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February 18, 2023

Beggars at the Feast [18 February 2023]

<h3 id="transcript">Transcript</h3> This transcript:<ol><li>Was machine generated.</li><li>Has not been checked for errors.</li><li>May not be entirely accurate.</li></ol> <hr> On 15 February 1546, an aging and ailing pastor climbed into the pulpit for what would be the last time. The topic of that last sermon is surely worthy of consideration, but not here and not now. Rather, let us follow this pastor to a nearby town, where he helped settle a dispute before retiring to his room with chest pains. He prayed the traditional prayer of the dying, Psalm 31, verse 5, Into your hand I commit my spirit, you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God. And then he went to sleep. Some hours later, around one in the morning, now the 18th, he awoke with more chest pain and was warmed with towels. The pastor thanked God for revealing to him the son in whom the pastor fervently believed. Two of the pastor's companions then asked him rather loudly, Reverend Father, are you ready to die, trusting in your Lord Jesus Christ, and to confess the doctrine which you have taught in his name? The pastor replied, Yes. This was his last spoken word, and he died of a stroke some hours later. However, he left behind a note, his true last words, I trust you will indulge me if I update the German half from medieval to modern. Wir sind betle, hoch ist veum. We are beggars. This is true. That pastor, of course, was Martin Luther. And so let me turn to the question, which you will already know if you read the show notes, why Lutheranism? Or more specifically, why am I Lutheran? Why should anyone be a Lutheran? I have recounted elsewhere and more than once how I came back to Lutheranism. I will decline to do so again here because I intend to focus on the actual question at hand. I wish to be clear at the outset that I do believe that there are actual Christians in other traditions. Lutherans have never held otherwise. However, I do believe that other Christians have denied themselves the fullness of the faith. We Lutherans are beggars. All Christians are. However, we are beggars who have found a rich man who has thrown open his home to all and has prepared a great feast. Many scraps from this feast have been cast out here and there, and they can certainly nourish. But such scraps are not the fullness of the feast. At times we have been content to remain at the feast while so many others who have themselves been invited to the feast remain outside, content to survive on the aforementioned scraps. And so, when I invite you to come to the feast, I stand to gain nothing, save the joy, of course, of seeing another brother come into the master's hall. You have been invited to the feast, and you are my brother according to the flesh. The assumption is always one of partisan spirit, that the goal is to win or simply to score points or similar. This may be true for some, but it is not true for Lutherans. You are not a point in some ongoing contest with Rome or the Reformed or anyone else. You are a fellow beggar, and I have an invitation to the feast with your name on it. Now the Lord is super abundant in his grace, in his mercy with his gifts. It is not one place alone where we see or find available the forgiveness of sins. It is not simply in the word. Now that is what many will contend, and that is to say they are content with the scraps. I do not mean to describe the word of God as scraps, but the exegesis to which certain Christians hold turns the scriptures into scraps. They make it seem as if God is miserly with his grace when he is in fact super abundant, because you have not just the scriptures, yes, of course, the forgiveness of sins, faith, these good things are available in the scriptures, but they are also available in the sacraments. What does Christ say? What does scripture say of the cup? Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. Forgiveness of sins is available in the Lord's Supper as scripture clearly teaches. God is super abundant. There are multiple means of forgiveness of sins. There are multiple means for the creation and maintenance of faith. Important that point, the maintenance of faith. The point of the Lord's Supper is to strengthen your faith. It is part of the faith. It is part of God's goodness. It is part of the super abundant grace of God's gifts to man. And the same holds for baptism. Baptism now saves you, a literal quote from scripture. And of course, there are those who will go on and read the rest of the verse as you very well should. You should read the whole chapter, the book, the entirety of the collection of books that is scripture. But they will fail to understand what is actually said there, because baptism is spoken of as antitupos, an antitype. That verse is dealing with typology. And to go over typology again, I've done this elsewhere, but it is worth repeating. In dealing in typology, you have types and the antitype. Types, presaged, prefigure, are something pointing to the antitype. The type is always lesser than the antitype. The antitype is always greater than the types. And so what is listed with regard to baptism as types? Well, you have the flood. From what did the flood save? The flood saved, of course, from the wicked sinful world and temporal death. You have the passage through the Red Sea. From what did that passage, that type of baptism save? And again, of course, it is temporal death, in this case being pursued by the Egyptians. And so if baptism is the antitype of these types, well, what is greater than temporal death? What is the only thing from which you can be saved that is more meaningful than temporal death? Well, of course, it is eternal death. That is the only thing that is a greater evil than temporal death. And so baptism saves you from eternal death. Well, what is eternal death? Eternal death is