0:02 - Introduction to Ephesians
1:18 - Parenting and Moral Law
2:49 - The Issue of Bond Servants
6:05 - The Ethics of Slavery
8:38 - The Armor of God
14:06 - Understanding Principalities
18:32 - The Wiles of Sophistry
22:44 - Moral Hypocrisy Explained
25:39 - Universalism and Empiricism
30:51 - The Role of Moral Integrity
This lecture by Stefan Molyneux dives into Ephesians 6, presenting a critical examination of its teachings, particularly in the context of familial relationships and the controversial subject of slavery. Beginning with the admonition for children to obey their parents, Molyneux highlights the nuanced interpretation of "in the Lord," suggesting that obedience is not merely about submission, but about aligning with moral law as taught through parental guidance. This sets the foundation for understanding parental authority in a virtuous framework rather than just a hierarchical one.
Molyneux extrapolates on the imperatives for parents to raise their children with "training and admonition" rather than through provocation or aggression, offering a modern interpretation of admonition as gentle counsel rather than nagging. The discussion then shifts to the text's references to bondservants and masters, where Molyneux confronts the absence of a clear moral condemnation of slavery within the biblical text. He articulates the inherent ethical conflicts posed by these teachings, comparing the historical context of slavery with contemporary moral standards, and emphasizes the need for a modern ethical stance against such practices, which he regards as one of the greatest evils influencing societal structures and progression.
Continuing through Ephesians, Molyneux expresses his discomfort with the biblical exhortation for slaves to obey their earthly masters "with respect and fear." He critiques this directive as an endorsement of slavery, arguing that it not only diminishes the moral standing of the biblical text but also poses severe ethical quandaries for believers who must reconcile these teachings with contemporary views on human dignity and freedom. Through this, he emphasizes the moral responsibility of the Christian faith to advocate against practices that historically dehumanize individuals.
Shifting gears, Molyneux introduces the concept of the "armor of God," imploring listeners to recognize the metaphorical battles they face against moral deceit and manipulation. He makes a distinction between physical confrontations and the spiritual warfare inherent in upholding personal integrity in the face of societal pressures and sophistries—that is, the insidious lies and manipulations that can distract one from true virtues. His exploration here speaks to the mechanisms of power dynamics present in everyday interactions, particularly pertaining to the manipulative strategies used by individuals to maintain dominance over others.
Molyneux rounds out the discussion by invoking the role of universal moral principles and the importance of empirical evidence in evaluating moral claims. He calls for a rigorous examination of consistency in moral arguments, utilizing the internet as a tool to expose hypocrisy. By laying out a framework for assessing moral arguments, he encourages individuals to demand accountability from those who wield moral arguments for control or coercion. This existential warrior stance culminates in a call to action for listeners to protect themselves against deceptive moral posturing, encouraging them to remain vigilant and steadfast in their convictions against manipulative and oppressive practices.
Ultimately, the lecture serves as both a theological and philosophical exploration, pushing listeners to engage critically with scripture while maintaining a focus on the foundational values of truth and integrity. Molyneux’s combative tone against moral hypocrisy challenges the audience to confront their beliefs about authority, obedience, and the responsibilities they carry in their personal lives and broader societal interactions.
[0:00] All right, so good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain.
[0:03] So, if you're finding these talks helpful or useful or deep or meaningful or any or all of the above, if you could please help out the show, freedomain.com slash donate. All right, so this is Ephesians 6, and we're going to go to our trusty King James version. This is a very famous passage and creates, has within it some of the best poetry that is around.
[0:31] So, children and parents, this is six. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Now, this is very interesting. Obey your parents in the Lord, which means with regards to virtue, with regards to good. Obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. So you obey the moral law as manifested in your parents. Your parents teach you the moral law. You can't invent it all yourself out of whole cloth. And so obey your parents in the Lord. Not just obey your parents, but obey your parents in the Lord. Obey the moral law transmitted through your parents, which is really to say obey the moral law, and your parents are responsible for teaching that to you.
[1:18] Honor your father and mother which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth and you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord, so do not be a nag do not be a scold do not be a bully do not abuse do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord The Lord here, for the more secularly inclined, would be morality, objective philosophy, virtue.
[1:55] Objectivity, empiricism, right? Bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. So training, of course, is to train children to be moral. Admonition, admonition is to remind, Right, not to nag, not to bully, right, but to admonish is a very different thing. A counsel or a warning, this kind of stuff, let's look at Miriam Webster, right? Gentle or friendly reproof, counsel or warning against fault or oversight.
