Well, hello, streamers. Good to see you. Or good to be seen, I guess. I'm not really seeing. I'm not really seeing you right now. For the record, I've never worked at McDonald's. Any of you guys worked at McDonald's? Not that I know of. Have you ever done a partial shift at McDonald's? Never done even a partial shift at McDonald's. Get some photo ops or anything? Have not done it. For the record. Not in Oakland, not in Montreal, not in DC, not anywhere. They didn't keep very good records in the 80s, though. No? That's what they are like. Oh yeah, I mean McDonald's, I mean they were just a podunk thing back in the 80s. They were like, you know, a mom and pop shop back then. They'd only served, you know, 100 billion hamburgers by then. Are you referring to, because we don't know if Kamala Harris actually worked at Mellon when she said she did? They have no record of it. McDonald's released a statement saying, well we don't have any records, but we also didn't keep records in the 80s of employment. Her story has changed by the way. Originally her story was that she worked at McDonald's in Oakland. I guess as a teenager or something, I don't know. But then it was she worked at McDonald's as she was working her way through college, but she didn't go to college in California. She's learned well. She's learned well from the old man. So she went to college in Montreal in DC. Her mentors taught her how to She's not as good at it, though. Let's be honest. She's not as good at it. Come on, if you're going to tell me stories, be good at it. She could have just said, I worked at a burger joint. I worked at a fast food place. You don't have to elaborate. Yeah. I did work at a burger joint, by the way. That I did for a year or two. But maybe, hey maybe she did, she worked at some other burger joint, but McDonald's is like saying, I Googled it and used Bing, or I Xeroxed it, but you use a, you know, a brother or HP printer. You know, the brand name is now the term for the category, because Google is a verb now, not just a noun. Right, right. I feel like it would be an easy thing to explain though. Well that's the bonus coverage on the beginning of the stream, we're going to jump into recording The show, the topics are actually listed in the description so I don't have to run through that now. And McDonald's will no longer be relevant by the time this airs because this will be after the inauguration. Right, well you're saying McDonald's will be out of business by then? I'm just saying. It can only hope, Josh. I'm just saying nobody will care anymore. Come on, it's healthy for you. Alright, here we go. Good morning, and thank you for listening to us this Sunday morning on NewsRadio 930 WFMD. I'm Troy Skinner. I'm the pastor of Household of Faith in Christ, online at HouseholdofFaithinChrist.com, and I'm the host of the Faith Debate. Joined this week, as it's becoming pretty normal now, David Forsey. He's the pastor of the Whack-A-Mole Church. I call it that because they meet at different locations, depending on, it's a house church, and whichever family wants to host, they take turns, and it's a rotisserie league. Is that better than a whack-a-mole church, a rotisserie league church? I don't know. You had some highfalutin name for it at one point. It was something like the Greater Potomac, I don't know, yadda yadda. Yeah, that was a good one. Yeah, so good I remembered it really well. And Daniel Razvi is here. He's here representing the church at Imran's house. He's one of the pastors there and he's also, they have a ministry called Conquered by Love Ministries online at conqueredbylove.org. So today, here's what we're talking about. In light of what's been happening in the Middle East, has there been something going on in the Middle East the last year, year and a half, something like that? I can't really remember. Last thousand, couple thousand years. Last couple thousand years or something in the Middle East? I don't know. Anyway, something's going on in the Middle East. And there's also been some chatter. By the time this airs, there may not be a Middle East. There might not be a planet, right? Because there's been more chatter about World War III since like the 1970s and 80s. And Rapture and all that. You know, because there's the Ukraine thing. His name might not even air, Daniel. That's right. We might meet him in the air before this airs. I don't subscribe to that eschatology, but... Maybe God will bless us with being able to listen to this in glory. Wow. Something is imperfect on this show. I think that'll be allowed. So anyway, there is a lot of buzz about, you know, eventual World War III or ongoing hot skirmishes and wars taking place right now. And speaking of the Middle East, right, there were civilian casualties back on October 7th of 2023 when the whole thing kind of lit really hot again. And then their response is real, retaliated. And in their retaliations over the past months, there have been more civilian casualties. And it raises that age-old question, is it okay for us to be – Many people, I think, many of our listeners would probably rightly point out that there does not seem to be any sort of comparison at all between the level of destruction and rampage that's going on from one side to the other. Yeah, and I'm not getting into the minutiae of it because I'm not framing this as, you know, Palestine. People get offended by that thing. By the way, this is a quick aside. You guys, if you disagree, I'll write it down. It'll be a separate show topic for another day. But this line that people who think an awful lot like me on a lot of issues say, you know, Palestine is not even a real place. It is. Stop it. It makes us sound silly when we say it's not a real place. just because it isn't just because i would go to just because there wasn't a palestine uh... five thousand years ago there was a united states of america five thousand years ago yes it's where it is a real place palestine's a real place israel's renamed palestine by the romans as insult to use that's where they came from so it is israel always has been but they were i would i would put you on that yet okay well i will make a note palestine All it takes is for you to say, don't fight me on this, for me to fight you on this. Just tell David Palestine is a real place. Anyway, so it's similar to the, talking about Israel and stuff, it's similar to the discussions I had with people a number of years ago when there was all the talk about whether or not the United States embassy should be moved or not in Israel. And I supported that move, not for political reasons, but for logic reasons. It'd be like somebody saying, I know the United States considers Washington, D.C. to be their nation's capital, but we don't like the United States, so we're gonna put our embassy in New York or Houston or something, and pretend that New York or Houston are the capital of the country, when clearly, Washington, D.C. is the capital. So let's just have our embassy where the capital is. Let's not pretend it's someplace else. Let's just put it where it is. You know, let's not get worried about what the political ramifications are. By the way, all those supposed political ramifications never materialized. Go figure. That was the whole thing about when Nixon went to China, right? It was a famous phrase, right? Nixon went to China because he was the first president to acknowledge that mainland China was now being ruled by another country. or another government, but still was to be called China. We had been pretending for 30 years or whatever that the original Chinese government, which had relocated to Taiwan, was the real China, and these other ones were just an invading force that would someday be destroyed. So we would always have our embassies in Taiwan, and we would call them China. And then Nixon changed that. He called Beijing China, and Taiwan is Taiwan. Of course, China for their part, since Taiwan is still part of China also. And by the time this airs, maybe it will be. But I view that a little bit differently, because countries' boundaries change all the time, but I view it very differently than I would the Israel thing, because Israel is a country that the boundaries were determined by God and announced as such, and so I have much stronger feelings about the specific boundary lines of Israel. Well, I believe in a sovereign God, so I believe every nation that's ever existed has had its boundaries determined by God. Well, but also that he bothered to tell us what they were. Anyway, we're way off track what we want to be talking about. We're six minutes into the show here. So basically the question of just war theory, is there ever... Would it be better to use Ukraine and Russia for our example, Daniel? Sure. Okay. But generally speaking, do any of the three of us think there's ever a time when war is completely unjustified, right? Completely unjustified? There are times when war is justified. We could have somebody in this room, I'm not sure who off the top of my head, but I'm sure somebody locally could come in and make an argument that war is never justified. Particularly some people coming from a Brethren kind of a background, very pacifist kind of idea, they might say war is never justified. But I don't think any of us come from a Brethren's background, Quakers, Crusades. Did they say that about countries or just about Christians, that Christians shouldn't participate? Well, I think in Anabaptist, for example, to be consistent would say that they are not in favor of any war, but they can't really control what the government does. It's just we're not going to fight. Right. Okay. So let me ask the question this way. Is it always wrong when countries engage in war? No. a war of offense or a war of defense? Those terms can be kind of blurry, too. Because a lot of the current wars that are going on, both sides would consider themselves to be acting in self-defense. We mentioned Israel and Hamas. But if you ask the leader of Hamas, who's now dead, if you ask – but if you asked him before he was dead, are you fighting offense or defense, he would say defense. I would say he's wrong and crazy for saying that, but he would say that. And obviously, Netanyahu would also say he's fighting a defensive war. So just because the countries believe or say that it's defensive doesn't make it defensive or offensive. I don't know, but we've got to define those terms, defense and offense, I guess. But I would say there's plenty of times when war would be justified. Not only justified, the reason I know that is because God has commanded war to be waged in many examples throughout the Bible. So if it never is justified, then God is immoral, and that we know is not true. Is it only justified if God commands it? No. Is it only justified if it involves ancient Israel? Many people would say that, right? That would be the Anabaptist argument. I don't know as much about the Brethren, but I have a lot more Anabaptist friends that they would say. Only justified if it happens in the Old Testament. Basically that God would never give such an order again. He only did it for Israel taking over Canaan, and he would never give such an order again. Therefore, we can just assume that all future wars are unjustified. Now, let's say we'll use Ukraine and Russia because it's going to be less theologically charged than Israel. And it's a little, not a whole lot, but a little cleaner to try to have that conversation. So for the sake of argument, you know, I'm going to put it out either way. Let's say that Russia was justified in feeling threatened by the maneuvers of NATO and them being threatened by military presence in Ukraine and their historical claim on that land being justified and culturally there's some connections and stuff. Let's say that the Russians were right. Or, if you don't like that one, let's say the Ukrainians are right and they've been attacked by Russia and they need to, Both of them could make an argument that their fisticuffs are justified. So are they? One or the other? Are one or the other or both of them justified? Or both of them completely, there's no justification for anybody? I think it's possible that neither is the answer. And also both. In a specific conflict, I think there's – it's sometimes going to be hard to make that – and every case is going to be different. You get different people in the room where you all debate whether one specific conflict is justified. If you want to give like an overarching principle on when are conflicts justified, that might better, I'm not sure. This kind of plays into, you know, as a Christian, the practical implication. Because, I mean, none of us, in this room anyway, and probably most of our listeners, none of us have like a button to press to launch a nuclear missile at a country. So we're not, we're not the ones that are starting conflicts, but we... I would bet money that you don't have a nuclear weapon in your backyard, yes. That's correct, but the bet is, do I have the ability to start a conflict or not? Oh, you definitely do. I would also bet that if he did have a nuclear weapon in his backyard, he wouldn't tell you. That's true. I have words, I have fists, right? So what I'm trying to say is, can we bring it back to a little bit more practical? What should a Christian do about conflicts that already are existing or going to be existing? I mean, we have a saying that we can vote, and if we get a position to government, we could vote to have conflicts and so on. But for the broader listener, that's joining in, the practical application is, what do Christians do? If you get drafted, what should you do? And who should your allegiance be? One of the things that I've heard some people make is a reasonable case that the Revolutionary War was not justified, biblically speaking, because it was an uprising against what people would consider the lawful government of the colonies at the time. If you subscribe to that, I'm not sure that I do, but if you subscribe to that theory, then at what point do you now After the war, do you no longer have allegiance to Britain? Do you still pay taxes to Britain in 1792 or 1799 or 1810 or 1812 when the British came back and burned down the White House? Would you say, yes, great, my team's back in charge now for a week and then pay their taxes there and then go back? When do you decide, you know, if China invades the U.S., at what point does it stop being the U.S. and start being China and now as Christians you have to give allegiance to the lawful authority that's in place at that time? I don't know, but how do you continue to defend your home and property and your government, and you get drafted? Those are, I think, a little more practical. Well, you said you brought up home and property, right? And you're actually bringing it down to the level of personal. Sure. What is my personal responsibility over what is my domain or responsibility. And that's sort of what I was trying to do by saying, you know, like, I have words, I have fists. And so the first question I ask is, like, is there ever a time when I need to use those, right, in – either to start a conflict or to resolve a conflict, you know. And I would say yes, and I think there are a lot of people who are true pacifists who would say no. Yes. But I'm pretty sure, even if they're not using physical force for conflicts, that pacifists will will participate in word conflicts. Even if they're polite and non-vulgar, there still is a struggle. But it does rise to a very different level when there's killing involved. It's not more than just blows being exchanged or harsh words. If somebody dies, now all of a sudden you have to decide, was this to justify death? Because if not, then that's murder. My knuckles, if I use them, they can sustain a lot of damage and pain and destruction. And I'm, as the one who has authority over my body... Your body, your choice? Is that what you're saying? Uh, well, I'm, I'm saying I'm responsible for what my body does, right? Whether it's good or bad. Um, and so, uh, so, you know, and, and in the same way, I think, so like you, you sort of scale up on that, like, um, you know, like there, so, so death in the sense of, right, the, the destruction of something, the ending of, uh, of something that's alive. If somebody actually dies, though, if you kill somebody, then that is a very different legal standard that's now going to be invoked. Well, yes, if we're talking about, you know, a person on a person, but then when you go to, I'm thinking about like also like a nation is a body of people, right? And so in that sense, like there is, like those who are responsible for that body, have to make decisions for that body, for the good of that body, right, is what they're supposed to do. And they'll be accountable for those decisions, whether in this life or the next. So that's sort of where I'm going with all of it. So there are wars of conquest and expansion, and there have been throughout history plenty of times where the leaders of the country would have no pretense that it was in response to aggression by their neighbor. They said, well, I just want more territory, and I'm going to take it because I'm stronger than you. And that has happened. Most of the conflicts that are in the world today, those are not the excuses being given by the leaders. But there