[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome in to the Think Deeper podcast. I'm Jack Wilkie, joined by Joe Wilkey and Will Harab. Think Deeper podcast presented by Focus Press. These guys are always better at remembering that than I am. Speaking of Focus Press, just want to remind you guys, we do seminars. We like to come and meet christians all over. Joe and will just did one for their godly young men podcast at Leoma, Tennessee from hearing good reviews. So of course, as expected. So book a godly young man, book a think deeper seminar.
Individual ones. We all have things we go and talk about. Of course, Dr. Brad Harab has his as well.
You can reach us through our facebook page for focuspress or our email addresses.
[email protected] I think you guys have focuspress.org email addresses. But if not, if you reach out to me, if you can't get a hold of them, then I'll forward it on to them. But yeah, I know a lot of churches are setting their fall schedule or their summer schedule, whatever it may be. Just keep us in mind. Having said all that, let's get into our episode this week, which is about immigration.
Immigration. We do political every now and then. This is one of those political things that is really crossing over to mainstream conversation. And so as to why we would do an episode on the political first things first.
The sheer numbers are hard to ignore at this point. It's been said that since the Biden administration took office, the population equivalent of, I think it was the twelveth biggest state in America has come across the border. And so bigger than 38. Yeah, that's an invasion. Well, yeah, that's a lot of people, right. I mean, that's to take on to a system that is under heavyweight already. And so there's that. But then the other thing, this is, one of the reasons I put it on is recent headlines have said it is the number one concern of Americans right now, number one election concern.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: Which makes sense.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, you look at those numbers.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I was just going to say we just did an episode on global warming or climate change. People aren't concerned about that right now. When it comes to the election, it's still kind of a topic of conversation. But people are worried about this. I mean, I'm seeing news stories and headlines every single day on Twitter or X, excuse me, of so and so gets killed by illegal immigrants, so and so gets raped by illegal immigrant. Illegal immigrant.
It's the number one thing that is on people's mind right now. Whereas it feels like for an election year, there's always something like that. But right now, it does seem like this is something that everybody is kind of up in arms about. Everybody has a take on, everybody has an opinion on. And so, Jack, the last thing you've got on here, talking about this, having this discussion, is going to give us another chance to basically answer the question of what does God's word have to say about this? How do we see this hot button political, cultural issue through the lens of the Bible? And hopefully, especially if you're a longtime listener, since we started this in January of 2022, you know, that is our approach to everything. Self defense, critical race theory, a lot of the transgenderism, a lot of this stuff that is very hot buttoned in the culture, in society, even in the political realm, we want to encourage christians look at it through the biblical lens. And so where some people might say it's not relevant, it's not relevant. Let's just stick to the gospel. We want to be able to see these things through the biblical lens. And so Jack's the one that had this idea to talk about it, and I'm glad he did. It's going to be good.
[00:03:33] Speaker A: I think also with it, you can get tied up in the blue red, republican, Democrat taking sides thing before opening your bible. And then there's a lot of ways to twist what the scripture says. And this is something that is very emotionally charged. I mean, you're talking about families. A lot of times you're talking about, you remember that it was kind of the catchphrase a few years ago. Kids in cages. Kids in cages. And it's just a detention center.
It's an ugly situation. The thing this year, the razor wire in the Eagles pass Texas and the Texas Abbott's administration government, Abbott's administration putting the razor wire out and feds is coming in and removing it and kind of that back and forth. Are we going to have this? This is dangerous for people? Well, that's kind of the point. Or like all the back and forth. It's very emotional. And so emotion sometimes can cloud our thinking of scripture. And so I think this really gives us an opportunity to talk about this issue, but also on a broader scale, think through how to apply the Bible, kind of turn down the noise and everything that's going on around us and say, okay, what does the Bible actually say? Because it's so easy to see it manipulated.
[00:04:37] Speaker C: I think it's important for us to see it from both sides. We want to do due diligence as always, and really build this thing up. Steel, man it from both sides, because, again, the last thing we want to do is make this just about the political or Republican, Democrat. No, this is a biblical worldview issue here as to how we ought to view this. And so we do want to do both sides due diligence or give both sides their say. And so with that, let's jump right in, fellas. Two, the arguments. We'll start with those in favor of open borders and being pro immigration. And the first thing that comes to mind that you'll hear a lot of people, I was listening to a podcast earlier this week about it and Preston Sprinkle and had a woman on there and a hispanic woman, I think, that had immigrated herself. And so, of course, she had a very specific idea and understanding of what this looked like, and she helped in this area. Her first and biggest argument was look at all the people that are immigrants in the Bible. Ruth is an immigrant, Esther's immigrant, Jesus'immigrant, Abraham's immigrant, Joseph, David, every one of them is an immigrant.
And you can look at Israel being immigrants themselves, being in a foreign nation. And then you look at some of the scriptures given all throughout a couple, and then let you guys pick up. I'll just take the first two we had on the outline. Here you have Exodus 22 21, you shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. And then skip down a little bit to Exodus 23, verse nine, you shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt. So he's saying it right there, which is, hey, you guys were immigrants basically at one time. So the thinking right off the bat, and then I'll let you guys jump in the thinking for the pro immigrant side, saying it's perfectly fine is basically everybody is at one point. But specific Bible characters were, and it was not seen as wrong. As a matter of fact, they were told to be kind to the immigrants themselves.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot of talk in the Old Testament specifically about the stranger. At least that's the word the new king James uses a lot. That passage you brought up, Jack's got on their outline, deuteronomy 20 719, basically the same thing about not mistreating the stranger, kind of welcoming the stranger in Ezekiel 22, Leviticus 23, deuteronomy ten. I'm not going to read all of them verbatim because a lot of them say the same thing. But essentially, again, kind of this premise of treating the stranger well, not mistreating the stranger, the stranger who is within your gates. I think that's in the Ten Commandments in Exodus chapter 20. And so I'm curious, and this is something that depends on your definition of the stranger, I suppose. Is that just talking about somebody who is a foreigner to somebody who is not like you when it comes to your heritage or your country? Or is that talking about. What is that talking about? I guess in the Old Testament. But those who argue for pro immigration do go to those passages. And again, there are a lot of them. The Deuteronomy, Leviticus, Exodus, Ezekiel, Matthew 25 would be the other one. And I'll hand it to Jack, talking about clothing the hungry or clothing the hungry, feeding the hungry, clothing those who are naked doing the good deeds to those who are in need. And they take that and they apply it to the immigrants. So they're essentially without a home and we're taking care of them here. And so as you can see, there is a lot of kind of scriptural references that can be brought up here when it comes to the immigration. Again, loving the stranger, not mistreating the stranger, the question is, do those things apply? So this is where, Jack, I'll hand it to you for any additional thoughts on those things.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: Yeah, you've got all those scriptures, and then you've got the poem on the Statue of Liberty or the plaque or whatever about you're poor, you're tired, you're huddled masses. And people would say, that's a christian value which we can get into the whole thing of man. A lot of the people who are in favor of this and saying these kind of things are very anti christian nationalists, like, well, should the nation have christian laws or not? Christian values or not? But with that, you're looking at the Bible verses. God wanted his people to be welcoming and treat them well, not oppress them, not take advantage of them, because people who are refugees, people who are away from their own people, there's just that statistical disadvantage that is a real thing. And so these are kind of realities of human life that even though things do operate different now, which we're going to talk about in a little, I mean, you do have to realize that when you're coming into a different country, there's going to be some difficulties there. And our job as Christians is not make it harder on them for that reason.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: I was just going to say, I think it is a good point, too. I mean, the United States literally was built on the foundation of people coming over from England to this country to be immigrants, essentially, and to live here and that's how our country was started.