[2:35] This is really important. Gentle or friendly reproof, counsel of warning against fault or oversight. These are not accidental terms. Bring them up in the training and admission of the Lord. This next one is not so good at all.
[2:50] Bond servants and masters. Now, bond servants are people who are legally bound to be under the direct economic and political and coercive control of a master.
[3:04] So, in general, in some of the versions of the Bible translate this directly as slaves. The King James gives bond servants, but slaves in many ways would be equal. Now, of course, equal terms. One of the big problems, of course, with the Bible is it does not talk against slavery in any foundational way. I mean, it gives some responsibility to the masters to not be abusive, but it does not talk against slavery. This is one of the things that, when I first read through the Bible, it was hard to miss. And frankly, this is one of the things that puts the Bible and its ethics in its own time. Now, of course, we all fully, completely, and deeply accept that slavery is one of the greatest moral and, in fact, practical evils of the world, because, The practice of slavery obviously removes the free will and moral independence of another sovereign soul, but also the practice of slavery delays and destroys economic progress. It has been one of the worst toxins in human life, the fact of slavery, because because of slavery, the Industrial Revolution could not happen because the Industrial Revolution could not happen.
[4:23] Hundreds of millions or perhaps billions. I mean, the birth rate and population was, well, sorry, the population was much lower back in the day. So there was a massive amount of death and suffering because of slavery, and nowhere in the Bible is slavery called a great evil. Now, to be fair, it could be that the people who were transcribing, as you would say, from your religious or writing the Bible if you're secular, the people who were writing the Bible could not speak out against slavery because that would get you ostracized or killed.
[4:59] Slavery was the foundation of the wealth of the elites, and if you spoke out against slavery, then you would probably come to quite a bad end indeed. However, of course, Christianity was in many ways founded or at least validated by those willing to come to a very bad end because they loved Jesus and recognized him as the Son of God. So, it seems a little hard to process, and this is what puts the Bible in its time. And this is an argument against the Bible being a product of an all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful God, because slavery being one of the greatest evils in human history, and arguably the greatest evil in human history in its sort of moral and practical implications and results. So, an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God Would first set his sights on slavery And the fact that the Bible is not anti-slavery.
[6:00] And mentions it with respect, right? The slaves, you have to obey your masters.
[6:06] You must obey your masters. That is not good. And I don't know any way around this without deploying interstellar levels of sophistry. This tells you that the morals are of the time because in Ephesians... Actually, no, let's switch just so we can look at the other... Ways of looking at it. Because bondservants, to me, is a minor term of sophistry, because I think it should read slaves. So, in the New International Version, it says, slaves, and the other ones are pretty much the same, it says, slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.
[7:03] Serve wholeheartedly as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free. Ouch. I'm telling you, this is a solar plexus blow to the ethics, and whether Christian or not, whether religious or not, this needs to be grappled with. Let's read this again. Slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and fear and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. I mean, what does this mean? That slavery is not immoral and that slaves have a deep moral duty to obey their earthly masters with respect and fear and with sincerity of heart. This is a blanket, approval, and endorsement of slavery.
[8:01] Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from your heart. The will of God. The will of God is that you as a slave must enthusiastically, happily, and with respect and fear, obey those who coercively rule over you. And then Ephesians goes on to say, serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free. This is brutal. This is brutal. And this is a passage that had me kind of jolt out of my seat.
[8:38] I read the Bible, of course, when I was working up north. So I was 18 or 19. And I don't know how to get around it. I mean, I don't know. It's almost 40 years later. I don't know how to get around it. And there is, of course, an urge to get around it, because we wish to view the moral commandments of the Bible as outside the time of the age, to have eternal virtue.
[9:10] And if we were to say this as a moralist, if a moralist were to say this about, say, the antebellum South or the slaves currently controlled, bullied, and subjugated in the world as a whole, if we were to say this about them, we would be considered entirely corrupt and immoral. And this is not an evil character, right? These are good moral admonishments. So, saying that slaves obey with respect, with sincerity wholeheartedly, and the will of God is that you enthusiastically obey those who own you like livestock. I mean, this is a lot further than render unto God what is God, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. There's some ambiguity there. But this is a full-throated, wholehearted, moral commandment, praise and endorsement of slavery. And it goes on to say, and masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no favoritism with him.
