Death by A Thousand Seatbelts: Luke Saint on the Immigration Debate and the Civil Magistrate

 Welcome to another episode of the Carpefeide 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 episode 241 of the Carpefeide Podcast. How are you tonight Jesse? I'm good, I feel old, that numbers. It's an old number. Thanks, because I'm older than the 40 part of that number and I can tell you it's old. My body. Oh wow you are aren't you? My body hurts so much. You're okay. You're gonna pull through. I've been diagnosed with arthritis and joints now. That's bad. I don't like it. It's because that does sound really old. It does. It does. It's a horrible. I have arthritis in my back. That's that's what it turns out. I thought maybe I just had a muscular issues and doctors like no you have arthritis. It's right here. We you know eventually we could do some nerve of nerve ablation. I don't like how about this. How about no not yet please. Thank you. And so the arthritis was the only problem he found with you. That's crazy. And then they found arthritis in my shoulder and he's like we're definitely gonna do an ultrasound guy that got an injection of steroids in this. And I said I don't want to be old anymore. But enough about you. What enough about me? We were we're gonna do a special guest recap of a debate. We were as you all know good listeners of the Carpefeide Podcast. We were graciously invited to the future of Christendom conference. And there was a very fun. Fun. Maybe fun isn't the right word but there was a debate that happened at the future of Christendom conference on immigration by William Wolfe and one Luke Saint. And we are grace tonight with have to be able to have Luke Saint on because I don't think William Wolfe cared enough. Anyway. It is by the debate to be fair to be fair. I didn't ask him. Yes. That is true. William Wolfe have you had to reach out to William Wolfe's agent to contact Luke. Welcome. Now he's never gonna come on. Luke, welcome to the podcast. How are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me back on guys. We are glad to have you on. We were glad to be invited to your conference. It was a wonderful time. We got to really broaden our understanding of theonomy and it was very enjoyable for us. Yeah. We took, I took, well, I took good notes. You were there for two of the days. I was there for two of the days. I felt like it was a whirlwind and I was sucking down information. It was great the way you did it with the succinct sessions because you were able to put a lot more content out. Then you would maybe necessarily get at a traditional conference where you're having hour plus sessions. Yeah, definitely. I liked it. I liked the format. We've had hour long sessions before where we'd have like, you know, back in the days when we were first starting to do this kind of stuff, we're throwing conferences. We would have sometimes hour, hour and 20 minute long presentations. And, and you know what? I, you know, credits a TikTok. It TikToks figured out there's a lot of relevant material that can be just scrunched down to just a few seconds. And that's all you need. You don't need anything else. You just need that small, very small block. And I think I'd like to think that conferences are starting to do that now. I hope they are where they're just taking something that said in an hour or an hour and 20 and just put it down into 20 minutes and people are much more willing to process that information. And that's what we were trying to do there. It was good. It was in and out. I was, I have to say, Justin, you weren't there for this. But I was curious if they were going to, if they were going to raise the music on on Joel. And to, to my surprise, they were consistent and they definitely had to. That was fun for me. I was like, oh, are they going to do it? Are they going to do it? I'm like watching the time. Like I'm like forgetting what he's talking about. But, you know, the desk reform. And there are guys that are all about equity under the law going to be equitable in their use of the music as the monitor of letting you know you're going over your time. Yeah, but the Patriarchs, they're special, you know, they have a special dispensation. I'm pretty sure Moses is just down. That's right. No partiality. Moses was up there and he went over his time limit. He was getting the music. Yeah, equal opportunity. I did say, man, we should have done, I forget why we didn't have a problem because we didn't record. We should have done a conference recap episode. But that's not this episode. We want to get to actual content. Before we do that, though, Luke, I did want to, I did want to see if you'd be willing to respond to something real quick. If you don't mind, I'm going to play a clip and then just ask a question and just get your gut reaction. Is that okay? Yeah, sure. All right. Let's see here. He made his way to attempt to play a club. No, no, no, it'll work. It'll work. It'll work. Let him cook. But that's illegal for us today. Is it not? If we get attacked, are we allowed to fight back? No, we have to call the police. We've made it illegal to fight back and I came and believe that question was asked. So live react to Luke. Would you have stopped my answer has not changed? We're just curious if you would have. It's just, nope, that I said to you guys later, my real feelings about that I was actually holding back there. You know, when you're talking in a debate about immigration regulation and someone asked the question, hey, Mr. Theanomist, what happens if people just start attacking you? What then smart guy? What are you going to do now? People just pull out shotguns and they start attacking you. And you weren't ready for this because you're a Theanomist and you want open borders. So what are you going to do now? That's why I said, why would you even ask that question? Obviously the answer is when people start if they launch a fifth column into your country and they say three, two, one. Now start attacking what you do is you go get your gun and you fight back. That's what you do. But someone was like, oh, this is going to get him. You know, I maybe it was a friend of mine. I don't know. But it was not one of us. It was not one of us. I would all assure you. It's just like such a stupid question. It's like, you know, what happens if we take away speed limits? People just start killing each other, man. Like what are you doing about that smart guy? You know, and this kind of nonsense. It just it just it pisses me off. Yeah, yeah. We could tell. I'm kidding. Johnny is not asking a fifth column question. And I understand. Okay, let me just say deliver that question. Maybe I'm not added that mad at that person. It depends on the attitude of the person. But maybe I'm not mad at that person. I'm just maybe frustrated with how state of state is made as so stupid that we have to ask these very. The questions like obviously here's what you do. But we've just been driven to a place. Like this goes back to like I talk about like. When when somebody in our community. Like for example, stalks us. We don't know what to do. We're helpless. We don't know what to do. Someone stalking me. I the police. I called the police and the police can't do anything because he hasn't done anything yet. So what I do I'm helpless. My life is hell. I have to stay inside. I have to run around. And if we had just thought about this from the perspective of God's law, maybe he would get some friends and go over and beat the ever living crap out of that guy. Because that's the right thing to do. But since we're so status were like, I'm not allowed to do anything. I'm only allowed to ask the police to do something. And then once they get here, they tell me, well, I'm sorry, we can't do anything either. And that's the status. It's a quote matriol. That's the status hell hole that we live in. People can't think for themselves anymore. We view everything in terms of what can I get the magistrate to do for me rather than going, you know, what's the right thing to do right now with what I have in front of me. And we're just programmed to think, well, given that I'm not allowed to do anything. I'm not allowed to fight back. I'm not allowed to defend myself. I'm not allowed to teach people a lesson like it used to be in the old days. What do you do when people just start attacking you? You know, you're not allowed to fight back. And that has made us so stupid. And if it forces us to not be able to view these things with common sense paradigms. Yeah. No, I understood why you were frustrated. I just thought, I was, I was like, oh, man, this is, this is good. Let's do more questions. Is there a way we could make Luke angry? That's a point of the podcast. It's like the Avengers trying to poke the Hulk. It's like what do you do. Anyway, that was just for fun. And back of my mind, I knew it was going to be that clear. Immediately at the conference, you guys were niggling down. So just to be clear, the premise of the, well, you know what, why don't you instead of me trying to state it, Luke, what was your premise going into the debate that you took the negative position on? My premise was, you know, is the magistrate authorized to punish people for crossing a political national border. And my, I was on the negative position. And my main paradigm that I was trying to address was the road piece and safety is through injustice. And I think that's this whole, this is all framed on this. I think a lot of people who are for the modern state of, you know, immigration regulation process, if you press them far enough, I think you get to a place where they eventually say, yeah, for some people, it's unjust. Some people don't deserve to be, um, deported. Some people don't deserve to be denied the ability to come in. But that's just the price we have to pay to have this program to have this system, you know, and to have peace and security. And I'm trying to argue against that paradigm. Yeah. Um, there was, there was a lot of, I, I think that might be actually the word of the conference is paradigm. There was a lot of, a lot of talk about shifting paradigms. And I know Chris was, Chris was hammering those points a lot too, along with you. Um, yes. Yeah. And I think that that's, that's actually, this