have been many in the past where they said, well, we just want to take over the next country because I'm stronger. And I think you might be able to make it. Which would be like me? going to my neighbor and saying, hey, I'm stronger than you, so I'm going to take all your stuff. because i want it and so you know that you could i think make a decent case uh... biblically speaking that that type of war would not be justified and i think because when you can make a much easier case about that that's probably why most of the quote-unquote civilized countries these days don't attempt to say that's why they're doing things even if the real reason is oil or land or uh... you know sex trafficking or whatever else that we always have, you know, some kind of excuse. Well, we're saving these people or we're protecting from this other thing or whatever. Yeah, that's the voice of Daniel Razvi. I also heard David Forsey. I'm Troy Skinner. This is the Faith Debate on NewsRadio 930 WFMD and we are more than halfway through and it occurs to me We haven't made a whole lot of progress in the conversation, which I think is a point in the favor of the pacifists, because they have a very simple, consistent, they'd be done having this conversation, right? It's wrong. Period. Full stop. Done. Right? Don't wage war. Don't steal your neighbor's stuff. Don't use the knuckles on the hands that belong to your body to, you know, bludgeon somebody. Don't do those things. Turn the other cheek. Love, love, love. It's a very simple kind of an argument. And I think people might be attracted to just the simplicity. Like, I don't have to go through all these gray areas and these difficult things to try to figure out. Because we haven't made any ground. I mean, this has been a discussion for, I'm beating us up for this, by the way, it's been a discussion for generations. So we're not going to solve this issue, but just as trying to enter into the conversation, figure it out. So why isn't simple? Just say, you know what? War. Bad. Shooting. No good. Death. Avoid it. We are sinful people and we have an imperfect mind. Speak for yourself. A lot of things really just aren't black and white. You know, take lying for example. Many Christians would instinctively say, oh, lying's bad. Okay, well then why was Rahab not only not punished, but in fact praised by God for her lie? So clearly, not all lies are bad. And that's one of the easiest things, you know, have you ever lied? Okay, you've committed sins. Well, probably if you've lied, it was a sin. But there are lies that are not sins. And we know that because the Bible makes it very clear that at least a couple of specific lies were justified and correct. So that's just for lying. And that's one of the littlest sins you could think of. Oh, it's just a little lie. Well, everything from there is just going to get more and more complicated. There are some things that I would say are never okay, and the Bible does make those very clear. There doesn't ever seem to be an exception given against homosexuality, for example, or adultery or whatever. Although certain kinds of fornication are going to have certain remedies that are not death, right? You could marry as a result of it rather than being killed for it, depending on the type and so on. So, where am I going with this? My point is that a lot of things, biblically speaking, a lot of theological things really aren't black and white because the heart matters, too. and the intent and all that, and our relationship with God. And then God's mysteries are not always easy to discover, you know? Just as we've talked about before, just understanding the Trinity is already a monumental task. So if you want a simple answer for everything, then I guess it's kind of like saying, well, I want to understand fully everything and every reason that God does things and God commands things, but if that's what you want, then you want a God that's not sovereign, that's not... I want a God that's bigger than me. I want a God that's big enough that I can't understand Him, or why He does everything. Because if I can understand it all, then He fits in my head, and then He's not my creator. I am the creator. Let's talk about some of the things that might make it more unjust. civilians being killed by indiscriminate bombing of cities, let's say. Would that make it something that's not just? Well, I think there's another piece there, too, which is there is the is the conflict itself justified? And then there is, are the methods justified or not? So I think that's in some ways kind of a different issue. Yeah, I really do. And there's the whole idea of proportional response and stuff too, right? Because if I slap you, you might have the right to hit me back, but you probably don't have the right to shoot me. right uh... just a one-to-one basis right uh... but that if i put a gun that you can shoot me even if i haven't shot you yet there's there's various legal standards my right here uh... and so that's the whole proportional response and that's what's being talked about a lot in the middle east and i think one of the reasons that uh... because so much angst in the west is because we think about right and wrong as black and white everything you're either guilty or you're innocent there's no in-between where in the East, nobody thinks of right and wrong that way. They think of degrees of honor or shame, and you're either more honorable or less honorable, and something you do affects the entire country, and it reflects on the entire country, but especially you and your family and then your tribe and the nation. They don't really think of any particular action as being good or bad. It's only how does it make everything else perceived. And so that makes it really difficult when you have nations fighting that come from very different right and wrong worldviews. It's really impossible for – and that's – in fact, I was just talking with my family about this earlier today. I know you wanted to get away from Israel, but Israel is unique in that Israel is populated largely by people who were born in Europe and Russia, at least the last generation was anyway. Yet they live in the Middle East amongst a whole bunch of people that are much more of an honor and shame culture. They are more of a black-and-white type culture, which is, I think, one of the reasons why they attempt so strongly to warn people, get out of the way, those types of things, when they go into bomb places, where nobody else in the Middle East does that. But again, on the subject of civilians, any time that somebody is dying who's, let's say, innocent, that's always going to be a tragedy. So you have two questions, though. One is, even though it's sad, is it ultimately sinful or wrong? That's one question. The other question is, were they actually innocent? Because that's another subject entirely. You know, people say, what happens, there's a famous poem about when they came for the Jews in Germany, I don't remember, well you know, first they came for such and such, and I wasn't that, so I didn't say anything. Then they came for so and so, and I wasn't him, so I didn't say anything. And then they came for me, and there was nobody left to say anything for me. Right? So, he's feeling responsibility, he should have stood up all those other times. So is there really ever an innocent civilian then if a country is ruled by evil leaders that are acting horribly, and there is an opportunity for the citizens to say, no, I'm not going along with this, we're going to stop you, but then they don't, do they not bear some responsibility? On the West, I think in the West you can understand that to a degree. In the East, If you ask this question to anybody, Christian, Jew, Muslim, anybody who lives in Israel, in Pakistan, in India, in China, anywhere in the East, they will all immediately say, of course, yes. He's totally responsible. I don't care if he pulled the trigger or not. He didn't do anything to stop it. whether he could have done anything to stop it or not, his father or his brother or his uncle did this and therefore it's his fault too. Is that an argument against pacifism in the sense of by being a pacifist you are you would argue that you're actively causing some of that pain and suffering. Because you're not stopping. Could be. That's how I would explain it to a Westerner, but I think on a more basic level, whether you could have or should have or even did attempt to stop anything, you still bear responsibility for your family's actions and your tribe's actions. A couple of things I find interesting in the New Testament. One is soldiers go to John the Baptist and he doesn't tell them to not be soldiers anymore. He said do what you're commanded to do or whatever. Yeah, and don't treat people unfairly, don't abuse your power basically, right? And then we also have Paul saying that the government is there, they're there, there's a right way that they're supposed to be operating, but they're there in order to do that, to bear the sword. And they were put there by God. Right, yeah. And people will say, well, he wrote that when Nero was the leader, so clearly he wasn't meaning that they're always, you know, you can't use the excuse, well, my government's worse than that, you know, because that was a pretty bad leader. All right, we're going to end it there, and we can pick up this conversation in the next week's show. This is the Faith Debate. Thank you to Daniel Razvi, David Forsey, I'm Troy Skinner. Find us online at WFMD.com and HouseholdofFaithinChrist.com. Until next week, 167 and a half hours from now, God bless. We are way behind times, aren't we? It occurred to me that, well, these first few kind of can all dovetail into each other. So I think we'll probably end up doing some of that. But it occurred to me that the last comments you were making, Daniel, connect to... The honor and shame thing? To what Dave was saying about the body. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to avoid, because I know you don't want to get into it today, the whole worldview thing and honor of shame and fear of power and all this stuff and the way culture is, but I think that does also have a bearing on how people instinctively assume that something is just or unjust in wars is basically, you know, and especially with the way, you know, the whole killing of civilians thing and civilian casualties and deaths and stuff. The way the West handles it and the way the East handles it are very different and you don't generally think of it as the same level of wrongness if you live there in the East? Yeah. I mean, in that whole discussion, it's going to be difficult to avoid saying, OK, so on what foundation is the West built and on what foundation is the East built? Yeah. Which is, I know, something we want to get into and probably not today. Yeah. Well, and saying, OK, so like, yeah like what's the and oh you were going you were going different direction I think but that you were going there build on a Christian foundation well yes okay I would go I would not say that so I would say that that both both foundations are actually entirely just we see him through different lenses well we were still kind of in the flow of the conversation I'm gonna jump right back in here Good morning, Vietnam. Good morning, Vietnam. Oh, wow. Yeah, we're talking about war and stuff. I figured it'd be a good way to open the Faith Debate Show this morning. Good morning, Vietnam. Remember that Robin Williams movie from like the, was it the 80s, 90s? I don't know. Sorry. You don't know the movie? I apologize. You guys don't know that movie? Oh, man! Yeah, I know who Robin Williams was. You know, there are certain... We were barely alive then. There are certain days when I feel older than others. This is one of the days I feel old. Holy schmoly, how do you not know Good Morning Vietnam? I've heard that before. I've heard the phrase, but I don't know. Wow. He plays a DJ who's broadcasting to the troops in Vietnam, and he opens his morning show with Good Morning Vietnam, but it's a wartime kind of a... movie. What's it called? Good Morning Vietnam. That makes sense. How'd they come up with the title? We made exactly one millimeter of progress on our topic of just wars last week. We're going to try to make a second millimeter of progress on this week's edition of the Faith Debate. I'm Troy Skinner. You just heard Daniel Razvi talking about the millimeters. He's with the church that meets at Imran's house and you can find them online at conqueredbylove.org and David Forsey is a pastor in the area as well of a house church that meets the different member families host on a rotisserie league system. Southern Frederick County. Southern Frederick County, basically that's what you're going with now? You've downgraded from the greater Potomac region or whatever you were saying at one time. So anyway, last week we were talking about Israel a little bit and it was my fault we got off to a very sloppy start, so we didn't get off to a good start out of the gate. And we tried to corral the discussion and get it more focused on just war theory and do not have to relitigate any of that. It wouldn't take long if we did because we didn't cover that much ground. But the three of us on the panel this week are all of the opinion that war is sometimes justified. The question is, like, under what circumstances would it be justified and what would circumstances tell us that automatically that's not justified? And how can it be waged in a justified manner? Is there all are all methods of victory, of achieving victory, are they all justified? And I would say no, they're not all justified. I just thought of a great example, probably, of the civilian thing, probably a the civilian thing being whether or not it's a quick okay to kill civilians like your team and i thought that that's what i was saying that probably that's a very famous example of that there were many people who came to truman said uh... well we're if you drop this bomb a hundred thousand innocent people which by the west and his innocent people in japan they wouldn't consider themselves innocent if if they if somebody were to do this and if somebody who were to convince the people of Japan at that time that the Emperor was in the wrong, they would feel like, well, we're all to blame for that then, and so we should all die. That's how the Japanese would have felt that way. The West doesn't see that. They see them as their non-combatants, they're women and children, therefore they're innocent. So Truman was told, well, you're going to have 100,000 innocent people die, or a million Americans die, and probably as many more million Japanese soldiers die. in a long, drawn-out invasion. So we get two million, probably, or 100,000 for certain, that are probably not combatants, and zero Americans. And he said, well, I'll take that. And at the same time, by the same token, we get to also prove to Russia that we're still powerful, because they were fighting with Stalin at that time. at the negotiating table trying to divvy up Germany. And so there was a lot of other stuff, but the specific argument about whether civilians – so is that justified just because 100,000 noncombatants – I mean, that's a lot of people, and you don't know for a fact that we would have had millions dead in an invasion of Japan. I mean, on the current trajectory, I think it was a fair play, because not only would – I mean, they probably saved untold many more times Japanese lives, right? Even more innocent civilians, potentially. Oh, yeah, for sure, for sure. Because of the fight to the death mentality, the fight to the last man, fight to the last person mentality of the Japanese. Now, there is a certain attractiveness to that, pragmatically speaking, right? If you can save, using your 2,100,000 thing, if you can save 1.9 million lives, then okay, let's do that. But 100,000 people died. Explain it to their loved ones who didn't die that it was an OK trade. Those of you who are history buffs, you don't have to call in and tell me it was actually 123,964. I know it was over 100,000, but it wasn't millions. So that's the point. Yeah, good catch, because we would get people hung up on that sort of minutiae. I deal with them far too often. But anyway. It's like saying, for the good of the many, this one must die. Which is what the high priest said. And God orchestrated things in such a way that with Jesus, that worked out really well for us Christians. But he had unrighteous motives, the high priest had unrighteous motives in saying that. So is it righteous to say, yeah? I think you'd have to make an argument that pragmatism is never a good way to make decisions. And by the way, the Jesus example, we can't forget, theologically, his life wasn't taken from him. It was offered up and he gave himself up. So we have to keep that in mind as well. He said, I can just call down 12 leaders and angels at any time and save myself when I want to. I like that last week in the show, David was talking about the body, he was making a correlation between like he's responsible for what his body does, good or bad. And he was saying that like a country, a nation state is a whole bunch of people that represent a political body. And so if you use that example, then I mean, it's okay to punch somebody in the stomach when