Why I'm Not a Nazi

Germany didn't become Nazi Germany overnight. Prussia decriminalized sodomy in the 1700s. The universities became seedbeds of Marxism, textual criticism, and Nietzschean nihilism throughout the 1800s. The Weimar Republic decriminalized abortion in 1927. Kevin Swanson traces this long apostasy and explains why National Socialism was the rotten fruit of a nation that had long abandoned Jesus Christ. Kevin is joined by Jacob Tanner to address why Nazism was so evil...regardless of the narrative.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome to Generations. This is Kevin Swanson, and today I want to explain why I am not a Nazi. Now, there's been a fair amount of reactionary talk about rejecting the post-World War II consensus that has dominated the world for the last 75 years, and I'm the author-editor of this 1,000-page American God's Providence, the textbook on America's Christian history, and uh I think we need to answer these important questions. Did World War II make the world free for democracy? Or did World War II make the world free for international Marxism? Or did the World War II make the world free from God's laws and the Christian law order of the previous 1,000 years? These are important questions. Put another way, were the accepted standards of morality established by the winners any better than the standard of morality advocated by the Nazis and the Axis powers? The winners do write the history books, and they usually put forward the generally accepted standards of morality to be received or imposed upon in the world. These are intelligent questions not to be brushed aside by an uncritical crowd of lemmings, of course. But let me say from the outset that God always wins, and God actually writes the history books, and therefore God must legislate his laws and adjudicate on that basis. Remember, the mills of God grind slowly, but very fine. He may take a hundred years or so to grind down the nations, but it will happen. Always, always. As we have pointed out before in this program, there are many instances in history in which both sides get it wrong. And by the way, every mom and dad is aware of this when they have to adjudicate the court cases raised by their three and four-year-old children who can't get along the sandbox. So sometimes it's not just one child that's wrong, sometimes both children are in the wrong. So shall we vote for Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin? Hitler comes off as a bit more conservative or perhaps more supportive of traditional values, whatever that was or is. And of course, the definition of these things are up for grabs with the godless megalomaniacs. I I think it would be better to frame this discussion in biblical language. Now, first remember, Germany had already apostatized by the 1930s. Germany had left the Christian faith a long time before, way back in the 1800s, Prussia was among the first nations to decriminalize homosexuality in the 1700s, not to mention the public schools and compulsory tenants laws. The first widely distributed homosexual films and magazines come out of Prussia in the 1880s and 1890s, and Germany is ground zero for homosexuality at the turn of the 20th century. Germany was the hotbed for Marxism, textual criticism, Prussian socialism, Nietzsche's nihilistic philosophies, and about every other form of apostasy in the 1700s and 1800s. It wasn't a pleasant scene. It was good. Well, not good, not good, not good. All forms of socialism exploded in the 1880s and 1890s in Germany, well before socialism crept into England and the United States. The German universities were the seedbed of every form of Christian apostasy from the days of Christian Wolfe and Frederick I, Frederick II, the Weimar Republic decriminalized abortion in 1927, you can remember. Now the same thing happened to the rest of the West, but that was after World War II. So they didn't need God anymore after winning the war, especially by the 1960s and 70s and 80s. They expelled God from the schools for good behavior. They kicked God out of the legislatures. No more fear of God for the West. Following World War II comes the apostasy of the Netherlands, Great Britain, Canada, the United States, leftist, Marxist, pro-homosexual, pro-abortion, pro-godless education, pro-everything that's against God came to dominate in these allied nations. They legalized abortion, homosexualized mirage, and they introduced every form of perversion into the schools. So the question is valid. Did World War II make the world free for democracy? Or did World War II make the world free for international Marxism? Or did World War II make the world free from God's laws and the Christian law order that dominated for 1,000 years prior? The pride of the United States and England, that's what destroyed these nations. This reminds me of Deuteronomy 8. One more time. Let's run this by one more time. Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments, his judgments, his statutes, which I command you today, lest when you have eaten and are full and have built beautiful houses and dwell on them in the United States, Canada, England, anywhere else, and when your herds and your flocks they multiply, your silver, gold multiplied, all that you have multiplied, when your heart is lifted up and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of World War II, the land of Egypt, and out of the house of bondage. Deuteronomy 8. So rejecting the post-World War II agenda doesn't mean the Nazis had it right. Would you vote for Hitler or Stalin? Neither feared God. Now we take a strong stand against Nazism because National Socialism is a tyranny. It does not bind back governments to the standards of God's laws. Yes, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, they're still under God. Wrote a book on that, by the way, just published it recently. Yes, we need to say they are under God. The reason why we are not Nazis as Christians, no way, no way, no way. They murder people. They violate the sixth commandment. Wholesale. Now, some say if you're in government, you can get away with violating God's law. It's okay. You have all the power and the authority to violate any commandment you want to. Uh-uh. No, even Adolf Hitler is under God's laws. So by more than two or three witnesses, and reasonably I would say millions of witnesses, the Nazi civil magistrate violated the sixth commandment as legislated by Almighty God. But we also must take issue with Adolf Hitler's worldview. I deal with this in my book, American God's Providence, when we start getting into the World War II years. Adolf Hitler's worldview is messed up, man. I've read Mein Kampf, his signature work is Magnum Opus, and the heart testimony of this guy, Adolf Hitler. It's Nietzschean philosophy, it's Spencer's social Darwinism. There's no other way to read it. Here from Mein Kampf, listen to this. Hitler writes The stronger must rule. It must not unite with the weaker, thus sacrificing its own stature. Only the born weakling can think this cruel, and that is why he is weak and defective. For if this law did not hold, any conceivable evolution of organic