hell. And now there are some who will, of course, scream at this, that it is sola fide. It is, of course, by faith alone that you can be saved, by grace through faith, faith being the means. And we do not deny that. Don't forget that it's Lutherans who use those terms. What we mean and what scripture means by baptism now saves you is that baptism is one of the means by which you can be given faith. You are still saved by faith. You are not saved by the water. And we agree, the critique comes from our confessions that it would simply be a bath because we speak of the water alone as being a bathkeeper's baptism. That is the critique leveled by Luther. But of course, it's not the water alone. It is the water with the word. And when you combine the two, it is a sacrament. The same goes for the sacrament at the table, the Lord's Supper communion, whatever you want to call it. If you had only the bread and the wine, unconsecrated, which is to say not paired with the words of Christ, the words of institution, they would in fact be simple bread and wine. But when they are paired with the words of institution, when they are paired with the word of God, they become a sacrament. They are his true body and his true blood, as he says in his last will and testament. And so that is what we want other Christians to have. You are a beggar, the same as I. Every other Christian is a beggar, the same as Lutherans. But we want others to have the fullness of the faith that they neglect, the fullness of the faith that they deny due to faulty exegesis, due to a denial of what is clearly stated in scripture. And so we don't want to take the position of the Baptists who say that baptism does not save, a direct refutation of scripture, who say that children should not be baptized, because if baptism creates faith, then of course you want to baptize children. We don't want to be the same as the Reformed, who deny the reality of Christ's presence in the supper, in, with, and under the bread and wine. Now, of course, I know that the Reformed teach what they call the real presence, but it is not the same. They teach that you ascend to heaven and partake in a spiritual way. That is not what Christ says. He says, this is my body, this is my blood. And so we simply affirm it. I do not have to understand how the sacramental union works. I do not have to understand how bread can be body and wine can be blood. I affirm that that is true, because what does Christ say? This bread, it's bread, is my body, it's his body. This wine, it's wine, is my blood, it's his blood. The God who spoke the universe into existence can most certainly do this miracle as well. And I have no reason to doubt him. He has always been true. And so I believe what he said. And also with baptism, this promise is for you and for your children. Do not hinder the little children. Let them come unto me. The children are part of the church. Children of believers are the next generation of the church. They are to be part of the service. They are to be blessed with God's gifts. Yes, scripture instructs us that we are to examine those so they can discern the body and blood before they approach the table. But there is no such restriction on baptism. And so yes, we baptize children, because that is good, because that is what God wants, because that is what scripture commands. And you will see that in the Great Commission, because it says we are to disciple the nations. And how are we to do that? If you actually look at the grammar, it gives you what is supposed to be done. First is baptizing. Teaching isn't listed first. Baptizing is listed first. These are the two ways you disciple the nations, by baptizing and by teaching. That is what we are supposed to do. It does not place a restriction on baptism. It does not say that you baptize only adults. It does not say that you baptize only those who have stood up and given a full confession of faith. No, it says baptize and teach. That is how we are to disciple the nations. Now of course, when it comes to adults, we do in fact instruct them before we baptize them. But that's because we can. We know how to instruct adults in the faith. We do not know how to instruct infants in the faith. That is something we leave to God. We trust in Him because of what His Word says. Baptism now saves you. And so we baptize infants. And so to return to the fact that we are the poor beggars. When a poor beggar finds a rich man who is handing out food to all who come to him, to all who come to his hall, the true beggar seeks all of his friends to bring them into that hall. Some will of course deny that any such rich man could possibly exist. Some will state that they are content with the scraps they have found elsewhere. And some will listen and join the feast. Now I cannot make you believe my words. For in truth, they are not my words. I am repeating the words of the master of the hall, the master of the feast. I am simply repeating what is said in God's Word. And I cannot make you believe those things. That is the work of the Spirit. You must listen to the words that are spoken to you from the Word of God. Whether they come to you when you read it, or when someone else speaks it to you, however those words come to you, you must listen. The Spirit of God will be active in those words, and God's Word does not return to him void. Do not harden your heart. Do not be impenitent. Do not resist the Spirit. Now the reason that I want you to be Lutheran, to answer the question that is actually the subject of this episode, I want you to be Lutheran because I want you to come to the feast. I want you to actually partake of the fullness of the bounty that God sets before us. And what I'm saying is that I've been to the feast, and have seen the chair with your name on it, and it's currently empty. There's a chair at the feast with your name engraved on it, and it's empty. I do not want it to remain empty. Thank you.