you're in a fight with them. Right? So killing the civilians is punching them in the stomach. They're not the combatants. They're not the fists that are flying. Right. So that gets to the point where there is no – I mean, there's this industrial complex that supports the war effort. But it's also hopefully ending the conflict before one of the two people fighting dies, right? Like, how do I end this most quickly so that the conflict is stopped? But I guess another allergy would be then is it okay to then capture the person, tie them up, and then cut them piece by piece and torture them? having already subdued them and that'll be the, what? I'm saying that would be the more extreme example of, okay, these are really not combatants, they've already surrendered, they're not, now are you just going to kill every man, woman, and child in there? Because that has happened. And that happened, honestly, to some parts of Germany when the Allies finally broke through the lines. There was a lot of raping going on. There was a lot of killing going on. A lot of civilians died in Germany. Germany had already surrendered. and that is not and not just happened october seventh did not just happen in not uh... and uh... nazi germany is happened all throughout history when i think it's another one generally their their bad actors and surrender basically there's plenty more people people that rape and pillage and plunder and basically to destroy the area uh... actors Is that always unjustified, though? Because God did command similar things to happen. Not the raping, but he did command every man, woman, and child to be killed. And he also made provisions for future wars that presumably would be just saying, if you go to war and then you take captives, now you're going to take all these women and children captive and make them your servants now, okay? And that's one of those that everybody jumps to. And one of the reasons why – and I don't know if this could be a mistake saying this, but one of the reasons why last week I said for this discussion let's take ancient Israel off the table, because there's so many theological commitments, thoughts, whatever, that are packed into that, that are totally separate conversations, because I don't disagree with the history, I don't disagree with the God command aspect, I don't disagree with any of the stuff in the Old Testament, but as far as the purposes in that, the lessons that are being learned from that, I don't agree with you on on the multiple points you've brought up so far, and those would be separate shows. Well, I realize that, but the problem is I don't know that you could separate it, because if you're trying to decide when and how... Well, I don't know that you can avoid separating it. So that's what I'm saying. That's a totally separate series of shows. But if we're going to discuss how and why certain types of wars or parts of wars will be justified or unjustified, biblically speaking, there's no way to really do that adequately while throwing out half the Bible. I disagree. See, that's what I'm saying. I totally disagree. I don't think it's possible for me to have that kind of conversation. So what you're saying is you would base your theory of just or unjust war on the entire Bible and not just the New Testament. Yes. Well, and you would base it on Likewise, I think all three of us would be there. I would include all of the parts of the Bible as examples. I would too. See, we don't disagree on that. It's how to apply what those examples mean for us. That's where the difference is going to be. Right. Okay. But that's still going to come up in the discussion though. as far as to determine whether someone... Well, this goes back to a question that David brought up last week when he, I think, I don't know if he was just thinking out loud or if he was being playful or if he was thinking, hey, this is an avenue of discussion we should take when he said, so basically a war is justified if God commands it. And if God doesn't command the war, then it's unjustified. And that's kind of, that would be the example if I wanted to be, you know, committed to the same kinds of arguments that you've put forward about Israel and God commanded it. Okay. Did God command Russia to invade Ukraine? Did God command the United States to – well, the colonies to rebel against England? Did God command the United States to wipe out all of the Indian nations across North America? I would argue, no, we don't have any record of him commanding that. So that would say that all war is completely unjustified except for the war that took place in ancient Israel. Well, that would be the Anabaptist argument, but I'm not an Anabaptist. Why not though, right? That's the logical... No. It doesn't follow that because this war was justified, therefore all other wars are unjustified unless the various circumstances that started this one exactly happen again. That's not a logical argument. it is entirely possible that there is another kind of war that is still justified, and some of the principles that we learn by viewing these other wars, knowing that they were justified, there may be some similarities between those wars and some other wars which might happen in the future, whether or not all of the circumstances are there, namely, God commanding it, go do this now, even if all the circumstances are not there. Then we're going to have to say, you know, basic principles are, well, we can only go to war if we are wiping out an extremely wicked people, or we can only go to war if we are taking land for our families that God has promised to us. I wouldn't even go that far. I would say that one of the reasons you could go to war is to wipe out a wicked people. Not, you could only go to war to do that, because it's not a limiting principle. It just says this type specifically was godly, so the Anabaptists would say, you have to have all of those circumstances, and not just Anabaptists, I mean, you're not Anabaptists, but you've subscribed to the same, you would have, you have to have every little circumstance, including God commanding it outright in the beginning, in order for it to match and be an analogous conflict today. I don't think so. I think certain principles of why some of these wars were justified and why God commanded to do certain things, that we should draw on those same principles when we're deciding these current conflicts of whether we think they're justified. So I know you're trying to get us away from the topic of ancient Israel, I just don't know how I can, in my mind, separate those things from this whole discussion. Well, it may be helpful for me, what's going on. The picture that we're given in the Old Testament of the life experience of ancient Israel is pointing forward to what's going to happen in the Eschaton at the end of time. So God wipes out the evil and places his people in the promised land. That's the Old Testament. Guess what? God wipes out the evil people and places people in the forever promised land in glory. So one is anticipating the other and that's the lessons to be drawn from that. So God can kill whoever he wants because he created. He's the potter. The potter can do whatever he wants with the pot that he made. So if God's going to wipe people out through supernatural occurrences at the end of the age, Okay, God can do that. If God wants to wipe out those evil Canaanites using the adult men of his chosen people as his instruments, okay, God can do that. So that's where, to me, I can see a a delineation there that doesn't automatically make the ancient Israel experience something that's automatically applied across the board. This is similar to the theonomy kind of discussions we had, right? Like how far do we take the examples that were given about ancient Israel and apply them now? And my view on theonomy is, I guess, the same as it is with just war theory, which is there are principles that will be drawn, but we can't be too exacting because we're not ancient Israel. So we can't take the ancient Israel rules and apply them to us, but we can take principles and lessons that are learned from that. And I don't know that our leaders would want to even take that example, because they don't want to be held to that kind of standard. Look at what happened with Achan. One guy did a bad thing and stole a little piece of jewelry or whatever, and a gold nugget. There was like three things, right? He stole. And because of that, Israel lost the next battle. And like 30 or something of their people died, which was a lot, because compared to zero in all the battles combined, you know, 30 people was a lot of death, right? That one guy caused not only the battle to be lost, the whole army demoralized and all that. Imagine if that was the case. The U.S. military, one member of the military commits some heinous act and therefore we start losing all of our wars in the Middle East and Europe and Asia and stuff. I don't think our Western leaders want to have that kind of level of responsibility, but you were kind of David, you were kind of hinting at, they really should. I mean, the country is responsible for the actions of its people towards others. And so that is a very, very high standard. It's kind of a federal headship argument, right? The leaders, we're with them until we're not. And that's kind of what happened with the American Revolution and other revolutions too. We're not with the leaders anymore. We're going to have our own new set of leaders. That would be a difference, by the way. There weren't a bunch of random skirmishes. Well, there were a few, but it wasn't largely just this disorganized, everybody's vigilante justice trying to throw off the king. It's, they created their own government, if you will, their own set of leaders who drafted their own documents, their own petition, and they were cognizant of the fact that it's important to try to identify the lanes and stay in them. They weren't just off scattershot doing what they want. Well, I mean, yeah, it was all, they were British sanctioned governments, because it would be very, you know, it'd be like, you know, today, like, The President says, all right, these are my pet states, and all the other states are going to serve them. And all the other states say, no, I don't think so. You're not acting as a protector of us anymore. So you mean like sanctuary states or sanctuary states? Well, I'm just saying it as an example. It would be like that. Like cities where people who aren't citizens are allowed to vote in their elections? Like that kind of example? Oh, that doesn't exist in this country. You've been reading too many of those right-wing conspiracy theories. But anyway, it would be pretty easy for any given state to say if they wanted to, like, The federal government isn't protecting us anymore, so we're not going to listen to them. And that's all the colonies did. They were that organized. And that's what happened in the Civil War, and they lost the argument, but it was founded, I think, on the same principles. Like, okay, we just don't want to be part of this part of it anymore, but we still have the rest of the government. And the Civil War raises – I was looking for an opportunity to pivot to this, and you brought up the Civil War, and that's a perfect example. It's not about slavery, by the way. Yeah, well, I will say that it wasn't solely about slavery. I think it was in part about slavery. But yeah, making it as simple as that. And it might not even been primarily about slavery. I think just like today, back then, there were a lot of different political things. Yes. Yeah, lots of things. Same time. But North versus South, the blue versus the gray, was a lot of Christian versus Christian. Yes. In many battles, in fact, people found literal brothers, like their actual brother, not just cousin. brother on the other side. So that's a difference with ancient Israel too, by the way. It's God's people attacking clearly the enemy. But in the wars we have now, if we got drafted into the military and we had to go fight against England again, I mean, we would probably be shooting at some, potentially anyway, shooting at some, professing at least, and perhaps, in fact, right? So you have actual Christians fighting against actual Christians. Look at the current Ukraine and Russian war. There are many Russian soldiers that I would say are probably saved. I don't know how many, may not be very many, the thousands or hundreds, but there's certainly some. And I'm sure there are people in Ukraine that are also saved. So there are actual Christians shooting at each other in Ukraine and Russia. or there were when this was being recorded. So you guys remember, we record these shows several months ahead, so a lot of the geopolitical things that we're talking about are going to be kind of dated, but we're intending these principles to be timeless, because God is timeless. Except for the discussion about ancient Israel. Well, it's actually really dated. It'll be more dated in a few months than it is now. So, sometimes when things get really complicated, complex, there's all this gray area, you can't figure out what's what. Sometimes it's good to just try to make it hyper-simple. So a way to try to make this hyper-simple is that God says murder is wrong. Murder is a sin. So under what circumstances would engaging in a war be an unjustified killing, would be the kind of killing that we would say is murderous. Because to be clear, the Bible does not say that all killing is sinful, only that murder is sinful. Right, yeah, correct. There are plenty of times to kill somebody, and most notably being when the government does so in response to a crime. And it doesn't say anything specifically about I can't, in certain circumstances, kill a Christian. Let's say David loses his mind someday, and for whatever reason, he invades my home, and my family's life is in jeopardy. I'm like, you know what? I don't know what's going on with you right now, but I've got to put you down. Right or die, right? Those are the two yeah, and then you find out like oh, he was a Christian brother like well that really stinks But it wasn't a murder Right, you can kill someone and not have it be a murder, but you can't kill anybody Christian or not if it's a murder so any of the people in the Civil War They may personally not have chosen to go shoot other people on the other side, but they were commanded to do so by their government, and they could do that or they could desert and be caught and killed as well. And I don't know that the Bible calls us to do that necessarily. Again, there are plenty of pacifist Christians who would disagree with us. And we don't really have representation from a true pacifist in this room, so we're trying to kind of make their arguments for them. But they would say, no, you should just desert then or willingly be killed instead of firing any shots. But I don't know that Romans 13 quite goes with that, I think. And like you said, David, the example of John the Baptist and what his command was to the soldiers. So I don't know. There were certainly principles and people. There were also many Christians who were actually desiring to fight on both sides because they believed their cause was just and righteous, in the Civil War especially. We can make an argument of how many people in the North actually believed they were fighting to free slaves. Certainly by the end of the war, some of them did. After the Emancipation Proclamation, it became more overtly about slaves. And many people in the South would have other Christian reasons that they would use, and you can decide if they're justified or not, but they would say that there was interference by the North on a lot of different levels that were not justified. I don't know, but your feelings about whether a war is just does not make it just, because God does not change. So either it's just or it's not, right? But let's pull it back even further and make it more simple. University of Alabama plays the University of Georgia in a football match, and fans of both sides pray to God for their team's victory. Now what does God do? That's kind of a silly question, but you know people do that. You've probably met people who pray for their team to win. I if I'm going to pray during a football game, I'll pray for people not to get injured. That's I think something that those guys can kind of agree on. And I think I think it's kind of silly to pray for your team to win a football game. But, you know, I don't really know where I'm going with that except that that feels like a good analogy just without the bloodshed in that football game. Neither side is particularly justified or not justified. It's a game, right? They're not actually killing people. Any time somebody dies in a war, it's some form of a homicide, right? A person has died. It's a homicide. The question is, is it a justified homicide or is it a murder? I guess that's what it comes, for me, that's what it's beginning to boil down to with war. Was the killing a justified killing? So if the Chinese Red Army invades Maryland tomorrow and all the good old boys with their rifles and their shotguns and stuff rally and they start taking shots at the Chinese army and they kill a few of the Chinese soldiers, Well, they're defending their homeland, they're defending their families, they're