immigration discussion is originally what I was seeing online. Why, why we wanted to have you on a couple months ago? Because I'm like, wow, this is really no conservative Christian things that, that we shouldn't have immigration enforcement, right? Like we all love ice. And then I was just, I was just watching your organization through the things. I'm like, man, he seems really consistent. Maybe I should, maybe we should have to talk to this guy. Um, and then, and then we did. And then we went to the conference and I, I learned a lot, learned a lot about, um, you know, the, uh, the NLT position there, the non-legislative theonomy, which, which one do you prefer non-legislative or landcastrian? Honestly, I prefer theonomy. Theonomy? That's, that's, that's what I, that's what I'm just hoping it becomes. I hope it, you know, I don't want it to be a movement. I don't want it to be a school of thought. I just want it to be theonomy. Um, I think that's what it is. We just don't want to be the, the, the people who are so, so arrogant to be like, oh, biblical theonomy. You know, we're, we're, we can't, we can't call it that. Come on, stop. So we, we, we do believe it's, you know, biblical faithful theonomy and we've not seen anyone, you know, demonstrate that we're not being biblical faithful. Um, uh, but yeah, uh, I mean, I, I, I don't mind LT and LT. I mean, whatever phrase you got to use to note so we know we're talking about. I'm just hoping someday it just becomes theonomy. I think that's fair. Did you have a question you wanted to start with, brother? No, I, I actually, I like that question. This one? It's a good one to go from. So one of the things that you guys did dive down on the, on the points, at least, was the view of, the fact that there, if there's no explicit commands that were related to, um, the regulation of immigration, uh, and then relating that to the defense of a nation. Um, so in a passage like in Judges six or seven, where it speaks to the defense against invaders, how do you clarify that difference between an immigrant, right? So an alien or a sojourner and an invader? Um, I mean, uh, it's kind of the, uh, uh, the same difference. I mean, an invader is defined by his actions and not necessarily his intent. Um, an invader is somebody who invades to, who violates your spates to steal, kill, and destroy. That's what invader does. Um, uh, he actually, to, to, to meet the qualifications of invader, you actually have to invade. Um, and you have to be doing stealing, killing, or trying more, you're doing it. Otherwise, you know, invading, right? Um, if, if, uh, you know, if I'm, if I'm, if I'm invited to somebody else's house, and my intent is to steal, you know, something that they have, but then I never do it. Have I invaded? Well, the answer, well, no, no, you haven't, you, you haven't met the criteria of stealing, killing or destroying. Whereas, um, like, let's say I'm not even invited and I go, but I don't do anything, I don't steal or I, I don't kill, I don't destroy, just, I just go and I go out and look, okay, you're just kind of like a guest or something or you're just there. Um, we're, whereas someone who is invited and he goes and let's say he's addicted to drugs and he's, you know, constantly selling other people's stuff so he can buy money for drugs and he starts stealing stuff out of people's drawers. He's an invader. Out of care if he's invited, he's an invader. He's someone who's stealing and killing, and destroying, and a place where he's not supposed to. Um, so, uh, the difference between, um, invader and an immigrant is that an immigrant is coming here just to live and an invader is coming here. To steal and kill and destroy and then he actually partakes in that process. So if we're, I'm going to keep going with the, with the house analogy, um, for a minute, I know it's not quite analogous, necessarily in terms of the anime to a nation versus a household. I feel like the rules are a little bit there. It's not quite apples to oranges, but since you use that analogy, um, if someone, if someone popped over, right, uninvited, right. Um, and they knock on my door and I open the door and I don't want them on my property. Mm hmm. My intent as the homeowner would be get off my property. Why are you even here? I don't want you here. So does that, does that factor in it all? Like so, um, yeah, I guess is that factor in it all? No, um, the, the, the magistrate cannot through a vetting process properly determined whether someone belongs to or not. That there, there's no way to do it. You have to, I mean, the Bible says every charge shall be established in the testimony of two or three witnesses. You can't get that in an interview room with a vetting process. You can't charge somebody with anything because you just have one witness. So, biblical speaking, um, the process begins with guilty until proven innocent, right. You have to prove your innocence. Rushed in, he didn't like, um, lie detector tests because a lie detector tests forces you to prove your innocence. Right. That's what it, that's what it does. Um, you know, you, you, we're going to put you and we're going to test you to make sure you're telling the truth. Well, it's actually your job is to make sure I'm telling the truth. It's your job to prove that I'm lying, right. You're the one who has to prove that I'm guilty. I don't have to prove my innocence. You have to prove I'm guilty. And you can't do that with a vetting process cannot do that. The vetting process is completely irrelevant to whether someone's innocent or guilty. Um, I mean, that's, that's on the, I yield the entire position to them. That's, that's all that's the best case scenario. What's actually happening is people are being turned back through arbitrary standards. You know, you're, you're, I'm not joking you, but you're, you're birth date on your birth certificate and your birth date on your, um, your passport don't line up. You're rejected. You know, I'm saying, um, you know, one of your questions, one of the questions I asked you, um, look at it now. It doesn't make sense to me. You contradicted yourself here on this minor point. You're out. You know, I'm saying these, these, these, uh, that's what's actually going on. It, there's nobody in the vetting room right now going, huh, I've determined you're a bad person. You can't come in here because we're only like good people in here. That's not what's happening. All right. First off, we all know that this, this country is busing in bad people. The politicians want the chaos. They want bad people in here. You saw what happened with the Haitians. They want the people in here. They're the ones bringing the bad people in here. Um, and so a vetting process is not within the purview of the magistrate because it's first of its evaluation of guilty and innocent to prevent guilty. And secondly, um, uh, it's not his responsibility to control the thoroughfare of a nation's borders. That's not his responsibility. This is a relatively new thing. I've had discussion with people this all the time. They act like every since the dawn of time, there have been national border patrol with vetting and green cards and visas and, and questions. But this is a relatively new thing for nations to be doing. This is relatively new and we act like it's always been there. And, uh, it, it's not, it hasn't always been there. We've been fine in this country for a long time. So I'm sorry. I'm, I'm going for a long time there. But just to answer your question, um, the, uh, it can, it can, is the, you know, is the magistrate allowed people off of his quote unquote property because he doesn't know them. The answer is no because first, this isn't, this isn't his property. This isn't the magistrate's house. Uh, he doesn't get the run the nation like a father runs his household. A lot of different roles. The church and the house and the state and the business and the individual. There you are. All spheres of authority with some overlap, but not much. Um, God gives rules and laws for each one. We, it would be just as asked and I for me to say here, here's how my church was run. And that's how the nation should be run because this is how my church is run. Well, just because this is how your church is run doesn't mean the nation should be run that way. And just because this is how you control your family doesn't mean that this is how the nation should be run. The father makes a lot of decisions in the home. And, and you know what? Honestly, Jesse and Justin, I, I, I feel like people who bring up the, the, uh, family analogy, um, are really angling for the nation to be run like the father runs a house. I really do believe that when they're pressed and I, and I've asked people and I've pressed them on this before. And I said, do you think that the magistrate not only has authority to stop who's coming in, but also has the authority to stop who's going out. And the answer is yes, yes, he also has that authority. And I will tell you that. But once you press them on it, the answer is yes, he does have the authority. Um, and I, I, you know, I made a post on Facebook the other day because I tried to word it in such a way that. You know, the, the way that we're looking through this is, is the wrong way. We've looked at it as like a, like a, a father and a mother and a house with children. That's not what's happening. That's not the way to view what's happening in this country. What's more accurate is that there's a warden and there's prisoners. And more prisoners are coming in, except they have more freedoms than the prisoners who have been here longer. That's more like what's going, that's, that's more in line with reality. And by the way, one, you fight back, like the, if these new inmates start attacking you because their hands aren't tied, but yours are. So they start attacking you and they start sealing your stuff and you try to fight back. And the warden comes in, he looks around, he takes a look at what happened. And then he, then he gives the inmate a better cell and then he punishes you for fighting back. That's what's going on. That's the rules and the laws of our nation. It's not a house. It's a prison and more inmates are coming in and they just have more freedoms than the ones who have been here longer. Is