living beings would be unthinkable. That sounds like evolution to me. That sounds like Darwinism. Does that sound like Darwinism to you? Always struggle is a means to improve the health and the stamina of the species, and thus a cause of its evolution. Again, another quote. That sounds like Darwinism to me. And then again, but little as nature wishes a mating of weaker with stronger individuals, still less does she want the fusion of a higher with a lower race. Since otherwise the whole labor of selective evolution, perhaps through thousands of years, would be set at naught. All right, that's uh Adolf Hitler writing in Mein Kampf, translator Byron's Musi, 1939. Now, apparently the moral lesson that the world was supposed to take from World War II was this. All right, this is the post-World War II consensus. Aggressive nationalism, racial politics, antisemitism, and authoritarianism cause catastrophe. Therefore, post-war societies should favor liberal democracy, minority protections, international cooperation, and distrust of extreme nationalism. But what if liberal democracy, international cooperation, and multiculturalism imposed upon nations could be just as bad as the Nazis? What about that? What if the problem with the Nazis is the same as the communists? Socialism, big government, anti-supernatural materialism, and Darwinism? What if the more root problem with the Nazis was naturalistic evolution, as it is with the Marxists? What if the Nazis' antisemitism was wrapped up in Nietzsche and Darwin's philosophies? And what if the fundamental problem with Germany was 40 years of dabbling in homosexuality, naturalistic evolution, or just good old-fashioned Christian apostasy and a rejection of Jesus Christ, a national pride, and favoring of a traditional civilization rooted in paganism as opposed to God's law revealed in the Old New Testament? What if there was no fear of God before their eyes? What if the root problem with the Nazis was a favoring of an ethnic culture over Christian law? And what if the Nazis failed to diagnose the problem rightly and therefore presented the wrong solution and the ultimate solution? The ultimate solution. We all remember the ultimate solution. What if blaming Jews is just one more red herring, another distraction from the real issue, the real apostasy going on here? What if the post-world war consensus failed to diagnose the Nazi problem rightly and came up with another bad solution for their countries, including more Christian apostasy, more jettisoning of God's law, more homosexuality, more multiculturalism without Christian foundations, and internationalism and world government led by anti-Christs of the day who were supposed to oppose the anti-Christ nationalist dictator wannabe like Adolf Hitler. So whose side are you, who are you on? Whose side are we on in the post-Christian West? Are we Marxists or Nazis? Are we conservatives and Christians getting softer on Nazism as they knee-jerk away from the modern socialist, communist, anti-nationalist big government agenda of the 21st century? If you can only see one ditch, you're probably in the other one. God made man upright, but he has sought many inventions. Not just one, like many inventions. Back in the 1700s, there were the Unitarians, and then there were the Latitudinarians, who were quite tolerant of Unitarians, while not quite there yet. In the 2020s, there were the Nazis and then there are the Latitudinarianism, who are quite tolerant of Nazis, while not quite there yet. But what happens if you're left with two political choices and only two? This always takes us back to the question of choosing the better of two evils. When you're left with two evils, just admit it, God has turned your nation over to judgment. The handwriting is on the wall. It's time for one thing. It's time for God's people. People attend churches to humble themselves, turn from their wicked ways, and cry out for God's mercy, then and only then he might heal our land and save us from annihilation. So today, the post-war international order, the post-war consensus, do we accept it or reject it? As biblical Christians committed to a biblical world and life view. That's the question. Jacob Tanner now joins me on this edition. And Jacob Tanner joining us now on Generations. By the way, Jacob's got a new book, A Qualified Man Cultivating the Character of a Godly Leader. I think it ties in somewhat to what we're talking about in this uh edition, Jacob. Um, you you you saw my opening comments, why I am not a Nazi. I I felt I had to be clear about that. In some respects, you know, it's it's kind of hard to limp up to explain it once more. It's kind of sad that we have to, you know, step in and say, you know, um, hey, we're not Nazis. And yet I think it's appropriate that we do so.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Amen. Amen. And it seems weird that I'll do the same thing, but yes, I also am not a Nazi.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Oh, I'm I'm glad. I'm glad.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Praise the Lord, right? But it's it's unfortunate because there are many who over the past, I don't know, it seems like the past six years or so, there's been this uptick of people who are, if not willingly identifying themselves as neo-Nazis, are actually embracing the Nazi ideology. And some of them are even going so far as to worship Adolf Hitler. And it's strange because if you go back 10 years ago, I can remember a time where it was a slur to be called a Nazi. Like those who were on the political left would always throw this out if you were a conservative and they'd say, You fascist Nazi, how dare you hold to those conservative beliefs that you hold to. And now we've actually got to, we we've got to seriously tell people, no, we're not Nazis. So it's a crazy time that we're living in.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Yeah, but I think an important exercise, uh, for one thing, we want to be sure that we have the epistemological and ethical authority that drives us on all questions. You know, as in, if I said the most important reason why I'm not a Nazi, Jacob, is that I was taught not to be a Nazi by American public schools in the mainstream media. And NBC, ABC, CBS said you must not be a Nazi. And so therefore I'm not a Nazi. If that was my logic, just that it was politically incorrect or that the Marxist told me that I'm not to be a Nazi, and so I'm not a Nazi, I think you'd be a little disappointed with me.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Yeah, yeah. You'd be lacking the actual solid foundation that you need. Like you said, epistemologically, ethically, philosophically, you need to be biblically grounded, is what we're getting at here. And so if it's not the scripture, if it's not the word of God that is grounding us in whatever our worldview is, then ultimately it doesn't matter if you end up rejecting Nazism, you're gonna embrace some other evil instead, right? Yeah, exactly. So you need to be grounded in the scripture. That that's really the main point.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

