Right Response Ministries argues America's rejection of monarchy, fueled by anti-authority DNA and egalitarian pride, has created an atomistic society prone to crony capitalism and tyranny. The host contends that raw democracy erodes meritocracy, allowing foreign lobbies to dominate elections while producing no virtuous leaders in over a century. Citing Alexis de Tocqueville and biblical history, the segment asserts that constitutional monarchies offer superior stability against the "auto pen" of majority rule, predicting nations must eventually return to a "stiff hand" to restore order after importing unfit populations. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Why We Need a King00:06:25
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When you give us a positive review, what that does is it triggers the algorithm so that our podcast shows up on more people's news feeds.
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Four to six million people were present at the No Kings protest over this past weekend, all over major cities here in America.
Now, of course, what they're protesting is the idea that Donald Trump is a tyrant, that he is behaving like a king, and that in our American context, we're not supposed to have kings.
Now, I was tempted to be present at these protests as well.
In my case, I would have been protesting.
There's no kings.
Donald Trump should be acting like a king, but he's not even behaving close to that.
Lord, please, in your mercy, make Donald Trump half the man that my enemies think he is.
No, he's not being tyrannical.
He's not behaving like a king, not even close.
But it kind of got us thinking here with Right Response Ministries what's so bad about a king?
Now, historically, we know the answers to that question, and we'll cover it in today's episode.
There are real drawbacks to a monarchy.
And yet, at the same time, now about a quarter of a millennia into this American project, I think what we have to recognize is that although there may be drawbacks to a monarchy, there have been massive drawbacks to our absence of a monarchical figure as well.
That's going to be the topic of our show today.
Tune in now.
In the chat, I see somebody saying, Is Donald Trump a saved man?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I want him to be, obviously.
I want him to go to heaven.
I want him to know Christ.
But every time he opens his mouth in regards to Christian theology and belief, he seems to kind of reveal the fact that he does not know anything about the gospel and the Christian faith.
And it also does not help his case, the fact that he is celebrating sand demons.
In the Oval Office.
I was about to say, when he's not talking about Christian theology, he's probably hosting some type of interest group that's not Heritage Americans for some type of holiday.
No American in the past has ever celebrated.
Right.
Neither of them are.
And not just a holiday, but performing religious rituals to idols.
I mean, it's a big deal.
I tweeted out today, I'm going to say it right now, real quick, before we get into the topic for today's episode.
But I tweeted out earlier today and I tagged JD Vance.
And saying, look, here's your chance.
You say that you're a Christian.
This is your chance to make your allegiance to Christ known.
1 Kings chapter 18 says that Elijah, he went before all the people, right?
This is at Mount Carmel, this showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal, right?
The altars that they build and calling down fire from heaven.
Many of you, you're familiar with the story.
But before all this goes down, Elijah, he gathers all the people to come on the sidelines and watch this.
Contest between the gods.
And he says to the people, How long will you go on limping between two opinions?
If the Lord is God, serve him.
If Baal is God, then serve him.
And I think of JD Vance and I think of this Hindu celebration in the White House.
Now, he wasn't in the room.
It was Donald Trump and a bunch of Indians, a bunch of Hindus.
Not Stephen Miller, for the record either.
Stephen Miller was not in the room as well.
But that still happened in the White House.
JD Vance is vice president.
Of the United States, and he claims to be a Christian.
But his wife is Hindu.
And from people that I've talked to behind the scenes, because I've heard rumblings and rumors that she maybe converted to Catholicism.
But as I have explored that and talking to some people behind the scenes who would know, from what I've heard, that is a rumor that is not true.
She is still Hindu.
She has not converted to Catholicism.
So you have a man who is Heritage America.
Vice president and claims to be Christian, married to a Hindu who worships false gods, 300 million false gods to be precise.
And then the worship of those false gods is taking place on your watch in the White House.
JD Vance should come out publicly today and he should denounce the worship of idols that God will not bless in the White House in these United States.
We'll see.
Will he choose Christ?
Or will he limp between two opinions?
In his case, not just the Lord and the Baals, but the God of his heritage, the God and Savior of his soul, or the God of his wife?
There's a reason why King Solomon, towards the end of his life, fell.
It's because he married and took wives from foreign lands who worshiped foreign gods.
It's a tragedy, but JD Vance.
He's done some good things, but I remain highly suspicious.
You claim to love America, but you literally wrote a book, Hillbilly Elegy, where you blatantly say in the book that one of the reasons why you married a foreign wife from a foreign country who worships foreign gods is because of your embarrassment and shame of your own people.
The Pitfalls of Monarchy00:11:45
Chat, are we back?
Hashtag based?
I don't think so.
All right, let's talk about monarchy.
Ready?
It's important to remember in politics that the perfect system.
There is no abstract, perfect political system, but all of politics is contextual.
So there are contexts where some things might work and other ones where the exact same system might not work.
I think of Norway, for example, and a very socialized medicine system there.
Now, I'm not advocating for that type of system, but with a population of 5 million that's highly homogenous, highly healthy, and low crime, that type of system for socializing medicine, it's going to look a lot different and be a lot less intrusive and whatever it would be in America than it would be here with 330 million people who are.
Very much so, not healthy, very much so, very diverse.
There are just different considerations when it comes to what political system, what economic system works best for these people.
So, what we're not going to say in this episode is across all times and all places, monarchy is always going to be the best form of government.
That's not what we're saying.
However, what we are saying is that as you look across history and you look specifically at the last 250 years, I think of the French Revolution, that beheaded kings, that there's this strain running through it.
Where the side that's revolutionary, the side that bends towards liberalism and egalitarianism, that they have in their heart a hatred for monarchs, a hatred for kings.
It's as if the position itself existing, a king ruling over the land, it burns and chafes at them like kryptonite.
It's not a coincidence in 1917, October of 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution, the last absolute monarch.
There's absolute monarchs, so those are monarchs that are not tethered by a constitution.
They can essentially do whatever they have the political will to do.
Absolute monarchs, constitutional monarchs.
The last absolute monarch in Europe, the Tsar of Russia, was deposed, taken out, eventually killed, him and his daughters.
But it wasn't by Christians and it wasn't even by Europeans.
It was by Bolsheviks, of which 90% of their leadership was Jewish.
It was by communists.
Communism saw the biggest threat to their rise, to their establishment of communism, was a king.
I'm going to define monarchy here.
This is from a very critical source.
The title of the paper is Why Monarchy Must Be Abolished.
But I'm going to lay down a definition.
I'm going to lay down the most common critique of monarchy.
So, reading now from Christos Kiryako, Why Monarchy Must Be Abolished Monarchy is a form of government that, roughly, dictates that the right to rule is inherited by birth by a single ruler.
But monarchy, absolute or constitutional, breaches fundamental moral principles that undergird representative democracy, such as basic moral equality, dignity, and desert.
Simply put, the monarchs and their family.
Are treated as morally superior to ordinary citizens, and as a result, ordinary citizens are treated in an unfair and an undignified manner.
For example, monarchs are respected, enjoy dignity, income, opportunity, and public office and exalted social status just because of their inherited office, which is due to a mere historical accident of family lineage.
Mere historical accident of family lineage.
Hence, we have good moral reason to abolish monarchy.
And that's kind of his summation, his executive summary of his entire paper.
Him arguing, again, this is very recent, 2023, very much so a very liberal frame of thinking.
Hey, monarchy, at the end of the day, it's got to go.
There's still a few monarchs left in the world today.
Got to go because it might cause people to think that there's a hierarchy and that some people are better than others.
And we can't have that.
You're telling me people, some people by their birth might have a different, higher social station than others?
Crazy.
Abolish.
So, monarchy, there are still some monarchs left, but listen to what basically happened.
This is World War I and World War II.
And it needs to be seen that these are kind of the turning point that this all turns on.
Those basically marked the end of monarchs as we knew them in Europe.
Reading now from Solomon Larty, The Decline of Monarchy in the 21st Century, he says this.
Almost half of the countries in the world with monarchies disappeared in the 20th century.
In the middle of the century, the total of 59 monarchies in the world existing at the start of the century, only 28 remained.
More than 50% of monarchies were changed into republics.
In the second half of the century, Northern and Western Europe, as well as Japan, saw the stable development of parliamentary constitutional monarchies.
Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and the Kingdom of Thailand were constitutional monarchies with very few power granting elections that were all passed down.
To lower political administrative institutions.
And one of the key things to note here, for example, England has a monarch.
We did an episode a while ago, the state must correct the church.
And there actually is a head of the state.
And when he's installed into his office as king, he's given a charge to protect the church.
And that would be the King of England and the Anglican Church.
But as you'll notice here, these guys, they practically have no real power left.
So we're not even just talking about the title itself, we're also talking about everything that comes with it, that even the so called kings we have today, That formally would wear a crown and formally be installed, formally charged with protecting the Church of England, functionally, practically, they do next to nothing, or worse, are the rubber stamp to allow progressive reforms to happen.
And so you really have, you've had, especially I would say leading up to about 2020, you've had a dearth of great men, certainly those lacking the title of king, but even those that maybe had the title of king or were in some type of executive position like our president.
Lacked even the power granted to them to do anything.
I don't know about you.
I would say things have not been.
We've talked about this before.
We've been on a decline for a good couple hundred years.
And I would say the last 50 has been especially worse.
And I would never pretend as though we've been in a decline, and here's the one thing that did it.
Here was our fault.
Here's the error.
Here's what it all boils down to.
We got rid of kings.
But I don't think it's a coincidence that the man who is called to emulate virtue, to stir the people to goodness, It's crazy the way some of the reformers talked about the kings.
Listen to Samuel Rutherford.
He said, A king hath a political resemblance to the king of heavens, being a little God, and so is above any one man.
John Calvin said, When good magistrates rule, we see God.
When good magistrates rule, we see God, as it were, near us and governing us by means of those whom he hath appointed.
The good king in ancient times, he stirred the will of the people to something greater.
He himself was better.
And I don't think I don't get the sense that it was, I'm great and I have all of these, all this nobility and all this prowess and all these resources.
And if you work hard and apply yourself, you can be this too.
But there's something in the heart of man that looks to a great man and says, I'm not going to be like him.
The men in Richard the Lionheart's company, they're always going to recognize, yeah, this guy, he's a better fighter than us.
But it's an honor to be in his company, it's an honor to serve under him.
And I would die for that man.
I don't think it's a coincidence that died.
That we have now a managerial state.
We have the rise of feminism.
We have safety first.
And we have, I mean, think of Donald Trump as a great example a dearth of great men.
A lot of us thought Trump was the great man.
2016, 2018, 2020.
It's becoming increasingly clear that he's not.
It doesn't look like JD Vance will be either.
We've lost our great men and we lost the king along with it.
Yep.
Yep.
And maybe it's for the best that we don't have kings because we don't seem to have anyone fit to be a king today.
And maybe in God's mercy that might change.
