Episode #219: The Armour of God Series PT 1-Girting Ourselves With Truth W/Joshua Winchell

0:12 Mr. Winchell, every time I hear your last name, I think of Winchell's Donuts. Are they even still around? I'll tell you a story. I'll tell you one story about me. When I lived in, it was Sandy, UT I was living in, there was a Winchell's Donuts down the street and I had some fun. I pulled out my Alaskan driver's license, went in there and there was there was some young kids working there too. I pulled it out. I showed my my driver's license to him. I said I'm from quality control, from Winchell's corporate. I go, my name's Josh. My name is, you know, it's Corey Winchell. I was born Corey Winchell. It's Corey Winchell. And I need to, I need to inspect this place and possibly, you know, taste some of these doughnuts. And they walked me in the back and then they were like, wait a minute.

0:54 And I was like, yeah, yeah, he caught me. I'm just joking around. Let me buy 6 doughnuts. So I don't know that they're around anymore. They were at one time. I think Duncan's put him out of business, so I don't know. You know, I remember when I was living in, in, in Denver with, with my folks, I remember they had a bunch of Winchell's Donuts there and they were good. I mean, they weren't bad at all. Now, now that you told me that trick, since you're a, a former attorney, I assume there's no problem with me at all just walking in the back with of, of a Krispy Kreme there, right? You're, you're, you're telling me that's perfectly legal? I told them I wasn't. I actually came clean. I wanted to.

1:36 Yeah, it was, it was something I I was like, let's do this, man. Let's do. Because I was called Donut. I was the captain of my football team, state football and my whole name. They called me Donut my whole life. And I was like, can't you call me Winch? Can't you call me something else other than Donut? And yeah, I've, I've gotten that all my life. I haven't heard that actually in about 30 years. So that, that's my background. I didn't tell. Her been fine with with winch. I mean, that sounds so close to winch. You don't. I want that Well. Yeah, they, they they never called me. I don't know. I was just like, Donut for real. They're like, come here. But they, they didn't take it too far. Juno has no Winchell's Donuts, so only a few of them knew about it. So dude. Yeah, man, I'm, I'm from Alaska. In fact, I was five years old when McDonald's hit Juno, the first McDonald's. And I remember asking my mom and dad because I heard them talking about it, what it was.

2:25 And they said, well, it's a place where you can go eat hamburgers. And I'm like, well, let you know we make hamburgers at home. And then I remember we drove by like mom and dad really, really wanted a Big Mac, I guess. But I remember sitting in line for hours, dude, waiting to get through the drive through, and people were lined up on foot out of the store. I mean, it was a big deal back then. So what, let me ask you this. We're going to reminisce here for just a little bit more. In Juno, there was a hotel called the Prospector that used to serve buffets. Is that still there? Interestingly enough, the sister to the mother of my children, Jessica, we're all very tight, you know, even though my my wife's mainstream and I'm this we I've followed the 1132 and we've stayed very close friends. She is the manager there name's Jessica. It's called the Ramada now, but it's still the prospector to everybody that ever knows it.

3:21 That big sign that you're talking about because everybody it is now over. It is over right next to a place and everybody can see it by the side of the road. And I was like, I should buy that. I should buy that prospector sign 'cause it's like the Alaska airline sign. You know, you got that really notable picture of that, of that. I think he's Aleut or he could be a Anubic via the native. And then you've also got the prospector sign, which is the sourdough I'll. Tell you what, when I was a kid living there with my my folks, as you and I have talked on the Prospector Hotel, there used to be a picture of an old weathered prospector. And I remember Sunday mornings we would go and have breakfast there at the buffet.

4:08 And I used to call it the old man because I didn't know what a prospector was or how to pronounce prospector probably. And so we always used to just call it the old man's. But we'd go in there and we'd have, we'd have dinner or excuse me, breakfast once a week at the at the breakfast buffet. It wasn't the, yeah, the whole they, they had a light called the Prospector and they had this huge old letter, like Old West lettering called the Prospector Hotel. And it was called the Diggins Room back then. And it was a mining motif. But back when you were there at 5 or 6, you'd walk in there and you'd see these old like hats and you'd have like a little dangling light from the 1930s. It's called Diggins now, it's called TK Mcguire's and it's the Ramada, but same room. I grew up in it every what is it? Every Easter Grandma who was not, she was not religious either.

5:00 She's actually religious, but not she wouldn't go to church. She would take us down every Easter and stuff like that and we'd do the buffet stuff. I go there actually probably once a month. I know, I know everybody there so. Oh man, that's where I developed my utter love for biscuits and gravy. They had killer biscuits and gravy. I've been the World Round and Mike's Place in Douglas, which is closed now, but Mike's Place in Douglas, which is a island right next to our city, like 2 miles, it's the same thing as our city. And the prospector made the best roast beef. And I've been all over. I've been to France, I've been to Europe, I've been all the best roast beef I've ever had in my life. So I mean, it is good food. I mean, it's decent food.

5:42 It's the people go there for the fish when they come up to Alaska. But anyway, so totally. Well, man, I'm, I'm glad you're here and we're going to talk, start talking about the armor of God, right? This is the first one in the series. And look, I've had you on before with Drew when we were talking about the restored scriptures, but we didn't get a lot of time to talk about you. And I wanted to get get, get us off on the right foot here by by having you talk a little bit about yourself. Tell us how you got here. Kind of give us your Mormon credentials. OK, to give you a background, I'm, I'm what you would. I'll tell you what I call myself. Let me give you a background as to what I've done.

6:22 I my studies. How do I do this? I've been LDS my whole life. I've been a what you call a fundamentalist for at least 16 years. At least it's closer. It's pushing 18 now. I don't have a community here in Juneau that's that is conducive to it. So I ended up attending my the, the church. And so if you would have come into, say, Mormon doctrine class and the topics turn to either Adam or other things, you sitting in there would know exactly what I was saying, but they would slowly get it that I would say we've we've been to the temple and as you know, when we go to the temple, we're learning the things of the Lord and the things of God and the things of eternity.

7:07 And he always seems to teach us that, that Michael created the earth under the tutelage of Elohim and Jehovah. And it appears that he really wants us to emulate Michael. And then, you know, my eyes look around the room. Nobody gets it. But David's sitting in the room going winch. You need to come down. You need to come down to Utah. You really do, brother. And so it was like that for about a decade. Little less. I've got no acrimony per SE. I love these. I've known in my whole life, this is this is my town. I've been here off and on. Like I said, I've lived all over the world. I've lived in the Southwest, I've made it through. I didn't live in Missouri, but I've been there a few times.

7:48 So that's. Called the great state of Missouri. Missouri, yeah, I do use the a because I know a lot of people there. I don't use the I. So it's Missouri to me. And and I've got friends, I've had friends there in in KC, you know, and and the rest KC was my team for for a lot of years. My football coach was alignment for the Kansas City Chiefs back in the early 70s. And so anyway, so I think what you're but to give you a background, I'm true blue through and through. I my conversion story came through a series of testimony builders at research and some private, just private stuff. I don't I don't get into this online because much, but IA series of dreams and a series of we'll just say personal reflections.

8:33 You, you might call them like intimate personal revelations that we really have to get back to the religion that was restored because we have a, we have a leader, a dispensation leader. And they only come around once every little while. And I really started coming back to the knowledge of it. So I asked a lot of questions. I did a lot of things that was done very privately for myself. But after a few years, I just came out and said I need to find people that understand me. And I found them and you're one of them. So I can give you my background actually is law. I was a lawyer for I think 11 years. I still AM.

9:18 I mean, I've got my licenses. I just pay them up at I'm licensed in three states, pay them up and I'm back in the seat. The Lord actually, I feel it was very personal, said you need to repent of this and forsake this profession. And if you're going to do it, you need to do it either pro bono and you need to do it for the elderly, you know, maybe like some probates and some wills or for bankruptcy to help people get out of crushing debt. But you don't need to be a part of this anymore. And that was debilitating for me. I, I did love the practice. I was AI was a corporate counsel, business counsel. I practiced general law, but it was, it was pretty clear pretty pretty much time. So I went black back to blue collar work and some other private businesses. My background prior to that, I was I studied actually down there in Cedar City at SUUI, studied political science and I minored in history.

10:12 And the interesting thing with that is my my grades didn't suffer, but I got Magna cum laude. It wasn't summa. I got Magna in the areas of my interest, which was political science and history. And I loved history so much. I was going to become a historian, but I started looking around about the time of oh gosh, what's his name? Oh, very, very, very famous church historian. The the most hue nibly Hugh Nibley. I looked at Hugh Nibley's works and realized he was so intelligent, so amazingly intelligent. But I would look at some of these historians, bear their testimony and they'd stand up and start arguing about what this doctor thought or what this researcher thought or what that archaeologist thought.

11:00 And I felt that they started losing a little bit, just a little bit of their testimony in the rock or core doctrine. So I went to political science and became a political historian. I mean, if you would have known me back then, my big thing was Polybius and Thucydides. I don't look like this, but I was a geek man. Thucydides and Polybius, the the history of the Peloponnesian War and the history of the Roman Republic. I mean, if you, if you know Linus from Peanuts, like put a bust of Beethoven on his piano would have had a bust of Polybius like right there on my side. That's that's what I was like back then. So. All the chicks dig Dug. No, no. No, no, no, no, no, man, They dug me. They didn't dig that.

11:45 You know what I did? I'll tell you what I did. I put the quote of Patrick Henry on my phone message machine. I put the. I put the. I quoted Patrick Henry's fiery rhetorical Give me liberty. Liberty or give? Me get. The whole thing I can quote, I'm not going to do it for you, but I can quote it. I stuck that on my phone machine and, and the only ladies that ever stuck around were the ones that could could handle that. And there were a couple. I mean, you got to hand it to him. That was me back then, David. So I wanted you to see who I was so that you could see where I've come from and then where I am today. I'm of what you would call a political historian. I don't, I don't believe there's a science to it. I believe it's political history. And you've got maxims that that apply in political history to everything.

12:33 So you're going to see me approach that this way tonight. But you're going to see it testimonial. You're going to see faith rather than this doctor or that researcher or that archaeologist. So anyway, that's a background of me, man. I mean, I'm a Mormon, true blue through and through. I'm a fundamentalist. I'm a Musserite is what you guys call. I have my priesthood through Joseph Musser and I'm an independent. And I don't know what else to tell you, man. I just feel like I've, I've, I've spilled a lot of my history in the last five minutes, more than you probably knew. Oh, it's good. It's good. Look, there are bad attorneys for sure, but there's also some good ones too. And shout out to Randall Edwards, he's one of the good ones.

13:14 And so like, I don't necessarily subscribe to the all attorneys are bad thing, right? I think attorneys are needed. I, I think the average layperson is going to have a hard time navigating the entirety of known history of jurisprudence and starry decisis in America. And so I, I do think that they're absolutely needed and, and there are definitely some good ones out there. So at what point, Josh, did you start realizing? Because, because here's the thing, when you start talking about becoming a fundamentalist, there's like stages to it, right? It doesn't just happen overnight most of the time.