there. So when we're having this discussion, one of the things I first feel is like that's a good point of clarity is we're clarifying what in the realm of theonomy and God's law. What is the understanding of of immigration and God's in God's law? That's the discussion we're actually having. When we look at the reality of the fact that our nation isn't, this is just like a point of clarity, not like necessarily a deep question. This is just so the people can understand where we're at. When we're looking at our nation, we're talking about a nation that is currently not operating under God's law. No. So we're having a conversation in many ways to help inform and repair us for the day when we are able to rejoice in a land that is under God's law. That's right. Yes. Yes. And I said this in the debate with William. I said that I don't think mass immigration is good for us because our hands are tied. We can't deal with these immigrants. It's illegal for us to do the right thing. So when you have all these immigrants coming in who don't mind, who do not mind going to prison, who don't mind taking welfare, who don't mind, you know, a lot of things that Americans would mind. You know, if we, if we want to prison, we'd lose our house, we'd lose our job. You know, we'd lose a lot of things. We have a lot to lose if we break the law. They don't have hardly anything to lose if they break, if they break the law. That's why you have these rape gangs. They don't have nothing to lose. Right. So for us, you know, I don't think mass immigration is good for us right now because it doesn't mean that I'm like, okay, let's keep on. Let's keep on, you know, vetting rules. Let's up the vetting process. Let's give the state more power. The reality is immigration is bad for us right now because we are not equipped as a population to deal with immigrants because it's illegal for us to deal with them. The way that God's law gives us a freedom to. So as a result, if you could imagine, like I said before, it's a bunch of inmates are in here. Our hands are tied behind her back and a bunch of new inmates are coming in and their hands are not tied. And it would be something different if none of our hands were tied. Okay, we'd probably be able to deal with these guys. But since our hands are tied behind her back, is it good that more inmates are coming in? Not for us for them. Sure, but not for us. Yeah, and that's the reality that you mentioned in Europe because in Europe, the reality is their culture is not built on rape gangs. And so then you have rape gangs and the SNI man-centered answer is, well, this is part of their culture. This is part of their culture and we have to make room for their culture. And no, it's not okay for you. It's not part of your culture, but it's part of their culture. Now, their culture is here and we have to make room for their culture, which is we have to assimilate to their culture. Kind of retarded. So when you think about, and this is interesting, because when you think about the history of our own nation, outside of the manifest on the ship that you may have taken across the ocean, there wasn't a lot of checks on you coming into our country. If you wanted to pursue work, if you wanted to pursue land, if you wanted to take a job on the railroad, you know, they would literally just send leaflets out in Ireland and you could board a boat and come over. Oh, yep, John Wallace is getting off the boat. He got off the boat. And then you go over the railroad and you say, I'm John Wallace, I want to work. And you're like, okay, we'll put you to work. It really wasn't until we saw large populations coming from the same areas that we actually and instituted things like Ellis Island and started making up this registry of people coming over. Because there was a concern of assimilation. They at least acknowledged back then that there would be a problem if people didn't come into a country uh, in order to assimilate and are rather coming into a country from one location, you know, like when you had all these people coming over from Italy or all these people coming over from Ireland, right? That looks like that has the feel of possible invasion. This is a large people group from one nation coming over. Um, at that point they said we probably need to make sure that we have a list of these people so that we can understand and help them assimilate. And honestly, they want to do assimilate because that's why they were leaving where they are coming from. The difference is now what we see is people coming to a nation not desiring to assimilate, purposefully coming in to take advantage of man-made laws that allow them more freedom. I mean, it's better to be in all American prison than it is to be in, you know, a Syrian refugee camp. It just is. Yeah. Your food is provided for you. Your roof is provided for everything is provided for you and maybe you have a little, you know, homosexual activity. But like at the end of the day, that's not a problem either in the nation in the Quran. So just like in the Syrian camp. Well, it's especially, I don't know if you know about this, but it's especially not a concern for the Pakistanis. I don't know if you guys have seen the the the vets coming back from Pakistan and I mean, I kind of have to look both ways when I say this, but have you heard of Manloff Thursday? I have not. I don't. I'm concerned now that I have a couple of guesses, but yeah, that's that's the culture of a lot of vast, apparently vast swaths of Pakistani men. Interesting. That not interesting. They are it's part of of their culture that the Americans had to tell them, you know, guys, stop stop stop doing that in the barracks. Like stop it. Really? It's you got to you got to stop it. You guys are going way past fraternity here. Like this is well past. Yes. Not that kind of brotherhood. And you know, there's there's a whole culture of pedophilia there as well. So imagine these people coming to this country and you know, having that mindset, you know, just frankly and at risk of sound like Kevin from the office, you know, they would actually love prison. They they actually would every day. Every day. Every day. You would love prison. Yeah, yeah, you would love you would love prison. So you have that aspect too of, yeah, you're right, the American prison is better than even just your basic Pakistan village. And and this is where we have to acknowledge that the drive to to establish the hyper local church that grows so that we can continue to affect the nation and in fact, the nation with righteousness of God. I just wanted to it was just an important starting point for everyone to understand like we're trying to we want to be prepared for the day when God grants us a nation that has been church that has become a nation of church men that want to exact result God's laws. This is what God's law says and we're ready for it now. Um, one of the things that's key and you can probably flesh us out more, but the key aspect in God's economy and God's theonomy is that the nation was governed by God's law and that didn't matter whether you were a citizen, alien or sojourner. And so that is what then would that that would have a large I feel like that would have a large effect on anyone that was going into a nation governed by God's law. Yes. You know, I would say that the righteous were protected by God's law and the wicked were exposed to God's law if that makes sense. Yeah. The righteous, if you acted righteously, you enjoyed the protection of God's law. God's law, prosperous you, God's law, it defends you. You have to, but you have to be righteous. You actually have to do righteous actions. You can even fake acting righteous and it will prosper you. Right. You just have to put on a front really. You didn't actually have to believe in God. You didn't have to actually physically love your neighbor, have warm feelings for your neighbor, anything like that. But as soon as you started acting wickedly, it was, it became dangerous for you. God's law makes acting wicked dangerous. And that's why so many wicked immigrants feel safe when they're coming here because they're safe. Our laws have made it safe to be wicked in this country. They're not exposed to God's law. God's law would set them straight. But since we've passed so many laws and I blame general equity and all that kind of stuff, since we've passed so many laws that we're not doing God's law anymore, they're no longer exposed almost at all to any part or aspect of God's law, which empowers them to be wicked. God's law again makes it dangerous to be wicked. If you are being wicked under God's system, under God's law, you're really taking your life into your hands. You're taking your welfare into your hands. You're taking your reputation into your hands if you act wickedly. But in our system, if you act wickedly, sometimes, you know, sometimes you actually get elected office. Yeah, you do. Too soon. Too soon. Too soon. It's a day after, man. I'm sorry, I guess I was hockin' the time. I'm apologize. No, that's okay. I'm used to it. So I want to, I know some of my friends, therefore probably some of our listeners would probably benefit from, can you explain a little bit like, so you were talking earlier about the different spheres, you know, you have individual family, business, civil magistrate. So like, why, when we're talking about my home and an invader to my home, and I'm allowed to take action against that invader, you know, that's doing me harm. How is that not analogous to a nation? Like, I guess, can you explain biblically how those two things are not analogous? I don't know if I'm saying, I don't know if I'm saying this right. Why does that analogy not hold up? The, first, you know, judging the responsibility of the magistrate through my responsibilities of father is conflating the two spheres. God has given very specific roles. People don't know this, they don't believe it or they don't care. But God has given very specific roles of operation to the magistrate. Here's what you're supposed to do. Here's what you can do. Here's what you can't do. Right? A father is given authority over his own household. He's allowed to make rules. It's his own property, right? He's allowed to make rules that apply to his family. He's given