That's that's it. And I I think it's a worthwhile exercise that that I have stepped out in faith and in complete confidence in the authority of the word of God and said, I'm not a Nazi for these reasons. And there were ethical reasons and there are worldview issues behind it. But you you you give me your take. You said you're not a Nazi. Why not?

SPEAKER_00 14:41

There's a lot of different reasons biblically. We were talking a little bit beforehand, but one of the main reasons is because scripture tells us thou shalt not murder. Yeah. And you know, the Nazis murdered a lot of people, but scripture also tells us thou shalt not commit adultery. And we know that that extends further than just simply the act of committing adultery outside of the covenant of marriage. It really is a prohibition against all sexual immorality. And if you look at Nazi Germany, or actually even Germany, just in the lead up to Hitler's sort of reign of terror, there was sexual immorality running wildly all over the world. Everywhere. Yeah. It was, it was, I mean, even homosexuality was rampant in Hitler's Germany. And so you look at that, and then of course, God says, Thou shalt not have other gods. Well, Nazism, by and large, is occultic. It's actually what what Hitler was seeking to do was not embrace Christ. And some people, for listeners who don't know this, some people are trying to suggest that Hitler was a Christian prince, that Nazi principles are Christian principles. Neither of those things are true. But really, what Hitler was attempting to do, the mission of Nazism, was to recover sort of Germany's pagan heritage. So they wanted to return to Norse mythology, they wanted to return to occultism. And that's why this is historically verifiable. Hitler and the Nazis were occultic fanatics that were engaging in some very demonic exercises. So we could keep on going. But basically, Nazism breaks every single one of the commandments. And the more you dig into the worldview, the more clear it becomes, or the clearer it becomes, that you cannot be a Christian and hold to that worldview or that ideology.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