13:55 So, so there's definitely stages there. At what point were you, like, all of a sudden like, oh man, I think I'm a fundamentalist. What happened? It's actually a good story. I was 19, mainstream preparing for my mission and I went in to BYU, Idaho back then was called Rick's. And I spoke to a gentleman that I knew from childhood and I said I'm having issues understanding the notion of plural marriage. And the problem really wasn't doctrinal for me. It was cultural because I was raised, I'm raised in a in a place. It's really odd because people, even Protestants, even non religious, they'll practice their variants of plural marriage. They just aren't up to the moral standard that say others. Maybe, and I'm not trying to be arrogant about this, but we have established mores and rules and morals about it. They'll do it, but they won't call it that and they'll excuse it in so many different ways.

15:02 And so I was having problems back then. I was saying, why do we do this? What's the real deal behind this? And I, we had a nice little just discussion, a little bit of a religious knock down drag out. And he just said, at some point or another, you know, you have to have faith that that Joseph Smith and these men knew what they were doing and that plural marriage was, was the law. And this was coming from a church theologian in the educational CES system that I trusted. And he was not doing apologetics. He was telling me straight up, if you're going to understand it, you got to have faith in it. And it took me about two, two or three months, about half now I would say 8 months into my mission. And I remember the calming influence I felt. I, I just, it was, you don't have the faith of the wherewithal right now, but when you do, this is the law of heaven.

15:54 And I, I, I took that and I started getting into Mormon doctrine through Mcconkey. I went into obviously Joseph Smith's teachings, Brigham Young's and the rest of it. Never got deeply involved in the in the Journal of Discourses until the last few years. But I taught myself through the teachings and all I could get from Joseph Smith and I just said I'm going to be a dry, plural celestial marriage advocate. I'm going to be dry about this, but I'm going to believe in this. I'm going to, I'm going to do it. I'm not going to apologize for it ever again. I'm not going to feel bad or ashamed of it again. And if somebody brings it up, I'm not going to be belligerent, but I'm going to be the one at the church saying, why do we have this problem where everybody looks at the floor when this subject's brought up? And then I so I was, I was the one not advocating it. I was the one saying shame on the other people for not letting us believe in practice.

16:52 And I went through that stage for about 10 years without being a severe advocate. The issue would only come up maybe once or twice a year. And then from there I realized that there was the Adam Adam God doctrine. And that that's I'd say that's the early 2000s when I realized that I'd been going to a temple repeatedly and been being shown exaltation in its very framework hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times that that was the the Lord was saying, are you clean? Have you have you lived these five principles? Do you believe in the law of Elohim? Do you believe in the law of the Lord? Do you believe in the other all the other laws. OK, if you do, let me show you something. Let me show you Adam.

17:41 Let me show you a man named Jehovah and Elohim. And then I just after 60-70 eighty times. I just looked at that and I said, you and all of you, you must place yourself as Adam at the altar. Cause I've been told that hundreds of times. And I just looked up and I said, OK, I said, OK, I'm going to place myself as Adam at the altar. What do you want me to do? And then all of a sudden it came to me and all of the things. And so I got it independently. I didn't get it through the fundamentalists. I got it independent of that. And for many years I thought I'd have to go do it on my own. I thought of fundamentalist down in Utah and thereabouts, kind of as LDS versions of the Amish, you know, I or the Mennonites. I I'm not making fun because I know you guys so well. I am one, but I was like, oh, they're kind of the Mennonites. They're the Amish.

18:36 And I'm going to go do this the way Joseph did it. And after a few years, the Lord's like, no, no, no, you don't hope these guys have got a key in a line in and you guys need to go down. You need to go down. And you met me a couple, two, 2 1/2, maybe three years. Oh, no, you would have met Me 2 1/2 years ago. And so I started. So that was my my story is a little bit, it's not the classic story. I did go through my brief Heber J Grant's the devil time just like you do it. You did you know you Heber J Grant. Really. Did dude, I'm still there. Yeah, well, I am too with the thing. It's Wilford, I mean.

19:16 I I have a soft spot for Wilford. I think he was put in a tremendously horrible position. I do think he chose wrong, obviously, but for me Grant ultimately is where everything goes off the rails and goes awry. What happened with me is I am with you and if you look at my posts online, I've been brutal, brutally honest. Not brutal, but brutally honest about what what the Grand Tites did to the church because they are, they are the literal descendants of a Grand Tite, an apostasy of the Grand Tites. But when you look at what he was doing in the 30s and 40s with his kids, he was preaching the principal to his kids because Truman Madsen used to used to get on tapes and talk about his grandfather preaching the principal in 1932 to his uncle. And I'm like, I'm like, what's going on here? I thought he was the one back in 1912 that was throwing that wonderful apostle or 191113, that wonderful apostle, John W Taylor, trying to throw him out of the out of the church after they'd scooted him out of the 12 apostles in O 6. And so I started letting up a little bit, realizing that he's, he's a bureaucrat, he's a Politico. He's he's lost his shine.

20:30 But he certainly doesn't disbelieve in plural marriage. It's just not true. Wolford Woodruff. That's true right, That is correct. I get that he never lost his testimony of the principal, but he's the last polygamist prophet we have and is very hard on polygamists. And the problem is is that when I look at grant it smacks of rules for thee but not for me, and that's where he tends to lose me a lot is kind of that hypocrisy. Let. Me tell you I'm on your side. Let me let's tag Team Heber for a second. In 19 O 6, what they did was so because I've read, I've read the I've read the notes on both his excommunication and what they did when he left the the quorum.

21:13 But in 19 O 6 by O four, they started bringing monogamists on mass into the 12 by 1911 or 13, whenever they excommunicated him, they brought the monogamist and let them ask questions while Joseph F Smith was in the background. He asked twice because I've read the Ledger of his excommunication. He asked to speak to the Prophet twice and the Prophet. Not only did the Prophet not do it, Heber J Grant whispered into the monogamist who were asking these questions. They had no evidence. It was a it was a complete sham show by monogamist who had taken over the high, high, high priesthood. And we're running it pretty much into mammonism.

21:55 So I'm with you. I am with you 100% that there's no doubt. Here's the thing I have against against dear Wilfred Woodruff. I agree with you up and until 1898. Until then, I would agree that he was placed in a bad place. But if you read his his journal himself, the last three pages of his journal, he went over to San Francisco. He met with dozens and dozens and dozens of politicos for statehood. He stayed at his lobbyist house. The church was saying, no, he's over there. He's he's doing a little bit of a respite because he's old. No, he wasn't. He met with the Bohemian Club and was invited on a two week camping trip. What that means is that means the Bohemian Grove. He was invited on a two week camping trip, then brought in front of the entire Bohemian Club, met with their Hierophant, their high priest, and had a lovely time. He died five days later.

22:52 This was always about statehood. So he said if I ever do something that the Lord doesn't agree with, it is not the program. He will take my life and I say promise made, promise kept. That guy was going to join in with the Western elite. He was going to head up to the Bohemian Grove on a two week camp out and then he was getting and he was meeting with those guys. I know that this is going to be electric for many people. For me, Brigham Young was placed in such an awful situation, but he was a Samson shorn to me. How dare. And then the church when he died said he was over there on respite. He was just, he was convalescing. That's what they said publicly.

23:33 He's over there. He's not convalescing. He's politicking up for statehood and the senators. And then the very next month when he comes, when you have Lorenzo Snow asking the Lord, Lorenzo Snow sees the Lord out in the balustrade instead of the holy of Holies. Can I tell you my take, my take and I, it's going to start a little bit of a fire, My take. First, first thing we need to do. Let's qualify this. OK, this is is this in the realm of theory? I have. The evidence I have comes indirectly and it is hearsay, so I'll tell you that.

24:14 And it is my opinion. It is not. I'm very fair. Remember my historical background. I will always tell you, yeah, I'm not going to preach doctrine when it's only me. So sure, sure. OK, so this is we have this Pasha's theory on things. We have it on good information that the granddaughter of Lorenzo Snow was asked by a very close we'll just say a contact within my it was Ogden, but he he spoke to the granddaughter and said hey, you know that that discussion with the Lord on the right by the steps and not in the holy of holies. Did that have to do with what happened with polygamy, plural marriage?

24:57 Did the Lord say, I'm never going to speak to you again inside this holy of holies because of plural marriage? And Ogden said that she assented to what he said. Yeah. I don't know if it was verbal, nonverbal, a head nod or whatever, but she said my grandfather spoke to me. And when he said just answer by nod or not nod, Kevin's going to be the one that knows the story better. I do believe that the Lord no longer was in the holy of holies because of the way that ended and specifically because Wilfred Woodruff went to San Francisco and bent the knee and kissed the ring. I really believe that, brother. I believe that at that point the Lord said, I can speak to you right here and right here by the by the stairs. That suits me just fine.

25:42 I love you, Lorenzo. Do this. There's tithing to do other types of things to do. We're not going to discuss anything in that holy of holies until we get this thing right again, until we go back and get it right. That's my personal belief. So am IA fundamentalist? I tend to think so. I, I, I take exception to both Heber and Heber, J Grant and Wilfred at the end. But I know what you're saying. I've read his revelations of 1880. Tremendous when he was down there in Arizona and being told to never give up plural marriage. You know, all of that stuff. Just tremendous man. He was a tremendous man, but he was a Samson shorn. He went to San Francisco and he did those things. David, I'll get you or you can get online and go read the Diaries. It'll break your heart, it'll break your heart in two because when you say what is a two week vacation with the Bohemian Club and then and then you met with them later, He didn't go on vacation.

26:36 He met with them and he sat right next to their leading hierophant. This guy had participated in what's called the crematorium of care. That's where they, they basically engage in a crematorium. So it's what it's what the Bohemian Grove is what everybody gets scared about. He had already participated in a couple, half a dozen of those, this person that he's sitting next to and getting chummy with. And anyway, I, I don't, I don't want to start a fire. I'm just saying Wilfred Woodruff was a great man, but he was a Samson and a Samson shorn. And that's how I thought all. Right. So that kind of covers how you got here. And so now you're just up there in Alaska, working, doing your thing.

27:18 I I have, yeah, I have investments up here. I've got my kids up here, you know, we're going to be online. I've I've got, I've got children. Two of them are of age. They're they're of majority age. I'm, I'm raising two more. I have a close decent relationship with their mother. We married as mainstream and I'm you, you know where that lies. We we have a very decent relationship, but I am I am who I am and and you know what I mean by that. So and so I'm here. I'm here in Juneau. My background, like I said, is political history. And then I went and took a law degree at Gonzaga and practiced law for a good eleven years.

27:59 Hung up the hung up the gloves. You talk to me about good lawyers. I tend to agree with you. Let me give you a couple of stories. My son there at the end when I was doing a couple of things. This was up here in Juneau, my heyday. I was AI was a regional, I was a regional corporate counsel at one point for APEO that was rather large. We had six states. It was between 20 and 30,000, maybe even 40,000 worksite employees. And I was travelling around taking care of a lot of things. But at later in my career, my son would argue with me about everything at all under the sun. He would we somebody would say that's blue and he'd say, no dad, that's actually cerulean.

