RLL.Ep.44.Joe Biden's Inauguration

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The coming surveillance state, ongoing Covid crisis and a Christian response, the economy in collapse.

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Hi everybody, this is Steve Matthews. Thanks for joining me for Radio Luke Solicit, episode 44.
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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.
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But before I kind of dive into that, I almost feel like I have to apologize to you in advance here a bit.
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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.
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But then I thought to myself, yeah, you know, I missed last week, and I really hated to miss last week.
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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.
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And when you work a day job, and you try to do some podcasting, try to do some writing, that kind of thing on the side, well, you know, sometimes stuff doesn't always get done.
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You know, sometimes, sometimes life gets in the way. So I did miss last week. And I just,
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I wanted to get something out. It actually kind of highlights a couple of things about blogging, and podcasting, and doing videos, and this kind of thing.
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And maybe it's something I thought would be a little bit worth mentioning. Number one is consistency is super important.
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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
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I feel like, but that's really not the way that you're ever going to develop any kind of success, you know, in, in pretty much in anything, right?
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I mean, what do they say, practice makes perfect? Well, you know, when we're doing social media types of work, like I say, whether it's doing, doing something like this, doing some podcasting, doing some live streaming, and hi to everybody on, on Twitter and Periscope and DLive tonight.
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I'm not, I'm not streaming on Facebook and on YouTube, because there's some things
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I need to say here tonight that I probably would get, would get zapped on, on Facebook and on YouTube.
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So I'm not going to, to, to live stream there tonight on those. And because I want to be able to speak freely about some things.
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So anyway, consistency is a big point whenever you're doing podcasting or blogging or anything of that sort.
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The other thing too, is, is don't let the, the perfect be the enemy of the good. You know, I know
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I'm probably not as prepared tonight as, as what I should be, but I want to go ahead and, and do a podcast anyway.
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I want to go ahead and do a, a live stream anyway. You know, and just, just get ideas out there.
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I've, 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.
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And they're like, Oh, well, you know, I, I've got to, got to wait around until I get everything perfect. And, and, and this type of thing, well, you don't have to get everything perfect.
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I mean, sometimes you just need to get your, get your ideas out there. And, and I think that's pretty important, but sometimes we, we think we have to have this, this perfect, uh, perfect standard before we can, can even begin something.
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I mean, when I started blogging, it's hard to believe. I, I started writing the Luke's lucid blog back in, uh, in March of 2009.
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So almost 12 years, um, just a couple of months shy of 12 years at this point, I didn't know what
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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, um, you know, told me how to, how to write a post or anything like that.
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I kind of had to figure it out. And, 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.
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I mean, this is something I think is super important. I think as Christians, uh, I think that we need to be, be active in, in talking about some of the events that are going on because there's, there's a lot that's going on these days.
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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 were, we're all about declaring the truth.
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We know the truth about how can a sinful man be justified before, before an all
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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.
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Um, 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, uh, of a political or economic system where we're going to, to defend or to, to advocate.
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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 where, you know, the
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Bible teaches both political and economic freedom. And, and John Robbins called that constitutional capitalism, which is a system that we had in the
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United States of America when our country was founded, because we had a substantially
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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.
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And, and, uh, because the beliefs of the people have changed, so too has our government, you know, so too has our economic system and, uh, they're becoming less free all the time.
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But as Christians, you know, we are, we're advocates for liberty, you know, on the Liberty Bell, I think a quote, it was a
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Leviticus. I can't remember which chapter, but it said, you know, let liberty be proclaimed throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereunto.
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Um, 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 the faith in Jesus Christ and in liberty, political and economic liberty.
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But that's something that we've forgotten. And I think it's something that as Christians, uh, we need to learn for ourselves and we need to learn to teach others.
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And I think there's a, you know, this, this opportunity that we have to, to be bloggers, to be podcasters, to be, you know, uh,
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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,
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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.
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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.
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Just get started. You're, you're learn, you know, as, as you go through things, you're learning, you get better, you develop, uh, you know, we all do.
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So anyway, enough of that, uh, enough of that spiel there, I'll get down off my soapbox and then
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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 it's kind of what the, uh, the title of this, this episode is
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Joe Biden's inauguration. Uh, you know, we had this little inauguration this past Wednesday and, and I have to tell you,
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I mean, it's, it's not the inauguration that I wanted. You know, I, I did not want to see Joe Biden, uh, elected president.
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And I, I don't believe that he was elected president. You know, I think that he was, uh, was cheated in as president.
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You know, I, I believe that that, that was a stolen election. Now, not everybody believes that.
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And there are good people, uh, people whose opinions I respect, I think are smart, who, who do not agree with that.
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But in my own view, my own opinion, I think the evidence for that is overwhelming.