But let's spend a little bit of time just so that people understand the disclaimers to our position because there are some.
Let's spend a little bit of time just addressing.
Some of the drawbacks and the pitfalls of a monarchy.
So, one that's obvious that I think has to be mentioned is that if you have a bad king, then you're in big trouble.
If you have a bad king and a monarchical system, then there's really virtually zero checks and balances.
Now, even then, not entirely, because even with absolute monarchs in the past, the ultimate check and balance is still the kingdom.
The people.
There is a rich heritage of the people rising up at various times and various places and killing a king.
That's who disposed the czar.
That's who disposed the kings in France.
The people.
They were sick of him.
He didn't rule well.
They were done.
Yeah.
You were a bad king.
You eventually got taken out.
So there was, you know, just a, even if it wasn't formal or baked into the system, it wasn't on paper.
It's not in any constitution, it's still just a reality of nature that the people, if they're all against you, then.
Then the king ultimately is powerless.
He really, no matter what form of government you have, your rulers, be they presidents or council members or kings or parliament or whatever, your rulers really only have as much power as the people allow for.
At the end of the day, it's not even just legislation and laws, but it's political will.
And that political will is ultimately governed by the people.
What is the will of the people?
So, yes, there was always an informal check and balance to.
Even an absolute monarch in the sense of the people being able to quite literally, physically overthrow him, either banish him or death.
But aside from that, at least on paper, in an absolute monarch, there was no real check and balance.
And perhaps some of the greatest examples that we could point to, without even just looking at history over the last couple thousand years, we can look at the biblical history in the Old Testament with Old Covenant Israel and the kings that they had.
And we know that under that system, It was pretty much a ratio of two, three, four bad kings to every one good king.
And whenever there was a bad king in the land, the people suffered.
And it wasn't just, you know, it's like, well, how come we don't have all these examples of Israel, you know, turning against their king when they had a bad king?
Well, because the king often, his will, his devotion or lack thereof, it shaped the people.
And so when there were bad kings in Israel who would exalt high places to false gods, The Asherah poles, the altars to the Baals, when these things would take place, a lot of times the people would not ultimately rebel against the king because their hearts and minds would be shaped by the king and they would follow him into idolatry, into compromise, and Israel would fall underneath God's curses rather than his blessing.
And sometimes that would lend towards ultimately captivity and bondage by another nation until the people ultimately would repent and then God would spare them and save them and raise up a deliverer, whether it be.
One of the judges, or whatever it may be, or even a foreign king that God used in a providential, benevolent way, like Cyrus, and they would be released and able to go back to their land and rebuild the temple and the walls and Jerusalem and their kingdom.
Meritocracy Plus Democracy00:15:17
And so the point is that there are obvious drawbacks.
But I think what we've overlooked is the argument that we're making today is not that.
Why don't we have a king?
What could possibly go wrong?
I think we have enough biblical examples and historic examples.
Everybody knows good and well what could go wrong.
I think the argument that we want to make in today's episode is not that the drawbacks of monarchy are a boogeyman or overemphasized, because I think they're obvious and I think they're real, but rather that what I think we've missed and neglected is.
The massive significant drawbacks to the absence of a king.
I think that's what we need to address in today's episode.
There's a comment that I want to hit.
He's commented a few times now.
This is JMG.
If we can go back to the top of the chat and look at his first comment, JMG.
He said, keep going up towards, I think, his very first comment.
There it is.
He said, Meritocracy plus democracy is good at all times for all peoples.
Oh, wow.
Quite retarded.
JMG, I feel for you.
And it really, really, really pains me to have to publicly humiliate you like this.
But my friend, you need it.
Meritocracy plus democracy is good at all times for all peoples.
No, no, it is not.
Not at all.
Mostly, not so much because of the meritocracy, although we could go into problems even with that, but the democracy portion.
What I would say is that that second piece, democracy, completely undoes the first piece, meritocracy.
Democracy, by its innate definition, eradicates even the mere possibility of a democracy.
A meritocracy.
What democracy allows for, or not just what it allows for, what it ultimately mandates, is a race to the bottom.
That's what democracy does.
It brings down the entire polis to the lowest common denominator.
It says that those who don't have merit and that therefore don't deserve higher positions and stations and vocations in society have an equal say.
In the country.
So, what do you do, right?
So, you're saying, well, it should be meritocracy plus democracy.
Well, what do you do if 50% of the population plus one happens to be lower, right?
They have more vices than virtue.
They have less intelligence and gifting and capacity when it comes to work, contribution, vocation, less productivity.
Yeah.
But they still are the majority.
Right.
So, so what you're assuming there to say that it that it's good for all people at all times, right?
That's that's the part that's most insane about your comment.
What that implies is really just a lack of theological understanding of total depravity.
And I think this is kind of what I want to get at it was that theological understanding for many of the founders of our nation that caused them to have such an aversion towards kings.
Well, like if power corrupts, then absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Okay, but.
To think that because of total depravity, no man would be fit to be a virtuous king.
So, what we'll do instead is we'll make every man king, right?
That makes no sense at all.
It's not total depravity for one individual and it happens to be the monarch and everybody else is going to be virtuous.
If total depravity is true, then it's true for every man.
Then it's true for the populace, not just the monarch.
And so, the problem with this idea that meritocracy plus democracy.
Is going to be this eternal, constant, positive good for all people and all times.
Is that democracy and meritocracy are actually at all times opposed to one another?
We can't have meritocracy because of democracy.
I would point to 2020 and 2021, kind of the high watermark of progressive leftist policies and wokeness and BLM and All these things, I would look at that and say, that was the complete reversal of meritocracy.
It was, give me this, give me that.
Why?
Because you're the best man for the job?
Because you earned it?
Because you worked harder than others?
No, because I'm oppressed.
No, because I've been mistreated.
No, because I'm just loud and obnoxious and demanding.
Okay, well, that's the exact opposite of a meritocracy.
Well, how did we get there?
Well, we got there through democracy.
We got there because enough people felt that way and raised their voices loud enough, made enough of a racket to where, you know, well, the majority at this moment seemed to be saying this and voting in this direction.
And so all of a sudden, you had Ivy League colleges, universities doing the opposite of a meritocracy.
They were banning certain qualified, overqualified.
Individuals from admission to their schools on the basis not of meritocracy, but on the basis of them simply being white, you know, and in many cases also Asian.
So I think that democracy and meritocracy, the idea that, well, if you just have both working in tandem, then you're good to go.
That's the best system, you know, on God's green earth.
No, you just picked two things that are diametrically opposed.
To one another, you cannot have meritocracy with a raw, true democracy.
You can have some democratic elements, but that's not what we do.
We don't have a republic, right?
I know we do on paper.
It'd be nice if we did in reality.
But you have to understand this we do not have currently in the United States of America a constitutional republic.
We don't.
We have a raw democracy, and it's the very thing that every single one of our founders decried and detested.
None of the American founders had a single positive thing to say about democracy, at least a raw, true democracy.
But the moment that we extended the vote to everyone, to everyone, then we got a true, raw democracy.
We got universal suffrage.
And then we coupled universal suffrage, which was already troubling enough.
We coupled that with not just everyone in the country gets a say, but then we coupled it with Porous borders.
So now everyone in the world gets a say.
And we coupled it with foreign interests and lobbying.
So not just every individual in the world can come in and immediately get a vote and get a say, but even those who don't come in, entire entities, like APAC, they can get a say.
And I think that brings us to another benefit of a monarchy.
So the obvious drawback of a monarchy is what if you have a bad king?
And we know that throughout history and throughout biblical Old Testament history, There will be plenty of times where there is a bad king.
So we can't sit here and pretend that that's not a reality.
It is.
But in terms of some of the benefits, right now, when I think of all the foreign interests, all the corrupt, dirty money in our elections here in America, you can actually tie that in many ways to the fact that we don't have a king.
Because we have raw democracy, universal suffrage, And elections where people can vote for stuff.
That's what it is.
If anybody can stand up on their soapbox and rally 50% plus one of the population of any town or any state or our country as a whole to say, we want stuff, it's not about who's the most virtuous.
It's not about who's presenting the best policies.
It's about who will give me someone else's stuff.
And all you have to do is convince half of the populace.
Plus one to be on board with that.
And so then, what you get, and because of elections, so not just universal suffrage, not just raw democracy, but elections in and of themselves, what you have is you basically have the economic mode of capitalism applied to politics, right?
It's no longer about virtue and policies, it's about visibility.
Many people will simply go and vote for the candidate that they've heard of, right?
So then the question is who can raise the most funding?
Right?
Because in terms of familiarity, right?
Oh, I saw an ad on TV, or oh, I got a mailer, or oh, you know, I saw him on my favorite podcast, or like that's.
In Atlanta, Kamala Harris, when she launched her campaign, she was bringing all sorts of rappers out on stage.
Right.
So the advertisement was, we're going to have a free concert with these rappers that you've heard of.
Also, here will be Kamala Harris.
Georgia was a swing state.
Boom, thousands and thousands of people.
Oh, yeah, I know her.
She's my favorite rapper.
And the thing is, these are not just rappers who did this out of the goodness of their heart.
They were paid.
Right.
And you're allowed to, it's legal.
So, then what it comes down to is every election is literally just a capitalistic battle of who can raise the most money.
And then, when you're trying to raise the most money, well, then you're going to take every single dollar that you can and be racking your brain 24 7 of how you can get more funding.
And at a certain point, you've eaten up all the funding that's available in your country, in your district, or wherever the election is, whether it be local or national.
And so then you look beyond that.
So now you're looking to foreign lobbies.
You're looking to AIPAC.
You're looking to different foreign political groups to come and fund you for their interests.
So now you're not even representing the interests of the people that you're campaigning to govern, but other people in another nation that may actually even be, whether it be a hot war or a cold war, but another nation that at some extent is probably even opposed to your people.
And yet you're now making promises to them.
In order to get their funding, because the battle of an election at the end of the day is just a battle of money.
It's literally, I mean, almost, I would say the vast majority of the time, there are some exceptions, but the vast majority of the time, the candidate that wins is the candidate that was able to get more funding.
Yeah.
That's it.
And I mean, with monarchy, you have the obvious drawback when it's a son who takes over for his father.
Yeah.
What if he's a bad son?
What if he's a bad son?
But in the case of our elections today, for example, for president, the literal way he has to win, you mentioned the financing side.
But it's also, I have to appeal to the broadest coalition of people possible.
I have to appeal for gays for Trump.
I have to appeal to Indians for Trump.
Trump, I mean, how many times is he like, we're going to get the African American community?
So, by virtue of what you have to do to win an election, you have to go out and do your best to placate, appeal to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of special interest groups to build a coalition.
And tie your own hands behind your back, not just appeal to, but make promises.
And so, yes, you have like the different communities that you just mentioned.
And another one would, of course, be.
Jewish families, I think of the Adelsons who gave $100 million, $100 million to Trump.
And then what do the Adelsons want to do, this particular Jewish family?
