, we had this little inauguration this past Wednesday. And I have to tell you, I mean, it's not the inauguration that I wanted. You know, I did not want to see Joe Biden elected president. And I, I don't believe that he was elected president.
You know, I think that he was, was cheated in as president. You know, I believe that that, that was a stolen election. Now, not everybody believes that. And there are good people, people whose opinions I respect, I think are smart, who, who do not agree with that.
But in my own view, my own opinion, I think the evidence for that is overwhelming. And, you know, one of the things that sometimes that people, and I've seen Christians, you know, make the argument that there's a, as I think I mentioned before, there's a guy that I follow on YouTube who's a Christian.
And, you know, he believed right up until the end that, that somehow Donald Trump was going to be inaugurated as president, you know, and, and I thought it was, you know, from the time of, of the, the election back on November 3rd, or I guess it was the third, yeah, November 3rd.
You know, when, when Biden was declared the winner, I knew that it was going to be an uphill battle and a very low percentage chance that Donald Trump would prevail. You know, and he did not. I mean, it seems to me that the establishment, and I say this, not just the, not just the Democrats, but the establishment Republicans really, really, really wanted to get rid of him.
Now, you know, we can say, well, you know, Donald Trump wasn't a perfect guy or isn't a perfect guy. I mean, he's, you know, he, he has his flaws, but he got some big things right. You know, one of the big things, and in fact, I think this is one of the, maybe you could even say this is the overarching big thing that he got right is that he believed in and defended the Westphalian world order over against the new world order.
Now I haven't, I don't know if I have talked about the Westphalian world order in any of the, the podcasts, but it's the Westphalian world order, or maybe it's been a while anyway. The Westphalian world order is, is the, the geopolitical arrangement that came about following the 30 years war.
So what was the 30 years war? Well, the 30 years war was basically, it was a, it was the first pan-European war. And it, it started in, in 1618 and ran 30 years, oddly enough to 1648. And it was settled by the treaty of Westphalia.
And the, the Westphalian world order basically says, or the idea behind it is that national government is, is the highest level of government. You know, the nation state, you know, there aren't to be empires.
There aren't to be, you know, there's not to be a world government of some sort, you know, that there is supposed to be, you know, national governments and that one nation doesn't have a right to, to attack and another nation to, to take its territory, to interfere in its internal affairs.
You know, that it's basically mind your own business, MYOB, you know, applied to, to geopolitics. Now, a lot of people, when they hear that, they'd say, well, that's just common sense. But I mean, it took the Protestant reformation and a 30 year brutal war to settle the matter.
In the 30 year war, it was basically the Protestants versus the Roman Catholics and, and the Protestants won that fight. And all of us since that time, and I guess what, well, I mean, we're going on 400 years, right, of that.
For the past nearly 400 years, the geopolitical arrangement, assumptions, the international law that governs the relations between nations has really been geopolitical Protestantism. The New World Order, on the other hand, which is, you know, all of these, these globalist organizations, you know, the UN or, you know, the, the World Economic Forum, the Bilderbergers, you know, the, you know, the, the, the European Union, some of the NAFTA, or the, you know, the North American Trade Union that they've, they've put together, I can't think of what they, what they call the, the new one that was signed under President Trump.
But, but all of these things tend to a really New World Order. And of course, the ultimate New World Order organization, the ultimate organization driving to create a world government is, of course, the Roman Catholic Church.
But nobody ever talks about that. It's, it's amazing how blunt and how frank the, not only the popes, but, but other Roman Catholic officials have been for decades, and maybe even longer than that, calling for world government.
And yet everybody, it's very rare that people really actually seem to pick up on what they're saying. But this is something that Donald Trump got right. And you might remember, even back in, in the 2016, there was a little tiff between when, when, when Trump was running for president, I think it was in February, maybe March of 2016, where the pope had come over, Pope Francis had come over and visited Mexico.
And he gave a, he held a big mass, I think in, I think it was in Juarez, which is right across the border from El Paso, Texas. And, and on the flight back after he had held this, on the flight back to Rome, that it was there that the pope made some comment about, you know, that, you know, that anyone who builds walls and not bridges, you know, isn't a Christian.
That's not an exact quote, but that's, that's kind of a paraphrase of what he said. And of course, then Donald Trump shot back at the pope, which really amazed me. In fact, that was one of the things that, that when I first kind of started to get a little bit interested in, in Donald Trump as president or as a, as a presidential candidate, you know, that he would actually take on the pope because nobody, no, there, there's no other major American politician or even, you know, noteworthy candidate who's ever shot back at the pope.
You know, you know, you don't tug on Superman's cape, but, but, but Donald Trump did. And I was actually very impressed with that. But I mean, of course, Pope Francis and not just Pope Francis, but all of the pope before him, the entire magisterium of the Roman Catholic church, they are the ultimate globalists.
And they, they promote the new world order, which is globalism, which is basically world government. But Donald Trump was on the right side of that. And for, you know, I say he, he had a lot of flaws, but he was on the right side of that.
And this guy that we have in now, Joe Biden as president, he is fully on board with globalism. Of course, he's a Roman Catholic himself. And, you know, he is going to be a big promoter of globalism and the agenda of, you know, all of these globalists, including the agenda of, of Pope Francis.