that authority as a father. The state is not given that authority. The state is not someone's. If father and a mother, they're central planners. That's what they are. They run a household through their central planning, through their discussions, and they plan for everybody in there. And they have these plans and they have these rules that everyone has to follow. And they centrally plan the household. That's what a father and mother do. People want the state to be a central planner too. They want the magistrate to do the same thing. And they think that since a father and mother can do it, then the magistrate can do it as well. But that is not the responsibility of the magistrate. Any more than it is the responsibility of your pastor. Nobody is put in charge of centrally planning the nation. God is the one who does that. That's his purview. That's his prerogative. He's the one who guides the nation with his hand. Right? God is the one who does that. The magistrate's not supposed to do that. They're not supposed to sit around and go, okay, what are the problems and how can we fix them? That's not the responsibility. So their responsibility, and again, people don't believe this either. And this was one of the issues I had with William Wolf, who began his opening statement with Romans 13, defining the magistrate as an avenger. And then he goes right from there to basically he's a central planner. And you can't use Romans 13 to make the magistrate be a central planner now, to make the magistrate be a defender, to make the magistrate be a regular. It says he's an avenger. And the magistrate, according to God, is someone who is a reactive agent. He is not a proactive agent. Does it mean he can't be proactive? He just has to be proactive the way that God has told him to be proactive. He cannot pass laws, and this is like this is where we get into my legislative thing. But he's not given authority from God to pass laws to pass his own laws, even if they're based on God's laws, he's not given that authority. He's specifically told not to in the Bible, do it on the four two and do it on the 1232. Do not add to these laws. I'm giving you these laws, don't add it or take away. You know, I'll let you add to them, you know, I'll have to take away from them. So as a result, his responsibility is to not go around looking at people he thinks are dangerous and kick them out of the country. That's not his responsibility. That's not a punishment given in God's law. That's not a responsibility given to the magistrate. His responsibility, as it is defined in Exodus and Deuteronomy, and Romans 13, is he is an Avenger. He makes sure that what has been wronged, that thing that has been wrong, is now righted. That's his responsibility. A lot of people don't know about this, but I want to read to you a passage from Job 29. Job was a magistrate. Most people don't know about this. He was a judge. And I just want to read to you what he was able to accomplish. As a reactionary magistrate, okay? This is someone who went down. He said, I sat my seat in the gates and we're going to learn from Job. What it is I'm talking about. This is a magistrate. It's not planning things in society. He's not looking out and trying to balance the commerce. He's not trying to regulate the commerce. He's not trying to look out and say, who's coming in? Do I know them? Are they allowed in the city? That's none of that's going on. Okay? Verse 7 and vote, Job 29. I was about to perish, came upon me and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness and it clothed me. My justice was like a robe and a turban. I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. I was a father to the needy and I searched out the cause of him. I did not know. I broke the fangs of the unrighteous and made him drop his prey from his teeth. That I thought I shall die in my nest and I shall multiply my days as a sand. Men listened to me and waited and kept sounds from my counsel. After I spoke, they did not speak again and my word dripped upon them. They waited for me as the rain and they opened their mouths as for the spring rain. I smiled on them when they had no confidence and the light of my face, they did not cast down. I chose their way and sat as chief and I lived like a king among his troops, like one who comforts mourners. This is something that he was doing by sitting down in the gates of the city and waiting for cases to be brought to him so that he could judge among his people. This is what he was able to accomplish. Now I don't know about you, but after hearing that list, I'm kind of like, what else does he need to do? I mean, what's he lacking? You hear me say this all the time. He's missing Aristotle's full categories of law. I mean, sorry, that was the quietest. A quietest of four categories of law. Does he need to read the city by Plato and all that kind of stuff and learn about republicanism? What's he missing? But this is a magistrate that was doing exactly what God told him to do and this is what he was able to accomplish through it. And this is what I'm trying to say. This is a magistrate acting in the responsibility that God has given him. This is what he's able to accomplish and this is not a place that is struggling with immigrants coming in and changing the culture. That was great. Did he notes? So it came out a little bit in the debate where you were talking about private property interacting with the border of a nation. So I'm trying to think of, as we're reading that, I'm picturing Job sitting in the gates. I do not know what he looked like. But in my mind, he's white. What's that, what's that song that Christmas song? Oh, some children's. Some children's. Some children's. Some children's. Umand. I'd. Oh, not the almond. I think Joe Jonah and Elisha are the same person in my mind, my mental eye. Job Jonah. Yeah, it's because when on the flannel board, they were the same person. They kept losing characters on the flannel board. So I was like, oh, Moses is Jesus. I get it now. So so I'm picturing him sitting there. I never lost Joseph's. The coat. That was always there. Always a special coat. So I'm picturing Job and the city gates, right? He's adjudicating cases and and a band of surly, surly individuals starts approaching the city. What color are they? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We all know what color they were. Okay. All right. Good. All right, Joel. You did this. I did. I started it. And they're approaching the city. Okay. What happens? Is it citizens that that come to defend? Or like what is the interaction there? There's there's clear intent of of harm, right? We know what an angry mob looks like. Yeah. So I had a whole summer of that in America. Woo. Oh, the summer of love. The summer of love. So like how does how does that look then? Because obviously something has to be done. Like in my mind, I mean, you can you can clarify this. But I feel like you're not saying this. But if you are, please, but like do you let those people in and then once they've done something wrong, then you can then you can push out or like like what is the interaction there? Because I feel like this is kind of like the the real practical point of you see you see bad people or people with bad intent. We like I said, we know what an angry mob looks like. Coming and approaching your city or your town. Yeah. What does God's law maybe it's not the civil registry. What what sphere does God's law interact with that situation? I usually point out that we have this struggle today and people don't realize that we have this this this struggle. You know, we have the right to peaceably assemble. Can you tell me the moment that it becomes unpeaceable? What's the exact moment that a piece of peaceably lawful assembly becomes unpeaceable? You know, I can I can imagine a bunch of rednecks who are mad about gun control getting together and bringing their guns. Why they got to be rednecks Luke? Well, they did emergency, right? There was that gun march in Virginia. There was what 200,000 people there? All armed, nice and low. So the moment it becomes we all know that the moment it becomes unpeaceable is when it starts interacting with other people's property. When it starts becoming detrimental to other people's property. Yes, but what if they look really mad and look like they're about to attack? Do you just sit there and do nothing as a police? You know, that's that's the question we have right now. We have this question right now. My first question when it comes to like what why do we have mobs and why do we have rioting and all the kind of why do we have the like using the the Black Lives Matter riots? Why did they feel like it was safe for them to riot? That's my question. That's my first question. Why did they feel like it's safe? Because rioting is the the language of the unheard Luke. That's what I was told. It's mostly peaceful as well. I heard yes, mostly fiery but mostly peaceful. I'll give you a case study. This is something you can actually look up. If you guys are I mean, I think we're all a little too young to remember the Rodney King riots. I know about them but I had to go back and look. I don't remember them happening. Correct. If you guys are you guys familiar with the Rodney King riots? Yeah, I mean from historic from history. I was a lot of too young like they were happening when I was so young that I didn't know they were happening. Same. Yeah. And I think our parents all knew about them. But what was I mean, I was going on obviously just to recap for those who don't know. But you know, there's a video of the police beating up a Black guy named Rodney King and Los Angeles, this thing especially in Watts. And I was at Oakland. I forget where it was. There was a lot of riding South Central Los Angeles. A lot of riding going on. And what happened was there was the Korean community. Have you heard about the Korean community and what they did? No. You can look this up. There's video of it because news teams went out there and recorded it. But the the Koreans got up on their rooftops and they were carrying Usees. It's really cool because it looks like something out of a Von Dom film. You know, they all got the same that Asian haircut and they had these sunglasses on and they were holding Usees on