[00:09:29] Speaker A: So, yeah, it's interesting, the waves you have. You've got, of course, the Pilgrims and Jamestown.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: And Jamestown. Right.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: Yeah, all that stuff.
The first hundred years of it or so, and then you've got the revolution, and it's pretty much the same people. Obviously, the slave trade brought in. It's not really an immigrant. That's a whole other thing that they did poorly at that time. But then early 19 hundreds, the Ellis island ones, that's where you started getting lots of different people from, really all over Europe. But then the west coast was starting to have their immigration from the asian nations and things like that.
But then you got the world wars. I'm not trying to get into the history of all of it, but now it's kind of in the last 20 years, 2030 years or so, really. I mean, there's the NAFTA age, and I'm not trying to give a history lesson here. There's people that know this stuff a lot better than me. But in a sense, we're built on this. In another sense, it hasn't always been this way. I think there's kind of this idea that it has been.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: There's something different about this.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Especially when you look at the statistics. I mean, the numbers of seven, 8 million people in four years.
If it had been doing that for the last 300 years, how many people, we'd have the whole planet here. And so it's not exactly a continuation of how it's always been, even though those values are a part of what we do here.
[00:10:45] Speaker C: I think you could look at it as, and this is another pro for the immigration is look at it as an evangelistic opportunity of, we are the greatest nation on earth in so many ways. Capitalism and the american dream and everything else. You have a lot of people that come here that as a christian nation, when we were more of a christian nation, I'm sure there are millions of people that are christians, or at least thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of whatever it is that are christians that would not have been christians had they not immigrated here. You could make that case of this provided the ability to evangelize to them. And so when we let them in through our border, they're in a christian nation where they're much more likely to run into the gospel than if they were stuck in their maybe heathen nation, whatever it is, where the gospel isn't. Near as.
What's the term I'm looking for? Just as near as accessible culture. Yeah, near as accessible, I guess that's a great way to put it. So from an evangelism just, again, to kind of steal me in this thing, you could make the case that this is one of the best evangelism opportunities we got. The twelveth biggest state in America that has come through. Man, what an exciting opportunity to evangelize. I do think there are some people that view it that way.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: I think there's a lot of problems with that. I don't know if we want to get into that right now. That mindset.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: Go for it.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: I'm getting the nods.
I would say maybe we should start with determining how well are we taking advantage of our evangelistic opportunities that we have now.
With christian influence considerably decreasing, obviously, over the last 30 years, churches are shrinking, young people leaving. But sure, let's open the door for more opportunities to do something that we're already not doing very well so that we can continue to not do it very well. I just feel like that's not a very good argument.
Kind of showing my hand a little bit here. But yeah, to Joe's point, to steel, man, it that is something that is said is, hey, more people are open to the gospel. I just think. Not to mention, as we're going to get to, they're here illegally. So let's say you do what you're supposed to do and you convert them, baptize them. If they're still here illegally, what are they supposed to do?
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Right?
[00:12:50] Speaker B: Like, they're breaking the law, which is not something christians do. So I think there's a lot of problems with that. I think that's a very esoteric way to view it of, like, oh, it's more opportunities to spread the gospel. Okay, sure. But we're already not doing a great job of that here. So that's kind of my two cent on why. I don't really think that's a good reason to say why we should be pro immigration.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: I think that's one of a subgenre of argument in this, of everybody kind of has their designs on what they're going to do with these people when they get here and whether it's evangelism, whether it's for a certain type of workforce, people say, well, they'll do the jobs that we won't do, so we got to bring them in. So I've got a purpose for them bookmarked in mind, whether it's as a voting bloc, there even is even talk about bringing them in and letting them serve in the military. Well, recruitment is low, but we can get these guys in, they'll take the paycheck.
Okay. Are you operating from compassion at that point?
And obviously evangelism, there's compassion in that. But it's also, well, they'll respond to it better than the other people. So evangelistically will do better. Well, it says, go into all the world, not make your government bring people to you, number one. But we'll get to at the end of this, like, what happens if they do? Because just a lot of people, we probably have listeners in know places. Like, know, I knew a guy that was working as a preacher in a town in South Dakota, and they would just drop, the population of the town just got bigger all the time dropping these people. South Dakota gets really cold. They did a clothing drive for coats. And these people just line up around the block because they're coming from tropical climate places all over the world where you don't have a South Dakota winter. I mean, it was awful. And so they served. They tried to reach out to the folks like that, but I think looking at those people for those purposes is very short sighted.
I just don't like the framing of it feels slimy. It does.
[00:14:47] Speaker C: Well, I would say it bucks. The last one we have on the list, which is love your neighbor as yourself. Love one another because that would be the other thing that they might say is this is the loving thing to do to the immigrant, to the person that we're inviting in. Is this not a way that we should love our neighbor? Which is obviously a command from Christ, love your neighbor as yourself?
To which point I would say exactly what you're saying. It feels slimy to kind of bring them in like. But okay, fellas, to be fair, is there a way to love our neighbor through immigration if we're not looking to use them for whatever purposes? Is this the appropriate application for love your neighbor as yourself?