There was a book, and I have a copy of it, written by Hermann Rushning, who was a secretary for Adolf Hitler, and it's called Voice of Destruction. Very interesting. I think it was republished, if I'm not mistaken, by somebody, I can't remember who. And I have a copy of it. But if anybody wants uh to really dig into the heart of Adolf Hitler, this voice of destruction book, Conversations with Hitler from 1940, is uh is very instructive. I mean, he he had you know he had some real demonic influences uh working uh upon him, and you could and this comes out very clearly in the book as really an eye-opener, especially in terms of his interaction with the Christian church. You know, it was just behind-the-scenes stuff. So, you know, it had his political thing, you know, all the politicians have their political thing, but you get behind the curtain and you start to hear the the conversations that go on uh in the personal uh interactions, and you find that uh you find really this guy was demonic, satanic, uh anti-Christian, etc. etc. No question. No question about it. Now, here's here's another question for you, and I dealt with this a little bit in my opening comments, but I want your take on it. If you if you had a choice, and by the way, they had a choice, what, in the 1932 elections, oh yeah, between voting for Hitler or a communist or voting for Hitler or Stalin, would you vote for the better of two evils? And and and I can hear the argument coming. If if you refuse to vote for the better of two evils, as as a Christian, as the Christian population, if you refuse to vote for Hitler or Stalin, that would make you irrelevant in much of modern politics.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Right. And I I can hear what people are going to object and what people are going to say, but I've always found that sort of concept that you have only two options is almost always a false dichotomy, right? It's a it's a logical fallacy. I believe so. There's always another. There's always another option. There's always something else to do. And when it comes to being a Christian, usually the right thing to do is the least popular thing. So do you choose one evil over the other because one's better than the other? My argument would be no. You actually choose what is most Christian. So in that situation, do you vote? Do you not vote? I mean, for our own day and age, it's really going to depend. Um, I've been saying for Christians in the United States of America, my my sort of hobby horse lately has been for the past few years arguing that we really need to establish a Christian party and take a Christian political party seriously. This way, we don't end up with the dichotomy with the issue of, well, do we vote for the Democrat who is going to murder babies and support transgenderism and all of these other things? Or do we vote for the Republican that's going to do all of these same exact things just a little bit lesser? We we shouldn't get to that point, right? We need to actually start to uphold Christian virtues. We need to actually hold our politicians, we need to hold our elected leaders to those virtues. And there does come a point, and you know this because we've talked about John Knox before. There does come a point where the Christian absolutely has to resist the tyrant, has to resist tyranny in order to obey God. And I think that Nazi Germany and really the lead up to Nazi Germany is a series of unfortunate events where you can see several times where you're like, Why didn't the Christians resist here? Why didn't the Christians resist here? It's always easy though, when you're looking back at history to say that it's when you're actually living in the moment. What do you choose to do? And it's a difficult, it's a difficult question, honestly. What would you do if you were living in that age and you see two evils? Which one is going to serve the Christian church? Which one is going to help you more? And the answer ultimately we can say now is neither. But did did they really know that? I mean, by and large, the general general populace, did they know that when they elected Hitler? And if you do a lot of the reading, Hitler was a very charismatic man, which is weird if you ever actually listen to how he sounded and what he said. It it's strange that he was as charismatic as he was. Uh in fact, if you're familiar with Norm MacDonald, uh, who's maybe not always the best comedian, passed away a few years ago, he had a whole bit where he would talk about Hitler and he would say, you know, what what would you do if you could go back in time, you could have a time machine, because everybody always says this. I take a time machine and I'd go and I'd kill Hitler. And he said, Would you really though? Or would that charismatic man with those eyes just somehow get to you and get you to follow him and obey him? And it does seem like if we're if we take the demonic realm seriously, it does seem as though Satan is able to attract people to darkness by first appearing as light. And if you look at what Hitler was doing, a lot of what he promised initially is not at all what he delivered. So what would we do in that situation? I'd like to believe that we would resist the tyrant in order to obey God. Would that actually happen in practice? I don't know. All things in retrospect.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Well, I think the test today is whether or not you're going to advocate for the killing of innocent babies in their mother's wombs uh by supporting a Republican who's uh effectively pro-abortion in his policies. Right. You know, and and of course I ran for governor in here in the state of Colorado under the American Constitution Party and for the U.S. Senate position in 1998, and uh because I wanted a candidate who did not believe in uh murdering babies wholesale by the millions upon the millions in this state and throughout this country. And so, you know, I I took this stand in the 1990s, 1992, and again in 1994 and 1998, and uh I hope others would as well. Now, I think f founding something of a Christian party is helpful. I'm not sure the American Constitution Party quite pulled it off. Uh, but that's largely because it's almost impossible to get you know any more than you know uh you and your ten friends to uh come out from among them, be separate, and uh and covenant together on uh on a platform that is consistent to biblical principles. That that I think is probably your your most serious problem. Now, here's the other thing. I do believe that your strategy in terms of politics could remove from the national scene and work a little bit more diligently in the local scene. And therefore you're still involved in the magistrate, but you're doing something maybe just a little bit more doable, you know, in the present. So that's another approach that Christians can take. There may be a point at which you have a choice between Hitler and Stalin for a national position, but you can still work pretty diligently at the local magistrate level, as you know, there's interposition. So if the magistrate at the national level gets a little over-eager with uh its attempt to tyrannize the people, then you know you've worked hard enough in the local county and in the local state to perhaps push off some of that uh some of that tyranny. So that certainly is something we can do here in the United States, given that we have some degree of states' rights. Uh still still take it. Some degree. Some degree, yeah. Not not a lot. Well, there are strategies that you can take, but again, I am I am obviously in that camp where you don't support the better of two evils. Right. And uh if you do, if you if you're so pragmatic that you're constantly trying to save the ark, I mean save the nation, by violating basic principles and embracing leaders that do not fear God in hopes that one leader might kill just you know a few less innocent citizens than the other, then I I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm thinking that maybe it's time for the church itself to repent. That's why it seemed to come back all the time to if my people who are called by my name would humble themselves and turn from their evil ways. I if if that began within the churches, then we might have a shot at retaining some kind of righteousness and liberty at the highest echelons of the land. Well, Jacob, I I I also wanted to throw this one at you. Uh, concerning the post-World War II consensus, there are many turning away from it. Uh some perhaps for good reasons, some for not so good reasons, uh, some maybe even coming to the conclusion that the Nazis had it right. Um, in instead of coming to the conclusion that there can be two enemies, there could be two ditches, not uh not just one. Uh but what's your take on uh on the post-World War II consensus?

