Speed Limits, Mosques, and Theonomy: Untangling God's Civil Law w/Luke Saint

 And that's different from theonomy, which wants to destroy these offices. Theonomy wants to get rid of offices, and have only biblical offices, where Christian nationalism just seems to me to be wanting and desiring Christians in those places of power. Like, if theonomy would abolish IRS, Christian nationalism would just fire all the IRS employees and put Christians in there. And that would be a success in their mind. Welcome to another episode of the Carpe Feade podcast, where if the shoe fits, you wear it. And if the truth hurts, you bear it. I am Justin Gruber, and I am Jesse Gruber. And today we hope you will seize the faith. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Carpe Feade podcast episode 224. Hey, doing, Jesse. I'm doing pretty well. Thank you, brother. Man, I'm so glad to hear that because I can touch you again. Yeah, we're in the same room. I don't need you to touch me. I was going to say it's been a while, but we did this like three episodes ago. Please stop touching me. But we are, I'm not guilty any of the leads today. I don't even want to talk about the fact that a Finland Prime Minister that's allude her in has been found guilty of hate crimes and crimes against humanity because she published a paper that said homosexuality is a behavioral disorder. Oh, did you hear that? No, I didn't. Why don't I want to talk about it? But I'm not going to. I don't, I'm not going to. I don't follow a lot of European, European Lutheran news. No, it's, yeah, it's the whole stupid flattening of morality with the post-workin census, human rights garbage nonsense. And so she's just like, I believe in the Bible and I have studies and also your guilty of hate speech. So there's that. There's that. And on top of that, where to go, Europe? Where did you say she was? Finland. I'm going to need you to explain to me what the heck is going on with your communist. Oh my god. Democrat National Convention or whatever is going on. There's problems. Oh my gosh, Comrade, please, man. We got to do a whole episode on that. That's not this episode. That's not this episode. Tonight we have a very special guest on with us. We have a special guest on with us. Luke Saint is on tonight with us. So we're going to do some hardcore discussions on trying to figure out what the heck Christian nationalism and theonomy are because I think I struggle between somewhere in the middle and I need help. Luke, how are you doing? Doing well. Thanks for having me on, fellas. Absolutely. And just because now I'm actually. It's so funny. Everybody always says that at the beginning of the episode. Nobody ever says it at the end. Nobody's just getting it. That's not true. I'm just getting it. Luke, where can people find you? Before we get started and you do your background, but where can people find you? Where should they know your smooth voice from, by the way, very smooth voice? I am president of an organization called Future of Christendom. And you can find us at futureofcrisadom.org. We are a God's law promoting organization. And we're located in Southeast Pennsylvania. And I'm host of a podcast called Think and Reform podcast, where it's also a God's law promoting podcast. It's basically the podcast of Future of Christendom. There's other podcasts that likes to patron. And then there's the offensive and foolish podcast that my dad does with Pastor Matt Kennitzer. So we all basically have our own podcast where we promote God's law and we talk about philosophy and politics and things like that. Cool. Yes. And some fun video breakdowns. Those are fun. When you do the random video breakdowns and talking about theonomy from them. And sometimes you'll do a video. And I'm like, I didn't see theonomy coming out of this. And you're like, well, this is the words that I want to focus on in this field. I'm like, oh, there it is. Yeah, but usually two things I generally focus on. The Bible says it's better to curse a light of candle than to curse the darkness. And half of my podcast are usually cursing the darkness. Well, I'm sorry, I take it back. I thought 75% of my podcast are about cursing the darkness and 25% are lighting a candle. But I've been trying to lately focus more on lighting a candle rather than just saying what isn't the right thing, but focus more on what is the right thing and from the perspective of God's law. Yes. And amen. Amen to that. How do you find yourself being a God's law promoting web conference? Where how does one find themselves on that? Because I feel like there had to have been a journey involved. Yeah, our organization started off as something called the Mid-Atlantic Reformation Society was started by my dad and some faithful men who just wanted to pick up where they believe the church was leaving off. They realized that a lot of people were biblically ignorant and hostile even to biblical, I would say about half the Bible, basically, the Old Testament. And what they did was they started an organization where their original intent was to become a paratrooper church ministry where they would try to work with pastors and their desire was to teach God's law. They wanted to come along to our side churches and said, hey, we notice your people don't know what God's law says. So we'll come along and we'll teach them. If you guys wanted a workshop or something like that. And they found out very quickly, the pastors were like, no, no, that's so we're not interested in that at all. That's remotely, we don't want you teaching God's law. I mean, they found out quickly the pastors were hostile to it as well. I mean, bless their hearts. They just thought that people just didn't know. And if there was people out there teaching it, they would be excited because, hey, we don't know. We want to know where Christians, we love the Bible, things like that. And it's found out quite the opposite was true. And so we recently restructured and became future of Christendom. And we've gotten a lot of success, if you will, through our conferences, where we just platform people who we believe to be consistent and faithful Bible teachers. And that has been successful as far as promoting God's law. Because I do think there might have been a time in this country where you wouldn't really need a God's law promoting organization. I mean, the Puritan era was quite an era where people were probably more knowledgeable than I was than I am about what God's law says and things like that. I just love the Puritans. I can't say enough good things about them. I just love them so much. But unfortunately, the over emphasis on what people view as the truncated gospel has caused people to become ignorant of what the law of God says. And the problem there is, if you don't know your center, which is the knowledge of the law, then you don't need a savior. And so when we've rejected as a culture half of what the gospel message is, the fact that you're a sinner, I think a lot of people are lost. Yeah. And I think that that's probably pretty evident in American Christianity today. Also Christianity today. But American Christianity and all that. I wonder about these people sometimes who like fight against the idea of promoting God's law. Like people need to know what this says. And people need to be taught what it says. And they fight back against it. And they view what we're saying is, well, it works based salvation. Or when you be justified by the law. Well, first off, my problem with that is that, is that what you really think the law teaches? You think the more law in your life is going to convince you that you can do this. And I wonder about these people sometimes, because I'm like, you're not on the streets, are you? Every American is a legalist. When you talk to them, they're a legalist. Because what do they say? They say the same thing every single time. And I know because I've been out on the streets. Hey, you need to sit in, how does one get to heaven? And they'll give you a legalistic reason. And they'll say, well, if I'm just basically a good person, if I do more good than bad, that's legalism. And so the worst case scenario of, well, if we promote God's law, then we'll have legalists. Like the thing is, we already have legalists. Every American is a legalist. They believe in works-based salvation, if I'm just basically a good person. And when you read things like Psalm 119, and you're coming to contact with the Psalmist, he's saying, here's somebody who's not struggling with legalism. He's not wondering in thinking, oh, if I just fall the law, I'll be saved by my works. That is not evident in any of the Psalms. And since the law is a school teacher, that leaves us a Christ, it is a ministry of death. The more the law you have in your culture and society, the more you cannot keep up this facade of, hey, I can do this by my works. The more you expose to the requirements of the law, the more you realize, hey, I need a savior because I can't do this. And I think that's the downside of the Pharisees was they were pushing people away from the actual law, and we're hedging around it so much that people couldn't even see what the actual law was. And they were beginning to convince themselves, since they don't actually come in contact with the actual law, they were beginning to convince themselves, hey, I