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May 15, 2024 - Stew Peters Show
57:39
Millstone Report w Paul Harrell: King Charles' Portrait SATANIC, Paul Views How Should We Then Live?
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Rainbow Gestapo, the goose-stepping gay lobby, all of that stops right now.
Stare at the sun just for kicks all by myself.
I lose track of time, so I might be past my pride.
People say we need to, you know, make America great again.
I completely agree.
We may need to make Gallows great again.
Oh my, I feel just like I don't shine.
I look so good I might die.
All I know is everybody loves me.
Get down, sway into my own sound.
Flashes in my face now.
All I know is everybody loves me.
Literally so many people that need to have a millstone put around their neck and tossed into the sea.
Everybody, everybody, everybody.
Woo! .
Hello, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome to the Milton Report.
We've got a great show for you.
We've got some big questions to ask.
We really do appreciate it.
We can't do the program without you out there watching and listening every single day.
We really do appreciate it.
It's been said before that art imitates life.
Yesterday, the world watched in horror...
As the coronation portrait of King Charles III was unveiled and pardon my language, but it was a bloody nightmare.
That's not a figure of speech.
See for yourself.
Almost immediately, people reacted with disgust, as you might imagine.
This was seen as yet another mask-off moment when the satanic elite have no shame and are proudly telling us exactly who they are.
In the case of King Charles, he's soaked with blood?
King Charles apparently can trace his lineage to Transylvania, and some say he's a direct descendant of Count Dracula, or whoever the historical figure that Bram Stoker's Dracula was based on.
According to CornwallLive.com, quote, the royal family has links to several countries across Europe, including Romania.
And as it turns out, King Charles is the descendant of the real-life Dracula, formerly known as Prince Charles, Prince of Wales.
Charles III actually owns several properties in Transylvania, is the heir to Vlad the Impaler's bloodline.
The ruthless prince, also known as Vlad Tepes, And Vlad III Dracula is known for his cruelty towards his enemies and impaling them on stakes.
He lived in the 15th century and is said to have inspired Bram Stoker for his famous Count Dracula.
In 1462, following a battle, Vlad left a field filled with thousands of impaled victims.
More than 530 years later, in 1998, King Charles found out about his links to the Romanian ruler.
He is, in fact, the great-grandson 16 times removed through the concert of George V, Queen Mary, Romania tour store reports.
And then a genealogical tree in the British Chronicles written by David Hughes supports this claim as well.
The website adds, King Charles now owns several properties in the Romanian region.
The story went on, end quote.
According to other publications, Charles even has some of those properties he owns in Transylvania for rent.
I'm not sure that's the kind of Airbnb I would want to sign up for.
And isn't that the whole plot of Dracula, by the way?
Come, stay with me at my castle.
You'll be safe.
Your life is definitely not in danger.
But I digress.
Aside from the satanic nature, the satanic nature of King Charles III portrait, by the way, let's just see that again just to refresh your memory.
Right, so aside from the satanic nature of that, has anyone out there ever seen the movie Ghostbusters has anyone out there ever seen the movie Ghostbusters 2?
If you have, then surely you remember this.
Yeah, so is King Charles planning on using that painting as a horcrux?
I mean, inquiring minds want to know.
The ongoing collapse of Western civilization, or any civilization for that matter, is often accompanied by a decline in art.
In fact, one ex-user named Steve compared this new wicked painting of King Charles soaked in blood, or whatever it is, to King Edward VII, who died back in 1910.
And he noted the stark contrast.
Look, quote, This isn't a mere change in art.
It's a reflection of the Western soul's degradation.
Then he goes on to say, Francis Schaeffer would have a field day with this one.
Yes, he's right.
He's right, for sure, that the late theologian and author of the book, How Should We Then Live?, or another book, The Christian Manifesto, Francis Schaeffer, would have a field day with this one because he really talked a lot about the decline of art.
Those of you who never miss an episode of the Millstone Report will remember that we have talked about Francis Schaefer a few weeks ago and how valuable his insights into our current globalist predicament can be.