SPEAKER_00 25:00

So this is an interesting one because I've obviously I'm within that age range, I think, where a lot of these younger men are rejecting what they're calling the post-World War II consensus, and they're saying that basically our forefathers lied to us, our boomer generation let us down. Uh, they lied to us specifically. And what some of these people will say, and and this this is where nuance is required, right? Because they can mean several different things when they say that they're rejecting the post-World War II consensus. For example, is what they are saying that they reject the sort of NATO policies that have been put forth? Are they saying that the globalization efforts of the United States of America have by and large actually hurt us nationally, that they have hurt us back at home? Are they saying that we need to get back to just focusing on our country and improving our country and figuring out the national debt crisis and figuring out many of the other issues that are f plaguing our nation? Is that what they mean? Well, some people mean that. There's another group that simply means by that that they they think that the the Jews are behind everything. And they'll say, actually, Hitler had it right. The Nazis were a Christian party. And by the way, I'll just insert here again: this is total uh revision of history. This is this is not true, but it's easy to twist things around, right? So they'll come along and they'll say Hitler was a good guy. Um, they wanted to purge the world of the demonic influence of the Zionists and all the horrible, terrible things that the Zionists do. And so we have to re-embrace Nazi ideology. And what a lot of these people are reacting to, by the way, is what was happening back in 2020. So in 2020, we had COVID, we had churches shutting down, and we had critical race theory just running rampant through just about everything. And I don't even just mean mainline denominations. I mean it was going through our workplaces, it was going through seminaries, it was going through government, it was all over. And it seemed as though what they were really attacking ultimately were white Christian men. Straight white Christian men, I should add there, I suppose. And so a lot of men saw this happening and they thought, well, I'm being let down by everybody, by my government, I'm being let down by my workplace, I'm being let down by my family, I'm being let down by my friends. Where do I turn? Where are the answers? Where are the actual men with courage, the men with a backbone, rather than some gelatinous thing that they wouldn't even know what it was if you thwacked them over the head with it? Where are the men? And ultimately what they discovered is that there has been a group of, for a while it was on the fringes of society, but it has been growing in popularity of white supremacy or white separatism, basically skinhead, neo-Nazi, kinism, whatever you want to call it. They they mean different things, but ultimately it eventually falls under the same branch, the same category, which is they want to see white people in particular sort of glorified, even deified, if you will. And so, for example, a lot of these individuals that have been embracing the rejection of the post-war consensus, what they're saying is America has lied to us, history has lied to us, the Nazis were good people. And let me just give you one example of this, because I think that maybe some listeners have seen these things, but not really known what they were looking at. Um, one of the really well-known symbols of white separatism and neo-Nazi ideology is just a numerical number, 1488. And you might ask, what does that stand for? Well, 14 refers to the 14 words of a white supremacist named David Lane. He was a member, by the way, of a terrorist group called The Order. And David Lane's 14 words were these. I'm going to quote them here. We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. So those are the 14 words of David Lane, and then they would add to that 88, because eight is the it signifies the letter H, the eighth letter of the alphabet. And by putting eight, eight together, it signifies Hail Hitler. So the 14 words of David Lane combined with Hail Hitler became a sort of neo-Nazi white nationalist slogan. But it's now been embraced by what is actually a Christian nationalist movement. And again, I don't want to incorporate every Christian nationalist into this category because this is one of those things. It doesn't really have a real hard set-in-stone definition. That's one of the problems with Christian nationalism today. But there's been a movement of Christian nationalists saying, I'm going to reject the post-war consensus and I'm going to embrace my Anglo-Saxon heritage, and I am going to desire to have White Boy Summer. And so this is actually a thing. It's called White Boy Summer. There's videos that are all over X, YouTube, Facebook. And if you watch the videos, a couple of interesting things are done in them. One is they use a song that is a well-known white supremacist song. The song was not originally written by a white supremacist group, but I think it's like called Pompeii or something like that. And it's a song about watching Pompey be destroyed, but ultimately we will have our nation back. And so in these videos, they will use the slogan, uh, something along the lines of, we will have our land or we will have our home again. Again, that's a well-known white nationalist, white supremacist slogan. And they'll also incorporate within these videos real quick flashing images of Hitler, neo-Nazis, what have you. And again, there are Christian so-called pastors making these videos, sharing these videos. And then if you watch carefully, there's also a symbol for their movement of kind of like a white cross, and there's light shimmering off of it into a black surrounding, which is supposed to be the Aryan race, the white race bringing and glowing light into the darkness of the world around us. And you understand that the implication there is that the darkness is black people, people of color, white people, we're the ones that they would say are God's chosen people. In fact, they'll often say that we're the one of the not just the chosen people of Israel, we're one of the lost tribes of Israel. And then if you keep watching these videos, or if you follow what these guys are doing, you'll see them using very similar numbers. So rather than using 1488, they'll use things like 1183. So the 11 words of a man named Stephen Wolfe and 83 now being a symbol for Hail Christ. But their terminology is exactly the same as the white separatists. They'll say things like, listen, we don't want to kill black people. We just want to separate ourselves from them. We want to secure a land, we want to secure a place for ourselves, and that's all Hitler wanted to do. They say they just he just wanted a separatist nation where they got rid of the foreigners, they got rid of the invaders, they got rid of everybody who wasn't like them. And instead, they had a nation that was totally of their own. The problem is, we see this with Nazi Germany, and we see it happening today. Even those who claim to just simply be separatist, they'll often go by a title of Christian identity, uh, the Christian identity movement. They'll say that all we want is to get them out of our places of worship outside, they they want segregation, but it results in violence every single time. What's the end goal here? The only end goal can possibly be violence. So by saying we're gonna reject the post-war consensus, some of these people are saying, actually, we're going to embrace neo-Nazism, white supremacy. We're going to embrace these separatist ideologies, and ultimately, if we don't get what we want, we may just enact violence.