Because you could look at it and say, this is, again, Old Testament scripture talks about some of these things, of making sure that you are treating them kindly, things like that. And then you could look at Jesus and, hey, if the roman soldier makes you carry the pack, like the way we're supposed to treat the outsiders, the way we're supposed to treat those that maybe we even hate, we're supposed to be different as Christians. And so you could make the love one another case, what would you say to that?
[00:15:54] Speaker B: Again, I don't want to jump the gun here, but when I see all the stories about people getting raped and killed and taken to hotel rooms and just drugged and all these things that they can point to and say this was an illegal immigrant that did it.
I feel like loving your neighbor could go both ways. Like you're trying to protect those who are legally here. You're trying to, not to mention your family. If you're somebody who lives in a state where this is a lot more of an issue than us here in middle Tennessee, kind of in the center of the United States, that would be my argument is know loving your neighbor. Sure, you could apply it there. You could also apply it to we kind of want to protect those who are legally here and law abiding citizens just going about their lives. And it's not loving to just let them in and live as they just do whatever they want to. So again, I'm kind of jumping the gun because that would be the argument where the argument in favor of stricter immigration policies. But the love your neighbor thing, as is often the case, is just kind of dropped into a lot of arguments. Just kind of like as a trump card that I don't think it is. I don't think it is the trump card that a lot of people think it is because, again, love your neighbor. Which neighbor are we talking about? We talking about the people who are coming across the border illegally, or are we talking about the people who are getting killed and raped and again, drugged and all these things that those are our neighbors, too at some point. This is something we talked about before. You have to consider where does your primary responsibility to love your neighbor starts? With your family, your community, your friends.
How far down the line does that go? So what are your thoughts on that before we really delve into the other side of the argument for stricter immigration policies?
[00:17:34] Speaker A: I want to steal man them just a little bit on this, of the love your neighbor as yourself.
It's impossible to say where everybody's coming from, but there are a lot of places around the world just in dire situations, whether it's war torn places. You've got, of course, the Ukraine, Russia thing's been going on for a couple years, and now Israel, Palestine and Syria, not Assyria, Syria.
There's just wars all over the place. There's always nations in Africa and the Middle east that are in desperate times. And so with people like that, the refugees and Europe has dealt with this, of people just kind of floating across the Mediterranean on makeshift rafts kind of thing, washing up on their shore, coming from places where life is terrible. And so love your neighbor as yourself is as yourself. If you were a dad and you were trying to get to a new land, trying to get your family out of a bad situation.
I get that. I get the appeal to that. And they say, well, the consequences if we don't let them in, they might starve, they might die in a war torn area, whatever it may be.
That's true. That is one of the difficulties of this whole thing. On the other hand, it doesn't give you the responsibility to Wales point to neglect your own. As I said earlier, we've got a nation that is just crumbling under national debt.
I've got my hands full with four kids. Right. We don't have any more room in this house to put anybody. And it might be dangerous to them to take somebody in to house a homeless person or whatever else. I've got to think about them. And if I don't take the homeless person in, they might freeze out on the street, they might go through a really bad thing. All of those things are true, but it doesn't change my first duty to the people closest to me.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: Primary responsibility to your family.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. And I think one of the things that also is very easy to do is cost free compassion. Compassion, that is not going to cost you anything. It's people who are really far away. And somebody wrote on this, I wish I could think of it off the top of my head. Somebody had a brilliant thing on this, of the love your neighbor, and it's always the far away person. In fact, I wrote on this a while back. There was something in a Dostoyevsky book where he was talking about this guy just, I love people so much. I love people. I want people to do well. I want to help people. Man, I love people, but man, I cannot stand this person. Like my wife or my roommate or whoever it was, just can't stand them. They drive me crazy.
That's the problem. You don't love people that much. You love this vague idea of people far and away, and it's the same thing. And you've seen this with New York City.
Yeah, Chicago, DC, of, oh, just bring them know because it's cost free. They were never coming up there. Well, you start dropping them off on all their doorsteps and what all those mayors start saying, oh, we have a problem, we gotta do something about this. Yeah. And it's the same thing of like if your town is being overrun, if your schools, all the resources that should be going to what your taxes pay for, and now your family doesn't have access to that stuff anymore, or your town became more dangerous, the crime rates going up. You've seen what's happening in Sweden. And stuff like that where they're literally trying to have classes to tell some of these men, you can't rape children.
You don't follow kids into the locker room when you go to the pool and things like that.
What are we doing here? And so love your neighbor, to Will's point is perfect. Your first neighbor is your family, is your kids, is your wife, is your literal neighbor next door to you. And if you are putting them at risk by doing something like this or just lowering their ability to their quality of life by this.
[00:21:12] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I think it's all good to the Matthew 25 point of like, hey, if I was hungry, if I was thirsty, if I was naked, whatever it is, we'll just steal from the next guy and give it to you.
[00:21:23] Speaker A: Well, the other thing is, that's one of the most abused passages in the entire Bible because who is he talking about to one of these brethren of mine? Whoever does it to the Christians, whoever takes care of the church versus who doesn't, who persecutes.
[00:21:34] Speaker C: Yeah, that's exactly it. But imagine if you committed a sin in order to take care of somebody and we have to wrestle with, and this is, I think, going to usher us into kind of next part of the outline. Show our hand a little bit. These are the arguments in favor of the stricter policies in listening to that podcast. And you'll run across this, they have specific names for those that are undocumented immigrants, something like that. They're illegal aliens. They're illegal immigrants. They are coming in illegally.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: Like, you have to underline undocumented. Sounds a whole lot less imposing, doesn't it, though, right?
[00:22:07] Speaker C: They are illegal. They're not doing this correctly. And so when you're talking about, yes, there are the horror stories, we want to have compassion, we don't want to come so strong where it's like, well, the people that are just in these war torn villages and they're going to, well, hey, tough rocks. No, it really is. I couldn't imagine. I could not imagine what it would be like to be them. And to Jack's point, if I were a dad, of course I'd be trying to get my kids out. It's a horrible situation.
However, the answer cannot be, I'm going to go illegally, go somewhere else, like basically to commit a sin to get away from it.
We have to think about these people's souls. As christians, we talk about, we want to think about these people physically.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:22:45] Speaker C: We also have to think about their souls. You could say, well, we'll get their souls after we help them physically, to help women with their souls, they would have to go back to the place where they were physically speaking. It's a difficult.