His question centers around the idea that way back in 1974, 1973-1974, America lost her Christian consensus when we gave women the right to murder with impunity.
Again, he had the forethought, he had the wisdom, he had the discernment to understand what was coming before many of his peers, and he wanted Christians to understand how to live in an increasingly pagan environment.
He made a video documentary series back in the 70s, and it's really 70s if you catch my drift, And tonight, we're going to go over episode one of that series, specifically having to do with the fall of the Roman Empire and why their pagan society, the Romans, failed, right?
And the church survived.
Have you ever thought about that for a second?
Have you ever thought about how has Christ's church continued to survive amidst a world that hates Christians?
How should we as Christians live amidst this current chaos and worsening world?
So tonight, let's dive in.
And I'm warning you one more time, it is really 70s, but I think you're going to like it.
So let's start.
We're going to stop and go here.
And again, this is available on YouTube, but I just wanted to share this with this audience tonight because I think it's incredibly timely.
Episode 1, The Roman Age.
I think this is the part we saw a couple of weeks ago.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!
It's so much worse now.
If I had to do this again now and I was making this, you would basically show kids post-op.
So, the transing of kids in the drag shows, that's what you would show today.
Woo!
Stop it!
There is a flow to history and culture.
This flow is rooted in what people think.
And what they think will determine how they act.
There is violence and a breakdown in society up to the point in which it's unsafe.
To walk through the streets in many of the cities of the world.
On the other hand, there is a danger of increasing authoritarianism to meet the threat of chaos in our own countries and internationally.
Should we despair and give in?
If not, how should we then live?
The answer as to whether we should throw up our hands and give in is no.
There are good and sufficient reasons for this.
We can receive help from a quarter.
Throwing up your hands and giving in, just another fancy way of saying, don't take the black pill, right?
Don't take the black pill.
Which would be unexpected to most modern men.
But to understand how, we have to delve back into history.
I told you it was 70s, folks.
And you know, the documentaries back in the day, I mean, they just, quite frankly, I mean, you know, they didn't...
You didn't have big budgets, right?
Of course, you also just had the technology of 70s filmmaking.
I will begin with the time of the Romans, because the Roman civilization is the direct ancestor of the modern European world.
From the time of the earliest conquests under the Republic, right down to our own day, Roman law and Roman political ideas have influenced the European scene, the whole Western civilization.
The Roman Empire was great, both in size and military strength.
It reached out over much of the known world.
Its roads led over all of Europe.
The Near East and North Africa.
All the way from Hadrian's Wall, which was built to keep out the Scots, who were too tough to conquer, to the forts on the Rhine River, to the north of Africa, I just have to make a note here.
That is an incredible shot.
You know, in today's modern day, there's a lot more realism there.
It just seems more down-to-earth.
They would have called that shot off.
Literally, they shot that in the rain.
He's got an umbrella, and they're saying, no, we've got to shoot this.
So get an umbrella, get a map out, and let's get the shot.
They wouldn't do that today.
In one conquest, the...
I guess that's kind of meta.
We're talking about the decline of art, and you can literally see that in the way we shoot our films now, right?
It's just, they would probably do something with CGI. The Roman legions crossed the Alps, came down the Rhône Valley, past the peaks of the Dante Midi, to that place which is now called Vevey in Switzerland.
All right, so the next part of this is actually quite a lot of talking about how great the Romans are and everything else.
So we're going to forward just a little bit further along.
It talks about a city, a great Roman city.
Just basically talking about how great the Romans are, and then we get to him.
One time, 40,000 Romans lived here.
The opulence of Rome was here at Avange.
This gold bust of Marcus Aurelius was found here.
It tells you 70s.
Rome left its magnificent treasures in art and architecture across the whole empire. . .
. . . .
.
In many ways, Rome was great, but it had no real answers to the basic problems that all humanity faces. . . .
When a culture tries to build only on its military strength, very, very soon these will prove not to be sufficient for the simple reason that without a sufficient base of knowing what is right, what is wrong, why we should do certain things in contrast, why we should do certain others, no amount of military might is sufficient.
Wow.