28:41 It's cerulean. It's not cool. And I looked over at him and I was like, we're going to do this at the dinner table. It's like, I do this all day. You were going to do this. And I remember praying. And after a while the Lord's just saying, he's saying there's so much for you. There's so much for them. This isn't your bailiwick. This is going to make you into something that I can't reach. And that's what I mean. And so lawyers, there are good ones. But if you follow that line, instead of becoming a judge in Zion or a judge in Israel, you become argumentative, you become obstreperate. It's, I'm not saying all lawyers, not your lawyers that you know, Donathan was a decent man for Joseph Smith. There are good lawyers, but they have to be careful about where they take their where they take their passions. Gotcha.

29:28 Gotcha. 10 four. All right, well, let's dig into it, man. You're you're you're up here. It's your turn. What? What we're we're talking about the armor of God and yeah, let's let's just get into it. We you were you took the the the hell the to gird your loins about with truth. Right. So let's get into her. OK, well, let's start. I'm going to, I'm going to use some words and again, I'm going to tell you I, I, I'm a man of passion, as you heard with, with some of my things about John W Taylor and, and some of those things with other it I'm a man of passion. But I do need to, I'd like to start what's called with what's called exit.

30:17 It's it's called exegesis or exegesis. It's called The Who, what, when, where, and how of Ephesians 611 through 18. That's your armor of God. So let's just get into it. The epistle itself by Paul. I'm going to throw out some facts. I gave you a bibliography so that you didn't think I was just pulling it out of thin air, out of a hat and. We'll post that, we'll post that with these, with this episode show notes as well to make sure that people see that as well. Now on those pictures you sent me, did you want to share those on the podcast? If you, if you want to, I'll reference them and you can pull them up. You just slow me down and you say, hey, Josh, slow down and let's let's get this up here. But I'm going to walk through some facts. I usually take the majority view and where I don't take the majority view, I explain why I'm taking the minority or the growing majority here.

31:13 And the reason I do that is so that you guys don't think I'm just making stuff up to fit my argument. You'll in fundamentalism especially, you'll, you'll see a lot of guys, they'll come out with an idea and then I'll try to fit the idea doctrinally by coming off with some tangent and you've got to say, hey, we've got a lot of people doing this for a long time and this is what we think. So here we go. Nearly all scholars agree that Paul was enduring his first imprisonment at Rome, I think between the years of 60 to 62 when he wrote the epistle that's called Ephesians. Now most of those scholars conclude that it wasn't written to the Ephesians. It it wasn't written to the Ephesians exclusively as the underlying text. It never mentioned Ephesus, but referenced the Saints throughout the regions.

31:59 So the existing document, the the one the underlying text, most scholars would agree that it was a circular. It didn't say Ephesus. It said to the churches abroad. So technically, if you want to just throw out technicalities, Paul is writing to the churches. It would be the epistle of Paul to the churches. Now, how did it get Ephesus on it? Ephesus was the headquarters of Paul in Asia Minor. They're like the seven churches. His main church was in Ephesus. So if he wanted to circulate this out into Asia Minor or the world at large, his headquarters would have been Ephesus. So here he goes.

32:41 He's he's in Rome now. He's in imprisoned in Rome. He's under house arrest in bonds or chains. And he's saying, I'm going to write a, I'm going to write to all the churches. And then obviously he'd have to send that to Ephesus. So what we have now is the book of Ephesians. And also the, the scholars also say that the text that we have was written between say, 70 and 100 AD. That's three to 33 years after Paul was dead. So the text that we have comes between 3 to 33 years after he died. So it was a circular, it was people writing stuff down or sending it out or doing that really.

33:21 Though for for that time period, that's not like that's nothing that should should throw anybody into, you know, doubting what the authenticity of Ephesus. Right. No No 30 to 70. Years is is really quite that shows that it was at least making circulation well before that, right? That's how they did. In fact, like you said, Ephesians is one of the earliest texts we got because some of them were hundreds of years later. But I'm not trying to do it to doubt it. What I'm doing is is you're going to see he's writing to the entire church. He wants everybody everywhere. It's not to the Ephesians over here. It's to everybody everywhere.

34:03 And you're going to see it in there. And it's important for us tonight because we're going to talk about putting on the whole armor of God, but we need to do a little background to see how do we even get to armor and why are we talking about it. So even though the existing text was 33 to 33 years after that, he was he was discussing these things with the entire church. Now you, as you know, Ephesus served as Paul's for Paul in his early missions as the headquarters and he served roughly, I think there were three missions that you that are that are ascribable to Paul. So that's kind of the background of this text. But to get to the text, you have to see how Paul got to Rome.

34:47 So I'm going to kind of get into and this is going to bring up some of our first pictures. I'm going to, I'm going to show pretty much how Paul got over to to Rome after his missions Paul made. Josh, I don't mean to screw up your flow, but as soon as you want me to bring up a picture, let me know and I'll start sharing my screen, OK? We're going to bring up the Soric, which is going to be that first picture of that, that beautiful tile that has the warning of anybody coming into the court. So we're going to do that here in a second. But I want to get to that by giving a background. So it says Paul was under house arrest in Judea from 58 to 60 AD, roughly after a group of Jewish men accused him of bringing a man named Trophimus, which was a Greek beyond the Sorg, into the inner court of the Temple at Jerusalem.

35:37 So I used a lot of fancy words. I used the word called sorg and inner inner court of the Temple at Jerusalem. What the SORG is, it was a set of staves or fencing that would block off the inner court from the court of the Gentiles. And so if you walked past a certain point, you would enter into what was called the inner court and they would have these warnings. And these warnings are intense. We're going to read that here. If you want, let me let me pull up my so I know you're going to have it online, but let me pull up mine so that I can be there with you. There's Paul. And you see my screen here by the way. I'm going back and forth between applications. I can see that I've got mine pulled up and it it shows a tile.

36:28 It says this is the this is a tile that they actually found during the era actually of Paul. It was roughly in that in that time period, but it would have been both in the in the Coiny Greek and it would be done in Latin as well for the benefit of strangers. And so in 58 Paul's in Jerusalem celebrating feast of Pentecost is what this says. And while he's in the city, he meets with James, Jesus's half brother and other Christian elders. That's Acts. It's quoting it there for you. And you can find this by the way, I put the the www.biblestudy.org he says says, but they the Jews having been informed that you are teaching all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to apostatize for Moses telling them not to circumcise their children nor walk in the customs.

37:20 Now, I don't want to be crude with you, but if you brought an uncircumcised person beyond the, the SORG that is almost prima facie it's a legal term of, of you are found absolutely guilty. If you walk an uncircumcised male, adult male into the inner court, you're bringing Gentiles into the court under the, under the guise and auspices of those Jews. And so the there's been arguments throughout that Paul never brought Trophemus in, but what you can see is Paul converted roughly about 30-4. Traditionally it holds that he converted AT34AD. We're moving 24 years past that to 58 or roughly around there, and he's coming into the Sorig and all of his old Pharisitical friends are now aged and they're saying that's Paul or Saul of Tarsus.

38:15 He's running about with all the Jews throughout the Kingdom or up in Asia Minor, throughout Damascus, you know, all of the areas, and he's teaching them not to circumcise. And so these guys get really excited and then the cry goes out. He's got Trophimus with him. He's bringing Trophimus into the inner court. Now let's read what this this sign says because it's intense. I haven't seen signs like this. I've seen one and I'm going to tell you about that, but it's just, it's pretty intense. This is what it reads the translation. No stranger is to enter within the balustrade round the temple and enclosure. Whoever is caught will be responsible to himself for his death, which will ensue.

38:59 That's what it says. It says it in in koion, excuse me, Koina, Greek and in Latin. Now to be clear, stranger means non Jew. It means going, it means gentile. So this is the thing that you're reading as a Greek or with the Latin as a Roman as you're getting really close to that soaring, which is that that fencing that as it goes into the inner court, Paul passes through that and a huge riot ensues because of these these things they're saying this man's teaching men not to circumcise. If you're not circumcised, that prima facie means that you're Gentiles. He's teaching the Gentiles. He's doing this and made a lot of accusations of that nature against Paul, and this caused a huge problem for him.

39:47 So such an action, if true, would be punishable by immediate death. The sign posted there at the entrance explains this with very calm intensity. I've never seen a sign like that but one time in my life. I know you, you guys, you know Christchurch, right over there in Nevada. You. You've been out there. Good folks over there. Yeah, great folks. When I was, my brother was baptized into their denomination. And as we were passing by there, he said, hey, have you ever been to the back gate of Area 52? And I said, no, I haven't been to the back gate of Area 52. We were going back over to Utah. He's like, let's go down there and see what's going on down there. I was like, first of all, are we going to be OK down there? He's like, sure, you're allowed to be down there. People camp out.

40:32 As long as you don't pass, the gate should be fine. We're going down the road, which is approximately 6 miles. It's a right turn off the highway, 6 miles down, and then all of a sudden way up in the distance, I see this gleaming white truck come up all the way on top of a of a bluff. We driving further, driving further, this big Apache, It looks like an Apache. I don't know what it is, but it's one of those military copters, those black ones, comes hovering about 60-70 yards off the ground down the road towards us. Now, this doesn't make what we're doing illegal, but what it was was a show. It was basically saying we don't register you guys, you're not wanted out here. We're just going to let you know you get up to reflection. Wait, have you been out there?

41:18 Yeah, yeah, I, I did a survey close to there once and kind of crapped my pants up once almost because of something, something very similar, Josh. So I went out there with him and I'm sitting there at the gate on the right side of the, the correct side of the gate and I'm reading some of these warnings and it's just like the, the soric warnings, pretty much it says don't, don't step over this gate. Don't come out here if you don't have business out here. It's going to lead to, it's going to lead to everything from civil penalties to death. Don't cross here, you know, and there's a guy in a white truck with a shotgun up there. There's guys up in the air. They were so low to the ground. I could see guys with with automatic light arms on the side by the pilot in the in the helicopter, You know, I, you know, I gave him my own special little, little wave.

42:08 You know, I was, I was in the passenger seat. My brother was driving. So the soaring was a very serious thing. It was it was something people talk about. Hey, don't go into the inner court back then. If you did that, it caused it caused a major, major scuffle. And that's what happened to Paul. He got pulled in, I believe personally to it was a political job on him. He walked into the soaring. Everybody knew and I think they just demonstrated and caused the big ruckus. I don't know that he was bringing gentiles in there. I don't know if Trophimus really made it in there, but he was preaching non circumcision and that probably put him off pretty badly. So they would say he's encouraging Jews to come into the beyond the soaring uncircumcised, which makes them gentiles.

42:55 That's the background of this. And it's important because he's going to go before 2 leaders, Festus first of all, and then over to Agrippa and he, they're going to argue back and forth. When he goes to Festus, he's going to appeal to Caesar. Festus is going to say, well, let's send you to a grip of the second. Agrippa. The second is going to tell him. He's going to say, I understand your argument. I understand where you're coming from. I would free you. You're you would be a free man right now had you not claimed to to go before Caesar, but you've claimed to go before Caesar. You claimed it. So to Caesar, you're going to go. And that's where we are.

43:35 This is the background of this, and it's important because when we get into the armor of God, we're going to see two passages in here that talk about what I believe, and I think you'll believe to be temple worship. At the very beginning of Ephesians. He's going to talk about the needs of these things, and then he's going to talk about putting on the armor of God, not to wrestle with flesh and blood, but against spiritual adversaries. So the temple is crucial to the Ephesians. And, and, and I'm, I'm given the background of this. I'm only going to talk about the loins of truth. I'm not going to stomp down anybody else's area. But I'm I'm saying it's important to see that so that you see Paul as he truly is. Perfect.