And go through the process, which right now is a nightmare. And that's a part of the issue here, is, from a political perspective, it's just a nightmare to start this process. But I think right off the bat, in kind of the first thing I'd say in favor of the stricter policies is we have to wrestle with what it means to be illegal coming into this. Meaning you are into that twelveth biggest state coming in. Those people are not documented. We don't know where they're going. We don't know their names. We don't know what's going on there. We can't even help them in that way because they are coming across. And when they're shipped to New York, they're filling up hotels, they're filling up resources, they're filling up ballrooms and such within these hotels, where it is a massive issue that people don't know what to do with. And they're illegal. They did not come in legally. The difference between Ellis island, the difference between some of these other places is these are the people that, yes, maybe they're running from different places around the world and they're coming here. They did want to do it right. They were willing to give up their name, and they were willing to assimilate into America. And you go, well, the assimilation process look different. There's the know and all of the Irish there, and there's little Italy and things like that. Sure, they were in their own boroughs. They went to their own and kind of gathered around their own people, which makes for an interesting. Jack had a very good article on.
Yeah, we won't go too much into it, but people will gravitate toward their own people groups, in a way. At the same time, they were Italian Americans, they were Irish Americans, they were African Americans. Like American is the main point. They did so legally as these people from Mexico, as the Mexicans are crossing the border. They're not Mexican Americans because they're not assimilating into not. They're doing so illegally. That is one of the biggest issues that I see, and one of the biggest things that I would say is in favor of stricter policies.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: I wanted to shout out an article by Brother Waylon Deaver, Scattershot report is his substance.
Just really laid out the scriptural case very well. And he made an illustration I thought was great of if you know, that there is a really generous lady in your neighborhood who just gives to everybody who asks, that doesn't mean it's okay to break in and steal it from the drawer. And it's kind of the same thing of like, man, there's health care here. There's education. There's all this kind of stuff. That's great. That doesn't mean you just get to come take it however you want, especially go check out his article. Highly recommend it. It's a good subscription there as well on substac, the work he's doing there. But romans 13 one, every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. And you can get into the whole theory of christian government. What is the duty of government and all that, but it just says right here, God set these governments in place. You're supposed to obey them. And the government's job is to punish evildoers, punish people who break the laws, punish people who do wrong, and those.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Who resist the authority resist the ordinance of God. There in verse two.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: That's exactly it. And this to me is, you might not care about immigration that much. You might think, I already know where I stand. Why are they doing an episode on this? This is why I like having conversations like this is. You see how easily scripture is twisted emotionally off of what sounds good. But when you actually get into real life and start applying it, well, they're coming from bad places. The standard of living is better here. And all of these catchphrases love the immigrant, not oppressing the immigrant. And we're a nation of immigrants. And just love your neighbor as yourself. All of these things that have been brought up. But then you do have to live in the real world. You actually have to live in a world where you think, where do we put them? What jobs do we have for them? How do we feed them? Who's footing the bill for all this? How are we teaching them our laws, keeping people safe, all of these things that it's almost like somebody just says, well, love the immigrant, and plugs their.
[00:26:37] Speaker C: Ears and goes, la la la.
[00:26:39] Speaker A: You can do that, or you can live in the real world where there are consequences for decisions. And you can also come to the Bible without the emotion of things like that and say, what does it actually say? Well, it know, obey the governing authorities.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: I think about the he gets us commercial that went on during the Super bowl that we talked about. I actually don't know if we talked about on the podcast, but Jack, I know, wrote about it and we discussed it before one of those things. I think if I remember right. One of the kind of scenes that flashed up on the screen was the immigrant coming over illegally and kind of making the point that Jesus would accept the illegal immigrant was, again, the message that was presented through that commercial that a lot of christians were coming out saying, hey, these commercials are great. And what I think of a lot, this is kind of my go to every time. Common sense. What does common sense tell you? Would God be pleased with the way they're going about it? Set aside the excuses. Set aside the horror stories, the tragic heart throb sob stories of families being split upon all these things. Is God pleased with the way they're doing it? Because you get into situational ethics. You get into all those things just because their situation is bad or whatever. Do they have that authority or that right to come in and do things again just in direct violation of the way that things are supposed to be done? That's why I brought up verse two. And when Jack went to romans 13, you resist the governing authorities, you're resisting God. And so to me, that makes it pretty clear that God would not be pleased. And so therefore, if God is not pleased with their actions, again, doing something illegally, circumventing a system that is in place for this purpose and stealing, I mean, the arguments are made that they are stealing because it's not rightfully theirs. They're stealing the health care, stealing all these things. If God is not pleased with that, why are we then accepting of it? Why are we then love the immigrant? Pro immigration. And this is what's frustrating, is that I think a lot of Christians, myself included, would say we are pro immigration, done legally. We are pro loving the stranger, loving the foreigner. If it's gone about the right way and we can decry the system and it's messed up and it takes forever. And I understand all those things. At the same time, if they're actively resisting the governing authorities, they're actively resisting God. Therefore, what business do we have putting our blessing on it? What business do we have coming out saying, yeah, I'm pro a system that is completely violating the governing authorities. I am pro a system that is completely contradicting the rules that are set in place.
What are we doing? To me again, when we're blessing or approving of something that God clearly does not bless, we're entering very dangerous territory.
[00:29:22] Speaker C: We also have to be very aware of the fact that when you point to the Old Testament, one of their biggest, well, they're all immigrants in the Bible, right? Like Jesus was an immigrant.
We are. And I like how you put this on, the, you know, Old Testament laws were for theocracy, not a modern nation state.
We're living in complex times and in complex ways, and the nations are not apples to apples. Ruth, the know who, decides to come and kind of assimilate into the israelite culture with Naomi, obviously, with her husband, and then with Naomi and such as they're going that way.
