Okay, Mike Mattone's question last week was basically how do we get from these ideas in the past, and we covered a number of thinkers, that lead to the so-called expressive individualism of our day. And Dr. Truman attempts to answer that in this chapter, and we're gonna give a little distillation of it. But let me begin, again, we wanna give you biblical framework for all of these things. In 2 Timothy chapter three, But understand this, that in the last days, last days, folks, is not a week or two before Jesus comes back. Last days is the whole period from Christ's coming until his return. So it's the whole gospel age, okay? Understand this, that in the last days, including this one, there will be times of difficulty. For people will be, and your first phrase in a list is an umbrella category in the Greek language, this is the umbrella. People will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. That doesn't mean you don't minister to them, but don't let their viruses infect you. For among them are those who, and I have to admit, when I read this, all I can think of, quite frankly, is modern media. Among them are those who creep into households, and capture weak women burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth, just as Janus and Jambres opposed Moses. So these men also opposed the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But it doesn't end there. We'll end there with the end of the class. The challenge, folks, whenever you do historical studies, It's kind of a which comes first, the chicken or the egg issue. Are we drawn by ideas, and those ideas then affect the way we look at material things, or is it the material things that affect your ideas? For example, is it an idea that created technology, or is technology creating our ideas? Or is it, and I think the right answer is both and. Are our thoughts shaped by social conditions, or do social conditions shape our thoughts? I think it's both and, or in the market. Does a fad create the market? Does the market create the fad? It's both and. And so because it's both and, it makes answering the question, how did we get here, rather difficult. But let me use a word, it's a good word for this, about the 20th and 21st centuries. We've covered ideas that brought us to the early 20th century. Let's look at the 20th century and the early 21st century. There's a confluence of bringing together of several things that have led to the rise and triumph of the modern self, the title of Dr. Truman's full book, but especially the sexualization of the self in our society. And here's where I want to challenge you, brothers and sisters, an interesting phrase that's given in the Old Testament about the sons of Issachar, Issachar was one of the lesser known tribes of Israel and said the sons of Issachar had understanding of the times what Israel ought to do. And that's what we want to be in this class. Sons of Issachar who understand the times what Israel ought to do. So we're in chapter 5 of Strange New World. and it is called The Revolt of the Masses. And so there are five influences that make a confluence that, according to Dr. Truman, and I think he's pretty much on target, these five things are what bring us to where we are today in our culture. Number one, we've gone from a fixed world, to a plastic world. We'll explain that in a minute, but all you can think of is that movie from, what was it, 1967 or something, The Graduate, where young Dustin Hoffman plays The Graduate, and a professor takes him aside, and he wants to give him a secret to success. And the secret to success, and he does, whoever the actor was, he does it beautifully, he says, plastics. Keep in mind, plastics, and he walks off. So it's kind of like this, okay? So we've gone from a fixed world to a plastic world. Now, let me give you an illustration, okay? Years ago, when I was in Uganda, I went with Dr. Kerto to a little village seven miles away from the main highway. Seven miles that seemed like 700 miles because we're all roads. It was all dirt road I don't know how they found the village, but it was seven miles away from the the main road and The people in that village Had never left that village They were born there. They were brought up there. They lived there. They died there. That was it. That was their world and And they didn't have radios, they didn't have television, they don't know if they have now, because this goes back to the early 2000s, but that was it. And what their tribal leaders taught, they followed, they didn't change it, and it was a stable culture. Okay, now we live in a plastic culture. Think of Long Island. I mean, quite frankly, things change every day in our culture. My, you've got to get an upgrade to your hard drive system or your software that you use. That's all the time. And there's new technology, there's new ideas. That's a plastic culture where you can mold what is around you like plastic. So here's our world. Where, as Dr. Truman puts it, the raw material of the world is to be shaped by the human will and technology. You say, well, what does that mean? Simple illustration. Before the electric light, you might use a torch or