February 18, 2023

Beggars at the Feast

Show Notes …

October 22, 2022

Hope [22 October 2022]

<h3 id="transcript">Transcript</h3> This transcript:<ol><li>Was machine generated.</li><li>Has not been checked for errors.</li><li>May not be entirely accurate.</li></ol> <hr> Although hope is the topic of this particular podcast episode, I want to go through a few preliminary matters first, before getting into the topic itself. So first, a discussion of the current state of affairs. There are those who would contend that the strength of the West is spent, that our energy is sapped, that our time is past. I do not subscribe to such a view. I do not hold to those conclusions. Admittedly, the West today is a civilization in decline, but I do not believe our decline is terminal. It is a temporary decline, a speed bump in our story, in our civilizational mythos. We will rise again, as we have always done, and we will reach heights never before seen. I have absolute faith in our people and I have absolute faith in our God. Our God cannot lie, and He has promised to enlarge our people, and to never abandon us. More on that in just a little bit. And so I want to discuss the issue of so-called black pills. It has become, on the right, and generally in society, popular to seek out, read, collect, share, and publicize negative stories and negative information, these so-called black pills. This is a very serious problem. This behavior is unbecoming for sons of the West. Stop doing it. We all know what we face. We all know what we have temporarily at least lost. We do not need to remind our brothers and sisters of this information every single day. Demoralizing our own only helps the enemy. Now, there is a proper place for negative stories and negative information, but it is not a hobby. It is not something that should be a major part of one's day. Do not devote your time and effort to this. Do other things that are productive. We are engaged in a war, and war is not fought only on battlefields. The narrative is a battlefield. Now, of course, at present we do not control the narrative. However, we can have personal control over such things as the narrative in our own minds, as the narrative that we share with others. So control your mind and your tongue. Again, do not demoralize your brothers and sisters. We are going to win, and you must believe this. No one is going to believe you if you say we are going to win, and then you spend your time sharing negative information and negative stories. So stop doing it. Now, it may seem like I am going to violate my own rule right now, but I'm not. As I said, there is a time and a place, and this is a time and a place to address the particular issue of despair. Now, for Zoomers and younger, particularly young men, there is this ambient, pervasive despair in our society. Now, giving in to that may be easy. In fact, it is fairly easy. But that is what our enemy wants. Do not give the enemy what he wants. Now, I recognize it's easy to say that, and it's another thing to live in this society under present conditions and do it. Life is struggle, and those who struggle are those who succeed. So I am asking you to keep fighting. What we are going through now is temporary. Matters will improve, move forward. If we keep moving forward, if we keep struggling, if we keep fighting, we will ultimately succeed. And now to get into the topic proper, I want to discuss hope. Why do I have hope? Well, two reasons. First, a belief in our people. Second, a belief in our God. I am going to go over the first at length, and then the second in, well, also at length, but we'll do the first. First point, belief in our people. Look at our history. Is there a more impressive history of any people, any civilization? The answer is no, of course not. What we, as the sons and daughters of Japheth, have accomplished eclipses everything else. Even look at our present. Yes, even in our decadent, decayed state, we surpass all would-be competitors. And now I want to address neo-pagans specifically. There are those who will say that, and this is tied directly into my second point leading into it, there are those who will say, particularly in the neo-pagan scene, as it were, that Christianity is a foreign religion, that Christianity is alien to the European peoples, that paganism is our actual religion, and we should all be pagans. Go back to worshipping trees and nature or whatever it is they happen to do. I would like to point out, just initially, it's completely ridiculous. It's a ludicrous claim, because Genesis, the beginning of Scripture, through the 10th chapter, deals with humanity generally. It is not limited to the sons of Shem. It's not limited to the specific son of Shem, Abraham, and his line. Although, yes, a good chunk of Scripture is their history, if you think that it is flattering toward them, then I would suggest that perhaps you read the book. And that would go toward those who claim that, no, we are the real Jews. We're not. And you wouldn't make that claim if you knew anything about the Old Testament or the New Testament. So, Scripture is our story as well, particularly Genesis 1 through 10, the beginning. And it becomes our story again in the New Testament, because, of course, all are one in Christ. Now, I don't mean that the distinctives are erased, because, of course, those who