defending their heritage. But the Chinese who came over here unprovoked to start shooting at the Marylanders, well, they're murdering people. So they're entering, so maybe it's like two, there could be one war and one side, or multiple versions of sides, are fighting an unjust war, and the other side is fighting a just war. This gets to a question you asked at the very, very beginning of this discussion last week too, right? Whether it's a defensive war or an offensive war. But Daniel made the point about it being, there's all sorts of battles of conquest and taking over more territory. Yeah, and also to say, like, in defense of who, right? Like, is it, am I just to defend, you know, my neighbor's daughter from her abusive father? right like is that just like that's not my house that's not my fight he's not attacking me right yeah is do i put myself in the middle of that like is that the right thing to do is that the right thing for nations to do And we're going to stay on this general topic, but begin to pivot into something a little more on the personal side. That's a good transitional kind of way to end this show in next week's episode. So that was David Forsey with the good finishing thought. Lots of good thoughts in the middle of it all was Daniel Razvi. I'm Troy Skinner. You can find us online at WFMD.com and HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com. We will continue this conversation next week, 167 and a half hours from, let me check, yep, right about now. God bless. Well, you said I had good thoughts. That's impressive. Yeah, I mean... Good thoughts about ancient Israel. I can disagree with you, but... and they can still be good thoughts. I wasn't trying to give you a hard time, except that I really... maybe I misunderstood your comment. I just felt like that was kind of tying my hands as far as some of my main principles on how war could be just or unjust are really going to be rooted in some of those examples of the Old Testament. Well, if you're able to give good, if you're able to really get to core principles, then there should be principles that you can consistently demonstrate throughout Scripture. Correct, but I think it's also wrong to say, well, we can discuss all of Scripture except for this, you know. Well, I was just trying to have it not be the default of, well, you know, certainly war is okay because God commanded war. It's not as simple as that because God commanded war in a very particular context. Well, no, the thing you can draw that everybody can agree is that it could be the case that at some point a war was justified because we know that those were. That doesn't mean All other wars will be or it doesn't just saying that doesn't mean It doesn't doesn't explain why it could be or not justified or not justified. So we still have to figure that part out But I would still draw principles from those Wars that we know were justified because those are a good benchmark. We know these were justified So why would they justify was it only because God said so well, he actually did tell us why there's some reasons he gave why they were What he was commanding so would those circumstances ever happen again? Could they ever happen again without God specifically telling somebody you need to do this? And my supposition would be yes, because I see the principles in there that are kind of universal principles. That sounds like justification for jihad, though. Well, no, because... Well, has not God promised us the earth? Good morning, Maryland! Is that better? Last week we opened with Good Morning Vietnam, this week we open with Good Morning Maryland. Is that another movie that I've never heard of, Troy? No, it's one we should make, though. Okay. Good Morning Maryland, starring Daniel Razvi, David Forsey. Oh, sorry, I gave you top billing. David Forsey, Daniel Razvi. I don't know how to give you equal billing. visually you can put them both on the screen at the same time, but in audio I don't know how to give you both the top billing. Top billing just means who's getting paid more, right? David, David, Rasby, Daniel, Forsyth. Is that a way to just blend them? You're paying David three times as much as you pay me to be here. Actually, I hate to break it to you, but I'm being paid a billion times more than both of you put together. Just for the record. Anyway, this is the Faith Debate. Off to a good, rip-roaring start. to God, but more down to earth, specifically to the station for giving us this time on the air at no expense for so many years because they really have seen the value in biblical teaching, or at least they see that there's enough demand from the listeners that justifies it. So if you're listening to the show and you have been blessed by it, please write or call the radio station so that they can keep us on the air. Not that I'm expecting not to be on the air, but it's always good to have additional people and reasons for them, so that if ever somebody were to call and complain and try to cancel us, then they have some evidence in our file that people like us. And if you've ever been cursed by the show, keep it to yourself. Yes. Anyway, so that's... I think the people that would complain are not up this early on Sunday morning. Probably not. They were busy with activities into the wee hours of Saturday night into Sunday morning. Is that what you're saying? The one laughing at you, but you're not listening to hear him, is David Forsey. The other person who was telling you to continue to show your support for the show, and we do appreciate it, that was Daniel Razvi. I'm Troy Skinner, and this is the Faith Debate on NewsRadio 930 WFMD. Find us online at wfmd.com and householdoffaithinchrist.com. That's the name of the church that I pastor. So, we've been talking about war. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. You remember that song? That's one position, yeah. Remember that song? No. You guys haven't heard of... Have you heard it before? No, I haven't. You haven't heard that song? Oh, I have. Okay. Sure. I listen to classical music. You didn't know Good Morning Vietnam. I was nervous, man. My cultural references. Do you watch any movies, Daniel? I like Star Trek. Not the new Star Trek, though, because they've gone completely woke. The Star Trek Discovery, have you seen that one? It's a streaming only thing. Have you seen that? They should just call it, and I mean this like, I don't mean this for shock value. I mean it using the vernacular of the day of the left. They should call it queers in space. Because the entire queer spectrum, the entire LGBTQIA plus thing, all of the, it's like equal opportunity for everything to come at you and be offensive to your sensibilities if you're a biblical Christian. Yeah. That's just because it's a lot of non-humans, right? Aliens. Yeah, but there's same-sex relationships. Actually, humans, too. And transgenderism and trans-speciesism. It's off the charts. But anyway, yeah. So I just saved you some time. You don't have to watch it. I was identified as a Klingon. The original series and the next generation series, I think, hold up over time. The other series, you know, we'll see. Anyway, so we're talking about what we've, not now, but we're gonna transition to talk about what we were hoping to talk about, which we've been talking about the last couple of shows, having to do with war and that sort of thing. I do want to take a second here to throw in personal reactions. So there was a war taking place in the middle of last century or near the middle of the last century centered mostly in Europe, although there's the Pacific battle as well. But most of us in this country for some reason focus on the Nazis. and Hitler and all of that. And again, I'm going to say what Daniel said. Okay, fine. I'm not going to get every precise detail said in the way that you want me to say it because I might not agree with your understanding. It's not as simple as Germany invades Poland and the English were completely innocent bystanders, but they had to do something. I understand it's more complicated than that. But for ease of conversation, Germany invades Poland, The English and the rest of Europe have to do something. They get involved. They try to reign this in, and Chamberlain is an abject failure. There's an argument against pacifism, by the way, I think. Some would disagree with me, I'm sure. At least appeasement, but I'm not sure what the difference really is, to be honest. Practically speaking, yeah. Then Churchill comes in and takes care of business, but it took a while. Right? I mean, it took a long, long time. And so a number of people, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was one of the most famous theologians of the last century. In my opinion, one of the more overrated theologians of the last century. Not that he's completely overrated. Don't misunderstand me. He's brilliant. He's eminently quotable. There's a lot of good stuff there, but there's a lot of troublesome baggage in there too. We don't get bogged down in all of that unless one of you wants to take the bait. I think a lot of his practical theology is good. But mostly what I want to talk about is Dietrich got involved with some guys that tried to take Hitler out. They tried to assassinate him. And I was reminded of that truth with, I mean, ever since 2015, we've been hearing stuff about Donald Trump being Hitler. He's a new incarnation of Hitler. He's America's Hitler. We've got to stop Hitler at all things. Who wants Hitler as the president of the United States? I'm pretty sure people were, well, Yeah, I'm pretty sure some people compared Nixon to Hitler back in the day. It's just a... It's just a trope at this point, right? It's a way to demonize your political enemy. And it's unfortunate, because especially in American politics, it seems like everything is Hitler, everything's a Nazi or a fascist, because those are the most extreme examples most people can think of. having not as much education on history as they should, potentially, in order to draw other examples. But those are the first two examples anybody can think of as bad. Well, you're Hitler, so you're bad. It's like racist. You're racist, which doesn't really have any meaning these days because it's used so much. I would say even Hitler has no real meaning. If everyone's Hitler, no one's Hitler. Exactly. But you're right. Many people, especially if they've been hearing, oh, he's Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, and then they woke up, oh, Hitler killed 16 million people. I don't want that. So now we've got to stop this. There's so many time travel stories about let's go back in time and kill Hitler. If you had the chance, you would kill him. But could you actually kill him when he was a baby and he hadn't done any of these things yet? And then you get the whole what's right and wrong from a Western perspective. But that's what you're getting at is, is it ever justified to assassinate anybody for any purpose? And I was reminded of it. And to be clear, I do not advocate that. Well, that's going to be the question. That's actually the question. Do we advocate that? He's on the record now. He's not advocating it. I'm not advocating any specific assassinations against any person that is now living. We are talking about whether specific things in the past could have been justified. But this question made it into the mix of this conversation because I was reminded of these realities this past summer, in the summer of, and as this airs, there hasn't been anything new as we're recording, but something maybe new has happened by the time this airs. I don't know. It may have been a successful attempt by the time this airs. Yeah, let's hope not. But as a recording of this, I was reminded this past summer, in the summer of 2024, there were at least two and maybe a third that never quite got off the ground attempt on Donald Trump's life. And I just, I couldn't help but think, you know, I disagree that Donald Trump's Hitler. He's not, he's not Hitler. I'm not a huge fan across the board with Donald Trump, but whatever you think of the man, he is not Hitler. Okay. I mean, he doesn't even have a mustache for crying out loud. Okay. So, but there are people who are convinced. Anyway, Hitler was famous for liking white people, but Trump's orange, not white, so that's the point. John Wilkes Booth thought he'd be a hero for taking out Lincoln, right? He was surprised not to be. Right? So these people, they get it in their head that if I take this guy out, I'm doing the righteous thing. This is a good thing for me to do. So now pivoting back to the actual Hitler, was Bonhoeffer and his buddies, was he right? Well, here's, I guess, what's a more basic question, and you're going to love my example of this one, but is an assassination ever a justifiable method of waging war? We have a good example of that in the Bible. In fact, maybe you'll like this because it's not a specific command by God, do it this way. But Ehud was a very fat man. Remember this passage? I forget the guy's name. Ehud was the assassin, right? Yeah, and it's actually one of the funnier stories in the Bible if you understand that there can be humor in the Bible. There's humor there. It's kind of morbid, but it's morbidly funny, I guess, in a way. It's locker room humor. So this guy goes to rescue the Jews from the oppression of this wicked king is it is a mobile mobile? I can't think at the time of it. Maybe I think so I'm gonna trust you guys on that. I remember it's in judges and One of the characters names was he who'd but the point was the king was really fat and the guy went in and how fat was he? You know under deception and said, I came with a present for the king and they sent all the guards out for some reason and said, here's a good present. The present was a knife that he stabbed him with and killed the king. while it wasn't explicitly commanded by God for him to do it in that way, that's recorded anyway, he may have, God may have spoken to the guy, the assassin, the judge of Israel, but there's no record, the Bible says, go do it this way, but it does record, he did, and it records him as, in generally a favorable light, there's not a- Now does he take it onto his own initiative to do that, or is he, you know, There's nothing about God telling him to do it. So it wasn't necessarily a military operation by the official government? He was one of the oppressed people. He wasn't yet a judge of his own. Well, he was. In the sense that he was a leader of people. were told that God raised up judges. And he's one of those names that God raised up as a judge. So the reason I'm asking that question is part of his official capacity to do those sorts of things, right? I mean, as much as it's the official capacity of a prophet to speak the word of God. you know, if we want to use some mushy language for assassinations, you know, God put it on his heart to go and assassinate this king and then to go round up a bunch of Israelites to throw the oppressors out of the country. So it says The children cried unto the Lord. The Lord raised them up a deliverer. So the Lord raised him up as a deliverer. And by him the children of Israel sent a present unto Egon, the king of Moab. So it was a group of Israelites who had joined in this plot together. So he wasn't acting alone. And I think that is... And he was acting in the role of a deliverer that was raised up and he was like sanctioned. It was a sanctioned activity. That's the question I'm asking. John Wilkes Booth wasn't sanctioned by anybody, right? teacher bonhoeffer i don't think the sanctioned by anybody well nobody wasn't that there's a group of leaders a group of them so that that is a difference right so i think that that that the key difference there was a number of people there were a number of people involved in the teacher bonhoeffer so if i can convince a bunch of yahoos that i should go kill somebody it's it's that okay no i don't think that is but that is a good metric if you're the only one that's that's that thinks this Yeah, well, I think it's the beginnings of a helpful metro. I think it's got to be more than that. I think, again, I used this line two shows ago about we've got to identify the lanes and stay in them. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was not a military officer. He wasn't representing any particular military operation. He wasn't raised up by anybody. He wasn't ordained by any particular military force. Was he? Is there some secret aspect to his cloak and dagger activities I don't know about? As far as I know, it was just a group of people who realized Hitler's got to go, and maybe we've got the means to do it. It wasn't like it was sanctioned by anyone. Well, he was very involved. Who was the authority there? He was very involved as a spy, and so against Germany. Was he commissioned? I mean, he was. I don't know. I'm asking honestly. Well, not by Hitler, obviously. By the Allies? Yeah. Did Churchill send him or did the Americans send him or something? No, but who needs to send him if it's the right thing to do? Well, see, this gets into a question that we had probably over a year ago now. It was just an aside, and I said, we'll park it about abortion. They're slaughtering, brutally slaughtering children in abortion mills all across the country. So should the three of us go barge in and take out all the doctors and nurses to save those babies' lives? We don't have the authority to do that. It would be the right thing to do, quote unquote, but we don't have the authority. It's not our lane. it's not sanctioned. But see, that gets back to what we said a year ago as well, or two years ago I think it was by now, where if you replace abortion clinic with anything else, then suddenly it becomes, it feels all of a sudden a lot more reasonable, right? If you walk down the street and see somebody stabbing someone, you could feel obligated to, and certainly justified if you did, go and stop them or kill the guy who was stabbing somebody or shooting somebody that was of any age outside the womb. So what makes a difference now that they're inside the womb other than it's legally sanctioned by the government to kill a baby when they're inside the womb? And so then you're not only doing something that could be morally right, but it's also illegal under your own government. So now you have the question, you must obey God rather than men. So obviously what God commands you to do, but does God always command you to go save every single person from harm? interesting question are you back then i don't think we have to do we really actually resolved those questions couple years ago and you know that there's still kind of what we're talking about here if they're dangerous questions uh... you know i i i i think if there's an immense intense in an immense evil being committed that is that that that's it you know uh... a problem But there is a passage, and it just occurs to me, we didn't really bring this up a couple years ago, I think this might be a good example. There's a passage, a prophetic passage, which I would say is referring to a future end time, but regardless of what it's referring to, it's in Ezekiel. And it talks about, go mark all the men who are weeping and mourning for the evil that's being done in Israel, right? And then those people will be spared when Israel is destroyed or whatever. And there's a similar passage in Revelation talking about once we see all the men of God on their foreheads, then the locusts will not touch them, right? They come out of the abyss. Aside from the main point of that passage, whatever it is, presumably these were people who heard their hearts were aching and they were actually crying and weeping in anguish over the evil that was being done. They weren't necessarily personally stopping all this evil from being done. They hadn't taken it upon themselves to go kill all the Baal worshippers and whatever else. but they were definitely cut to the heart about it. So it may not always be incumbent on the believer to go immediately stop all sins that you see occurring throughout the country. And I personally would even take it further, because the power of the sword is given to the state. The classic Romans argument. If we're not sanctioned, we're not ambassadors representing the state, You know, we're not the instrument the state's going to use to take care of things like the police officers or the military or what have you. Taking the laws into our own hands is anarchy. It's mob rule. It's like there's got to be some sort of a regimen of spheres of sovereignty and control of things. So the A-team is not justified in what they do in the TV show? Oh, so you haven't seen Good Morning Vietnam, but you have seen the A-team. The A-team was funny. You are highly cultured, my friend. So here's something that I think is interesting about the Dietrich Bonhoeffer situation is there was already many nations trying to stop Hitler, right? They were in the middle of a war. And so I think that's a different situation there. In peacetime, where you make the assumption that this person will someday become a bad guy. Where you go vigilante, just for lack of a better term. So I think in that sense, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wasn't vigilante. He was part of a large plot, including higher up officials within Hitler's administration, in order to try and assassinate Hitler. And it was a time of war. You know, I think that changes the situation drastically, actually. What about something that's not quite as dramatic as that? It's the same principles at play, but it's not about a war, although it's a culture war. And there's a spiritual war. But in a culture war, we use words. Right. And we use the legal system. We don't use guns. Does the name Michael Cassidy mean anything to either one of you off the top of your head? No. The satanic display in the state house of Iowa, does that mean anything to you? Yeah, so in Christmastime, 2023, Michael Cassidy took it upon himself to, I think he used a sword or something and like... No. He took the head off of the satanic display somehow. He pulled it off because it was... He pulled it off? It was just like sitting... Whatever it was, he beheaded it. It was a sloppy display. He knocked the head off. And he's still in the news, well, I don't know if he is as this airs, but as we're recording this, he's still in the news. He faced charges, charged with a hate crime. because it was a religious attack on Satanism, I guess. I don't know. He got off on that. Technically, he got slaps on the wrist, but he didn't face the full brunt of what he could have faced. And I say praise God for that because it's ridiculous. However, I'm not so sure he was right to do what he did. Now, I don't agree with what persecution he's been getting since. Like he's apparently he's an airplane fighter pilot trainer or something for the Navy. He trains reservemen. or something. And the Navy's now coming after him saying that he's a danger and they're going to decommission him. And I mean, I don't know what that, but you see, so he's still in the news for those reasons, but he wasn't part of some like vast group of people, right? He wasn't, he wasn't representing, you know, some sort of kill anybody. He wasn't assassinated. But is it, was he right to do that? I'm not so sure. I don't think he was wrong to do it. I would have a hard time convicting him if I was on the jury. I mean, what he did was less destructive than, like, spray paint. Than, like, you know, like on a wall. And there is no place, and there should be no place, on public property or anywhere in the country for a satanic temple. I agree with that. It is not protected, it should not be protected under the First Amendment. I actually would agree with that. Satanism doesn't need to be protected. So I agree with that. The proper forum for that, as you would say, would be to file a lawsuit against the city. Were there no other avenues available to him at all? He could have potentially filed a lawsuit against the city. It probably would have gotten thrown out. I mean, among conservatives who pay attention to these sorts of things, I know I'm in a distinct minority. I'm making enemies. People who might have liked me before now don't like me. Oh, you're just a mealy-mouthed girly man. You don't think he should have done that. I'm just trying to figure out what is the righteous thing to do. Jesus went and overturned tables in the temple. Yes, he's God, but he was not acting only as God in that circumstance. The Iowa State House is in the temple of God. No. You sound like Nancy Pelosi all of a sudden. But they were defiling the temple. And in this case, this Titanic statue was defiling the public grounds. It defiles everywhere it exists. Yeah, but Jesus goes into the temple, and it's his father's house. He owns it. See, I was a little bit different. This guy wasn't even an Iowan, I don't think. I think you could use... I think he drove in from out of state. It wasn't even his state house. I think you could almost use a freedom of speech argument, right? If you have the freedom to set this thing up in a public space, well, then I have the freedom to come and take it down. So do those knuckleheads in Europe have the right to throw pea soup at paintings on the museums? Right? I mean, it's a funny idea. No, because that's not necessarily like it might be displayed for the public to view, but it's not a religious display. Can we as Christians... That old art is not making any particular statement. The only reason why they do it is because it will get them lots of attention. I would not use the free speech argument either because if you put up a, I don't know, a depiction of the nativity scene, whatever, can some Buddhist go take that down? No, I don't think they can. If it's in a state house? Well, the things that are displayed in the State House are permitted by the state, right? So somebody applied for it and was approved by duly elected officials to put this display up there, yeah. Really? Yeah, because they believed that under the First Amendment they had no right to deny anybody for any display, so they approve all displays. So Troy, do you think you should have gone to get approval for a display and set up a purely Christian display next to the satanic display? That would have been an avenue. And then you might have come back the next day and the head might have fallen off on its own, just like when the Ark of God was... Now, we'll say that he feels like the strength of his conviction was, I need to do this, and if they throw the book at me, so what? Then, okay. It's like the people that get arrested for praying outside abortion clinics. In the news also last week, some 83-year-old woman was facing all this jail time for blocking the hallway. She didn't kill anybody. She didn't stop anything. She just stood in the hallway. Now they're trying to throw the book at her. And we have less than a minute, and this might spawn conversation, so I wonder if I should mention it, but we as Christians, we're Christians, we're part of the body. Do we have the right to go to all these, you know, leftless Lulu, unbiblical churches throughout Frederick that are waving the pride flags and tear them down? I think that's an option, but you need to understand what you're getting yourself into. Gotcha. So we might be righteous in doing it, but then if we have to pay the civil penalty for such things. I don't know that you can necessarily say it's righteous. It's a way to communicate something. Right? That's true. And it's a way to communicate maybe the truth. Okay. So, you know, like... But it may be the wrong way. All right. This was a good conversation. I liked it. We might shift gears a little bit next week. We'll see. We might talk about the weather. Let's complain about traffic and the weather. That's always a good thing. It'll be more sophisticated than that, I promise you. I'm Troy Skinner. The one laughing at my lame joke was, and I appreciate that, by the way, is Daniel Razvi and David Forsey also. We're all pastors in the area. You can find us online at HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com, or you can connect with me and I can connect with them, or you can, of course, go to WFMD.com. Till next week, 167 and a half hours from now, God bless. So traffic and the weather. So we're going to talk about how the government uses ships to create and move around hurricanes. We can do that. I would put it past them. The Milton, for sure, was an engineered hurricane. If the only governments that are led by aliens, the lizard people, those are the ones. You can see on the satellite, a massive flash and then all of a sudden it becomes category 5 instead of category 3 or 2. That doesn't happen. Massive flash? Yeah, on the satellite image, you can see if you look on the time stamps on the hurricane, you can see that it was category 2. Then there was a huge flash in the center of the hurricane, and all of a sudden, in just a few minutes, it becomes Category 5. That's not how hurricanes work. And then it went back down again with another flash several times. Because you study hurricanes. So are you suggesting that the hurricane changed or that the reporting of the hurricane was manipulated like the Dominion voting machines to tell us it was a 5 and it was only a 3? No, I'm suggesting the hurricane actually changed intensity up and down several times. But how would we know? They're just showing us a colorful picture on a screen that circles it. It could be a cartoon. With publicly available satellite data that's been shown. So yes, the data could be... You're assuming we have a spherical Earth. I am not assuming. I am confidently asserting that we have a spheroid along the Earth. that is not quite circular. If any of you ever run into a flat earther that would want to come on the show, we should do that. We did some shows with a flat earther, but they never actually aired because the way we did it was he had a podcast, and John Switzer and I were on his podcast, and then we were going to use the audio on our show, and he forgot to hit the record button. So we did two or three hours of conversation with nothing to show for it. Oh, man. I know some Flat Earthers. If they'd be willing to come on and talk about it. I don't know that they would be. Is that a faith debate kind of topic? Well, the hardcore Christian Flat Earthers it is, because the integrity of the Bible is at stake, because it talks about the firmament, the waters above, the waters below, and the corners and all that. Yeah, exactly. In fact, in my opinion, that is the only thing remotely approaching a coherent argument for a Flat Earth would be biblically based. I don't agree with it at all. But I think the only thing that remotely approaches anything that could be a coherent argument for it has to come from only the Bible. Because you can't make any scientific argument for it. I mean, it's like saying, I don't believe in evolution. Some people do. Some people try to make scientific arguments. They try, but they're absurd scientific arguments. But an evolutionist would say the same thing about my arguments against evolution. Now, I think there's some good scientific arguments against evolution. I think there are many fantastic ones of those. But it also is true that even if there were no scientific arguments against evolution, it would still not be true because the Bible says it's not true. Right? And so that will be where some of the people with the Flat Earth Mindset come from. They say, well, I don't know, I can't explain why the science doesn't seem to back that up. Other than, you know, well, maybe somebody doesn't understand the science very well, but the Bible says this, therefore... That's what it is. And so, at least they're consistent, at least to the people that I've met. If any of the people you know would be comfortable coming on and you feel like they would be up on the arguments well enough to try to defend it and argue it, because there might be some loonies who they believe in it, but they haven't studied it, but if they can try to make the arguments, that would be an interesting show, I think. So anyway, if they're going to do it from the Bible, and I'm not dying to do it necessarily, but I think it would be an interesting thing. And I think it would be interesting for the listener. I think that that would be a, I think, I think it's getting more and more popular. So yeah, well, the internet, the people that I know that believe it, I don't know that there would be the internet and the fact that the government lies just about everything all the time. They're like, see, see, they've lied about this too. Right. It just feeds it, feeds the beast. You can't trust anything. Actually, you have to believe the opposite. Yeah, pretty much. Welcome to the Faith Debate. Thanks for spending part of your Sunday morning with us here on News Radio 930 WFMD. I am Troy Skinner, the host of the show and the pastor of Household of Faith in Christ. You can find us online at HouseholdofFaithinChrist.com. And of course, the The show has a page at WFMD.com. You can connect with all of the podcasts and the outline of show topics and that sort of stuff is there. That's also on the HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com website. In fact, that's a better one, Stop Shopping on us, because there you can link to the Sermon Audio podcasts and the Odyssey.com podcasts. There are way more podcasts of the faith debate available through the Household of Faith in Christ website than there are on the WFMD.com website. That's because the radio station over the years has changed ownership a few times, and whenever that's happened, old shows got lost. And I downloaded a bunch of those shows before they got lost, and so I've been uploading them onto Sermon Audio and Odyssey. One a day for the last several years, we're up around 1,000 faith debates that are... The faith debate, almost as good as a sermon. Almost. Yeah, so yeah, sermonaudio.com, they specialize mostly in sermons, but there are other people that put stuff on there that aren't just sermons, and I clearly mark it out as it's the faith debate, and it's not earmarked as a sermon, it's earmarked as a radio show. So anyway, so you can check all that out. Anyway, the one giving me a hard time over there is David Forsey. He pastors a church that meets in various locations, depending on the week, in southern Frederick County mostly. And Daniel Rasby, he's one of the pastors at the church that meets at Imron's. You can find them online at conqueredbylove.org. So we spent the last three weeks bludgeoning to