You know, and that's something that I think right now, The entire Western NATO apparatus is fighting, right?
You know, this massive military alliance and, you know, yeah, they're trying to start World War III, but what is the chief export of NATO if it's not the rainbow and sodomy and You have to have gay rights if you want to be a member of the European Union or gay mirage.
You know what I mean?
It's just men making arbitrary decisions, giving their opinions about what they think is right or what they think is wrong, but it's based on nothing because we've pushed the Christian God of the Bible out of public life and our leaders reject him.
Many of our leaders reject him.
Many of the ones in the Republican Uniparty establishment don't even want to talk about I mean, it's the rot of Republican secularism, neutrality is a myth.
We've talked about this all ad nauseum, but...
The practical, real-world consequences of that is that your society has no basis, has no solid foundation, and it will collapse.
It's basically like a built-in mechanism because people are going to get sicker and sicker and sicker and more and more wicked and evil.
And again, the question is, as Christians, as those that believe in God, that believe in Jesus Christ, what do we do?
Rome first tried to build upon the decisions of accepted citizens of the Republic and later on the decisions of its emperors.
But the attempt ultimately failed because it was not a sufficient base on which to build a society.
And they never had the kind of democracy we have where everybody shares in it.
But for those who were the real citizens of the state, They just tried to build on their opinions, and this totally failed.
Then they turned to their gods.
This is the goddess Diana, whose temple was in Ephesus, which is in modern Turkey.
The Romans, like the Greeks before them, also tried to build upon their gods, in the hope of having something big enough I mean, think, what's the modern, what are their gods now?
Aside from the overt Satanism that we just saw in the King Charles photo, it'll be something like diversity, equity, inclusion.
It'll be something like multiculturalism.
It'll be something that, it could be saving the planet.
Whatever it is, it's something that gives us something to boast about.
It's our own version of morality where we are going to call ourselves good and virtuous for saving the planet and stopping those evil climate deniers or getting rid of our past racial sins and trying to make the world one big, homogenous, multicultural utopia minus any white people.
We'll delete them.
And we are the good guys.
Whatever it is that you're going to build upon, like, you know, they would say, well, they would obviously, the Greeks and Romans, that the gods are good.
They are good.
They are noble.
They are true.
We are noble.
We are virtuous for worshiping them, for ascribing to them what they deserve, and then we're good for doing that, and then our crops will grow, or whatever the case may be.
But whatever you're going to, whatever your false gods are, in this case, we talk a lot about, you know, a woman.
I mean, women are In many ways, the focus of our idolatry in the West are our women.
Is that a big enough, is that a solid thing to build a society on?
Will your society last?
And the answer is no, of course not.
But their gods were not big enough because they were finite.
That is, they were limited.
They were like bigger men and women, not basically different from human men and women.
They were amplified humanity, not divinity.
This being so, the Romans had no sufficient base intellectually.
That is, they did not have anything big enough or permanent enough to which to relate either their thinking or their life.
Therefore, they had no value system strong enough to bear the strains of life, either individual or political.
All their gods together could not give them a sufficient base for life, morals, values, or final decisions.
The Romans made their own gods depending upon their society, and when the society tumbled, their gods tumbled with them.
Thus the Roman experiment in social harmony, based on an elitist republic, ultimately failed.
The Senate no longer could keep order.
Armed gangs terrorized the city of Rome, and the normal functions of government were disrupted as rivals fought for power.
Self-interest took the place of social interest, no matter how sophisticated the traffic.
Thus, in desperation, the people accepted authoritarian government.
In the days of Julius Caesar, Rome turned to an authoritarian system centered in Caesar himself.
As Plutarch put it, the Romans made Caesar dictator for life in the hope that the government of a single person would give them time to breathe after so many civil wars and calamities.
This was indeed a tyranny avowed.
Since his power now was not only absolute, but perpetual too.
So last week we talked about constitutioning harder, and we specifically talked about Pastor Joel Webin's remarks that, you know, got him, they were controversial.
Not really to me, but, you know, other people were upset about what he said.