SPEAKER_01 33:05

Interact with uh with the question as to whether Acts 17 intends for the tribes of the earth to be separated into their own geographical boundaries. Or, you know, as as we read scripture, we find that that you know scripture has no big agenda to purify the the boundaries of a nation by you know weeding out the foreigners. You you find that the foreigners are actually invited into Israel um in the Old Testament. And and of course, Pentecost was a reversal of Babel. And we've said this many times that uh that yeah, Babel is intended to decentralize and yes, put national boundaries about uh certain peoples. But with the coming of Jesus Christ, the middle walls of partition between Jews and Gentiles come crashing down. We begin to see the possibility of a reintegration of the tribes and nations into the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, which could, which could be any church in any state or any country uh in the world today. And so, you know, Jesus came to break down these boundaries, and I think that's completely legitimate. And yet, and yeah, here's been my argument for a while, and that is when the leftists come into a country and jettison the Christian foundations of the country, and at the same time, there's no real interest on the part of the Church of Jesus Christ to evangelize and disciple the nations concerning the immigrants coming into the nation, you're probably creating a situation in which it's going to be difficult to retain any kind of a national unity given you have jettisoned Christ at the foundations of the nation. So that's the point I've made up to this point. Um, but again, as Christians, our agenda is the gospel. Our agenda is to break down the middle walls of partition and to find unity between uh multicultures, the tribes and nations. And by the way, even within your own family, and that's tough enough for some people, you know. But again, and by the way, if you can't retain some kind of unity within your own local family in your own local church, you're probably not going to have enough gospel to share with the nations.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

Amen. No, I'm in I'm in total agreement with you. And when we read in Acts 17 about the boundaries that God has set in place, I would agree with you that those boundaries came as an effect of the Tower of Babel and the confusion of language and the dispersion of people throughout the entirety of the earth because that was what man was supposed to do from the get-go. Man was told in the Dominion Mandate to go forth into all the world, to populate it, to take dominion of it, ultimately to cultivate Christian culture. Now, they try to centralize in one unique location, and rather than building out, they build up. So God comes and he confuses the language and he says, Now you're gonna go out. But what we see happen with Pentecost is not God saying, all of you now have to live in the same area. Instead, what we see God doing is he's saying, I'm gonna take my kingdom and I'm gonna expand it over the earth. So it's going to do exactly what it was supposed to do when he first gave the commandment to Adam. Now the kingdom of God is gonna be cultivated across the earth, and it's going to include people from every tribe, language, nation. It's gonna include all peoples. Now, eventually, will all peoples be in one nation together? Yes, because that one nation will in fact cover the entire globe. It will be God's kingdom, which is ultimately advanced through the gospel. So there's a connection there between the Dominion Mandate and the Great Commission. But what Jesus does through that gospel is he brings people who were formerly at odds with one another, people who were formerly enemies, and he makes us at peace with both himself and one another. And that's why when you get to Revelation, you read that wonderful, wonderful verse where it says that people from every tribe, language, and nation are all joined together to celebrate, to worship the Lamb of God, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. But you're exactly right when it comes to immigration that if we don't care about discipleship, if we don't care about actually impressing these Christian principles upon others, then we're going to have a very serious problem. One of my arguments for a while now has been this America was founded as a Christian nation, I would argue. It was founded in covenant with God. Now, I would say we're rebellious right now. We're not, we're not faithful to that covenant, which invites a lot of curses upon us from our God. But when people join our country and they immigrate legally into our nation, if we were actually obeying God and if we were obeying the principles of Scripture, one of the things that we would be saying is, hey, you have to at the very least bow the knee to Christ. You have to at the very least submit yourself to his law, to his word. And at the very least, do it on a surface level. We can't force a conversion, but if you're going to join a nation that's in covenant with Yahweh, that's what it looks like. And that's what we see, by the way, with Old Testament Israel. If the Gentiles wanted to come in before Christ, they had to, at the very least, a surface level, they had to make a profession that they were going to follow Yahweh. And it should be the same now. Now, one other thing that I'll add here is some people will be like, well, that sounds a lot like liberalism. You're okay with any immigrant coming in. No, we're talking about legal immigration, which is a very different matter altogether. I think that nations obviously have a right to border patrol. Nations obviously have a right to seek their own welfare of their own citizens first and foremost. But I have no problem with legal immigration. And I think that if we did it rightly, and again, this goes back to what we were saying earlier. How are you going to establish a Christian party? It seems like it's hard to get even 10 people to agree on this. How are you going to do something like this? It seems like it'll be difficult. It will be. It'll be extremely difficult. It'll be extremely hard. But what I find is that it's the extremely difficult and hard things that ultimately offer the most value. And on top of that, it's the things that seem most impossible that I believe God is calling us to. Because turns out when God, the sovereign God of the universe, the sovereign God of the cosmos, is with us, and Jesus has promised exactly that he will not leave nor forsake us. We can actually tackle those impossible things, and he will make them possible.

