Do you think you're the devil himself? No, but I I do have a good mirror.
SPEAKER_01This is the last interview that Jeffrey Epstein ever gave. He gave it to Steve Bannon in the year 2019 in his own mansion in New York. This was before he got arrested for the second time, sent to prison, and he died there in August of 2019. Here he is describing how romance is not really captured by science because romance gives you a creepy feeling.
SPEAKER_06People are attracted to each other and some everyone has the same feeling. They've seen someone walk in the room and they say, Oh, that person gives me the a creepy feeling. Science is trying to describe science doesn't describe what creepy feelings means. They just know it's a creepy feeling.
SPEAKER_01The fact that he uses the word creepy three times as the adjective to describe what romance really is, uh, is very on-brand for Jeffrey Epstein, the former financier, the paedophile, the child rapist. We are going to watch the last five minutes of this interview, the last five minutes that Jeffrey Epstein gave to the world. It was only actually released during the last batch of Epstein files that have been released in the last couple of weeks. We're going to look at this last five minutes, and then I'm going to talk about four things that we learn. I'm also going to get some help from an old preacher, Leonard Ravenhill, and from an old story from the Bible. Stick around for that. We are Speak Life. We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus. Have you given our channel a subscribe? Let's get into it. Steve Bannon asks Jeffrey Epstein, should people receive his money?
SPEAKER_07Should they take your money?
SPEAKER_06Derek Bach at Harvard said taking money for good causes is a good thing.
SPEAKER_07So if Hitler, if Hitler took all the gold out of the out of the teeth of the Jews and said, I want to give this to Heidelberg University to fund the Leibniz chairs so that I can study high-energy physics, Derek Bach would say that was fine.
SPEAKER_06Again, it it's these questions are questions where people good people on both sides, like your Charlottesville, could differ. I I don't I don't know the answer.
SPEAKER_07So tell us, tell us the two, tell give us the two answers. What with the one answer why it shouldn't be, and then the one answer Derek Bach says, I'll take essentially take cash from anybody because I got so many projects, so many good guys, and this is the way I'll do it. So I'm indifferent to where the cash comes from. Money's money. And if I got good guys, I'm the fiduciary, says these are good people and this is good research. Okay, I'll take the cash from however from any source, including you. What's the other argument? I let me give you that. I know in my case, I've Is your money dirty money? If you live it might just ask a question, is your money dirty money? No, it's not.
SPEAKER_06So, in fact, why is it not dirty money? Because I I earned it my a heart. But you you earned it I you earned it, we went back to this before.
SPEAKER_07You earned it, you earned it advising the worst people in the world, right? That do enormous bad things, uh, and just to make more money.
SPEAKER_06So if I instead of asking me the question, should you take the money, because I think it's a legitimate question. Do you think it's a legitimate question? Yes, no question. Because what I because I think about it, I think you have to ethics is always a complicated subject, but I can tell you that with the money I gave to help try to eradicate polio in Pakistan and India, instead of asking me whether that money was should be given to these children for vaccines, I think you might want to ask their mothers who who received the vaccine who know their child now won't get polio, and ask them if Epstein should have helped these people.
SPEAKER_07If we walked in if we walked into a mathematician, we walked into that clinic where they're giving that money out to these people that are in the most dire straits of poverty and and and sickness, and told them that the money was coming from a what are you, class three sexual predator? Tier one. Tier one's the highest and worst? No, I said the lowest? But a criminal.
SPEAKER_06Yes.
SPEAKER_07That the money came from them. What what percentage of people do you estimate? I understand you don't like probabilities, do you estimate, would say, I don't care, I want the money for my children? I would say everyone said I want the money for my children. Did they know where the money came from?
SPEAKER_06If I think if you told them the devil hundred percent the devil himself. The devil himself said, I'm gonna exchange some dollars for your child's life. Do you think you're the devil himself? No, but I I do have a good mirror.
SPEAKER_07It's a serious question. Do you think you're the devil himself? Why would you say that? Because you have all the attributes. You're you're incredibly smart. You remember the devil is somebody else's what? The devil's brilliant. You read Milton's You read Milton's Paradise Loss.
SPEAKER_06No, the devil scares me.