the top of their businesses. And the worst arm to defend from distance. But go ahead. Yeah. True. But when that ended up happening is none of the riding came to their businesses. None of them. Well, there you go. And they didn't shoot anyone. They just had to make a show. Right. That's all they had to do. They just had to they just had to flex their guns. They just had to flex their muscles if you will. The riding went to places where they felt safe riding. That's where riots go. They go to places where they feel safe. Why is there always a shooter in a gun controlled zone? They go to places where they feel safe. They can be wicked. And my question is why does this mob feel confident enough to do what they're doing? Because they know that no one's allowed to defend themselves. They know that no one's allowed to defend their property. They know that even if you display a gun, you guys remember that? Remember that during the riots? That couple, that rich couple got out of their house and they were like showing their guns and they looked like they just came up yesterday. Right. That was funny. But the riders stayed away. But guess who got lawsuits? Guess who got arrested? Well, they did. Right? Not the riders. They just went off from a long-term area business. Stealing, killing and destroying. But the people who displayed their guns, they're the ones who had to deal with the legal trouble. This also happened last, I think it was last year, and I talked about this on my podcast. But there was a man, I think it was in Los Angeles. A mob was coming towards his house. And all he did was pull out a gun and hold it. And he said, if you come here, you're going to get, you're going to get, you know, don't come over here. I don't think even verbally threatened him that way. It was just he held the gun out and said, don't come over here. He got arrested. And this is what I'm talking about. We're prisoners with our hands tied behind our back. The wicked are given power and authority to be wicked. And we are punished for doing the right thing. The right thing to do is, and I see this before the distance, South Africa, four guys with guns just started firing shotguns into the air and they marched right into a mob. And they couldn't even march right into the mob because the mob had dispersed before they even got there, before they even got close. They just started firing the air and the mob was dispersed in about 30 seconds. Right? A mob and a riot is only going to go where it feels safe, looting. And the problem is our laws. And again, I pointed general equity here. Our laws have made it illegal for us to defend our homes when they're attacked. We can't do it. They technically maybe are home to your person, but you can't defend your business. If someone is riding and you pull out a shotgun, you shoot someone in your business, you're going to want to get sued. Right? But that's the right thing to do to defend your property. And thieves and looters should know that it's not worth my life. I'm not going to risk my life trying to buy, you know, you know, crest white strips from or trying to steal crest white strips from the writing. You know what I'm saying? I'm not going to do that. No, if I do that, I could die. I could lose my life. But the only reason they're riding is because they know they're not going to lose their life. They know they're protected. They know that the law protects them and punishes you if you try to do something about it. In fact, you could argue it's an invitation to do it. Because maybe on the off chance, maybe they would get hurt, breaking your glass. And now maybe they got a lawsuit. Right? And so all of these laws coming together are, you know, through the best intentions, and I get it, have made it illegal for the righteous to be righteous, to protect our homes and our property with lethal force. It's illegal to do that. In the Rodney King riots, the cops went back and I'm not joking. They arrested the Koreans. That's what the cops arrested. The cops arrested the Koreans for displaying guns and protecting their businesses. Well, I mean, a lot of it, a lot of things, a lot of the damage was in the Korean community. Like, there was a huge racial connection to the riots that were going on. Like it wasn't just because Rodney Kin was beaten by cops, you know, it was, there was Korean black African American tensions in the city of Los Angeles as well. The, yes. Yeah, sorry. No, I was, so one of the things that kept... Can I just, can I just circle back to... I was, I was going to. Yeah. Perfect. So one of the things I was thinking as you're talking like, what, what, what, what to do there is, the church itself is called the ecclesia, right? Which means the called out ones. But that was actually a term for the city before it was a term for the church. It was to signify that when there was an approaching force, the ecclesiastical would assemble so they could address how to engage with the approaching force or perhaps a particular community affecting issue. That was affecting the community. You would have the called out ones assemble come together and assemble. And that's the name for, for the church. I think even that, the picking up the, the taking of that vernacular from, from the Greek context to apply to the church, kind of hints at the reality that there is a reason to assemble when trying to meet an opposition. And they sent the need to be the ones that are called out that gather together to address, address these issues head on. Yes. It's something that's a very biblical, it's a very, it's a very biblical position to have. Yes. And their society, they had the watchtower. And that was an alarm system, you know, that was exactly what that was. So that if they saw a force coming that they could assemble and defend themselves, that's perfectly fine that the magistrate should lead in that. The magistrates should be definitely in touch with what's going on in their country. And, but the fact that, you know, you were allowed to assemble and defend your land, does not mean, does that mean that it's somehow to a lot of people means that the magistrate now has to set up national vetting checkpoints and ask dumb questions to people. And I'm saying the two are completely unrelated. So, so in, in this hypothetical, right, I just wanted to kind of get back to what the answer actually is. So you see, sin makes you stupid, right? So even if, so say there is an angry riotous mob, that's approaching your city. Yeah. What, what happens? Like, can you just walk me through like a chain of events that's perfectly, biblically permissible? Yeah. So, let's say there was a riotous, right? The magistrate would, would assemble basically what we would call a posse today, or he would, so this, this happened in the Bible several times in the Old Testament, where Moses would assemble the judges. When the Israelites had yoke to themselves the bail of Pior, you basically had a, had a mob going on in Israel at the time. Moses called all the judges and said, grab a sword, we're going to war. So that's what would happen. You would have the judges of 10, the judges of 50 and judges of 100, which would be a lot of people. They would basically assemble as a force. Not to say these would be the only ones assembled. They, you know, you would have military schools all over the place. Men don't need a reason to train for the military. We train as soon as we're, you know, able to pick up a stick. And again, you know, you would be able to have military schools, unlike in our system and our societies. It's difficult to have a military school. But you would have a force assembled and probably just, I'd say probably a couple of minutes. You would go out to meet that other force. And you would probably, I mean, the way the Bible words it is when you come across something like this. I mean, if they're already looting and destroying, it might be a martial law, just whoever, whoever you, because that's what happened in the Bible, whoever you find committing this uneval act, it's, it's, I'm sorry, it's, it's, it's, go time. And the mat, mat history is absolutely authorized to do that when people have, what is it, what was the phrase, theology? They had, they had made themselves a spectacle in the eyes of the world or something like that. I forget how Exodus had worded it, Moses had worded it. But he, he said, if you find somebody and they're, and they're doing some wrong, you have my 40 to, it's, we're, we're going to war against these people. So you would have the judges assemble all of the judges and they would go to war against that, against that mob. So there's nothing biblically impermissible to setting up watchtowers, having, having the citizenry, man, those things. You're, the main, I guess the main, issue with our current, because you, you, you even spoke and said, you know, putting up, there's nothing biblically impermissible about putting up a wall. The issue is this relentless vetting process. So if we did see, that's, that's, let's, I'm going to expand this out to our country. If we did see a large, militarily armed mob approaching our southern border, that would be a call to action by the civil magistrate to assemble for, for, for, for possible war. Or, or can you, can you barricade them out in any way? I'd say put a helicopter on them. Put a helicopter on them. The, the, the thing about God's law is you're, you're constantly thinking in terms of if I'm brought to trial, can I defend myself? That's what you're thinking about. Is there two or three witnesses? That's, it can, can I give a reasonable excuse for what I'm about to do? Now, if there's a riotous mob, if, if there's a military force assembling on your southern border, there is nothing in the Bible that says, you can't just attack them. Why wait? Just attack them. If, if they are making it obvious that they're about to come in and start invading, that these are not people here that just want to come and live. But this is, you're seeing goose stepping, you know, in Vader force and they got tanks and things like that. Why wait? Just go attack them. And who is going to say you as a nation, oh, you shouldn't have done that? You had no right to attack these people, even though they were getting ready to invade. Now, is, is there different