[10:20] Okay, so what does it mean to say to a master, do not threaten your slaves? What does this mean? I don't know what it means because the whole way that a master enforces being a master and having a slave is to threaten the slave, right? If you try to run away, I will cripple you or kill you, and if you disobey me, I have the right to assault you. I mean, slavery is enforced through threats. So saying to a master, don't threaten them with regards to his slaves, it is a misreading of the entire relationship. And again, I know that the urge, the impulse is to dodge this, to wriggle away, but the Bible is, of course, in its ideal form, it's an ideal concept, the Bible is transcribed from the will of God. This isn't people talking about what they think God means or thinks. This is transcribed according to the will and inspiration of God. And honestly, this is a very tough one. This is a very tough one we know and fully accept now that slavery is a monstrous and grave evil.
[11:35] And yet it is endorsed not just in obey the master since he has power over you but obey the master according to the holy will of God as if your master were God or Jesus himself, obey them as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from your heart. So, it's not just saying, you know, hey man, this is a tough situation, but you'll be rewarded in heaven. This is the way the world is set up. There are masters and slaves, but even the slaves shall be saved. No, no, it's not doing that, right? This is not what Ephesians is saying. What Ephesians is saying is, you must enthusiastically, wholeheartedly, with optimism and respect and fear obey masters. And nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, a thousand times nope, and what can I tell you? I don't know any way around this. I don't know any way to minimize this. I don't know any way to bypass this. This is a glaring, staring, central black eye in the moral authority of the text.
[12:46] If anyone said this to you about slavery in the present or slavery, say, in the past in America or other places, that if somebody made this argument that it was the responsibility, crazy as it is, for the slaves to enthusiastically obey their masters, that would be an endorsement of slavery. And that would be to say that the slavery must exist not just in the physical realm, but that slavery must exist in the mind. You must not just obey, you must enthusiastically obey.
[13:23] And that is what it is. There's no way around it. But the passage that I find very powerful, and you've heard of this one, I'm sure, the armor of God. Again, we're going to go back to King James, because to me, that might in fact, have the hand of Shakespeare. Probably not, but there's some rumors, and I like to imagine it from time to time. So, if we go back to King James, then we can get this next. The whole armor of God. Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
[14:07] For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities against powers against the rulers of the darkness of this age against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand.
[14:38] A principality, of course, is a state ruled by a prince, and also in traditional Christian hierarchy of angels, the fifth highest order of the ninefold celestial hierarchy. So he's saying here, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. The wiles. It's very powerful, because he's not saying stand against the physical might, but the wiles. The wiles is the sophistry, are the lies, the misdirections, the appeals to empathy from those who have no empathy themselves. The wiles, the running in mazes, the creation of a labyrinth of language that confuses, baffles, bewilders, and ensnares, and enslaves you. The wiles of the devil. So stand against the wiles of the devil.
[15:38] So one example that I would give from a philosophical standpoint, this is analogous, but not direct. So, you've heard this, of course, in call-in shows, when people say, if they confront abusive parents, or parents who were abusive in the past, and they confront them, and their parents say, I did the best I could with the knowledge I had. Right? So that's a while. That is a way of saying, you can't expect me to be omniscient. I did the best I could with the knowledge I had, and it is cruel for you to... Have a standard for me that was impossible for me at the time. It would be like calling a two-year-old incompetent because they can't play basketball. Well, you're doing the best you can with the physicality you have at the time, and there's an injustice in having higher standards than that which is physically possible at the time. That's bad.
[16:34] Now, the answer to that, of course, is, if the standard is, do the best you can with the knowledge you had, then those self-same parents who claim this as a justification for parenting should never have criticized a child for any poor showing in school. If you fail a test, you say, well, I did the best I could with the knowledge I had. Oh, well, that's fine, right? But that's not what they said. So when you as a child did not, well, you did the best you could with the knowledge you had, your parents would say, well, it was your responsibility to study for the test, right? If you fail a test, your parents get mad at you, the teacher calls them in, and you say, hey, man, I did the best I could with the knowledge I had, they would say, but you were supposed to study. You are responsible for gaining the knowledge you need to pass a test, right? So the while, the sophistry, The manipulation is, hey, man, I did the best I could with the knowledge I had, which as a grown-ass adult who's in charge of children is a pretty sad excuse, particularly if you then say to your children when they're young, that's no excuse. I did the best I could with the knowledge I had. That's no excuse.