can't work myself in a God's good graces because I can follow these other laws here. And that's what's important. That? I mean, amen. Amen. Amen. But I'm really interested. I'm interested. I want to, before we discuss, I do want to kind of get some good working definitions just so that we're, I don't want to have an hour-long podcast and not talk about the same thing. So if you don't mind, do you think you could define for us your theonomic position? And maybe since I know you would love to contrast that and not compare it to maybe the Christian nationalist or the popular Christian nationalist position currently, that might help some of our listeners and us understand kind of what, how to engage in the further conversation here. So yeah, throw some definitions out of this here, Luke. And before you do that, like we didn't, like please say this, Luke, but like we consider, I don't must be free, Jesse. Please never do. We just, I love you so much. I love you so much. We generally consider ourselves Christian, nationalist, and the animus. So we love your help is really why we, we had you on as a therapy session for ourselves. And if other people can benefit, if other people can benefit from it, they're great. Okay, well, if it's a therapy session, let's all hold hands. I'm just okay. Cool, I can hold hands right now. So my position and I would just like, I would like for my position to just be called theonomy. But unfortunately, there's an understanding out there of theonomy that are just different than the way that me and others are approaching it. And so what we believe in is called non-legislative theonomy for lack of better term or Lancaster in theonomy because it's coming at based, coming out of Lancaster kind of thing. It's associated with Lancaster. It was a term that someone on Facebook actually came up with. And what that is is an approach to God's law where we let the law of God basically be the law of the land, right? And one of the focuses of it is that it embraces God's civil structure, where most every other political system rejects God's civil structure. This is, I would say probably the only one, as far as I can see that actually embraces in once to implement God's civil structure, not only God's law but God's system, God's political system. We promote, in addition to God's law, God's political system. And so the reason it's called non-legislative theonomy is because God's law outlaws a legislature in Deuteronomy 42 and 1232, where he says, these laws, I want you to be careful to do these laws, do not add to them or take away from them. And once you add a legislature by nature, you're starting to add to God's law and take away from it. Unfortunately, it's just the result. And then there's a version of theonomy out there called general equity theonomy, which doesn't necessarily promote God's civil structure. It doesn't promote God's political organization. It just kind of promotes God's law, generally speaking. And what it does, it tries to adapt God's law to different political systems. There are a lot of general equity theonomists that want to go back to the constitution. There are a lot of general equity theonomists that want to monarchy. These are, this general equity theonomy is basically take, I mean, I say this all the time, so sorry for repeating myself, but basically it's, you take God's law, turn it into principles, and then your principles become law. And that's general equity theonomy. That's what it's become. I'm not saying that's what they meant back in the days of Westminster, but that's just what it is. It's become, if you can tie something back to God's law, then it's a legitimate law. And that's the worst end of it. There are other faithful, I think, very faithful general equity people that are like, I want to all are lost to be based on the Bible and they can't really articulate everything and every nuance, but that's just their attitude and they call themselves general equity theonomists. So that's kind of like the two-spection of general equity theonomy. One is really bad and one is people just trying to be faithful. And it kind of bring in the, kind of trying to bring in the confessions along with them and trying to understand that. And as far as Christian nationalism goes, this is an even bigger spectrum. Obviously, if you've been around Christian nationalism, I mean, my opinion is more thing, it's not exactly what it used to be back in the day, it used to be very biblically based. There's memes of crusades all the time. The crusades have kind of gone away. We don't really post crusades anymore. But Christian nationalism, that's because the boy were so back, Luke. Yeah, yeah, we were so back. We were so back. Christian nationalism, defining it from the leaders, right? Because you ask 10 different Christian nationalists, what is Christian nationalism? Many of them are gonna have different answers. And I'm not saying that, you know, theonomy is like, oh no, we all agree on the same thing. I'm not saying that, but Christian nationalism is much more expansive. And I think there's a huge umbrella of many different types of theologies that are living under that umbrella with Christian nationalism. But going with Stephen Wolf, Christian nationalism is, I mean, this is what Wolf teaches. It's a dictatorship with a Christian prince at the top. And this Christian prince is beholden to Christian traditions and he's the leader of the nation and his job and responsibility is to order the people for their good, right? And there's a lot of Christian nationalists that are, I would say probably half of them are monarchists and the other half are probably constitutional guys. And they wanna go back to the constitution. And so it's very focused on the nation. We want a Christian nation that's on the good end. The bad end is the way that they kind of reject God's law, most of them don't know what God's law says. And the ones who do say that they believe God's law only really believe God's law because they don't know what it says. And most of them want to come into contact with God's law like Webman who came into contact with God's law. They end up rejecting it. That's just my experience so far. When this wants to find out what it really says. So Christian nationalism is the desire on the very elementary end. Does the desire to have a Christian nation? The pragmatic approach of Christian nationalism is just basically let's have Christians running the country. We're not really gonna change anything. We're just gonna have Christians in positions of power. They don't really talk about freedom and liberty. Those aren't their buzzwords. Those buzzwords are order and peace and security. And what their desire is to not, I mean, they don't talk about, let's get rid of all of the alphabet organizations. They very rarely talk about that. What they want are Christians in those places of power. And that's different from theonomy which wants to destroy these offices. Theonomy wants to get rid of offices and have only biblical offices where Christian nationalism just seems to me to be wanting and desiring Christians in those places of power. Like if theonomy would abolish IRS, Christian nationalism would just fire all the IRS employees and put Christians in there. And that would be a success in their mind. So if that was helpful for you, that's my basic elevator pitch for these three different approaches. It's a really tall building, Luke. It's a really tall elevator. No, I just one question before I let you speak. So one, let me speak. Thanks for letting me speak. I appreciate that. Yeah, you know. That's excellent. Never let me speak. That's not true. So just in terms of my brain trying to get categories straight, now I'll use theonomy in terms of not not just slate of theonomy because that is a lot of things to say in a short amount of time. So could you as a theonomist consider yourself a Christian nationalist or do you view them as too totally separate thing? No, I mean, like I said on the light end, the desire to have a Christian nation every theonomist by nature is as Christian nationalist. If that's what they mean, if that's what the terminology means, we want a Christian nation. Well, you can't be a theonomist and not want a Christian nation at the same time. That's completely inconsistent. So it's just, you know, when you say the term Christian nationalists, it very rarely means we want God's laws of standard of the land anymore. So yeah, I'm not afraid of using the term to describe myself because I do want a Christian nation and I agree. The positive thing about the Christian nationalists, in my mind, is that they, they've taken the step of the church has got to do something. The Christians have got to do something. We've got to do something. We can't depend on other people to do something. It's got to be us. We can't prayer away out of the situation and just have us rapture out of here. You know, they've abandoned that and I think that's good. The problem is they've stepped out of doubting castle but there seems like a lot of their leaders are trying to lead them back in. All right, yeah, that's a hopeful clarification. I will let you speak now. Well, I'll take the speaking baton from you and I will speak whenever I hold you. There we go. If you guys seen Lord of the Flies, the movie, or read the book or read it all