NXR Podcast - THE INTERVIEW - Does Theonomy Have A Mechanism For Mitigating Immigration? with David Reece
Aired: 2024-11-18
Duration: 01:12:05


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[00:00:42]  Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
[00:00:46]  This is Theology Applied.
[00:00:53]  All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
[00:00:56]  I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
[00:00:58]  In this episode, I'm welcoming back to the show my friend, Pastor David Reese.
[00:01:03]  Mr. David Reese, if we're talking about Armored Republic as a CEO, Pastor, David Reese, if we're talking about Presbyterian Reformed Church that he pastors in the larger Phoenix area in Arizona.
[00:01:15]  And we are continuing the conversation.
[00:01:17]  So, I kind of over promised, under delivered on our last episode.

=== Biblical Reasons to Block Borders (08:39) ===

[00:01:21]  I said, we're going to talk about immigration as a case study.
[00:01:24]  We want to talk about natural law and the theonomic conception and then use a case study to kind of tease out or to demonstrate why we need special revelation.
[00:01:37]  Um, and but then also saying, but there is a natural law conception that is scriptural and working that in, and so trying to demonstrate the principle, the 30,000 foot view principle, uh, with a particular example and using immigration because it's relevant, it's pertinent to our country, our moment in history, um, and fleshing that out.
[00:01:57]  Well, we didn't get to it in the last episode.
[00:01:59]  If you watched that, I encourage you, if you didn't, to go back and check that out.
[00:02:04]  It's it's like 90 minutes, it's a longer episode, but packed with a lot of great principles of epistemology.
[00:02:11]  How do we know what we know?
[00:02:13]  And then God's revelation.
[00:02:14]  How does God speak to us?
[00:02:15]  How do we receive that message?
[00:02:18]  And what's the standard?
[00:02:19]  By what standard?
[00:02:19]  How then should we live?
[00:02:20]  How should the state live?
[00:02:21]  How should families live, the household, the church, all those kinds of things?
[00:02:25]  And so now we want to make sure that we don't miss it again because it would be entirely possible for the two of us to do this.
[00:02:31]  So, to make sure that we don't miss it again, we're going to start right out the gate with immigration and talking about, well, this is what theonomy would say with immigration.
[00:02:40]  I'm going to let Mr. Reese do that.
[00:02:41]  And then I'm going to play the devil's advocate and say, well, this.
[00:02:46]  To me, it seems like where the theonomic conception is absolutely the standard, the minimum standard.
[00:02:53]  But I think there might be room in the realm of prudence to add some additional things because we might still end up with 4 billion people that want to come into the country.
[00:03:03]  So we're going to start with that.
[00:03:05]  He's going to make his arguments.
[00:03:06]  I'm not really going to make arguments so much as I'm going to pose some questions and we'll see how he responds.
[00:03:12]  And then from that, it really begs or raises this larger question, which is, Back to epistemology.
[00:03:19]  How do we know what we know?
[00:03:21]  How does, because if it is just prudence, then if you're not careful, all of a sudden the state can do whatever they want.
[00:03:28]  And we know that that's a problem.
[00:03:30]  So let's open it up with immigration.
[00:03:33]  Right now, it seems as though we have a flood, not just of people coming into the country, but criminals coming in.
[00:03:39]  And not just criminals because they're coming in by committing the crime of coming in illegally.
[00:03:43]  But the recent stats I read, I think it's 13,000 that were previously.
[00:03:49]  Previously found guilty of homicide, murder, and then another certain amount of thousands that were guilty of other criminal charges.
[00:04:00]  It might have been 13,000 total, 6,000 homicide, and 7,000 something else.
[00:04:05]  But the point is, thousands of known criminals, and at least a few thousand who aren't just criminals, but murderers.
[00:04:14]  And we're saying, come on in.
[00:04:16]  That's crazy.
[00:04:18]  How would the Theonomist deal?
[00:04:21]  With such madness as we find it today?
[00:04:24]  Yeah, so the system right now, you know, there are obviously many, many, many problems with it.
[00:04:32]  And when you think about what are the limits of the state in terms of borders, biblically, you can find the idea of defending the borders.
[00:04:43]  And you can also find the idea of the ability to check as people are crossing.
[00:04:49]  One of the things that you can find there is in.
[00:04:52]  Romans 13 verses 1 through 7, you have this idea of paying customs to whom customs are owed.
[00:05:00]  And that idea of customs being basically paying some sort of a fee as you're crossing borders, right?
[00:05:07]  This is this principle of having to pay as you're dealing with the transfer through jurisdictions, which is different from some sort of a protectionist tariff.
[00:05:19]  It's just it's this idea that there's a fee to be able to be processed through because it's an expense.
[00:05:24]  to have to have people on the border.
[00:05:26]  And so the people that are using the transit across the border helping to pay for that.
[00:05:30]  And our own constitution tried to capture that with this idea of customs being used and paying for themselves and how the customs shouldn't be collected anymore once you've reached the covering of expenses.
[00:05:40]  And so you have this sort of like ongoing off-and-on collection of customs for dealing with those who are protecting the border.
[00:05:50]  And so when you're crossing a border, there are basically three main things.
[00:05:55]  That the government's supposed to look for.
[00:05:57]  The first one is Is this actually an invading army?
[00:06:02]  And you might find a large group of military aged men gathering together with some sort of group coherence, questionable as to whether or not it's an invading army.
[00:06:14]  And so you might say, You know, we're not going to accept the claim that this horde of men crossing over together without women or children are here with peaceable and honorable intentions.
[00:06:30]  You might have some sort of a on its face probable cause basis for the rejection of that.
[00:06:37]  So I think prudence comes into the finding of facts.
[00:06:40]  Prudence does not come into the finding of law.
[00:06:43]  The law that the government has to operate under is given to us by God.
[00:06:47]  Prudence comes into the finding of facts.
[00:06:49]  And so what we allow and don't allow is based upon fact determination.
[00:06:53]  And so when we also think about this idea of like, okay, so they're supposed to, there's this looking to see if there's an invasion or not.
[00:07:01]  And then there's also this idea, is a person a fleeing felon?
[00:07:05]  And so you have to have some sort of mechanism for determining, are they fleeing just penalty?
[00:07:10]  And if a person is fleeing and they hide the fact that they're fleeing from punishment, then that is a type of perjury.
[00:07:18]  If a person is fleeing and they say, yeah, I'm fleeing, but I'm fleeing an unjust penalty or an unjust process, that's asylum seeking.
[00:07:27]  And asylum seeking, you're admitting something like, I have been found guilty or I'm being chased by my government.
[00:07:33]  And so there's legitimate basis to hold in detention awaiting a due process like trial.
[00:07:41]  And so when there's a basis for thinking this is an invading army, nope.
[00:07:45]  When there's a basis for thinking it's brigands, you know, organized criminal, you know, force crossing, you could say nope.
[00:07:51]  You know, those are both forms of stopping invasion.
[00:07:54]  When you're looking at the idea of a person fleeing justice and asking for asylum, sorry?
[00:08:01]  A fugitive.
[00:08:02]  Yeah, yeah, a fugitive.
[00:08:03]  You know, and they ask for asylum, you consider that.
[00:08:06]  And then, you know, now in our time, it'd be really easy to have systems, you know, on our borders where we go like, here's this person who's been found guilty of a crime, you know, and so you simply search that and they can say, Well, yeah, I was found guilty of a crime in Mexico, but it was a town that was controlled by, you know, whichever gang.
[00:08:23]  And so it was an unjust system or whatever.
[00:08:24]  Okay, fine.
[00:08:25]  Let's take that into consideration.
[00:08:26]  Let's deal with that.
[00:08:27]  And so we would want to have an asylum system to deal with people like that, to deal with those who are fleeing wicked tyranny or criminal oppression.
[00:08:36]  Would you send away or reject those who are claiming asylum but went through 13 different countries on their way to ours?