He was just speaking out loud, but he was speaking of the truth that our Constitution here in America, our Republic, while it may be preferred, is a system of government.
Quite frankly, our specific Republic was for moral and religious people.
That's what was said of it.
And we're no longer a moral and religious people, and so that's why the document is meaningless.
That's why nobody wants to enforce what it says.
That's why the judiciary has completely destroyed it with what they call jurisprudence, or, you know, the more common phrase would be legislating from the bench.
That's why Congress doesn't respect the Constitution.
Congress, you know, abdicates their authority, giving their legislative-making rule or law-making authority to unconstitutional bureaucracies.
Then the executive branch and the intelligence agencies, they don't care about the Constitution.
They're weaponizing the surveillance state and the intel state against the American people, right?
And why?
Because we have immoral people— I mean, if you fundamentally understand the Christian condition, if you fundamentally understand the human condition as fallen men, as people who are depraved, unless God saves us, then you realize that when you have all this power and you're a wicked man, the question is not whether or not to use your power for your own personal gain.
It's why wouldn't you use it?
Why wouldn't they do it?
Of course they're going to do it.
And so this is the problem that we have, right?
And this is why Joel Webbin, again, the pastor, and he's also his ministry group, Right Response Ministries, is saying, look, this is going to result in a strong man to come in and say, we're going to stop all this because a wicked people have got to be ruled by somebody, right?
And it's a built-in mechanism, quite frankly, that people will cry out for something like that, and that's the danger here.
Maybe it's by design.
I don't know.
All I know is that our society, just specifically the United States of America, it's not going to survive if we continue to allow the bloodshed of innocents The transing of kids, the calling evil good and good evil on a massive scale, if we continue to allow that, that's just no basis.
That's no foundation that will support that.
The hope that we do have, obviously, is Christians is in God, is in Christ.
Practically, I think you're seeing a lot of that manifest itself in Christian red states that still have a little bit of power to govern themselves.
There's still that going on.
When people talk about Christian nationalism being a boogeyman, I say, you're seeing it play out in Christian red states right now.
Go look at the laws that Christian red states have been passing.
And they are very much, they're quoting scripture on the floor of their legislature, right?
Not to mention, they're also going against the New World Order.
Tennessee has banned chemtrails, for goodness sake, right?
They've come out and banned what they call geoengineering, or they don't want anything spraying in the skies.
And according to some people, they're saying since they passed the law, even though it doesn't even go into effect until July, that Tennessee has clear skies now.
There's no lasting contrails that blot out the sun.
Anyway.
I say all that to say, nationally speaking though, on what basis?
How do we agree?
Right?
How do we agree?
When President Trump comes out and says, look, in order to win elections, we've got to let the purple-haired blue staters murder their babies because we can't have a national abortion ban, even Bill Maher is like, now hang on.
You've got one side of the country that thinks it's murder, and then the other side that says it's not murder, but...
You tell me.
You tell me.
We just watched the United Methodists.
Essentially, they haven't been united for a very long time, but once the ones who believed in the Bible left, they went ahead and passed the gay marriage.
The United States of America, what is the basis of our union at this point?
Is it the intelligence apparatus occupying our government?
Is that the basis?
Because if that's the only basis, and you've got half the country or more than half the country that thinks that it's murder and the other don't, and the other half don't want to trans kids, but the other do, and both sides think they have the moral high ground, you tell me how that's going to work out.
Without what Joel Webin said may happen, or what we're going to hear Francis Schaeffer talk about, what happened to Rome.
After Caesar's death, Octavian, later called Caesar Augustus, grand-nephew of Caesar, came to power.
The great Roman poet Virgil, friend of Augustus, wrote in his Aeneid, saying that Augustus was a divinely appointed leader, and that Rome's mission was to bring peace and civilization to the world.
That sounds like NATO....external and internal.
Peace and civilization to the world, but you're gonna have to accept the rainbow and heartily approve it.
...external peace.
While keeping the outward forms of legal constitutionality, Romans of every class were ready to allow him total power in order to restore and assure the functioning of the political system of business and the affairs of daily life.