a candle and read at night. But you didn't do it for very long. When the sun went down, daylight savings time, Eastern Standard Time, you went to bed. And when the sun came up, you got up and you worked. Not with the electric light. I'm not saying electric lights are wrong. Thank the Lord for them. But you see how that changes your whole view of a day. We literally have become a 24-hour day rather than a daylight and nighttime culture. That's a simple example. And technology, our technology, reinforces the focus on the individual and individual satisfaction. Remember where we're going, that language of Charles Taylor about our culture, expressive individualism, and our technology reinforces to that. Simple illustration. It used to be If you wanted to hear a concert, you went to Carnegie Hall, or you went to the Town Square, or you didn't have a phonograph, you didn't have a radio, you didn't have a television. Now, you have Pandora, and you pick out the music that you want. If you don't like it, you don't put it on there. Well, there's an example of how, and this is not wrong, it's just different, rather than becoming part of the group to enjoy something, everything is very, very much individualized, and that shapes our way of thinking. Now let me quote Carl Truman. Dr. Truman in page 96 of his book and and here he is actually quoting Eat me. Well, this is this is dr. Truman's quote. He says we no longer think of ourselves as subject To the world's fixed nature or of it as of has having an objective authority or meaning we are the ones with power and And we are the ones who give the world significance. Now, there is a story in the Bible about this. We are the ones who give the world meaning. We are the ones who give the world significance. Essentially, we are gods. What is that story in the Bible? The Tower of Babel, which we get Babylon, let us make a name for ourselves. And God says now nothing that they want to do will become impossible to them. Now that's not in the fullest sense of the word true, but it's dangerous when people have that amount of power. Now, this is where, Dr. Truman's a dear friend, I love his book, I'm so thankful for it, I wouldn't be using it, but there's one area of weakness I think that he doesn't emphasize as he should. There is a self-destructive power of idolatry. There is a self-destructive power of evil. There is a self-destructive power of foolishness. And we're going to come to this at the end of the message, but that is critical if you're going to think in a holistic way about what's going on today. Quite frankly, a society cannot exist for too long with this kind of foolishness. That's not particularly encouraging. Well, it is as far as it goes. But anyway, so that's what we're getting at here when we talk about people want to make Tower of Babel. The Lord has his ways of doing that. Okay, that's number one in the confluence. Number two, this is second influence that forms this confluence that brings us to today. The collapse of traditional authority. And that traditional authority is vested in church, family, and nation. And all three of those have either are collapsing, let me put it like that. So we mentioned this, so the church was fractured during the Reformation, and that also fractured an institutional unity, the Roman Catholic Church, an institutional unity of religion. And well, that produced religious freedom, for which we're thankful, but what that did is it produced competition in churches. what I call tribalism in the sermon. And so Baptists compete with Presbyterians, Presbyterians with Baptists, both of them compete with Methodists and Arminians with Calvinists and the whole kind of a thing. And so you have competition. What does competition lead to? A market. It leads to a market mentality. We have our niche in the market. We will cater to a certain group in the market. That's a really bad way for the church to function. Because people get tired of Walmart, they go to Target or Target. And that is the way people in many ways are viewing the church today. Couple that with what Carl Truman describes as the cultural despisers of religion. And we mentioned Nietzsche and Marx and Wilhelm Reich. Well, now that's in popular culture, a cultured despising of religion. And now it's not just religious people are stupid or religious people are hypocrites or both. Now we are racists, we are bigoted, we are national imperialists, and we're tyrants. And that's the way that's viewed. That's one of the reasons why, we'll come to this later, you hear about Iran and what they're doing there. People say, oh, if you let these Christians get their way, they're going to do the same thing. Okay, so, but that's the way. Now, folks, don't react to that. people say racist, pluck any beams out of your eyes or bigotry or whatever, but that is in fact the way, again, culture despisers of religion think. So the church is under assault from within and from without. The family, no-fault divorce, single-parent family, cohabitation, the hookup culture, redefinition of marriage. Hello? That's plastic, folks. It's not stable. And so the concept of a stable nuclear family is pretty much an abnormality anymore in our culture. And then the collapse of traditional authority in the nation. That used to be 1776 is regarded Declaration of Independence. There's the statement of what makes us a nation, the Declaration of Independence and later the Constitution. Not anymore. 