Oh, they want to build a casino right in DFW that's going to increase crime, drunkenness.
And they gave you $100 million.
But they gave you $100 million.
They didn't say anything.
Exactly.
They gave you $100 million.
And so are you going to stand in their way?
No.
Are you maybe even behind the scenes going to try to do something, push some of your weight in their direction in favor of what they're trying to do, even though it's not good for the people?
Yes, that's the constant temptation.
And so with the king, okay, maybe it's a 50 50 chance.
Virtuous son, not virtuous son.
And I would even say, and we'll talk about this in the second segment, there's reason, nobility, the blood of kings, there's a reason it might be a better chance than that.
But say 50 50, good king, bad king.
With that type of system, the chance of a virtuous man getting through.
It has been over 100 years since I would say in this country we have had a true, virtuous, outstanding Christian man.
Like even Ronald Reagan, I mean, privately, I think a moral, upstanding guy.
He came out later on.
He did a lot of damage, but he recognized, he said, hey, no fault divorce.
Yeah, that was an L.
I took it.
But the dude, as far as mentioning Christ in messages, in speeches, very minimal.
We're talking over 100 years since this system, and I mean, this crony capitalism has been around for a while.
So we're talking over 100 years that this system has probably not produced.
Just about anyone virtuous.
So, even on its worst day, monarchy, it can give you a bad apple, but the chances are better to do that.
And just to steel man our opponents, the devil's advocate that may be listening, you said 50 50.
And I think that's probably pretty generous.
Even looking at Israel at a time when God was regularly speaking to the people and speaking to the king audibly through prophets, divine revelation, and accompanying that, just in case they were like, well, I don't know if this is really a prophet from the Lord.
Accompanying and validating the audible voice, the infallible voice of God through the prophets, validated by signs and wonders.
Right?
So at that time, right, that's a pretty good deal.
Law Above the King00:13:25
Even at that time, I would say it was not 50 50, but probably more like 25% of the time, good king, 75% bad.
Right?
Right?
So this time in prose, new covenant.
That's pretty powerful.
Right?
I will write my law on your hearts.
I will cause you to walk.
I think of Ezekiel 36.
And we do have, yes, we have many, many unbelievers in these United States, but we do have many people who, by God's grace, are regenerate with new hearts, new creatures in Christ Jesus.
So that's one benefit.
But let's just say that, okay, well, maybe Old Covenant Israel, it was a unique time.
And so maybe their percentage, their statistics would be better 75% of the time, a bad king, 25% good.
And so let's say for us, maybe it's 90, 10.
Well, I would say that's still 10% more often of having good governance and a godly civil magistrate than the current system that we have.
I don't think it's possible in our current system.
See, that's what I'm trying to say I'm not trying to say, hey, if you have a monarchy, there's no dangers and you'll never have a bad king.
No, I'm willing to say nine out of 10 times you'll have a bad king.
But I think 10 out of 10 times through a raw democracy and universal suffrage and what we currently have, 10 out of 10 times, You're going to have crap leaders.
And didn't always used to be this way.
Think of the Lincoln Douglas debates, 90 minutes, hours long debates.
Only men were voting at the time.
I think it was only would have been white men.
So you're sitting down with the men who are making the decisions and they're giving opening statements that are an hour long.
Here's what I think about government.
Here's what I think principles should be employed.
Like we used to have where the merits of the argument, one, you did not have Lincoln going up and he's like, and I'm sponsored by Coca Cola and I'm sponsored by Amazon.
We had a time where men, because the executive branch, it was the attempt of the founders.
To bring together some of the best of aristocracy, some of the best of the Roman Republic, and some of the best of monarchy.
They understood that a George Washington type figure could bring the people to better themselves.
So it's their attempt at kind of fusing it together.
And there was a time, all that to say, and defend America's founding, there was a time where good men had a chance to argue on the merits, to argue on the basis of their virtue, and to be heard by good, God fearing men who would then go on to vote for them.
We're simply recognizing the reality hey, that was in the mid 1800s, and that hasn't existed.
For 100 to 150 years.
That's what I'm saying.
Amen.
Ironically, there's somebody whose handle is new king.
And they have two comments here I think are worth reading.
One said, But a bad king could do so much bad.
That's true.
That's what we're covering right now.
Their second comment says, Jesus is king.
So why not throning?
I think what he's saying is, Why not enthrone him?
And then he said, Lex Rex.
Yes.
That last part right there, Lex Rex, I want to.
I want to mention that just for a moment.
Lex Rex, meaning the law is above the king rather than the king above the law.
And I think it is worth noting that under the monarchy of Old Covenant Israel, you did have, I think, kind of a hybrid between absolute monarchy but also a constitutional monarchy.
There was a constitution, and the constitution was the law of Moses.
And the king was held in check, not necessarily formally, by A formal military power, but he was held in check, at least in terms of not vote, but voice.
And a voice, even without a vote, can be powerful through the prophet, right?
Isaiah, I think of Elijah, you know, with King Ahab, you know, going to the king, speaking to the king.
It is not lawful for you to do this.
It is not lawful for you to do that.
Fear God.
Thus saith the Lord.
And so my point is that I think that through ministers, the church staying in its lane, right?
So the church not legislating, right?
Not bearing the sword, but the church preaching as a voice, not a formal voice.
Governing power, right?
But an ecclesiastical voice that speaks to the king.
I think that you could have a dynamic of that.
And in terms of the constitutional aspect, you can have a law above the king.
You can have certain legislation that every single man in the kingdom, including the king himself, is bound to, and have that legislation, that law above the king, be the law of the Lord.
There actually is a way.
Of doing that.
And that law, just like Ezra, he comes and he's kind of the priest.
He's in the sphere of the church.
And then you have others like, what is his name?
Zerubbabel.
Tough name.
Zerubbabel rebuilt the rubbable.
But Zerubbabel and also then later Nehemiah, right?
They're both kind of in the civil magistrate sphere and that earthly civil kingdom.
But Ezra is in the ecclesiastical, the sacred church.
Kingdom.
And Ezra, he's the one who they build, ultimately, they basically build a literal platform.
They're building a pulpit and they dust off, you know, they recover and dust off the law of the Lord, the law of Moses, and he reads it to the people.
And the people are weeping underneath the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
And that ultimately informs the civil magistrate, your Nehemias, your Zerubbabel's, that they need to do what's right.
Ezra is, you know, he's not ultimately the political leader.
He's the priest.
But you have priests and politicians in a good kingdom, priests and politicians working together, each in their various spheres, not overlapping.
So the politician isn't administering word and sacrament, and the priest is not legislating civil law.
But the priest is speaking the word of the Lord to the politician and shaping and binding his conscience.
And the politician is then responding to that and leading in a lawful manner, in a godly manner.
Lex Rex, I guess my point is you're saying, well, no king but Christ, and we have Christ, and that's enough.
And a bad king would be really bad, though, so we shouldn't have them.
But then you put right there, in there, Lex Rex.
And I guess what I want to point out is that last little piece, Lex Rex, is kind of ironic because law above the king still implies that there is a king.
And so if that's the argument, is well, we think that there should still be a law above the king.
Well, I think Wes and I would both say, Amen.
We're fine with a law being above the king.
But what we currently have is that the one law in America is that you can't have a king.
And it seems as though the implication of that has progressively, gradually snowballed to being well, the law is not a law above the king, but the law is that you can't have a king.
And over time, by not having a king, we have come to a point where we now also don't have a law.
And I find that to be incredibly challenging.
We don't have either.
Yeah, we don't have either.
To say, I think for this segment, people always love to bring up when Israel wanted a king and God was telling them no, he warns them about it in Deuteronomy.
But one of the reasons, and you'll remember, all the nations around them had kings.
It's for sure, monarchy is the state of nature.
So all the kingdoms around them had kings, and Israel is going to ask for a king.
But one of the things that Israel was supposed to be was a city on a hill and a shining light.
And so God says, I'm not going to give you a king because my goal for you is to be a people that are governed by my law.
So all the nations would look up, they would have their kings, they would have their monarchs.
But they would look at this one nation and they would say, Man, what's so unique about them?
They don't have kings like us.
They're not run like us.
What is it that makes them different and prosper and flourish and so ferocious in battle?
Oh, they have the law of God given them directly.
And Isaiah says, Why don't we go and be and come up to Israel and learn from them because they have God's law?
So God's prohibition on kings for the old covenant in the Old Testament was saying, Guys, I want you to be different.
Not because these things are inherently bad, but I've called you, set you apart like the priests of Levi, you know, that certain tribe.
I've set you apart for something different.
Now, Israel rebels against that and says, Nope, we don't like that task that you gave us.
We don't want to be the city on Hill.
We want to have a king like everyone else.
And God gives it to them, has some downsides, has some upsides.
I think of King David.
Ultimately, they served as a type of Christ.
But it was not at all a, hey, it's not ideal to have a king.
It's not a good thing whatsoever.
I'm telling you not to do it.
It was much more so, I've set you apart for a specific purpose for you to model my law.
Right.
Because think about it like this.
If Israel, in the mind of God, it seems as though what he was saying is, I don't want the other nations, I don't want Assyria and Egypt and Babylon to look to you in your seasons of success and for the glory to go to your king.
Like God is jealous.
His name, the scripture says, for his name is jealous.
God is jealous for his glory and he will share it with no man.
And so God didn't want the other nations to look and see Israel in its prosperity and blessing and to attribute that accomplishment to their.
Their leader, their king.
Rather, he wanted people to look to Israel and say, Oh, there's not any one man that we can point to as the premier ruler or leader or monarch who would be responsible for this immense prosperity and blessing.
The only thing that we can point to is not a person, but a principle, a law.
And the law, this principle, comes from God.
Wow, Israel is superior.
Because their God, not their king, but their God is superior to our gods.
That was the goal.
That was the reasoning.
And then, in terms of the drawbacks, just to mention briefly, when God speaks through the prophet Samuel as Israel is demanding a king to be like the other nations, number one, God doesn't just denounce Israel's desire for a king, he particularly is denouncing Israel's desire to be like all these other nations.
That was the big moral failure, is that they wanted to be like all these other godless foreign nations.
But then when God speaks to the king and does lay out some downsides, that's clear in scripture.
Here are some of the downsides.
Here's at least two that are specifically mentioned by name.
One is God speaking through Samuel says to Israel, If you have a king, he'll take 10% in taxes.
Wes, how much do we currently pay in taxes?
Oh, my goodness.
Depending on your tax bracket, 20 to 30%.
Okay, so according to God's word, infallible, audible words spoken through the prophet, inscripturated in the Bible, the thing to watch out for with a king is that we might have, in our current state, far less taxes than we currently do.
Okay, so then I'm not really worried about that.
And then the next one is also if there's a king, he'll conscript your sons.
In war, in battle, enlisting them in his armies.
Do we send sons and daughters to war right now?
Well, at least we do it for our nations and Tris.