[17:53] Or if your parents say if they were abusive or mean or did things that were wrong or bad and then when you get older you confront them and then they say well you need to let go of the past you need to stop being bothered by the past you need to move on right just move on you're stuck in the past and you need to move on and i'm giving you good advice and so on right okay, Fortunately, my mother never tried this one with me because my answer to my mother, if she had ever said, you're stuck in the past, you need to move on and stop being bothered by the past, is I would say, you're still complaining about the divorce from 30 years ago.
[18:33] How dare you tell me to move on when, you know, I was in my mid-teens and we were going to restaurants and drawing up fantasy lists of everything you were going to force my father to pay for. And that you were, when you first met him again at a family gathering, at a wedding, when you first met him again in many, many, many years, you complained about him again and were upset with him again. So that's not good. And the other thing too, of course, is that if you complain to your parents and then they say, why are you so stuck in the past? You've got to let things go. You've got to move on. Well, did your parents ever, when you were growing up, did your parents ever bring up things that you had done in the past in a negative fashion?
[19:18] Or if they found out that you had done something negative, but they found out days or weeks or even months later, were they unbothered by it? If they found out, say, that you had, I don't know, lost a flashlight or lost your braces, right? Or lost your glasses, but they didn't find out for a week or so, or maybe longer. If they were upset about it and you were to say to them, man, me losing this stuff, that's in the past. You got to let it go. You got to move on. Don't let the past control you. Don't let just move on, man. Would they have said, yeah, you know, it's really good advice. I shouldn't be bothered by stuff that happened in the past. Well, that's a problem.
[20:07] The wiles is this kind of sophistry where a moral is advanced. It's better to X, right? It's better to not judge people by impossible standards. Sure, that's reasonable, right? But if the impossible standard is, well, I lacked knowledge, well, you can always gain knowledge, right? I failed my math test because I didn't know the math. Well, it was your responsibility to know the math. You can't just say, well, I did the best I could with the knowledge I had, right? So, that is a false standard that is put forward to evade moral responsibility, and the reason we know it's a false standard is that parents, neglectful or abusive parents when confronted, will pull out all of these moral standards that they did not follow when they were parents. They will claim excuses as adults that they never would have granted their children when their children were 4 or 6 or 8 or 10 or 15 or whatever, right? Or parents, when confronted with bad behavior, will say, well, I had a bad childhood. To which, of course, the response is, well, if you knew that you had a bad childhood, then you'd be responsible for fixing the effects.
[21:21] Well, I had it worse than you. Well, first of all, that's unverifiable. And secondly, if you know that you had a bad childhood, then you are responsible for fixing it. Right? I mean, if as a kid you put your hand in a fire and it burns, then you are responsible for keeping your children's hands out of fire because you know how much it burns, and you certainly should not be grabbing their hands and putting them into a fire.
[21:46] And of course, there is a rank contradiction between I did the best I could with the knowledge I had, and I may have acted poorly, but my excuse is that I had a bad childhood, so it wasn't really my fault.
[21:59] I mean, if you know you had a bad childhood, then you had the knowledge necessary to improve things, right? It would be like me as a kid saying, yes, I failed the math test and I knew that I didn't have the knowledge to pass it. Well, that would make my responsibility for failing the math test go up, not down. So when parents say, well, I acted badly because I had a bad childhood.
[22:25] Saying, well, I know what bad parenting is, therefore I had no capacity to improve my bad parenting. If your father had a father who yelled at him and then he yelled at you, then he knows exactly how bad it is. And he has full access to that because he claims it as an excuse. But if you claim something as an excuse, then you know the causality.
[22:44] I acted badly because I had a bad childhood, in which case you're responsible for fixing it. If someone were to genuinely say, However, we could measure that genuinely. I have no idea why I acted badly. That's a whole different situation. That's a whole different situation.
[22:59] So, the wiles are in the false morals that are invoked in the moment in order to gain some material advantage, control, or dominance. In the moment. In the moment. I mean, the sort of typical example is the mainstream media being very, very sad that government workers are losing their jobs while previously having zero empathy for Republicans who were losing their jobs, like the gym manufacturing people, people who tended to vote for the right. So if the principle is we should have sympathy for those who lose their jobs, then they should have had sympathy for the Republicans who lost their job, but they didn't. I learned to code. You'll get a job in the green economy. It doesn't matter. Who cares? Things got to change. Things got to move on. You'll deal with it, right? So if there's this coldness to people losing their jobs, but suddenly when those on the left are losing their jobs, there's this massive tearful, well, these are people too, and sympathy. That's a while. It's repulsive. It's just like skin-crawlingly, spine-vomity repulsive. These are the wiles.