44:17 That's that's the soup in which he is swimming, so to speak, right now is he's not making friends. He's kind of a rabble rouser. Yeah, well, when he got in front of Festus, he'd been, he'd been over with the Greeks. And the Greeks traditionally are some of the best argumentation. That's all they did in the agora, that these older men would go to the agora and they would argue, philosophize about everything, could pick up toothpicks and philosophize of toothpicks. He'd been with those guys for 20 years and so I think what he did in front of Festus was he he probably got into that mode and then said, OK, fine, I'll appeal to Caesar. And that's what got him into Rome. Gotcha.

45:00 No, that makes a lot of sense. All right, moving on. Moving on, we're going to go into what I call Roman opinions of Paul, and we're going to do this through two things. It's in the bibliography. I'm just going to kind of speed through this so that we can get to the meat of the matter, which is actually girding the loins with truth. We want to get down to girding and the rest of it. I just want to give you this background. So I bet to understand the term Christian, you have to understand that at the time of Paul, it's anachronistic. And what that means is that nobody used the term Christian. They would say a follower, a Jewish follower of Rabbi Yeshua, They would say these are Jews. And these Jews believe that Rabbi Yeshua has fulfilled the covenant of Messiah, of the Messiah. So prior to 110 AD, calling somebody a Christian is anachronistic, all right?

45:57 It simply was never done. So we have to look at the way Nero sees this. He's saying things like this. He says, wow, 24 years ago there was this big thing and there was a leader and there was a schism and then we had to put them to death. And then I have the Roman guards coming back saying the Christians never really revolted. It wasn't really them. It was these, these, these patriotic types. I, I don't know what's going on, but there seems to be trouble brewing with, with the Jewish, with the with Palestina is what they called it. And so everybody says Nero. Nero didn't like Christians. What Nero was handed was a simmering pot of Palestina between two contending ideologies of Judaism. One was to follow the Messiah, who is a Yeshua who is Jesus Christ, and the other were the traditional Pharositical mosaics.

46:56 That's how the Romans would have seen him because they didn't they didn't refer to him as Christian or crystal lawyer any of that stuff till about 110 ADI see so that it's important to know that and that's that is the growing majority is saying that so history is kind of slighted Nero and Nero is not he's not a the epitome of virtue. OK Nero is not I'm not trying to bring Nero and put him up on a pedestal. I'm trying to be. You're not trying to make Nero great again. No, no, no, no, no, no. So history, I mean, if you, if you could see how that those politics work. His mother, I'm not going to get into history, history so that you know, I made history my minor instead of my major or my master's because it's my passion. I was the guy that when the when the political science teacher would start throwing out things, I would go Fact Check him. And when he started getting in because he got into political dialogues, both of them did.

47:56 I would start, I would start pulling out books. I remember one time he started just tearing into Reagan and tearing into all these things. And I was like, I want to know both sides. So I went out and got went down the bookstore, the little 5 and time start pulling out all these real politic books from Nixon and went through and and fast read through the blurbs and the rest of it. That's who I am. But that's that's where I was going in my life. But the the Lord said don't be a dried read. Don't go down that road. Stay in the believers realm. Don't argue. You see what I'm saying right? Yep, I get you. This is my passion. So this stuff is my passion. So the term Christian was not used at the time of Nero. So from 60 to 62 Paul is in Rome.

48:39 All right, Tacitus would write in, in 120 AD and Suetonius would write, I believe it's 118 AD that the Christians were blamed for the burning of Rome. That couldn't happen. What would have to happen is that Nero would say, I know there's trouble brewing in Palestina. They're they're the biggest rabble rousers in all the umpire. It's probably those guys or that virulent sect of Jews called, you know, the followers of, of Rabbi Yeshua. Those guys may have done it or the Jews may have. There's no proof that he accused Christians of that, except for Tacitus, who was using anachronistic terms like 60 years later.

49:28 This is important because you're going to see Nero is going to let him go. Nero's going. To let Tacitus. Go, no, Tacitus is a historian in in 120. He's going to let, he's going to go after his first imprisonment. Then he's going to bring him back after the burning of Rome and everybody's going to say, oh, it must be the Christians. There are a lot of reasons he would bring him back. And we're going to get into that. And then we're going to get into the loins, the girding of the loins with truth. So I I know I'm talking a lot, but I'm I'm throwing it. Out. No, you're good. You're good. I'm following it. I'm this is good. We're we're doing just fine. All right, so it's important. This is important because we're going to see in this discussion of how to act toward how of how to act toward government and the use of military symbology in the writings of the Ephesians. So he's going to be, but he's going to be in imprisonment and he's going to start using military symbology. In the writings of Ephesians, says Rome would become more bellicose against Judea.

50:32 And history would show that when they say Judea, I mean the Pharisitical Jews, you're going to see that by 67 to 70 before Titus comes in there and just sacks Jerusalem. You're going to see that the Pharisitical side of the Jews became more bellicose than the followers of Yeshua, what you call the Christians so for. Those who don't know, what does the word bellicose mean? They're going to become aggressive. They're going to say we have got to go into Jerusalem and sack Jerusalem. And that's going to be in 6767 to 70 is going to be what's called the the Jewish war. And so I'm, I'm positing that Nero is saying, hey, we've got troubles brewing over here.

51:16 I don't know which is which. They're all Jewish to me. And there's a problem over here. And I'm saying that even after the death of Paul, we're going to see that the Pharisitical Jews, the ones that followed the Mosaic and did not follow Yeshua, we're going to see that the Romans took those guys down as the real target. It'll start with the Spatian and then it'll end with Titus. They weren't focusing in on Christians. They were focusing in on bellicose, highly patriotic, what you would call Maccabean style level Jewish political rhetoric. So. They're still looking for that political savior. They're still looking for the guy to come in, restore the restore the Kingdom of David and and and get get the oppressors off their backs.

52:05 Now you're going to you just made my point. Thank you. You basically said when we wrestle not against flesh and blood, we're wrestling against spiritual darkness in high places. We're, we're wrestling against evil and wickedness, you know, and we're doing this stuff, but we're not wrestling against the Roman Empire. We're not, we're not taking down the man. None of us are. We're, we're wrestling against our own sins and the sins of others. We need to take on the armor of God. Now we're going to see that he was basically bound to a Roman soldier called a Praetorian Guard as he was writing or dictating this. So all of those Praetorians that were in that room and on those and on that duty, it was 2 years, all of them would have known about this. So if he was writing down, let's take down Rome, let's burn it to the ground, let's protect the temple site, let's let's build all of these other highly patriotic sites. He would have had his head cut off a lot sooner. He didn't.

53:05 He was let go by Nero after the writings of Ephesians. And so I want you to see Ephesians as a non militaristic, more of a spiritual warfare. It's spiritual. That makes so much more sense why he used the that that metaphor for the armor, because there's certain parts of that armor, Josh, that wouldn't necessarily be ubiquitous throughout Jewish culture, right? Bucklers. You got bucklers? Yeah, I'm with you, man. You got bucklers. You've got things going on that don't make sense, but they will make. Yes, I'm.

53:47 I'm with you. You know, and that's interesting because I think what we're seeing here who this this carries some implications because I'm just thinking about this like if Paul is writing this and he's writing about what would be recognizable as Roman armor to Romans. What I can't help but wonder if these aren't the first seeds that are planted within Roman political thought, so to speak, that Christianity can be conducive to Rome and doesn't cede the ground to for for Constantine later.

54:28 Does that make sense? Because if he's. Talking to the military. Guys. You're 2 steps ahead of me, Paul. Not only did that my my humble opinion and I have it in scripture is going to say Paul taught every Praetorian guard that he was bound to and every team. And the reason I know that is I think it's Ephesians 113. He says I am being known by the entire Praetorian Guard. All of the guard knows me. It says it in Philippians. I'm sorry. And Philippians. Is fascinating. He he wrote Philippians while he was in his first imprisonment and he wrote in Philippians 113. He says at the same time Ephesians was being written, it says Paul was quote becoming known to the entire guard, which is the Praetorian Guard. The Praetorian Guard were 9000 men that were under the auspices of Caesar.

55:19 They would be like the they would be the right be the highest, highest level military bureaucrat leaders that how do I find their equivalent? Their equivalent would be the military industrial complex, the National Security Agency blended in with the CIA SEAL Team 6. There's 9000 of these guys. They're called the Praetorians. Few months back, Justin Frankham had an idea to make learning about the fullness of the restored gospel a lot easier. It was an idea that once I had my mind wrapped around it, I felt like it could do a lot of good. Mormon Legacy Ministries is a multi denominational ministering effort to provide a safe landing place for Mormons to land until they find their forever church home, while at the same time offering folks an opportunity for worship and fellowship. Here's a little bit of what Mormon Legacy Ministries is offering.

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56:54 So whether you're an independent Mormon fundamentalist, or maybe you're a Mormon fundamentalist already in a group, but you want more opportunities to learn and serve, or perhaps you're an LDS person wanting to learn more about what your theological cousins believe, or maybe even you're not a Mormon at all and you're just curious about the faith. Mormon Legacy Ministries is a place for you where you can go to learn all those things from the comfort of your own home over Zoom. To get there, all you need to do is go to mormonlegacy.org and then click any or all of those classes that are being offered there. Again, that's Mormon legacyministries.org. Go there today and sign up. And totally fits Paul's style, right? He's going to tailor his like when he goes to Mars Hill, he speaks very with a lot of philosophical overtones because he knows that's what's going to land with his audience. So this, this armor thing, this makes sense given the Praetorian Guard because it's something that the Guard would be very familiar with and it fits Paul's mode of teaching, especially when he's in in those Hellenistic circles. These guards were 18 inches away from wrist to wrist. So let's get into Paul being bound in chains as stated in Ephesians 620 at the end.

58:13 Bound in chains in the Greek is called Halusis Hal use. This is a small chain. It's a, it's the Greek word for a small chain. You bind A1 wrist. There's an 18 inch small chain that's bound to the wrist of the Praetorian Guard. And they have to do that all day, all day. They they would, they would go in cycles of six hours and they would go in probably in cycles of teams week on week off or a couple days on and off. Now you do the math. If you have a team of four for one week, one week, team of four, that's going to be 200. What is that? That's going to be a team of four for 52 weeks. That's going to be 208 different Praetorian guards for two years. 400 Praetorian guards are going to not only know you, they're going to have sat there 18 inches away from you as you're dictating to your friends or writing down the scriptures and they would be engaging in in religious discussion. So these Praetorian guards would be sent throughout Rome. Hey, we're going to need you over in Jerusalem. We're going to need you up in Asia Minor. You need to get up to Philippi over into Greece. You've got to go over here into Spain. They get moved around all the time. So they're going to say, hey, where have you been? I've been in Rome.

59:32 What have you been doing? I was, I was bounded chains to a guy named Paul. He's a Jewish man that follows the Rabbi Yeshua and he wrote these letters and wow, all he did was talk about God all day for I was there the whole week, the whole month, whatever. He's just talking about God. Paul became known throughout the entire guard is what it says everywhere. So when you say this is ideal, this armor of God, he would have been writing and they looking over there and saying, OK, so the buckler and then the breastplate and then the the skirting. But it wasn't about warfare. It was spiritual.