If you actually read Joe Biden's campaign website, he openly quoted a papal encyclical, which is kind of an extraordinary thing. So, you know, no, I'm not a big fan of Joe Biden. And I think that there could be some very, he's going to do a lot of damage to the United States.
He's going to do serious damage to this country. And as Christians, of course, we can't lose our heads about this. And we have to be able to respond rationally in faith and with boldness. And I want to close a little bit in today's podcast on that.
So I'll kind of leave it at that and we'll come back and talk about this. But anyway, we had this big inauguration this past week, and it wasn't really the inauguration that I wanted to see. And there are a lot of things that bothered me about that.
One of the fact is that I don't believe that Joe Biden was legitimately elected as president. See, that's the kind of stuff I can't say on YouTube or on Facebook. So that's why I'm not live streaming on those today.
I'm going to sip a coffee here just a moment. But one thing I wanted to talk about, and this is in connection with the inauguration and some of the remarks that Joe Biden made during the inauguration, is there's an article that was, the title of it's called the New Domestic War on Terror is Coming.
No speculation is needed. Those who wield power are demanding it. The only question is, how much opposition will they encounter? Now, the article is by a gentleman by the name of Glenn Greenwald. Now, Glenn Greenwald is a, he's an independent journalist.
In fact, he founded a news organization called The Independent, from which he was actually recently kicked out of. So he co-founded it, and then he got the boot. Now, Glenn Greenwald is not a, he's not a conservative.
He's not, I don't believe he's a Christian. And so he's someone that probably you and I would have some political differences with. But I like his work. I think he's a gifted journalist. And I think he tells the truth.
He's somebody who's honest. And that's one of the things I really appreciate about the work that he does. So let's read a little bit about, let's read a little bit of his article here and see what he has to say.
I said, I'm going to put this in the show notes so you can check this article out for yourself. So here's, here we go. Writes Glenn Greenwald, the last two weeks have ushered in a wave of new domestic police powers and rhetoric in the name of fighting terrorism, that are carbon copies of many of the worst excesses of the first war on terror that began nearly 20 years ago.
This trend shows no sign of receding as we move farther from the January 6th Capitol riot. The opposite is true. It is intensifying. We have written as an orgy of censorship from Silicon Valley monopolies with calls for far more aggressive speech policing, a visibly militarized Washington DC featuring non-ironically named Green Zone, vows from the incoming president and his key allies for a new anti-domestic terrorism bill and frequent accusations of sedition, treason, and terrorism against members of Congress and citizens.
This is all driven by a radical expansion of the meaning of incitement to violence. It is accompanied by viral on social media pleas that one work with the FBI to turn in one's fellow citizens, see something, say something.
It demands for a new system of domestic surveillance. Underlying all this are immediate insinuations that anyone questioning any of this must, by virtue of these doubts, harbor sympathy with a terrorist and a neo-Nazi white supremacist ideology.
So that's Glenn Greenwald. And I think he makes some really good points there. You go back to that riot on Capitol Hill on January 6th. I remember I was sitting there watching that. I wasn't watching it, but I remember I got something on my Twitter feed, and it was talking about this, the breach of the Capitol building.
It showed some video, you know, people climbing a wall and one guy hanging off a balcony. I got it. It was in the Senate chamber, maybe it was. I don't know. It was just crazy stuff, and I saw that, and I was just appalled by it.
You know, as a Christian, I don't want to see, you know, that kind of political violence and anarchy going on, but I knew that that would be used as basically a cudgel, as a baseball bat to beat down anybody who, say, was a Trump supporter or disagreed with Joe Biden or believed in economic and political liberty or constitutional government and these types of things, that they were going to use that.
They were going to seize on it and really try to go after patriotic Americans. Sure enough, I mean, they haven't disappointed, not even one bit, and that's something I wish I was wrong about, but it's very obvious that that's what's going on.
In fact, that's one of the reasons that some people, you know, have raised questions about, you know, was that whole Capitol riot a setup? Now, I don't know the answer to that. I mean, I think it's possible maybe that something was going on there.
There's an old question. You know, when you're doing political analysis, when you're trying to look at a situation and maybe you don't have all the facts, you don't know everything that's gone on, one of the common questions that people will ask, sometimes they're couched in Latin terms, or say quibono, and quibono is simply Latin for who benefits.
You know, so when something happens, you know, you ask yourself, okay, so who's the beneficiary of this particular action? And maybe that person or organization or group of people, maybe they're the ones that actually had something to do with it.
And certainly this, that Capitol riot benefited the Democrats. Now, here's the thing. As somebody who believes in law and order, you know, and as a Christian, I certainly do, and I think most of you probably listening tonight would probably say the same thing.
You probably believe in law and order, and we should. We're called to do that. I mean, what's the Apostle Paul say? You know, he enjoins his readers to be subject to the governing authorities. You know, and that's what we should be.
Now, that doesn't mean we always agree and we always do what the government says. Now, that's, and we're going to talk a little bit about that later. But, you know, in general, I mean that, you know, Christians are to be subject to the governing authorities.
And certainly the kind of behavior that was going on January 6th by at least some Trump supporters was, you know, I mean, that was lawlessness. And those people who got into the Capitol and did violence, you know, and smashed things up and stole things.
I mean, there's one woman, I think she was some 22 year old, very young person. She got in there and I guess stole Nancy Pelosi's laptop. And I mean, there was some bad things that went on there, and those people deserve to be punished.