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And, you know, one of the things that sometimes that people, and I've, I've seen Christians, you know, make the argument that there's a, as I think
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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
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Donald Trump was going to be, um, 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.
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Yeah. November 3rd. Um, 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.
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Uh, you know, and, and he did not, I mean, it seems to me that the establishment and I say this, not just these, not just the
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Democrats, but the establishment Republicans really, really, really wanted to get rid of him. Now, you know, we can say, well, you know,
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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.
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You know, one of the big things, and in fact, I think this is one of the, the, maybe you could even say this is the overarching big thing that he got right is that he believed in and defended the
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Westphalian world order over against the new world order. Now I haven't, I don't know if I have talked about the
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Westphalian world order in any of the, uh, the podcasts, but it's, uh, the Westphalian world order, or maybe it's been a while anyway, the
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Westphalian world order is, is the, uh, the geopolitical arrangement that came about following the 30 years war.
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So what was the 30 years war where the 30 years war was basically, it was a, it was the first pan European war.
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And it, it started in, in 1618 and ran 30 years, oddly enough to, uh, 1648.
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Uh, and it was settled by the treaty of Westphalia and the, the
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Westphalian world order basically says, uh, 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.
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There aren't to be, you know, there's not to be a world government of some sort, you know, that there was supposed to be, you know, national governments and that one nation doesn't have a right to, uh, to attack and another nation to, to take its territory, to interfere in its internal affairs.
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You know, that it's basically mind your own business, MYOB, you know, applied to, to geopolitics.
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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, uh, brutal war to settle the matter.
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Uh, in, in the 30 year war, it was basically the Protestants versus the Roman Catholics. And, and the
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Protestants won that fight and all of us since that time. And I guess what, uh, well,
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I mean, we're, we're going on 400 years, right. Uh, of that, um, for the past, uh, nearly 400 years, the geopolitical arrangement assumptions, uh, the international law that say the, the, the governs the relations between nations is really been geopolitical
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Protestantism. The new world order on the other hand, which is, you know, all of these, these globalist organizations, you know, the
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UN or, um, you know, the, uh, the world economic forum, the
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Bilderbergers, you know, the, you know, all, you know, the, the, uh, um, the
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European union, um, some of the, uh, the NAFTA or the, you know, the, the North American, uh, trade union that they've put together.
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I can't think of what they, what they call the, uh, um, the new one, um, that was signed under president
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Trump, but, but all of these things tend to, uh, uh, a really new world order.
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And of course the ultimate new world order organization, the ultimate, uh, organization driving to create a world government is of course the
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Roman Catholic church, but nobody ever talks about that. It's, it's amazing how blunt and how
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Frank, the not only the Popes, but, but other, uh, Roman Catholic officials have been for decades, um, and maybe even longer than that calling for world government.
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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.
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And you might remember even back in, in the 2016, there was that little tiff between when, when, uh, when
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Trump was running for president, I think it was in February, maybe March of, of 2016, where, uh, the
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Pope had come over, Pope Francis had come over and visited Mexico and he gave a, he held a big mass,
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I think in, uh, I think it was in Juarez, which is right across the border from El Paso, Texas.
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And, uh, and on the flight back, uh, after he had held this, uh, on the flight back to, uh, to Rome, that it was there that the
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Pope made some comment about, you know, that, you know, that, that, uh, anyone who builds walls and not bridges, you know, isn't a
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Christian. That's not an exact quote, but that's, that's kind of a paraphrase of what he said. And of course then, then Donald Trump shot back at the
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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, uh, as a presidential candidate, you know, that he would actually take on the
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Pope because nobody, no, there's no other major American politician or even, uh, you know, noteworthy candidate who's ever shot back at the
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Pope. You know, um, you know, you don't tug on Superman's cape, but, but, uh, but Donald Trump did.
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And I was actually very impressed with that. But I mean, of course, Pope Francis and not just Pope Francis, but all of the
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Pope before him, the entire magisterium of the Roman Catholic church, they are the ultimate globalists.
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And they, they promote the new world order, which is globalism, which is basically world government.
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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.
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This guy that we have in now, Joe Biden as president, he is fully on board with globalism.
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Of course, he's a Roman Catholic himself. And, uh, 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, uh, of Pope Francis.
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Uh, if you actually read Joe Biden's, um, uh, campaign website, he openly quoted a papal encyclical, which is kind of an extraordinary thing.
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So, you know, no, I'm not a big fan of Joe Biden. And I think that there could be some very, uh, he's going to do a lot of damage to the
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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.
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And, and, and we have to, to be able to respond rationally in faith, um, and with boldness.
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And I want to close a little bit in today's podcast on that. So I'll kind of leave it at that.
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And we'll, 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.