the time. Like the conch, remember, if you hold the conch, you're like a dog speaking conch. That was also in, we would recommend, we would recognize that from SpongeBob. They had a speaking conch. No, that was an old conch. That was the old conch. That was the old conch. And you guys didn't even give me the welcome. Welcome to our club. Welcome to our club. You know, somebody pulled out the other day on me. Somebody pulled out the wild thornberries on me, dude. And I was like, dude, that's a great pool. I've told you forgot about that. Oh my god. That's what we did. That's what he did. He's like, wow, I'm sorry. I did a real top. I did a real, I think it was top. Topthornberry? I don't know. He said his name. Wow, dude, that is a crazy pool right now. You know who you know, you know, played his voice. No, he played his voice. Flea from from Brad Pitt, Shelley Peppers. So you know what, that's really perfect. He's a great boy. He's so perfect. Okay, I feel like we could do a whole episode on like 90s nostalgia. Can we do that? That would be awful. I do want to say, Flea actually does talk very intelligently when he's talking about music. He's actually really good at music. I just want to say that. His really smart. Back to what I was going to say. I would say, if I was to define, when I say I'm a Christian nationalist, I mean that I am in Christ, and I desire all to be in Christ. And I'm a nationalist in that I desire the good of my nation. And I believe that I need the good of my nation before I can go ahead and start doing good in others. Not to say that I can't walk and chew together at the same time, but that would be my primary focus when I say I'm a Christian nationalist, which is probably a pretty baseline definition of two words. But that's pretty much what I mean when I say Christian nationalist. But it is a wild ride on Christian nationalism. As you said, it is a wild ride. And when I say I'm a theodomist, I mean if there is any source of righteousness to be found, it is only found first through God's law. There's no other way to identify righteousness unless God tells us what righteousness is because we don't get to define that. So that's pretty much what I mean. When I say I'm a theodomist and a Christian nationalist, and when I'm reformed, it means I try to go to the Bible and do what it says because it's God's word and I don't have anything else. So I don't know. Those are basic definitions. We're pretty simple people. We're brought on brother kind of guys. I mean, we're pretty exclusionary. If I told, I don't think, I don't terms with defining the term. I mean, I don't think a weapon in Swabai would be like, that's not what Christian nationalism is. That's right. But when it comes to trying to understand non-legislative theotomy versus general equity theotomy, I'm finding difficulty on both sides. So I like you here, them trying to wedge laws that are the laws of a nation into gods, into some form of gods, gods written moral or civil law, when in reality they were never a part of gods, moral or civil law. And I think one of the ones that I've heard you use so many times is speed limits. Yes. Right, there's no way to wedge a speed limit into gods, moral or civil law. And I think we can all agree on that. I tried to come up with that hypothetical. And I said, like the only possible way, God would put a law, if you wanted to like round about, try to say God put a law on speed limit, it would be if a guy pushed a rock down a high enough mountain that it reached 60 miles an hour and killed somebody. But even then he didn't put a limit on the on-health as the rock was going. That wasn't the concern of the law. Mm-hmm. Yes. And so I think fully on board with what you say there, that they're trying to wedge that in. Then on the other side, I'm trying to understand how a non-legislative theonomist would rightly identify any given nation in our world today. How do we define them? What sets them apart from anything? Or are there actually not, are many of the nations we have today not even really nations at all? Because I think part of the identity of a nation for me is not just the borders, which I believe is, I believe God has sovereign over, but also a nation is often identified in its structure of law and laws that a nation might have. So what do you think of that? Am I making sense? Well, there's two nations that come to mind that don't have borders that we recognize as nations. So I mean, one would be Israel. When it was walking around for 40 years in the desert, they had no borders, but they were still a nation. And the other one would be the gypsies, apparently don't officially live anywhere, but we still recognize them as their own people. Now you might say that it's not a nation, but they are distinct people. I think I would probably identify a nation as a distinct people. That would be my basic definition, a distinct people. And I would say that probably the most defining characteristic would be their laws. And I think as a theanomist, I would define a nation just most base level, a distinct people that with a given set of laws. And from there, I would, you know, you can probably expand it, but it's interesting that God doesn't give us a definition. People's and ethnosimists, people or nation. And there's no objective definition of what a nationless, someone can say, I know here it is right here. I'm not aware of one in the scriptures. I think that our understanding of a nation changes over time. And the reason I say that is because, you know, back when countries were forming, and we called them countries where there were no countries before we didn't call them countries. But then we started putting down borders and these nations like Norway, you know, suddenly it was a country. You know, if you looked at the Holy Roman Empire, it was a bunch of fiefdoms, a bunch of little hamlets, a bunch of little kingdoms. And then they suddenly just became Germany. And their understanding of a nation changed. And I think our understanding of nationhood and peoples is evolving over time. And I don't try to use my understanding of a nation to tell you what's right and what's wrong and what a nation should be. My focus is primarily in promoting God's law for a distinct people. Right. And I think I follow that logic. I always go to Paul in Acts 1726, when he says, he made from one man every nation, which we know would be ethnos, every ethnos of mankind to live on all the face of the earth having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation. Yes. So for me, it always comes down to a people in a place at a time. That's how I look at a nation from the scriptures. So it's a people in a place at a time. And to be sure, Israel did not have a land, particularly did not have a land when God gave them the law, God's law. And then, but we also, I think we could acknowledge that God was looking as he had promised them a land to establish that law as to be the law of when they arrived there, the law of that land, that boundary of habitation in which they lived. I'm willing to work with anyone's definition of a nation. I really am. It's not so easy. Yeah. It's not something I really argue about. It's not a nation Nazi. It's not a nation Nazi. I'm not. And some people get really, get really uptight, because I mean, some people are like militant about defining an American and defining what a nation is. And I just don't, I fight people when I think they're wrong about something. But if they're like, this is what I believe a nation is, and it makes basic sense, I don't fight them on it. Because the fact is, there are nations right now that exist, that disagree with each other on what a nation is. We don't all agree what a nation is, but they still exist at the same time. And so that's why I don't fight anybody really on the definition of a nation. I do fight people in the definition of American, but I don't really fight people on the definition of a nation. Now I just want to ask what an American is. What's an American according to Luke Zayn? You know, a lot of people really don't like propositional nationhood, but I so far, without getting into a huge discussion with anyone about this, except you know, dialogging on social media, this is basically an untested. But this is what I propose so far is that I believe an American is different from any other nation in that it was propositional. And that it's not just propositional, but I think primarily it is, I do believe an American is anyone who can articulate believes and can articulate in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness within a Christian context. If you do not believe in that, and you don't know what it is, I don't think you're an American. But I think if you do believe in the right to life, and the liberty to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness within a Christian context, meaning that you can explain these things from the Christian philosophy of what life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness means, and not from a pagan philosophy. If you can do that, I think you're an American. And I think that's what made America special was that a lot of people came over here, and they agreed with that, and they lived like that was true. And so if I could give an example, I believe an Indian man who can explain this is very not