argue that the various verses that say there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, whatever the order happens to be in the particular verse of your choice, that's an argument related to soteriology. It's related to salvation. All can be saved through Christ. The reason those distinctions are used, and I'll eventually go over those verses in greater length, but this is sufficient for now. The reason those distinctions are used is because they're real distinctions. Because no one would look at those, no sane person would look at those, and think, oh yes, there's neither male nor female, that's true. No, it's because it's very obvious there is male and there is female, and they are not the same. And so that holds for the other categories as well. There are slaves. There are free men. There are Jews. There are Greeks. In this case, Greek is a general term for other nations. That's scripture saying that nations are real things. That race is a real thing. But to return to the point to address neo-pagans, and point out that scripture is our story as well, and that this is our actual ancestral religion, we Christians are actually being true to our ancestors. Not in whatever sense the neo-pagans think they're being true to their ancestral religion, because paganism for Europeans, for the sons and daughters of Japheth, was an aberration. Father Japheth was faithful. He was a believer. He was a Christian. And so that's part of why, when missionaries made it to Europe, Europeans converted so readily. We weren't converting to some alien, strange religion. We were converting back to what our ancestors had originally been, before corruption had entered in and our myths had become confused and a mess. And so if you want to truly be true to your ancestors, you have to be a Christian, because that's what they were. And of course it is also the truth. And so that is my first point. My belief in our people, my absolute belief in our people, is one of the reasons I have hope. And the second reason, belief in our God. I'm going to go over this one at a little greater length, for reasons that should be somewhat obvious. Now if we turn to scripture, we have, of course, Noah, the man we could perhaps call Ur-Großvater, our overall grandfather, the grandfather of the entirety of humanity, because, of course, all of mankind descends from his three sons and their wives, who are incidentally unnamed in scripture, probably to avoid outright ancestor worship. Now, Genesis 9 is the relevant bit for what we are discussing today, and so I'm going to read the second half of Genesis 9. The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah. And from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed. Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, he said, Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers. He also said, Blessed be the Lord the God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. After the flood Noah lived 350 years. All the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died. Now I'm going to go through and break down at least the blessing and curse, but it is worth noting how specifically Ham being the father of Canaan is multiple times drawn out in this passage by Moses. And before moving on, I also want to address just in the next chapter, chapter 10, a quick point that I sometimes see raised by various people, again, usually neo-pagans. There are those who will argue that the Philistines, one of the major enemy groups of the Old Testament Israelites, were European. And that's false. They were not. And we know that because the very next chapter in Genesis is the table of nations, which gives the genealogy of these various groups. And so in verse 14, Pathrusim, Kasluhim, two of the sons of Ham, from whom the Philistines came, that is the parenthetical for Kasluhim. So the Philistines were in fact Hamites, not Japhethites. They were not our brothers and sisters, not our cousins, just to address that tangential point. And so let us look at the blessing and curse here from Noah. But before we speak of the blessing and curse, and I will reinforce this shortly with a little excerpt from Luther's works, it is important to note who Noah is and what Noah is at this point in time. Noah, of course, is the father at this point of the three sons who will go on to repopulate the earth. He's not the father of all living, because those sons have wives, and Noah also has a wife. But Noah becomes the father of all of humanity, because he is the father of these sons who repopulate the world. So he is the federal head of humanity post-flood. This gives him a number of roles. He is going to be the king and the high priest at this point. He also is a prophet, because of course he speaks for God. We know this because he prophesied before the flood, and he is still God's representative to man, his sons and their families, here after the flood. And so it is important to remember that Noah is a prophet. This blessing and curse recorded in Scripture, incidentally being poetic, which is an indicator that it is prophecy, is indeed a prophecy. This is not just Noah waking up hungover from a drunken nap and screaming at his children, as some would like to characterize it. No, this is a common, collected prophet of God speaking about the future, speaking God's will for mankind. And so we