1619, in which America was established as a place that was to be a safe haven for slavery. Well, when you raise that question, That, which to my mind is not even a legitimate question, but anyway, but you raise that specter, you couple that with an educational establishment that loves to promote new ideas, and people say, oh, wait a minute, it's kind of like, Nan, what you were saying the other day. You get these different theories. How do you know which one is which? The radical criticism of leaders. And folks, as I said the other week, if you're going to start taking down statues, then take them all down. Because there are no perfect leaders. Yesterday, in Chicago, they defaced the statue of Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln was the one who pushed the Emancipation Proclamation because they say he was opposed to Native Americans. Okay, maybe he was, but folks, no leader is, but you see what it does. You don't trust anybody because iconoclasm never puts something significant in its place. Our national identity is no longer a source of stability, but of suspicion. Now, you can go too far on the Christian nationalism, I get that. But you're meant to have a certain stability in a nation. I mean, to use a biblical example, Rome was a pagan nation. Paul was a Roman citizen. He wasn't embarrassed about using that Roman citizenship to protect himself, okay? So if he lived in a culture in which people were always questioning that, that would have been blasphemy. Okay, so that's the third thing. So you've got church and family and state all being undermined, and when, listen carefully, you have no external anchors, People will start looking internally. Dr. Truman quotes a Jewish writer. I'm not familiar with him, but the quotation from his manuscript on this is very powerful. That Jewish writer, Yuval Levine, says, we have moved, roughly speaking, from thinking of institutions as molds that shape people's character and habits towards seeing them, institutions, as platforms that allow people to be themselves and to display themselves before a wider world. And Dr. Truman adds, we can express this more bluntly. Institutions are no longer authoritative places of formation but of performance, expressive individuals. Everyone wants to be a star. And so they're on Facebook, and we're not saying the social media is wrong, but you've got to be careful of the implications of that. Of course, Twitter was one. I'll have to see what happens with all of that. But it was very interesting yesterday. We were at a birthday party for a little boy, and Margaret and I were sitting with two teachers and another lady who worked for not-for-profit, all parents incidentally, very, very concerned parents. And the two teachers, I said, how have you seen things change in, say, the last 10 years? One had been a teacher for 15 years, the other 17. They both said the same thing, the cell phone. The cell phone is the big change. And it's not just the cell phone, it's the videos kids do. Everybody's wanting to be a performer on these videos. So that's expressive individualism. See how appropriate this is? When I told them I was a minister, it's kind of a... Oh, what's good? Is he gonna breathe fire? And I was I can be nice once in a while So we chatted and I opened them up and so one of the ladies was married to a believer She said may I ask you a question? I said sure she said what do you say when a child? Says he or she feels like he says she he feels like he is a woman How do you respond to that because you know, you're supposed to respect people's feelings, right? And I said, it's a very dangerous thing for people to live out of their feelings. I said, I don't even feel like a Christian until I've had a cup of coffee in the morning, kind of a thing. But you see where this is going. Anyway, okay, so I don't want to get too far afield. So performance, that's one of the things Nan and I have discussed. Nan, when you mentioned young people do a performance, you're never supposed to criticize it, because otherwise, right? I mean, I don't want to overstate it, because it's the performance. Number three, influence, part of the confluence. The loss of sacred order. Now that's different than the church authority, the loss of sacred order. What's sacred order? Well, cultures traditionally have justified their moral codes, the way you regulate or govern human behavior or the behavior of a body. We talked about the church today being an organized body. And cultures traditionally have justified their moral orders, and how do they do it? They appeal to a sacred order, and traditions that are rooted in that order. And so that's true whether it's the Torah, the Old Testament, and particularly the law, or whether it's the Bible, or whether it's the Koran, or the Book of Mormon, there's an appeal to a sacred order, okay? Now today, this