I have no problem saying that. You know, as a Christian, as somebody who believes in law and order, I have no problem with saying those people who, you know, breached the Capitol and engaged in some kind of, you know, violent behavior and trespassing, this type of thing, they should have been punished.
Now, the other thing, though, that's interesting about all that, if you look at some of those videos, I mean, there's one video of people walking through the rotunda of the Capitol, and they are staying in a, you know, between a sort of like a rope corridor that's in there.
I mean, those are people that apparently were let in. I mean, they weren't destroying anything. And I certainly don't think that those people, you know, who simply walked into the Capitol and didn't engage in some of the kinds of violent acts that some people were doing.
Yeah, I don't think that they should be punished. But I mean, if somebody was doing something you shouldn't have been doing, yeah, certainly, I have no problem with someone being prosecuted for that. You know, you think of that clown with the horns on and the animal skin over his head.
He called himself a shaman of some sort. I don't know. He's kind of a weird guy, you know, and he's going to probably do some jail time over that. And, you know, some of the stuff that he did, he probably deserves it.
I'm not going to argue that those people don't deserve it. But, you know, what's what's interesting is that whole incident at the Capitol. I mean, by the standards of the Democrats, you could say that that was a mostly peaceful protest.
Yeah, I don't know exactly how many people were at the Trump rally on January the 6th. I've heard 200 ,000. I've heard various figures, but it was a pretty good sized crowd. And I don't think anywhere near that number went into the Capitol.
Or of those people that went into the Capitol, I think the number of people that really engaged in violent behavior was actually pretty low. So that was a mostly peaceful protest, quite literally mostly peaceful, you know.
And so, you know, it's very hypocritical the Democrats, I mean, who did nothing. I mean, all summer long, you know, when this country was burning to the ground from coast to coast, you know, for the better part of a year, the Democrats never once denounced any of that stuff.
And in fact, I think the last time I heard him say anything about that, I think Jerry Nadler, he's one of the leading Democrats in the House of Representatives, Jerry Nadler made some comment that it was a myth.
He said it was a myth, you know, about all the rioting that was going, excuse me, going on in, I think he was referring to some of the stuff going on in Portland, Oregon, for example, you know, Antifa and how they were tearing stuff up and burning things down every night.
He said it was a myth. He certainly wasn't in any hurry to condemn any of that stuff. But boy, I tell you, when you had a few Trump supporters accused of rioting on January 6th, they want to basically bring the House down on all political opposition, on just, you know, ordinary Republicans or conservatives or what have you.
And they're going to try to use the law, apparently the Democrats are, to really go after those people who've committed the crime of disagreeing with them. And I think that is a very dangerous situation.
It's kind of interesting in that article that Glenn Greenwald wrote, he had a couple of videos in there. And one of them was a video, it was about a minute long of a guy named Jeremy Bash. And he gets on, he's on a program, I guess it was on MSNBC.
And what he said is that, quote, we reset our entire intelligence approach, you know, that we have to reset it. This Jeremy Bash was demanding that we reset our entire intelligence approach, including looking at greater surveillance of them.
You know, I guess he's and he's talking about, oh, I don't know, maybe people he politically disagrees with. And he continues, he says, quote, the FBI is going to have to run confidential sources, end quote.
And, you know, it's, it's very disturbing. And one of the things that I'm not going to play the video for you, but you may want to check it out. If you look at the article, one of the things that he talks about, in his in his comments, he talks about, he says, okay, you know, that the law enforcement is going after and punishing people who, you know, who have done things after the fact, he says, oh, but that's not good enough.
And again, I'm paraphrasing here, what we need to do is we need to go after people before they do that, you know, we have to have all this secret surveillance. Well, that, you know, his comments, Jeremy Bash's comments really highlight the difference between two different types of approach to law enforcement.
There's two basic ways that you can two basic theories of law enforcement. One of them is crime prevention, and one in the other is crime punishment. Now the Christian, the biblical approach to criminal justice is crime punishment.
So what you do is, you know, when when a crime has been committed, you know, you go find out who the suspects are, you know, you put those people on trial. And if if that person is found, found guilty at that person at that time that that individual is punished.
But crime prevention, what that does is it attempts to put in regulations, surveillance, for instance, as this Jeremy Bash wants, ahead of time, and in order to prevent some crime in the future. In other words, you're surveilled, you're regulated, that is to say you are punished.
Everyone is punished in advance, in order to attempt to prevent some wrongdoing in the future. Now the the problem with that should be pretty obvious. You're punishing the innocent, along with the guilty.
Now that that is not biblical justice. And and yet, that is a very common way of thinking. You know, there was that there was a movie, I think, I guess it was a book first, it was called Minority Report.
And it was about this, you know, some kind of future dystopia. And, you know, they had a department of pre-crime and, and they had these these sort of these psychic people who could, you know, claim to be able to to look into the future, and they could tell, you know, who is going to commit a crime.
And so they would go and arrest this person before, you know, it could be a year, it could be maybe a decade or something, or decades before this person was going to commit a crime in the future. Well, they go arrest that person now, you know, even though that person had just been going about his life normally.
If these people who were these these psychics, these these visionaries, deemed that you were someone who's going to commit a crime, you could be arrested. Even though there had been no criminal activity on your part whatsoever.
And now we're actually seeing this stuff really more and more in in real life. There's another video on there, and this is within Glenn Greenwald's article. And it's a video on CNN, and it features a gentleman by the name of Alex Deimos.