1:00:13 So yes, he would have been preaching, I believe. I believe what you just said that it. That is fascinating because as we were talking and look, I've already been in talks with someone. This is kind of a general announcement. I'm about to get a producer on the show so I don't have to Google search my own stuff and he can keep me straight. He's going to be real good at it. But I was, I was just doing some, some, some quick research here. There were several members of the Praetorian Guard that ended up becoming Caesar or Emperor, Right, right. And, and if, if human nature holds across the, the eons, which I believe it does, then it becomes kind of a, a no brainer that at some point this stuff's going like I could see, I could see those praetorian guards taking what Paul taught and they become even semi converted, right? You could see Paul's lecture here or, or parable about this armor of God almost becoming a badge of honor for these guys, right?

1:01:24 And, and, and they're going to internalize that and they're going to, oh, it makes, it makes total sense now, right? This is going to permeate even if they didn't make it all the way to, to the emperor of Rome, You imagine summer advisors, right? They got, they got emperor's ears, right. And so this really is the seeds I think, that are planted that would break things open for when Constantine comes along. Of of course, these so that you know how I feel about this and, and there are many historians, some may try to disagree, but it they know the Praetorian Guard was the military, the equivalent of our military industrial complex. They decided whether Caesar stayed Caesar or Caesar died because they protected him.

1:02:15 They had all the positions of authority. There were 9000 of them. These were battle hardened troops that if you said this man's an enemy of the state, they didn't talk a long time about that. They said what? This man's an enemy of the state. You know what happens after that. That's the kind of people that they were. And so when you see somebody like Augustus Caesar ruling, as long as he ruled, he ruled not just, I believe at the leisure of it, he ruled in the graces of the men that called his Praetorian Guard. And we get the history of him being this amazing August looking, reticent, stoic looking leader with all of his robes and he's on his, on his throne in his Dios, looking down at people. No, you got to see all the guard behind him, all the people throughout the provinces, all the politics. Without that, he would have been a dead man, a full dead man. So these guys are very powerful.

1:03:12 The and every, every Roman historian, every teacher would tell you that. They would say at the end, it was the Praetorian Guard running the show. Nero would get rid of his mother and his mother would be gotten rid of through the Praetorian Guard. That that's how that stuff works. So you're absolutely right. And So what Paul did, I think he did it through inspiration. He says, hey, I'm bound in chains to the Praetorian Guard. These guys are going to go 9000 and we're going to go all throughout the entire entire Roman Empire. So guess what I get to do? I've got a captive audience for two years. I'm going to write epistles. I'm going to dictate it to my friends. My friends are going to visit and we're going to discuss religion.

1:03:56 It would be like you and me, you're bound in chains. I get to come visit you and we're preaching to the the, the national security framework that intense interesting. All right, let's let's move on because we really, we really got to get to the loins of truth. But there's a lot here and there's a lot to think about. This is good stuff. All right. Do I need to switch go forward in photos yet? I was going to have you. OK, so that that hallucis there are I don't know if I put it in pictures, but I definitely put it in the bibliography. You'll see there's a scholar who discusses all he discusses is Roman the what they do and the policy and and the procedure of how they bind people and hold them under house arrest.

1:04:48 He's it's it's it's in the bibliography and you'll you'll see it there. So I'm just going to move on past that and down into we talked about becoming known. So everywhere Paul would go afterwards, they say he went to Spain, some say he went all the way up into England to Britannia. Everywhere he go, there would be a Praetorian guard, if not being the prefect, attached to the prefect. And when he was known, hey, did you know Saul of Tarsus? Paul is here And they say who's Paul? It would be likely that one of the Praetorian Guards would say, hey, my brother Festus was in Rome. He was bound to this guy for like 3 weeks. This guy apparently caused a riot inside the inner court, inside the Soric and did this.

1:05:36 He would be known everywhere that he wouldn't be able to go without that. They would be like that. He would his name would be known. He'd be a person of interest is what we would call him. So the background to the doctrines. All right, so let's get let's get into it. Remember how I told you that we talked about he had gone, he had gotten thrown in in chains, imprisoned because he went inside the soric apparently and was and caused a riot or a disturbance. If you look at Ephesians 113, it talks about a ceiling by the Holy Spirit of promise. It's right there in in Ephesians 113.

1:06:18 As you know, the ceilings we make by the Holy Spirit of promise are ceilings we make in the temple. He's telling all the Saints everywhere that they are worthy of that ceiling of the Holy Spirit of promise. So he got thrown in prison for bringing, apparently attempting to bring strangers into the inner court. And when he beat that charge, he claimed, went over to Caesar, he got on and wrote in Ephesians, all of you, as I know, are worthy of that ceiling by that Holy Spirit of promise. Now this is a little teaser, a little insight. He's saying you people are worthy of the covenants. You are covenant worthy people. And to the to the Mosaic Jews, it would be like saying you Gentiles are worthy of this.

1:07:04 But as we know, Isaiah prophesied that we would go and disperse into the Gentiles and we would bring the Gentiles back to the covenant. It's Ephesians 113 and you'll be able to see it there. It's kind of a little bit of a teaser. So I'm, I'm going to start moving into the direction of that. We're going to talk about temples. We're going to talk about promises and covenants. We're going to talk about the armor of God being the promises to God about certain areas. We're going to be talking a little bit, not a lot about washings and anointings of certain areas without getting into it, definitely talk about the blessing of the loins. But before we get to that, I need to reinforce for you. And you know, I want to get this quick because I want to get to the the meat of it says Paul declares that the fight is not with flesh and blood.

1:07:55 He would go very far in convincing the Romans that he is not advocating rebellion. He says, For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of the world. Then he said against spiritual wickedness in high places. Do you guys, do you know where the high places are? Do you know anything about ancient like the Old Testament when you say high places? The high places were always just that. That was temple imagery. There you, there you. So now that you said that, you made this so easy for me. In the Greek, the high places are called iperanios. I'm butchering that it means heavenly or the heavenly realms, which is the Greek version of high places. The high places comes from the and later on you'll see that when we have the Hebrew versions of the New Testament, when we do the Hebrew versions of the of the New Testament, they're going to use certain types of words.

1:08:54 It's called Bam Romim, and bam Romim means the high places. Just like you said, the spiritual high places, it can mean the apostates with all of their Groves. It can mean the holy of holies in the temple. So he's talking about spiritual wickedness that occurs in high places. What happened in the inner court? In the inner court is a sacred place. It's a heavenly or divine place because you're not allowing strangers or Gentiles or unwashed worldly people there. They committed and conspired to throw him out by deception, by conspiracy.

1:09:34 There is wickedness occurring in high places. He's saying that we stand against these priests that take over these high places and when they take over them, they don't engage in the covenants. They don't live the covenants. They do spiritual wickedness, deceptions and cause riots and all the rest of it. He would be talking a little bit about that, but there are other reasons that he's talking about it. The Hebrew version would say that we stand against evil spirits in the high places. That's intense. He's saying because it's been corrupted, there's evil spirits now surrounding the high places.

1:10:16 So he's saying you, you, you charged me with bringing strangers and Gentiles in here. I'm charging you with evil spirits in the high places, or at least spiritual wickedness in the high places. So he's getting this. Reason you're worried about gentiles. You're you guys are dragging dragon and demons so to speak. So to speak. That's right. So let let me kind of I'm going to tease this out and talk about it at some point later on years down the road. It's can mean a high holy area on a mountain or in a temple that has been taken over by quote UN quote with what John and Jesus would call the children of darkness, the brood of Vipers, the serpents, the children of the devil, Satan seed, or as Jesus and John the Baptizer in the Essenes, the Qumran communities would have called the transplanted Pharisee temple priests. So there were original temple priests called the Seed of Zadok.

1:11:11 They went out and started communities and tried to bring about the pure or the righteous called the Essenes. These people, John especially called the Pharisees at the temple a brood of Vipers. That is a direct quote from his writings. He said you are broods of Vipers. Jesus would call them children of darkness, servants, children of the devil, the seed of the devil, or Satan's seed. And he would do that to the Pharisees that came from those areas. So I'm trying to set this. I'm trying to set this up a little bit the way they would have seen it. I I just want to be clear here. There is a doctrine called Serpent Seed which basically says that Eve had intercourse with the devil and that's where Cain came from, but we're not talking about. We're not talking about.

1:11:57 Lilith, this is all right. This is all just figurative. So what happens when you don't have the authority anymore? When the authority goes with John the Baptist to his father, out to the Essenes and they're out there in the wilderness, crying in the wilderness and camel hair. You've got all the authorized ones out there and the non authorized. All of a sudden all this spiritual evil spirits in the high places start coming in. I'm trying to give you a flavor of John and a flavor of the Essenes. I'm trying to give you that because Paul is going to be taking it from the Gentiles perspective and he's going to be saying we stand against spiritual wickedness in high places. John the Baptist said would say, I stand here and baptize you into the Kingdom of God. The Messiah is coming and I'm not worthy to unloose his his latch.

1:12:44 And they say, but what are the Pharisees? And he says they are a brood of Vipers. That, that, that feeling and that flow from that era. I just want you to feel I'm not trying to take on so that you know, I'm not trying to take on any, any I family history wise. And I've told you this, I don't want to get into it too much because I'm more for the remnant of Israel than I am for anything else. But I am not badgering my brethren who are Judaistic or Mosaic in their outlook. I'm not. I'm not looking to buy against the Jewish. I'm saying be like Paul, be like John, be like Jesus, come to the true covenant. I'm not saying let's go bash the Judaistics.

1:13:27 I'm not. I'm not that I'm 12% Ashkenazi in it. I'm not using that for any other reason. Probably putting a a probably putting a bull's eye on my back now, but I have a family history with that. But the real, the real Israelites to me are the ones that Jesus said, they're the remnant. They're the one that you and I are going to go to. We're probably part of that. So anyway, I don't want to, I don't want to turn this into a, you're good, you're good. So now let's shift gears. All right. So like I said, as we switch gears, I want to dive in to, I think I told you, I just want to make sure the Hebrew translation of these high places is Bam Romine. And again, I'm chopping that up probably pretty brutally, but it's the high places.

1:14:13 It's it really is the high places. So we're now talking about, I believe, a temple covenant level of armor. And so I want to take us into the temple covenant level of armor. And to do that we need to kind of explore two different sayings. One saying is a direct quote from Paul. It's gird the loins as to what that means and distinguish that from girding up the loins. So girding up the loins versus gird the loins because the the quote here isn't gird up your loins with truth, it just says gird the loins with truth. And I'm going to go through that and then we're going to end by talking about how we cover our loins with truth. And then we'll end it here.

1:14:57 And I'm hoping we can do it in a, in a, not a speedy fashion, but in a, in a good. Clip. But whatever it takes, we're good. If I were to ask you say what do you think is the most popular and not by population, but by length of time, the most popular type of garment, just a single garment, most popular for the longest amount of history, What would you think that was? Would you think it's blue jeans or what? What would you think? Well, fortunately it wasn't bell bottoms, so we have that going for us. Yeah. So I would say probably, and given what we're talking about, I would say the loincloth or loincloth, absolutely. I'm going to focus on the longest running loincloth they have, which is roughly a 2000 year fashion statement. It was used for 2000 years in variant forms, but the form maintained its basic.