That's way different than millions of people coming across the border. That, again, to Jack's point, we live in the real world here of like this has real consequences back then. I'm sure it did to a certain degree. But it is not the. It's. It's not apples to apples here with Old Testament, even with New Testament, it's not apples to apples. And I think that's a bit of a. It's a bit of a stretch to look at the Old Testament and go, well, David was an immigrant, or Ruth was an immigrant, or whoever Abraham was immigrants. These people were moving like Abraham's whole family was a town in and of itself. So when he would move from place to place, first off, he blessed the people that were there. He would do deals with the people that were there. We see that throughout the old Testament of the lambs that were given and things like that. A lot of different deals made within these cultures and these countries they're going to. But this immigration issue, trying to make those apples to apples, I think, is a very big stretch. America is a different state than we've seen. Yes, it's still a government, but this is when Romans 13 comes in of like, and we have to go to the ten Commandments. Do not steal. Is one of the ten Commandments. And what is the government supposed to do? According to Romans 13, one and following, to punish the evildoer. Those that are coming in illegally are stealing. It is against God. It is ten commandments. It is wrong. And the government's job is to punish this. And just because back then, Ruth decided to cross the border, so to speak, does not give millions of people the right to come cross the border illegally and think that's.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: That's also to the point about the nation state is different. That is true. I say that because I put it on the outline, but there's also the side of it of even then, they had a hard time. Like, Abraham didn't always get along with the people he lived around or know, and they're fighting over the wells, and he has to just keep picking up and moving because it's not going well.
[00:31:48] Speaker B: It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. There were real world consequences.
[00:31:50] Speaker A: Well, and Abraham and Isaac and like they keep saying, we can't marry the women from around here because they're corrupt. Like they send back to get a wife for Isaac. Rebecca tells Jacob, go back home, marry one of the women from there. Esau marries the local women. It's a problem because it's like there's culture clash here, there's religious clash here. There's all kinds of clash that comes from it. And Israel and Egypt, obviously, there's the clash there in Canaan when you're living among other people and you didn't get rid of the people, didn't drive them out of that land, those things come up, those issues of non assimilation and things like that, that still pertain today. And so there is that reality of what goes on. There's also, in this, I mentioned earlier, kind of the subargument here about the purpose you're bringing them in for. And people say those things like, well, those are the jobs that we won't do. Or you kind of know there's a lot of cheap labor that goes on, whether it's janitorial stuff or construction work or things like that, where they're paid under the table, they're paid less wages than maybe even wages below minimum wage and things like that.
Apparently childcare in certain areas of the country, that's a very common thing to have an immigrant person who they can't go and say, hey, I'm not being paid fairly because that would expose themselves as far as their legal status. And so there's a lot of people taking advantage of it, and it's a really bad thing. And so that's not great. As I said, it's not compassion that brings a lot of them here. Again, you can look at them as a voting bloc or whatever it may be, all of the things that these things are being done for, it's not ending in good results. It's not ending in any of the stated goals other than just getting them in the door. And so again, I just keep coming back to there's the emotional thing that sounds really nice, and then you get into the real world and the consequences are not good. And it also just doesn't line up with the hard truths that are in there about what God said about the law and the government, the nation and things like that.
[00:33:58] Speaker C: So here's kind of the question that arises from this. I think this is where a lot of Christians might push back on this.
Is it wrong for us to push our national interests as Americans. Is it wrong for christians to have a national identity and to really fight for that national identity and be afraid to lose it? And that includes, yes, maybe even pumping the brakes on tons of actual immigration, of legal immigration so as to maintain the values of America. So for wanted, if you had a ton of Americans going over, even legally into Russia, what do you think Russia does that to that? If russian, they have their own, and I'm just making Russia, it could be any country, it could be Brazil or who knows? Like they have their own culture, they have their own ideas as a nation of what they want and their heritage and everything else. If you were to take another nation and bring in even legally, millions and millions and millions, that was going to threaten that way of life and wipe out that heritage, do they have the ability, this is to the christian point as well, do they have the ability to fight for that and say, time out, I believe in America, I believe in this nation enough to say no. Now where I would say initially people are going to kind of put their, hey, we have no nation here. Of course, ours is, our citizenship's in heaven. So it really doesn't matter what happens here. On know, right off the bat, I think you're going to have a lot of christians say that. But what would you guys say to that? Is it wrong for christians to believe in their culture of America and want to keep that as.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: I don't think it is wrong for the very purpose of, or I guess the very point that God puts you in the, you could say God puts you in the situation, the culture that you're in for a reason. God does not intend for you to ignore your culture, for you to ignore where you're from. We've had this discussion before about this world is not my home. Like you said, joe, our citizenship is in heaven. That doesn't mean that you don't have a citizenship here. That doesn't mean that you don't have a cultural interest here. And for you to just kind of plug your ears and blindfold your eyes and say, doesn't matter what happens here. I don't have any invested interest in my country, my culture.
You're doing yourself a disservice. I think back to the israelites, they most certainly had their own kind of cultural interests, their own national interests, their own way of life that they wanted to further. And that was God's people. And you say, well, yeah, that was a spiritual thing as well, but I think it was also they wanted to protect that culture and that heritage people say, well, America is not Israel. And of course it's not. I agree with that. At the same time, I see parallels there in the sense of you were blessed to be in the culture that you're in, you're blessed to be in the country that you're in. You were given this opportunity for you to just say, yeah, it's all irrelevant. You're ignoring what God is. It'd be the same as if for the people that kind of want to ignore basic biology, that men and women are different, they just kind of want to ignore that and kind of blend us all together into a big gray melting pot.
That's not the case. We are different and we have different talents and we have different roles and we want men to be masculine and women to be feminine. I don't know, I guess I see a parallel there. Once again, know Americans kind of seeking the interest of America. That's the culture we're in. It doesn't mean that that's a violation of love your neighbor. It doesn't mean that we should treat other countries poorly. But I live in the United States of America. Of course I want the United States of America to prosper and to do very well. And so if to your point, legal illegal immigration, whatever, if that's going to damage the prosperity of my nation, of my country, if that's going to make my kids lives in 50 years more miserable, my grandkids lives that much more difficult, I don't think it's wrong to root against that.
I guess to root for the opposite, to root for again, prosperity and for leaders to make the right decisions and for our culture to be further established and further spread. Really, I do not see a problem with that personally. That was kind of a rambling there. But that's my answer. Jack, how about yours?
[00:38:03] Speaker A: I agree. And it's not that we don't want other nations people make it into a competition thing. It's not a competition. I, I want your nation to thrive. I want mine to thrive. I want my neighbor to be able to feed his kids. I want to be able to feed my kids and if I'm doing really well and his kids, they're going to starve and I can help out. I should, if helping his kids out would cost my kids, I shouldn't do it. And same thing nationally on that level. And you brought up people look at it biblically like we're not any of those things anymore. Galatians 328 neither jew nor Greek. And we've talked before about that being abused for as you said neither male nor female.