SPEAKER_07This Satan is he is at the number one or two archangel. And the reason he goes to hell and leads the rebellion is because he can't be the top guy. And his thing is, I'd rather I'd rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.
SPEAKER_06I saw that in a movie once called The American Dharma. I don't remember who said it. Okay? We have to go. Okay, good. Okay.
SPEAKER_01It's an interesting question. So money that's come from Epstein, who is it dirty money? It's certainly come from a convicted criminal, a sexual abuser. Should people feel bad about receiving that money if it leads to uh polio vaccines and saved lives? You know, people often say that they are consequentialists. They say that we should just look for the greatest good for the greatest number. You show them the trolley car problem in moral philosophy, and most people actually pull the lever in order to have the trolley car go and run over the one person rather than continue on its way and kill the five. We might say that we are consequentialists, but in reality, when we're confronted with somebody like Jeffrey Epstein, we start to get in touch with moral realism. We start to get in touch with some very strong intuitions that there are things that stink to high heaven, there are things that are wrong, no matter how many polio vaccines get rolled out. We say we're consequentialists, but moral outrage really starts to question that. We say that we are simply hedonists wanting to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. But imagine if somebody could prove that Jeffrey Epstein has actually reduced the amount of pain in this world somehow through these polio vaccines. Is it possible? I don't know. I don't know how you'd do the calculation. That's one of the problems with consequentialism. But if you could do the calculation, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that Jeffrey Epstein saved more lives than he destroyed. Is that possible? And even if that is the case, can we call him a moral monster? I think we can, but I don't think we can on consequentialism. And I don't think we can on hedonism. This is the first of four things that I want us to press into from the Epstein Files. We are confused as people. We say that we believe certain things, we live in certain ways, and then the moral gravity of Epstein's abuse just kind of lands on the playground of the West like an asteroid. And in the smoldering ruins, we start to question our previous certainties. Are we consequentialists? Are we hedonists? Don't we actually believe in right and wrong with a capital R and a capital W? In the West, so many people say they're consequentialists, but maybe not. In the West, so many people just want to maximize pleasure, but now we recognize there's something more important than that. We say in the West that sex is just recreation and bodies are just playgrounds, and then sexual abuse scandals like this hit and we recognize that sex is so much more significant than recreation. And bodies are so much more significant than playgrounds. If you fall over in the playground and graze your knee, that's one kind of harm. But sexual abuse is a whole other order of harm. It is a violation, it is a desecration because bodies are temples, not playgrounds, and sex is so significant. It's not just recreation. You know, we speak out both sides of our mouths in the post-Christian West about sex. On the one hand, sex is a leisure activity, and as long as there are two consenting adults, no big deal. And if it ever goes wrong, it is the most serious thing that could ever occur in your life. Chris Williamson just summarized this beautifully when he had Louise Perry on the show alongside Bonnie Bloom.
SPEAKER_00This is something that Mary's written about, which is the world is at a weird intersection at the moment, that sex is uh simultaneously completely meaningless and can be done casually and doesn't have anything uh uh beyond the physical action attached to it, you can sleep with him and not catch feels. And also, if done incorrectly, can be the single most traumatic event of your life that never changes, that you're never able to recover from. And it squaring this circle is difficult.
SPEAKER_01We are confused in the post-Christian West, and we're also confused about this idea of judgment and justice. So many of us in the post-Christian West just think that judgment, divine judgment, is just some kind of overhang from Old Testament religion. And nobody believes in fire and brimstone anymore. The only fire and brimstone we ever fear is fire and brimstone preaching. The actual fire and brimstone that may fall from heaven is something that we keep out of sight, out of mind, until real evil smacks us in the face and makes us call out for justice. Look at this TikToker who just blew up by saying this is making her more religious. If anything's making me religious again is those damn Epstein files Wednesday, Thursday, Friday was that. Right? That that this is making people recognize that divine justice is a good thing. That in August 2019, Jeffrey Epstein did not escape justice, but wound up right in front of the throne of judgment. What had seemed like Old Testament vindictiveness in the face of actual evil makes people go, oh yes, there is such a thing as evil. There are things that stink to high heaven, and when heaven responds, there is something so apt and righteous and just about it all. This Christian TikToker is coming across person after person who are actually doing business with God because of the evil of Epstein.