[00:08:46]  Like, you know, it's like, well, You were fleeing from whatever Guatemala or what, like, and you went through this country and this country and this, like, why asylum here?
[00:09:00]  Yeah, that's a good question.
[00:09:01]  And you, you know, you might go all those countries in between here and there or tyrannical or whatever.
[00:09:06]  I mean, the question of those things, those are part of the process that you go through, right?
[00:09:11]  I think a due process of law to deal with those borders is a part of how you deal justly with asylum seekers.
[00:09:22]  And then You have the idea of disease, right?
[00:09:27]  And so there's the public safety restraint of disease, and there's the criminal justice issue of fugitives.
[00:09:36]  There's asylum as a thing to be considered for fugitives.
[00:09:40]  And then there's this idea of invading armies, right?
[00:09:43]  Those are the reasons to potentially block persons from crossing borders that I can find in the Bible.
[00:09:52]  Okay.
[00:09:54]  Now, When I deal with those categories and you think about, besides that, let's say you've just got a bunch of people coming in.

=== Criminal Penalties for Rebellion (14:38) ===

[00:10:01]  You've just got a bunch of Baal worshipers that are like, I'm here for the trade, right?
[00:10:07]  And I'm going to the land of opportunity so that I can do work there.
[00:10:11]  And you go like, but you're bringing your Baal worship.
[00:10:16]  So this problem, the Bible has criminal penalties for idolatry.
[00:10:25]  The Bible has criminal penalties for Sabbath breaking.
[00:10:29]  The Bible has criminal penalties for people stirring up rebellion.
[00:10:33]  The Bible has criminal penalties for trying to cause people to break the covenant and to abandon the true God.
[00:10:40]  The Bible has criminal penalties for acts of violence and for certain sexual sins.
[00:10:49]  The Bible has criminal penalties relating to property crimes and relating to false oaths.
[00:10:57]  Especially in terms of public judicature with others.
[00:11:00]  And so those are the things we should be punishing and dealing with.
[00:11:05]  And most of the power that exists should be existing in terms of private property owners.
[00:11:10]  So if a person comes into the land and they want to do work as a pagan, they're going to know the public law here is if they engage in their pagan worship and get caught, penalty.
[00:11:20]  And so I think the boomer cons or whatever are not going to like that.
[00:11:27]  And then a lot of the guys that want a Christian nation are going to be like, well, I don't want.
[00:11:31]  You know, the pagans coming in.
[00:11:33]  It's like, well, you could be a pagan and go into Israel.
[00:11:36]  You weren't allowed to do the paganism, right?
[00:11:39]  We don't, the state is not in charge of your thoughts, it deals with external actions.
[00:11:43]  Right.
[00:11:43]  Flesh out now for the listener, because one other mitigating factor that's certainly theonomic and clear in God's law is that nobody would be getting a cash money handout.
[00:11:55]  Nobody's getting $150,000 towards a down payment on a house in California, which is not, sadly, not hyperbole, but real conversations from Gavin Newsom about immigrants getting $150,000 of state money, taxes taken from other people.
[00:12:16]  To help them buy a house.
[00:12:17]  Meanwhile, we have natural citizens all over the country that can't afford a home because of inflation.
[00:12:26]  So, that would be another thing, right?
[00:12:27]  That you would say that's going to mitigate immigration, there's no free lunch, right?
[00:12:33]  Right.
[00:12:33]  So, a theonomic system, you would not have welfare.
[00:12:37]  The idea of helping people with their immediate needs for their consumption is the role of the charity of private persons and households.
[00:12:48]  and of the church for those in the church and for those who need immediate help, they can receive as a mercy ministry some material goods along with the preaching of the gospel.
[00:12:59]  And if they wanted ongoing help for some period of time, they would need to come under discipleship.
[00:13:04]  And so in the private house, people should be giving in the name of Christ and then they should be discipling people and you could bring them into work and then you should be able to disciple them.
[00:13:15]  Or you could be able to pull people in to be discipled in the church as they're receiving mercy ministry.
[00:13:21]  The state welfare system undermines the power of the witness of Christians and of the church in terms of mercy ministry.
[00:13:29]  And so the welfare system is not mercy ministry.
[00:13:32]  The welfare system is theft, extracting property from people by coercive power and redistributing that wealth and giving it to people at the whims of the ruler.
[00:13:43]  And we know that what Democrats do with that is they seek to buy dependents, right?
[00:13:48]  They enslave people and make them dependent upon the state.
[00:13:51]  And by giving them these things, they become a controlled voting class.
[00:13:56]  And so it's a mechanism of buying votes cheaply.
[00:13:59]  They've determined that people who are not citizens and that can vote illegally are easier to buy and control than it is to win citizens by the prudence of your actions or by good government or anything like that.
[00:14:16]  And so if you're simply trying to abuse power for your own benefits, then an illegal class of persons or a group of dependent persons that are citizens either of those are far easier to deal with than those that are actually governing their own lives well or that are here legally.
[00:14:35]  So if we get rid of the welfare state, that's a big thing.
[00:14:38]  So the issue, I mean, everybody looks at this whole thing and they're just like, well, okay, maybe, la-de-da, but what are you going to do to get there?
[00:14:46]  That's a big part of the problem.
[00:14:47]  And so I think that the solution to that is people have to build things.
[00:14:54]  So the issue of how you get there, I want to say to people, in order to get to a place, we have to know where we're going.
[00:15:02]  And so I want to kind of head off at the past, people saying this is like fairyland stuff we're talking about.
[00:15:09]  But what does God say we should do?
[00:15:12]  That's the thing I'm trying to address.
[00:15:15]  And so if we think about the stuff that God says we should do, we identify that, we now have an objective to pursue, and then we can think about the means to get there.
[00:15:22]  So I can't really address both, but I want to ask people who are considering this to not be focused on the idea of just how do we get there, but we're answering the question of, Is it practical when it gets there?
[00:15:34]  Is theonomy actually a thing that, when it's put into place, would be good and would work?
[00:15:39]  So, if you don't have welfare as a system, you're not attracting people to just take the stolen money, and you're encouraging people to work and to come and find somebody who's willing to pay them.
[00:15:53]  So, they have to offer service and come under the leadership of somebody else.
[00:15:57]  And they're not citizens.
[00:16:00]  They don't get to vote.
[00:16:02]  And so, in order to become a citizen, you have to covenant.
[00:16:05]  to take the national covenant.
[00:16:07]  And what should be in a Christian nation include a swearing to uphold the reformed religion.
[00:16:13]  And so then, if you've got that there, the other thing that the Bible teaches about people who enter the assembly is if you come in to Israel and you join, that you're not able to participate in that congregation of voters.
[00:16:32]  You're not able to be a part of the assembly in terms of the exercise of the vote.
[00:16:36]  Until the third generation, right?
[00:16:38]  So you've got the guy that covenanted, you've got his son being raised in that state, and then you've got the next generation after that, and you're looking at grandchildren.
[00:16:50]  So, therefore, these are people who are almost certainly having spent the whole time being raised in this Christian nation.
[00:16:56]  And so that third generation.
[00:16:58]  And then you can also have states where there's a history where there was a problem where you can say, well, not to the fifth or sixth or tenth generation, right?
[00:17:05]  So that's what I was going to say.
[00:17:07]  I'm so glad you brought that up because that helps me tremendously.
[00:17:12]  If these are people who are coming in, but not given full citizenship until, because if we're going to be theonomic, that's another, I would think, a general equity application of, you know, that all these different nations.
[00:17:27]  And it's ironic a little bit when God is giving out his determination of which nations.
[00:17:32]  So the minimum threshold is three generations.
[00:17:36]  And I take that as like, that's probably in the mind of God, what he's thinking, the length of time that takes for assimilation, like to really be.
[00:17:45]  To really be Israel, to become a part of this nation, a Hebrew.
[00:17:52]  It probably takes three generations.