definitions for getting ready to invade? Of course, but there is a time when it becomes obvious. I know what's going to happen here. I've seen this before. I'm not going to wait around for my people to get attacked. For me to preemptively strike these people. And that will send a message to everyone else that if you're going to attack this place, you better not make it obvious. Because if you do, we're going to, we're going to strike first. So it, if someone has a case to be made and say, no, you are not publicly authorized to attack someone that you know is not to attack you. I want to hear it. I definitely want to hear it. But I do think to magistrate or the people of a nation, if they feel they're being threatened to respond, I think they are publicly authorized. Absolutely. Okay. I think that that's, I think that that's actually a really good clarification. Because I think, I think part of the shock from, and I know the specificity in which, the debate took place. But I feel like part of the shock from, I feel like William, because it didn't seem like he knew a ton about what you were going to say from my perspective. I'll just say that as graciously as I can. It made, I think to him, it seemed like you were just going to let everybody in, anybody in, no matter what. But through this discussion, this makes much more rational sense, which is why I was kind of trying to push this point of, you know, I don't think, I, from what I know of God's character, what he's revealed to me, allowing bad people to do me harm does not seem like the thing that he's, that he, that he dies upon. Right. So in other words, if God's law was being enacted, and you had a force of fighting a gem in as the Bible would like to use biblical verbiage, right. We have warriors, right, that are chanting aloakbar, yeah, trying to come into your nation. There's already a problem, right. There's already a problem. They're trying to bring in a Dollar Tree, which God's law is very clear on already. We don't need to have, we don't need to, we don't need to have a long drawn out adjudication process here. We know exactly where the lines are drawn already. They've already drawn them for us. Yes. And this is, and this is probably the difficulty in this discussion. I don't know if this, this resonates with you, Luke, but the difficulty in living in the nation and trying to bear up under Romans 131 and in 1 Peter and in Titus 3, we're, we're to, we're to honor the authority that God has placed over us. But we know, biblically, that authority is given the, is, is given that authority by God to enact righteousness and to punish unrighteousness. That's their, that's their whole game. That's why God has instituted civil authority. And yet, and yet what we, what we see is the civil magistrate enacting unrighteousness. And when that, when that happens, we don't live under an emperor. So we have a different system. We live under a system that in theory was supposed to be governed by the, the consensus of a Christianized nation. That's how it was supposed to be governed. So now we have a responsibility to engage in that process. And, and not actually follow through as Christians, like so, so when I read in 1 Peter, where we know that there is a, a holy nation, right, a royal priesthood, a living temple, and that is the people of God, that is those who are in Christ. And it's harkening back to the Old Testament language right there, as Peter's writing. And if we know that that's a spiritual people, isn't there a, isn't the, the gap that needs to be bridged from the church first into the civil authority? Isn't there a gap? Yeah, like the gap being, my nation isn't a holy nation. The people in the church are the holy nation. The people in Christ are the holy nation. That is to carry forth God's law. Isn't there a gap then in our, in our current physical ethnos between the holy nation of the church and man centered idolatry that needs to be bridged first? Before, before we get God's law, right. I don't know about that, because, you know, the Bible says, you know, the kingdom of God comes in ways that we just, we just can't predict it. And it's like, compare us as the blowing of the wind. You just don't know where it's going to blow next. I can't lay out and say, here's what needs to happen before we, before we get the kingdom of God. There is nobody that could have explained to you that what needed to happen for the reformation to take place was that a professor of theology at Vittinburg needed to nail 95 feces to the door. That's what I could have never could have said that to you. That's what needed to happen. And then they needed to go through the 30 years war and then needed, you know, they needed all these battles and wars to happen. And all these things like, ostensibly, some of them needed to happen, some of them didn't need to happen. You know, a reformation, I don't think is ever planned. I think it's something that happens from faithfulness in small little places. And that's my concern. Sooner or later, God is going to reward the faithfulness of small little people who aren't doing anything grand and that's going to turn into a reformation. That's what I think is going to happen. Does that mean that we need to be mostly Christian before we get God's law? No, I don't think so. I don't think that when I'm not sure I'm willing to say that Israel ever had a majority of believers ever. And if they did, it was probably only in moments, right? Like it was only at these flashpoint moments. We're for a second. Everybody was like, well, yes. I think it's interesting that the number two out of 12 keeps coming up in the Bible. 10 men went to spy on Cain and 10. We're about 12 men went to spy on Cain and 10. We're about and two were good, right? So that describes many times in the Bible where they talk about 10 and two, where you had two sons of Jacob that were given to him from Rebecca that he loved more than the rest. 10 were about and two were good, right? Then he had the 12 spies, 10 were about and two were good. And then you had the splitting of Israel. What did you have? Well, you had 10 were about and two were good, right? So you had Judah and you had Benjamin. And this keeps up coming up. So if you're going to my head, I'd say probably at any point you had one sixth of the population was faithful, right? If I'm going to get to sort of any sort of Harold Camping, numerology, that's as far as I go. But let's just let's just say that it was give us like 20% of the population was was faithful. If they still had 80 years of rest, they still had 40 years of rest. I don't think that was an attribute of the spiritual state of Israel at that time. It might be actually, it might be, but there's not much in the text to say they had this piece because they were righteous. I think it had more to do or just as much to do with their political system as it did with their presence or lack thereof of spiritual fruit. So I don't think that we need a Christian majority. America was not started because there was a Christian majority. America was started in our spiritual powerhouse was from the Puritans and they were a minority over minority over minority over minority. You know, you had the Catholic Church, then you had the Protestants and the split off from that, you had the Puritans and the split off from that, you had the separatists and the split off from that, you had the separatists that came to America. And they're the ones who we credit with starting America more than anybody else. So, you know, I'm not going to say what we need to have, what your Christian or these would be some sort of massive spiritual awakening. Maybe, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I think the Lord can bring about reformation regardless of if there is, if we're mostly Christian first. A reformation with God's law might come because the majority were Christian or it might be, it might start the majority of a nation becoming Christian as a law is a schoolmaster that leads us to Christ. Can I, that was really good. I'm not trying to like blow by the fact that that was, that was very helpful. I'm just looking at our time and I want, I want to be conscious of it. So, I'm going to try to, I'm going to try to ask this question from my understanding of everything that I've tried to soak in from future of Christendom type stuff. So, I guess there is, there is a part of theonomy that feels more, it feels like it looks like general equity, but I don't think that that's, I don't think that that's what it is from your position. So, I'm kind of going away from immigration and the debate actually, just using this podcast for myself. So, like, there is, in adjudicating cases, right, there is an aspect of wisdom there on the part of the judges, right? Yes. There's, and I think, I think even in private conversation, you brought up like, like, Solomon with the, with the two babies, like, you know, in terms of president, it's like, well, you know, every time does this happen, do you, do you bring out a sword? Like, yeah, there's, there's an aspect of wisdom to that in, in applying God's law to adjudicate cases. I can see, I had a friend to ask a question, I can see where that kind of looks almost like general equity-ish. So, like, for instance, when Paul talks about, like, the law about muscling the ox, which I've heard you talk about before. And the context of that is paying pastors, doesn't that seem like a general equity kind of principle? Doesn't that seem like he's kind of pulling a general equity of that passage and applying it to something other than an ox? And how, how would you reconcile the way that that works? Yeah. So, first, I want to say that Paul doesn't get this from muscling the ox. He gets it from several laws. The, the, the, the past of 1 Corinthians 9, he talks about the ox, but he doesn't limit it to the ox. He doesn't say just because the ox, he, he starts off by saying, who serves as soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating him? He eats fruit? Who tends to flock without getting some of the milk? Right? So, he starts there. He doesn't start with the ox. And then he goes into the ox, right? And he also, in verse 13, after he's done with the ox, he says, do you, do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple and those who are at the, at the serve of the altar, share in the sacrificial offering in the same way the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel, right? This is not what, I think a lot of people think is like what's going on with general equity. He's saying that this is not me taking the general equity principle. He's saying this is a commandment from the Lord that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel. He's saying that's a commandment. That's not a general equity principle. A general equity principle is not a commandment. A general equity principle is applying a commandment further beyond. It's original intent and basically making a new law out of this new principle. That's what a general equity thing is. But he's not making a new law. He's saying this is an existing commandment from God already. It's already there. It's already a commandment. So, I don't think it's a good case study for general equity principle unless it was just the ox. But he doesn't talk about just the ox. He talks about several laws and makes this case from several laws and concludes that this is a physical commandment that you can find in the law. So, that's the first thing I want to say. But it's not a comprehensive commandment. I just want to clarify. Yes. And I agree with him. Also, with the, she must be silent, as the law also says. I can't find a law where it says women must be silent, right? Just off the top of my head, I can't think of the law. I think some people have made a connection, but I have not. Right? So, I'm not going to say that, oh, yes, I know exactly what he's talking about here. But apparently to him, it's an extant commandment from that you can find in the law. Secondly, the general equity principle that we're talking about, we do believe that general equity should be used in adjudication. From day one, we've been saying that. There is a place for general equity. The Bible says, like, for example, anyone who steals a man, shall we put the death? And anyone found a possession of that man shall be put the death. A way to conclude that's just talking about men and not children and not women, right? Because it just says men, right? In adjudication, you're always using the general equity principle, but that's for adjudication. It's not for legislation. We literally had this discussion today. I was actually, that's what I was literally talking with Jesse about was like, if the general equity guys could just figure out that it's just the laws that are the problem and realize that general equity does come to bear, like in the judgment, in the adjudication process, they would probably suddenly find a lot of common ground all of a sudden. I think there's, because I, what I don't think is that general equity, general equity, well, I wouldn't say this carefully, I think that many general equity, you say something carefully, that's crazy. Those that hold the general equity, many of them also ardently love God's law holistically. And I say that to say that there are those that are general equity that want to pervert God's law. There are always going to be men that want to pervert God's law. But I think there are many that do love God's law. And if they would just understand that we're talking about the reality that if you use, if you use an axe that has a loose axe head and that axe head causes injury, applies to someone who purposefully doesn't give a crap about their brakes and goes out and drives their car with brakes. A judge now has to adjudicate, well, no, you didn't maintain that thing and it killed someone. That's on you. Like that's your fault. Right. It's the same principle, but it's not done in the making of the law. It's the done in the adjudication of the actions. Now Justin, it's the brakes fault just like it's the guns fault for when people get killed by guns. Yeah, my bad, my bad. One of the things, this was a hopeful clarification. That was a good job. Yes, well done, both of you. This is just a question from my end. YouTube, bud. This is probably not as apical. We've, all right, so we've we've veered off into many directions from my equation. One of the things I was thinking about today, in the institution of the kings, one of the things that isn't inherently adjudicated, obviously isn't provided for in the law is what the kings then taxed and Samuel warns the people that if they're going to choose a king, it is the rejection of God as the theacrat, their God over the nation, and that the king would then enact these laws, these provisions of what he would require the people. Yes. And then similarly, I know that the kings would, which king was a daggone it. It wasn't he said it was one of the kings actually took stock of the immigrant's population, the alien and sojourners in the land and then use and then use them for labor. It was Solomon. Yeah, it was Solomon and use them as labor. He didn't actually take stock. If you remember, he actually used the data from the census, the same as when it's never supposed to have taken. So he used the census to then use them in labor. Is this is that an extension of similarly what we feel in our nation where we have we have men in the place of God in Magistrate and they make these laws that are overreaching and they're going beyond what God had called for them to do and thus it has negative effects on the nation. Oh, yeah, I think so too. I was surprised at William. Did you guys notice when he when he said so and he asked me like, so do you think that like our laws are bad? And I was like, yeah, I do think that our laws are bad. I was shocked that he, you know, I wasn't expecting that. You know, I was ready for a lot of the things but I wasn't ready for him to say like, so do you actually think like our laws are like not good laws? I was like, yeah, 100% like 99% of them. There's a lot of them as we've as we've said. When there's seven million laws, 99% still leaves too many laws. Yeah, I mean, we have people thinking like this going back to the the break situation that if there wasn't a law saying addressing specifically breaks on a car. I guess we'd have to conclude that the magistrate can't rule, right? Because it's not law addressing it, right? That's what people are saying. That's the way they use general equity and the way that they use the legislature. There's got to be a law addressing it. Otherwise, we don't know what to do. I think I know, I think people know when they're wronged and that is when you know, it's always justice is always defined as, it's always in the context of a man between his neighbor, man and his neighbor. And that's the kind of society we're trying to reform towards is when we go to the magistrate, there's nothing standing between me and my neighbor except the law of God so that we're both beholden to it. We're both equal on both in equal understanding under the law, equal standing. And in our system right now, as Justin, as you were saying, there are other laws. I mean, I don't use this word often, but I mean at this time, literally millions of laws that we now have to account for and we have to get through those laws before we can even get to the law of God. And those laws are protecting wicked people and they're punishing righteous people. And as I said before a couple days ago, the death of America is not coming because it's not a death of a thousand cuts. It's a death of a thousand seatbelts. We're regulating ourselves to death in such a way that it's illegal to do the right thing when it comes to these situations causing this harm. And we've done that through over legislation. I just want to say one thing, I want to say this for a while about the debate. You know, there's a lot of things in this debate that we talked about, a lot of things that we brought up and we just didn't have time to flush them out. This debate for us, the future of Christendom was a lot of it was not trying to catch William Wolf in a contradiction. We weren't trying to do that. We weren't trying to be like, we're not trying to use him as like, look at how stupid people are who have this opinion, you know, look at how dumb they are. We're not, we weren't trying to do that. We were trying by the grace of God to initiate a paradigm shift as you were saying earlier, Jesse. These are concepts that take a while to think about and they're concepts that are counter-cultural in such a way that you can't really grasp them after one debate about it, after one debate. You're not going to grasp fully what it is we're saying. And it's unfortunate, but we've made peace with that. So we wanted to use this debate as like a sounding word, as like we need to dump these concepts. We need to plant these seeds so that they will grow in time. We get to give these people something to think about because nobody's saying this and we know what we're saying is biblically faithful and we trust that what we, as long as we're biblically faithful, God will grow those seeds. But that's what a lot of this debate was about was just giving voice to these seeds and planting them so that people can start to think about them and, you know, once they start searching the scriptures with these seeds in mind, we're hoping that the scriptures will feed and water and prosper those seeds to become, you know, plants of the wrong. Yes, and amen. And to be charitable, William Wolf, we didn't reach out to him and we're probably not smart enough for him to come out of our pockets because we're two. God, idiots. You never know, man. You might, maybe you would grace us. You should reach out Jesse. I'm planning on it. I thought we talked about this. We'll give equal time for those that want it. Absolutely. Equal time. Anyone can have our airwaves except for the inhabitants. I do also want to clear for one point that I made when I meant that when I said that Paul, when Paul making this in this the statements wasn't being comprehensive, meaning Paul didn't assume that they were a law, a God, one of God's laws that he must keep for he himself many times did not take, did not gain his living, his, his needs from the gospel, even though he was a person that could clean the gospel. Oh, yeah, he could have, he could have demanded. Correct, but he now, there are many times in which I think I think of just how much time