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Um, and there are a lot of things that bothered me about that. One of the fact is that, that I don't believe that the
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Joe Biden was legitimately elected as president. So that's the kind of stuff I can't say on YouTube or on, on Facebook.
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So that's why I'm not live streaming on those today and a sip of coffee here just a moment. But, uh, one thing
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I wanted to talk about, and this is in connection with the, the inauguration and, and some of the remarks that the
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Joe Biden made during the inauguration is, uh, there's an article that was, uh, the title of it's called the new domestic war on terror is coming.
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No speculation is needed. Those who wield power are demanding it. The only question is how much opposition will they encounter?
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Now, the article is by a gentleman by the name of Glenn Greenwald. Now, uh, Glenn Greenwald is a, he's an independent journalist.
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In fact, he founded a, uh, a news organization called the independent, uh, from which he was actually recently kicked out of.
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Um, so he, he, he, he co -founded it and then he got the boot. Um, now Glenn Greenwald is not a, he's not a conservative.
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He's not, I don't believe he's a Christian and, and he's, so he's someone that, that probably you and I would have some political differences with, but I like his work.
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I think he's a gifted journalist and, and I think he tells the truth. You know, he's, he's somebody who's honest.
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And, and that's one of the things that I really appreciate about the work that he does. Uh, so let's read a little bit, uh, about, let's read a little bit of his article here and see what he has to say.
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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.
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Um, 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.
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This trend shows no sign of receding as we move farther from the January 6th Capitol riot. The opposite is true.
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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
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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.
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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
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FBI to turn in one's fellow citizens, see something, say something in demands for a new system of domestic surveillance.
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Underlying all this are immediate insinuations that anyone questioning any of this must by virtue of these doubts harbor sympathy with the terrorist and a neo -Nazi white supremacist ideology.
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So that's Glenn Greenwald and I think he makes some really good points there.
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You go back to that riot on Capitol Hill on January 6th.
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I remember I was sitting there watching that or I wasn't watching it, but I remember I got something on my
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Twitter feed and it was talking about this, the breach of the Capitol building.
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It showed some video, you know, people climbing a wall and one guy hanging off a balcony. I got it because in the
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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.
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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
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Trump supporter or disagreed with Joe Biden or believed in economic and political liberty or constitutional government and these types of things.
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They were going to seize on it and really try to go after patriotic
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Americans. Sure enough, I mean, they haven't disappointed, not even one bit and that's something
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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 have raised questions about, you know, was that whole
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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.
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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
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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?
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And maybe that person or organization or group of people, maybe they're the ones that actually had something to do with it.
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And certainly, that Capitol riot benefited the Democrats. Now, here's the thing.
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As somebody who believes in law and order, and as a Christian, I certainly do, and I think most of you probably listening tonight would probably say the same thing.
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You probably believe in law and order, and we should. We're called to do that. I mean, what's the
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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.
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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.
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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
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Trump supporters, was, you know, I mean, that was lawlessness.
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And those people who got into the Capitol and did violence, you know, and smashed things up and stole things.
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I mean, there's one woman, I think she was some 22 -year -old, very young person. She got in there and,
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I guess, stole Nancy Pelosi's laptop. I mean, there were some bad things that went on there, and those people deserve to be
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I have no problem saying that. You know, as a Christian, as somebody who believes in law and order,
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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.
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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
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Capitol, and they are staying in a, you know, between a sort of like a rope corridor that's in there.
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I mean, those are people that apparently were let in. I mean, they weren't destroying anything.
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And I certainly don't think that those people, you know, who simply walked into the
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Capitol and didn't engage in some of the kinds of violent acts that some people were doing, yeah,
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I don't think that they should be punished. But I mean, if somebody was doing something, he shouldn't have been doing.
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Yeah, certainly, I have no problem with someone being prosecuted for that.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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But you know, what's interesting is that whole incident at the Capitol. I mean, by the standards of the
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Democrats, you could say that that was a mostly peaceful protest. You know, I don't know exactly how many people were at the
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Trump rally on January the 6th. I've heard 200 ,000.
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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
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Capitol or of those people that went into the Capitol, I think the number of people to really engage in violent behavior was actually pretty low.
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So that was a mostly peaceful protest, quite literally mostly peaceful, you know. And so, you know, it's very hypocritical, the
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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
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Democrats never once denounced any of that stuff. And in fact,
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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
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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,
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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.
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He said it was a myth. He certainly wasn't in any hurry to condemn any of that stuff.
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But boy, I tell you, when you had a few Trump supporters accused of rioting on January 6th, they want to basically bring the
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House down on all political opposition, on just ordinary
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Republicans or conservatives or what have you. And they're going to try to use the law, apparently the
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Democrats are, to really go after those people who've committed the crime of disagreeing with them.
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And I think that is a very dangerous situation. It's kind of interesting in the, in that article that Glenn Greenwald wrote, he had a couple of videos in there.