Oh, we do it for others.
So if you have a king, right?
I mean, think about this.
Let's just be logical for a moment.
The big warning from God through the prophet Samuel about a monarch in Israel was if you have a monarch, he'll take your sons.
And send them in battle to defend your country.
We currently have our sons and daughters sent into battle to defend other countries.
Looking at you, Ukraine, looking at you, Israel.
Okay.
Also, if you have a king, he'll tax you 10%.
We don't have a king, we're taxed 20 to 30%.
So I'm going to need somebody, you know, because there's Christians, you know, who would push back and say, we can't have a king.
Why?
Because the Bible warns what will happen with a king.
Yeah, but the warnings of the Bible is that what would happen with a king would be better than what we currently have happening now without a king.
Something to think about.
Let's go to our first commercial break and we'll be right back.
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I want to shift this discussion of kings over to our American context.
We're no strangers to the fact that, obviously, from the protests this weekend and from others, Americans are very much so opposed to the king.
And you have to remember that King George, at the time, America suffered incredible grievances under him.
The colonies, if you read the Declaration of Independence, it's some 25 grievances.
And what they'd been doing is the king was supposed to be their shield from parliament.
So parliament was levying taxes.
Parliament was stationed in the state.
That's what I was going to say real quick.
Like, King George sucked.
But at the same time, to be fair, the thing that sucked about King George wasn't necessarily him, the king himself, directly oppressing the Americas.
But in many ways, it was him not standing in guard, in protection of the oppression coming from parliament.
Exactly.
So even in that case, You still have an entity, a governing entity outside of the monarch doing the majority of the dirty work.
So, even in America, it's founding history.
It's like, what's the problem here?
The king wasn't strong enough.
Right?
Right.
If parliament didn't exist, there wouldn't have been all these grievances about troops being quartered, about the levying of taxes, about the refusing to pass laws.
Like, that's actually, when you go through and read them, we did this in an episode earlier this year.
When you go through and read, they were saying, like, hey, the legislator can't pass laws because they're not in session.
Some of that was the king wouldn't call it.
But it all had to do a lot with the red tape that a huge governing body like parliament is wrapped up in.
And so the point is, the Americans appealed again and again to King George, very respectfully.
Again and again, they said, oh, king, you have a duty.
We're your subject.
We're loyal to the crown.
They didn't disparage him.
They made a deal.
Yep.
They made a deal.
He gave a word.
And their deal was not with parliament, it was with the king.
So they appealed to him again and again.
And finally, After a certain point where he ignored them, which I think they were in their right to do, they said, Listen, we're going to declare our independences.
We are assuming from ourselves the just powers among the nations.
We're asserting ourselves as equal.
And there's that famous line in the Declaration of Independence We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights, et cetera.
And what they were talking about, of course, was looking 250 years down the corridor of time that Haitians who have immigrated illegally to the United States would have an equal vote.
To heritage Americans.
John Hancock is penning this.
He's just thinking of Haiti.
He's like, all men created equal.
And we'll get to that in a moment.
That's what they meant for sure.
But baked into our bones then, so we then formed in the, so you had the Anti Federalists and the Federalists.
We formed a government, we laid out a constitution, we laid out a bill of rights to protect American citizens from the injustices that they had received.
But the point is that in our DNA, from our founding, 250 years ago at this point, is a very anti kings mindset.
And we've just walked through the history of it.
We understand where that came from.
But unfortunately, it has come with baggage.
So, in addition to, hey, in America, no kings.
In America, nobody is above the law.
What has unfortunately come with that, and we have to be honest, and especially at 250 years when this mindset is doing incredible damage to us, To be honest, that Americans also have with them a detrimental anti authority streak.
I'm going to read from Alexis de Tocqueville here a short quote.
Remember, he's the French statesman who comes to America to observe democracy in action.
It's his famous book, Democracy in America.
And he says this In America, the family, and so he clarifies here, the family in the Roman and aristocratic signification of the word does not exist.
He says, In America, the family, as it was known in the ancient world, does not exist.
As soon as the young American approaches manhood, The ties of filial obedience are relaxed day by day.
Master of his thoughts, he is soon master of his conduct.
Essentially saying, in the past, there was a certain type of familial duty that one had a duty to his fatherland, a duty to his country.
But America, for better or for worse, even in the 1800s, he's saying, no, they don't actually feel that sense.
American man turns 18, 20 years old.
They don't have that sense of duty.
They don't have that sense of duty.
It's atomistic.
Already, even then, imagine how much more today, but even then, he's basically saying, It's individualism.
It's too atomistic.
And you see this in the denominations that flourish the most in America Baptists.
Baptists.
Methodists.
And Methodists.
They don't have an episcopal structure, they don't have a presbyterian structure.
There's no hierarchy.
They don't have hierarchy.
And probably at the core of this, we mentioned all men are created equal.
Here's the one thing when it comes to kings, especially a kingly line.
So you think of the Tsars in Russia, you think of certain nobles in Europe.
What happened was the sons would rule, right?
This is King Henry VIIII.
He's like, I have got to get a son here.
I will literally become Protestant to annul my marriages, to marry a woman that will give me a son.
But in that, all right, my son's going to rule.
And then, Lord willing, his son is going to rule.
And his son is going to rule.
There is a baked in assumption that his sons will be better fit for ruling.
At an individual level, all men are created equal.
No, actually, they're not.
The product, the offspring of 300 years of access, even just practically, we've done an episode on genetics, even just practically, the best of nutrition, the best of tactical training.
The best of education, speaking multiple languages.
He's probably been married to a noble woman, not just for King Henry and his one person in his one generation.
No, but we're talking about a lineage hundreds of years, hundreds of years of a particular family being, um, masters in various realms and arts and science.
Um, and saying that, yes, we think that multiple subsequent generations over the course of centuries of mastering this, that, and the other, and And superior nutrition, all these is going to produce a higher stock of people.
That's not absurd by any stretch.
I mean, even if you look at like Grok or ChatGPT and look at America and try to account for, you know, in the last few years, IQ has actually fallen.
But if you look, you know, historically and back up from 1910 to 2010, IQ, average IQ of America has actually gone up.
And when you ask Grok, liberal Grok, to account for this, It mentions education and nutrition as the two biggest contributors.
Okay, if in 100, not 1,000, but 100 years, so thinking probably three, four generations, in three or four generations, improved nutrition and a higher regimen of education can take IQ,
I believe it was one full standard deviation up for the general populace across the board, average IQ for the nation, then what would happen in a particular family?
If that one family has the highest rigor in education and training and nutrition and this, that, and the other, then, yeah, then that family, at the end of the day, God still has to save each individual person, right?
So God would have to, you know, God saved the king, right?
God would have to save that son as he did his father.
Otherwise, he would turn out to be a terrible king.
But in every temporal and natural sense, which does matter, it does need to be accounted for.
In every temporal and natural sense, you're talking about a particular family that is not just your blue collar everyday man.
It is a particular family that is superior.
And we have to be okay with that.
And here's the thing people get bothered.
Look, I'm not advocating.
I'm not saying that I'm that guy, right?
I'm not saying my family.
I'm not saying the weapons.
I'm saying I believe in the promise of God.
It won't be me.
It won't.
And I have like multiple, whether it's an illustration in a sermon, multiple occasions where over the past few years I've made the point I'm making right now.
I'm not talking about myself.
But do I believe that there are certain individuals somewhere out there who are better than me?
They're smarter.
They're healthier.
They are more virtuous.
They're more classically trained and educated.
Yes.
And those people typically do not just appear out of the ether.
You can look to their parents and get a sense of, oh, I see.
Right?
I mean, think of the old adage.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Is that true?
Is it at least, maybe there are exceptions?
I'm sure there are, but is it at least generally true?
Well, if that's generally true, then why wouldn't we want to say, look, here are some of the best families in our nation, and we want to set them up in positions of leadership and power rather than just anyone being able to come in at any time.
And if they can appeal to the basest appetites of the lowest sector of our population and get enough funding from foreign lobbying groups to back their campaign, then all of a sudden they become a ruler.
Right?
So it's like, well, if you have a king, a monarchy, you might have a bad king.
Well, if you don't, it turns out that you'll have Muslim Somalian women marrying their brother in order to gain citizenship and in one generation being in Congress.
I need someone to explain to me how that is better.
Because I'm not seeing it.
We don't have a king.
We have an auto pen.
Is there, most kings would not be as bad as the four years we had of Biden.
Well, democracy, at the very least, the people who are in the country.
But a king, Wes, a king, what if he locked people in their homes for months on end?
What if he forced them?
If we had a king, he might actually shut down churches, right?
If we had a king, like, what if he forced curriculum in schools with pornography?
You know, if we had a king, what if he shut down?
What if he forced transgender activists to the lawn of the Cast right.
What, what, what if he actually, um, you know, uh, taxed people 10 percent?
Oh, we currently have 30.
What if he locked people in their homes?
What if he actually forced people to inject a foreign substance into their bloodstream?
What if it, like, guys, it's like, what are we even talking about?
Right.
And this is a joke.
Like Henry VIII, that man loved to drink and he loved to party.
He was not going into people's homes, forcing vaccines, forcing curriculum.
Like, even some of the worst examples we have, and there's bad ones.
Now, I will say, women like Bloody Mary have done some of the exceptionally bad ones.
But even in the exceptionally bad kings that ruled badly, often their reign was short.
I think of Julian the Apostate as emperor early on in Rome.
He was a pagan worshiper in private.
We talked with the other Paul about this, but the populace was so Christian, he had to keep it in private.
So, at worst, yeah, you've got a pagan emperor, but the populace is so Christian, he has to keep it in private.
Think about the Pharisees.
There's so many times it says they sought to kill Jesus but could not because of the people.
There were moments, even in Jesus' own ministry, where it's like, Like wicked Jewish rulers who want to conspire and kill Jesus, who eventually do.
But for three years before, in the province of God, it was his appointed time.
God himself sovereignly kept Jesus protected.
But God, who stands above in the ultimate, highest sense, works through human means.
He works through temporal means, he works through agency.
And so, at the top level, why didn't Jesus get put to death sooner?
Well, because God is sovereign and he didn't allow it to happen.
That's a true answer.
Another true answer, though, is through what human means did God protect Jesus until it was his time?
Through the populace, through the people, through the people.
So, whether it's God through the people holding the king in check or holding the Sanhedrin in check, like God can always work through the people and he can do that in virtually any system, any system.
So, if we're just saying, well, we don't like the king because there's not enough checks and balances, well, Okay, but a raw democracy doesn't have checks and balances either.
And at least with a king, the king can protect.
The big fear, I think, with the king is what's going to happen to the peasants?
But right now, let's just be honest it's not the peasants who are ultimately in danger, it's the families of nobility.
If we're using a feudal lord system and the equivalent in our modern American context, the peasants are doing just fine.
We're importing peasants by the millions, right?
And the peasants are getting trillions of dollars from the people who actually work.