likely, but I'm just saying, an Indian man who comes over here and can explain and believes in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness within a Christian context, if he can do that, I look at that guy as an American, whereas if I look at somebody who's been here from the, for 20 generations from the Mayflower, and he loves baseball, and he can walk on shoe gum, and he loves rock and roll, and he went to Harvard and all that kind of stuff. And he's a white as a sand on the beach. But as a communist, I will say, you're not an American. You're not, I don't care if you meet all of the cultural indicators, if you don't have the faith that it takes to require to be an American, which I think is set America apart from all the nations, was that it was primarily a faith. If you can, if you tell me, yes, I've been here forever, and I'm an American, I speak language perfectly, my family's been here for generations, but I am a communist, I'd say not, you're not an American. You're not. Given our, given our founding, the actual history from source documents on our founding, not the kind of history that people spew on Twitter, that would be accurate. I feel like that is a very accurate definition of American. I'm very comfortable with that definition of American. How about you? Yeah, we're, we're propositional guys. Okay, all right, a lot of people are, Milton about that, especially the Christian nationals, they don't like that. They want to tie American, Americanism to ethnicity. And they want to, they want to target. You watched that debate, yeah. Okay. We watched that debate, and every subsequent discussion from that debate, and did a podcast on that debate, and every subsequent discussion on that debate. All right, so you know where I'm coming from, great. Yeah, and we said, well, that's stupid. That's stupid, yeah. Yeah. Yes, they try to gatekeep Americanism through, through white people. And I just, I don't agree with that at all. Yeah, I'm always, I always try to point people to the Togfill who, and he wrote on America. Yeah. Let me explain to you this, this French guy came over and he was like, oh, hey, this America is crazy different. Like, you know that their women can walk the streets in the dark and not fear being raped and murdered? It's crazy over here. It's almost like they believe in Christ and what the Bible says. Really is, it's just because they were all white. It's so crazy. It's really cool. It's so crazy. So I'll take this time to pat yourself on the back. Everybody pat yourself on the back. Yeah, we're white, great. I'm told that I should be ashamed and feel a definite guilt because of my whiteness. So anyway, you're a redhead, you're cool now. Oh no, I'm a redhead, I'm actually. I think that's all part of it. I'm a black. No, I play that card all the time. Can you do me a favor? This will be like a real base level question. Can you define law for me? I would say a definition of law would be a command from a higher authority that carries a penalty that applies to, that applies to you, that applies to you, whether you believe in it or not. Wow, that was a good one. I mean, I just, I'm only, I tried to think of questions that actually flowed from things that you and, and I've heard your dad now talk discuss. So I tried to pick, I wanted to make sure I picked questions that you could answer that were in your real house, but also I didn't know exactly what you would say on it. So that was a great definition of law. And so in that, in that we, we can identify that a nation could have laws, but those laws themselves don't have to actually be righteous. Is that right? I mean, yeah, there are unrighteous laws. There are, there are unjust laws, right? So yeah, for a law to exist, it doesn't have to be righteous. It's basically an enforcement, you know, by the magistrate of a moral principle. I don't force them, I'm actually about to go. That, that, okay, that, I think that, I feel like that, that checks out for me. I have no qualms, I don't know where to go. I don't know, I'm trying to go somewhere at all. Oh, I know, I'm trying to get away. You're like, I've already asked questions. I've done talking, man. I'm still holding your hand, you're a lot of, all hail the magic cunch. Oh, magic, all the magic. So, so then law, we can then identify, really, that law is separate from sin. Yes. Okay. So law is separate from sin. Do you, not good, the Bible def, Bible to find sin as lawlessness, which I think is a very interesting definition. Sin is the breaking of God's law. But if we're just talking about small L law, you know, the fact is that there are laws that when you break them, you're not in sin. When, oh, you were going to talk. No, so I think we're, were we going to ask the same question? I don't know, but I wouldn't need to talk. So, but, but you would agree that, or you would, would you say that if you break God's civil law, that would be sin because it's God decreeing it? Yes. And, and even there, there's, there's new wants. Obviously, David broke the commandment. Now, now you said you qualified it was civil law. If I could just use the term, term, generally of God's law, there are 10 times where God's law has been broken. And it was not a sin like David eating a show bread, right? That was not, that was not a sin. I might even use this as an example. Some people would use this as an example. Phineas killing the, Israelite and the, the mobitists who were fornicating. Yeah. That guy so much. We used to have a band, my brother's and we called ourselves Phineas because we like to so much. Wait, you're not the, you're not the middle band Phineas because no. No, no, no, no. Cool level was just about to explode. No, I wish. But we, even that was like you could say, well, he broke God's civil law, right? There's an argument there. I mean, I don't agree with it. People say, look, he broke civil law. It wasn't too worth your witnesses. He didn't stone him. He just killed him with the spear, right? You know, like Bible says no one's to be put to death without a trial. And look, he violated that, right? And so, I mean, I think that's the beauty of God's law. Is it allows for nuance? It allows you to use your common sense, whereas man made law in my opinion forces you to often, often forces you to disregard those things. Yeah, with Phineas, I definitely would say the, the two or three witnesses were the people that were gathered for the correct administration from God of his law that then watched that man take that mobile woman into his tent to fortify with her. So I think the two or three witnesses was actually already on the sin that guy was expressly saying at that moment, don't do this in. And the stone was a spear and yeah, it could have been a stone at its pure actually. Nonetheless, he was blessed for generations because of what he did. When, so when I think of God's civil law, I immediately go to the quintessential civil law that we all will talk about, which I know you guys mentioned on, you've mentioned often. And that would be the civil law of if you had, when you construct your roof, make sure you have a parapet, make sure you have a walled roof. Yeah. I've noticed in America that many of our homes don't have parapets. Would that be us breaking the civil law? No, I mean, I don't think so at all. I mean, notice in that law, there's no penalty for breaking it. There's no office of building inspector in God's law, right? And so for someone to suddenly take the upon themselves and go around looking at everybody's roof and saying, where is your fence? You know, there's no appropriate punishment for somebody who builds a roof and does not put a fence on it. There's no appropriate punishment. You can't find them because there's no victim, right? It's not a capital offense and you can't restore and you can't be beaten for it. Basically, those are the only three options you have in God's law. And so the application of it is almost impossible to enforce by the magistrate. The magistrate cannot enforce this because there's no appropriate penalty to attach to it. There's no way to punish anybody for not doing it. The only punishment comes is when someone gets into an accident and they fall off your roof. And suddenly, if you don't have a fence on there and now the magistrate knows, okay, this was your fault. You're supposed to have a fence up there. But if there's no victim, then there's really no crime. Right, but the penalty is fault. Actually, I mean, if you're on a technical, the penalty for not having a parapet is fault. It's not guilt of the crime. It's faults of the crime. Yes. Right. And again, this is assuming a trial, right? Because I mean, again, there's nuance. What if you've built the roof and you didn't put the fence up yet, but someone was out of their walk in anyway, you know, are you still guilty? You know, everything depends on how, how, you know, the the the locus of God's law is we're loving our neighbor and we're loving God. That's what this is all about, right? That's the that's the philosophy behind the whole thing. And so this allows the judge to look at what even some people would define as the parent breaking of God's law and say, okay, what really happened here? Because he's trying to love his neighbor and he's trying to love God at the same time. So there are certain instances like people falling