[00:17:54]  And God is recognizing that to really say, these are my people, and I share their interests and I share their customs and their culture.
[00:18:01]  And most importantly, of course, their religion, their God, that those things take time.
[00:18:07]  And so the people can come in.
[00:18:08]  One, you're not getting a handout, you're coming to work.
[00:18:11]  Two, you have to come in legally.
[00:18:12]  Three, we can check you at the door.
[00:18:14]  Are you a criminal?
[00:18:17]  Is this an invasion?
[00:18:18]  And then, four, even when you come in, you don't, not only do you not get a handout or free money, but you also do not get a vote.
[00:18:29]  That helps tremendously.
[00:18:31]  And then, what I was going to say is it's interesting that Egypt, you know, you think of it's like Egypt killed all the Hebrew boys under two years of age, you know, for I don't know exactly how, but for several years and enslaved the entire nation of Israel for 400 years.
[00:18:52]  And then, after letting them go, ran them down and tried to slaughter them in the wilderness.
[00:18:56]  Like Egypt, you know, and they're pagans worshiping Ra and, you know, sun god and all these different.
[00:19:03]  You would think, like, if there's any variation of time, Egypt's, you know, going to be 10 generations.
[00:19:09]  You know, they're going to be penalized.
[00:19:11]  But they weren't.
[00:19:12]  Egypt, if I'm remembering correctly, Egypt was three generations, the minimum threshold of anybody who's coming into Israel, assimilating with Israel.
[00:19:22]  But it was actually those who were closer to Israel, like brothers.
[00:19:27]  Who had betrayed them when Israel needed them most?
[00:19:33]  That got like the harshest penalties of like 10 generations.
[00:19:37]  Because I forget exactly, it might have been Edom, the Edomites, or I can't remember who it is, but one particular nation that like Israel passed by them at some point, went through their land and asked for, can we go through your land and can you give us provisions?
[00:19:57]  And that's all.
[00:19:58]  It's like Egypt enslaved them for 400 years.
[00:20:01]  And these other guys.
[00:20:02]  Failed to give them lunch, you know, basically.
[00:20:06]  And these guys, 10 generations before you could, you know, it makes me think.
[00:20:10]  Now, again, it's God's law.
[00:20:11]  God is good and perfect and holy and right.
[00:20:14]  But it does, you know, that one, I'll be honest, you know, I don't like, because I'd be scared knowing Americans, I'd be scared that, you know, if everybody in America became theonomic, they'd be like, all right, Great Britain, revolutionary, you know, the war for independence, even though we share so much in common in our heritage, and you actually would.
[00:20:37]  In many ways, assimilate the fastest.
[00:20:41]  You guys, because of the war for independence, you guys, it's going to be 20 generations, you know?
[00:20:47]  And then over here, you know, Somalia, you know, three generations.
[00:20:51]  And I'll be honest, like at a natural level, I'm like, I think Somalia, like, can we at least give it five or six?
[00:21:00]  Because, not because of anything, you know, because of skin pigment or anything like that, but it's, Somalians as a nation and their customs and their culture is not, it's just not compatible.
[00:21:11]  It's not compatible with our heritage, our history, our religion, a lot of these kinds of things.
[00:21:18]  They're like Haitians.
[00:21:19]  Because people, I've had this argument too, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts, but I've had people say, well, Haiti is, you know, a Christian nation.
[00:21:26]  It's like, no, it's not.
[00:21:28]  The problem with Haiti is you've got one island, and half of it is the Dominican, you know, the DR, the Dominican Republic.
[00:21:35]  And it was, for the most part, you know, settled by Protestants.
[00:21:40]  And, you know, it's not first world, but it's developing world.
[00:21:43]  It's, you know, it's a lot more hopeful.
[00:21:45]  And then the other side, and that's all it is one island with just a wall, you know, a border, a line right across the middle.
[00:21:52]  One side, you've got the Dominican Republic settled by Protestant Christians, and there's room for improvement.
[00:22:00]  Don't get me wrong, but it's doing okay.
[00:22:02]  Other side of the fence, and you've got Haiti also settled by Christians, but Papists, Catholics.
[00:22:11]  And Haiti is a hellhole.
[00:22:15]  Like Haiti is, Trump said that once upon a time.
[00:22:17]  He's like, Haiti is a hellhole, and people gave him so much grief.
[00:22:21]  And I'm like, gosh, darn it, he was right.
[00:22:23]  He was also right when he said Russell Moore is a terrible person.
[00:22:26]  You know, like Trump has been right about a few things.
[00:22:28]  And so, but here's the thing that when the Catholics settled, and in the little bit of study I've done about it, when the Catholics settled Haiti, they did a syncretism of the Haitian voodoo and literal worship of demons within Catholicism.
[00:22:44]  So they were like, hey, we just, We would like for you to have Catholic voodoo.
[00:22:50]  Could you have papal worship of demons instead of?
[00:22:55]  And that was the difference between the Protestants over here with the DR and the Catholics over here with Haiti.
[00:23:01]  And so, anyways, all that being said, my point is people give us, you know, I'll make the argument and say, hey, you know what?
[00:23:07]  We really don't need more Haitians.
[00:23:08]  In fact, I think we need less.
[00:23:10]  We have like 590,000 Haitians in a very short window, just a few years, that have come over here and destroyed entire towns like Springfield, Ohio.
[00:23:20]  We need, I think, to deport a lot of Haitians.
[00:23:24]  I would argue 80, 90% of the ones who have come in the past few years need to be deported.
[00:23:29]  That said, people would push back and say, but Joel, they're Christians.
[00:23:33]  Is this because Joel, are you making that argument because they're black?
[00:23:38]  No, I'm making the argument because they're not compatible with America and they're not Christians.
[00:23:44]  And people say, well, Haiti is 97% Christian.
[00:23:48]  Okay, I can read statistics too, but going beyond that, what kind of Christian?
[00:23:52]  We're talking about a voodoo, cannibalistic, syncretized Christian.
[00:23:57]  Roman Christian.
[00:23:58]  Yeah, they're 97% that Christian.
[00:24:03]  That's not Christian.
[00:24:04]  That's not Christian.
[00:24:06]  So, what do you think about all that?
[00:24:07]  So, I would say Haiti needs to wait.
[00:24:09]  England, yeah, three generations you're in.
[00:24:12]  I'd be able to argue one or two, but I am caught up with because the word of God is true.
[00:24:19]  But it seems like God's like, hey, the guys who killed your babies and enslaved you for 400 years, three generations, and the guys who are your closest kin, like your cousins, makes me think of the Brits.
[00:24:31]  But they didn't give you lunch that one time, you know, or they tax your tea.
[00:24:35]  Those guys, 10 generations.
[00:24:37]  And I'm like, oh, no.
[00:24:38]  What do you think about that?

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=== Mixing Slaves and Covenants (15:04) ===

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[00:27:52]  First, regarding papal syncretism, like all papist stuff is syncretism.
[00:27:56]  And you said, like, voodoo cannibalistic Roman Catholicism.
[00:28:00]  That's just Roman Catholicism because they have magical nonsense, and then they believe they're literally eating the flesh of Jesus in a physical way.
[00:28:09]  So, anyway, I wanted to make sure to get in my phone number.
[00:28:12]  There's my Puritan friend, David Reese.
[00:28:15]  You are truly a Puritan.
[00:28:16]  Go ahead.
[00:28:19]  So that being the case, what I want to say about the rest of it is, yeah, it's interesting.
[00:28:26]  You look at Egypt.
[00:28:26]  What do you have in the formation of the state of Israel?
[00:28:30]  You have a mixed multitude leaving Egypt.
[00:28:33]  So a big part of their constitutional body, right, when they form, when the constitution of Israel is given at Mount Sinai, the covenanted body that forms that state is actually largely made up of ethnic Egyptians.
[00:28:51]  And so you have this mixed multitude of people who have mixed ethnic marriages.