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And one of them was a video, it was about a minute long of a guy named Jeremy Bash.
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And he gets on, he's on a program, I guess it was on MSNBC.
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And what he said is that, quote, we reset our entire intelligence approach, you know, that we have to reset it.
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This Jeremy Bash was demanding that we reset our entire intelligence approach, including looking at greater surveillance of them.
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You know, I guess he's and he's talking about, oh, I don't know, maybe people he politically disagrees with.
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And he continues, he says, quote, the FBI is going to have to run confidential sources, end quote.
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And, you know, it's very disturbing. And one of the things, and I'm not going to play the video for you, but you may want to check it out if you look at the article.
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One of the things that he talks about 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.
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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.
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Well, that, you know, his comments, Jeremy Bash's comments really highlight the difference between two different types of approach to law enforcement.
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There's two basic ways that you can, two basic theories of law enforcement. One of them is crime prevention, and the other is crime punishment.
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Now, the Christian, the biblical approach to criminal justice is crime punishment.
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So what you do is, you know, 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 that person is found guilty at that person at that time, that individual is punished.
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But crime prevention, what that does is it attempts to put in regulations, surveillance, for instance, as this
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Jeremy Bash wants, ahead of time in order to prevent some crime in the future.
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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.
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Now, the problem with that should be pretty obvious. You're punishing the innocent along with the guilty.
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Now, that is not biblical justice. And yet, that is a very common way of thinking.
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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 they had these sort of these psychic people who could, you know, claim to be able to look into the future, and they could tell, you know, who was going to commit a crime.
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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.
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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 psychics, 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.
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And now we're actually seeing this stuff really more and more in real life.
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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 Stamos.
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Apparently he was a former Facebook official, and some of the things that he says are also very disturbing.
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And let me read a little bit of Glenn Greenwald's commentary to you. The second video features the amazing declaration from a former
30:15
Facebook security official, Alex Stamos, talking to the very concerned CNN host, Brian Stelter, about the need for social media companies to use the same tactics against U .S.
30:25
citizens that they used 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.
30:37
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,
30:54
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.
31:05
So, for instance, if, you know, as I said earlier in this podcast,
31:11
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.
31:22
You know, 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.
31:32
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.
31:44
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 isn't popular with, say,
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Alex Stamos and maybe other people of his ilk, that people, you know, have to be driven off the internet because of that.
32:05
That is really disturbing. Let me continue here. I'm going to continue to read
32:11
Glenn Greenwald, and he says, he's quoting Alex Stamos here, quote, press freedoms are being abused by these actors, end quote.
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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.
32:33
Well, how's that? You know, it's perfectly legitimate to question what goes on.
32:39
You know, this whole country, I mean, the whole idea of free speech is that you have the ability to question the official explanations.
32:50
Glenn Greenwald continues, Stamos noted how generous he and his comrades have been up until now, quote, we have given a lot of leeway, both in the traditional media and in social media to people with a very broad range of views, end quote, but no more.
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Now is the time to, quote, get us all back in the same consensual reality, end quote.
33:11
Well, I mean, what if you don't consent to be part of his consensual reality? Well, it's not consensual then, is it?
33:17
You know, I think as the Westminster Confession talks about that God himself is
33:23
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, you know, and Luther gave that very dramatic speech of his, you know, he talked about, you know, that it's not safe to go against conscience, that God is
33:43
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,
33:54
I can do no other, here I stand. Great stuff, you know, and that was a very
34:00
Christian statement that Martin Luther gave, but what this guy, this Alex Stamos, wants is he wants dogma, you know, he wants there to be certain truths 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,
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I doubt that these authoritarian, these tyrannical types like Alex Stamos 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.
35:00
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
35:08
White House post overseeing the fight against ideologically inspired violent extremists and increasing funding to combat them, end quote.
35:15
So, you know, I guess that they're going to have this domestic terrorism bill, and I don't know,
35:21
I guess, if you say, you know, I disagree with Joe Biden with his Green New Deal or some other aspect of his presidency,
35:30
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 where that's headed, and that is very, very disturbing.
35:43
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.
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These are constitutionally guaranteed freedoms that, as Americans, you know, we almost tend to say, well, you know, these things are taken for granted.
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But this is all changing, you know, we are in new territory here, and it's not a good place to be.
36:22
Now, another thing I wanted to talk about here today were the COVID lockdowns. I mean, this is something
36:28
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,
36:36
I think it was a sermon from just last week by John MacArthur, that he preached at Grace Community Church.
36:44
Now, you know, I have been very, very much impressed with the way
36:51
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 the
37:03
COVID lockdowns, I think he's done a wonderful job, and I think he's really stood his ground.
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I mean, they told him, you know, last year that the church wasn't allowed to meet, and they went ahead and they met anyway.