Right.
Who Protects the Peasants00:02:03
November 1st, food stamps, they might not, though.
And so, what, and let's be honest, like we were talking about this before we started recording, right?
Because of the government shutdown, that news has just surfaced that if the government shutdown doesn't end before November 1st, we have eight days.
Then, yeah, eight days, then you're not going to get welfare benefits.
And so, in our American context, what's going to happen?
You won't get welfare benefits, so a lot of people are going to have to go out and get a job, right?
Wrong.
It means that Target and Walmart are going to have to beef up their security because theft will go through the roof.
I mean, nobody's actually come out and said, if I don't get my EBT stamps, I am going to steal groceries.
Nobody's actually posted.
Thousands of people have said, if I don't get my welfare, I will rob.
They've said it.
Yep.
I will rob this store.
I will rob my Thanksgiving dinner.
That's right.
I'll take it from you if I don't get it from the government.
Give me stuff.
Right.
So.
And that's what our current system gives you.
Universal suffrage with raw democracy means that meritocracy is, oh, democracy plus meritocracy.
If there's democracy, there can't be meritocracy.
And in our current system, what we have is if you can get enough people to be lazy or immoral or whatever it is, if you can get 50% of them plus one in your country, and if you don't have the numbers, it's like, well, most of the country actually is hardworking and virtuous.
Oh, we can fix that.
We'll import from the third world.
Don't you take no for an answer.
Until slowly over 60 years on the Hart Cellar Act until now, oh, now we've changed the demographics.
Now we have our 50% plus one.
And now, with the other 49% over the coming years, we will, through elections and through legislation, we will vote and vote and vote until we vote away all of your stuff.
That's democracy.
That's what we currently have.
And I'll be honest, I can't picture any monarch that would be as threatening as the system we currently have.
Yeah.
Lineage and Unexpected Heroes00:04:30
Old books used to recognize this too.
I was reading earlier this year King Arthur to my son before bed, and it often, when it introduced a knight, it spoke of his parents.
And it tied the lineage to their right to rule.
I think of Aragorn and Boromir at the very end of his life.
He's promising him that he'll continue his fight.
And he says, You know, I don't know what strength lies within my ideology.
Oh, I'm sorry.
What strength lies within my friendship?
Oh, no.
I don't know what strength lies within my blood.
The whole arc of the Lord of the Rings, it's not as though the fellowship is there.
And there's kind of a question Well, who's going to be king of Gondor over this?
There's one man, the blood of Numenor runs through him.
That's right.
There's only one person who's fit to do it.
And it's not just one person who's allowed to do it.
It's only that same one person who is the only one who is allowed to do it by tradition and by law is also the only person who, in terms of merit, would be fit to do it because there's something about his lineage that doesn't just make him permissible, but it also makes him able.
It actually makes him able.
And you look at Tolkien, he is brilliant.
One of my favorite Catholics, G.K. Chesterton would be another.
But Tolkien is brilliant in the sense that he kind of perfectly marries.
Two worlds, thinking of a more modern world, but then also an old, an ancient, and more traditional world.
And so Tolkien has the unexpected hero, right?
The unexpected hero.
So it's like, at the end of the day, who really saves the world, the known world, Middle Earth?
Well, it's a wizard, or it's a hobbit.
And even beyond that, at some level, it's not just Frodo, but it's.
Gollum.
It's a hobbit that's been corrupted for 500 years, his mind poisoned by the ring, and he inadvertently ends up saving all of Middle earth.
And so there is this unexpected hero theme throughout the book.
But at the same time, I think it's key to remember that the hero is unexpected in one sense and yet completely expected in another.
And what I mean by that is backing up from the Lord of the Rings to the Hobbit.
And so now thinking, Frodo, you know, he comes from the line, he's the nephew of Bilbo.
So the principle would remain the same.
But look at Bilbo for a moment and the hobbit.
Bilbo is unexpected in the sense of just that he's a hobbit.
But he's not just any hobbit, he's a hobbit who is, you know, the son of a Took, right?
And the Took family is unique among all the hobbits in the sense that they have, you know, certain members of their family.
That were hobbits by nature, more quiet and homebodies and domestic.
But the Tooks were a unique family that had more than one individual throughout their lineage, their ancestry, who were prone towards risk and adventure.
And there was one particular Took in the lineage of Bilbo, who was, even though he's a hobbit, so all hobbits are relatively small, but he was so large that he, you know, Tolkien says that he could ride a real horse, right?
Because the hobbits would ride ponies because they were so small.
And that's my point is that's not a coincidence.
So even when Tolkien, Picks a hero.
On the one hand, he picks an unexpected hero, right?
Not among wizards, not among men, not among elves, but hobbits.
But even though he chooses a hobbit, he picks the most expected hobbit that you could in the sense that he picks a hobbit from a noble ancestry, right?
And so whether it's Aragorn or whether it's Bilbo, and then of course Frodo, at every level, it's, oh, you know what?
And then lines like what you quoted I do not know what strength.
You know, flows through my blood.
A quote from Aragorn.
Tolkien understood meritocracy, effort, human agency, choices, will.
But then, above it all, he also understood lineage, providence, sovereignty.
Like the whole time with the ring, there's this sense of making the right choice with noble characters.
And yet, there's also providence at every moment that this person just the timing happens to be perfect.
Pride vs. Humble Governance00:08:57
And so there's will and agency, and yet there's also fate and destiny.
And I think that we, it's not a coincidence that in our American context, not only have we rejected monarchy as a political form, what have we also done theologically?
At every level, it's not just politically, but it's theologically and culturally.
Like what we've ultimately rejected.
Is well, they actually used to say this in the founding of our nation we have no sovereign here.
What a cell phone!
I mean, right there was a time where it's like, well, the verdict hasn't come back in.
Well, it's come back in now.
We have no sovereign here, and so what do we have instead?
Um, we have gay furries, we have drag queen story hour, we have blue haired feminist priestess in our churches.
We like, I think I prefer a sovereign, I think I'd prefer it.
Yeah.
If you could, just to kind of sum it all up, if you could get most Americans that would say, oh, no king, you put them in a corner and you gave them truth serum.
And there are valid reasons.
I mentioned at our founding with King George, there's other arguments to be made.
But most Americans, you put them in the corner, you give them truth serum.
Why is it that you hate the idea of the king?
Because I hate the idea that there's someone born and they are more fit than me by virtue of their birth to rule.
And I.
We just need to be honest.
The majority of us, 99% of us, we were.
To be ruled, men must be governed.
Now, some will rule over families, rule over churches, be lesser magistrates to the higher magistrates.
But I would say, specifically in America, what is it about us that hate kings?
We hate the idea that there are those born that are superior to us to rule.
You're absolutely right.
It's because we're liberals.
And I've said it many times.
I'll say it again.
Liberalism is the reigning dogma of our day.
And if liberalism was the car, the engine that drives it is egalitarianism.
It is a forced, unnatural, and unbiblical flattening of every distinction because distinctions necessarily create disparity, and disparity implies and ultimately mandates hierarchy.
We hate hierarchy, therefore, we must get rid of disparities, which means that we ultimately must not acknowledge distinctions and flatten distinctions to create a totalizing egalitarian society.
Where everyone is equal, and the only way to have ultimately equality is to force androgyny, to where we achieve equality because we forced sameness.
Everyone is equal because everyone is the same.
Anyone who's brilliant, anyone who's talented, anyone who stands out, who has some kind of attribute, be it virtue or be it gifting, that would cause them to stand out and be distinct, we have to shackle them, we have to suppress them.
In order for them to be the same as everyone else, so that we can ensure that they would be equal to everyone else.
And when you think of what would be the driving, so liberalism, the heart of that, right, being egalitarianism.
But then when you think of, like, okay, what's the car is liberalism, the engine is egalitarianism.
What's the fuel now?
Pride.
C.S. Lewis had a brilliant quote, a friend of Tolkien, close friend.
He said, Pride is perhaps the most difficult sin to see in ourselves.
And yet, one of the easiest sins to detect in others.
And so, perhaps the most effective way of detecting pride in ourselves, right, because it's hard to notice in yourself, is to see how bothered we are by the pride that we think we see in others.
In other words, what I've noticed is that a truly humble person, even if he is surrounded by the company of arrogant fools, Because of his humility, the pride in others who surround him bothers him far less.
The people who are most prideful are usually the people who are most bothered by what they perceive to be as pride in others.
And so, what I'm saying is that this idea of, you're not better than me, you think you're better than me, you think that there's hierarchy, you think that there's superiority, what you're dealing with there is not a humble person.
What you're dealing with there is a very arrogant person.
And in most cases, you might say, well, if they're really that arrogant, wouldn't they embrace hierarchy and just place themselves at the top?
And that's what you would expect.
But that wouldn't require arrogance alone.
That would require a person who is arrogant, but also happens to be competent.
What we have in our country is people who are incredibly arrogant.
And also at the same time, even they are aware of the fact.
That they're arrogant but also incredibly stupid.
So, the reason why you have people not saying, Well, I actually do like hierarchy, but I just should be at the top.
But the reason you don't see people arguing for that very often is because they're stupid.
They're unintelligent, unimpressive, not gifted, not virtuous.
And so, the best that they could hope for is the flattening of all distinctions and the full embrace of egalitarianism because they know that they're not fit to rule, that they're not fit for.
So, they're not even attempting to argue for hierarchy, but simply self serving hierarchy to place themselves above others because they know that they wouldn't even be capable of being above others.
You have arrogant people who often, sadly, happen to also be the least impressive people.
And at this point of time, I think we have a country full of such individuals.
And so, liberalism is the perfect.
Solution in their minds and the full embrace of egalitarianism, but all of it fueled by pride.
So, this idea of no kings, or this idea of even, you know, let's put it into theological terms for a second.
I am a Baptist, and I think there's something to this doctrine, but I want to be honest for a second.
I have seen people say the priesthood of all believers, I've seen people say it in such a way that it's true and it's rooted in scripture.
And what they're doing as they quote this phrase, theological phrase, and biblical phrase, the priesthood of all believers, is they're doing something that honors the Lord, something that's virtuous and true.
And yet I have seen people assert the priesthood of all believers just as many times, if not more, far more, where it's what they're doing, what they're attempting in asserting this concept, this principle, the priesthood of all believers, is simply the ecclesiastical.
Christian version of the liberal asserting egalitarianism.
And there's no discernible difference whatsoever.
My point is, it is ingrained in our American bone.
It's in our soul.
It's written in our history, in our origin, and our whole ethos is basically defined by a sense of rebellious pride.
We Americans are a rebellious people.
We destroyed kings, destroyed hierarchy, destroyed distinctions.
We destroyed it in the ecclesiastical realm.
We destroyed raw democracy.
Oh, but the church, it'll have a sense of order.
No, congregationalism.
At every level, we literally said, the world that God made, we hate.
And I'm just kind of sick of it.