[00:28:56]  You have Egyptians themselves that have covenanted and come in, and you've got those that are ethnically related back to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob.
[00:29:07]  Okay, you've got to help me with that.
[00:29:09]  So, where did ethnic Egyptians?
[00:29:11]  I mean, we're talking Hebrews were slaves.
[00:29:15]  It doesn't seem like any Egyptian guys are going to be like, man, I'd love to marry into that family.
[00:29:21]  Like, where do the ethnic Egyptians marrying into Israel come from?
[00:29:25]  So, first of all, during the 400 year period, a significant portion of it, Israel is raised up as a prominent position.
[00:29:33]  Goshen is a nice piece of land.
[00:29:34]  That's true.
[00:29:35]  That's real estate.
[00:29:35]  Okay.
[00:29:36]  They're initially in a position of prominence.
[00:29:39]  That's true.
[00:29:40]  You have Joseph as the prime minister.
[00:29:42]  And once there's a transition of power where there's a dynastic replacement that occurs, you have a pharaoh that does not remember Joseph, right?
[00:29:50]  So, you have this like.
[00:29:52]  You have this sort of like loss of power of the Hebrews as an ethnic group there.
[00:29:59]  And as the Yahwehists, the pre Christ Christ Christians being there, they're in a position of prominence, and then they're trampled underfoot.
[00:30:11]  And so there's some portion of time where they've been mixing this occurring.
[00:30:15]  Then you have.
[00:30:16]  Real quick, one thing so that's super helpful, but just to push back a little bit more we know Joseph, that he took an Egyptian wife, we know that.
[00:30:25]  And so his sons who receive a blessing from their grandfather Jacob, Ephraim and Manasseh, they're 50% DNA of Jacob and 50% Egyptian.
[00:30:39]  So we know that.
[00:30:42]  But do you think that the other brothers, because Joseph, there are some extraordinary circumstances there.
[00:30:49]  And one of those circumstances being that, yes, he was viceroy of all of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh.
[00:30:55]  But he's still a slave in the sense that he's not a free man.
[00:30:58]  He can't.
[00:30:58]  So you can be a slave and have immense power, but he's not free to just go back to his father.
[00:31:04]  He's like, he's in Egypt, he's under Pharaoh's command.
[00:31:08]  He's the chief slave in all of Egypt, but he's still a slave, kind of like the Roman Empire, that there were slaves who owned slaves, you know, and slaves could be very powerful people, and you could have free men who were, you know, legally free, but were poor, you know, and slaves that are richer than free men.
[00:31:21]  And so I think, you know, my persuasion is that dynamic's going on.
[00:31:25]  And so with that, I'm under the persuasion that Joseph may not have had a say in his marriage, that he was, you know, you're going to marry this woman and have children by her.
[00:31:37]  But with Judah, you know, and Simeon and Benjamin, Would they have instructed their children to marry Egyptians?
[00:31:48]  That's cool.
[00:31:51]  I think the law of God would have required them to marry believers, right?
[00:31:55]  I think there would have been people who disobeyed.
[00:31:57]  I think that just like, I'm a Sethite view guy, right?
[00:32:01]  So I think that the men were lusting after women of the world and then married them and then they had ungodly children.
[00:32:08]  I think that would have happened in Egypt too.
[00:32:10]  I also think that there would have been some Egyptian women that converted.
[00:32:13]  I also think there would have been some Egyptian men that converted, and then there would have been Israelite women that married them as they're a part of the church.
[00:32:21]  And then I think there also would have been, in the system of slavery during the last portions of the time in Egypt, there would have been women who were concubines or forced to be married, that kind of thing.
[00:32:32]  And you would have had a number of types of examples of abuse in that way.
[00:32:36]  I also think during the process of the plagues, you have a significant portion of the Egyptian population converting.
[00:32:45]  And joining the Hebrews.
[00:32:47]  And so that lines up with the general population starting to favor them and giving them gold and silver as a part of the plunder.
[00:32:56]  Okay.
[00:32:57]  So in that way, they plundered the Egyptians.
[00:32:59]  And you're saying it wasn't that they didn't plunder the Egyptians by theft, they didn't go into all the Egyptians' house and take their stuff, but the Egyptians actually resourced them out of their own personal treasury to make this journey.
[00:33:13]  And so I think a part of that resourcing could also, by the way, be the giving over of other slaves.
[00:33:19]  And so you have this process of the giving of lots of stuff.
[00:33:22]  You have the process of people converting.
[00:33:25]  You have the process of all that stuff.
[00:33:27]  So, I mean, we're talking 400 years, a huge portion of the nation leaving.
[00:33:34]  So this, a huge body of Mizraim, of Egypt, is departing out, and it's a mixed multitude.
[00:33:44]  And so the other thing is Egypt would have been relatively metropolitan.
[00:33:49]  Compared to other places, because of the worldwide famine or the at least the Mediterranean zone famine that was widely occurring.
[00:34:00]  And so, you would have had a lot of people coming into there.
[00:34:03]  And so, you'd have this interesting kind of mix there as well.
[00:34:06]  And then, they were a power center that would have attracted trade, attracted people.
[00:34:11]  And so, you would have had a lot of stuff going on with just sort of a.
[00:34:14]  And it's at the, you know, it's at a cross point across, you know, three continents.
[00:34:19]  And so, you have this sort of.
[00:34:21]  Massive international state thing.
[00:34:24]  And Egypt is interesting in how it didn't go and conquer huge amounts of land as compared to other empires.
[00:34:33]  It tended to make vassals win wars and disappear.
[00:34:37]  And so it sort of, as opposed to trying to expand, it tried to retain its strength and to create buffer states.
[00:34:44]  And so it kind of kept coming back around the Nile for its center of power.
[00:34:47]  So just a lot of weird, interesting things there that kind of make it somewhat similar in a lot of ways to the United States.
[00:34:54]  In terms of the way we exercise power and kind of come back in a lot of ways.
[00:34:57]  But anyway, so all I have to say, yeah, I believe that the mixed multitude is mixed ethnically.
[00:35:04]  And at the same time, it's predominantly people who are genetically coming from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.
[00:35:13]  And so you have these peoples that are attached on, hangers on, that are mixed ethnicity, all that kind of stuff coming in.
[00:35:19]  And so that group that leaves out, they're the ones that covenant, and that's the assembly that forms the electorate, the heads of house would have been the voters, the men of 20 and above that are heads of house.
[00:35:31]  Would have been the voters in that body from the beginning.
[00:35:34]  And so Egypt, like Britain for us, would have been sort of the state of origin in terms of their Declaration of Independence coming out.
[00:35:43]  And so I think the mixture of history, there's an interesting way race is sort of predominant there.
[00:35:48]  Even though there was abuse, there's also this recognition of the historical reality.
[00:35:53]  And so I think our historical connection to Britain is something that would make us that we would need to have a recognition that the Commonwealth countries are places that we would need to think of.
[00:36:04]  As sort of having a similar connection to us as Egypt, even looking at failures in the past or whatever, wanting to have that.
[00:36:10]  So I think the shared connectivity is important.
[00:36:14]  So then the history of Israel as a state interacting with other people is very short.
[00:36:19]  Apart from its long term connection to Egypt, its interactions with other people, you have a very short list of interactions from its initiation as a covenanted body.
[00:36:29]  I see.
[00:36:29]  I like that.
[00:36:30]  Okay.
[00:36:31]  Yeah, because that's super helpful.
[00:36:33]  That was good.
[00:36:34]  Because what I was struggling with is like, man, You know, if the minimum threshold is three generations for full assimilation and full voting rights and citizenship, but then there's even further penalties.
[00:36:49]  But the further penalties are for the guys who seem to have the least in common and have oppressed the most, like Egypt, or I'm sorry, like the 10 generations, the furthest penalties are the guys who have the most in common, your cousins who didn't give you lunch that one time, and then the guys who, Have the minimum threshold, or guys who actually did oppress you, like Egypt, and have less in common.