death the war question. And we made a lot of ground. Actually, we didn't make a whole lot of ground, but we're going to move on. If nothing else, we gave you fodder for consideration. I don't think we found a hill to die on. Yeah, that is good. But I think if you want to try to think things through and see what some different ways to approach the question of when war is justified, if ever, and when it's not justified, and when people should take it into their own hands, that sort of thing. I think they were interesting shows. I encourage you to go check out those old podcasts. But now for this week. As we're recording there were only two there might have been another one by the time this airs But there were only two really really nasty hurricanes to affect the United States of America there was a lean and Milton And Helene probably forever changed certain aspects of the Carolinas. And Milton, not quite as bad, but pretty significant. I would say not nearly as bad and not in the same ballpark. No, but pretty significant monetarily because there's a heck of a lot more rebuilding to do in Florida. than there would be in the hills and mountains of the Carolinas. So the long-lasting effects in the Carolinas are far more dramatic at the personal you know, existential level. But what happened in Florida is a pretty big deal, too. So hurricanes, as they always are, you know, late summer, early fall, they're always in the news, and this is why we have to fight against climate change, don't you know? I believe in global warming. In the last day, God will destroy the entire Earth by fire. The climate does change. I think the science backs that up. There's been cycles of warming and cooling and that sort of thing. I think there's a reason. There are places in in Europe now that had been covered by snow for Generations and generations ice and snow and now because the earth is warming it's melting but we're seeing that beneath that ice and snow are roads and Remnants of houses and things like that. So obviously it wasn't frozen tundra Once upon a time, so there's evidence that there has been some changes. These things happen. It's just, it's part of the cycle. I don't know if the earth wobbles or what's going on there, but there are cyclical changes that happen on the planet. And that's the encouraging thing also, you know, when you think about what God's plan for humanity and for the earth is, if you're a Christian, you should Yes, you were given the very first command God gave to Christians. I know you don't want to spend too long on this. No, it's fine. The very first command given to anybody, man, in the Bible is be fruitful and multiply, and subdue the earth, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the air, and the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So everything is under man's dominion on this earth. That means you should use that responsibility wisely, so you shouldn't frivolously destroy the earth, but it is also ours to do with what we please. So if the government wants to make the hurricanes stronger, Yes. Is that exercising dominion? We'll get to that in a second. The reason I say this should be encouraging to the believer is because you should not be living in fear that we will not have a planet in 10 years or 12 years because of human-caused CO2 emissions and climate change and all that. Neither should you be I would say, and maybe you won't quite agree with this, but neither should you be in fear of total nuclear annihilation of the earth such that all life on earth perishes, because I also, I believe that neither of those things are possible, biblically speaking. We know how it turns out. We know that the earth eventually is destroyed by God, by fire, someday, and there is a new heaven and a new earth. We disagree on how and when that happens, potentially, but there is a future time in which there is a new heaven and a new earth, and God is the one that destroys the earth, not man. And it isn't by some kind of nuclear winter. There may be nuclear attacks and certain, you know, people have found symbolism in prophecy that seems to resemble various nuclear disasters. But such of science fiction where the entire Earth is now, there's nobody left alive on Earth because of the total nuclear apocalypse, that is something that I believe strongly does not line up with scripture. just as I believe that the earth being destroyed by human-caused climate changes also not lines up with scripture. So you should not be living in fear of those things. You should still be wise, you should be good stewards of what God's given you, but there are many, many people, not always believers, but there are many, many people that live in fear of one or both of those eventualities, and even if it was true that they could happen, you shouldn't be living your life by fear, but you should be wise and plan for just praising God and trusting God through everything. So that's my bit of encouragement to the believer. And it might just be semantics, but I tend to think less in terms of the earth being destroyed, maybe the earth as we know it being destroyed as more of a renewal. Remaking, yeah. Remaking and heaven comes to earth, that kind of thing. But yeah, the earth as we know it, does cease to exist as it does now. So we have these hurricanes, and every time there's death and destruction, this question gets asked, but I'm gonna add something that we haven't talked about specifically on the Faith Debate that I can remember. We've been doing this show for two decades, and I don't think I've ever asked the second question I'm gonna ask. So the first question is, these natural disasters like these big hurricanes and stuff, are these God's will? God takes responsibility for them. And the other thing is, this is the second question, can Satan control the weather? No. Okay. I don't know. I don't have a short answer for both of those. I don't know that there's any, I mean, can you give me scriptural reasons to think that Satan has some sort of control over the weather? One that comes to mind. You want to go first? Go ahead. I mean, the only one I can think of, okay, is there's the whirlwind. right? With Job that comes and destroys the... That's the one I was going to mention. Okay. All right. So, but Satan got permission from God to do that with the weather. Everything Satan does, though, is by permission from God. Right. So, I think the only reason to ask that question is to think, like, somehow, like, who are we blaming? Well, okay, maybe God gave Satan permission to do this with the weather. Maybe he didn't. Either way, does not God take responsibility for what happens with the weather? And I think that seems very clear to me throughout scripture that God is always saying, like, I own the things that happen on the earth. So if Satan is controlling the weather ever, and I think because of that particular story in Job, We can say there may be occasions when... Satan is, at least on that occasion, is given permission to have some control over the weather, but even that's not outside of God's sovereignty, and so he's being used as an instrument of God, I guess. But there's other instances recorded of supernatural miracles being done by workers of demonic, like Pharaoh's magicians, for example. What did they do? I mean, they turned their staffs into snakes, so that was, you know... It's not the weather. I know. They also turned the water into blood, which is more weather-like. You know, I think the first three or four plagues, they basically replicated. And you could look at that and say, oh, it was just like today's magicians. They're just illusionists. Maybe. But I think the implication is given in Exodus that these were like supernatural things happening. and they were trying to copy God. And God let that happen, right? He didn't stop it from happening. He just kept making his miracles bigger and stronger. But as far as the weather goes, the third question... Maybe there is something instructive there, right? Where it's clear, okay, well, like, there are other spiritual forces besides God at work in the world, but God is supreme over all of them, and so... Ultimately, they bow before him. Yeah, and I like the turn this is taking because I think it's, you know, I've mentioned this off the air to you guys, Daniel and I had this conversation not too long ago. One of the primary motivations I have for continuing to do this show after all these years, you know, I mean, it's It is a privilege. The radio station allows us to come in and record, use their studios, and use their airways to broadcast it, and then they convert the audio into podcasts, which I'm then able to download and put on other platforms. All that's possible because of the radio station. We're grateful. But it's also a commitment of time. We're taking time out of our day. We spend several hours recording multiple shows, at least once a month usually. And then I have to manage the webpage on the radio station, and I have to download those podcasts and then upload them on other platforms. And there's a commitment of time. And I'm not suggesting I have better things to do, but what I'm saying is, okay, I have to justify, there's this commitment of time. And so there's an instructional aspect. So we have fun and we talk about stuff that hopefully is going to be interesting and get you thinking and maybe get you laughing every once in a while, maybe get you a little incensed with us every once in a while. But also hopefully you can learn something here or there. And not so much always trying to get you to think what you should think, although there's certain things I would like you to, that I think you should think and I would like you to think, but mostly just to try to get you equipped to start to think. Like how to go about thinking about things, how to try to compare your current thinking with what biblical thinking is, and how does it match up, and if it matches up well, good for you, and if it doesn't, you can adjust accordingly. So I think the surprising answer to this question is, I think the answer is yes, Satan can have control over the weather, with at least one proof text to go on. However, and this is a huge however, it never happens outside of God's control. God is, it's not like Satan's out running rogue and he sent a hurricane to the Carolinas or sent a hurricane to Florida or something. And God's like, oh, what am I gonna do now? I didn't see that one coming. Oh, that sneaky Satan, he got me again. That's not what's going on. So I think I like that. So it then pivots back to the big question. When these natural disaster type things, not just hurricanes, it's earthquakes, volcanoes, what have you. If God is sovereign, is it God's will? People died in those hurricanes. And the other question, which you may laugh at, and we may have different opinions on that fact, but it is being talked about a lot now, even by politicians, is does the government control the weather? ever. If they do, it's under God's sovereign hand. He's allowing it to happen at the very least. Anything that we do is under God's sovereign hand. I think that we have technology that can have some effect on localized weather events. I really do. I think that there's some. Probably, yeah. But at the hurricane level, I'm not so sure. I'm 100 percent certain that many governments have tried to control the weather and figure out how to do it. And I think it's a service to those who are going to be mad if we don't say this. We have to say contrails. at least say the word contrails. People are concerned about the jet exhaust in the sky. A lot of people would say that the amount of exhaust that's put out by some jets is way disproportionate to what the jet should actually be putting out, so they're probably spraying certain chemicals to cause And so the debate is whether they're contrails, I mean condensation trails, meaning merely water vapor, or if they're chemtrails because the government or some evil nefarious group out there is polluting our air on purpose to make us sick or to create There is such a thing, and this is not a conspiracy theory, there is such a thing as cloud seeding, which is being done by many governments. And the idea is if you put certain types of chemicals in the air over a certain spot, it will cause clouds to form and cause water vapor to condense and then turn into rain. So to basically make rain in the desert, governments are working on the ability and perfecting the ability to do that, and to some greater or lesser success in various locations. every major government and scientific community would admit and agree that this type of thing does happen and it actually has been effective, at least to some degree, in certain areas. Now, the more extreme claims, which are not generally admitted to by governments, would be that they can use certain types of energy weapons or lasers and other things to also impact events or start fires or earthquakes in different places. And I've researched it somewhat, and I don't see it out of the realm of possibility that there is something that can be done that is more than just cloud seeding by some governments. Now, whether that means they have total control over all weather, no, I don't think that's the case. But I do – I have seen certain things that do appear to be outside the normal pattern that could potentially be explained by some kind of technology that is not widely known. And see, we're talking about this now, and you were laughing at Orange Man bad when he suggested the possibility of maybe using some sort of nuclear detonation to diminish or wipe out a hurricane. Remember when he got laughed at about that a few years back? Remember that? There's actually a certain logic to that when you think about it. If you were to detonate some sort of a huge explosion, the heat would evaporate so much of the moisture in those clouds that maybe it could have some sort of an effect on it. Who's to say? But anyway, anything that Orange Man Bad says is going to be viewed as bad because it came from Orange Man. So let's take this down to a smaller scale, right? And we'll say, OK, we think of the weather as being something really big and the most difficult thing to harness. right, as far as natural stuff on the Earth. Yeah, on the globe, yeah. Right, you know, because I can... Easier than harnessing the sun, but, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or even the moon to affect the tides or whatever. But, you know, I mean, we do... We are supposed to exercise dominion over the Earth, you know, going back to like the, you know, Daniel's earlier points. And so when I have a garden, I'm altering the ecosystem. I'm changing things. I'm affecting things. The butterfly effect. Oh, yeah. Maybe I stopped the hurricane by my little garden. So yeah. So I don't think we can say it's necessarily wrong. I think you could have hubris in, I think I could have hubris in the way that I'm trying to do my garden, right? Just as much as a government could have hubris in thinking that they can, you know, do something really big weather-wise. And maybe they can, right? But, you know, are they glorifying themselves in that? Like, do I give myself glory for my garden? No, I give glory to God for, you know, allowing giving me knowledge and causing the growth of my seeds and giving the sun and the rain and all of that. So I think that's another sort of interesting element to add in there, too. Like, is it wrong to try and control the weather? Not necessarily. And we do it on a really small scale with greenhouses and things like that, right? Yeah, uh-huh, of course. Of course, yeah. whatever those different rooms are called in houses. I think where it gets sticky for people to think about is when they're like, okay, this is really destructive, right? Is a solarium the same as a conservatory, by the way? I don't know. I think I was thinking conservatory, but I said solarium. Is a solarium a similar thing to a conservatory? I don't know, Troy. Anyway, I felt like an idiot for half a second there. For the record, I should feel like an idiot all the time, but I felt like an idiot, in fact, for only half a second. I'm sure somebody could, you know, send you an email for the technical details. I'm sorry to interrupt, but... Well, I think the struggle is, right, like, why we want, maybe we want to blame Satan is because, you know, like a lot of death happened from it, right? A lot of destruction, a lot of horrible things. and why we, you know, want to maybe let God off the hook, right? It's because then if he is responsible for all of that death and destruction, now we have to resolve that with him being good, right? So I think it gets down to the heart of that ultimate question, right, of, you know, why, if God is good, why do bad things still happen in his world? What about those who are very staunch, and they're Christians, in leadership positions, actually. We've had them on this show. I've had these discussions. I have one pastor who's, I count as a, I don't know what to call him, but it's a friend, exactly. We're very pleasant with each other, acquaintances. You know, like we don't have dinner at each other's house or anything like that. And he got red in the face talking about this issue with me. When I said, of course, I mean, God is sovereign. So he either caused it or