is largely abandoned. Why? Well, we mentioned one. There's a fear of theocracy. I mean, would you really want the Mormons to run the United States of America? No. Do you want the Sharia Islam governing America? No. And people say, well, it's the same thing with the Christians. Let them govern America, and that's what it's going to be. You're going to have the death penalty for homosexuality and all that. And that's what people think. So there's a fear of theocracy. The other is, and this is when it gets a little bit more difficult, pluralism. We are a pluralistic culture. And so do I like a proliferation of mosques? No. Would I be willing to give my life for people to have their mosques? Yes, because we're a culture that encourages freedom. But you put that together with the collapse of religious institutions, and you've really got problems. It's one thing if the church is a vibrant, powerful force in the culture for good, but today at best we're marginalized. Now let me give you an example. 2016, the Supreme Court decision legalizes quote-unquote gay marriage. And the objections to quote-unquote gay marriage were dismissed as irrational bigotry. Now that's the loss of sacred order. You don't have to be a bigot to say that there's something wrong. But to oppose homosexual marriage is not irrational bigotry. However, if you don't have an attachment to a sacred order, that's what you'd say. Now let's wed that together with Marx's emphasis on everything being political, which incidentally is why colleges are so into politics on every level, because there's a strong Marxist influence in many of our colleges. But what does that mean? It means that the one who shouts the loudest wins. You don't believe it? the last election, and a woman's right to choose is screened. And people follow that because of the loudness of the voice. And dare you say and prove that abortion is genocide, and you will be screened down with even louder voices. You don't believe it? People who've tried to speak in colleges and say that, or they're shouted down. Not always, but it's all too common. So there's the loss of sacred order and those things feeding that influence. Number four, we've got five of them. Number four, how do we get to where we are? Remember again what you've got. We've gone from a fixed world to a plastic world, largely because of technology. There's the collapse of traditional authority. There's the loss of a sacred order. Number four, this is huge, contraception, pornography, and sex. 1958, after years of testing, since I think 1950, the pill legalized and it becomes common in 1959. The Roman Catholic Church, much to its credit, said this is going to bring in an avalanche of promiscuity and they were right. Now, women claim they have control, see here it is, plastic, control over their own fertility by the pill. I have my right to choose, it's my body. But also, the link between sex and pregnancy is severed, which means sex becomes, here's the word, recreational without the need of long-term commitment. Now, pastorally, this is why when people are living together, I don't write them off. You say, no, you need to regularize things. Now, if they're not believers, two non-believers, they still should get married, if for no other reason than the protection of the woman. And, okay, so anyway, but you get the point. Okay, so that's 1950, that's contraception. Now you can do an abortion at home with a pill. Pornography, 1950s, Playboy shocks America as it comes out with its centerfolds and many others that followed in its wake. Look at how far we've come. Porn stars. Now what does that say in a child's mind? A star is someone who's an expert, a star is someone who is skilled, a star is someone who is an exemplar and famous. A porn star. So today, and you can find these shirts, I would hope none of you would give these to a grandchild, but one of the little shirts for a little baby girl. Future porn star. Now, again, we talked, remember that we've got words that we did, social imaginary. This creates this social imaginary about which Charles Taylor speaks. And so, as Carl Truman points out, this is connected very much with expressive individualism, and you'll read this in your book. He says, it presents the pornography culture, it presents the sexual act as something whose significance is found simply in the pleasure of the observer or consumer. Now remember what Freud said, we live for our pleasures, right? The traditional Christian idea that sex is the seal on a unique interpersonal lifelong exclusive relationship between one man and one woman, and therefore has meaning only in the context of that relationship, is not part of the philosophy of pornography. To use a distinction deployed by philosopher Roger Scruton, pornography is about bodies, not faces. If sex is just about my pleasure, any body will do as a partner. Or for that matter, to be blunt, I myself may bring about gratification. But in a marriage, the specific identity of the sexual partners is critical. The purpose of sex is not to have sex, but to make love. to reinforce a relationship with a particular person, or to use Scruton's terminology, with