[00:37:13]  Then I was like, oh man, I'm afraid my theonomic spidey sense begins to tingle because I'm thinking, like, oh, the general equity of that, I'm not going to like it.
[00:37:22]  It's going to be, you know, three generations for Haiti, you know, and 20 for England.
[00:37:27]  But the way that you just conceptualized and espoused that idea is helpful in seeing, oh, actually, Great Britain might be more likened to our Egypt.
[00:37:42]  Then, so, anyways, that's really helpful and intriguing.
[00:37:47]  One of the things that also I think is interesting in the New Covenant era, when you think about Israel was the national church, and there's the provincial or parochial or localized nature of the church in the Old Covenant, is such that the international affairs of Israel were kind of stuck in this isolation place.
[00:38:06]  When you think about the dominance that occurs during the Davidic reign, and then ultimately in the Solomonic reign, where you have a number of nations that become covenantally subject to Israel.
[00:38:19]  And we're told that Solomon ruled from the river to the river.
[00:38:23]  He ruled basically collecting tribute in all the zone that was promised to Abraham from the Nile to the Euphrates.
[00:38:30]  And so he had subjugated that whole zone largely through the work of his father.
[00:38:35]  I mean, Solomon, like Alexander the Great, inherits this military power from Philip.
[00:38:41]  Solomon inherits that from David.
[00:38:43]  And so during that period of time where there's this sort of hegemony of Israel, you have covenanted states.
[00:38:50]  Some of them are treated in ways that are interesting, like Tyre.
[00:38:55]  There's this obvious mutual relationship of trust.
[00:38:59]  There's an adoption of the true religion in various places that are subjected by Israel.
[00:39:05]  And that sort of gives us some of a hint of where that can go.
[00:39:08]  But the relationship of nations can become as close as the relationship of the tribes.
[00:39:13]  The tribes are confederated together.
[00:39:15]  They have a federated government where the tribes act sort of like, in the United States, we think about states.
[00:39:20]  Our states are like our countries.
[00:39:22]  Our states are as powerful and big as.
[00:39:25]  As countries.
[00:39:27]  And so that federating process, as we covenant, you can have covenanting that extends out who is there, right?
[00:39:39]  So if you had a nation become reformed and it has a great covenant and you have another nation that's reformed, has a great covenant, and there's this interaction, it's possible to covenant together to share in a, and now you have a federal union.
[00:39:54]  And so you can eliminate the differentiation over time.
[00:39:59]  Of things for citizenship, or sort of like how you can move from one state to the other in the Union, we're recognizing the citizenship of each other and not requiring that.
[00:40:07]  But if you had this Christian covenant that's overriding for the nation, then you would make it so that whether you're in this sovereign piece or that sovereign piece, you're united in such a civil covenant that makes it so that the voting populations can transfer without loss.
[00:40:25]  But you're creating a zone that's outside of that covenanted body.
[00:40:29]  And so the Christian process of seeing Christ acknowledged as the king over all of the nations, you have Christian individuals governing themselves well, governing their households well.
[00:40:41]  Then they are seeking to see good churches in place, to have those churches be united and to see an established church.
[00:40:48]  And then your goal is to have the state acknowledge through a civil covenant what Christ's rule in the civil sphere.
[00:40:55]  And you want churches across borders to acknowledge each other and potentially acknowledge.
[00:41:00]  Help to start to build the bridges of fraternity across those borders.
[00:41:03]  And as those two nations are both solidly Christian, there's opportunity to potentially share in a federal union.
[00:41:09]  And so there's this way in which peace and unity spreads.
[00:41:12]  And you think about it, like the United Nations has a humanistic view of this, right?
[00:41:15]  But Isaiah talks about the beating of swords into plowshares and of spears into pruning hooks.
[00:41:23]  And as conservatives, we kind of laugh, you know?
[00:41:26]  And it's like, well, look, I make body armor for a living, so I'm not, you know, I'm not like trying to pretend like I don't believe in human evil.
[00:41:32]  But the point is, When Christian influence reaches a certain level in a state, you spend less on security and policing, and you spend more on productivity as a percentage of what you're doing.
[00:41:43]  It's one of the blessings of peace.
[00:41:45]  And with nations, as Christ's reign extends in the post-millennial hope to the nations, and more and more of them are Christian, there's less and less warfare there.
[00:41:56]  And the international relations are less dominated by warfare and more dominated by peace and commerce and confederating.
[00:42:06]  And so those types of activities is what we want to work toward.
[00:42:10]  And so there are times when you have to tribalize and separate off because there's this grand humanistic empire that needs to be divided from.
[00:42:19]  But the hope is to then consolidate, build, and then grow back out.
[00:42:23]  And that peaceable way of growing back out is by the spread of the gospel.
[00:42:26]  And there's the old missionary trope, right, which is you use commerce, which helps to bring Christianity in, which helps to build civilization.
[00:42:35]  And that allows for that building of Christian civilization.

=== Peace Over Warfare in Nations (03:25) ===

[00:42:39]  And Christendom, so where you're able to acknowledge each other and work with each other.
[00:42:42]  So, that process is a constructive process.
[00:42:46]  And there's also the process where wicked nations nearby righteous nations sometimes the wicked nations start an unjust war, and the righteous nation gets to expand by righteous conquest.
[00:42:59]  And so, as we think about this process of international interaction and the way that theonomy allows for a positive program of building, it's the power of the gospel, but also the proper use of the state and the waging of just warfare.
[00:43:13]  So, I hope that gives a picture of sort of the.
[00:43:16]  The way international interactions would be conceptualized.
[00:43:22]  All right, that's it, guys.
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[00:45:49]  That's fascinating.
[00:45:50]  I really appreciate it.
[00:45:51]  So, um, You know, I still struggle with just theoretically before all the other nations catch up.

=== Free Coffee for Listeners (15:19) ===

[00:46:04]  And that isn't, you know, we're currently on decline.
[00:46:07]  So we'll see what the Lord and his providence does.
[00:46:09]  But let's say that America repents, we get back on track, and we're just, you know, thriving as a nation.
[00:46:16]  Our civilization, all these different things, the metrics keep, you know, pushing back the way they used to, you know, life expectancy longer.
[00:46:24]  And personal individual wealth and poverty is being further eradicated, and all these kinds of things.
[00:46:31]  If that's the case, and in a hypothetical simulation here, let's say the rest of the world is just in dire straits and lots of war, invasions, thugs, cartels, all these kinds of things.
[00:46:48]  And we have this theonomic nation.
[00:46:50]  If you come here, you got to work.
[00:46:53]  You got to come here legally.
[00:46:55]  You don't get to pagan.
[00:46:56]  You can be a pagan, but you don't get to do paganism.
[00:46:59]  And you certainly will not be a citizen for a minimum of three generations.
[00:47:04]  And at that point, you'd have to be a Christian in covenant with us.
[00:47:07]  A voting citizen.
[00:47:08]  What's up?
[00:47:09]  Voting citizen.
[00:47:10]  Gotcha.
[00:47:11]  You take the covenant, you become a citizen, but you're not a voting citizen until the third generation.
[00:47:15]  Until the third generation.
[00:47:16]  Yep.
[00:47:16]  So all those things.
[00:47:19]  But if the rest of the world is torn by war and crime and all these different things and poverty, what if 4 billion people, half of the world, what if 4 billion people, what if the whole nation of India?
[00:47:37]  Right.
[00:47:37]  One point, I think it's 1.2, 1.3 billion people.
[00:47:40]  What if they all say, all right, we will not publicly worship any cows?
[00:47:46]  We're not going to eat them.
[00:47:47]  Still not going to eat them, but we won't worship them.
[00:47:52]  And we will not do these pagan things.
[00:47:54]  And we're going to come.
[00:47:55]  We're not criminals.
[00:47:57]  We're going to come and we're ready to work.
[00:48:02]  We will answer all the phones.