37:18
And not only did they not merely just meet, but they also did not social distance, they didn't have mask requirements, and he was doing this in one of the most restrictive environments in the country when it comes to COVID tyranny.
37:37
California itself as a state has been really bad, and I don't know I don't know for sure that the church is in, that Grace Community Church, I don't know if they're in the
37:49
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.
37:58
I mean, he's been merciless in his lockdowns. You know, here in Ohio where I am,
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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.
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But compared to what they have out in California, we've actually gotten off pretty light by comparison.
38:24
You know, the COVID lockdowns, I mean, my view on those things is that it's tyranny, plain and simple. And what's disturbing to me about them is that not only are the governors acting in a really pretty high -handed fashion, but they're getting away with it.
38:39
You know, I mean, here and there, there's a little political opposition. You know, there are a few people complaints here and there, but nothing really very organized.
38:48
And most people seem to have bought into this stuff, you know, bought into the lockdowns, bought into the curfews, bought into the mask requirements with very little pushback.
38:58
Here in Ohio, I mean, there was a move they were going to impeach the governor. Well, that went nowhere.
39:05
There was a, I think, a more organized move to try to limit the governor's ability to take executive action.
39:15
Nothing has come of that. I mean, our state legislature is basically non -existent. We have a governor.
39:22
We have a pharaoh is what we have. You know, I actually voted for Mike DeWine. I didn't know I was electing a pharaoh, but that's what we have.
39:31
And in my opinion, if there's ever going to, if there's going to be any effective pushback on the
39:37
COVID tyranny, it's going to have to come from Christians. Christians are going to have to take the lead. And this is another thing that's disappointed me and frustrated me about the whole
39:46
COVID situation is that most churches, and I'm talking here about even Bible -believing churches, maybe especially
39:52
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?
40:03
And a lot of times, you know, ministers or elders, you know, what have you,
40:09
I mean, they will cite Romans 13, you know, and there's that passage, I think it's Romans 13, one, where Paul writes, let every soul be subject to the governing authorities.
40:19
And 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?
40:28
Do we always have to obey everything that Caesar says? And that's a serious question.
40:35
And I would argue that if you do good exegesis, if you really interpret the
40:43
Bible correctly, you realize that there are some limits on that statement of what Paul said. Because, I mean, if we do,
40:50
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.
40:58
I mean, governments throughout history have ordered all kinds of immoral, vile things. And if a governor tells you to do something, if a government official, a magistrate, you know, if Caesar tells you to do something that's immoral, are you required to do it just because Paul said, let every soul be subject to the governing authorities?
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I don't think so. And, you know, there's a lot of evidence in the Bible to say that there are some things that as Christians, 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.
41:36
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,
41:42
I think, that are very obvious and pretty easy to understand. You know, you read there in Exodus chapter 1, you know,
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Pharaoh ordered the midwives, the Hebrew midwives, to kill all the firstborn male children.
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And these midwives refused to do that, and they were actually given their own households.
42:03
They were praised for their refusal to obey Pharaoh. You know, we read in Hebrews chapter 11, and this is the chapter on faith,
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Moses' parents are commended because, you know, they preserve Moses alive, and it says they were not afraid of the king's command.
42:25
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 they would not have their son killed.
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I mean, what Pharaoh wanted to do was murder their son, and they wouldn't go along with it. And they're praised, this is an act of faith.
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Or, you know, let's think of the young Hebrew men, the Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. 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 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.
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And, you know, of course, these guys didn't do that, and they got brought in front of Nebuchadnezzar.
43:13
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,
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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.
43:30
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 level of what it ordinarily was, and even killed the soldiers that took the young men up to,
43:44
I guess, to toss them in the furnace. And, of course, famously, God delivered them. But, you know, the thing with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is they said, even if God doesn't deliver us, we're still not going to bow down to your golden image, because what was being asked was immoral.
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You know, Nebuchadnezzar was demanding that they practice idolatry, and he wouldn't do it.
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He demanded they violate the Ten Commandments. They said, we're not going to do it. Or you think of, you know, when
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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 this man's name—he's talking about Jesus—anymore?
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And, of course, Peter answered, and he said, well, you know, we must obey God rather than men.
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So, I mean, there are four examples right there of civil disobedience in Scripture. Now, you know, if Paul's command in Romans 13, 1, let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, well, then all of those sinned.
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You know, the Hebrew midwives should have killed the male children. Moses' parents should have had
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Moses killed. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, well, they should have bowed down to the golden image.
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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 we're not going to preach anymore.
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We're not going to teach anymore in the name of Jesus. We're going to go back to our nets and fishes and, you know, try to just put this whole thing behind us.
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We're going to recant. You know, it's kind of like what the
45:21
Roman Catholic officials were telling Martin Luther, you know, recant, recant, rewoco.