There's a certain thing that does mean, and that's that we have equal value before God. He saves all of us equally and all that. There's still different male and women's roles. There's still nations and all that. Paul still considered himself a jew. You see in revelation there in heaven, people of every nation and tribe and tongue. If our nationality is dissolved in the waters of baptism, why does it say that in heaven you go all the way back to the tower of Babel? God created nations. And at the time, again, it wasn't the nation state, it was people groups. And you've got the table of nations there, the genealogy that flows from that 70 names people scattered all throughout the world. The different languages, people say. That was like the bad result of Babel. No, that was God forcing what he told them to do and they wouldn't do. God told them, take your families and go all over the world. And they didn't. They tried to stay in one place. And so he said, I'll make you. I'll change your languages, so you have to go other places. And they did. And so God created the nations at that point and said, the Bible has so much to say about the nations. I mean, just run a concordance search on nations and see how big it is in God's plan. Israel was supposed to be a light to the nations. That doesn't mean that every nation was supposed to become jewish. They're just supposed to be a light to the nations. Well, again, you see in heaven, every nation, tribe and tongue. And so, yeah, there are going to be Americans in heaven, there's going to be Russians in heaven, there's going to be Mexicans in heaven, and Italians in heaven, and all those different things, because it says it right there. I mean, I'm not making this up. And so here and now, to Will's point about it's okay to be an American, it's okay to be a proud American. It's okay to want America to succeed, not in a competitive way, again, not know. We want to suck up all the resources and everybody else, well, that's your problem. No, it's in the same way. I hope my neighbor's kids are eating well, and I'm going to make sure my kids are eating well. I hope my nation is doing well, and we're going to do the things to protect it. Because the other thing that comes out of this, because America has been so prosperous, people look at that prosperity as a duty to bring people in, and they'll say things like, well, America is not a people. It's an idea. And anybody can come in and be a part of that idea. The melting pot and all that stuff. No, it's a people. Every nation is a people. That's what a nation is. It's a group of people. And so throwing that away and kind of taking it away from those people to say, well, it's just kind of open for anybody who wants to walk across the line.
As you said, it's anti nature.
[00:41:11] Speaker C: And what's fractured us.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: So.
[00:41:15] Speaker C: What'S fractured us is just the people that, first off, aren't proud to be Americans.
They can't stand up for their own people group. They're not proud to be Americans because, well, Americans used to do XYZ, like, go look at the rest of the world. There's a lot of things that they're ashamed of America doing 50 years ago that the rest of the world is doing today. So they don't know that. The second thing is you look at the socialists, that they're kind of teaching the public schools and such, all the socialism, they demonize the rich man who, okay, well, maybe he got it illegally or whatever else. Most of the time the guy has just worked his tail off. He's been very smart, been studious, whatever it is, he makes a lot of money. And then they go, well, that's ours, give it back. And it's the same concept as America's gotten prosperous. But this is why we believe in christian nationalism and really christian internationalism, which is we want Christ to rule the entire world. Because where the gospel goes and where Christianity goes, people flourish. People don't die from starvation, usually because the church steps in and really helps in those areas. We are conflating what the church can do for those in its vicinity, in the surrounding area with what America can do for the world. And that's two different things.
The local church that's on the corner, that happens to be next to the mission or whatever it is, yeah, they can help in that area. And I think that's fantastic. That is them loving their neighbor. But to conflate that with America being, we have to help everybody else. The best thing we can do is christianize the rest of the world where you have little nation states that think this way, that take care of one another, where capitalism flourishes. And so all of the people, where there's a lot of war and there's a lot of poverty and everything else, Christianity by and large, does away with those things because of church cultural influence. It's cultural influence. That's what we're praying for. But you don't have to have everybody come to America to get it. We ought to be exporting, not importing.
[00:43:01] Speaker A: People'S human lives get better where Christianity comes to their nation. What a, a, what a novel. Like, obviously this is old hat for a long time, deep thinkers that we talk about things this way. It's just ridiculous to me that this is even up for debate, that it's good for nations to do those things. And when ours isn't doing that, we really need to focus on getting ours right. And not just, like you say, the language that's tied up. It's Christiansee, but it's not christian, it's not biblical, it's not under God's authority. Again, it's the emotional approach to the Bible. It's the oppressed oppressor approach to the Bible. Yeah, it talks about the oppressed in the Bible. And I would argue when it talks about the oppressing the immigrant, it is talking about bringing in people and saying, I'm going to pay you less than I'll pay anybody else because you're an immigrant. That happens. That is wrong. That shouldn't happen. That is happening because people are opening the door and saying, well, anything goes.
Those verses that they're quoting kind of go against the cause they're standing for. So I think this thing is a whole tangled mess and we really have to think through these things.
[00:44:10] Speaker B: So I think we've all kind of revealed kind of where we stand on it, which side we lean more towards.
But this is something that I fully agree we should be having the discussions on at least. And so, of course, that's the purpose for this. Jack's got three very difficult questions here at the end that as we're kind of getting close on our time here, we probably should go ahead and get into because if you know anything about us three, anytime there's an interesting question involved, you have no idea how long it's going to go. So, guys, I am going to go ahead and take us into this last section, which is kind of these tough questions that need to be answered. First one being, do we have an obligation to take in refugees of war torn areas or impoverished people? So this is appealing to, again, kind of those sob stories of just how desperately awful the situation is that a lot of these immigrants are leaving and so don't we want a better life for them? Don't we want them to have, it's a land of opportunity. Don't we want them to have those same opportunities that we had. Again, maybe it's just a war zone where they're from war torn areas, as he put on here, or again, just impoverished, completely impoverished. And so coming to a land of opportunity, do we have that obligation to take them? Does essentially, does the situation they're coming from have any bearing or have any sway over what our stance on immigration should be? What are your thoughts on that? And I might not have phrased that question well, but I think that's kind of what we're going for here with that question.
[00:45:35] Speaker A: Joe made a great point a couple of minutes ago where people would just put the church's obligation to the realities that we're in the same as the nation's obligation. They're just not. And so the church should have that compassion on people, should care for people. That doesn't mean we get to import them or bring them in or whatever, but it's kind of, well, if this is something that's good for christians and for the church to do, then we should want the country to do it.
There's this idea out there that nations should be governed according to the sermon on the mount. No, they shouldn't. Nations should be governed according to God's principles for good governance that are given in the proverbs. You can extrapolate from the law that so much of the western law is based on is law of Moses kind of know, you and I need to follow the sermon on the mount. You and I need to turn the other cheek. Nations need to protect their people. I mean, these aren't contradictory things. Well, in the same sense, the church where you can have compassion on those people, whether it's sending money or sending medical missions and things like that, that the church has always done, building hospitals all around the world. Absolutely.