off roofs while they're building the fence. You know, whose fault is that? You know, so these are all questions that need to be hashed out in a in a courtroom setting with, you know, two or three witnesses, things like that. So you could say you could say, okay, technically, there is a penalty and the penalty is fault. I can get behind that for sure. Okay. Wait, so. So in the auto, there's no building inspectors though. No building inspectors know. All right. Luke's saying for Christian prints. I'm making the I'm making the signs right now. Well, and that that's one of the frustrating things to me is is is is Doug Wilson when he talks about mosques. You know, is the question is, can you have your mosque? Well, the answer is, of course, you can have your mosque. You're anyone. There's no building inspector. Why are we assuming there's a building inspector? What it's not a crime to build a mosque? It's a crime to worship false idols. That's the crime. It's a it's a crime to worship false gods. It's not a crime to build a mosque. You could build a mosque, but as soon as you start using it, that's a crime. So it doesn't out. Let's say it doesn't put the locus on trying to stop the crime from happening in the first place. Now, I don't imagine anyone would be building mosques in a theonic society because that would just be inviting inviting justice and judgment to your establishment. But we're looking at it from the wrong idea for like, are you allowed to have a mosque that assumes a building inspector? And in God's law, there is no such office. The problem with a mosque is it's like introducing a gun in the first act of a play by the second of act. The gun must be used. Yes, the mosque. The mosque. The mosque is a direct implication of worship. It's a church. A church implies worships. So that's the problem. The mosque. There's no building to inspect the mosque. The problem is there should be no mosque. If I said, yes, and it looks like a mosque. My first question is, what's the purpose of this building? And and the problem that you see here again with with having a legislature, because if you assume a legislature, and then you say, the ask the question, are you allowed to have a mosque? Now we need to define a mosque. We need to define it. And how do you define a mosque objectively? And how do you know that they're not going to change whatever you define it as so they can build mosque? And and and you know, you write it down, say, this is a mosque. And then the then the Muslims just change their building structure or whatever it is. And they start building these. And now we have to outlaw that too. You know, I'm saying, and it just never ends. It just never ends. You keep on going and keep on making new new laws and they keep on changing and they keep on adapting. You know, and and the problem is now we're not soon enough. You're going to start living in New Jersey. Yeah. Right. And you know, let allowing God's law to function the way it was meant to be meant to function and not assuming, you know, human paganistic categories of of political jurisprudence into our thinking allows the people to function the way God's law sets us to function without having to worry about. These offices where we we now have to ask all these extra questions and we now have to start punishing people. Eventually, it's where I was happy to start punishing people who aren't doing either. I had a question. Then you talked so eloquently with your smooth voice and I totally forgot my question. Just well, I'll just say that the purpose of letting the Muslims build a mosque only to have them not use it is so that they waste expenditures in time. So that then you can just tear down the mosque and end up bankrupting Islam. That's why you were about that. Yeah. And you know, I mean, I just I don't I don't foresee anyone in a Theonomic society building a mosque. I just don't I don't foresee it. But but again, the focus is, I mean, there is no office of building inspector. There's no one that has the authority by giving them by God to come along and say, you cannot build this structure. There's no there's no such a thing. Are you still thinking about your thing because I could keep going? Oh, go right ahead. All right. So I literally have so many questions, but none of them connected exactly to what we're just so. Do you in your view looking past into history besides obviously the nation of Israel? Do you have another nation as an example that would be or fit into the definition of the army as you've stated it? Like has one existed like there, there have been many that have been close. And I, I, I, I, I'm of the opinion that like even if I, you know, suddenly, if we had our own nation tomorrow and we tried to do God's law, I'm of the opinion. That our understanding of God's law and God's the paradigms that God's law teaches us will improve drastically because I'm still drowning in statism out here. You know, my mind is still affected by statism. My reasoning is still affected by statism. I do think there would be flaws in what we do and what we say that would need reformation later on. I mean, well, I'm separate from and a guy. So I do think that even if we tried to make his faith flows, we could, I do think that, you know, our attempt to faithfulness plus Satan, plus time equals some sort of flaw that Satan can exploit and really, really wreak havoc. I think his ability to wreak havoc would be extremely mitigated as compared to humanist systems. But there would be things that need to be addressed to me that the Israelites, they had seven reformations, right? Obviously, there were things that times they went down and they had to come back up, but they, you know, they had them. So I bring up some examples. John Elliott, I think his name was John Elliott was a missionary to the Indians back in the 1600s. He tried to organize them politically according to Exodus 18. All right, he wrote a whole book about it. The English crown was so mad and so offended. They said to him, you either retract this book or we will not let you be a missionary to the Indians anymore. And he retracted the book, but you can still read it. And it's actually at the end of my book. There's a, there's an excerpt from it. The parliament, I believe, was called the Barreboans parliament from England during the English Civil War, featured many people who were called fifth monarchists. Their eschatology was, was very wack, but some of them did truly believe that the office of legislature should be abolished. And I don't think those people necessarily got the power, but I think some of the fifth monarchists did. And a cromwell came very close, very close. I mean, he was a deuteronomy guy beginning to end, but he still kept on destroying the legislature and then bringing it back. He would get rid of the parliament guys and then bring it back. I think that was probably his flaw until he just said, you know, I'm just going to do it myself. That's probably a very close example of, of a Theanomic Society. Also Alfred the Great was one guy with his dooms. How he's basically plagiarizing Exodus. He came very close. But as far as I know, the best example actually was Old Testament, Israel, during the time of the judges. Not sure. And then so I hear like, I'm not even going to call it modern Christian nationalists. I'll just use current Christian nationalist circles. It almost feels like there is a, like you said, get Christians in positions of power. It seems very top down on a Theanomic view. You know, I'm like, I can't even, we can't even get New Jersey to think about abolishing abortion. We're a little, we're a little ways away from a great Theanomic structure. Do you see the, do you see the, the effort of pursuing Theanomy as a heart change first? Or a political power top down? Oh, I, as I told you before, the, I often point to what the abolitioners are doing. OK. If you can look up what the abolitionists are doing, I've never seen an organization or a movement, if you will. I don't like the word movement, but it's not a lack of a term. I'll use that. I've never seen a movement that's failed upwards so many times. They've not passed one bill. Not one bill has been passed. They've had 0% success in the political realm, but you can't tell me that the conversation is not changing with every new bill that they pass. Oh, excuse me, with every bill that gets shot down, they get more converts to their cause. I've never seen anything like it. They've never succeeded. Not once, but they keep on changing hearts and minds. And if you can look at that and ask the chicken air egg question, what's happening here? Is this a political structure or is this change hearts and minds? Well, for them, I would use them and say, well, I think that's change hearts and minds, right? And they're putting pressure on the political structure. They're putting pressure on the government. The government's not putting pressure on them. So if it was me, I would probably say the conversations and the debates and the arguments, the articles and the books are going to come first before it comes from the top down because I do not think that you're most basic Christian, especially your most basic Christian politician. Even if he had a new nation tomorrow, he wouldn't know. I mean, he'd go back and try to do the Constitution again, because