I'm sick of it.
I have been so convicted over these last two years as the Lord, I believe, by the power of the Holy Spirit, revealing this to me.
And I've just realized, like every day, I have to wake up and the Lord just reminds me, Joel, you're a lib.
You're a lib.
Hey, Joel, you think you're based?
You're a Baptist.
Joel, you think you're based?
What's your church polity?
Congregationalism?
Order in Church Polity00:02:04
Yeah, you're gay.
And I'm just having to sit with that.
I'm just having to own that.
I'm having to actually reflect.
And it's painful to realize, man, I've been deceived at every level.
At every level, I've embraced gay, effeminate, Prideful, rebellious liberalism.
I've done it in church polity.
I've done it in civil polity.
I've done it in ideology at every single level.
I'm a gay lib.
And by God's grace, I'd like to not be.
So, all right.
Great.
We'll head to our second commercial break and then handle the super chats that we got.
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The Value of Generous Donors00:02:55
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Okay, super chats.
We got a lot of them today.
I just want to start by saying a couple things.
Number one, thank you guys so much.
It really means the world to us.
And our biggest, you know, I don't want to just say it for the super chats because that's the moment that we're in right now.
I want to be honest here.
The biggest thing that keeps us on the map, keeps us in the fight, is the financial support from all of you.
But the biggest thing is our donors.
Super chats matter immensely, immensely.
But the biggest thing, though, because it's not fair if I say, man, this guy gave $50 super chat.
That matters.
Thank you.
But I'm just going to be honest.
The reason we're in the fight is because you guys giving $50 super chats and also a few guys who will remain anonymous writing $20,000 checks.
So those guys, whew.
Thank you.
You know who you are.
So, those anonymous donors who are actually signing up for things like top guys, that's a huge thing.
Those are guys who support us $100 a month and are given special access.
And there are guys who want in that we won't let because we are daily interacting with them.
And so, they have to be vetted and trusted.
But, our top guys from the bottom of our heart, thank you.
Our big donors, anonymous donors, thank you.
But the next in line, I would say kind of like third tier, but it really matters, is our super chat guys.
And so, all of you guys, this whole week so far, the last couple episodes, our super chats have gone to the next level.
They're full, good questions.
Like lots of super chats, generous, great comments, great questions.
So, thank you so much.
All right.
Let's start at the bottom first.
Bottom?
Do you want to go ahead with Austin?
Sure.
Okay.
So, this is from Austin Gondor.
And he writes in, he gave a $50 super chat, very generous.
Thank you, Austin.
He said, I don't usually catch you live, but I'm praying for you and your family.
I'm getting married in three days.
Awesome.
Congratulations.
My fiance and I love your ministry.
A Formal King Preferred00:03:36
I'll be honest.
Usually it's, I love your ministry.
And I really enjoy it whenever my fiance or wife gives me permission to watch, which is really good.
It's something I enjoy, like Gollum in privacy, in the darkness.
Right.
So the fact that your fiance is watching it with you and enjoys it, you've got to keep her.
That's awesome.
He said, she is very based.
By the way, I was the one who super chatted on Elijah Schaefer on his show a while back.
When I was on the show too about wedding rings.
So I remember you.
That's great.
Thanks for following us over here on Right Response.
We really appreciate it.
Austin's like, my wedding's coming up in three days, but I got to pray for Joel.
God bless.
Our guy.
All right.
Answers in Scripture also sent $50.
Very kind.
And he said, Long live the Christian King.
Good job, men.
I spent 17 years in public school to learn my place in life was to serve a nameless deep state government that is now fully corrupt.
Many such cases.
Give me a king so at least I know who to love or hate.
That right there, that last line.
Give me a king.
So, see, that's the thing.
It's like, well, we don't want a monarchy because that might be bad.
What if the king is evil?
Yep, that can absolutely happen.
But I really feel like, once again, Rush Duny coming in the clutch.
It's not whether but which.
So, it's not so much that I really, really, really think that we should have a king and we currently don't.
I feel like one of the strongest arguments I would make is I'd like to have a formal king instead of the kings that we do have.
We do currently have kings, except instead of one who's named, who we can hold accountable, who we can see, we have all these faceless, nameless kings who are dictating policy.
They're dictating taxes.
George Soros was a big funder of the No Kings protest.
Where does he live?
What are his goals?
He's a king.
He is a king, right?
Even like Donald Trump, it's like, well, and I'm not saying he's a king.
I wish he'd be a little bit more of one.
It's like, well, Donald Trump is a king.
Nope.
But Donald Trump, in many ways, in large part, won this last election because another king threw his weight behind him, namely Elon Musk.
Through Elon Musk and his funding and his presence and his influence.
So we have kings.
I mean, during the 2020 election, Mark Zuckerberg just said, you know what, Hunter Biden laptop story, no, just suppress, gone.
That is a fiat dictate.
That is a kingly, in this case, an evil, wicked, unjustifiable kingly order.
So we have kings, but instead of it being unaccountable kings, because they're not even in the civil sphere, but rather in the private, right?
The private sphere of capitalistic economic sphere with no recourse, right?
No avenue of accountability.
I'd rather have a political, visible king.
Where the people have some form of recourse than to have dozens of unnamed shadow kings who are protected by our sacred capitalism, and many of them beholden to other interests, other parties, and even other nations.
Right.
Qualifications for Female Deacons00:14:29
Yeah.
So good point.
All right.
This dude rocks.
I'll give this one to you.
$5 super chat.
Great supporter, great guy.
He said, It seems like scripture doesn't say women can't be deacons.
What is your take?
It isn't a leadership position after all.
God bless, friends.
Yeah, so I would say that women can't be deacons.
And I do think that school.
Scripture says that.
But I will say this this dude Rocks has been an incredible, consistent supporter of the show.
Appreciate him very much.
And the individual behind this account emailed me just last night encouraging us.
And so I'm very, very grateful and appreciative of you.
And so none of this is, I'm not going to put you in your place or anything like that.
It's a perfectly fine question.
I do, I know what you're saying.
Scripture is not as explicit.
In the way that it forbids women from being deacons, but I do believe that scripture forbids women from being deacons.
But I will admit it's not quite as explicit or clear as the prohibition on women being elders.
That said, if you look at both Titus and 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, 1 Timothy 3, you have the qualifications for elders, and you just have one section, and it starts with he.
He must be husband of but one wife.
In the case of deacons, thinking of like 1 Timothy 3, this is where guys, I think, get confused.
And I think this is where this dude rocks is coming from.
In the case of 1 Timothy 3, you have one section for elders he must be the husband of but one wife.
But then you have two sections for deacons.
And it gives the qualifications for a male deacon he must be this, that, and the other.
And then it gives this subsection, another section where it says, likewise, Women.
Now, this is what he mentioned elsewhere.
I saw it earlier in the comments.
He was quoting 1 Timothy 3, likewise, women.
In the Greek, it can, I admit, it can translate as either wives or women.
But I do believe that in that, so you have to look at context.
Remember that Greek is a less specific language on purpose because it was meant to be a universal language primarily.
To do with commerce and the ability for multiple different peoples who all spoke different native tongues to be able to gather in centralized economic hubs and centers.
And so you have people from Assyria or this person from Babylon who all speak different languages in different locations coming together in a centralized hub and being able to trade.
And do commerce.
And so it was just kind of a more rudimentary, basic language that didn't have as many specific terms, not as many specific terms.
So the Greek, sometimes you have one Greek word that could actually translate to be multiple different other words, like in the case of wives or women.
I do think that the context is wives.
I'll give you a couple of reasons why.
Number one, if it's women, Then basically, the assumption there, and I think this is where you're coming from, this dude rocks, is you're thinking, well, you have one list of qualifications for male deacons, and then likewise women.
If you're not reading it as wives, I think it should be wives, but if you're reading it as women, likewise women, then what you're implying, what you're assuming, is male deacons have one set of qualifications, and then there's also such a thing as female deacons.
But what you have to admit, because you look at what it says for women, and I think it's wives, It's a different set of qualifications, and it's not just different, it's less.
It's less.
So just open it up, look at 1 Timothy 3.
You have multiple different characteristics, tenets that have to be met in the case of a male deacon.
And then you have about half that amount, or even a third of that amount, for if you're assuming that it's women and not wise, for female deacons.
And so, what you would have in the scripture, if you think about this logically, is you would have God sanctioned, biblically approved affirmative action.
Essentially, saying same role, deacon.
When a man fills that role, he must be this tall to ride the ride.
When a woman fills the role, she can be less.
And so, you would be essentially hamstringing the church.
You would be saying, you know what, we want to have both male and female deacons.
In the case of our female deacons, they'll be less qualified.
It'd be like a Matt Chandler thing, except not with race, but with gender instead.
Right.
Well, I'll take, you know, the seven female deacon over the eight male deacon, right?
Instead of the seven African American over the eight Anglo American, his notorious, you know, saying.
So I don't think that that's what God's doing.
I don't think God is saying, you know what, you can have a male or a female deacon.
In the case of a male deacon, he's got to be really qualified.
In the case of a female deacon, she can be less qualified.
But that's how you would have to read it if you read that as women, female deacons, rather than.
Oh, here's simply the qualifications for not a female deacon, but the wife of a male deacon.
Now, the counter to that argument is that people would say, well, if it is qualifications not for female deacons, women, but rather the wives of male deacons, then how come there are no qualifications earlier in 1 Timothy 3 for the wives of elders?
Why qualifications for the wives of deacons and not qualifications for the wives of elders?
And my answer to that, as I've studied the issue, is.
Is I believe that there's something about the nature of the role of a deacon that will necessarily and naturally include the co ministry of his wife in a much larger capacity than the role of elder.
Because the role of elder is a ministry of the word, and the role of deacon is a ministry of mercy.
I'll say that again.
Primarily, the role of an elder is a ministry of the word, and the role of a deacon is the ministry of mercy.
Right, this is where you have the um the inauguration or the origin of deacons in Acts chapter 6.
That's another, this is a descriptive, it's not prescriptive like 1 Timothy 3.
It's a descriptive text, but it is there's something to be said for the fact that in one of the few descriptive texts that we have for the office of deacon, um, they say, Bring us seven men, not seven people, not seven women, but bring us seven men filled with the Holy Spirit and endowed with wisdom, you know, who are fit to perform this task.
And what is the task?
Well, the task is a task of a ministry of service, a ministry of mercy.
That the elders and the church there at Jerusalem at the time were being overrun and overwhelmed by the need of widows, and not just the practical need in terms of charity and service for widows, but also the need for counsel and mediation because there was a conflict arising between two different groups the Hebraic Jews and the Hellenistic Jews.
We were at each other's throats, opposed to one another, because they were claiming that one of their groups, the widows among one of their groups, were being overlooked in favor of the other.
So, what you have is you have conflict resolution, you have counseling, mediation, and the service of this ministry of mercy and service and charity towards actually feeding those widows.