But it's the nation's job to uphold a border. And so for the church to subvert that or root for the subversion of that, no.
[00:46:50] Speaker C: Yeah, I would say the same thing.
It sounds heartless. It sounds very mean to say that. How could you say that? And once again, look, I haven't been in that situation, and I more than likely probably looking to do the same exact thing. If I were in their situation of get my kids out, see if I can get to safety, I get all that. I would be more in favor of. Know what I don't understand is we're not bordering any of those nations. They're taking syrian refugees. When there are multiple countries around Syria that they could potentially get to a lot closer. Europe's a lot closer or it's in Africa a lot closer. Obviously, they don't have the resources for it in a lot of places, but there are other places they could go. They decide to come over to America because America has decided that we will be kind of the mother hen that gathers the chick, so to speak.
And that is ultimately to the detriment of America.
Yeah, I would say no. I think that is them subverting what I think is what ought to be in place. And if we can send money over there, if we can help in any way, if there's churches in bordering nations that can then take people in, that they're allowed to go up through there, great. And I'll support them all day long. But, yeah, I think America has a right to uphold its sovereign state and to uphold, again its heritage and everything that we stand for. And what we're seeing is America is crumbling from the inside because of things like this. And how many crises are going around the world? When do you get to say no? And when do you get to say how bad a crisis is? Well, as a war torn area. Okay. Well, they're dealing with poverty. Well, they're dealing with a fire. Well, they're dealing with tornadoes or tsunamis. Well, they're dealing with everybody's always in Cris around the globe. America can't be the country that takes in literally every single person. Well, we're a melting pot. We're going to be nothing if we continue to do that. Everything could potentially lend toward coming to America. You have to pump the brakes at some point.
[00:48:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. Only thing I would say is an analogy I would use, say you're married, you got four kids, you're living in your house. Let's say you and your wife are fighting every single day, super unhealthy, unhappy marriage. Your kids are rebelling, going off the deep end, doing illegal things. You just have absolutely no control over your house. Your family or household is crumbling, and someone comes the door and says, hey, there's three foster kids we need you to take in. Can you take them in? Do you have an obligation to take those foster kids in when your entire family and household is crumbling before your eyes? Is it selfish of you to say, no, we've got a kind of bigger fish to fry at the moment. Of course not. That would be, again, kind of the parallel that I would see with the state of our country right now with so many difficulties and issues that we clearly can't handle or are not handling for us to just open the floodgates and say, well, everybody come in and join us again. I liken it to that example of your marriage is falling apart, your kids are going off the deep end doing illegal things, and you're saying, yeah, let me take in three more foster kids. It's not selfish to say, no, we don't have that obligation.
It's not a guilt trip thing. So just wanted to bring that up. That's something that I would say there.
[00:49:56] Speaker C: It's a joke at this point. But isn't the national debt like, what, 30 trillion at this point?
[00:50:01] Speaker A: 32,000,000,000,034?
[00:50:07] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. People don't think about this, but that is debt. That is a problem. That is against a nation. That's not good. Bible speaks to debt.
The world doesn't have enough money to make up our trillions.
[00:50:21] Speaker B: Basically, that we analogy, you can't even afford the house you're living in.
[00:50:25] Speaker C: But you take exactly it.
[00:50:26] Speaker A: Right.
[00:50:28] Speaker C: That's exactly it. I was going to further the illustration you just made.
[00:50:30] Speaker B: Sorry, things get worse and worse and.
[00:50:33] Speaker C: No, no, that's perfect. That's exactly where I was going with it, is like, imagine you're losing the house and it's like, yeah, but we'll take them in, fix your own house, and then we can determine what to do from there. The second question that Jack has here, can christians support deportations, potentially broken up families? He already referenced the kids in.
And again, we're not looking to get political here. I do think that that was used media wise.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: That's a funny thing to say at the end of all this.
Yes, no, you're right. But I'm saying, yeah, that was the.
[00:51:05] Speaker C: Media stirring something up because Biden's in the same, like, it's in the same.
[00:51:11] Speaker A: It'S the, it's emotional rhetoric about a harsh mean.
[00:51:16] Speaker C: And so I think they were playing, tugging on people's heartstrings for specific political gain in that moment. I'm trying not to make it political, but I do think both presidents have done this recently and a lot of presidents have. So the question is, can christians support the deportations, knowing you may end up with kids in cages, you may end up with families that are broken up, things like that.
[00:51:38] Speaker A: I think at this point you kind of have to, to say like, this is not sustainable. This is going to end very poorly for everybody involved.
And again, you break the law in the same sense of like, well, yeah, I mean, a guy robs a bank, he's separated from his family. That does happen. He's put in jail, and maybe they can see it. You hope that they can get reunited someday, but generally speaking, that's what happens. And I think the policy, every measure should be taken to try and keep families together as much as possible. That's one of the problems of these border crossings. The kids at the borders is they're just kind of being handed over, given up, like there's not care for them. And so, yeah, they're being orphaned at the border.
[00:52:24] Speaker C: Sex trafficking.
[00:52:25] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, the sex trafficking issue is awful.
There's just a cascade of bad things that are coming out of this incentive being left open and to correct a very ugly issue is probably going to produce some ugly results. But if you don't live with those ugly results, and that's really, again, another philosophical thing that's above the whole immigration thing. A lot of christians, because this stuff means getting your hands dirty, means there's no easy solutions in which everything can just remain 100% pure and nothing bad ever happens because you're in the real world, because you're in politics, because of just how humanity works. People think, well, then christians just shouldn't be involved in that at all. No, your job is to navigate the best situation and hope to make it better so you don't have to deal with that again.
[00:53:14] Speaker C: That's the point of the proverbs, is wisdom, bringing wisdom to each situation. The point of an elder is a good elder is not that he has the right answer every single day. It's bringing wisdom to difficult situations where, yes, families may be torn apart in this situation. Those are the consequences. You would hope that that's something that would cause families to think twice, but usually not because the parents are pushing for their kids to come in. But we didn't even get into the sex trafficking. We didn't get into the drugs coming across. We didn't get into all of the issues that are legitimate issues, not just the burden on society in terms of insurance and everything else. We're talking all of the horrors that come with border crossings like this. Like where are the Christians standing up to those things? Where the christians stand up going, yeah, we don't need more drugs in our culture. We probably need stronger borders where that's not going to take place. We're supposed to be against drug use, too. So you can't kind of have it both ways where you're good to open borders, but then you want to shut it down on the other things.