SPEAKER_03If there is one positive thing I can leave you with today, in the middle of all this darkness coming through the Epstein files, I've seen countless people turning to Jesus Christ or turning back to him. I've seen comments under my own videos of people saying they're praying again and people saying that this isn't just politics, this is spiritual. And most of us always knew evil existed. If this evil is intentional and this darkness is coordinated, then God has to be real too. Light doesn't exist without darkness. And that's why people are running back to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01So this is the second thing that we learn. We are confused as a culture. We're also confronted by a thing called judgment. There is a reckoning. That's what Belinda Gates said when she was asked about her husband appearing uh again and again in the Epstein files. This NPR journalist asks Belinda Gates what is her response to everything that's surfacing right now?
SPEAKER_02The emails in the files suggest that Bill Gates had additional affairs and that he tried to get medication to treat a sexually transmitted infection, and that he was gonna give you the medicine without you knowing. His representative has said all of this is false. It is not on you to have to respond to the details of that alleged behavior, but I I wonder what your dominant emotion is when you read these news articles with these details.
SPEAKER_04Sad. Just unbelievable sadness. Unbelievable sadness, right? Um again, I'm able to take my own sadness and look at those young girls and say, my god, how did they how did that happen to those girls, right? And so for me, it's just sadness. Sadness for, you know, I I've left, I had to I left my marriage, I had to leave my marriage, I wanted to leave my marriage, I had to leave the foundation. I felt I needed to eventually leave the foundation, so it's just sad. That's the truth, right? And and it's kind of like, uh, at least for me, I've been able to move on in life, and I hope there's some justice.
SPEAKER_01It is unbelievably sad uh when she's pressed on what we learn from the whole thing, she uses a word that I think is very significant.
SPEAKER_04Well, let me say this. I think we're having a reckoning as a society, right? Um no girl, no girl should ever be put in the situation that they were put in by Epstein and whatever was going on with all of the various people around him. No girl. I mean, i it it's just it's beyond heartbreaking, right? I remember being those ages those girls were. I remember my daughters being those ages, right?
SPEAKER_01Right. It's a reckoning. Uh and a reckoning is a confrontation with justice. A confrontation with that which will rearrange the furniture and call evil evil. This is what's happening as we look at the Epstein files. It is a reckoning. And if we did not believe in objective moral evil before, well maybe we will now. And this was the journey that C.S. Lewis took. He went from being an atheist to being a theist when he took evil seriously, because he thought if there is evil with a capital E, then there must be goodness with a capital G. This is the way he puts it at one point. My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust, but how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? We are confronted with evil in these cases, and we are confronted with evil in these cases, and our secular vocabulary is not up to the job of describing life as it is. The secular worldview is such a thin understanding of life. It's such a fairy tale understanding of life. Christianity that believes in heaven and hell and good and evil and God and Satan, that might sound to the secular ear like it's the fairy tale view. Actually, it is the much more profound and variegated, multifaceted, and nuanced view of reality. It's the kind of view of reality that actually accounts for the Epstein Files and the B minor mass, right? For great evil and incredible beauty. We live in a world of glory and garbage, and that glory and garbage exists not just out there, but also in our own hearts, and the Bible is just realistic enough to call evil evil with a capital E. And these kinds of reckonings can wake us up to reality. And the reality is that we are in a spiritual battle that is far deeper, far scarier than anything we might have imagined. But there's a third C I want to press into. It's not just that we are confused, it's not just that we are confronted. Um, we are also Christ-haunted. Because the straight line against which all this crookedness is being judged is a very particular straight line in order to call the evils of Jeffrey Epstein and everything that was going on around that, to call that evil, is actually to use a standard that is very specifically Christian, actually. And to drive home the point of how very Christian our moral presuppositions are when we judge Epstein to be so evil. Just ask yourself the question if Jeffrey Epstein lived in ancient Rome before the Christian Revolution took hold, what would we call him? A senator, probably. Ultra-elite males did that kind of thing in Rome, and of course they