And I don't think these seven men were appointed to simply carry bowls of soup.
Two widows.
I think that the church would do that, that multiple people would serve as volunteers in the church to actually execute this service, this ministry.
I think the seven men, the reason why one of the qualifications in Acts 6 is that they're endowed with wisdom and the Spirit of God is because they were going to oversee this ministry, which involved more than just a whiteboard and mapping out paths to different tables to carry soup the most efficiently, but actually conflict mediation and counsel.
As well, between two different sects of the church groups that were growing in enmity toward one another.
And so, seven men, not people that could be men or women, but seven men filled with the Holy Spirit.
Now, all that back to the argument I was making a moment ago.
So, one, you have a descriptive text in Acts chapter six that says men.
Two, that descriptive text in Acts chapter six doesn't just speak to the qualifications, you must be a man and filled with the spirit and endowed with wisdom, but also.
It describes not just who can fill the role, but the nature of the role itself.
And the nature of the role involves wisdom and counsel, but it also is very much a role of service, practical service.
And when it comes to practical service, this is something that a wife is going to partner with her husband in at a much greater capacity and much higher frequency than the role of, if the role is, for instance, a ministry of the word.
And just to put it into practical terms, If you have a deacon in the church, a male deacon, and his role is to care for the poor through practical, physical acts of service, his wife is going to partner with him in that at a high degree.
Whereas for me, as an elder, a pastor, minister of the word in my church, there are many things that I do, but my chief functions are preaching the word and administering the sacrament, in which case my wife, who is Very qualified if we're speaking of just mere virtue and character.
But my wife is not partnering with me in preaching and baptism and the Lord's Supper.
And so I think that the reason why you have a list of qualifications for the wives of deacons and an absence of a list of qualifications for the wives of elders is because implicitly we're meant to assume that the wife of a deacon will partner with her husband in that ministry.
To a higher degree and a greater frequency than the wife of an elder will partner with her husband, because the nature of those two roles in the church, the nature of the role of an elder is primarily, predominantly dealing with the word and sacrament, whereas the nature of the role of a deacon is primarily practical acts of service and charity.
And it's simply implicit that a wife would function in charity and service.
At a much higher level than she would with preaching and administering sacraments.
So I don't think, because the counter argument, playing the devil's advocate, they would say, well, if this is this subtext for the qualifications of deacons, if it's read as wives of male deacons instead of women being female deacons, well, then that seems to exalt the role of deacon above elder because deacons are such a high role that there's qualifications even for their wives.
But elder must be a lower role because.
They don't seem to have any explicit qualifications for their wives listed at all.
That's kind of the way that people would argue it.
And I would say it's not because deacon is above, in terms of hierarchy, elder.
It's not because of the degree of those two roles, deacon being above elder, but the nature and manner of those two roles.
Deacon is very practical, elder is very spiritual, deacon is service and charity, elder is word and sacrament.
And I think that's the argument that I would make.
I also saw one other comment from you in regards to Phoebe.
She is mentioned as a deacon or deaconess.
Again, this is where you have to understand the nature of the Greek language.
One word being able to translate in many ways, just like the Greek word could translate as women or wives, so too the Greek word can translate for deacon.
It could be speaking of deacon in terms of.
The formal ordained office of a deacon in the church, an ecclesiastical formal office, or deacon in the informal, more organic sense of just meaning a servant.
And so I think that what the scripture is speaking in terms of Phoebe is simply saying that she is a wonderful servant of the Lord, not capital S formal ordained servant, deacon in the ecclesiastical capacity of an officer of the church, but simply the way that all Christians should be servants.
So, I think the scripture is simply commending her as a wonderful lowercase s servant, a Christian servant, but not capital S ordained office of deacon.
So, Timothy Keller, hardest hit.
Yep.
Timothy Keller got real cute with qualifications of deacons while being a PCA minister who is bound by the Westminster standards that strictly forbid female deacons.
The Book of Common Order, I believe it is, forbids the laying on of hands to men.
So, what they did is they appointed deaconesses, if I remember correctly.
Breaking Laws to Honor God00:15:31
That's right.
But didn't lay hands on them.
So, they would be deacons.
So, they would say, well, they're not actually ordained.
So, they're installed, they're appointed, they're designated, but they're not ordained.
But then, what they did that was even further and atrocious is in the spirit of fairness, they're like, well, we can't ordain women and still be in the PCA, holding to the Westminster standards.
So, we won't ordain women.
But what we'll do is we'll stop ordaining men in the spirit of egalitarianism.
So, they didn't lay hands on women.
But they did call them deaconesses and they did appoint them without ordaining them.
And to make it fair, they stopped ordaining and laying hands on men.
So they had unordained but appointed male and female deacons in a true egalitarian spirit.
It's positively subversive.
Very bad.
Dapper Dan sent $5.
Thanks, Dan.
I reject democracy because I reject naturalistic thinking.
And democracy is just an evolutionary theory of politics.
It's also very Jewish.
Yeah, well said.
Elliot White sent $5.
Thanks, Elliot.
What is the best advice you have for a state representative?
My father is one.
This is a good question.
We should do an episode sometimes on the different kinds of roles in the culture war.
So, you have the propaganda, and that would be guys like us.
We're not hiding our power levels.
In fact, if anything, we're a little too out and about to forthcoming with them.
So, you've got troops on the ground.
These are the guys that tend to your young Republicans.
They donate, they vote, they're active, they door knock.
Those guys hide their power levels.
You have guys providing the rhetoric and the propaganda, they're giving instructions.
But then you have a much smaller subset, and those are the politicians.
And it's hard to get a hold of them, and it's even harder to get them.
To take your positions, to listen to your side, especially in their position, they have a difficult time pushing the Overton window because you push it too far, you're basically going to be voted out the next election.
So the question is my father's a state representative.
What would your advice be?
I think practically it would be live on the right edge of the Overton window, not outside of it.
With you outside the Overton window, we are outside the Overton window.
Yeah, let your state representatives be outside the Overton window.
But as much as you can, where it's acceptable, you're not risking your job, push the issue on this.
All right, so like anti Semitism, there's been a couple, even in Texas, bills that come forward defining it this out of the other.
I'm going to go ahead and vote no on this.
You don't need to get into all the reasons why.
You don't have to go out and cite First Thessalonians, oppose God, kill the prophets.
You don't need to do that, but say, hey, I think this sets a bad precedent as far as the enemies of all mankind.
Don't need to bring that up.
Live on the right edge of the Overton window.
Hey, this happens to be true.
Say it in ways that are normie friendly.
And I think those guys have a ton of opportunity to make a real difference, but they will lose that opportunity.
If they're in the center, not pushing it at all, or they're too far outside and basically written off.
Yep, agreed.
Okay, this dude rocks again.
He said, Joel, as a Nephilim theorizer, I am not a theorizer, I'm a Nephilim believer.
You should look up Gary Wayne.
I listened to him interviewed by Encounter today over his The Genesis 6 Conspiracy book.
I'll look it up.
Never heard of him.
All right.
All right.
Will Nelson sent $5.
Thanks, Will.
Well, we all know well, installation of democracy worked out in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Well, you know, there's this wonderful place in Africa where they took our constitution and carbon copied it, and it's flourishing, it's doing great economically.
Oh, wait, that didn't work so well.
We've mentioned it before it's the people that really make a political system.
So, democracy, there are times actually where a greater majority of people voting, when you have a good, moral, Christian, intelligent people, that actually could work much better than even a republic or an aristocracy with a bad people.
It depends a lot on the people.
In this case, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yeah.
Not the people of Syria.
Doesn't work for it.
Yep.
That's the thing.
I've said it before.
I'll say it real briefly.
But people look at the American experiment and they say, well, you know, for a while it worked out really well and arguably better than any country in the world.
Look at the prosperity.
Look at the blessing.
Look at the success.
That's all true.
But I think what you have to recognize is one, we did not have a raw democracy.
That came later through universal suffrage.
What we had in the beginning was a constitutional republic.
And so you had, you know, You had the populace voting, but not every sector of the populace.
You had those who were of a particular stock and representing not just individuals themselves, but representing households, right?
You had head of households who were voting.
In addition to that, so one, not a raw democracy, but a constitutional republic.
Secondly, even that constitutional republic, in large part, the reason why it fared so well is because it did not simply hang in midair.
It's not that it came out of the ether.
That constitutional republic.
Came from the people, a particular quality, caliber of people.
And where did those people come from?
Oh, well, they were forged over the course of about seven to nine hundred years from a Christian monarch.
They were Europeans who were ready for self governance because if you just got the right form of government and the right constitution, it would work with any people.
No, they were particular people that that form of self governance and self representation worked for them because they were a high caliber people.
And they were a high caliber people.
It came about over a long, grueling process of men being governed for generation after And after centuries, their progeny, their posterity were finally fit for self governance.
Right.
So that doesn't just happen.
So the idea of like, well, let's just go back.
I don't think it's linear, right?
I don't think it's a sliding scale where it's like Christian monarchy.
Goes to an aristocracy, goes to a constitutional republic, and then devolves into a raw democracy.
And if we want to right the ship, we just need to go back one setting, you know, from raw democracy to the constitutional republic.
No, I don't think it's linear.
I think it's circular.
Unfortunately, I'm not even saying that I like this.
This is not what I'm prescribing.
This is what I'm predicting.
What I predict is that this is not a line, but a circle, and that the only way on is through.
And that you have to circle back around.
That once you lose the Constitutional Republic, and what I mean by that is the people who are fit for the Constitutional Republic and devolve into the most base of appetites and the lowest common denominator,
and flood your country with a bunch of people who are not the descendants of seven to 900 years of a Christian monarchy, then I think what you have to do from that point.
It's go all the way back around that you have to then move from this raw democracy, universal suffrage, lowest common denominator, back to a stiff hand.
Again, it's what I'm predicting, not necessarily prescribing, but historically, I don't really, I can't think of any examples where a nation of our size, about 200 million, added an additional 100 million.
So, 50% of their founding stock from the third world and different places that are not Christian and worship demons, thinking of Muslim nations, Hindu nations, and devolved and propagandized for over half a century with just media slop and degeneracy and all these kinds of things, and atheism taught in the public schools,
indoctrinated and educated in the ways of secularism and all these kinds of things.
And then just turn the clock back.
I can't think of any example like that.
Constitutional Republic worked because we had the people suitable for it.
We no longer have those people by design, very intentionally.
We imported people who are not fit and we took the people, the founding stock that were fit and their posterity and denigrated them.
And so now I feel like we're kind of back at phase one.
We want to clean house, we want to get everyone ship shape.
Men must be governed.
I think we're back.
Full circle.
Yep.
Depper Dan sent another $5.
He said, monarchy makes bad leaders more detrimental, but democracy makes bad leaders more often.
That's a good way of saying it.
That's a good way of saying it.
Yeah.
Got it.
All right.
Justin Holt, he gave us $10.
Thanks, Justin.