1:15:52 It had went everything from just a a piece of cloth hanging down in front of the genitals. But the most used one, you have to turn it's, they had them definitely. And in ancient Sumeria, they obviously had them in Acadia and other areas of these places. But the longest running that I could find was the Egyptian Shanti. It's a everybody that watches TV knows what a Shanti is. It's a fancy name for a kilt, basically. Let's open up some of those pictures and you'll see where. We at so here I'm showing, I think it's the Egyptian one. It's the looks like black marble and it's missing a leg.

1:16:35 Yeah, that was a statue of Ashanti. Let's go ahead and let me see Loins of Truth. Let's go to the Shandit, OK? And then? So that's the one in Egypt. I'm showing the one on the Egyptian hieroglyphics. The Egyptian hieroglyphics and then it shows a couple of lighter skinned gentlemen in an equivalent of a shandit. So we got it right here. It's up. Yep. So could you believe that for 2000 years roughly from the Old Kingdom of Egypt through the New Kingdom. So we'll say anywhere from about 1300 years to roughly 2000 that this was the prime wrap, loincloth wrap for people in Egypt. It it ran the longest that we know of. Now, I'm not getting into a cross cultural because I'm sure that we could find robes that lasted long, long, long time, but I'm talking about girding the loins type of a garment. What would last the longest?

1:17:34 It would be this. So this is a wrap. Let's kind of go through this really fast and let's just kind of think together. The the shindig or the loincloth was used in ancient Egypt for three purposes. First, it was to to cover the loins. So they had everything from a basic, just a cloth that would go down. There was a lot at the slave class that some of the slaves weren't even entitled to wear a garment. The very simple slaves or even the more the more cultured slaves were allowed to shindig just a garment that goes around the loins to cover it. House and domestic servants, high domestic servants, they would look like these two Caucasian looking men.

1:18:17 They would, they would be wearing either that or the Egyptian hieroglyphic version of it. That's what they would wear. So if you're a servant, if you look at the things that I'm showing you, do you see any belts anywhere? What do you see? Is it just a wrap? It's just a wrap. That's all I'm seeing. It's absolutely a wrap. So historically, and I've provided in the bibliography the books on this, There are two. One focuses on archaeological, She's very good at that. She does a very good job. And the other ones goes through and analyzes the hieroglyphics in the writings and the paintings and the carvings. But there was a distinguished difference between what you would call domestic or house slaves or house servants.

1:19:06 We'll call them servants and those that engaged in heavy, heavy labor or even in warfare like soldiers. So as you look through this, you'll notice that there were belts that were either wrapped in or tied around that would gird this shindig. But if you were a House of domestic, if you are a house or domestic, you would have been wrapped and tucked without a belt. So a girding is a belt, it's a censure. It's a, it's a, it's a tightly bound, usually leather. It can be other materials, but it's not a wrap. It's actually a girding of a wrap. So I'm going to I'm going to walk through this kind of simply kind of like a Descartian methodology.

1:19:54 So now you're a house domestic servant and you're working inside the house and you're taking things, you're washing people's feet at the Thor, you're going out and you're shopping for the the foodstuffs, bringing them back from market. You're going to look like these two, basically these white, all of these people that don't have any girdings on. You'll be doing that. But. Just hanging out in your wrap. Hanging out in your wrap. But let's say that you are an overseer for Pharaoh's farms or his stone quarries or something like that. That requires a little bit more exertion, almost a quasi military role. Do you think that they would just do wraps like this, or do you think they'd put censures and belts on them? I think you'd one couple things, right? I think First off, you'd probably want something a little heavier than just a wrap, right?

1:20:45 So I'm thinking leather, a belt to make sure it stays in place. You're going to be doing a lot more than just carrying home the groceries, right? So you're going to want to make sure that stuff stays in place. If if we go to the next picture here, which is the the looks like the Roman kind of armor there so to speak. Right. Around the waist, that's what I would imagine that would be more. Like, OK, so in Egypt, yes, that the Roman armor, it's let me, I don't want to mispronounce this stuff. It's called teregies. That they're called teregies. That those they're leather. They're basically leather straps that come down.

1:21:25 And there would be a lot more than the picture you saw. They would actually be folded in back and forth to protect the loins in battle. But the the Egyptian version, if you worked out in the fields as a field hand, or let's say you're at your house and you're relaxing and you're in your shenti, you're in your kilter, you're your wrap and you have your wrap on. And all of a sudden the supervisor of your battalion comes in and says, we're going to war. What do you think that the fastest way to convey that to a person would be if you walked up to a fellow soldier who's relaxing at his house in a neatly tucked shenti and just engaging in domestic activities, and you have to tell them, hey, we need to assemble and we need to go out into the field to assemble because we're going up into the Hittites. We're going to fight the Hattie up in up in the plains of Israel.

1:22:15 How do you think they would say that? GERD up your loins. They would get rid of the up and they would just say GERD the loins. So now you're you're you're working out in the cattle fields and you're pulling steer around and you're a supervisor of those cattle and you have to bring the men out and say, hey, we're going to be moving the cattle couple of miles down the way. It's going to go through a bunch of gates. We've got some properties here and it's going to cross a small Creek. How do you think that they would tell them that they're going to exert hard work that day? What would they tell those people at their the night before at their house tomorrow? We're going to do this so. Gird up gird, or gird up your loins.

1:22:56 Gird the loins, they would say, take a belt, take a belt, wrap your your wrap in that belt. Gird the loins. The Egyptians wouldn't use the up version. And I'll we're going to explain that because the Israelites traditionally distinguished themselves from Egyptians if they were free, not slaves. If they were free, they had robes. And so we're going to get into the girding, the girding up of the loins, which is a different phrase. So I want you to see it. I want you to see this, this this kind of muscular looking leader of an army walking into his battalion group or at passing by the homes of his captain. And all he does is he's like, he talks to Nefaritu and Nefaritu gird the loins. And he looks up and he knows exactly what that means. OK, He wants me to put a girding loincloth on. I'm probably going to bring my arrows, get the war chariot and have a couple Spears ready.

1:23:53 That's what gird the loins means to them. OK, The supervisor of the cattle or whatever it is comes in and says, hey, it's not going to be a light day today. It's going to be a tough day. Gird the loins. That's. Ancient time to put on your big boy pants. Put on the big boy pants. Gird it with the belt. Now I want to put AI want to put a pin in this because remember that this went that slaves and domestics would not have girdings. They would just have simple wraps, right? Put a pin in this because we're going to come back and around to it. OK, you, you just remind me. Say hey, remember how you said that the domestics only had wraps and they were only especially the slaves.

1:24:33 All they had was one piece of clothing and it was a shandik or a wrap or a loincloth. All right, let's go back to there. So as you and I already stated, we've been over this, the Roman Terragies. The Roman Terragies is a protection of the loin area using plated or on top of one on top of another, below another. And in some cases they would do three stack, but they would gird their they would gird the loins all the way around with these leather straps that would have weighted bolted metals to keep it down. This would stop swords from from slicing and cutting because it would hit that, that rawhide, that heavy hide. And I don't know if it's rawhide, but it was heavy hide and it would stop the cuttings for it. That's how the Romans that the Praetorian Guard when they were bound to Paul, when he'd say the loins, they would say, oh man, yeah, we don't have them on today. We've just got our Roman skirt or tunics. But yeah, look at them out there on the fields of Mars. You can see them in their terrages. They've girded the loins.

1:25:39 That's that would have been what they would have saw when they said having your loins gird about with truth. They would say, OK, we girt with the terragies and he's girding the loins to protect the loins and that's the terragies. So yes, the Romans had their version for battle. And as you see, the Terragies had those belts, all of them had a belt sensor that would hold that thing on so that they weren't loose. Check. OK. So it's it's incredibly important to see that the gird to the girding of the loins means that the the loins are held tight around by a wrap. It's not loose. It's not domestic.

1:26:21 Now you remember how I said I was going to come back to to the point of the domestics? Yes. What year you you remember Joseph of Egypt? Yes, Joseph, I mean not personally. Sold, but but well, one day we will. He's, he's definitely our granddad. We're both, I, I would assume we're both, you know, we're both Ephraim Ephraim. So Grandpa Joseph of Egypt was sold into slavery into Potiphar's house. And while in Potiphar's house, he was a slave and a domestic and a Butler. The chief Butler is what they said. He hung out as a domestic at the house as a slave. How many garments do you think he would have? One 2-3 How many would he have I. Have no idea man.

1:27:09 As a slave, he would have one, he would have one garment. It would be a shentig, and he's not royalty so they wouldn't have the nice plated ones like you see Pharaoh wearing later in the later kingdoms. It would be a wrap. So now I just want to tease out this idea. I'm giving you some insight. Remember Potiphar's wife? Potiphar's wife made several advances against Joseph. And being young and inexperienced, he just pushed her away. She cornered him one time. She cornered him and said, lay with me. And he's saying, how can I do this great evil? They said. She grabbed upon his garment. She grabbed. Upon his garment, and he's a slave. He only has one that garment.

1:27:54 Do you think it was girded up as a domestic and a slave was not girded up? Probably not. And as he ran away from her, she would have had a hold of it sufficient that it would have fallen off and our dear grandfather would have been running through the House Commando or in the buff. I don't want to be rude about it. He'd be running about the household in the buff. She would be holding on to an incriminating piece of evidence that she would have to do something about. And she began to scream. She said, behold, behold, I have the garment of the man that tried to violate me or however she said it. Check. This is why the girding and he didn't have a choice. The the reason I'm telling you this is had he had a girding which he wouldn't have had as a slave, but let's say he was in the higher echelons, like later on when he became viceroy. If he had girdings about his loins, had Potiphar's wife grabbed onto him and he ran, it would have been very unlikely that she would have had a hold of his garment at the end of the day.

1:29:00 Do you see the difference? Yep. Nope, I see. So when you gird the loins, you gird the loins with truth. And in the case of Potiphar's wife, had those loins been girded, we would have a much different story than him going to possibly, we don't know of him going to the to jail for all those years. So gird the loins. Did you see the depth of that? Gird the loins. I do. So he didn't have a choice. Not saying that he did that on purpose. He was domestic and probably right around the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, end of the First or the Old Kingdom. So now we're going to get to where I wanted to go, and I'm happy to do this. Let's talk a little bit about girding up the loins.

1:29:42 And I know most LDS know about this, so can you share? I'd like you to because you share with us what girding up the loins means to an Israelite under the Mosaic Law. I would, I would. I girding up the loins and you're taking. The loins and you're girding it up. Do you do you know I'm, I'm not trying to put you on the spot. Do you know what it means? Not exactly. Why don't you illuminate that, OK? So in ancient Israel, it's going to be in the areas of Exodus. And I have a picture of all the chapters. It'll be Exodus, I believe 28 parts of 29. There'll be some numbers judges for Samuel. They talk about all the holy clothing, but of all the clothing, there are two pieces of clothes, especially at the time.