After 12 BC, he became the head of the state religion with the title Pontifex Maximus.
Terrifying.
All men were urged to worship the spirit of Rome and the genius of the Emperor.
Later this became obligatory for all the people of the Empire.
Daniel chapter 3.
The Emperor simply ruled as gods.
Augustus tried to legislate morals and family life.
Later emperors tried impressive legal reforms and welfare programs.
But a human god was a poor foundation and Rome fell.
It is important to realize the difference a people's worldview makes to their strength as they're exposed to the pressures of life.
In the Roman era, we must understand that when one became a Christian, it meant that he stood not only opposed to the surrounding religions, but the entire culture I warned you that this was 70s, okay?
So this is a 70s depiction of what the early church in Rome may have looked like.
Back in the Roman days, when a person became a Christian and was marked as a Christian by baptism, it was a very short step at times from the open profession of faith to the martyr's death.
Rome was cruel, and his cruelty could perhaps be best pictured and his cruelty could perhaps be best pictured by the events which took place in the Roman arenas.
For example, the gladiator one sees in this statue.
Or the Christians thrown to the beefs as people watched.
Let us not forget why the Christians were killed.
They were not killed because they worshiped Jesus.
At that time, many religions were practiced in the Roman world.
Some were called the mystery religions.
Here, for example, we can see one of the initiatory rites practiced by one of these religions depicted in this Roman house in Pompeii.
Nobody cared who worshiped whom, as long as the unity of the estate was maintained, centered in the worship of the emperor.
The Christians were killed because they were rebels, and this was especially so as they lost the support of the Jewish synagogues, and therefore the immunity which the Jews had since the time of Caesar.
We may express the nature of this rebellion in two ways, both of which are true.
We can say they worship Jesus as God, and they worship the personal, infinite God only.
This worshiping of the one God only, Caesar could not tolerate.
It was counted as treason.
That's where we're headed.
I mean, think about it right now.
If you want to think about it from a standpoint of...
Look at the churches that would be acceptable to the uniparty establishment.
Let's take Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi or any of these people that don't go to a church that actually believes what the Bible says.
I'm talking about the churches that have caved, that have allowed women in the pulpit, that have allowed gays, and that have essentially...
Look, it just so happens that everything in the post-World War II idea of liberalism, that the Bible conforms exactly to that in my standards, and it conforms perfectly to modern-day society.
Those people are accepted, and you know why?
Because they're not actually worshiping the God of the Bible.
They're not actually worshipping the God that Scripture describes.
They're the same people that, you know, in the 70s were trying to say, oh, well, we've got to separate the historical Jesus from his miracles.
And if you do that, then, well, there is no historical Jesus.
Congratulations, you've erased him, right?
Because they don't want to believe in the supernatural.
They don't actually want to believe that he resurrected from the dead and he's seated at the right hand of the Father right now.
Right now as I speak.
So...
Really what it comes down to is this anti-Christian bias that we see that's permeated our culture.
Why?
Why is it anti?
Because it's the people that don't want to worship any other gods.
They don't want to tip their hat to the rainbow, right?
They don't want to tip their hat to the baby murderers and try to give excuses for why.
Well, technically, maybe it is a woman's body and it's a right to choose.
No.
And that's the type of Christianity that The type of Christianity that is singular.
The type of Christianity that is exclusive.
That is exclusively worshipping the Christian God and will not kowtow to the culture and all of the different pagan influences.
Those are the Christians they want to put in boxcars.
Those are the Christians the government hates.
Those are the Christians the corporation hates.
Those are the Christians that NATO hates.
Those are the Christians that are targeted and are marginalized.
Just like in Rome.
We're not there yet, but when I say that they want to put Christians in boxcars, it will be the exclusivity.
It will be the ones that will not bow to Nebuchadnezzar's statue.
Those are the ones.
And that's why these people that are scared of a phrase called Christian nationalism and don't understand that there are Christians who are politically organizing and trying to save the future, secure the future for their children with what little rights we have left.
When you get all bent out of shape over the idea of Christian nationalism, it looks like you're working for the enemy.