a face, not just with a body. So that's what we're getting at with pornography, and that brings us obviously to sex. And you may not remember it, but from the misty past, the term will come to your mind. The Kinsey Report in 1953. In fact, these things came out in the 50s. is, has historical relevance in itself, but that's, we had done two wars, and people were tired, and they wanted pleasure, and then the pill comes along, and pornography comes along, and then the Kinsey Report in 1953, scientific accounts, quote unquote, that challenged traditional sexual codes and presented, quote, a greater variety of expression as legitimate sexuality. Let me read it again. A scientific accounts in the Kinsey report that challenged traditional sexual codes and presented, quote, a greater variety of expressing legitimate sexuality. Hello? So, there you go. Contraception, pornography, and sex. In other words, and of course, hey, you've got sex therapists and all this kind of stuff that you can get on the TV. Powerful stories about how sexual pleasure is the key to human happiness. That, again, is all building on Freud. But man's chief end, and this is what? To gratify my sexual desires however I want. That's very much today. And then the last influence in the confluence is the revolt of the elites. And here I'm going to let you read your book, page 106 and following, especially the conclusion. But quick summary on the revolt of the elites. The traditional view, if you can put it that way, what was a religious authority? You pass on the faith and you pass on respect for your fathers in the faith and for religious institutions. And I don't ever want to make an idol out of the OPC, but I'll say this, at least they want us to respect our fathers in the faith that have followed the Lord faithfully. That's historic emphasis on religious authority. What were national leaders to do? You expected them to be civically minded and patriotic. Families, you expect them to pass on respect for elders, as you see very much in the Chinese and Asian culture, far better than ours. Respect for parents and for grandparents. And education is what? It's supposed to be the wisdom of the past that shaped good citizens today. And need I tell you what today is, folks? What Karl Truman calls an aggressive negativity to the past, its values and beliefs. I mean, right within the church, you have the challenges to the faith and to its background. Within our own national leaders, disrespect for the Constitution that they vowed to uphold. families and education, and often folks it's our bad example more than anything else. But add to that entertainment. In the 1960s, ah, the Ed Sullivan Show. Interesting, you have to wonder how he became ever the master of ceremonies for that show, but in the 1960s when the Rolling Stones Appeared on the Ed Sullivan show They were made to change their song. Let's spend the night together To let's spend some time together That was 1964 65 Wow, but today if you told me to change it, they'd scream and I you can't make us change our song that gives you an idea and entertainment and But now you add to that the support of much, not all, but much of big business, Amazon and Facebook, and at least in the past, Twitter, for radical social causes, where you may have a leader who is conservative in his view of government keeping its hands off, but very libertarian in his view of social mores, and so they'll promote all kinds of godless causes, and you're all to some extent familiar with all of that. So to quote Karl Truman again on page 108, and I do want you to read the last part because he develops this more, in short, the role of the cultural elites today is not to maintain continuity with the past, to preserve its beliefs and practices, or perhaps to modify them to make them fit contemporary conditions, but still to do so in a way that respects and stands in continuity with previous generations. Rather, it is to overthrow them in the pursuit of establishing the new values, those of expressive individuals who need to be liberated from these historical cultural chains that inhibit them from being truly themselves and society from being truly free and just, which is where we've gone with these things. I've got to be free of these restraints if I'm going to be truly free. And there you go, that brings us right back to 2 Timothy. I'm going to let you read the conclusion of that chapter. It's excellent. Okay, see, Sarah, this is 2 Timothy 3 and verses 1 through 8, including within the church itself people who oppose the truth. All of that's here in verses 1 through 8. This is the way 2 Timothy 3 ends in verse 9. But they, practitioners of all of these things that he's mentioned, will not get very far. For their folly, their foolishness, will be plain to all, as was that of those two men, Janus and Jambres." That, folks, that's the self-destructive, inherent self-destructive power of evil, foolishness, and idolatry. And that is what will happen. Now, let me quote William Hendrickson as we close his commentary on 2 Timothy, because he nails it when he comments on this text. To be sure, the enemies of the faith advance