and ultra-elite males do that kind of thing now. And that's what these files are kind of blowing the lid on. But perhaps the biggest difference between then and now is that now we are outraged by it. Then it is a commonplace. Now we name it as the egregious evil that it is, then it was business as usual. A Roman senator would not exactly understand what we find so objectionable to Jeffrey Epstein. Rich elite males do what they want, right? But all of us answer back and we say, No, no, no, you do not use power to exploit those without power, you use your power to serve those beneath you, don't you? And the Roman scratches his head. And and we say to him, Look, bodies are temples. They are they are not these these playgrounds. And again the Roman scratches his head and and we say, Look, sex is significant, and rape and abuse is one of the worst things that a human being can ever endure. And once again the Roman scratches his head. I mean, in Rome, the rape of noble women um was of course an incredible affront, especially to her husband or that kind of thing. But the sexual exploitation of children in Rome and Greece and the ancient world more broadly was lauded as pederasty. Peteraste means child love, right? Now Jews and Christians were horrified by the practice, and they called it Pyothoria, which means child destruction. But that's the people of the book. That's these people who bring this weird, straight line to bear on what was just commonplace, what was just business as usual in the ancient world. So as you explain to this ancient Roman senator what's so wrong about the behavior of Jeffrey Epstein, none of it is making sense. But you, whether you're a Christian or not, you're going to say to that Roman senator, Epstein should not have done that because power is used to serve, and bodies are more like temples than playgrounds, and sex is significant, and sexual exploitation is one of the worst things that can happen to people. And hey, Epstein is not above the law. Nobody is above the law. We're all equal, right? And money does not entitle you to special favor. And at this point, the Roman Senator is just laughing at you. What planet are you on? And in truth, we are on planet Christian at that point. Whether you go to church or not, you're you're essentially inhabiting a Christian worldview as you make those kinds of cases. In our outrage at Jeffrey Epstein, which is entirely justified, we are Christ haunted. It is a Christian or at least a Christian-ish vision of humanity, of power, of man and woman and sex and bodies. It is a Christian vision of these things that is animating our sense of indignation. And Jeffrey Epstein is reminding us that we are Christ haunted. Fourthly, we are complicit. You see, for every one of our Christian-ish fingers that's pointing at Jeffrey Epstein and some of the others that have appeared in the files, there are other fingers that are pointing back at us. There are any number of videos on YouTube right now, and they're all saying, you know, I am in the Epstein Files. And, you know, people who have been named and they're coming out and they're telling their story about how they once met Epstein at a party and there's an email, and in one of these three million files, their name exists. I am in the Epstein Files. But there's a deeper sense, isn't there, in which we are in the Epstein Files. That if we have ever used power in order to exploit rather than serve, if we have i if we we have ever treated sex or people as something to be exploited, if we have ever thought ourselves to be above the law, if we have ever turned a blind eye to those who act in these sorts of ways, if we have ever fawned over the powerful, no matter what their virtue is, if we have ever lowered our own standards in order to make it in the inner ring, then perhaps we are complicit in similar kinds of things. I mean it's extraordinary to know that there are three million Epstein files. Are there three million scrivener files? Or add your own name in there. Imagine that you could control F on three million files of all the things that you have said and done, and emailed and tweeted. What do we do? With our complicity. What do we do knowing that there are files on us? Did you know there are files on you? Here's Leonard Ravenhill uh preaching back in the 70s on Revelation chapter 20, the judgment seat of Christ. Here are the files that will be released on the Great Day.
SPEAKER_05And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books according to their works. This is a great exposure.
SPEAKER_01Raven Hill, having read from Revelation 20, this is in the context of Richard Nixon. His tapes had just been released. People were being shocked by that misconduct, and the files had been released. Some of the files have been released, some of the files hadn't been released.
SPEAKER_05They couldn't find the 18 minutes on the tapes of Mr. Nixon. Well, I'll tell you, he's got a perfect record of them.
SPEAKER_01Got a perfect record of them. And Ravenhill, in his day, said, Don't just point your finger at Nixon, there's three fingers pointing back at you. He says this.