Apparently he was a former Facebook official. And some of the things that he says are also very disturbing. And let me read a little bit of Glenn Greenwald's commentary to you. The second video features the amazing declaration from a former Facebook security official, Alex Deimos, talking to the very concerned CNN host, Brian Stelter, about the need for social media companies to use the same tactics against US citizens that they use to remove ISIS from the internet, in collaboration with law enforcement.
And that those tactics should be directly aimed at what he calls extremist conservative influencers. So of course part of the problem here is, what's an extremist conservative influencer? Well I saw another video, and I think it may have been on CNN, where they're interviewing some guy.
And I remember at the bottom of the screen, I think they call it the chyron, you know the kind of the banner at the bottom of the screen. And it said something there about extremists who question the election results.
So for instance, as I said earlier in this podcast, I said I don't think that we had a legitimate election. I very much do question the election results. So I guess in the minds of some people, that would make me an extremist.
And there are millions upon millions upon millions of people out there who've looked at the presidential election and said, you know there are some problems there. You know I question the legitimacy of the result.
And so that makes you an extremist. You know and I guess you're supposed to be unpersoned, and you're supposed to have the same kind of tactics applied to you. You get kicked off the internet as they used to kick off ISIS.
You know ISIS, you know these are the guys that are running around setting people on fire and beheading them. And somehow a political opinion that maybe doesn't isn't popular with say Alex Deimos and maybe other people of his ilk, that people you know have to be driven off the internet because of that.
That is really disturbing. Let me continue here. I'm going to continue to read Glenn Greenwald. And he says, he's quoting Alex Deimos here, quote, press freedoms are being abused by these actors, end quote.
So again you know if there's a conservative influencer out there on the internet talking about these things that they're abusing their press freedom. Well how's that? You know that you know it's perfectly legitimate to question what goes on.
You know this whole country, I mean the whole idea of free speech is that you have the ability to question the official explanations. Glenn Greenwald continues, Deimos noted how generous he and his comrades have been up until now.
Quote, we have given a lot of leeway both in traditional media and in social media to people with a very broad range of views, end quote, but no more. Now is the time to quote, get us all back in the same consensual reality, end quote.
Well I mean what if you don't consent to be part of his consensual reality? Well it's not consensual then is it? You know I think as the Westminster Confession talks about that God himself is Lord of the conscience.
You know I mean when Martin Luther was there before the Diet of Worms, you know they told him recant, recant. And you know Luther gave that very dramatic speech of his and he talked about you know that it's not safe to go against conscience, that God is Lord of the conscience.
And he said you know as long as he's convicted by scriptures you know that he cannot, you know that he will not recant. You know I can do no other, here I stand. Great stuff you know and that was a very Christian statement that Martin Luther gave.
But what this guy, this Alex Deimos wants is he wants dogma. You know he wants there to be certain truths that to which you must consent and if you don't consent to those at the very least you're going to get unpersoned from the internet.
And one supposes that there might be worse things to follow. You know he doesn't say what that is but you know I doubt that these authoritarian, these tyrannical types like Alex Deimos would simply be satisfied with just you know booting people off the internet that they disagree with.
And Glenn Greenwald continues here in the article. He says this, he writes, calls for a war on terror sequel, a domestic version complete with surveillance and censorship, are not confined to ratings deprive cable hosts and ghouls from the security state.
The Wall Street Journal reports that quote, Mr. Biden has said he plans to make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism and he has been urged to create a White House post overseeing the fight against ideologically inspired violent extremists and increasing funding to combat them end quote.
So you know I guess that they're going to have this domestic terrorism bill and I don't know I guess if you say you know I disagree with Joe Biden with his Green New Deal or some other aspect of his presidency.
I don't know are you going to get thrown in jail? Are you going to be silenced? I mean it certainly seems that's that's headed and that is very very disturbing. So anyway there's more to the article. It's a long article.
It's an excellent article and I would highly recommend that you read it because I think that it really lays out probably as well as any article that I've seen some of the serious restrictions on basic civil liberties.
These are constitutionally guaranteed freedoms that as Americans you know we almost tend to say well you know these things are taken for granted but this is all changing. You know this is a we we are in we are in in new territory here and and it's it's not a good place to be.
Now another thing I wanted to talk about here today were the the COVID lockdowns. I mean this is something I haven't probably talked about as much recently as I should have. One of the things that got me thinking about that was a friend who sent me a recent sermon.
In fact I think it was a sermon from just last week by John MacArthur that he preached at at Grace Community Church. Now you know I have been very very much impressed with the way John MacArthur and his church have handled the whole COVID situation.
Now I've had my disagreements with John MacArthur but when it comes to dealing with with the COVID lockdowns I think he's done a wonderful job and I think he's really stood his ground. I mean the they told him you know last year that the church wasn't allowed to meet and they went ahead and they met anyway and not only did they not merely just meet but they also did not social distance.
They didn't have mask requirements and and he was doing this in in one of the most restrictive environments in the country when it comes to to COVID tyranny. California itself as a state has been really bad and and I don't know I don't know for sure that that the church is in that Grace Community Church I don't know if they're in the the Los Angeles city limits or not but they're in the Los Angeles area and of course the mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti has just been absolutely brutal.