they're the most of us are biblically illiterate. We don't we when I ask people Christians, like tell me about your government, you know, OK, well, by camera legislature, and we have a president, he serves every four years, he can go to terms. And then there's has the Senate, there's has a result representatives. And then there's the judicial branch, and you got the Supreme Court and you got the circuits and all that kind of stuff. So they'd be able to tell me basically, basically, every, every American knows our political structure. And I said, OK, tell me, tell me God's government. What did God set up? You get a blank stare. I don't know. No idea. No idea. Most people would be like, oh, Constitutional Republic, just because that's what we have right now, you know, they think that's what God had back in the day. So I don't think it's going to come from the top down. I do think it is going to come from the bottom up. Gotcha. Do you have any threads to pull on here? Are you ready? You want to keep talking? No, go ahead. I'll put up here at my next one. I didn't. If you have more, I didn't. I was going to I was going to ask you when it comes to the governance of man. When Romans 13 outlines the role of government as wheeling the sword against unrighteousness is Paul. Does Paul have in his mind there the, the, the local magistrates that were ruling under Rome's authority? I think he qualifies it because I think the, you know, I think that every magistrate has the capability to do the right thing and every magistrate has a capability to the wrong thing. Both Paul and Peter, in my opinion, qualified the role of the magistrate. They're supposed to be punishing evil and praising those who do good. And a lot of people, I don't think they don't pick that up. And Paul also says the only time you should fear the magistrate is when it's when you're doing evil. When you're doing evil, when you're doing evil, that's the only time you should be afraid of the magistrate. If you're not doing evil, then why should you be afraid of the magistrate? I do think that we have if, if I, no matter where you are, if you're doing something wrong, according to God's law, and you're being punished by the magistrate, you have a responsibility to submit yourself to the magistrate. You do. I think Roman Sturtyn 13 cheaches that. I do not think that it's a blank check for the magistrate to everything. Basically, the magistrate says you have to do. I don't think that's what he's saying at all. Paul himself, when he was thrown into prison and the police came to grab him and grab him out and say, come out, come out of their Paul and Silas. You know, you know, you're your term is finished or you're free. He said, no, no. I'm not doing that. They have to come here and apologize. Now, most Roman Sturtyn people would be like, oh, what? You know, you, no, you have to obey. They're not asking you to sin. You got to obey them, right? You know, the, the, the, the, the Bible literally says police. The police told them to get out and Paul said, no, okay. That does not fit most people's definition of Roman Sturtyn's submission. So I think Paul himself demonstrates that our status understanding, Roman Sturtyn, is basically you have to listen until they ask you to sin, is absolutely bizarre and crazy. Paul often says, do not submit yourselves again to a yoga slavery. And the argument is, is same with other spheres. We take this argument with consistently with other spheres. Peebers 13 says, you need to submit yourself to your church leaders. Does that mean I have to do it unless they're asking me to sin? If the church leader says, give me your tithe or else I'm going to take your house. I have hebers 13 saying unconditionally, there's no caveats, submit yourself. Roman Sturtyn has caveats, Roman Sturtyn has conditions. Hebers 13 has none. Says, submit yourselves for the discharge of your soul. So if my pastor comes to me and says, give me your, give me your tithe. And if you don't, I get your house. According to our consistent understanding of Roman Sturtyn, I'm sinning unless I submit my tithe and give my tithe to the pastor. Right. And this was the whole argument of the reformation. We would, if we took our wooden interpretation of Roman Sturtyn and we probably, it's the hebers 13 consistently, we would not be able to say no to the Pope. Is he not a God established authority? Is he not in charge of my soul? Well, yeah, he is. That's what he says. He is anyway. If he says it must be the voice of God because there's no authority that exists outside of God. But we had this huge war. We had this huge debate where we told the Pope to go kick rocks. But you know what? We were in the right and he was in the wrong. He still is in the wrong to this day. We don't recognize his authority. But you can't tell me that God didn't establish his authority because I've Roman Sturtyn, every authority is from God. So there's this schizophrenic approach where we hold our pastors to this standard of like, you know, you have a job to do. You have a responsibility and I can see where it begins and where it ends in the scripture. And I don't care what you say about he was 13. I'm not going to isolate that passage. But suddenly when we come to the civil magistrate, we abandoned that hermeneutic and we're like, yeah, basically you have to do whatever he says, as long as not asking this. Which I find extremely inconsistent. I find the church. I find the church structure and it's a governance to feel significantly different from the governance of man in Roman Sturtyn. If I was to try to pull on the biblical threads. In other words, the authority from the authority of a pastor isn't found in the pastor. The authority of the pastor is found in God's word. So the pastor in demanding your tide has changed tide from by the way, I wouldn't say tide anyway. The pastor in demanding your offering to the church, your sacrificial giving to the church has suddenly changed what sacrificial giving is. He's suddenly changed what God has commanded, which we are to give from a generous and charitable heart because all of everything that we have is God's. So he's changed it by demanding it. He's actually failed the church government there in the first place. I've always found the submission to a pastor to be if I'm submitting myself to the leadership in this church, then I will seek to follow the biblical teaching of this church. Which I feel is a little different than I guess it's not I guess you can just go to another nation. So I guess it's a little different than it's not necessarily different. You could just leave your nation and go to another nation. They didn't always have that necessarily necessarily ability before, but we certainly do now. We could all hop on a plane to Hungary if we felt they were doing better at trying to uphold God's standard in practice in their nation. But as far as the church goes, I always the office of the office of pastor, the office of elder of overseer is literally the office of under shepherd a shepherd that works for Christ. Yes. And until someone brings up, you know, there's a Matthew 23, you know, render Caesar, things are Caesar and the gods and things are gods. And a pastor can militarize that passage just like the state has you owe me this. This is for me. This is God's right and I have the authority from God to take it from you by force because look, we've justified the taking of our money by force using render to Caesar what is Caesar's and the pastors once they get a clue, they will do the same thing and say, well, listen, you got to render to God's what has got on God's authority. You got to give it to me right now. And if you don't, I will punish you, right. And so the approach that we have for the magistrate to complete that game, the there's enough biblical warrant with our bad harmonutics to warrant the pastor to punish people who aren't paying ties. It's funny because that's not funny. But one of the one of the passages you often refer to is how Paul uses the law to not muzzle the ox while it's treading green to speak about how the church is to care for their pastor. But you know what most pastors don't like is when I point out to them that all that means is that your church should be helping you eat. Most pastors don't like that when I point that out because we're we're we're we're a bivocational church and by that I don't mean we raise some funds. I mean, we have two jobs as pastors. We are pastors of the church and we also have full time jobs. And we've gotten into discussions with other pastors, particularly pastors who are like, hey, you don't necessarily have a building. Why don't we merge, which always goes well up until they're like, so here's how we distribute funds. And then they start bringing up pastures like that. Well, you know, that doesn't mean you make $80,000 a year. That just means your your flocks should love you enough to make sure you don't go hungry. What would you say, I mean, at the end of that passage, Paul says, this is my question. Paul says, you know, those who preach the gospel should make their living from the gospel. Isn't that just beyond eating though? Well, no, I mean, yes, it is beyond eating. It would be the physical needs. The church was to meet the physical needs of a pastor. So we're talking, when we're talking about that culture, they're