allowed it through some. natural means it got put in place to begin with anyway but made god ultimately is responsible for any and all things that happen because as arcee sproles to famously say there are no maverick molecules right there's no smoke you out there doing a dance on something got to go back and get they grab you know he's he's in control of everything including hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes and volcanoes and and uh... tsunamis and all that sort of stuff and he got be read the face is very angry I think he stayed angry with me for a little while. He got over it and I don't talk about that with him anymore. But what do we say to somebody who's that adamant? No, because God is good and he's loving and he's caring and you know that's because of the damage we've done to the ecology through our carbon footprints or that's because of like attacks from Satan. What do we say to talk them off that ledge? Well, I mean, you can either be a deist or not. You know, you can say, well... You can say, well, you know, like, God wound the whole thing up and it's just running, and now whatever we do is, you know, what causes things to happen, you know? And then I don't know what you do with Satan at that point, right? Or you can be a... Honestly, I would say, or you could be a polytheist if you're going to say that Satan and God are actually fighting each other and there's some sort of equality in that fight, right? Yeah, like you're a polytheist if you believe that, I think. And so you can be a deist or you can be a polytheist or you can be a monotheist, right? And you can say, you know, like, and it's all... God is not bound by our sense of morality. You know, who are we to say what is good or bad that God does? That was the whole argument of Job, right? The whole book of Job is about, you know, why God? Why God? Why do you let all this suffering happen? Why me? Why me? Why me? Or why them? Or whatever. And for 40 chapters, or 38 chapters, we go back and forth on that, and a lot of the theories why God might have done this. And then, God answers. And he speaks for like four chapters, and he doesn't answer the question. Basically, he doesn't say why. All he says is, you are man, I am God, shut up. Did you make the earth? Did you cause the animals? Did you create man? Did you put things here and there in their place and set everything in motion? Did you do that? No, I didn't think so. So be quiet, pray for forgiveness, and know your place. And he wasn't being mean or wrong to say that. He was explaining we have our place. We are men. We are not God. So to ascribe immorality to God is so heinous. And what God was saying there is, I am the teacher, and you are the student. And ultimately, really, everything I do is with purpose and is instructive. And so as hard as that is, all things that occur are instructive to those who will look to God And from God's perspective, there are no innocents. We're all guilty. Yes, that is a very significant point. Every single person deserves death. None of us was owed the life that we have. God gave us the life that we have, and it's his to do with what he will. And we have to remember the lesson we learned from the tail end of the book of Genesis with the story of Joseph, all these horrible things befall Joseph. But then the lesson we can glean from that is that they intended it for evil. So even if it is Satan doing something, or if we are screwing up our ecology such that the storms have gotten worse, or what have you, that, okay, those are bad, tragic, terrible things, and yet God is going to use those for good. He's got purposes that are beyond our imagination, and we have to just lean into that and trust that he's a good God. And when things that appear to be evil to our eye, we might say, you know what? They might be evil, and God's going to still use it for good, or it might not even be evil. It might be tragic, but not evil. There could be some sort of a good tragedy. I'm not sure what that looks like exactly, but how we define our terms is important. God is good. These are foundational for me, and they should be for all Christians, I would argue. God is good. God is all-powerful. And nothing happens that God doesn't know about or hasn't allowed to happen. that doesn't make God evil. And even that is just a human way of trying to grasp at an understanding, to say, well, God allows things. Or did he make things happen? None of those terms that we use to talk about how we use our human will or try to impose our human will can even comprehend it all, God. And that'll be the final word. That was David Forsey. You also heard from Daniel Razvi. I'm Troy Skinner. This is the Faith Debate. Find us online at HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com and WFMD.com. God bless. For us, that's pretty pedestrian. Yeah, for most of the people who will hear this show, it's gonna like... agitate them, blow their mind, they won't want to accept it. No, how can you say God brought that destruction to the southeastern United States? All of the things that we talked about here were very reformed. The non-reformed... Very biblical, you mean? The more non-reformative or the more Arminian listeners are going to have much more of a problem with it. Because they're more theistic or they're more polytheistic? No, because they would be more in line of And God is not willing that any should perish, you know, that all should come to repentance. And so God wills that everybody gets saved. So some combination of theism or polytheism? That would be how you describe it. They would definitely vehemently disagree with that. Well, that's fine. But those are the only other options of what you're saying. I guess more deist then, right? Because God chooses to be involved many times, but also chooses not to be involved. Right, but if they're going to use the, you know, he's not willing, right? In the sense that they might mean it, right? Then that means that somehow he's powerless, which means now we have... Well, and that's the argument for the sovereignty of God, that's the reformed argument. And polytheism, I think it also comes up when you say, like, the ability to thwart God's will. Oh, oh well that makes me a god, right? That makes me in some way equal with God. Right. And therefore polytheism. Well the other thing that we didn't even touch on and I probably should have brought up is because God's in control, when these things that look horrible to us are happening, not only can we have a confidence that, well, okay, God's in control, he's a good God, so I'm going to trust that it's okay, that this has happened somehow, God's going to work it for good. But also, beyond that, God doesn't do anything without a reason. So all of these things have a purpose. Yeah. That's a huge point. It's not just random. Maybe we should, it's a different show, but maybe... Maybe we'll bring it up as we... I feel like we kind of made that point. Yeah, it's on the stream anyway, so... Are we doing another one, or are we... Yeah, we're gonna do one more if we can. Alright, let's do it. This was the one you wanted to talk about, actually, the Protestants defecting. Oh, yeah. Oh, is that a one-show thing? You think it's more than one show? Well, if they're threads we can't tackle, I'll jot them down and maybe we'll swing back and tackle those threads, because I'm... Are you going to be in the next recording? What, the one in November? What are the threads? I'm not... This will be multiple reasons, and we don't want to flush those out, maybe. I don't know. We can give it a shot. See what we can do. How about we try to work if that's – yeah, we work – I'm thinking of it as just kind of some foundational things, but then if we want to explore those foundational things, we could set those up as separate topics and we'll do a whole recording session one night on whatever those things are. Sounds fair. Mark? Yeah. Welcome to the Faith Debate on NewsRadio 930 WFMD. We thank you so much for spending part of your Sunday morning with us. Who's us? Well, I'm Troy Skinner, host of the Faith Debate and pastor of Household of Faith in Christ. We're online at HouseholdofFaithinChrist.com. And Daniel Razvi, find him online at ConqueredByLove.org. He's one of the pastors of the church that meets at Imran's house. And David Forsey, He's a pastor in the area of the unnamed church. It's a house church. It could be the church that meets at David's house. The house that meets at David's house? But that's not always accurate. It's not true. Sometimes you're not at David's house. Home is where the heart is. If David's heart is in the house, he's home. Wow. Wow, so if we carve his heart out with a spoon and bring it to your house, that's his house? That was a dark turn I just took right there. Well, if there are any deer in his house, a female deer is called a heart, H-A-R-T. Oh! Take one of those. Oh, yes. That's true. Doe. I thought a doe was a deer, a female deer. It's a heart? Well, in the King James, they call it a heart. So we get the song wrong. So it's not Doe, Remy. It's Heart, Remy. I thought it was a male deer. Heart? Yeah. You're right, a heart is a male deer, I'm sorry. Ah, a doe is a female, so the song is correct. A hind would be a female deer. If it's a heart, a heart and a hind and then a doe and a buck. Right. Depending on, those must come from two different root sources. Language. I don't... I just like in English that we can borrow from all over the place. That's right. It just enriches the language. Yeah, and that I think is what makes ours one of the most difficult languages to really Well, that and the fact that we now feel like slang is pretty acceptable overall as a culture. So that means we can add new words. Yeah. And infinitum. And it's ridiculous. And we are not agreeing on definitions of words either. And social media has so exploded that there are so many terms now that the young whippersnappers are using on social media. I have no idea what they're talking. Now, sometimes if they just use a particular acronym or bizarre term and it's got a surrounding context, I can usually like, okay, I think that probably means something along these lines. But sometimes they use three, four, five of these terms in one social media posts as I have no idea. Sure, you can go the other direction with that too. Language evolves, right? So I could say this to you. That drainway may look barry at first, but it's dree and squatty. If you go down it can be whambley and get royally and end up in quite a bucketary. I see a tad squatty. What? Don't. Stop thinking about new or you'll never become oofy. These are all English words. They're all actual valid English words in the dictionary. I want you to post that on social media. I don't have a social media. Send it to me so I can post it. And they have meanings and I can tell you what the meaning of each of those words is because I practice that sentence quite a lot. But my point is you can go through an underbridge dictionary and you can get a whole bunch of words that are not common use. If you guys are listening to this and your wife's not in the car so it won't be spoiled, you can go and tell her when you get home that she looks quite pulchritudinous. Pokertudinous sounds awful, right? Sounds like an insult, but it means quite pretty or beautiful or whatever. So go tell your wife that she's pokertudinous today, and she might slap you until you tell her what the definition is, and then she might slap you again. Pokertudinous. Alright, so the scheduled topic for today. We're halfway done with the show. And Daniel actually brought this up a number of months ago. And I said, we'll get around to talking about this as time allows. And time, as it turns out, begins to allow today. We'll see if we can do this in one show if we're going to need multiple episodes for this. But the general question is, why does it seem as though there's an epidemic of Protestants leaving for Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, those non-Protestant traditions. First of all, I phrase it that way, why does it seem as though, because do we think that in fact there is an epidemic? I'm not sure what to make of that. Yeah, I think, I mean, I know a lot more people than I used to who are who've moved towards – and it's moves towards Orthodoxy or Eastern Orthodoxy. I haven't seen much in the way of moving towards Roman Catholic, but I – There have been a lot of celebrities and a lot of well-known theologians that have moved in that direction over the last few decades, and especially in the last few years. But I've seen a lot of movement towards, like, the Anglican tradition, right, which is not papal, but is very Roman Catholic in many, many ways. Okay. Well, for our discussion, let's just say that there is this unusual trend towards Protestants leaving to go Eastern Orthodox or go Roman Catholic or Anglican, I guess. We'll include that into the mix. Although Anglicans would count themselves as Protestants. Well, that's a different type of protest. The king wanted to be the head of the church instead of the pope. Okay, so what will we owe this to? What's going on? I think there's probably a number of reasons. One is, I think, very, very effective marketing on the behalf of the Catholic Church in that we all really should be one church. The protest is over. Look, we signed this joint statement of faith with the Lutherans, and they did. You can look it up. But they have a pope right now that's not even Christian. Well, so what kind of I mean, that's got to be undercutting their marketing. A lot of people have not. A lot of people have not looked that deeply at it. Right. So we're not. But, you know, there are. I didn't say that for effect, by the way. I think that's an accurate statement. Pope Francis is not saved. There's no way. There's no way. Maybe we'll do a separate show on all the reasons why I can say that with such confidence. So I can tell you why I really think it is. So I think it's people looking for something that has had very long-term stability, something that has been the same for a very long time. People are getting disillusioned with how much fracturing the American church... That's an illusion, though. It's just you're saying that's the perception. Because they haven't been the same for a very long time. Like the veneration of Mary, that's relatively new. Right? And I'm not necessarily thinking the Roman Catholic Church. All the changes of Vatican II, that's last century. That's not that long ago. Sounds like Troy's also talking more about orthodoxy. You have more connections with the Eastern Orthodox Church, it sounds like. Yeah, I know a good number of families. And they would argue that they're the original church and they haven't changed anything at all, which historically just is... We should get an Eastern Orthodox person on here to have this debate, but it just doesn't hold up under scrutiny when you look at history. But I think a lot of it has to do with... They haven't changed much in 1,000 years, but they don't go back 2,000 years without changes. I think a lot of it has to do with... with practice. Liturgy. They like the spells and bells, as they say? Well, yeah. More strict boundaries. Because if you grew up in a non-denominational Southern Baptist, whatever, you know, megachurch in Virginia or Alabama or something, you kind of get a very freewheeling, you know, flexible boundaries type of feel from a lot of those churches, rightly or wrongly, even some of the ones that are more biblically founded in some of their teachings, everything feels a lot more, a lot less rigid, and humans strive and desire strong, strict boundaries of what they can and cannot do. Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox? I don't think that's the issue. Oh, because Eastern Orthodox, they're not rigid. You come and go as you want on their worship services. People come late, leave early. There's no rigidity there. The services are rigid, though. They're always a certain format. They read from certain prayers, and they have very much more strict liturgy. Okay, so there's a consistent structure to what is going on. And they've been doing it that way for a very long time. In the Protestant Church, some of the more liturgical denominations would be Presbyterians, for example, and they're going to be a lot more rigid in their worship services. And it feels, some people, not having the Spirit necessarily could feel more or less spiritual in one of those categories. And humans long for, just like with kids, right? If you're raising children and you don't give them any rules at all, they're going to flounder. And in fact, contrary to what they might tell you, kids actually do want rules. If you give them rules, and you're very specific and strict on those rules, not to overburden them with many rules that shouldn't apply, but if you're consistent in applying the rules, kids respond much better to that form of parenting than no rules at all. And in a lot of the non-denominational churches or the modern Baptist or charismatic churches in America, are much more freewheeling well whatever you want to know you got freedom in in christ to do this and that nothing and how you worship doesn't really matter just as long as it's from the heart and this and people desire more structure than that they think well we should be making rules got to make the rules so where's the church that really based on what they say god makes me never change it will be marketing from catholic churches that they haven't and the orthodox church does not seem to have changed as much so that's why people don't know there's a lot of things there that uh... I'm tempted to want to respond to, but I don't want to gloss over. David chimed in really quickly. When you started to go down that path, he said, yeah, that's only true, but that's not really what I think is causing the shift. So what do you think it is? If it's not, they're looking for the liturgy and the familiarity of the structure and those are the, what do you think it is? Well, no, I think it is the – Oh, you do think it's that. So what did you mean when you said, I don't think it's that? Did I misunderstand you? It's not – It wasn't just marketing is what he was saying. Yeah, and it's not a theological thing. It's a practice thing. So yeah, so I think with the instability of the American family. I think that's part of the problem. I think, right, there's not roots and security and something consistent to hold onto there for many, many, many people. Wouldn't that be true for the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics too? Why aren't they storming the doors of the Protestant churches? Well, so I think a few reasons. Things like, so you could say, all right, like the fundamentalists have a lot of rules, right? And they've been real consistent for a long time, right? But they're not cool. They have a really bad name right now. And things that are really old, not out of date, fundamentalists are just out of date, but things that at least have the appearance or the feeling of being really old are much more interesting, are much cooler. And there are many people that buy into the argument that we have the original, whether it's Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. Or Anabaptist. Maybe. But we have the original doctrines and before the Church Fathers messed it all up for us and stuff and before everything else. Isn't that the Reformed claim though, right? That the Reformation was getting back to what the Bible says and getting back to the apostolic teachings. There has been a very big lack of teaching on what the reasons for the Reformation were. and so many people grew up and they were why are we catholic election to be one church i mean what was just and the catholic church has been signed his joint statement of faith with the lutherans and and trying to get other there there's a whole campaign in the the protest is over the protest over we actually agree right there and there are it's not just laypeople there are pastors that are becoming catholics Right? There's some more famous ones like Scott Hahn and somebody else with a really long name that I can't remember right now. They were Presbyterian ministers, I think. The other guy was an Anglican minister and he became Catholic. And then there's some more high-profile people that weren't necessarily pastors, like the Donut Man. Have you heard of the Donut Man? Do you know who that is? I think I only heard of it, you mentioned it once before. Yeah, he was like a children's church teacher. Like, you know, the kids' songs in Sunday school, like, I'm in the Lord's Army, or Zacchaeus was a wee little man, you know, those types of songs. He would go around to churches and sing them to kids and teach kids about Jesus and stuff, kind of little Sunday school sessions. And he went around to a whole bunch of Protestant churches, and then a few years ago he became Catholic. And I'm not sure why, I didn't look into too many details he gave on why. In the non-theologian area, some famous people like Candace Owens, for example, a conservative right-wing commentator, podcaster, YouTuber, Candace Owens, she became Catholic recently. So why do you think those people are becoming Catholic? Because I'm thinking of the normal everyday person, right? Why is it attractive to them? And I think the reasons are pretty clear. I think some of those same reasons. I think they feel like there's more structure, there's more tradition, and there's less man choosing what to do. Because it's tradition, the assumption is made that God is the one that chose it. It could be a wrong assumption, but the assumption is made that if it's always been done this way, or for a very, very long time this way, why we should come around and say it should be done differently? That's not honest. Yeah, I think one of the things that the evangelical... I think this is one of the fruits, actually, of the larger evangelical Protestant movement in general trying to meet the culture where it is. rather than make it comfortable for the culture, rather than saying, no, we're the church. We have a culture. And this is what it's like. I don't know. Clearly, you guys are more in tune with this than I am. And so I'm probably missing some huge things. I see it as just part of the larger issue. The same thing that has people leaving the Protestant tradition for orthodoxy or Catholicism is the same kind of thing that's causing the leave for wokeism. They're abandoning biblical gospel truth for something that feels like the flavor of the day to them. But people aren't leaving to become Catholics because they hate God or they feel like... People aren't becoming woke because they hate God either, they would say. Many of them would say that Christianity has ruined everything, and they would not like Catholics either. Ed Stetzer, what's the VeggieTales guys? Phil Fisher. These guys still call themselves Christians. They don't hate God, and yet they're about as woke as they come, right? They've left the Reformation. They might still call themselves Protestants, but they've left the Reformation. Another example, maybe Josh Harris. Well, he left the faith. Yeah, he's apostate now. But he doesn't even identify as a Christian anymore. He rejects Christianity. is to become more godly and to stick to more Christian traditions from our forefathers. And there might be something to that because I think that if it's not a Christian church, the fightin' words for those who are going to hear what I'm going to say next, but the LDS, the Mormon quote unquote church, they've had some challenges over the last decade plus with some dwindling membership and some infighting and some problems going on. And it seems like a lot of that is happening because they've begun to deviate from some of their cultic practices and their commitments. So the traditions have been altered and people are rejecting, like, wait a minute, what was attractive about Mormonism was this sense of stability that maybe isn't there anymore. I think, yeah, I mean, I think what we see here is also like it's evidence of a big sort, right? lots of options and of people saying, maybe these people who I thought thought one way don't actually think that now that these other aspects of life and belief are being revealed, right? And so then there's going to be movement. Hank Hanegraaff is a famous individual. He was the Bible Answer Man for years on the radio, and he left the Protestant tradition to become Eastern Orthodox about five years ago-ish, probably six years ago. My knee-jerk reaction when I see somebody becoming Eastern Orthodox... I was thinking if that was the long name you couldn't think of. Maybe. No, I don't know. I don't think so. The other name I was thinking of is somebody who became Catholic. But my knee-jerk reaction when I hear somebody becoming Eastern Orthodox is that it is more likely that they could be still saved than if they become Catholic. Because I have more of a high regard for the Orthodox Church than I do for the Catholic Church. Yeah, you're going to get in trouble with that statement, but I think there's a strong measure of truth in that. I will say this. I think someone can be Roman Catholic and be saved. But I think that those who are Roman Catholic and are saved either aren't really familiar with all the things that their church teaches, or they are familiar, but they choose to ignore those things and embrace a more gospel-centered understanding of things, and they stand in disagreement with their church. Why they wouldn't leave at that point, I don't quite understand that. But Eastern Orthodox, I think some of the attraction there is they don't really have these discussions that we're having. The faith debate is not an Eastern Orthodox thing. They don't debate these things. Everything's a mystery. And so we're trying to figure out, does God control the weather, like we were talking about last week's show? And it's like, it's a mystery. When is it OK to have a war and not have a war? It's a mystery. Who can say? That's kind of an Eastern Orthodox attitude. And I think a lot of people are weary. the political fighting, and they're just tired. It's like, I just want to have some sort of religious experience. That's a big, big deal, right? This generation is all about experiences. So they can have this experience without the fighting. And they've been told, if they're Protestant, they've been told for their whole life that Roman Catholic's bad. Let me try the Eastern Orthodox. I've never heard that the Eastern Orthodox tradition is bad. Let me go do that. So I think that's part of it. And the Eastern Orthodox has the advantage, too, of some of the same things that are attractive to the New Age, mystic, experiential spirituality kind of a thing, it fits better in Eastern Orthodox mode, right? So that might be... a feather in their cap for those who are looking for a change. I don't find it attractive because I want to know what the Bible says. I want to be taught about it. I want to dive in. I want to press in. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, that's not what they're all about. And I don't think I'm saying anything pejorative. I think if we had one of the representatives in the room, they'd say, yes, that's true. Well, we figured out years ago, we don't have to fight about it anymore. We've decided that everything that's worth knowing, we know, and the other stuff is a mystery. You know, that's kind of where they live. In the Roman Catholics, I can understand. Why somebody likes the tradition and the structure of the liturgy and stuff, but why wouldn't they join a Missouri Synod Lutheran congregation, which has a lot of the same vibe? Or even Anglican, a lot of the same kind of a high church vibe. Why wouldn't they do that? Why go Roman Catholic? So what's going on there? Is it just tapping into what they think is history? Is that what you think? Well, I don't know. That seems to be more of a... I don't have a lot of experience personally with anyone who's done that, gone the Roman Catholic direction, if you will. From my observation, that seems to be people that are much more intellectually driven, that seems to be what's happening. And I wonder what kind of, I mean, have you seen other studies? Is it like George Barna or Barna Group? I don't know, that'd be interesting. The Protestants that are leaving, are they leaving from particular Protestant traditions? Are they leaving from the charismatic rock concert Sunday morning experience and leaving for something more traditional? Are they leaving from the frozen, chosen, hyper-Calvinist Presbyterian thing and going to something that's not quite so legalistic and controlling? By the way – Or are they leaving from some Anglican or Lutheran traditions that are much more – Yeah. liturgical already and then going to something else. Yeah, I wonder. I know a lot of Southern Baptists have left the Southern Baptist Convention, but that's because... They're still Baptists though, generally. Yeah, they're leaving because they get mad if you call them a denomination, but the Southern Baptist denomination is a mess. It has been now for a decade. They believe in critical race theory and stuff too, and most of the churches may not agree with that. Yeah, I think that battle's over. If you're still a Southern Baptist church, you need to say, you know what, it's over, move on. You're not going to rescue that. It's the Titanic, it hit the iceberg, okay? It's going to sink. So get a lifeboat, get one now before it's too late. Which is interesting, because it seemed to have a resurgence for a time. It used to be very liberal. Well, there was a time about 15 years ago, I think, there was a time they had a vote. on whether to pull all of their kids out for public school, and it was very narrowly defeated. That would have massively changed the South if they all pulled back public school at the same time, millions of kids. I think this – well, not just the South, it would have been changing the whole country. But I think that the – well, I don't want to make this about the whole Southern Baptist thing, but I think some of the people could be leaving that be disenchanted and they're not sure where to land and they end up at the at the local Catholic parish because the priest gives a very funny homily for 10 minutes every week and they think that's cool. Who knows? A lot of people I know that are Catholic, and we have a lot of Catholics in my family. My wife and I come kind of out of a Catholic tradition in large measure. And if you ask them about church and stuff, without exception, it's, oh, man, he's great. He's so funny. He is so funny. I love his homily. He is so funny. That's why they go. You have a pithy preacher, that's great. I would have to say if you were saved and you were really grounded in doctrine, I don't know why you could find yourself to join the Catholic Church. You may come up with reasons to stay in the Catholic Church if you already were there when you came to this better knowledge of doctrine, and we are struggling to find a number of reasons why that could be, but I could imagine there could be some. I have much less respect for somebody that joins the Catholic Church actively. Same thing even with the Orthodox tradition. Again, it depends. I don't know as much about the Orthodox Church as I do about the Catholic Church, and David, it sounds like, knows more about the Orthodox Church, no less about the Catholic Church, Well, this might be a bit of an ask for a lightning strike, but I don't mean a lightning strike as a judgment from God, but like a needle in a haystack kind of lightning strike. We're flummoxed just to figure out what some of the main reasons might be because we don't have a lot of personal exposure to people who've made this decision. At this moment, if you happen to be hearing the show and you're one of those people, you've left the Protestant tradition to become Roman Catholic or to become Eastern Orthodox, contact me. And if you're comfortable, we'll have you on the show so you can explain what the reasons were. I'd be curious to know what your reasons were and I'm sure that you would be speaking for some other people and we can try to grapple with some of those reasons. And we might playfully debate with you a little bit and try to persuade you to come back to the right side of the river. But that might be helpful because there's no, to my way of thinking, there's no legitimate reason to make that change. So I want to know what, in your mind, was a legitimate reason to make the change. Anyway, that's going to end up being the final. The plea for you to join the show in the future is going to be how we end this show. David Forsyth, Daniel Razvi, I'm Troy Skinner. Thanks so much for listening to the show. Find us online at HouseholdOfFaithInChrist.com and WFMD.com. Not sure what we're talking about next time for sure. I think we've got some things in the hopper. So I know it's going to be great. That much I can tell you. God willing, it's going to be great. Until next week, 167 and a half hours from now, God bless. Thanks for the headphones, Troy. Sure. The problem is, I think most people, I'm sure it's not all people, But I would imagine almost all people who make that change don't understand the gospel or are rejecting the gospel somehow, right? There's no reason to make that change unless you just don't get the gospel. You're searching for something. And I think Protestant churches get it right. Most of them sadly don't these days. Although I do think you're more likely to find an Orthodox pastor that understands the gospel than a Catholic pastor or a Catholic priest. Yeah, I haven't had enough exposure to know one way or the other. What about Coptic? Do you know any Coptics? Have you had any Coptics on the show? No. Are there Coptics locally? I don't know if they are locally. I think they are. This DC area, there's a lot of different... Yeah. Yeah, it's funny, because I've tried to think about, who have we never had on the show? That's one. Yeah, one time. Okay. That'd be worth getting an Orthodox pastor back on, but definitely a Coptic Christian. Yeah, and every time we try to bring something up, it's a mystery, and we know we've been doing this forever. We're the only church that hasn't changed. Everybody else has changed. We haven't changed. We're the exact same as 2,000 years ago. I'm like, that's just not true. They're kind of frozen in time from like the year 1,000 AD. Anyway. All right, well, we're going to wrap this up. Your extended bonus coverage is now coming to an end. Sticking with us this long. God bless.