SPEAKER_01 39:35

Well, the only possibility for maximizing liberty and providing uh righteousness for a nation is to establish a nation upon the standards of God's holy law, as uh given to us in the uh Old and New Testaments. And again, people who say, well, now wait a minute, we need a pluralistic law that's formed in the religion of Marxism. I just simply say, wrong religion. That's not my religion. So it's it's just a it's a conflict of religions when it comes down to which law system upon which you're going to form a nation. And I much, much refer, prefer the Christian law system. That by the way, to a great extent, our nation in the Western world was formed upon a Christian world and life view, a Christian law system going all the way back to uh King Alfred and Athelstan and the others. And uh, you know, uh English common law was eventually summarized with Blackstone, who, by the way, was a very important uh legal uh scholar that contributed to uh many of our founders and the sort of law systems that they they brought into the American jurisprudence. Uh now, uh one last question for you, Jacob, and that is uh part of the rejection of the post-World II World War II consensus was a rejection of Israel. I think there's been something of a loss of memory and amnesia concerning World War II, so that's part of it. But this I think is a massive development of tremendous geopolitical repercussions. And uh and and that is, you know, Gallup poll has just done a recent survey on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. I think this came out a couple of months ago. Again, this is Gallup poll. Sympathy for Israel among the 20 somethings, 30 somethings, 23 percent. Sympathy for Palestinians, 53 percent. That's among American 20 somethings and 30 somethings. And by the way, the support numbers exactly flip for the 55 plusers. In other words, it just goes the opposite direction. But for the 20 somethings, 30 somethings, which completely validates the sorts of things you've been saying here, 23% support for Israel, 53% support for Palestinians, and in the UK, much, much, much uh broader uh range here. 16% of UKers now favorable towards Israel, 78% unfavorable towards Israel. In 1967, that number was 57% favorable. Now, these were the major allied powers that really gave so much support to Israel since what, 1948? That being the case, that public opinion has shifted so dramatically in the UK and the US. And by the way, that was where their major support existed. It doesn't look like uh the future of Israel is in good hands, especially when you s think of the the lack of support they're getting from these the international community.

SPEAKER_00 42:31

Yeah, when when we look at a lot of the differences now, I would say in my generation compared with, you know, even just a generation ago or two generations ago, there's there's a definite shift here on opinions regarding the Jews and regarding Israel. And there's a lot of different reasons for that. Some of them are theological, some of them are eschatological, and some of it is just simply related to the fact that in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and even into the 80s, probably the most popular branch of theology that was being promoted was dispensationalism. Right. And then along with the fall of dispensationalism, it sort of fell out of popular use. There was an uptick, a sort of rise, and not only an embracing of reform theology, but an embracing of amillennialism and post-millennialism. And what's interesting to me is that with both of those systems, which are, by the way, historical systems that date all the way, I mean, amillennialism was actually part of post-millennialism, but it dates all the way back to the early church. The opinion on Israel, the long-standing opinion on the Jews, I should say, because Israel as a nation ceased to be in 70 AD, the long-standing tradition was that God eventually would save the Jews. In the final analysis, he would bring them back into the church. In fact, I'm thinking specifically of a Romans chapter 11. And here the Apostle Paul is writing about his desire to see his own countrymen, the Jews, come to saving faith. And he says in verse 15, if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? And so he has this great vision where those who have been broken off from the olive branch are actually going to be grafted back in. That was the longstanding tradition of the church that they are enemies of the gospel for now, but eventually there will come a point in time where God will revive, He will restore Jews to the church by large number. But I think what happened is as dispensationalists. Was on the rise, the Jews began to occupy this elevated position of God's chosen people. So much so that you had guys like John Hagee saying, if you're a Jew, you don't even need Christ, you don't even need the gospel, you're just in. You're just automatically in God's kingdom. And that clearly is not the case. So then what happens is you have younger guys come along, guys within my generation and the generation before me, who go, Well, that's clearly not biblical. What does the Bible actually say? But it goes back to that false dichotomy that we were talking about before. It's almost as though these men believe that it's either you love the Jews or you hate the Jews. It's one or the other. And that's clearly not the case. We can actually come to a position where we say, look, those who are still practicing Judaism are enemies of Christianity and they must receive the gospel and they must repent of their sins and they must be saved. And I love them in the sense that I love all of my enemies because I desire earnestly their salvation and their inclusion into the kingdom of God. But they can't just come in as they are. They need to repent and they need to trust in Jesus Christ by faith alone. But you have some people in 1948 saying, Well, look, the establishment of the nation of Israel, the re-establishment of the nation, shows that they really are God's chosen people and the end is here. Well, here we are 70 years later. The end, as they foresaw it, has not yet come. And in fact, it looks as though there's a distinct possibility that the nation of Israel may very well cease to be yet again. And people are saying, Well, what happens now? If that happens, has God failed his promise?