Will, any thoughts on that before we move to the third question, just to.
[00:54:14] Speaker B: Be Mr. Analogy again, can you support the breaking up of a homosexual family that has two men or two women that have got three kids adopted or whatever. Can you support that family breaking up? Yeah, you probably can and you probably should. And so to Jack's point, the emotional side of this where it's like, are you really pro breaking up families?
I just so dislike the framing of know the way that that gets framed, like by me being anti immigration. I'm pro breaking up families. That's not the way it it.
[00:54:46] Speaker C: I just think it's, know, a lot of the phrasing of these things is manipulative to tug on the heartstrings of christians. And again, the funny thing is they'll appeal, as Jack said earlier, they'll appeal to the christian nation side of it when it's convenient to them and the christian heartstrings when it's convenient. And the moment that they can rip out your heart, they will. So it's just disingenuous.
[00:55:05] Speaker A: But the last question I wrote in my article on he gets us, which will referenced earlier, the he gets us campaign, it's putting Christianity on as a skin suit. They're not holding christian values in any other way, but they're going to pretend to represent Christ in quoting verses against you out of context and all that.
[00:55:22] Speaker C: That was a really good article. Last question you got on here to wrestle with. What do you do if families start getting dropped in your neighborhood? This is happening to a lot. We may even have listeners where this has taken place where they're just starting to see the trucks are pulling and, and they have people getting out. As we talked about, Chicago, New York.
[00:55:39] Speaker A: DC, there are several Minnesota and mean.
[00:55:44] Speaker C: They'Re getting hit hard. And I hear they're coming in from the canadian border, coming down even into Minnesota where you're having people come down from there where they're kind of coming around in weird ways. So they're coming across, muslims are coming across into Canada because it's easier to get in than they're crossing the border up the north. So they have their own issues up there.
So, fellas, what do we do if families start getting dropped in our neighborhoods?
Yeah, I guess I won't go first on this one. What are your guys'thoughts?
[00:56:11] Speaker A: I think that's where I had solid.
[00:56:12] Speaker B: Answers on the other two. Not this. Sorry, go ahead.
[00:56:14] Speaker A: We talked about. That's where the church does. Okay. Now we can talk about what the government should and should not do, but what they are doing, that's the world you have to live in. And if they're putting them there. You do love the neighbor, you love the person that's there. Again, you don't take advantage of them. You don't hire them on the cheap and things like that. You pay them a fair wage and things like that. On the other hand, again, this is one of those, oh, that sounds so mean. It's reality. You got to protect your family. You've got to be careful about what you're allowing because these things are happening. As I said, germany, Sweden, all through Europe have seen this for a couple of decades now. They know the results and bad things happen. You're dealing with people that don't have the value system. They don't come from a christianized country as much as America's backslidden. It has a moral base that we take for granted like crazy. I mean, we are so ungrateful for what we have and what we grow up in that people coming from a war torn country don't have your values a lot of times, and you have to deal with that. We had a brother, came to preaching school at Bear Valley, a Christian from Africa. Sweetest guy in the world, sweet family and all that. He kept plagiarizing. Every paper he wrote was just blatant plagiarism. And they could not get him to understand, like, you can't do this, man. This is not how academics work here. You can't just copy and paste and submit it. He wasn't a bad guy.
It's totally different cultures, things like that. And so you have to understand that is something you're dealing with. Even the best of these people aren't going to understand the cultural values and expectations of them. There's a lot of bad places left in the world that, again, we're very insulated from. Thank God. For what? Literally, for what? Our ancestors, not an ancestor. I have forefathers, whatever you want to call them, accomplished that things are better here and again because of christian influence and all that. So when those people come in your neighborhood again, you need to be loving, you need to be open, you don't need to be naive, is I guess what I'm trying to say.
[00:58:11] Speaker B: Yeah, that's pretty much the route I was going to go. Be kind, be loving.
If there's an opportunity to do something for them, maybe to share the gospel, you take it. Of course you're not going to turn that down, but protect your family. I mean, just take whatever precautions you need to watch your kids a little closer. I mean, whatever it is, again, you might be thinking, man, they're getting kind of dramatic. This stuff's happening every single day. And so, especially for the husbands and men and fathers that are listening to this, protect your family. So, yeah, I didn't have much else to add. That's a good point, Jack.
[00:58:44] Speaker C: Joe, did you have good.
[00:58:48] Speaker A: All right. And as I said, immigration is the issue, but I like issues like this because they're so revealing of thought patterns of the ways we're coming to the Bible, of the ways emotion affects us, the way we can open up the Bible and see two different things. We can just see things totally contradictory to the way that somebody else sees it. But we have to be very careful about the influences on us. Obviously, we think our reading of this biblically is correct and for the reasons that we gave. But you have to be careful. And again, you have to not over spiritualize, not overemotionalize.
This is something that drives me crazy, is we will give solutions to stuff in our podcast here or in things in my articles, and people get really mad about it and really don't like it, but they won't wrestle with the hard questions that are presented. Like, well, I got to this conclusion from wrestling with real world questions. You can live in a fantasy land where there's never any difficulty, and it's always the clearest answer in the world. That's no good. You got to wrestle with these things. And I think when you do, I stand behind the conclusions we came to here. So, any final closing thoughts from you.
[00:59:54] Speaker C: Guys to that point, if you are listening to this going, man, they got it all wrong. Obviously, we ask that you be cordial, but please let us know if you are a focus plus subscriber. Of course, comment. We'll get back to that in the deep end. But even if you're not, comment on Facebook, we'd like to know kind of where you stand on these things, if there's a part. But like I said, please keep it cordial. The other thing is maybe not anecdotal. One of the podcasts that I was listening to was basically all anecdotal. I'm an immigrant, and so you could tell it was drenched in anecdote. I understand that there's a time and place for that, but this is one of those that if you have a biblical argument for it that maybe we didn't make, maybe we didn't hit that, please let us know. We'd love to respond to that. But, yeah, I think I stand fit pretty firm on this with you fellas. But will any last thoughts?
[01:00:42] Speaker A: No.
[01:00:42] Speaker B: Let us know. We like the feedback. We love the comments and it always makes for interesting discussion in the next segment.
[01:00:49] Speaker A: Sorry. We will talk to you guys next weekend.