SPEAKER_05And they're going to be read out one day before millions. You say, Mr. Raymond, I couldn't stand up there or anywhere else. I'm so nervous. If a few people look at me, I want to tell you something. There'll be a thousand million or trillion people when you stand there at the judgment seat without your wife to lean on, or your husband, or your preacher, or a friend. You can't send your lawyer. You can't send a representative. You can't send them send a preacher who says, Well, I understand this person was always falling up and down and in and out, and he didn't know where they were. I I I I'll explain it to you. And the Lord says you won't do anything of the kind. Can you think of all the men who make millions out of pornography? Can you think of the pimps who pollute those little girls? Can you imagine when God takes hold of history and empties it? The secret archives of our hearts and lives are gonna pass before. And I cannot whether he flies his own private leader or how many millions he has? I saw the dead small and great stand before God and the books were opened. Can you think of Pharaoh standing before Jesus Christ and having to account for the massacre? Can you think of Herod the Great having to account for the massacre? Can you think of Hitler having to account for the massacre? We're told of six million Jews? Did you this morning, I mean, I know you had your tribulation, the bacon was burned, and some other tragedy happened? But did you think this morning that somebody for Christ's sake is gonna lose his head in Cambodia or Vietnam? Or Russia? Do you think that Stalin ever dreamed that all the bloody purges he made, he'd have to answer for every precious drop of blood he ever spilled? Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? God should bring every work into judgment with every secret thing. The dead, small and great, are going to stand before God in that awesome day. That great scholar Daniel Webster was once asked, What is the greatest thought? You have a colossal mind. What is the greatest thought that has ever travelled down the corridors of your mind? He said, I've thought many great things, but the greatest thing that I've ever thought of, the most awesome, the most terrifying, the most shattering thought I've ever had is my personal accountability to God one day.
SPEAKER_01My personal accountability to God on that day. There aren't just Epstein files, there are Scrivener files, there are you files, and there is a judge, and shall not the judge of all the earth do what is right? So what are we going to do? Because there is egregious evil like what Epstein has manifested in this world, but we are all complicit, and we need a gospel, we need a story of this world that can truly account for the highs and the lows, the good and the evil, and show us a way forward. And you know that's who Jesus Christ is. He comes into this world that is so compromised by evil. And in John chapter three, he says, God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. The world in that verse, that famous verse, John 3 16, is a world that is so evil, it is so corrupt, it's a sort of world that when the word of God comes to it, everybody silences the word. That when the life of God Jesus Christ comes to it, we kill the life. That when the very love of God incarnate shows up, we crucify love. We are that kind of world, but God is the kind of God who can love even that kind of world, but He He needs to come and confront us with our complicity with evil. So what are we going to do in all our complicity and all our compromise? Well, in a sense, we're not going to do anything. The the gospel that can handle all of this is a gospel that says Jesus enters into our evil. Colossians chapter two verse thirteen When you are dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us. He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross, and having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them by the cross. This is why Christians love the cross. It is the ultimate control A of all the files. And the delete and into the recycling bin and delete forever. It is the wiping the files clean. It is the crucifying of the legal indebtedness that has stood against us. It is the cancelling of all the things that ought to mean our cancellation. And really it has to be God who deals with all this. We cannot deal with all of that. It has to be God who has made us alive in Christ, who has cancelled the legal indebtedness. It's a precious truth. But it's really the only thing that actually can stand us on our feet in order to deal with God and then deal with our neighbor again. The Epstein files exist, they testify to the existence of evil. Where are we going to turn? Let's turn to the God who can actually do more than simply judge evil. There's a God who can handle it, there's a God who can take responsibility for it, there's a God who can take that evil where it truly belongs, but rise up again to offer us peace. Do you know the peace of God? Do you know both the seriousness of your legal indebtedness, the sins that cling to you, but also the wonder of Jesus having cancelled it all through his death on the cross? Do you know that? We've got a wonderful way of you exploring those truths or just refreshing yourself in those truths again. It's called 321. Why don't you go to 321Course dot com and discover life according to Jesus, the way that he came into our world as the Son of the Father to take on himself all our evil and rise up again to offer us oneness with himself and eternal love in the family of God. Go to three two onecourse.com, start an account, it's totally free. We would love you to do that. And have you subscribed to the channel? Please do hit the subscribe button, like the video, share it around the place, and we'd love to see you on the next video. God bless.