I mean he's been merciless in in his lockdowns. You know here in Ohio where I am I mean we have lockdowns. I have been a big critic of our governor here Mike DeWine. I think that he has really bought into a lot of this nonsense but compared to what they have out in California we've actually gotten off pretty light by comparison.
You know the COVID lockdowns I mean my view in those things that it's tyranny plain and simple and it what's disturbing to me about them is that not only are the governors acting in a a high really pretty high-handed fashion but they're getting away with it.
You know I mean here and there there's there's a little political opposition you know there there are a few people complaints here and there but nothing really very organized and and most people seem to have have bought into this stuff.
You know bought into the the lockdowns, bought into the curfews, bought into the mask requirements with very little pushback. Here in Ohio I mean there was a move they were going to impeach the governor well that that went nowhere.
There was a I think a more organized move to try to limit the governor's ability to take executive action. Nothing has come of that. I mean our state legislature is is basically non-existent. We have we have a governor we have a pharaoh is what we have.
You know I actually voted for Mike DeWine and I didn't know that I was electing a pharaoh but but that's what we have and in my opinion if there's ever going to if there's going to be any effective pushback on the COVID tyranny it's going to have to come from Christians.
Christians are going to have to take the lead but this and this is another thing that's disappointed me and frustrated me about the whole COVID situation is that most churches I'm talking here about even bible-believing churches maybe especially bible-believing churches have gone along with all the COVID orders.
Now it's very common when you hear people you know you may ask them okay well why are you doing this and a lot of times you know ministers or elders or you know what have you I mean they they will cite Romans 13 you know and there's that that passage I think it's it's Romans 13 one where Paul writes let every soul be subject to the governing authorities.
I quoted that earlier in the podcast today. Well okay I mean that's true but let me ask you this is that an absolute? Do we always have to obey everything that Caesar says? And that's a serious question and I would would argue that if you you do good exegesis if you really interpret the bible correctly you realize that there are some limits on that statement that what Paul said because I mean if we do I mean if we're obligated to do whatever the government tells us to do I mean we could be implicated in all kinds of heinous crimes.
I mean governments throughout history have ordered all kinds of immoral vile things and if if a governor tells you to do do something if a government official a magistrate you know if Caesar tells you to do something it's immoral are you required to do it just because Paul said let every soul be subject to the governing authorities?
I don't think so and and I you know there's there's a lot of evidence in the bible to say that there are some things that as Christians we're not only do are we not only is it not moral for us to go along with certain things that the government tells us but we have a moral obligation to oppose it.
You know think about I'll just cite quickly for you a few examples that come to mind and there may be others but these are a few I think that are very obvious and pretty easy to understand. You know you read there in Exodus chapter one you know Pharaoh ordered the the midwives the Hebrew midwives to kill all the first born male children and these midwives refused to do that and they were actually given their own households they they were praised for their refusal to obey Pharaoh.
You know we read in in Hebrews chapter 11 this is the the chapter on faith Moses' parents are commended because you know they they preserve Moses alive and it says they were not afraid of the king's command.
So even Moses' parents you know Moses survived because their parents engaged in an act of civil disobedience they wouldn't go along with Pharaoh and and they would not would not have their son killed.
I mean what Pharaoh wanted to do was murder their son and they wouldn't go along with it and in their praise this is an act of faith or you know let's think of the the young Hebrew men the Shadrach Meshach and Abednego and and you know there was that order that went out by Nebuchadnezzar and he said you know when you hear the sound of the music and you know everybody has to fall down and worship the skull and the image that I've set up and if if you don't do it well really bad stuff's going to happen to you you know you're going to get tossed in a fiery furnace and you know of course these guys didn't do that and they got brought in front of Nebuchadnezzar and it was interesting Nebuchadnezzar kind of gave him a second chance I guess maybe part of him really didn't want to carry it out and he says you know if you're willing to do it now you know okay fine you know I'll I'll let it slide and of course they told him they said we're not going to do that we're not going to do that and then it talks about how enraged Nebuchadnezzar you know became and he tossed him in a fiery furnace and it was heated seven times the the uh the level of uh of what it ordinarily was and even killed the soldiers that took the the young men up to I guess to toss them in the furnace and of course famously God delivered them.
But you know the the thing with the Shadrach Meshach and Abednego is they they said even if God doesn't deliver us we're still not going to bow down your golden image because what was being asked was immoral.
You know he was uh Nebuchadnezzar was demanding that they they practice idolatry and he wouldn't do it. They were you know he demanded they violate the 10 commandments. They said we're not going to do it or you think of you know the uh when Peter and John got dragged in front of the Sanhedrin the second time and they told him you know did we not strictly tell you not to preach in in this man's uh name you're talking about Jesus uh anymore.
And of course Peter answered and he said well you know um you know we must obey God rather than men. So I mean there there are four examples right there of civil disobedience in scripture now you know if if Paul's command in Romans 13 one let every soul be subject to the governing authorities well then all of those people sinned you know the Hebrew midwives should have killed the male children.
Moses parents should have had Moses killed Shadrach Meshach and Abednego well they should have bowed down to the golden image and by all means you know Peter and John they should have said well yeah you know you guys are right you told us not to do this and uh we're not going to preach anymore we're not going to teach anymore in the name of Jesus we're going to go back to our nets and fishes and and you know try to try to just put this whole thing behind us.