[24:10] Leads to the line. Now, fortunately, of course, we have the internet to point out hypocrisy, and the understanding of hypocrisy is the liberation from false morality. You know, when I finally physically fought back against my violent mother, and she was just horrified and appalled, and how dare you, and it's like, okay.
[24:28] Like the criminal who's only into gun control when somebody else has the gun, right? When you get the gun from the criminal, suddenly he feels that violence is just a terrible way to solve things. I mean, it's just rank hypocrisy and self-serving moral contradictions are everywhere in the world. I mean, you can't live and breathe without seeing them everywhere at all times, under almost all circumstances. I mean, questioning the validity of elections is something, of course, that when the left does it, it's protecting democracy. When the right does it, it's an insurrection. It's terrible. It's just appalling. It's destroying democracy. Just, you know, it's sort of boring, boring stuff. So it's interesting, the full armor of God, well, the full armor of God is universal morals. And this is why empiricism is so valuable. It's essential. It's essential when it comes to evaluating people's moral propositions. So, all the people who said healthcare is a human right, were they complaining when healthcare was effectively shut down for months or in cases years over COVID?
[25:40] No, no, no. We have to find a way to health care, right? So they don't care. They don't care.
[25:46] So universality and empiricism is the way that you defend against these devilish sophistries and manipulations. So the universalism is extract the principle and see if the person has betrayed that principle in the past, right? So your mother, you complain about your mother to your mother and your mother says, well, you've got to let go of the past. You've got to forgive the past. You've got to move on. And then you say, well, hang on, but you were constantly complaining about dad, during and after the divorce for years and years and years, right? So you make it a universal principle, right? You make it a universal principle. And then you see if the person has followed that universal principle. Well, we've got to have sympathy to people who were losing their jobs. Okay. Well, when your political opponents lost their jobs, did you feel sympathy, right? I mean, if people say violent protests by the right are unacceptable, okay, well, by the right is not a moral category, right? So, violent protests are unacceptable, and did you ever say the same thing and condemn violent protests by the left?
[26:58] So, universalism is, okay, so this is your moral principle. Let's find out if you have followed that moral principle in the past, in a consistent fashion? Well, that's how you, the full armor of God is universalism plus empiricism. And universalism plus empiricism is how you dismiss people's moral arguments. Right?
[27:21] Parents say, well, we did the best we could with the knowledge we had, but they punished you or got mad at you or whatever for failing a test in which you did the best you could with the knowledge that you had, then clearly they don't believe in the defense called, do the best you can with the knowledge you had or have, right? They don't believe in that. And so you can dismiss this as a manipulative, pathetic defense, as a sophistry, as a devilish wile in this context, right? You extract the principle, and you see if the person has followed the principle in any reasonably, I mean, who's perfect, right? Reasonably consistent fashion. And of course, you see this all over Twitter, right?
[28:00] People on the left condemning what people on the right do, and then you say, well, did you condemn it when people on the left did it? And of course, they didn't, so you just dismiss them. You just dismiss them. Are you willing to live your values? If you're not willing to live your values, then I won't listen to your argument, because they're not morals, their manipulations. And it's really repulsive to use people's moral sense in an attempt to gain dominance and control over them. In other words, using their desire for virtue and consistency to dominate and control them. To deploy morals to excuse your own child abuse is repulsive in the extreme. And it is, of course, a continuation of the abuse. Does the person grab morals in a way like they're running from a bear grabbing rocks, turning and throwing the rocks. They're just desperate to avoid a negative experience, so they just grab and throw whatever they think might stick. We see this, of course, all the time.
[28:58] Right so the full armor of god is somebody comes at you with a moral argument you extract the principle and then you find out and you can do this very easily this is a great thing about the internet is people's moral stances and statements are recorded and easily searchable for all time, right it's beautiful so you can very easily go back you don't have to go to the library look up books find some way to publish it and get it out somebody tweets something you extract the moral principle, you find out that they've completely violated that moral principle in the past for their own team or their own benefit. And then you point that out and you say, okay, well, I mean, you don't believe this is just a move, right? I mean, this is amazing, right? The full armor of God is the internet never forgets, right? It's amazing. So the full armor of God is universality and then empiricism. Now, of course, people will say, well, just because I've been hypocritical doesn't mean that my argument is invalid. Well, I mean, that's true. Hypocrisy is not a proof that an argument is invalid, but it is proof that you cannot trust the hypocrite.