address first Canaan, or as it turns out, Ham. Now I'm going to read an excerpt here from Luther's works. This is the second volume of the American edition. I'm going to start on page 173, if anyone else would like to go ahead and find it at some point and read it. The whole thing is worth reading. Realistically, all of Luther's works are, but in particular, his Genesis commentary is very good, the first eight volumes. So, to hear from Luther. Hence in his description of what the two brothers did, Moses points out the extraordinary malice of Ham, namely, that he had a satanic and bitter hatred against his father, who thus would not at least cover with his own garment an unfamiliar and strange human being, who has been overcome by wine and is naked on the road, in order to avoid disgrace. How much more? This should have been done for a father. But Ham not only fails to render this service to his father, who was at that time the supreme sovereign of the world, something that human reason teaches us to do for strangers, but he even reveals Noah's plight with pleasure, derides his drunken father, and reveals their father's sin to his brothers as though it were good news. Moses, therefore, holds up Ham as a horrible example that should be carefully impressed in the church, in order that young people may learn to respect their elders, the magistrates, and their parents. This account is not recorded for Noah's sake or for Ham's sake. It is recorded for the sake of their descendants and of every one of us. Ham, the despiser of God and of his parent, is depicted in the most hideous colors. Moreover, the penalty for such great wickedness is pointed out with special care. For Noah, a foolish, feeble-minded, and ridiculous old man, in the eyes of his son, now comes forward in prophetic majesty and announces to his sons a divine revelation about future events. Thus it is true what Paul says. Strength is made perfect in weakness, 2 Corinthians 12.9. The assurance with which Noah makes his pronouncement here is proof that it is full of the Holy Spirit, even though his son derided and despised him as though he had been altogether forsaken by the Holy Spirit. At this point, I am passing over the discussion on which I touched above, the discussion concerning the order of the sons of Noah, who was the firstborn and who the youngest. I'm going to skip a little bit of this paragraph. Even though son Ham sinned against his father in many ways, yet this sin was the most striking. In it the fruit of the first sin and the malice of Satan revealed themselves as the drunken father lay there naked. When through this sin the rest of his sins had been made full and complete, the Holy Spirit condemns him and, to deter others, also threatens him with everlasting servitude. Now I'm actually going to go back and read a snippet of the paragraph I skipped, because it in particular is relevant to our discussion here. More profitable and more deserving of notice is this. The Holy Spirit has moved to such great wrath against the disobedient and contemptuous son that he even refuses to call him by his own name, but designates him as Canaan after his own son. Some maintain that because God was willing to save Ham in the ark with the others, as though he were one who was blessed, Noah wanted to curse his son Canaan, not him. Nevertheless, the curse upon the son recoils upon the father, who deserves it. Hence the name Ham disappears at this point, because the Holy Spirit hates it, and this is indeed an ominous hatred. And so it is important to note, as Luther clearly says here, that this curse, of course, is a curse on Ham, because this is Noah speaking about his three sons, and he blesses or curses them in turn. And so we will look at the curse on Ham. Cursed be Ham, a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers. Now that's a fairly straightforward curse. I think we all understand what that means. So let's look next at Shem, because of course Shem is the next, and these are actually in reverse order of the ages, but that's a discussion for another time, when actually going over Genesis. And so what is the blessing for Shem? Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. So Shem is blessed in that Canaan will be his servant, and we do see this later with the Old Testament Israelites conquering the Canaanites, although they obviously failed in what they were commanded to do. But it is worth noting, and Luther does note this later in his commentary on this section, what is actually said is, blessed be the Lord. Noah blesses the Lord primarily, not Shem primarily, in this blessing for Shem. But we'll move on, and we will discuss Japheth, because that is our focus for obvious reasons, since we are sons of Japheth. So the blessing for Japheth has three parts. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem, and let Canaan be his servant. Of course the last bit is just a mirror of the blessing for Shem, which makes perfect sense, because Ham is cursed to be a servant of servants. And so that, of course, again, is Ham, not Canaan. Ham is cursed to be our servant so long as the earth continues. This is not a limited curse here. There's no time limit, may he be cursed until it's, let Canaan be his servant. So he is cursed to be our servant so long as the earth continues, or at least so long as Ham continues. But to look at the other two blessings, which are... they're more interesting, and they are more relevant for our purpose here. We have... I'll take them in reverse order, since I started with the third. The second, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem. Well, what does it mean to dwell in the tents of a person? In this case, Shem. And it's relevant that it's Shem. Because what comes from Shem, what comes through Shem? Shem, of course, is the Urvater, the ultimate father, the primordial father, if you will, of the Messiah, of Christ. Because Christ comes from the Shemitic line. And so to dwell in the tents of Shem means to come into the church, to be included in that salvation, to be included in God's plans. But it means more than that. Because to dwell in the tents of Shem, it doesn't say to dwell with Shem in his tents. It says to dwell in the tents of Shem. We replace Shem. That's not because... It's not in the Reformed sense of God picking one and not picking another and cursing another. That's not what it is. This is a prophecy that is fulfilled because the sons of Japheth are faithful and become the church on earth. The West is the church. The West is Christendom. Christendom is the West. That is us dwelling in the tents of Shem. That is the fulfillment of that, and that is the reason we are the ones, our ancestors are the ones, who took Christianity to the world. Because of this prophecy. This... that was this prophecy being fulfilled. And now to talk about the first of the three. May God enlarge Japheth. There's some contention, mostly by those who are more versed in the languages than I am, but there is some contention regarding whether the verb here is enlarge or persuade. I'm inclined to say that it is probably one of the cases in Scripture where the Spirit intended both. So we can interpret it as both, and... Actually, it is a fuller sense of what is meant here if you use both. And so enlarge Japheth simply means what it means. It doesn't mean to make him a giant, obviously. It means to enlarge his progeny and their place in the world to make his line great. And we see that, of course, because that is what happened with Europeans. And do note, again, this is not a temporary promise. This is not for a time. This is so long as this world endures, enlarge Japheth. And persuade Japheth, of course, is persuade him insofar as bringing him back to the faith, bringing his progeny who have wandered astray into paganism back into the Church, back into true belief. And that is what the blessing is on Japheth. And so to get back to why this belief in God gives me hope. Well, God cannot abandon us. We see that here in the prophecy through Noah. One of God's greatest prophets says that God will enlarge our people, persuade us, which is to say, make us true Christians, part of the Church. We will dwell in the tents of Shem and Canaan-Ham will be our servant. And so God has two choices. He can drop the curtain and end this play. He can bring the world to an end. He can complete the signs that are not complete with regard to Revelation, and the second coming can take place. Or he can rescue us. It isn't arrogant of me to say this. I'm not saying that God is confined. I am saying God limited himself to these options. And so we take him at his word. We believe him. We trust him. When we pray, we remind him of these things. Not that he is forgotten, but that he likes to hear from us. And so we speak his words back to him in prayer. God, you promised. And so we can say that as sons and daughters of Japheth. We can say, but Father, you promised. When we look at the state of the world, and we know where things should be, where things could be, and we know what our people could be if they would simply come back to the true faith. And so that is what we say when we pray, but Father, you promised. Because we have this promise more so than anyone else. No one else has this promise that God made to our people through Father Noah. And so it is important never to lose sight of this. And of course we also have very many other promises in Scripture from God. I will never leave you nor forsake you. But so the question is, where do we find God? Where do we meet God? We of course, as I said, we will meet him in prayer. We find him in prayer. But Father, you promised. But we also find him in his church, where he is promised to be. In his word, where he is promised to be. In his sacraments, where he is promised to be. And so we do not neglect these things. We use all of them because God is super abundant in his grace and in his provision for us. And so we should use all of these things he has given us. Not focus on one to the detriment of the others, to the exclusion of the others. Revel in the fullness of what God has given us. And the bottom line for this is, not that I'm ending the episode just yet, but the bottom line is I want you to have hope. I want you to recognize that there is hope. And so I'm not telling you just to be delusional, not to be a Pollyanna. I want you to have hope because there is hope. The despair is false. The despair is a lie. The hope is the truth. And so I want you to go out and form meaningful bonds with your brothers. Form a men's group. It doesn't matter that much what you do. Yes, at some point you should also have a men's group for studying scripture, but form a men's group, read