to constantly increasing ungodliness, and their word devours like a gangrene, he's quoting 2 Timothy 2.16 and 17, so that for a while, it may seem that their purpose is going to be achieved and that the entire organism of the church will be destroyed. But, listen, this never happens, not in any of the many periods of the church's history, and not even toward the end of the age. The purpose is always to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. But this is ever impossible. The thought here, in the text I just read, is like that in 2 Timothy 2, 17 and 18, followed by the comforting verse 19. God's solid foundation remains standing. And in that sense, it is true that the errorists will not get very far. Their folly, lack of understanding, senselessness, will become entirely clear to all, which is the word used in the original. No doubt God's children see this folly first of all. Afterward, others too will see it. For even worldly people have a tendency to follow first one deceiver, then another. For example, Those who yesterday glorified Stalin, who led Russia, who incidentally was worse than Hitler. For example, those who yesterday glorified Stalin, today condemn him in no uncertain terms. Exactly that same thing happened in the case of Yanis and Yambres. And folks, that's what happens with foolishness. Yesterday, again, when they said, well, how do you respond when somebody says, well, I feel like a man or a woman, because they're supposed to respect that in that culture. And I said, do you realize how dangerous it is to live out of feelings? And both of them, while they knew they had to acknowledge the feelings of the students, they both didn't say anything, because they know that's true. And then I said, let me ask you a question. So then if they think they're a man or they think they're a woman, then they should be encouraged to get sex change operations and sex change hormones. Oh, no, no, no, no. We don't want any of that. Because they realize deep down inside, that whole worldview is foolish. So that's a good example of it. All right. I want to be done on time. Questions, comments, arguments? I don't have Mike Mattone here. Yeah, Jim. Western family, yeah. we are all witness to the various attacks coming from outside for many years now. And in particular, which is subtle, but it was exposed during COVID, the American Federation of Teachers and how they are trying to take control of the children and pull that control away from the parents. I mean, that's pure Marxism. Yeah, right. Yeah, sure, because in a Marxist world, the children are children of the state. And Jim, I've told young people, and you know, I'm not a negative guy, right? I mean, you listen to people. Probably one of the most important words for Christians in our culture is no. And even when Paul says we are to abstain from, literally, we are to say no to, ungodliness and all unrighteousness. And there's an example of, no, our children are not the state's, they're ours. Other questions, comments? Yes, Socrates. I just often struggle with the, you know, problem of living in a democracy where we have to respect other people's rights, and yet as Christians we're very intolerant of things that are blatantly sinful. And it's a fine line to walk that we have to be able to uphold a godly morality in the face of, but be accepting. I guess the best way to put it is we hate the sin and love the sinner. So in spite of people's, we can't, we'd have to kind of speak up in a very compassionate way. And I guess it's within, starting in the home and then in community groups, on school boards, where you have this blatant ideological bent towards transgenderism and all this craziness. Those people, technically in a democracy are allowed to have that viewpoint, and the question is how do we counter that? Yeah, well, Socrates, that's a huge, great question. Number one, we are not a democracy. And I know you know that. A democracy is the French Revolution where majority rules, the minority get their heads cut off. And so we are a constitutional republic. We're a government under law. And so law needs to be the standard. And when you're talking about school boards, that is a really difficult issue because we've lost our connection with sacred order. And I think, Socrates, those issues really need to be determined locally. If you're in a school area where there's more of a critical mass of people really committed to Judaism or Christianity or the Judeo-Christian ethic, they will resist that. You use the right word, they'll tolerate it, but you don't promote it. You don't start having same-gender bathrooms and that kind of thing. If you are in an area in which that's not the predominant view. That's going to be promulgated in a school. If I'm a parent, I'm looking for an alternative. Okay? And I'm not saying that's the only way to do it. But again, the social imaginary. You don't want your children around a worldview that's going to condition them more than your Christian worldview. And let me just add another thing. It really relates to the message. This is why none of us should be dealing with these things alone. We don't need lone