[00:48:05]  There will be thick accents for every phone service that you use.
[00:48:09]  But You've already had them because you shipped all your jobs to us, anyways.
[00:48:12]  Now we'll just be in your country doing the jobs instead of doing your jobs over there.
[00:48:16]  So we're coming 1.3 billion.
[00:48:20]  I just feel like practically the nation is going to collapse.
[00:48:24]  America, I just, I like how, how is it, how's it going to work?
[00:48:31]  It's like we're coming for a job, but, but we don't have that many jobs.
[00:48:34]  You have to, jobs have to be created.
[00:48:37]  It, it takes time to, to actually expand and create industry.
[00:48:41]  And, and honestly, like, I, I'm not, Trying to be facetious and asking this, you're better at business than I am.
[00:48:48]  So I'm genuinely asking, you've created jobs.
[00:48:50]  You've actually been a guy, a pastor who is theologically sound, but also has some serious real world experience that's worthy of respect.
[00:49:01]  You've created more jobs than I have.
[00:49:03]  I created a job for Nathan over there.
[00:49:06]  I did that by the grace of God.
[00:49:07]  God did it.
[00:49:07]  You know, but he used me.
[00:49:09]  I created one job, David.
[00:49:11]  And I'm proud of it.
[00:49:12]  Nathan is feeding a family with a job I created.
[00:49:14]  Uh, but I'd be willing to bet you created a lot more jobs than I currently have, and uh, so I want to hear your honest answer.
[00:49:22]  I'm open to learn here and be proven wrong.
[00:49:25]  But 1.3 billion, the entire nation of India moving here and doing it legally, and all the criminals let's let's you know, being fair to your conception, let's say, um, let's say 0.3 billion of them get sent back, you know, because they're criminals or they're this or they're that, but the rest of them really are non criminals and they still love cows in their heart, but they won't worship them in the streets, and um.
[00:49:50]  And they're not going to be voting citizens and they're going to work and they're not going to get welfare.
[00:49:55]  But still, a billion, a billion people, and let's say over a six month period.
[00:50:01]  How do we survive that?
[00:50:04]  Yeah, so I think one of the things is that we have to remember that one of the big problems in America is the widespread existence of publicly owned spaces.
[00:50:14]  And so we think about the space being governed by the state, right?
[00:50:19]  We think about cities.
[00:50:20]  Counties, states, and the federal government.
[00:50:23]  I live in Arizona where a majority of the land, I think it's closer to like three quarters of the land, is owned by a government.
[00:50:30]  And so as a result, the land is being totally efficiently used, right?
[00:50:34]  It's amazing.
[00:50:34]  Like all the government-owned lands are just a wonderland of efficiency.
[00:50:38]  That's not the case, right?
[00:50:39]  It's just you've got like empty wasteland, and then the private land is just this sprawling metropolis of glory.
[00:50:47]  And so when you think about private property and the government of private property, if you actually enforce trespassing laws where are these people staying?
[00:51:00]  And so you talk about the idea of the nation collapsing.
[00:51:04]  The problem is infrastructure systems and the idea of wages.
[00:51:08]  So if you have a huge number of people come in all of a sudden looking for jobs, what happens?
[00:51:14]  Well, wages collapse for low-skilled jobs that don't require communication or cultural understanding.
[00:51:20]  That's true.
[00:51:21]  What happens to positions where there's so now you have a bunch of rich people being able to hire very cheap labor to do low-value positions.
[00:51:31]  And now managing those people becomes a difficulty.
[00:51:36]  And you know what else becomes a difficulty?
[00:51:38]  Is servicing the profit increase of all of the rich people who now have very cheap labor pools.
[00:51:44]  And so you hire people who have cultural understanding and who are willing that you'd prefer to work with, right?
[00:51:49]  You go like, I don't want to have to interact with people who have really thick accents.
[00:51:53]  I'm going to hire this guy to interact because it takes the frustration off.
[00:51:58]  Or I don't have time to deal with any of that.
[00:51:59]  Your goal, as you're wealthy, your goal is to reduce the points of contact that you've got because time is limited.
[00:52:05]  So you go, I'm going to manage people through somebody else, and I'm going to manage through a person who's easy to manage.
[00:52:11]  So what happens is people are wealth-generating machines.
[00:52:17]  That's what people do.
[00:52:18]  So if a person is working well enough to keep a job, that's because they're generating wealth.
[00:52:23]  They're generating wealth at a faster pace than they're consuming it, than they're receiving it.
[00:52:28]  So somebody who's good at allocating resources is hiring somebody else to do something.
[00:52:35]  and they're generating a profit off of that, and they're then going to also have to pay for management.
[00:52:40]  And so if you had all of a sudden three times our current population quickly come in, the people who are currently here who have skills, what you would find is that those skills are continuing.
[00:52:53]  Now you're going to have increased profitability and you're going to have increased wealth being dumped in.
[00:52:57]  And the people who have skills, those skills are going to become higher demand.
[00:52:59]  The other thing is the people who previously were doing low-level work are going to be given opportunities to manage those people.
[00:53:07]  And there's going to be a general rise as long as there's productivity that's occurring.
[00:53:12]  There's going to be an increase in the production of wealth, and there's going to be some people who are going to not be able to get a job.
[00:53:17]  And so they're going to come in, and then they're not going to be able to find a job, and they can't, therefore, pay to be someplace.
[00:53:21]  So they're being pushed around because they're trespassing, and they're going to be removed, and maybe they get removed because of the crime of trespassing, or they start to steal because they're like, oh, I can't get a job.
[00:53:29]  Okay, great, now there's a penalty on that person, whatever.
[00:53:33]  So you have this sorting out, it would absolutely be a mess.
[00:53:35]  It's just horrific.
[00:53:38]  You're just going from 300 something million to You know, one to three times that being added, right?
[00:53:43]  All of a sudden you're at 1.3, 1.4 billion people.
[00:53:47]  So if you've got that scenario, those people are coming in and they're quickly taking opportunities to do work and increasing productivity and they're spreading out looking for the opportunity.
[00:53:57]  And so it's going to create chaos, but that kind of dramatic move is a little bit unrealistic in most scenarios.
[00:54:04]  You're right.
[00:54:04]  Most scenarios we're going to have that is because it's in response to a humanitarian crisis or whatever else, right?
[00:54:09]  But you're going to have, in those crazy scenarios, something where you're dealing with.
[00:54:14]  But in general, the issue of private property ownership, the state ought to sell off its land to private property holders and only hold on to property as necessary for its functions.
[00:54:28]  And then you have all that land being managed by private property holders.
[00:54:34]  And then people are working.
[00:54:35]  You need to remember, we think of business as this secularized zone.
[00:54:39]  Christian business is supposed to be a place where you disciple people and apply the word of God.
[00:54:43]  You go, you want to come work for me?
[00:54:44]  That's great.
[00:54:44]  You're going to submit to the law order of Christ here, and you're going to learn.
[00:54:51]  I'm going to disciple you as a servant in my house.
[00:54:54]  And so, a lot of people are going to ricochet off of that because they're like, no, I don't want to do that.
[00:54:59]  And so, they're going to leave, or they're going to commit crimes, or whatever.
[00:55:02]  It's going to create problems, and it's going to get sorted out.
[00:55:04]  And a lot of people would get discipled under that Christian power, under private property ownership, and you'd have a Christian state.
[00:55:10]  is dealing with all sorts of stuff that needs to be punished, helping to sort that out.
[00:55:14]  And so in most situations, you'd have a flow of people that's coming over time.
[00:55:20]  And so that flow of people over time is being dealt with by systems.
[00:55:23]  But sometimes we have a huge, crazy system where a bunch of people are coming in.
[00:55:26]  The other thing is, as a state, you might go, all these people are coming.
[00:55:30]  There's some sort of huge thing going on.
[00:55:32]  They're basically asylum seekers.
[00:55:34]  And for the sake of order, we're going to do a process of managing how to deal with this gradually.