SPEAKER_01 46:19

And so the question, of course, for us is Is the re-establishment of the secular nation of Israel necessary for the salvation of the Jews? To which you would say, No.

SPEAKER_00 46:31

You don't think so?

SPEAKER_01 46:31

So God can save the Jews even without the re-establishment of a secular nation.

SPEAKER_00 46:37

I'll I'll go even further than that. God has promised us something far better in Jesus' own words, the meek shall inherit the earth. So they don't need a particular geographical land at this point. Those who follow Christ get the world. And that's a far, far better promise. And of course, we could dig deeper into scripture and theology and really dig into the fact that God did fulfill the landscape promise, especially under the reign of King Solomon. So that promise was absolutely fulfilled, but the promise now has grown significantly larger, where God says, Hey, if you come to Jesus, who is the true Israel of God, by the way, you'll be engrafted into this true olive branch, so that whether you're Jew or Gentile, you are one in the body of Christ, meaning you inherit the promises of Israel. And now the promise to Israel, which belongs to both Jew and Gentile, is the meek shall inherit the earth. So no, they don't need a modern day geopolitical land in order to experience salvation. And we could go even further than that. If America ceases to be one day as a nation, that doesn't impact God's promises a single bit. God's promise is still the meek shall inherit the earth, that this earth will belong to Christ, and therefore, because we are united to Christ, we too will inherit what God is giving the Son.

SPEAKER_01 47:58

Good point. Whether America exists or not, the kingdom of God continues to move forward. Thank you very much. Uh no need for these particular nations. Although America has been an amazing expression of the kingdom of God as much as we have submitted ourselves to Jesus and submitted ourselves to a biblical law system. Well, thank God for the amazing journey of Robert Marie Michane and Andrew Bonard back in the 1820s. You know, they came into the Promised Land, actually up from Alexandria on camels into the Promised Land and began to identify small Christian churches among the Jews as early as the 1820s. And since then, thousands upon thousands of Jews have come to Jesus for the first time in 2,000 years. So, you know what, this may be just the beginning. And again, do we really need secular nations to defend the kingdom of God? Or can Jesus be successful in establishing his church in every tribe and nation, Jew and Gentile, without the aid of some of these secular nations? And we say, absolutely. And in the meantime, we call the nations of the earth to kiss the sun, lest he be angry and they perish from the way. Whether it be a Hitler in Germany or a Stalin in the Soviet Union or anywhere else, or even a Trump here in the United States, we call on all of them, Natanyahoo out in Israel, kiss the sun, kiss the Lord Jesus Christ, lest he be angry, and you perish from the way. And I'm actually a little concerned about the pro-homosexual ideology that's being promoted by the Israel government. We've commented on that a few times. Seems to be one of the most pro-homosexual areas of that neck of the woods right now. And I'm telling you, I think they did something really, really close. They had a big homosexual celebration close to where the ancient Sodom and Gomorrah was, out there near the Dead Sea. Uh, this would have been back in June. And uh not a good plan. Not a good plan. Okay, let's not do that.

SPEAKER_00 49:49

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 49:50

Um kiss the sun, lest he be angry and you perish from the way, lest his anger has been kindled but a little. And they may set themselves against the Lord and his anointed, saying, Let's break their bands asunder, let's cast away his law from us. But he that sits in the heavens shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision. Uh, this is the message we need to take to the nations, every nation, doesn't matter who they are. And uh and I hope that that's being done by faithful Christian pastors, not just in this country, but all around the world. Because after all, Jesus Christ is on the right hand of the Father. He is King of kings and Lord of Lords, and he will reign until he brings all of his enemies under his footstool. That, my friends, you can take to the bank with you. And that wraps up this edition of the Generations Broadcast. Jacob Tanner has been my guest with me on this edition of the program. Uh be aware of his new book, A Qualified Man: Cultivating the Character of a Godly Leader, recommended to you today. Jacob, thank you so much for being with us today on the Generations Broadcast.

SPEAKER_00 50:46

Yeah, thank you, Kevin, for having me on again. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 50:49

And this is Kevin Swanson inviting you back again next time as we continue to lay down a vision for the next generation. This has been a production of the Generations Media Network. For more information, go to generations.org/slash media.