When people actually know what time it is and they're trying to plan accordingly.
We've got to take a break.
More on this, episode one, of How Should We Then Live?
Documentary by the late theologian Francis Schaeffer.
When we come back, my name is Paul Harrell.
Don't go anywhere.
back in just a moment.
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And welcome back to the program.
Ladies and gentlemen, really appreciate you being with us.
This is the Millstone Report.
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So what we are in the midst of doing, if you're just joining us, is we've been going over...
A little documentary called How Should We Then Live?
It's based on a book written by Francis Schaeffer who back in 1973 said, look, the Christian consensus in America is gone, so how do Christians live in this pagan environment?
What do we do?
What should we do?
It's really, really good stuff.
The book is fantastic if you've never seen it.
It's a great complement to his other book called The Christian Manifesto.
We may take a deep dive down that road sometime as well.
We've been going over episode one.
It's available on YouTube, but we've been comparing what he's talking about to what we're going through now.
Specifically, this is the Roman Empire.
And we've gotten to the point where the Roman Empire is starting to kill Christians.
Now, the reason they're wanting to kill Christians...
Is because it's fine to worship whoever you want to worship in ancient Rome, but you can't exclusively worship anybody, especially Jesus.
So because they exclusively worship Jesus and they don't want to worship everything else, they're deemed a threat to the state.
So we're picking up here where we left off before the break.
Let's listen.
This became a special threat to the unity of the state based on emperor worship during the reign of Diocletian in the third century, when people of the higher classes began to become Christians in larger numbers.
And again, if you're just joining us, I warn you, many times this documentary was made in the 70s.
It is real 70s, especially the depictions of the early church, but it's also refreshing.
It is.
In the Roman era, when one became a Christian, it meant that he stood not only opposed to the surrounding religions, but the entire culture built on those religions.
Is that the case today?
Certainly that wasn't the case in early America when we were founded as a Christian nation, but it is the case now.
I mean, let's be honest, folks.
Let's get real.
If you are a Bible-believing Christian, then you stand against, just by confessing that, you stand against virtually every secular institution in the country.
Basically, everyone.
I mean, does the NBA have a Christian night, or do they have an LGBT rainbow sodomy night?
Does the NHL have that?
Does the NFL have that?
Right?
Let's just think about sports.
What about your colleges and universities?
The ones that aren't Christians, and even the ones that are Christians, like, let's take a Baylor University, for example, the Baylor Baptist University.
We'll capitulate and we'll allow groups to form on their campus that have no basis, that are actually the complete antithesis to Scripture and what it means to be a Christian.
And not to mention, we talked earlier, the mainline denominations churches, the mainline churches that have caved over the years, and now they accept gay clergy, they accept gay marriage, they accept women in the pulpit, they accept all of these things.
Why?
Why?
So that they can be adored by the culture.
So that they can get praised by the culture.
So that they're not those kinds of Christians.
Yeah.
I think we are certainly to the marginalized portion.
We're definitely not being thrown to the lions yet.
Amen.
The early church believed that Jesus was the Old Testament prophesied Messiah and that he had come and that he had died in substitution on the cross.
The second thing, however, is something that we're apt to forget and that is that they really did believe that the Old Testament and the revelation in Christ and the growing New Testament, it was growing then, of course, say the first century.
was God who had spoken.
And that God had given truth.
And as such they were not caught in the flux of the relativistic Roman world because it really was relativistic much like our own day.
A weak base for a culture or an individual can only stand when the pressures are not too great.
As an illustration, let us take this bridge.
The Romans built many little humpback bridges like this over the streams of Europe.
People and wagons went over them safely for centuries, for two millennia.
But now, if someone would drive a heavily loaded truck over these, they would break.
It is this way with the lives and value systems of individuals and cultures.
If they have nothing stronger to build upon than their own finiteness, their own limitedness.
They can stand if the pressures are not too great.
But as the pressures mount, if they do not have a sufficient base, they crash.
Just as these Roman bridges would crash if someone drove over them with a modern ten-ton truck.