[00:55:41]  So we're going to do like tribunals and stuff to investigate.
[00:55:44]  And look, is that we're going to deal with them in groups.
[00:55:46]  And so that might be this is this an invasion or not?
[00:55:48]  So you'd have probable cause, you'd have warrant for some sort of a dealing with that group and holding.
[00:55:55]  And you might provide care for them in the short term in some sort of a way where there's a containment as you're gradually releasing and doing stuff and you're sorting out who wants to take the covenant.
[00:56:06]  Which of you is willing to confess Christ now and to take our national covenant and to come and work in that context?
[00:56:11]  Okay, who wants to come and look for an opportunity to work?
[00:56:17]  In a Christian home, looking to be willing to be discipled in that context and relying for economic dependence for a period of time, being sponsored by that.
[00:56:26]  Okay, who's looking out to go be a wage laborer or a day laborer or whatever type of a thing?
[00:56:32]  So you could sort stuff out in some sort of a crazy scenario where the state is having to kind of corral, temporarily help, and then to deal with a process of sort and release.
[00:56:42]  So I think there are things like that where there's exercise of power to deal with it.
[00:56:46]  That's a crazy scenario.
[00:56:47]  And I still think you could manage it in a Christian system with the law order of God in a way that would be a blessing to everybody.
[00:56:53]  Okay.
[00:56:54]  All right.
[00:56:55]  And if we ask, you know, who's ready to take the covenant now, not just work, you know, but take the covenant now and profess Christ as Lord, if we're skeptical and it's India, we say, who's ready to also eat a hamburger?
[00:57:10]  And if they're coming from Israel, we say, who's ready to eat a hamburger with bacon?
[00:57:15]  And then we know for sure that the profession is true.
[00:57:18]  Now, it is funny, though.
[00:57:19]  I've talked to guys offline.
[00:57:20]  That was great.
[00:57:21]  David, that really was helpful.
[00:57:25]  That really was helpful.
[00:57:26]  I need to think about it more, but you answered a lot of the contingencies because that's a lot.
[00:57:33]  I mean, whenever we're testing truth, when we're testing a system, when we're testing a train of thought, a system of thought, that's what you do.
[00:57:43]  You test it.
[00:57:44]  Here's a problem.
[00:57:45]  You throw the problem at it, and can this concept, this system, this doctrine hold up?
[00:57:53]  Right.
[00:57:54]  That's what that's how I became a Calvinist was, you know, going every verse in the Bible and like, does this work?
[00:58:01]  Does this work with, with, you know, the doctrines of grace?
[00:58:04]  Does this work?
[00:58:04]  And it's like, you know, and at first, you know, you're like, well, Calvinism doesn't work.
[00:58:08]  That's ridiculous because the Bible says, choose this day whom you will serve, you know, and that's man's, you know, and like, and so at first, you're like, you have problem verses, right?
[00:58:16]  There are certain problems, but that's even with verses, even with our hermeneutic, that's what we call it problem verses.
[00:58:22]  Problem is the emphasis.
[00:58:23]  So we throw problems at a system, whether it's a systematic, you know, theology or whatever it is, a doctrinal system.
[00:58:30]  It's like, can it handle the problem?
[00:58:32]  And at first, you say, well, there's too many problems, the system can't handle it.
[00:58:37]  And sometimes that's true.
[00:58:38]  It's a bad system.
[00:58:39]  And then other times it really can be just simply ignorance with the system.
[00:58:43]  The system's actually better than you thought it was.
[00:58:45]  And there are apparent problems, right?
[00:58:47]  Like apparent paradoxes, you know, within reform thought, but they're not true paradoxes.
[00:58:52]  It's actually not a true contradiction that, oh, with the agency of man and the sovereignty of God, turns out they get along just fine.
[00:58:58]  And God's sovereignty is preeminent above, but there's no contradiction, not in real logical terms or biblical terms and blah, blah, blah.
[00:59:06]  And so that's what I'm working through.
[00:59:09]  Is just okay.
[00:59:10]  Like, because right now, everybody, you know, everybody is getting real, really interested in political theology or political philosophy.
[00:59:23]  And guys who, you know, guys who have been doing politics for a long time are because everything's such a mess.
[00:59:31]  You know, like the state is a joke, our culture is a joke.
[00:59:35]  We have a country filled with degenerates.
[00:59:37]  And so, guys who have been doing political philosophy for a long time, and if they're doing it just even halfway decently, Just halfway decently.
[00:59:45]  All of a sudden, they're launching into the stratosphere of notoriety and platform.
[00:59:51]  And people are like, please, please, I would love to hear you out because I've got Clown World over here.
[00:59:59]  And then even within Christians, 95% of the Christians, even evangelical Christians, are just a bunch of pietists and have no solutions to offer except just pray a little harder and extend your quiet time from 15 minutes a day to 25 minutes a day.
[01:00:15]  It's like, Okay, well, if that's what I've got from 95% of the evangelical pastors, then yes, talk to me about your political philosophy, you know, that you can track back to the reformers and the founders and, you know, and these kinds of things.
[01:00:30]  And so all of a sudden, there's this rise of other voices that I was unfamiliar with.
[01:00:37]  And a lot of what they're saying, I'm like, man, I think that's good.
[01:00:40]  I think that's good.
[01:00:41]  And I think it's true to the word of God.
[01:00:42]  And then there's other times where it's like, yeah, but that one I don't like because that one seems like.
[01:00:51]  It would be good so long as you have a good leader, which might last a generation.
[01:00:57]  And then you get Cromwell's son, and now it's going to go to crap.
[01:01:02]  It's going to be terrible because it's still just the reason of man.
[01:01:06]  And I feel like the reason of man is part of the reason why we're here.
[01:01:10]  I think even some of our founders, although I appreciate them, and I absolutely believe the lion's share of the majority were not deists, but evangelical Christians.
[01:01:19]  But I do think that they intentionally left out some Jesus' Lord language that I would have liked.

=== Reason Subordinate to God's Law (10:41) ===

[01:01:24]  You know, in some of our founding doctrines, they could have been a little bit more explicit.
[01:01:27]  And I think part of the reason they weren't is because the ripples of the Enlightenment were already working on some good Christian men and perverting some of their thought and giving reason a little bit too high of prominence.
[01:01:40]  And even though, you know, Deuteronomy was the most quoted, you know, book, you know, in a lot of different sessions, but still it's like, man, I wish you would have put that on paper a little bit more and etched it into our founding so that we would have been preserved.
[01:01:55]  From some of these future problems.
[01:01:56]  And at the same time, I'm sympathetic and gracious that, like, I don't think the founders could have even conceived of taxpayer funded transgender operations on minors.
[01:02:11]  You know, like, so there's certain things they just didn't put in there because they're like, surely, you know, to us and our posterity, surely our posterity won't be completely mentally retarded, at least not every single one of them.
[01:02:24]  But here we are.
[01:02:26]  We showed you, we are absolutely insane.
[01:02:30]  And so, you know, and likewise, like the first, you know, the First Amendment, Congress shall make, yeah, so we should not have a national church.
[01:02:39]  Great.
[01:02:39]  That's great.
[01:02:41]  They didn't spell it out as much as they could have because I don't think any of them could even conceive of the temple of satanic, literally satanic temples.
[01:02:52]  I get emails, by the way, because people will see my clips, they'll go viral.
[01:02:55]  And so people, I actually have to tip the hat.
[01:02:59]  I appreciate the creativity of the trolling.
[01:03:01]  I get emails from Planned Parenthood.
[01:03:03]  I get emails from the Satanic Temple.
[01:03:04]  I get emails because they'll take my email from the church website and sign me up for all these different organizations.
[01:03:10]  And so until I unsubscribe, you know, and then somebody will resubscribe me.
[01:03:14]  And so, anyways, but I don't think the founders could have conceived, possibly conceived, of when the First Amendment was there, of satanic temples being a legitimate religion that's, you know, respected and protected under.