1:30:32 All right, let's, let's move it back a little bit further. Have you had a chance yet to read the Joseph Smith translation of the Bible? I parts of it, I haven't gone through the whole Bible right. I've I've hit the hit the highlights. So the key ones that I know for sure he changed. The King James version has this, but nothing makes it more clear to us than the than the King James version. I mean, some of those passages are so beautiful. You got Genesis 14. Genesis 50 is incredible because he he predicts the birth of both Moses and Joseph Smith Junior, both of them in in JST 50. But what I'm, what I'm bringing up here is, oh, it just went right out of my head. I'll, I'll get back to it.

1:31:21 I'll get back to it. But there are two, there are two types of clothing that the Israelites would have worn. They would have been shepherds in Egypt. Pharaoh and all of the ruling classes looked down on, on shepherds. They were considered an abomination to the Egyptians. So if you came into Egypt and said, Hey, what's your profession? And you said, I'm a shepherd of sheep and cattle. They would go, oh, oh, ho, ho, yeah. And they they'd look over at Joseph and Joseph would said, hey, we could take him up to Goshen. We could put him in Goshen if you like. They could be. And he goes, I'll do you one better than that. Let's have them be the leader of Pharaoh's cattle. He he made Joseph the leader of Pharaoh's cattle. He because he told him he was a shepherd from birth. But they looked down on shepherds. They were considered an abomination to to Egyptians, that means rednecks, low, low class that they look down on. Shepherds traditionally wear robes, especially those that are Canaanites that come out of the land of Canaan that we know of as Israel.

1:32:26 Now, they wore robes in the in the testaments, in the Old Testament, there are several articles of clothing that discuss these things, but of all of it, there are two. The first is a set of britches. They're called linen britches or breeches. That's what we call them in English. They're called the Mishnah sahim in Hebrew. And again, I probably tortured that word. You have a picture of that, that if you want to put it up, you can. These linen britches were considered a wrap and if used in tandem with the Godol Kohanites, the Godol Kohan Kohanim, which are the high priests of the Levites, there are 8 pieces of articles of clothing for a high priest under the Law of Moses.

1:33:20 But even concurrent or at the time of the leaving of Israel, it would have been known that the Jews would have distinguished themselves from Egyptians by robes. They would have worn robes. They would have considered loincloths not beneath them, but that would have been gentile, stranger to them. So. The free Israelites would have robes. So from the time of Israel, they are told when they want to leave in haste, when you want to run really fast, when you want to have free movement about the loins, they are told to gird up their robes. So they take their robes, they pull them back, they wrap them around, and then there's two pieces that they will bring and tie, usually around a belt in the middle and it will gird up the robe all the way up.

1:34:09 It'll gird it all the way up the legs. That's called girding up the loins. And you'll see that it's not exclusive, but pretty much exclusive for our purposes to our people, the Israelites. So now when the Israel, when, when, when you're when Aaron comes out and says, Moses says we're ready, gird up the loins. What do you think gird up the loins meant to the Israelites? When when Aaron came around and said, gird the gird up your loins, Moses said we're ready. What does that mean to them? Probably either they're moving or they're going to war. They're, they're going to be leaving Egypt very fast. You guys are going to walk not slowly in robes. You're going to be scooting it out of there and you're going to be doing it with a high hand because you, you took and borrowed their jewels because you have to go worship the Lord.

1:34:54 You got out in the desert just like Pharaoh said that Moses could. They're going to come out with a high hand holding gold, silver, jewels, rubies, and they're going to wrap or gird up the loins and they're going to walk fast. They're going to be like, let's scoot this down the road. Let's get 50 clicks 50 miles down the way before Pharaoh knows what's going on. It's called girding up the loins. So yes, you'd go to war. You move around really fast or if you're doing heavy, heavy, heavy types of of work. In Israel, a person that would have girded the loins a lot is a priest that we know is Samson. He would have gird up his loins because he would have that jawbone of the, of the donkey and he would have gone out and fought people and he wouldn't have done it in his robes. He would have gird them up around his loins. He would have run around.

1:35:41 So now that we know those two phrases, now that we've kind of done a background and we realized Paul's talking at least about spiritual armor and possibly, certainly temple ceilings and temple things that that started all this. I'd like to get into the final kind of thing here and talk a little bit about the Israelite holy clothing as where we get our Mormon holy garments from. We get we, as you know, we wear holy clothing. We have we wear holy clothing. The Israelites were told to wear holy clothing a clothing as well. And there are four basic for the priests. There are four basic pieces of holy clothing. There are 8 pieces for the highest of the of the high priest.

1:36:27 They're called the they're called the Godol Kohanites or Kohanim is what they would call it. So let me pull open the Lev Leem. I've got the britch breeches there. You're going to want to see this. OK, So for a high priest, there would be the the hosen, which is the tunic. It's the robe. There would be the mishnasahim, the britches or the breeches, the linen breeches. There'd be a sash or a girdle, A woven sash, which would serve as a belt. And there'd be the Mizna fet, which is the mitre or the headdress that we know. It's, it's kind of a back then it was a tall turban looking thing.

1:37:08 Now the high high priest, they would add to that an additional ephod, which was an embroidered apron garment. They would put what they call the Cochin, which is a Brit, A breastplate. And then they have the meal, the robe and it's Aziz, which is the golden forehead plate. It would look like a tiara. They have this gold tiara that goes right underneath their mitre that says holy to the Lord and it's it's it would be a gold plate on there. So those are the very highest of their priests, but all the priests would have worn at least four. I want to talk about because you asked me to talk about the loins. The loins are gird about by the Mishnasahim, the britches, what you would call the lower portions of your garments. I know that you're a onesie, but I, because I'm an independent, I, I wear, I wear the earliest form of Joseph Smith had. They're basically they're, they're breathable cotton long Johns, two piece with them with all the marks in them. So the Mishnah Sahim, the britches are what cover the loins.

1:38:13 That's what that's what the Jews would cover their loins with, especially the priests. And there are a lot of reasons that they would do it. And the reasons that they would do it is to provide holiness. Holiness to the Lord is the reason that they wore these holy clothing, purity and chastity, the Mishnah Saeem. And even now they wear it. If you were to have a close enough relationship with a very pious leader amongst the Jewish community and you and they somehow would talk to you about the Mishnah Saeem, they would be private conversation. They would tell you things like the Mishnah Saeem, the britches. Actually, they atone for sexual impurity. If you get certain fluids on you that are natural to living in a married capacity, the Mishnasaim, after you've cleansed yourself ritually, they purify and atone for any impurities that are upon you.

1:39:05 They believe in spiritual purities called ritual. So when you become defiled, there are spirits around you that are defiled spirits. You got to get rid of them through ritual purification. The Mishnasaim breaches get rid of those impurities. That's what the and that's in the Talmud. That's that's Judaic thought and it's very, very old, very old. So we as LDS, whom I believe are the lawful heirs and to the covenant, we are the seat of Zadok that's been scattered amongst the Gentiles. We have our own holy clothing patterned after this, and we also have our temple clothing, which is almost identical save only the disease. The golden forehead plate, the the tiara forehead plate, That's the only thing we're missing.

1:39:52 We have everything and we've had it for hundreds of years, OK? Right. We're going to get into the Mishnah, Sahim, the britches. We're going to talk about clothing or covering the loins with an armor of God. And this is where I wanted to go. This is where we were always going. Do you remember the washings? Do you do you remember instead? Do you remember the loins? OK, I don't want to get on into this online because this is a podcast with a lot of people. Most notably, you know, we'll have members. But you know, gentiles that can get confused. Remember those blessings when I tell you that your posterity is the truth of your loins. There are there are other truths. There's intimacy, There's love.

1:40:39 But intimacy and love are tools for a posterity. Right. The posterity is what the Lord wants. And if you go into the the final covenant power on the priesthood, I'll leave it at that, that final covenant at the veil, it's going to be upon you and upon your posterity. And I'm saying that the truth of your loins, the very, very truth of your loins, is the raising up of righteous posterity to the Lord, even to the Father. You're plurally married, so you are under the guidance of raising a posterity to the Father. That's where you are in your plural capacity. I'm saying you asked me to come here and to talk about the loins of truth for you. The loins of truth is Asher.

1:41:24 That's the loin of truth. That's the exact truth of your loins. And you are clothed about to that purpose by covenant. I've spent so much time trying to get us here. I'd like to spend a couple minutes here either answering questions or talking to you about that. But I testify to you that if you girt your loins about with truth, then you will raise up a posterity to the Father. I further testify to you that that can and only will be done according to plural celestial marriage. That is not a cut to monogamists. That is a hopeful expectation included within myself. I'm I'm a lone man up here in the wilderness up in Alaska. Yet I believe and I'm saying to girt your loins with truth is to fully activate those cleansing blessings of the washing and then the garment that was provided to you to cover your loins for that specific truth.

1:42:18 And the law of chastity is a is an absolute commandment for that. We can't get close to the veil unless we make those chastity vows. And chasteness is not celibacy. It's to raise the posterity of the Lord. I wish that we were in the temple right now. I would tell you my whole heart, I would tell you everything about it. But I want the, I want every listener to understand that chasteness is the raising of posterity to the Father. It is not celibacy. Celibacy is chastity prior to that arrangement, but after that arrangement, it's the raising of the seed to the Father. And it's been specified in our holy works. In the Book of Mormon, it says that the Father desireth of the Lord desireth to raise up seed to the Father. Then it is, and it's been in our Doctrine and Covenants and in all of our sacred writings.

1:43:07 But I'm saying that the first thing Paul talked about was the loins of truth, and he talked about it having been thrown out of a temple by a brood of Vipers that tried to use conspiracy, cabal and deception to confuse the public. They threw him out of a temple. He sat down with the Roman Praetorian Guard, used this metaphor, and the first thing he said is he said gird the loins. Gird the loins with truth. Know that you are bringing a holy seat of posterity to the Lord on this earth through your faith. And brother, I've pretty much said everything I've needed to say tonight. Is there anything else you want to talk about with me? You know, you kind of took it the same direction I was going to.

1:43:49 So I I think we're on to something. I want to say this in no uncertain terms. So everybody understands. Look, if you got kids under the age of about 13, you might want to stop here until it's just the adults in the room because we're going to talk about a few sensitive things here. OK? Hopefully you heated that. So there's a man I go to church with in Missouri who says that with each priesthood advancement or ordinance, you can't sin as cheaply. Meaning that if you mess up bad after taking covenants, the repercussions will be more severe without the atonement and without sincere, humble repentance.

1:44:30 So if you are a threat to the adversaries plan, if you've taken those covenants, you can bet you'll be a target. Now we are absolutely in a spiritual war. It's not a physical war. Nobody pick up any weapons. This is a spiritual war we're talking about. If this spiritual war was a chess game, he wants to take you off the board. And look, he's not dumb. He is good at his job. One of the ways he gets people off the board is by sexual temptation. It's a strong feeling that has the ability to cloud our judgement. And this is not a new thing. He has been doing this for as long as there have been people of God trying to do the right thing.

1:45:11 We only have to look back at the Old Testament, at the Old Gods, right? Let's just say that in Israel, you have a piece of ground that or you know, let's just say you're in in a bit of a drought, right? Whatever reason, you decide to skip the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and go straight to to like Canaanite gods, which is what Israel did. So first they would turn the ball and they would turn part of the thing they would do is that they would turn their fields back feral and that was kind of like an offering, right? When that didn't work, then they would go into something way darker, which was essentially like, and I even hate saying it was they were rich ritualistic orgies and it was done usually under the name of of Ishtar Isis Anana. They're the same goddess.