We're going to we're going to recant you know it's it's kind of like what uh what they were you know the uh you know the Roman Catholic officials were telling Martin Luther you know recant recant rewoco you know there's I think of that scene in uh there was a movie uh the movie Luther the the newer version uh I think was made well maybe in 2003 or so.
And uh when there's that scene where Martin Luther was going to go in and talk to Cardinal uh Cajetan and the uh I guess his the Cardinal's assistant or somebody you know he and Luther were talking outside before he went into the Cardinal's chamber and and this guy told him he says when you go in you don't argue you say one word rewoco I recant and you're not supposed to argue you know you don't you with the Cardinal you you recant you say um you know I I disavow all these things and you move on.
Well Luther defied you know the Roman Catholic Church and thank God that he did um you know in the Roman Catholic Church was also the in in a lot of ways the civil authority as well and so you might even say what uh what Luther did was maybe you could construe it in some ways an act of civil disobedience.
Uh you know he wouldn't uh wouldn't go along with the Pope and you know that that was a very uh an extraordinary thing that he did. So yeah I I think that you know you can certainly find in in scripture lots and lots of uh at least four very good examples of people who did not go along with what the uh the civil authorities said what the civil magistrate was telling them to do and you know so you know of course the the challenge that that comes is you know we know that this took place so you know the the the challenge is you know how does this apply to to our current situation.
Well you know we know that from a constitutional standpoint that governors do not have a right to tell people you can't assemble for church. You know there's you know you look at the and this goes back to the first amendment of the constitution it says you know the congress shall pass no law.
Now you might say well it says congress shall pass no law. It doesn't say anything about a state governor saying not being able to pass law whether it's something that came along and it's related it's in the 14th amendment of the constitution it's called the incorporation doctrine and all of those those amendments the bill of rights those are also applied to the states.
So the the state governors do not have a right to say you cannot meet on a sunday morning you can't meet on the lord's day. But this is what the and i think it was i think it was the governor that was saying this i don't know that it was the city um i'm a little bit unclear on that but they were told uh very early on this whole covet thing as grace community church you can't even meet i mean forget about social distancing the mass you can't even meet at all is what they were told um and uh and they said we're not going to obey that now i think initially i think grace community church did go along with it and then at some point last summer they finally said okay enough is enough and and this is the lord's day and we are called to meet on the lord's day and we're going to do that.
And and i have so much admiration for the stance uh that that john macarthur has taken and i just wish i'd see more of that out of uh out of more of my fellow christians. And i just i don't see it right now you know but you know as christians you know we need to keep praying about this we need to keep speaking out about this.
You know we have solid ground to push back on all of this stuff. You know this idea somehow that you have to wear a mask when you sing i guess you know what if you if you uh um if you sing amazing grace without a mask on you're going to kill grandma and and so you know we we have to go along with these mask requirements.
Well where does where does it say anywhere in scripture that caesar has any business regulating how the church worships now you know that i i have a real problem with that and and with with the whole with with with all of the covid restrictions.
I mean these things are destroying our economy. They're destroying people's lives. You know it's interesting you know some people talk about oh we're going to save all these lives by having all these covid restrictions.
But what they don't ever talk about is all the lives are being destroyed because of the covid restrictions. I mean they're destroying people's businesses. People's health is suffering physical health people's mental health is suffering because of all the the isolation in that that's going on.
You know these these governors are destroying our country. They are destroying our liberties. They are destroying our economy. And and this stuff needs to stop. I mean when this stuff was first put on and this was back in the spring oh it's 15 days to flatten the curve.
Well here we are almost a year later. Are we anywhere closer to having these covered restrictions removed. Now you can answer that question as well as i can. No we're not. And in fact it seems like the uh the current administration wants to even lock down harder.
You know do more of what doesn't work and even more to the point not only do they want to do more of what doesn't work they want to do more of what is immoral. Um you know there is no biblical there is no medical precedent for locking down and quarantining healthy people.
You don't quarantine healthy people. And you can see this i mean this has never been the practice in medicine to do this. And you can trace this idea right. All the way back to scripture. Um you know in in the old testament there's and it's in the book of leviticus i don't have the chapter.
Maybe it's a chapter 13 or 15 something like this. But anyway it talks in there about the uh the laws about leprosy. You know and if someone um believes that he he may have leprosy he has a responsibility to go to the priest and he's examined by the priest.
And and there's a lot of detail. It's a very detailed process that someone goes through to be examined to actually determine okay does he have leprosy. And it's only after he has been a priest has determined he has leprosy that he is quarantining.
He's put outside the camp. You know he's supposed to go around say unclean unclean you know this type of thing but it's only after a a detailed and formal process um that he is is quarantined. I mean essentially that's what that was.
You put outside the camp you're being quarantined now. And of course people could be restored too. I mean if if someone's leprosy went away they had to come and show themselves or priest there was a whole set of protocol that that uh that they had to go through uh and and the priest had to pronounce okay you know that that you've been you're clean of your leprosy and you can come back and join the uh join the community.
So i mean from from what we learned from the bible we learn we learn two things. You know we learn first of all that um you know you you don't quarantine healthy people. You know that's that's the big takeaway there maybe i should just say that there's there's one big takeaway there you know we we learn that you don't quarantine healthy people.
And there maybe the second thing i guess this is what i was thinking of uh the second thing is there's biblical justification for quarantines. So i mean if somebody actually is say exhibiting symptoms of of covid somebody's sick.