[01:03:32]  You know, the Constitution.
[01:03:33]  That's not what they were thinking about.
[01:03:35]  But here we are.
[01:03:36]  And so, anyways, I say all that to say I really appreciate the thoughtfulness, the level of thought and thoroughness of thought that you offer, David, because prudence, we need prudence.
[01:03:49]  I'm not against prudence.
[01:03:51]  But I'll say reason, man's reason, we need that too.
[01:03:54]  But there is a certain level, if man's reason becomes preeminent, supreme, then that gets us right back to where we are.
[01:04:04]  You can have better men, more righteous men who have less, therefore less corrupted reason.
[01:04:11]  But that doesn't ultimately, in the end, if our American experiment has taught us anything or taught me anything, it's that one generation of righteous men, or even multiple generations of righteous men, if reason is the only hedge, then it does not protect their children from squandering everything.
[01:04:34]  The inheritance that they left, and ultimately just destroying everything that they built.
[01:04:39]  And that's what it is.
[01:04:40]  We've just had consecutive generations now, for at least, I would argue, 120 years of just swarms of locusts.
[01:04:47]  They've just come and devoured all the fruits and all the harvest of good men.
[01:04:53]  Good men made good times, and good times produced soft men.
[01:04:57]  And those soft men, we've come and made hard times.
[01:05:00]  And we need good men, hard men, again, to come on the scene.
[01:05:03]  But we need hard men this time to hopefully come.
[01:05:07]  And hedge the bets with a little bit more explicit language.
[01:05:10]  Like the law word of God says X, Y, Z. You know, so, anyways, so that's what I love about you is you're like, let's use the word because you can have a righteous guy, a righteous guy, and an intelligent guy.
[01:05:29]  But if it's, we want reason, but if the reason is not subordinate to the law word of God, then.
[01:05:38]  We get in trouble.
[01:05:39]  And I think that's part of why our founding is the best one we've had yet.
[01:05:42]  It's the high watermark.
[01:05:43]  You know, that's what you were saying.
[01:05:44]  The high watermark of human civilization, you know, and the closest we've gotten to a Christian nation, and I believe it really was a Christian nation, but the best Christian nation we've conceptualized in human history thus far America, these United States.
[01:06:00]  I really believe that.
[01:06:02]  And I would like to think that in the future, by God's grace, over the next thousand years or 2,000 years, whatever it is, we'll have a lot of nations that'll look and they'll look at America's founding and say, yep, this, this, this, let's use it, let's use it.
[01:06:16]  And then they'll also say, And in our constitution, let's say the Lord Jesus Christ, you know, and so that, you know, whatever it is, 100 years from now or 150 years from now, when the blue haired feminists come and say, we're not a Christian nation, we can say, no, no, no, no.
[01:06:36]  We are.
[01:06:37]  Nice try.
[01:06:38]  Go ruin some other country.
[01:06:40]  So, any can, I feel like this might be a good place to, what are your final thoughts?
[01:06:47]  Reason, epistemology?
[01:06:49]  You know, we already laid out the case study.
[01:06:51]  I think you did a great job.
[01:06:52]  What are the final thoughts, final warnings, even, admonitions to people?
[01:06:59]  So, I don't have the ability in a short way to give you anything really useful on epistemology now, but I do think there are a few things about some of the stuff that you laid out that I think is beautiful and helpful.
[01:07:13]  One thing I want to communicate is that reason is laws of logic and necessary inference, where you use syllogisms.
[01:07:22]  And you use immediate inference.
[01:07:24]  I think most people, when they use the word reason, they have no idea what they mean.
[01:07:28]  They just it's basically just like.
[01:07:30]  Whatever my opinions are, whatever I think is right yeah, and reason is the laws of logic and the rules of good necessary inference.
[01:07:37]  You're right, because even when we say reasonable, we usually mean um preferable yeah, no and so.
[01:07:44]  So this idea that the rules of logic are found in the scriptures themselves.
[01:07:48]  You can find Jesus arguing with the Sadducees using syllogisms.
[01:07:51]  You can find the apostle Paul using syllogism after syllogism, connected together, using the prior conclusions as a premise and the next one that's called the Sorites, right?
[01:07:58]  And so you find the laws of logic in scripture itself.
[01:08:01]  God uses the law of identity to define himself.
[01:08:03]  I am that I am, you know.
[01:08:05]  And so God is the logos, right?
[01:08:08]  And so reason is a part, is an attribute of God.
[01:08:14]  But what you reason from, what axiom are you using?
[01:08:20]  What presuppositions are you reasoning from?
[01:08:23]  And so we must have Our presuppositions made plain.
[01:08:27]  And I think the Declaration of Independence, which is the founding covenantal document for our country, makes explicit that it's the Christian God.
[01:08:36]  And the Declaration of Independence is ignored as the charter and the founding covenantal document of our nation because of the fact that it is laid out that when people want to emphasize Thomas Jefferson as a deist, he helped to found a local church called the Calvinistic Episcopal Church.
[01:08:58]  So, you know, whether he, you know, his heterodoxy that we know about, he was professing to be a Calvinist.
[01:09:07]  You know, like, so a Calvinistic Episcopalian, right?
[01:09:11]  So the idea that at least externally, even the guy that's like the poster child for being heterodox was professing publicly for a large portion of his life to be an Orthodox.
[01:09:28]  Protestant man.
[01:09:30]  And so we have those things, and I think that the recognition that we do have an explicit legal Christian base for the country, and yet it wasn't done well enough.
[01:09:43]  And so we need to remember that constitutions, like confessions of faith, need to be tied back to Scripture so that we understand the Constitution is an effort to systematize the teaching of Scripture about the way that good governance works in the civil sphere.
[01:09:58]  And we want to defend that by saying the true authority is the Word of God.
[01:10:02]  Here's our effort to make it plain and make it easier for the citizen to judge the magistrate and to see who's keeping their oath and not.
[01:10:09]  And so that's one thing there.
[01:10:10]  And I want to simply say that the Word of God is sufficient for every good work.
[01:10:17]  To make the man of God complete for every good work, to be thoroughly furnished, not partially furnished, thoroughly furnished for every good work.
[01:10:24]  And that includes the good work of ruling in the state.
[01:10:28]  And so I want to encourage Christians to have confidence in the Word of God for civil authority.
[01:10:35]  And I want to remind you that there's really only six options.
[01:10:37]  We talked about this in the last episode anarchy, where there's no legitimate basis to exercise power, realpolitik, where you say authority, power comes at the end of a gun, and so just might makes right.
[01:10:50]  There's this idea of social contract where you say, well, by agreement we can form governments and we can make them do whatever we want.
[01:10:56]  And that's contrary to Scripture.
[01:10:57]  And then there's this idea of natural law that you can, from man's observation, the reason apart from Scripture, be able to come up with what the state should do.
[01:11:07]  And that's not the case.
[01:11:09]  And then we have this idea of divine right of kings that just some people have blue blood and they should be able to rule and that we just need to generally obey them.
[01:11:16]  And that's something that the Puritans fought vigorously against.
[01:11:20]  The English Civil War was basically a war against the divine right of kings.
[01:11:24]  As were the various Protestant resistances that occurred across Europe.
[01:11:27]  And so, that English tradition that we have of limited government is the Protestant tradition of limited government and viewing the covenant and law word of God as the sole basis for human authority, one man over another, and realizing that the state depends upon God for its authority, or else the state is claiming to be God.
[01:11:51]  Amen.
[01:11:52]  Well said.
[01:11:53]  All right.
[01:11:54]  Well, thank you to the listener for joining us.
[01:11:56]  And thank you, Mr. Reese, for joining us.
[01:11:58]  And we hope it's been helpful.
[01:12:00]  And we will have more conversations like this in the future, Lord willing.
[01:12:04]  We'll see you next time.
[01:12:05]  God bless.