Culture and the freedoms of men are fragile.
If there is not a sufficient base, it only takes time, and often not a great deal of time, before there is a collapse.
In catacombs such as these here in Rome, the Christians buried their dead and met for worship.
That it was the Christians who were able to resist the religious mixtures, syncretism, and the effects of the weaknesses of Roman culture speaks of the strength of the Christian worldview.
This strength rested on God being an infinite personal God and that he had spoken in the Old Testament the revelation through Christ and the gradually growing New Testament and that he had spoken in a way that people could understand.
This meant that they not only had knowledge about the universe and mankind, which people could not find out by themselves, but they had absolute universal values by which to live and by which to judge the state in which they lived.
Absolute universal values with which to live and with which to judge the state.
So as we live now in the midst of this increasing, you know, this occupation, because, you know, you say we're no longer a Christian nation in America, and that's certainly true.
I mean, look at what's happened, you know, post-World War II, but that's not necessarily to say that we're a nation that doesn't have any Christians in it.
I mean, there's still a lot of Christians in America.
Some of them are told to just accept the boxcar plan.
Others are saying, no, we're not going to do that.
Again, as I mentioned earlier before we went to break about the Christian red states that are trying to govern themselves, they're being voted in by Christians.
And then they're going and passing laws.
You know, they're coming up with laws to put pedophiles.
If you're a pedophile, then we'll enact the death penalty.
Like, right?
Well, you're eligible for the death penalty now in some states if you are a pedophile.
Then the transient kids, the drag show thing as well.
Banning puberty blockers, banning.
All of that stuff's happening.
Right.
Right.
But as a whole, the people, as a whole, our leaders in the idea of secular neutrality, it's just permeated everything.
And to the point where we have no, these universal truths with which to live our lives, these universal truths that America was founded on are nothing more than what was written on a piece of paper like the Declaration.
We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
That's not at all what, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that's not at all what people believe, because to believe in God is to believe in a power higher than the state, and that is now anathema.
Go listen to Nancy Pelosi.
Nancy Pelosi and the Oxford Society a couple of days ago.
God, gays, and guns.
That's the problem with the right.
They can't get over God, gays, and guns.
Meaning Christians are the problem.
Christians are the main threat.
Christians are the main threat to the people in control today.
And they were a threat to the Roman Empire as well.
The difference being the Roman Empire started out as pagan, whereas America and the West...
Well, America started out as Christian.
The West became Christian.
And now we're seeing the re-paganization of the West and the paganization of America for the first time.
And people are unique in being made in the image of God.
There was a reason for the basic dignity and value of each individual.
If they had worshipped Jesus and Caesar, they would have gone unharmed.
But they worshipped one God only and rejected all forms of syncretism.
There was no mixture.
All other gods were seen as false gods.
Or we can express why they were killed in another way.
No totalitarian authority, no authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions.
No. No.
The
Christians had a universal standard by which to judge not only personal morals but the state.
So they were counted as the enemy of totalitarian Rome.
The End
It's just interesting to see the cost of Christianity.
They had the answer.
We don't confront.
Which the Romans did not have.
As the Romans tried to build upon the state.
Or upon their limited gods.
The Christians continued to grow in numbers and continued in history.
The Romans had the Christian answers before them, but they turned from that base, which would have given their society the answers they needed.
And their society collapsed.
As their empire ground down, the Romans and their decadence were given to a great thirst for violence and the gratification of their senses, as in their rampant sexuality.
Here in Pompeii, a century or so after the Republic had ceased to exist, the phallus cult was strong.
Nothing is new under the sun.
Paintings and statuary of exaggerated sexual content adorned the houses of the affluent.
Not all the art in Pompeii was like this, but that which was of sexual representation was just plain blatant.
Rome collapsed, not from external, but from internal weaknesses.
Even though Emperor Constantine ended the persecution of the Christians, and Christianity became a legal religion in 313 AD, and the official state religion of the empire in 381 AD, the majority of the people went on in their old ways.
Apathy was the chief mark of the period.
The elite abandoned intellectual life for their social life.