Well i mean i i think even just being basic politeness you know you shouldn't be out. You know if you know you've got some kind of sickness you shouldn't be going uh out and spreading it around. I mean think about you know remember way way back it's hard to believe this is almost seems like a mythical time before you ever heard the word covid.
I mean if you had a cold or if you had a fever or you had you know the the bug or some sort and you were sick. Yeah you know you try to avoid going to work or if you did have to go to work you know you'd let people say hey oh i'm not going to shake hands with you like you know i've got the got got a cold or something like that i don't want to spread it around.
So i mean you know just basic politeness. You don't want to go and flick that on other people. And if you've got something that's a serious disease um yeah i mean i i think that you can have you know there there are uh legitimate grounds where you can quarantine people.
But these are sick people that you quarantine you don't quarantine healthy people. You know there's no example in scriptures of the priests going around locking down israel and saying we're doing this to prevent the spread of leprosy.
Well i mean if if they did that i mean they could have locked israel down forever because there was always going to be leprosy. You know leprosy you will always have with you. I guess you want to paraphrase uh uh paraphrase something that uh that jesus said and you know the the coronavirus you will always have with you.
Uh you know and if if we're going to use the uh the relative prevalence of of coronavirus of this covid i don't know if we will ever get out of lockdowns i don't know if we will ever get rid of masks i don't know if we'll ever get rid of anti-social distancing.
This stuff needs to end it needed it never should have started. It was always a bad idea. And the people that implemented this thing should have known before they even did this that this was a bad idea and yet they've not only did they implement it but they've persisted in it for almost a year.
This stuff needs to stop and that's uh about all i'm going to say about covid here for the moment. Uh you know then we have the economy and uh it's interesting i mean the economy is in serious trouble.
I mean we've got massive unemployment uh we've got massive price inflation. And you know joe biden he gets in the office and one of the first things he said he wants to he's proposed a 1 .9 trillion dollar stimulus package.
Well let me ask you this where does that 1 .9 trillion dollars come from. Does the government have a piggy bank that they go in and you know take a hammer to and you know smash the thing and and take out the 1 .9 trillion.
Well of course not. That money doesn't even exist for that money for the government to be able to hand out 1 .9 trillion dollars. They're going to have to create it. The federal reserve specific is going to have to create that out of thin air.
That's fraud. That's counterfeiting. I mean our entire financial system is based on fraud uh it's based on the fraud of the central bank issued debt-based dollar. And the dollar is designed basically uh basically to uh function as a as a wealth transfer mechanism to transfer money from the the poor and the middle class.
And uh and uh send it right up to the very top of the pyramid uh the socio-economic pyramid. And it's been doing a fabulous job the fed has of of of enriching the the already rich and and impoverishing everybody else for over 100 years now it i mean the federal reserve is an unconstitutional institution.
You know the uh you know gold and silver only are supposed to be legal tender but you know we've we've allowed the this uh this monstrous organization to uh to take root here uh on our shores and i mean it is sucking the life out of this country.
You know ron paul had it right. He wrote that book i think this was back in 2012 or so when he was running for president. Call it end the fed absolutely end the fed that needs to be shut down you know the ground needs to be salted uh it is it is destroying this country.
And the uh this the stimulus package just 1 .9 stimulus is not going to help anyone with this i mean it might make some people a little bit wealthier. It might help a little bit in the short run but it's destroying the country in the long run.
You know that when they talk about you know these injections of money uh by the federal reserve one of the uh the most common uh metaphors that people will use is they they're comparing it to say a uh a drug addict or an alcoholic you know who you know has to take another uh hit from the bottle or take another uh shot of uh heroin or or whatever you know you know a drug addict they have to keep taking drugs in in bigger and bigger amounts or or drinking more uh in in bigger and bigger amounts in order to get the same effect and eventually you know it kills the person who's doing that stuff.
And in like fashion printing money destroys nations. It destroys the financial system. It destroys nations. And this is going to destroy the united states of america. And i i don't know when that's going to happen.
There are some people some very smart people some very good people that i listen to financially um who think that this may not be too far off who think we're going to have a big uh we may have a big meltdown later this year now.
That doesn't necessarily mean that's going to be the end of things uh but printing money is never the answer. I mean the most the printing money can do. It's like taking another hit from the bottle or taking a another uh another hit of drugs and yeah you you feel better temporarily it can do that but in the long run that stuff's going to kill the drug addict.
That's just going to kill the alcoholic. And in like fashion money printing is going to kill our country. This stuff needs to stop but i don't think it's going to stop until something blows up. There's simply just no political will.
The republicans don't have the will and the democrats don't have the will. You know there are too many vested interests uh who get too much out of continuing the system as it is but the system can't indefinitely continue.
It's going to come to an end. It's just a matter of when it's not a matter of if so you know as christians what are we to say to all this. I mean there's just you know i look around and you know i'd love to be able to say oh you know there's good news here good news there.
Well i'll tell you what right now there's not a lot of good news. You know our economy is a mess. Our state of our civil rights is a mess uh we are looking at uh turning more and more into a surveillance state.
There are some really disturbing things going on you know and i haven't even really talked about the moral climate yet. Have i you know i haven't talked about all the uh the nonsense that's going on with critical race theory with uh transgenderism um all that stuff.