he spent planning and emphasis he did not, and a court, specifically not seeking funds. So I wanted to clarify that and just on one other point, it is the living there is not so that you can drive it Bentley. The living there is to provide, is to meet your needs just to be clear. Anyway, he talked about this last time I was on the line. Yeah, I know. I told you I don't know what time it talks about it a lot. It's like just with education. Oh, man, I love talking about education. Let's talk about education right now. Just get it. One of the, one of the books that I picked up, I was given to, I was given it by one of the girls at the table. So I hope that was okay. I picked, I read through reading by justice. And I think it's first of all, it's small. And I'm a large man, but my time is small. By the way, if they appreciated that, their artwork was awesome at the conference. There's girls made some really awesome stuff. Yeah, that was cool. I played and cops said it was awesome. Anyway, we got our own custom for, I know it was awesome. It was very, very honored. But if you are, if you want to primer, I guess on an introduction onto these concepts, I would say that you and Chris did a really good job in this book laying out theonomy. I just in that book and a couple other books. Again, that I have read that we've mentioned before on the podcast is the sound auction of theography. Theography. Theography. Yeah, the sound, though, and also theography. Thanks, Elvenster. Oh, man. I can't do his voice. I can't do his voice. The sound doctrine of theocracy and seven status sins, which I have started reading twice now. And I've not finished, but that is because my time is small, not because it is not worth reading. You can find those books at future of chrism.org.org just to be clear. So one of the things that I don't think we realize is how steeped in statism we are. And I think that that goes for almost every Christian and something that you guys do really, really well. I'm just going to brag about you guys for a minute or two here, Luke. Something that I will, I will meet you so I don't hear it. I can see his ego inflating for one of the things that you guys do really, really well is, is help expose just how deeply entrenched in statism we are and about how, how little we actually know of God's law. I think it was, well, I know, I know it was in redeemed by justice. I posted it on a Facebook just the hundreds and thousands and millions of laws and edicts and ordinances that we are subject to. And that that God's law is but thousands and the student of God's law could cover that in a semester and and have covered and unders and come to a better understanding of God's law. And so, excuse me. And so when when I think about that, I was like whole, that that just the numbers, the pure, the sheer numbers and the difference between God's law and our current ordinances that we are beholden to in this nation is, is staggering. And no wonder it is, it is a, a freedom giving law from God that would allow people to prosper. So that was one thing that has been awakened in my heart because I still catch myself thinking like a status. I'm like, wait, but what about what about patriotism? What about what about these cool buildings and what about, you kind of ruined the Supreme Court building for me, Justin, I don't think you were there for that talk. I'm like, oh my gosh, is it really the architect that's terrible? You know, so there, there is that. And I, I have said it to your face. And so I'll say it again for our listeners. It has been said that no one hates the government enough. But the people in future of Christendom are probably the closest to hating the government that I have ever, that I've ever seen or heard. So I know you guys took that as a compliment. But thank you so much. And that's that I wish we definitely that on a t-shirt. We, I know a guy that makes that sure. I'll get all of that. That's someone of, in my opinion, and William Wolf was a very gracious person. We're so thankful for him having the guts to not be a keyboard warrior. And that was first one. So we're so thankful for him. But it's some, in my opinion, somewhat of a indictment against him that, that he did not know what I was talking about. He didn't know my reason. He didn't know my logic. You remember the credentials before, when Conrad was introducing him as the debate opponent, he had this thing. He was doing this. He was a center for baptism. I mean, I mean, I like five or six things. Very significant credentials. But he, Luke, Luke, Luke works at UPS and runs future grids in the MRI debates all right. Yeah, yeah, here we go. Okay, go. And this is what I think, and I say this humbly, I think somebody who meditates on the law of God day and night would no understand what I was talking about. Someone who, who follows someone, blesses the man who walks not in the counsel of the end godly, but understands the way of sinners or sits in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of God. And on his law, not his word, on his law, he meditates day and night. Someone who meditates day and night is not going to agree with me on everything. That's not what it's about. But you're going to know where I'm coming from. You're going to go, oh, yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah, I know what you're talking about at least. At least have some idea of grasping where I'm coming from and what my reason my logic is, he was, he had the whole time. He was like, I have no idea what you mean. You know, I, some of the questions I asked him, he had to be like, I'm sorry, I don't even know what you're asking me. And you know, the frustration that I have would would be, if I was to ask William, he, William, can you explain to me how the American government system works? He'd be like, yeah, bam, bam, bam, bam. He would tell me about the Supreme Court and the three branches of government and he would tell me about federal, state, local, he would tell me about, you know, counties and states and, you know, how we got started and by camera legislature and all that kind of stuff, he would go through all the list and tell me how American government system will work. And if I said, hey, William, how did the biblical system work? I don't think he would have had an answer. And that, I think, is most Christians in this country. We learn about our own political system first before we learned about God's political system. And as a result, we judge God's political system through the eyes of our political system. And we find God's political system wanting. We find it confusing. Rather than learning God's political system and judging our political system through it, which is what we should be doing. And that's what we're trying to do at Future Prison. We're trying to teach God's political system and we're trying to get other people to teach God's political system so that we have an objective standard by which to judge our political system. And that's one of the things we're trying to do. And one of the beauties of it for me in thinking critically like this about God's law is when God tells us that, you know, he has said, oh man, what is good, right? And that is to do justice, to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with him. Our system makes it impossible to even know what it would be to do justice. Amen. And God's system does not. God's system is very clear on what it means to do justice. Yes. And you can't, and you can't even, the problem with our system is you can't get to mercy because you can't do mercy. You can't love mercy unless you first do justice, do justly. And so once you do justly, then you can love mercy and be merciful because you know what justice is. But in our system, we don't know what justice is. And it's almost impossible to know given our laws, what justice is. And so we don't get to love mercy because there's no way to do justly. And there is definitely no one walking humbly with God. That third one of my stories is God has been a part of the world. And for those of you that visit future of Christendom.org, one of the joys of this conference was the, was the intense focus on the need for the church to be stronger, families to be stronger, because we know that God's law flourishes first in these places as we live this out and that God's people are, are a place where that, that beauty of God's law in a garden is supposed to grow first. And it spreads infectiously as we do that well. That is literally how acts to goes. That's how the church grows because God's law was flourishing amongst his people. And you know, it took a while to get to, you know, the national level, but it did because it flourishes where it's where God's people are. But yeah, we appreciate it. And we appreciate you coming on the night and talking to us right now and have a good time. Yeah, absolutely. It's my pleasure and we're so thankful to have you guys there. And I hope you guys were able to network and make some good connections while you were there. You know, we're not a very big conference. But it was an honor and privilege to have you guys there. And I'd love to see you guys there every year. Yeah, that'd be fun. Yeah, it's nice because you guys are close. And so everybody that was kind of close to us, we were fairly isolated down here. But we're just mostly just trying to not be mohabidins. So it's kind of tough. No, never. We will never be mohabidins. Never, ever. Maybe killed by mohabidins at one point. That's possible. But at least we can always go to like it. That's right. That's true. Oh, man. But we thank you, Luke, for coming on. I hope we've done enough good enough job of plugging future of christmasme.org. But is there any other areas that you'd like to let people know they can connect with you? Yeah, I host Think Him Reform podcast. But other than that, yeah, that's at future of christmasme.org and our YouTube channel. But that's it. Thank you so much for for plugging us and for the shadows and things like that. We really appreciate that. We try to do that. We want to be good hosts. I'd like to think with friends. That's awesome. Well, this has been the episode of the Carb May Fili podcast. And as we like to encourage you, christians every time we hope you this day would seize the faith.