Apathy also showed itself in the arts with a lack of creativity.
Officially sponsored art became decadent.
The music became increasingly bombastic.
Look at these four-century works here on the Arch of Constantine.
And in contrast, these handsome second century works of art taken from earlier monuments from the period of Emperor Trajan.
This portrait of Emperor Valtinian is so much inferior to this likeness of Emperor Nero, which was minted 300 years earlier.
So look at the art.
The art contrast.
And we can throw this tweet up here.
Look at this.
And yesterday, this was the beginning of our show.
If you're just joining us, we talked about this.
The coronation paintings 120 years apart.
The coronation of King Charles, his painting, versus this is Edward VII, I think.
And just to refresh your memory, this was yesterday.
People were horrified of the, basically, the...
I guess the real life, the reincarnation, I don't know, the Count Dracula, King Charles, modern day Count Dracula.
There it is.
Oh yeah.
Alright.
And, of course, people immediately drew comparisons to this.
Ghostbusters 2, if you're familiar.
Running out of time, though, back to Francis Schaeffer comparing the decline in art to the decline of the Roman civilization.
All of life was marked by the prevailing apathy.
And as the Roman economy slumped lower and lower, burdened by a costly government and by inflation, authoritarianism increased.
In order to try to set off the apathy.
And as less people were inclined to work, the state took over more and more, and more freedoms were lost.
For example, laws were passed binding the small farmer to his land.
And because of the apathy and its results, and the oppression, few people thought the old civilization was worth saving.
Rome did not collapse because of outward forces such as the barbarians, but because of inward rottenness.
And Rome gradually became a ruin.
The conclusion I draw looking at the Roman era is the fact that nothing humanistic provides a strong enough base for society.
As well as the individual life of the individual man and woman.
The Greeks and the Romans tried magnificently to first build on society, on those people who made up their society, which is an exclusive elitist society.
But those people, they tried to build on this and totally failed.
And then they tried to build on finite gods.
Gods that were not the infinite personal God.
This equally failed.
It brings a simple conclusion.
There is no foundation strong enough for society within the realm of finiteness and beginning for man alone and as autonomous.
The other side, of course, is that the Christians were able to stand.
But the reason they were Able to resist syncretism of that day and the breakdown and face the arena.
Really face it with certainty is because they began at exactly the opposite place.
They began with the existence of an infinite personal God and that he had spoken and they had the truth in the Old Testament, in the revelation of Christ and in the growing, the then growing, the New Testament.
Unbelievable.
Again, how should we then live in the Roman Age?
And here's the thing about that.
There are...
There are more.
It doesn't just start there.
It was an entire documentary series, again, in the 70s, and I know it was very 70s.
I hope that you out there watching have taken something from this episode.
I hope you understand.
I hope it's self-evident to you why I felt compelled to share that with you today, where we are now, right?
It is the Christians.
It is the Christians that have...
We actually have the answer.
We actually have the truth.
And it's an eternal truth.
And if we put our trust in God, obviously even through these tumultuous times that we're in the midst of and that we see coming down the pike...
There's a reason that through all of that, Christ's church survived.
How did that happen?
How?
How did that happen, right?
Well, because it's Christ's church.
It really is Christ's church.
Because he's real.
And he died for a people.
For those who would repent and trust in him.
And that is the most encouraging thought you can ever, ever meditate on, understand, embrace.
And so in the midst of this ever-increasing society, this ever-increasing paganism, this ever-increasing wickedness, or what it feels like, we can look back at history and we can say, wow, well...
How should we then live?
Now, there's more to this because, again, it keeps going.
He goes through the ages and talks about the different society, but his main premise is that God is the rock that enables us to put up with, to endure, to be delivered from the fires of the day.
And I hope that's an encouraging thought to you.
We're going to be back here tomorrow, unless I'm providentially hindered, wishing you a happy Thursday.
My name is Paul Harrell.
This is the Millstone Report.
Feel free to follow me on X at RealPaulHarrell.
That's at RealPaulHarrell.
God bless each and every one of you watching, and we'll see you tomorrow.
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