[30:08] Especially if the hypocrite is hiding his hypocrisy, like you cannot trust the hypocrite. So while it certainly is true that a hypocrite, being hypocritical does not disprove a moral argument, being a hypocrite absolutely destroys the value of engaging in a moral debate with a hypocrite, if that makes sense. So, if someone says, you should be all natural in bodybuilding competitions, and then it turns out that they've been juicing with steroids, that does not destroy, the validity of the argument that you should be all natural in bodybuilding competitions, but it will get you disqualified from the bodybuilding competition, right?
[30:46] The argument, but it destroys the validity of the interaction.
[30:52] And I feel like I need to make this point again, but it's probably redundant. I don't know that I've made it forcefully enough. Somebody who's a moral hypocrite, it doesn't prove or disprove their moral arguments, but it disqualifies them from credibility in moral conversations. So if somebody's a hypocrite, doesn't mean that their argument is proven or disproven, but it does mean I'm not going to debate with them because they will only ever be true or accurate accidentally, right? I mean, you wouldn't hire a blind batter for your softball team or your hardball team or whatever, right? Like you wouldn't, let's say you're at the top levels of baseball, you're in the show, right? Well, you wouldn't hire a blind batter, even though the blind batter could every once in a blue moon, hit a home run. Because he would not be a good batter. You say, yes, but you know, once every 10 years he can hit a home run. It's like, but he's not a good batter because he's only hitting a home run accidentally. He can't even see the ball.
[31:56] So you don't hire him because he cannot consistently produce value. And so somebody who's a moral hypocrite, don't engage with them because, well, it's technically true that their moral hypocrisy does not destroy their arguments, you can never trust them to act with good faith and integrity because they're hypocrites. If someone is a con man, it doesn't mean that they will never pay their bills on time, but you don't do business with them. If someone's a con man who argues for the value of property rights, you understand that arguing for the value of property rights is just a way of camouflaging his con, right?
[32:36] A cheating man or a con man who runs a bank who constantly tells everyone your funds are secure and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, if he turns out to be a cheat, that doesn't invalidate the importance of having your funds be secure in a bank. But it does mean that you wouldn't do any business with him ever again. I mean, if Bankman Fried ever gets out of jail and opens up another crypto exchange, if he's ever allowed to, would you put your crypto in his hands? Well, of course not. Because they're only making arguments to camouflage their corruption. So putting on the full armor of God to defend against the wiles of the devil, right, that's what it means. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. That's powerful, right?
[33:28] Spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. So it means that the angels are actually devils, right? The devils are pretending to be angels in order to fool you into thinking that you're subjugated to morality when you're only controlled by sophistry, manipulated by sophistry, right? In the heavenly places, in the appearance of virtue, spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places, right? The best camouflage for the devil is as an angel, and the best way for you to be enslaved is for someone to convince you of a moral good that requires your subjugation. Well, you care about the sick and the poor, therefore I have to take half your income to take care of them.
[34:16] So they're pretending to be, you care about the future of the planet, and you don't want your children to be underwater. You don't want cities to be underwater. You don't want the entire economy and environment and planet to be destroyed, do you? You care about the future. I mean, I'd believe the global warming stuff if people were tackling the national debt. And if they're not tackling the national debt, then they don't care about the future and they don't care about a good environment for their children. They don't. It's just foundational, right? I mean, tackling the national debt would not prove that global warming is true, but it would prove that people cared about the future of the world. But they don't. They don't.
[35:00] So the appearance of virtue, spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places, smuggling coercive control in under the guise of empathy, compassion, and morality, is how the devil does his work. How the devil does his work. Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. And of course it's all in preparation for great moral temptations right all of this is in preparation because there will come a time and probably more than one it happens more and more the more virtuous you are but there will come a time when the devil will slide up to you under the guise of an angel and will say to you, this is the path to goodness. This is the path to goodness. And a lot of life is preparation for that moment. And depending on how you respond to that moment, the devil either comes back stronger or stays away and tries to silence you from the world. Because the devil does not want you as an example of resisting the devil because that will embolden and strengthen others. I would imagine that most of the people who we deplatformed were first tempted with money and power and status.
[36:29] But they resisted, and the deplatforming is to hide their integrity from view so the people are not strengthened in this battle that Ephesians is talking about. All right, I hope that makes sense. I really do appreciate your time, care, thoughts, and attention. Your support is most gratefully and humbly accepted to freedomman.com slash donate. Lots of love from up here, my friends. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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