He said, You guys see Michael Knowles and Ali Beth Stuckey talking about dispensationalism in Israel, moderately based.
Read the title of the episode.
Maybe, maybe.
I'll have to see it.
It was on his recent episode, Make America Pregnant Again.
I'll have to check it out.
I appreciate Knowles.
I think moderately based would be a fair label for him.
Not nearly as based as he could be.
Michael Knowles, there's so much potential, right?
The blood of nobility runs through your veins.
Italian veins.
Yeah.
I mean, you've got this monarchical, Catholic, Italian, right?
There's greatness.
There's greatness there.
So I think that Knowles has potential to be.
Unfathomably based.
If he can get off the Israeli wire plantation, that would be absolutely vital.
But moderately based in the meantime, I think it's probably fair.
I struggle to use that descriptor, moderately based, for Ali Bastucci.
To me, it's an oxymoron on the face of it to have a woman in a pantsuit dressed like a man.
You know, speaking publicly with another man, influencing and leading.
And this one, too, talking about having more kids.
That's just, I remember a while ago, Michael Knowles and her, they were doing like a drinking game.
Like, even that combo was a little bit like, what are we doing here?
Let's have the men sit down and fix this problem.
Right.
Yeah.
So I struggle with that.
But who knows?
Maybe Knowles had some good points.
All right.
All right.
This dude, Rock, sent $20.
He said, would it be biblical for the president of the U.S. to take executive action?
To directly amend the Constitution to explicitly name Christ as sovereign over the country, knowing that he's potentially breaking the law to do it.
And he sent a $5 follow up to clarify in this hypothetical, he would be circumventing the normal processes to do so, taking an executive direct action, circumventing norms.
And I saw a comment that was not a super chat where he said, I'm essentially asking, can you break the law to name Christ as king?
Yeah.
He who saves his country violates no law.
And, uh, The law of the land is only valid insofar as it mirrors the law of God.
So, any current law on the books that forbids the public allegiance of a nation to the Lord Jesus Christ is an illegitimate law.
And so, I wouldn't even see it as law breaking, not in the eternal or ultimate or any valid real sense.
And the The alternative, what we currently have, I don't think this is the First Amendment and it's an authorial intent, but the way that it's interpreted and applied today, freedom of religion.
John MacArthur even said this.
And John MacArthur was, you know, I mean, he was not, you know, necessarily a magisterial reformer in his, you know, political doctrine.
But even John MacArthur said freedom of religion, freedom of religion is just freedom of idolatry.
So true, King.
Rest in peace, King.
So I agree.
So, like, I mean, what law would you be violating?
Well, you'd be violating a law that insists that foreign peoples should be able to publicly worship foreign gods.
That's a law that was made to be broken, and God would honor the breaking of that law.
I do think there's a, you could also frame it.
So, we asked, would it be biblical?
Would it be practically wise?
That is a whole different other field.
So, day one, you come in, you're like, I want to have the most opposition, the most difficulty.
The biggest, you know, no kings protest ever seen.
Day one, I'm going to declare it.
I'm going to declare martial law.
Maybe that's not the most tactical, but in principle, maybe it's the last day of your term in office, but in principle, we're saying biblically yes and amen.
Yeah.
Okay.
Green Raptor sent $2 super chat, said, We've forgotten the no king but Christ motto.
No, we haven't forgotten it.
I think we're just struggling to believe it.
So, well aware that there's, No king but Christ in the ultimate eternal sense.
But I just struggle to make a biblical argument for why there can be no earthly kings who ultimately are submitted to the one true, highest king, Christ.
And one of the biblical arguments I would make actually to go against no king but Christ is the fact that Christ, one of his names, is King of Kings.
Mm hmm.
The mere fact that Jesus is king of kings implies that there are such a thing, a valid thing, as earthly kings for Jesus to be king of.
And so, yeah, no king but Christ.
I've got a lot of good friends who would support that.
We have a sponsor who would support that.
I know what they mean.
I think the heart is in the right place, so I'm not going to disparage them.
It's probably something I can't remember, but I've probably even echoed that sentiment a couple of years ago myself.
But as I'm thinking about it more and more, I'd make two arguments.
One from Scripture, King of Kings.
I think that's a decent argument.
And then one I would make from history, and history being ultimately subservient to Scripture, but still a legitimate authority, not an infallible authority as Scripture is, but an authority nonetheless.
And the argument I would make from history is kind of similar to the argument I would make against dispensationalism.
Scripture Over History00:08:49
I would say dispensationalism, I think, is wrong on the merits in terms of its exegesis of the scripture.
But it also should be held as highly suspect just simply due to the mere fact that it's novel.
Do we really want to assert that the church, the universal church of Jesus Christ, the lowercase c, Catholic church, for 1850 years since its inception, completely missed?
This valid, true biblical doctrine, and then finally figured it out, right?
You know, in the last 150 years.
And that's an argument that I've made, and many of you would agree with, and say one of the arguments against dispensationalism is the fact that it's so novel.
And what that implies is that the Holy Spirit's leading and guiding and preservation of the doctrine of the church utterly neglected.
One whole swath, one whole realm of biblical doctrine for almost two millennia.
And so, what I would say is now applying that to kings is it wise and is it reasonable and probable to argue that the church of Jesus Christ, because it wasn't just like one nation like England, but that the church of Jesus Christ.
In multiple countries, multiple nations, in multiple time periods, for approximately 1700, 1800 years, just missed this doctrine.
Right.
I feel like if we're going to say one of the reasons, it's not the only reason, but one of the reasons we're suspicious of dispensationalism is the fact that it came about so recently, then I feel like by the same standard, equal weights and measures, we should be suspicious.
It's one thing to say, I don't think in this political context, this nation at this time, that monarchy is the most suitable form of government.
That's fine, right?
If we're just arguing about which form of government for which country in which time period is best, that's perfectly reasonable.
But that's not what Green Raptor and others would assert.
What they would assert is that there is an airtight universal principle in scripture for all places and all times to never have.
A monarchical, any kind of monarchical, whether it be constitutional monarchy or absolute monarchy form of government.
And that's, I'm just saying that's, that is a, that's a pretty wide universal swath.
Right.
And, and you would have to historically, right?
So biblically, King of Kings, I think that says something.
But then historically, you would have to say that virtually universally, the church in dozens of nations over the course of, Dozens of centuries, at least a dozen, dozen and a half centuries, missed this clear biblical universal prohibition.
And if that's the argument, is like, well, actually, it was always there all along, and we just realized it in the 1800s, then as the orcs would say in Lord of the Rings, meat is back on the menu, dispensationalism is back on the menu.
Right.
Okay.
This dude, Rock, sent $5.
If you're conflicted in your position on church structures, I think referencing back to what you said about Congregationalism, what's the answer?
A Catholic like Protestant high church.
God bless.
Good show.
Yes.
I think that is the answer.
I don't think you have to be Catholic.
We have many Catholic friends, but we have, of course, our profound disagreements.
But we love our Catholic friends and our co belligerents in the realm of culture and politics.
But there is a Protestant equivalency that rejects a Pope, Vicar of Christ on earth.
You know, it still holds to what we believe is sound doctrine in regards to soteriology and these things, would reject the Council of Trent, Vatican II, all these things, and is, you know, just distinctly and unapologetically Protestant, while still having an episcopal polity, governance, hierarchy within the church.
And that would be Episcopalianism, that would also be Anglicanism.
Both of those denominations within the Protestant.
Vane, historically Protestant, both of them had a way of having a hierarchical form of church polity while still being distinctly and unapologetically Protestant.
And I think of, you know, the great, great Anglican men Martin Lloyd Jones, John Stott.
He had a couple L's, but had some really good things.
So I think there's precedent there.
Yeah.
Avery Depecky, $10.
Thanks, Avery.
Politics by Aristotle should be mandatory reading in high school.
It covers much of what was said here.
Good show, guys.
Thanks.
Totally agree.
I cracked into it.
I also listened to some online lectures on it.
And Aristotle's politics is incredible.
Again, we're dealing with the common kingdom, the natural kingdoms.
This is not theology.
This is not church reading.
As far as the realm of politics.
You're not reading Aristotle on the doctrine of salvation.
Nope, you're not reading him on Sunday.
But politics, I want to learn it.
I want to understand it.
I want to know the history of it.
There's even lessons he has on virtue, like the golden mean, avoiding the excess or deficiency of certain virtues.
I think those are incredible and highly recommend Aristotle.
Yeah.
This dude, Rock, sent $5.
I think this is a question you answered.
Thanks for the detailed answer on deacons.
It helps a lot.
The only loose end I have is Roman saying Phoebe was a servant, different thing, which you said you answered through Greek.
The same word can refer to a deacon, deacon office, deacon as it's called.
I think he probably gave this super chat before I got to that part of the answer because it was so long.
And that's one of the ways that I'm able to milk more super chats out of our audience, I'll give an answer and be so painstakingly.
Slow and thorough, that they're like, I gotta, you know, he's not getting to this other part of the answer, so I gotta send him more money.
So I would just say to you, this dude rocks.
Gotcha.
Gotcha.
All right.
Titus Weller, $10 super chat, last one for the day.
Just wanted to support your ministry.
Thank you.
Very kind.
Thank you, Titus.
Really appreciate it.
All right.
Thanks for tuning in.
We hope that you've been blessed by this episode, and Lord willing, we will see you on Friday.
And what we're gonna be discussing, we're gonna have special guests.
We are.
Can we announce it?
It's not a secret.
Did Protestantism make the West gay?
That's the idea.
That's the title.
That's the idea.
That's the title.
We'll be discussing it.
This effeminate, fake, and gay ethos of the West.
Is this, you know, we'd like to say enlightenment.
I think it was.
I think, among other things, but enlightenment being a big one.
But there are guys who would say, well, the other side of the coin of the enlightenment, but same theme is the Reformation.
Yeah.
The Reformation is just the enlightenment Christianized.
Now, I disagree.
We're going to actually defend the Protestant faith.
But this question, we can't just say, well, I don't like it.
Like, no, it is a valid question.
Yeah.
It's a valid question.
And so we're going to delve into the history and we want to do it.
Can I announce the guest?
Yes.
We're going to do it with someone who is more knowledgeable on this topic than both of us.
And he's done a lot of great work.
He has his own YouTube channel and is putting out his own content.
If you haven't heard of him, I highly recommend that you go and check him out.
He goes by the name The Other Paul.
The Other Paul.
One happy little free bonus that you get by listening to him is he's Australian, has a thick Australian accent.
That might be a bonus for some.
Some say that's a bonus.
It might be a detriment, you know, but he's very knowledgeable, very well read.
And so he's going to be coming and joining us on the show for the live stream on Friday at 3 p.m. Central Time to give us a history of Protestantism and making the defense for fakeness and gayness coming from many Protestants, but not Protestantism.
Right.
So that'll be the show on Friday.
Thanks for tuning in, and we will see you soon, Lord willing.