rangers in this battle. We need Christians that are working together to try to resolve or work with some of these issues. That's a great question. Others? Yes, Nan. Going back to the democracy, in the educational field now, we are learning to create inclusive class, which means we should allow everything. We should have the children's book of two daddies, children's book about a boy wearing dress. We should allow that. And I think people are confusing. messing up about accepting people and accepting behaviours. Except if we don't accept the behaviour, it is like we are not accepting that. So I think there is a misunderstanding in that. And also, I really want to say something about the being-true-themselves. I think it is very tricky, being-true-themselves, because in the secular world, I think there is no pure, being themselves, because people are constantly and greatly influenced by the world, how the world see about them, how the world define them. Like I just read a research done by a nun in NYU. This writer founded a program, a theater program, to just let people to express their true selves. But what he found at the end of the research is he said, findings suggest that when given the space to write and perform uncensored stories, participants will often re-literate and reinforce damaging stereotypes. Interesting. They are given a chance to express their true selves, but actually they have the tendency to just repeat what the society wants them to be. It's kind of like man in the 1960s way before you were born, okay, in fact way before most of you were born we rebelled against our culture by wearing ripped jeans and like everybody else in our generation was doing. It's the same thing. Wow, that's a great point. Yeah, that's true. Oh my, well be careful, don't, let's not become nostalgic, but yeah, it's so true. Yeah, Iris and then Jim's gonna lead, Joe's gonna lead us in prayer. this happened in biblical times. I mean, this has been sin from inception. Because it happened in biblical times, there's a warning in Timothy, there are other warnings in Deuteronomy, there are warnings throughout. So I know we, because we live here, we've seen the last beacon, because it happened in Europe and it happened in all these places, but being the last beacon of hope, America, the United States, we saw that we were more grounded on biblical teachings. But as Europe and as the old cultures also experience this kind of decadence, we are starting in our society to live those things that God says will always happen because we're sinners and not believers. You know, on your point about this has been true throughout the Gospel age, more or less, believe it or not, there was homosexual marriage under the Emperor Nero in the first century. And it was faddish for men to wear women's clothing. So it's not new, okay? It's still sin. The second thing, Iris, is this. Our founding fathers Let's get over the question, were they Christians or not? That's a very difficult question. But they lived on Christian capital, let's face it. They all knew if you're going to have a republic, you have to have virtue in the citizen. That's the word they used. And they knew without virtue, you're not going to have a republic. You're going to have a chaotic mess because freedom is turned to license. That's, in a real sense, that's what we're seeing. But that confluence is important to break that down. Now, Joe Pulio, welcome again. Putting you to work right away, Joe and Linda. And we're going to be out of here by two o'clock because it's going to be raining heavily and we don't want any accidents coming home. Now, on Veterans Highway, there was a sign that illumined things at night and it made it, you could really see your way and it woke you up. But sadly, that's been closed down. So you want to get home before dark. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. All right, let's stand, Joe. Thank you for the great wisdom on the subject. I just want to read one quick passage. Amen, please. You know, Solomon, Ecclesiastes, he goes through all the gyrations of what is life, all is vanity, so forth and so on. He's back and forth on this thing. And he ends this way. He says, now all has been heard. Here is the conclusion of the matter. Nothing new under the sun. Fear God. commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it's good or evil. That's right. That's the bottom line. And the same writer said earlier in the book, there's nothing new under the sun. Yeah, that's right. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you, Lord God, for this very special time this morning, Lord, not only certainly the worship this morning, the breaking of bread, We thank you, Lord God, for this class. Lord, we thank you for the wisdom of a pastor, Lord, and of these resources, these books that we have. Lord God, we pray, God, that we would think about these things and take them seriously, Lord God, as we interact with others, Lord God. And now, Father, we just thank you, we praise you, we thank you for this food. Lord God, we pray for those who prepared it, bless them, Lord, and we just pray, God, for a safe travel home today. Amen.