I'll leave that off for today we've i think we've talked about enough uh enough depressing stuff for one day. Sometimes it can you know i mean following the news i mean it can be very difficult and i don't want to sound like uh like a very negative person but i mean we have to be honest with ourselves too we can't sit here and just uh pretend that everything is is wonderful because it's not wonderful.
There are some very serious problems. Um you know i live in the united states but i mean even if you don't live in the united states i mean if you live anywhere particularly in the west we have major problems.
Our civilization is in collapse. I mean this is something that uh gordon clark talked about this way back in uh in 1952 in in his uh his book uh christian view of men and things and john robbins more recently echoed some of his comments as well.
We are experiencing you and i we're going through a civilizational collapse um you know much like what happened uh during the uh um you know the fifth century uh of the realm of uh fifth century a .d and to the roman empire i mean we are going through a civilizational collapse and it seems like more and more we're actually reverting to a sort of neo uh neo feudalism.
You know where a few people you know bill gates or uh george soros or some of these other people you know they have everything you know these oligarchs they own everything and everybody else owns nothing.
Anyone has to scratch out an existence that seems to be where we're headed right now unless something happens to really change things you know. So so how is christians how do we face this. You know how do we process all of this negative news.
How do we get through the um you know it may be you know is is it foolish to have hope. Well well no uh it's it's not foolish but you know this is this is where we really have to turn to the scriptures.
And i i think sometimes you know that god can have a lot of purposes for bringing things about uh as they are. And and i think one of the reasons that he brings about difficulties um sort of the difficulties of the sort we're experiencing is it drives his people to him.
We have to seek him. You know it's you know when times are good it's it can be very easy to forget god it can be very easy to um to maybe think we can rely on our own resources our own wisdom our own strength our own wealth these kinds of things.
But when when times are tough uh we there comes a point where we have to realize i can't do this. You know i'm not smart enough i'm not rich enough i i have no power or very little power. And you know how am i going to be able to stand against these tremendous forces in the world.
Well we do that by seeking the lord's face. Yeah and i was thinking about i went back when i was preparing for this and i i read psalm 46. And you know psalm 46 starts off. It says god is a refuge and strength a very present help in trouble.
Yeah that's a wonderful verse. Now you think about hebrews. This is hebrews 13 5 and 6 it's quoting here. It says i never leave you. I will never leave you nor forsake you. So we may boldly say the lord is my helper i will not fear.
What can man do to me. Now i mean those there's almost you know when we say what can man do to me almost sounds you know if if it weren't for the exceeding great power the omnipotent power the lord jesus christ god our father the holy spirit.
If it weren't for that you know that would be a very flip very arrogant statement. But it's not our own strength that we run on. It's it's this it's it's the lord strength that we run on it's on that that we stand.
And in those in those verses and in many others you know the the old testament often talks about god being a strength and a shield uh to his people. And he is now you know i don't know exactly how things are going to go for the rest of this year.
You know i thought it was interesting listening to that john macarthur sermon today he was talking about you know how over the past 10 months during the pandemic that they've actually uh collected more money during that 10 month period than they had in any other period uh similar period.
He's talked about how the church has grown. I think they talked about uh whether they people were calling themselves grace refugees. You know because you know they they were leaving the other churches.
Maybe the churches had been shut down churches weren't having services and they were coming to grace community church. I mean their membership has grown because of the stance that they've taken now it doesn't always work out.
And when we take a stance for righteousness sometimes um you know sometimes things get tougher. That can happen too. I mean you know people have been thrown in jail uh people have been martyred for taking a stand for jesus christ.
So you know we can't always say that. Well because you know we took us took the right stand on something that oh oh you know that that i had this this just uh uh that i prospered even more now it you know the lord deals with all of us differently and all of our circumstances are different and and so we we can't necessarily say that we're always going to get um these necessarily wonderful results at least wonderful from a uh maybe what we would would prefer perspective but we know that god's faithful and he will never leave us nor will he forsake us.
Um and i think that's a thought that i wanted to leave you with that's that's really about all i had here for today. So i i hope that you can at least be encouraged by some of that. We have some very difficult times and um you know something else uh john macarthur was talking about he was talking about he uh briefly criticized post-millennialism you know he said you know the post-millennialists you know think that uh you know they're gonna uh obtain dominion over the the earth and that they're they're gonna walk right into heaven.
Well that's that's not what the bible teaches. You know we're gonna go through some tough times now. I don't know if this is the you know the end of the world and i don't want to say that i don't want to get off on a a long eschatological tangent but i think very clearly the uh the new testament teaches that that yeah that that christians are going to go through some tough times uh they already have we know that from history and i think there's a very good chance that the cost of being the disciple of christ is going to go up for all of us in the very near future.
But we know that he's faithful and and we can stand on that. And so i would encourage you with those with those words here um thanks so much for listening. I really do appreciate that i'm going to go ahead and have this uh this podcast posted out to the uh to the uh to my blog uh looks listed.
I'm also going to have that posted out there on the uh the thorn crown ministries website so you you can get it there. You can also subscribe to my podcast feed on uh apple podcasts it's available that way.
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Uh very much do i want to say thank you to those who who have uh have donated as well it really does. It really is a help and an encouragement. So thank you for that. And um i guess in closing i just would like to say you know may the the god of truth guide you in all truth as you read and study god's word i look forward to talking to you again next week.
Goodbye.