45:27
You know, I think of that scene in—there was a movie, the movie Luther, the newer version,
45:34
I think was made, well, maybe in 2003 or so, and there's that scene where Martin Luther is going to go in and talk to Cardinal Cajetan, and the,
45:47
I guess, the Cardinal's assistant or somebody, you know, he and Luther were talking outside before he went into the
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Cardinal's chamber, and this guy told him, he says, when you go in, you don't argue, you say one word, rewoco,
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I recant. And you're not supposed to argue, you know, you don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't go in and argue with the
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Cardinal, you recant, you say, you know, I disavow all of these things, and you move on.
46:14
Well, Luther defied, you know, the Roman Catholic Church, and thank God that he did.
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You know, in the Roman Catholic Church was also, in a lot of ways, the civil authority as well.
46:28
So you might even say what Luther did was maybe you could construe it in some ways to be an act of civil disobedience.
46:35
You know, he wouldn't go along with the Pope, and you know, that was a very, an extraordinary thing that he did.
46:45
So yeah, I think that, you know, you can certainly find in Scripture lots and lots of, at least four very good examples of people who did not go along with what the civil authorities said, what the civil magistrate was telling them to do.
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And, you know, so, you know, of course, the challenge that comes is, you know, we know that this took place, so, you know, the challenge is, you know, how does this apply to our current situation?
47:16
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.
47:27
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
47:32
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.
47:39
Well, there's something that came along, and it's related, it's in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, it's called the incorporation doctrine.
47:46
In all of those amendments, the Bill of Rights, those are also applied to the states.
47:53
So the state governors do not have a right to say you cannot meet on a
47:58
Sunday morning, you can't meet on the Lord's Day. But this is what the, and I think it was,
48:04
I think it was the governor that was saying this, I don't know that it was the city. I'm a little bit unclear on that, but they were told very early on this whole
48:12
COVID thing, as Grace Community Church, you can't even meet. I mean, forget about social distancing and masks, you can't even meet at all, is what they were told.
48:23
And they said, we're not going to obey that. Now, I think initially, I think Grace Community Church did go along with it.
48:30
And then at some point last summer, they finally said, okay, enough is enough. And this is the
48:37
Lord's Day, and we are called to meet on the Lord's Day, and we're going to do that. And I have so much admiration for the stance that John MacArthur has taken, and I just wish
48:50
I'd see more of that out of more of my fellow Christians. And I just, I don't see it right now, but as Christians, we need to keep praying about this, we need to keep speaking out about this.
49:02
We have solid ground to push back on all of this stuff. This idea somehow that you have to wear a mask when you sing,
49:09
I guess, you know what, if you sing Amazing Grace without a mask on, you're going to kill grandma, and so we have to go along with these mask requirements.
49:21
Well, where does it say anywhere in Scripture that Caesar has any business regulating how the church worships?
49:30
Now, I have a real problem with that, and with all of the
49:36
COVID restrictions. I mean, these things are destroying our economy, they're destroying people's lives.
49:42
It's interesting, 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
49:51
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 isolation in that that's going on.
50:04
These governors are destroying our country, they're destroying our liberties, they're destroying our economy, and this stuff needs to stop.
50:12
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.
50:19
Are we anywhere closer to having these COVID restrictions removed? Now, you can answer that question as well as I can.
50:27
No, we're not, and in fact, it seems like the current administration wants to even lock down harder, do more of what doesn't work.
50:38
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. There is no biblical, there is no medical precedent for locking down and quarantining healthy people.
50:51
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.
51:01
You know, in the Old Testament, and it's in the book of Leviticus, I don't have the chapter, maybe it was a chapter 13 or 15, something like this, but anyway, it talks in there about the laws about leprosy.
51:15
And if someone believes that he may have leprosy, he has a responsibility to go to the priest, and he's examined by the priest, and there's a lot of details, a very detailed process that someone goes through to be examined to actually determine, okay, does he have leprosy?
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And it's only after a priest has determined that he has leprosy that he is quarantined, you know, he's put outside the camp, you know, he's supposed to go around and say, unclean, unclean, you know, this type of thing.
51:43
But it's only after a detailed and formal process that he is quarantined.
51:52
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.
51:59
I mean, if someone's leprosy went away, they had to come and show themselves to a priest, and there was a whole set of protocol that they had to go through, and the priest had to pronounce, okay, you know, that you're clean of your leprosy, and you can come back and join the community.
52:17
So, I mean, from what we learned from the Bible, we learned two things. We learned, first of all, that, you know, you don't quarantine healthy people.
52:29
You know, that's the big takeaway there. Maybe I should just say there's one big takeaway there. You know, we learned that you don't quarantine healthy people.