talking about the physical needs. You could put into that a parish home. You could put into that transportation. If you wanted to, I think that might be a stretch. That wasn't the call the pastor back then. It was to be a local hyper local focus. You would put into that food a salary food. See, I would disagree. I would disagree with salary. So take it back to your take it back to your Levitical law. Take it back to the Old Testament. Did the priests build their homes when they entered a camp? No. Who built their homes? Other people did. They are. Yeah. So we could put we could put homes in there. And where where did all this is going to be weird, but where we know where the high priest's garments came from. But where did their general garments come from? Where are the garments donations, I think. Yeah. Right. So so we're looking at physical needs provided for there is there was no there was no. In other words, there was no excess inside of the priesthood. If they wanted, if there was to be excess, good luck. By the way, also being a priest in the Old Testament, good luck finding time to make any extra money. Good luck finding time to run a side hustle. Well, there wasn't even time for that. So so I think what we see what we've largely, well, it's because we've corporatized church. It's just what we've done. Yes. What we've done. But anyway, that's new here and there. I believe the first priority in taking care of the needs of your pastor is actually humbly submitting to the word of God that he preaches. That's the first and primary thing a church can do to actually care for the needs of a pastor because a pastor that's a pastor because he's truly called once nothing more than to watch the people he's been given to shepherd flourish in the word. And honestly, like while I can't actually physically live off of that, I'd say what that's spiritually that can spiritually carry me as a pastor forever. I could go off that energy. One person realizing the weight of scripture, the effects of sin and bringing a change can carry me for weeks, bro, like weeks. Excellent. So that's anyway, that's how I see that. But now we've gotten off of the audience. Those are very interesting tangent. I'm sorry. That was definitely a tangent. Great question. By the way, I didn't, I felt like I was being interviewed for a second. They're well done. He's wanted to berate somebody without information for a long time. And you just happen to be the guy. Oh my gosh. Right. So one of the questions that pops up because I know you've done you did a long form show on addressing Joel Webin's view of immigration from a general equity standpoint. Yeah. And although it's so funny because in our political structure, everything that's an issue becomes a, becomes a thing until it's not an issue and then no one thinks about it anymore. So like the fact that the legal immigration isn't really happening right now, no one really cares about it because it's not happening. So now I'm concerned about the price of corn. But when you look at immigration in, in from a non legislative, the anonymous perspective. Is immigration even a good word for the biblical communication of it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The immigrant is just a somebody who desires to move to a different location. But I've always, you can correct me. I'm sure you would be able to correct me. The Bible doesn't necessarily use the word immigrant. No. No. So they were some, I think some translations do. But that we would generally understand that there were, it would be more of a soldier or alien in the land or foreigner. Yeah. Does, does do you ever, this might be, I could read your mind. I'd help you. Does this, but yeah, that'd be a scary place. Don't do it. Stay away. Save yourself. Is there, is there an instance, because I can't, I couldn't think of one, but I figured you might actually have one off hand. Where we see sojourner alien foreigner, which are obviously exclusionary from the, from the nation terms. Are they ever citizen? Are they, are they ever citizen? I think that the definition of a citizen in Old Testament, Israel was somebody who was a part of the assembly. That's what I would call a citizen. You know, the circumcision and, you know, the whole nine yards. That's what I think that their definition of the citizen would be. Yeah. I think I can agree with that. You see that even as the Exodus occurs and you have people that are coming with Israel that, that are actually not inherently of the line of Abraham, as they leave that land. Caleb being one of them. Right. And so we see people that have obviously prositized in the Old Testament. This, this will be it for probably a different, a different tangent, but I actually hard hard, hard core disagree with the modern Jewish take the modern. I wore orthodox Jewish take that the nation of Israel was not to proselytize. I'm like, that's absolutely assing ridiculous. You were supposed to proselytize. You were the light of the world with the only one true law system. Why were you not proselytizing? It's like everybody that proselytized by the way ends up in the line of Christ. Like why didn't you proselytize everyone? What's wrong with you? Anyhow, I'm done. Yes. So, so when it comes to immigration, we see that in the Old Testament, if you were to be a soldier, alien or foreigner in the land, a couple of caveats, I always communicated when I was when I speak of those topics is that in many instances it involved this, we're not talking about people that are inherently simply traversing through. We're talking about people that are actually dwelling in. Yes. When they're dwelling in, it often came with what I would say was much more of an arrangement, so to speak, where there was communication between whatever local city or registry in that nation you were going into, you communicated with. So it wasn't just I showed up and popped up some tents. I'm here now. It was, hey, there's this we're in this field. Is this okay? Are you going to kill us now? Is that is that relatively accurate so far? I don't know as far as communication with the magistrate. You know, a lot of times. I think if like, for example, to use a modern example, if I decided to sell a part of my property to somebody from Zimbabwe and they came over here and lived here and neither of us told or asked the magistrate for a impression of that God's law has not been broken. I think back in that time as well, if you wanted to do business with the sojourner, you didn't really have to ask the magistrate. And if you're selling land or renting land, that's between you and the sojourner and magistrate doesn't really have any say in it. Right. At the same time, if you were in Israel, that was subletting your leasing parcels of your land to a Babylonian, you would, would there not be a compulsion to ensure that that Babylonian wasn't bringing in anything that would violate God's law into the land of Israel? No, there would not be any sort of vetting process because what God's law does, it doesn't, again, it doesn't try to stop something before it happens. God, the magistrate is there to punish those who practice evil. And there would not be any sort of vetting process that would be able to guarantee that this person is completely legit. Any sort of question you could ask them, they can just lie about, they can hide their idols, you know, as far as I know, there was no, there were no checkpoints except for you could argue maybe the city gates, you could argue, there's an argument that that could have been used as a checkpoint. But as far as vetting, there was no vetting process, you were only punished for the public practice of paganism or idolatry, you were not punished if you tried to move into the nation and you were a pagan, and you were an idolater. Idolater is a status and God's law doesn't punish status, God's law punishes action that's provable in court. So in God's system, you're not punished for being an idolater, you're punished for practicing publicly idolatry. And that's one thing that's interesting about God's laws that you're allowed to basically have any faith and operate in God's system with that faith. But as soon as you proselytize or as soon as you become public with your idolatry, that's when you're, the magic trick gets involved. But until then, you know, I obviously you had many people going through Israel who were pagans and many people who were living in Israel who were pagans. You didn't need to be part of the assembly to live there, you didn't need to be a believer to live there. And God's law doesn't require the Sojourner to be a believer to live in the country. So there was no need for a vetting process. But if you came here and you lived here and you started causing trouble, you know, F-A-F-O. So right, what I meant more so was, if you were going to love that person, well, would it not have looked like being, I'm subletting you this land to grow your crops here for whatever terms we described. Yes. If you practice your idol worship here, understand the laws of God apply to his land. Yes, I think that's absolutely loving. I think Israel, I mean, the promise of God was, you know, if you're faithful in these laws, the nations are going to know. And they're going to come to you and say, who has, who's got laws like these and a God's aneurysm like