books, drink beer, learn archery, whatever it happens to be. These are important bonds that you need to form with the men around you. Because ultimately these are the things that matter in life. And this is how we rebuild a nation that has been allowed to be worn down, torn down, atomized. We do it one man to another, one discussion, one hour spent together, one day spent together, one hiking trip, whatever it happens to be, one of those at a time. That's how we do it. And so the second part, find a wife. I know, I know, I know, there are challenges today in doing that. I recognize the reality. But there are plenty of eligible women. There are plenty of them. And you know what? There are new ones every single day. Go to the grocery store. Find a cute cashier. Ask her out. Go get a coffee. Whatever it happens to be, find a wife. If you have trouble with it, go speak to the old women in your congregation. Go speak to your pastor. Trust me, they will be happy to help you. That is one of the reasons they are there. That is one of the reasons we have that. It is for the continuation, for the formation of families and culture, for the maintenance of the civilization, so that we can move forward. And so, again, find a wife. And what do you do with that wife? Well, I hope I don't have to explain it in detail, but have children. And when I say have children, I mean as many as God will grant you. So, no birth control. And I know some of you will say, but what about the future? But what about expenses? But what about... Stop worrying. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Do not worry about the future. Trust in God. He will enable you to provide for the number of children He grants you. Trust in Him, and He will bless you. These are the things we need to do. This is what victory looks like. Victory looks like. And we will be victorious. I will be there on that future day when we have won, and I want each and every one of you to be there too. And I want you, at that future date, whenever that happens to be, whether it's a year from now, ten years from now, probably closer to that latter one, but I want you to look back on this day and reflect. Or look back on a similar day, whenever it happens to be. Perhaps it's not this day, but some similar day. And I want you to look back, recognize, and rejoice in the fact that you, by the grace of God, decided to keep going. Decided to work toward our victory and our better future. I want you to look back and be proud of what you have done. That is what I am calling you to do. And of course, we all know the saying, Civilizations grow great when old men plant trees in the shade of which they know they shall never rest. We may have to be those old men. And in fact, we should look at that as a blessing. That is a gift from God that we get to be the ones who rebuild this world for our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, out into the unknown and unforeseeable future. Except foreseeable with regard to God's promises. Because our children will always have that blessing. They will always have the possibility of that, but Father, you promised, prayer. And we must pass that on to them. They must know they have this. They must have the hope that so many have conspired to attempt to deny us. But to go back to that saying, that's always been our ethos, hasn't it? We are ultimately communitarians. We strive for the greater good. Not in the sense of denying the individual. Not in the collectivist sense of saying the individual does not matter, only the collective matters. Because if the collective matters, but the individual does not, that's incoherent. The individual must also matter. But the individual is not everything, and we know that because we see the atomization, we see the destruction, we see the cost of the individual being placed above everything else. And so that is not us. That's one of the reasons that the cost is so high for doing that. Because it is unnatural to us. It is not who and what we are. Because we are communitarian in our very nature. And we must return to that. So form meaningful bonds with other men, find a wife, have children, believe that we will succeed. And so in conclusion, at risk of ad nauseum for those who have been paying close attention, I want to reiterate my points. Stop spreading despair. Leave the black pills aside. Tell someone good news. Go out and tell someone that your dog learned something. You had a child, your child learned a new word. Whatever it happens to be, tell some other person just a little bit of good news. That's all it takes. If every person is sharing just a little bit of good news each and every day with someone else, it raises morale. It improves not our odds of victory, because we will win, but it improves the timetable. We will win sooner. We will win more thoroughly. We will have more men with us standing on that day when we win. Second, get a wife, have children. Third, go to church. And of course, I want you to go to church because God will be found where he has promised he will be found. And he has said he will be found in the church. So go to church. Four, the fourth point, believe with absolute certainty that we will win. Be at least as certain of our victory as you are of your own existence. We will win.

Not in Vain

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