52:39
And maybe the second thing, and I guess this is what I was thinking of, the second thing is there is biblical justification for quarantines.
52:48
So, I mean, if somebody actually is, say, exhibiting symptoms of COVID, somebody's sick, well,
52:53
I mean, 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 out and spreading it around.
53:03
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
53:10
COVID. I mean, if you had a cold, or if you had a fever, or you had, you know, the bug or some sort, and you were sick, 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,
53:22
I'm not going to shake hands and, you know, I've got a cold or something like that, and I don't want to spread it around.
53:28
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, yeah,
53:36
I mean, I think that you can have, you know, there are legitimate grounds where you can quarantine people, but these are sick people that you quarantine.
53:46
You don't quarantine healthy people. You know, there's no example in scriptures of the priests going around and locking down Israel and saying, we're doing this to prevent the spread of leprosy.
53:57
Well, I mean, if they did that, I mean, they could have locked Israel down forever, because there was always going to be leprosy.
54:04
You know, leprosy you will always have with you. I guess you want to paraphrase something that Jesus said, and, you know, the coronavirus you will always have with you.
54:16
You know, and if we're going to use the relative prevalence of coronavirus of this
54:23
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.
54:32
This stuff needs to end. 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.
54:49
This stuff needs to stop, and that's about all
54:56
I'm going to say about COVID here for the moment. You know, then we have the economy, and it's interesting.
55:02
I mean, the economy is in serious trouble. I mean, we've got massive unemployment. We've got massive price inflation, and, you know,
55:11
Joe Biden, he gets into office, and one of the first things he said, he wants to, he's proposed a 1 .9
55:16
trillion dollar stimulus package. Well, let me ask you this. Where does that 1 .9
55:22
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 take out the 1 .9
55:30
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
55:38
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.
55:45
That's fraud. That's counterfeiting. I mean, our entire financial system is based on fraud.
55:52
It's based on the fraud of the central bank -issued debt -based dollar, and the dollar is designed basically to function as a wealth transfer mechanism, to transfer money from the poor and the middle class and send it right up to the very top of the pyramid, the socioeconomic pyramid.
56:18
And it's been doing a fabulous job, the Fed has, of enriching the already rich and impoverishing everybody else for over 100 years.
56:29
I mean, the Federal Reserve is an unconstitutional institution. You know, you know, gold and silver only are supposed to be legal tender.
56:40
But, you know, we've allowed this monstrous organization to take root here on our shores, and I mean, it is sucking the life out of this country.
56:54
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, called
56:59
End the Fed. Absolutely. End the Fed. That needs to be shut down, you know, and the ground needs to be salted.
57:08
It is destroying this country, and this stimulus package, this 1 .9
57:14
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.
57:26
You know, when they talk about these injections of money by the Federal Reserve, one of the most common metaphors that people use is they compare it to, say, a drug addict or an alcoholic, you know, who has to take another hit from the bottle or take another shot of heroin or whatever.
57:50
You know, a drug addict, they have to keep taking drugs in bigger and bigger amounts or drinking more in bigger and bigger amounts in order to get the same effect.
58:01
And eventually, you know, it kills the person who's doing that stuff. And in like fashion, printing money destroys nations.
58:10
It destroys the financial system, it destroys nations. And this is going to destroy the United States of America.
58:17
And 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, who think that this may not be too far off, who think we're going to have a big, we may have a big meltdown later this year.
58:32
Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that that's going to be the end of things. But printing money is never the answer.
58:38
I mean, the most that printing money can do, it's like taking another hit from the bottle or taking another hit of drugs.
58:46
And yeah, you feel better temporarily, it can do that. But in the long run, that stuff's going to kill the drug addict, that stuff's going to kill the alcoholic.
58:55
And in like fashion, money printing is going to kill our country. This stuff needs to stop.
59:00
But I don't think it's going to stop until something blows up. There's simply just no political will.
59:06
The Republicans don't have the will and the Democrats don't have the will. You know, there are too many vested interests who get too much out of continuing the system as it is.
59:17
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.
59:26
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,
59:32
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.
59:38
You know, our economy's a mess, our state of our civil rights is a mess, we are looking at turning more and more into a surveillance state.
59:49
There are some really disturbing things going on. You know, and I haven't even really talked about the moral climate yet, have
59:54
I? You know, I haven't talked about all the nonsense that's going on with critical race theory, with transgenderism, all that stuff.
01:00:04
I'll leave that off for today. I think we've talked about enough depressing stuff for one day.
01:00:11
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 a very negative person, but I mean, we have to be honest with ourselves too.
01:00:22
We can't sit here and just pretend that everything is wonderful because it's not wonderful.
01:00:27
There are some very serious problems. You know, I live in the United States, but I mean, even if you don't live in the
01:00:33
United States, I mean, if you live anywhere, particularly in the West, we have major problems.