this? They're going to know what the law is about the chapter and de-terronomy by the way that chapter. They're not going to come in there and just be like, oh, I didn't know, right? These laws are so different. And I think there was so radical. I think everybody around them knew what the laws were. I don't think anything was like coming in, like I'm suddenly I'm bound down from my idol in the city street and someone grabs me. You know, every nation at that time had idol idol tree laws. You weren't a lot of worship other people's gods. You know, you had to worship the city God. You had to worship the leader. You know, I mean, all knew how anti- idol tree worked. You know, there was no like, oh, we're just freeing with worship anything. And what you guys have idol tree laws? You know, so that kind of that kind of silliness didn't happen. But I do think that for some reason there was somebody who came in there for whatever reason. And they didn't know. And you said, okay, I perceive that you don't really get it. So I'm going to help you. And this is what Rushney talked about. And this is in my book. So Jesse might have read this. So sorry if I'm repeating myself. But the ghetto was originally a place where people would come from, let's say you had the Polish ghetto. And then you had the Chinese ghetto. And you had all these different ghettos. And the function of the ghetto was to be a sort of a buffer where you could go to the country. And now you're in the country, but you're living among the countrymen of your people. And these people are slowly shifting and becoming more like the people of the nation that they live in. And this was a place for you to learn the new customs in a net of safety where people, you're not dealing with the local Americans. You're dealing with people who came to America that understand you and understand your culture. And they're going to teach you, hey, in America, we don't do it like that. Right? I understand why you're doing it. But we don't do it like that. Just let you know that's illegal. That's messed up. A lot of deprogramming needs to happen. So the ghetto was the deprogramming area for these people coming over so that if they made a mistake and brought over residual logic, residual philosophy, residual law, they could do it. They could do it in the front of the countrymen who understood them and were very lenient and saying, okay, see what's why you did that. But it was the ghetto's were places where you could come over and transition. And once you got the basics, you could get out of there and go live wherever you wanted it. What you weren't forced to go live there, but it was just a smart thing to do is what people is what people did. And basically my wife is Brazilian, you know, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania is basically the ghetto of the Brazilians. Once one Brazilian comes there, they all go there, you know, but what do they do? They form their own churches, they form their communities. And in these communities, they learn how to be American perfectly. No, or the bad people, of course, yes. And a lot of them don't come over here to be good people. I get it. But that was the original purpose. That was assuming that was the original function of the ghetto. That's fascinating. Very fascinating. So you want Lancaster to be a the enemy ghetto. That would be great. I mean, basically did that in Geneva. And you know, Luther, you know, as we say, yeah, I mean, Calvin, Calvin. Yeah, Calvin. Yeah, that's basically what they did. And they were moving refugees and immigrants through there, you know, and they went in there. They learned stuff and then they got out of there, right? I mean, they weren't they didn't stay in there. They got in there. They kind of got an education and then they left. And you know, in regarding like, you know, what if Lancaster became a theanomic ghetto, you know, people wouldn't know, I don't can't think of any other group of people who are not ready for the law of God, then Israel after 400 years of pagan slavery reached. Talk about somebody who was a group of people who were not ready who did not view these things in the paradigms of God's law. They coming out of living in another nation for 400 years, these people were not ready for God's law. We are much more, I mean, look at our legacy and our heritage. I mean, look at these puritans and the framers. I mean, Christianity everywhere steeped in it. We all think like Christians, even the pagans think like Christians, we are much more ready for God's law than I think people think we are. That's just inside. Oh, that's that's that was a great aside. So so Luke saying is driving out towards Phoenixville on a highway. He gets pulled over because his right foot is made a lead man and he is going 82 in a 65 and he gets his speeding ticket. What does Luke say to probably pays it. But Luke, that is obviously an unrighteous law. I mean, it's not a righteous law. Yeah, I pay my taxes and things like that. I first thing we do in the enemy is not replace anyone in the IRS. We remove the IRS completely. Then we can dismantle the rest, but I want that gone first. I hate it. Yeah, so I don't think it's inconsistent to promote God's law, but also basically pay the state to stop to leave you alone. That's basically what I'm doing. I'm giving the money to leave me alone. I don't think it's wrong to when a thief comes up and puts a gun to your head. This is giving your money to give him your money. I don't think that's necessarily wrong because I'm trying to protect my wife. In that sense, there is submission from me, but just because I submit in Romans 13 on some level says you've got to submit to... Let's grant the bad interpretation you've got to submit. Just because I submit doesn't mean I can't change or advocate for the change of my government. I think that they think, well, since you've got to submit, then you just have to basically stay out of politics forever and never amenity. When they tell you to shut up, you've got to shut up. Submission is not the same as perpetuation. Just because if I get robbed every day doesn't mean I don't work to make a society where people don't rob each other anymore. That's not inconsistent. What I'm advocating for is the freedom that God's law brings and the fact that it brings us closer to Christ. It's not inconsistent to every time I get a gun put to my head, which is what's happening because if I resist, I will be shot. It's not inconsistent to pay off the government to leave me alone. All I'm saying is if we got enough Ron Swanson's into Christian Ron Swanson's end of the government, we could just tear it down from the inside out. It's going to be a work of the Holy Spirit. I'm 100%. That's my frustration with Doug Wilson. We finally get somebody who I'm just absolutely one of the most based pastors. If you were to ask me five years ago, who's ear should the president, which pastor should have the president's ear? I'm just so sad that now that Doug Wilson has a president's ear ostensibly, you know, the quote we call the... By proxy, not maybe like, well, he's listening to everything he says and he's in the White House all the time. But I was just sad that Doug Wilson is not saying anything different than your basic politician to the president. It's very sad and very frustrating for me that instead of being a prophet, he's acting like a politician, which Trump can get any politician to say this thing that Doug Wilson is saying. And that was so great about Doug Wilson. He was so enlightening with his perspective and he was so strong in his stance. I just cannot believe at the finish line of his trajectory and he's not crossing the finish line. He's often drinking the cool aid with the rest of the knuckleheads. I'm just very sad about that. If you guys want to hear more about that, listen to the latest episode of Thinking Reform and you can hear way more about that. Luke, I'm terrified because my stream air minutes are about to expire. So I feel like we could be talking for way more hours. But as a final wrap up, if people want to learn more about this, what do they do? Well, how do future of christenum.org? And we have debates up there. We have discussions and podcasts, articles. We have books for sale. Chris and I wrote a book called Redeemed by Justice, which is not a promotion of salvation by works, but it's a phrase from Isaiah, I believe is chapter one. Zion will be redeemed by justice. And it's basically a lot of bullet points of what I'm saying when I'm talking about. And I wrote a book called The Sound Doctrine of Theocracy, which thank you a lot, Jesse, for, you know, throwing some attention to that. I appreciate that. And Chris Hume's book Seven Stated Sins is a really great one. Matt Kennitzer also wrote a book, I think it's called According to the Glorious Gospel, which is nonletchistly a Theomy for the perspective of a pastor. So any, he also has a, he also has a Theononic Catechism as well. He's written. So these, these, and other resources are available there. So how do future of christenum.org for more on that? Awesome. Awesome. And listen on Thank You Reform. Enjoy that. Thank you. Thank you so much. Listen and listen to that for sure. Well, dear Christian, as we like to say at the end of every episode, we hope that you this day would seize the faith.