01:00:38
Our civilization is in collapse. I mean, this is something that Gordon Clark talked about this way back in 1952 in his book
01:00:48
Christian View of Men and Things, and John Robbins more recently echoed some of his comments as well.
01:00:54
We are experiencing, you and I, we're going through a civilizational collapse. You know, much like what happened during the fifth century
01:01:06
AD 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 -feudalism, you know, where a few people, you know,
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Bill Gates or 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.
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You know, it has to scratch out an existence. That seems to be where we're headed right now, unless something happens to really change things.
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You know, so how as Christians, how do we face this? You know, how do we process all of this negative news?
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How do we get through the day? You know, it may be, you know, is it foolish to have hope?
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Well, no, it's not foolish, but, you know, this is where we really have to turn to the
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Scriptures, and I think sometimes, you know, God can have a lot of purposes for bringing things about as they are, and I think one of the reasons that He brings about difficulties, sort of the difficulties of the sort we're experiencing, is it drives
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His people to Him. We have to seek Him. You know, when times are good, it can be very easy to forget
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God, it can be very easy 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 times are tough, there comes a point where we have to realize,
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I can't do this. You know, I'm not smart enough, I'm not rich enough, I have no power or very little power, and, you know, how am
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I going to be able to stand against these tremendous forces in the world? Well, we do that by seeking the
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Lord's face. And I was thinking about, I went back when I was preparing for this, and I read
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Psalm 46, and, you know, Psalm 46 starts off, it says, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
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Yeah, that's a wonderful verse. You know, when you think about Hebrews, this is Hebrews 13, 5 and 6, it's quoting here, it says,
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I will never leave you nor forsake you, so we may boldly say, the
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Lord is my helper, I will not fear. What can man do to me? Now, I mean, there's almost, you know, when we say, what can man do to me, it almost sounds, you know, if it weren't for the exceeding great power, the omnipotent power, the
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Lord Jesus Christ, God our Father, the Holy Spirit, if it weren't for that, you know, that would be a very flippant, very arrogant statement, but it's not our own strength that we run on, it's the
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Lord's strength that we run on. It's on that that we stand. And in those verses and in many others, you know, the
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Old Testament often talks about God being a strength and a shield to His people, and He is.
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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.
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He was talking about, you know, how over the past 10 months during the pandemic that they've actually collected more money during that 10 -month period than they had in any other period, similar period.
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He's talked about how the church has grown. I think they talked about whether the people were calling themselves
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Grace refugees, you know, because, you know, they were leaving the other churches.
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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.
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Now, it doesn't always work out, and when we take a stance for righteousness, sometimes, you know, sometimes things get tougher.
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That can happen too. I mean, you know, people have been thrown in jail. People have been martyred for taking a stand for Jesus Christ.
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So, you know, we can't always say that, well, because, you know, we took the right stand on something that, oh, you know, that I had this just…that
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I prospered even more. No, you know, the Lord deals with all of us differently, and all of our circumstances are different.
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And so we can't necessarily say that we're always going to get these necessarily wonderful results, at least wonderful from a maybe what we would prefer perspective, but we know that God's faithful, and He will never leave us, nor will
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He forsake us. And I think that's a thought that I wanted to leave you with.
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That's really about all I had here for today. So I hope that you can at least be encouraged by some of that.
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We have some very difficult times, and, you know, something else John MacArthur was talking about.
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He briefly criticized post -millennialism. You know, he said, you know, the post -millennialists, you know, think that, you know, they're going to obtain dominion over the earth, and that they're going to walk right into heaven.
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Well, that's not what the Bible teaches, you know. We're going to go through some tough times.
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Now, I don't know if this is the, you know, the end of the world, and I don't want to say that.
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I don't want to get off on a long eschatological tangent, but I think very clearly the
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New Testament teaches that, yeah, that Christians are going to go through some tough times.
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They already have, we know that from history, and I think there's a very good chance that the cost of being a disciple of Christ is going to go up for all of us in the very near future.
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But we know that He's faithful, and we can stand on that.
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And so I would encourage you with those words here. Thanks so much for listening.
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I really do appreciate that. I'm going to go ahead and have this podcast posted out to my blog,
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Luke's Listed. I'm also going to have that posted out there on the Thorn Crown Ministries website, so you can get it there.
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You can also subscribe to my podcast feed on Apple Podcasts. It's available that way.
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And if you do come to my blog, I'm also going to have a donations page set up there. So, you know, if you do find some value in the work that I do, please consider making a donation.
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You can make that as a one -time donation or a recurring donation, whichever you're able to do.
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I very much do want to say thank you to those who have donated as well. It really is a help and an encouragement, so thank you for that.
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And I guess in closing, I just would like to say, you know, may the God of truth guide you in all truth, as you read and study