1:46:05 They're just in different representation. And she was known for being able to shift between genders. Like should start sounding kind of familiar. And so they would have these, these ritualistic orgies and they would, the only rule was you, you just couldn't be with your spouse essentially. And then what would end up happening always is that you would get unwanted pregnancies from that because in ancient Israel, who the dad of that baby is carries a lot of weight. It still does today. And so if you're not sure of the parentage, you're, you're kind of, you know, a little stumped here, right.

1:46:48 Well not to worry the those priests have a a fix in mind and as the conditions would deteriorate, drought would turn to famine and people were hungry, they would then OfferUp children as a sacrifice to the God Moloch and that was supposed to incur favor from the gods and end the famine. So we have to ask the question that can't be going on today, right? Well, I disagree. If we look at the modern environmentalist movement, they want to move people from the country into the cities.

1:47:30 And why? So they can turn the land back. Farrell Because people are bad and people mess up the environment. Then if we just look at what's going on in the cities, right? To me, it looks like a lot of, if it feels good, do it right, All inhibition on sexual activity is thrown out the window. And what's the result? Yeah, unwanted pregnancies. And so they refer back to killing the innocent through abortion. Now, what was the end result in Israel? It was less food. It was a class family unit. And it was the death of the next generation. What will be the outcome here for us? You know, 2000 years, 3000 years later, it's going to be pretty consistent.

1:48:19 It's going to be less food, collapse of the family and the abortion slash death of the next generation. See the adversary, he doesn't care if you invoke the names of the ancient Canaanite deity. He is far more concerned with getting you to practice what was done back then. So we as a as a society at large are still worshipping them. The only difference is is that it's been repackaged for modern consumption. But despite the names, the results are still the same. Hunger, a collapsed family unit, and death always waits at the door. Always. One of the ways he will do that to to men especially, again not exclusively but especially, is through sexual temptation. Absolutely.

1:49:14 And we live in a day and age now where you want to find a list of images. You don't have to go look. And they'll, they'll come to you. They'll come to you. You know, you want to be tempted in the flesh. That too will happen. And so it's going to become extremely important that you guard the sacred powers of procreation to be used only within the bounds that the Lord has set. Yeah. Because the second you do that, the second you cross that line, especially if you've taken out covenants, you're off the board at least for a little while till you can fully repent. And so I think as we go forward here, and I love what you said about girding your loins with truth is the is, is both having children as well as the raising of that posterity up in the truth of God to teach them to go after those covenants that we've made in the temple, to present a posterity to the Lord that you have worked endlessly for, even if they've decided to come along or not.

1:50:28 I I feel to say and agree with you, if you laden yourself down with sexual sin, you throw that sin upon your children and that's known in the Bible. So what you're doing is those sins don't just lay upon your spirit or your fabric or the, the, the energy upon you which you or life sustains. It passes and flows to your children. It talks about children born of fornication. They call them children of wrath. And it talks about other types of things. And we've talked about how spiritual warfare is what Paul's talking about. If you take loosely your covenants and expect to raid seed up to the Lord, what you're doing is ladling temptation upon future posterity with your mistakes. We see it with David and Solomon. David chooses Solomon.

1:51:16 You can see it's called the sins of the father, sins of the children. Now we don't believe that children will be responsible for their parents sin, but I do believe that there are intergenerational posterity. The the problem can be overcome through Christ, but it it is latently there. If you want to go out and be promiscuous and expect your children to take the covenant seriously, you're in for a rude awakening. You have to obey the law to raise them up to the Lord, to have them take it as seriously as you do. Children are so so unique and smart. They will smell out intention over words each time. They will know do as I say, not as I do. They will watch you. They will see you in the garage.

1:51:57 They will they will hear you. They will feel you. They will know what you're saying as you're going down the road. They're going to say dad says this, Dad does this. I'm doing what dad does because I love dad. And I agree with you, man. If we're going to step it up, I also further believe that people need to gear their desires to the procreation on the raising up of seed, which means they need to step it up a little bit so that the desire is geared in that direction when it comes. When they say this is a woman, that's very, very alluring to me. And you say that's fantastic. Why? Why? And you go, well, I there is no I that what is the reason?

1:52:39 Because if the reason is long term, forever, then you're going to have the right point of view. And it all blends in the physicality and the rest of it. So I love what you're saying. The Saints do need to do that, and it is the fastest way to get you sidelined, a sexual sin. The Lord took down one of the greatest of our kingly prophets, David. He had salvation, but he lost his exaltation because of his nonsense. He lost his wives. Yeah. And the Lord will do that. No joke. Straight up Nathan came in and said, boom, here's the lamb, here's this, here's that. Your wives are gone, you know. 100% and, and look, we're at a time now where we're dealing with more than just, I can't even believe I got to say this more than just normal sexual temptation. We got all sorts of stuff out there now, right? And there's no doubt if we look at what's happening with the LGBTQ, LGBTQ agenda.

1:53:40 And I want to be careful here because there are people who struggle with those feelings of same sex attraction. And to them, I have sympathy in my heart goes out to him. But nonetheless, I do believe that there's an overall agenda at the top that that is pushing this. And they want to absolutely destroy the family without question. And look, this is not a new tactic. It's not at all as I just showed. Absolutely. I don't have a problem with what you're going to say. My first point was going to be in the book of Jasher, it talks about some awful things that the men in Sodom tried to do to the angels and messengers to Noah, and it talked about their society at large. Their society was a gaslighting, narcissistic, hypersexual society that took such great liberties that expectations of sexuality were placed on total strangers that that passed into a that passed into a city.

1:54:40 Now, I do believe that there are people that struggle with same gender attraction, but this society is quickly getting into that book of Jasher moment with Sodom and Gomorrah where expectations are being made on people and such. Second, let me tell you that I agree with you fully. I wrote a book called Supper of the Great God where I basically said what you said. Here's the thing. There are three things you have to do to to to offend the Holy Ghost and have no, you'll have no forgiveness in this world and no forgiveness in the next. You have to know the Lord personally. You have to deny. It's four things actually. You have to deny the Lord, set him up to open shame, and then you have to kill innocents.

1:55:21 Now let's just walk through for a minute what you said. You have to be a covenant knower of the Lord. You have to begin to take those things lightly. Then mock the Lord and turn against him, set him up to open shame, and then you have to murder innocent life. You just specified where the covenant of Israel did it in ancient age, in ancient Ephraim, which are our parentage, anciently the northern Kingdom. That's what they did. They took their covenants, said now we're having a bad crop this year. All right, let's put a statue up and call it the Lord of the Harvest. We'll call it Baal. That's OK. The Lord of the harvest is up. Let's let the fields go fallow.

1:56:03 Well, that ain't working. You know, Jezebel, she says if you go down to the temple tonight, they'll get all of the harvest up and running by getting everybody procreative and excited. And then that the land will get excited and then it'll yield its fruit because we're having an orgy. Well, that sounds weird. Just go do it. Everybody's doing it. Unwanted pregnancy. Pretty soon. High priests have denied the Lord, turned away from the Lord, mocked the Lord, and now they're killing their own babies. The Holy Ghost, the way you offend them as you turn from the Lord after having known him, set him up to open shame and then murder innocent life in token of the savior. Jesus Christ, that's crazy. And you just basically defined it as sexual libertines and I agree with you.

1:56:50 I agree with you. I didn't want to make it that intense, but I did want to say I do believe that there are people that do struggle with same gender attraction, but we are quickly approaching a time where hyper sexuality and then hyper expectation of others. You got to be on board with this man. You got to be on board. It's like I don't need to be on board. I need to be tolerant, but I don't need to be on board with this. That's the problem we're having. We're having that big problem. Anyway, sorry I. We're agreeing. You're you're, you're good. And look, I, I made allusions to this last year on the podcast. It was right after I took my trip back east with, with Amber to celebrate our 30th and I visit.

1:57:32 I mean, we saw a lot of places and I knew at that point I'd seen some things at that point where I was like, OK, we're, you know, I said it. I, I just made a short little 5 minute thing saying, Hey, there's not going to be a real episode today, but I wanted to get on talk to you. And I said, don't worry, I'm going to keep talking about Mormonism. But the seasons have changed for me. And I feel like now it is time to just call the spade a spade and understand. And that is the point of this series on the armor of God is that we, we are there. And look, I'm going to say something else. It's not enough for you to gird up your own loins. If you're a, if you're a, a mother or a father, a husband or a wife, you have to ensure that those that you love around you, they're not putting on their armor because we're there. They're look, if you're able to withstand the temptations, fantastic.

1:58:27 Good job. You got there. Now you got to worry about your kids. Because the other thing is if, if, if Lucifer can't get to you, he will get to your children. I can't remember which movie it was years and years ago I saw this movie and the villain was talking to the hero or the villain was kind of talking to himself and or maybe it was somebody else. I can't remember. But anyway, the the statement was made. You can't defeat him physically. You go after the heart, right? You go after their, their, their emotions, right? Lucifer can't get to you. It's fine. It's fine. He he'll go after your children. So we have to be so careful now and we have to spend that time to to truly prepare our children because the enemies, you don't have to find them anymore.

1:59:23 There was a time. Look, Josh, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you? I'm 56 years old. Hey, I'm 48, so we're, we're, we're about 8 years apart, same generation. Essentially. If you wanted to find a smutty magazine when or, or if you wanted to look at smut when you were a kid, it was a chore, right? You were going to have to go down to probably the local convenience store, find the local wino, pay him to buy you a dirty magazine. OK, We live in a day now where you don't have to look for it. It'll find you, and it'll find you right in the privacy of your own home, through your phone, without anybody else seeing.

2:00:09 And that's just where we're at. And so now we, we have got to be cognizant of that. And, and part of that girding up protecting that area of the body spiritually and physically is teaching our children to be on the lookout for it. And then if it does find them, teach them to get out of there as quickly as they can because we're there. And and the more that that the adversary can take good people off the board, the more chances he has to run around and really 'cause havoc. Let let me take it a step further because I, I take a very, I take a practical approach to this. If you're young and you have desires, we cannot be fulfilling our desires online with whoredoms. We cannot, there's no, the greatest gift that we're given and the penultimate gift of our priesthood is the renewing of our flesh.

2:01:07 It's resurrection, the power and the covenant of our priesthood is to the renewing of our flesh. There is no renewing of the flesh in whoredoms. It's one of the fastest ways to take yourself off the track of magnifying your priesthood or the oath and covenant of the priesthood. And So what I'm saying is, is if you have desires in that regard, if you desire, if your desires are to women, they should be two good women that love you and you love them, that want to raise up a posterity. It shouldn't just be the desire of women, which we all have. It should be taking that, honing it, bridling it, harnessing it and saying I desire women. And nowadays I'm telling you, David, saying that you desire women. Nowadays it's becoming more and more obsolete, which is crazy. It's crazy.

2:01:56 The people don't even want to say I desire women. It's it's like there's a fear of it. That's almost like an HR department fear out in society. But if you do have desire for women, hone that desire for a family. And not just a family, a celestial family. And not just a celestial family, a covenant celestial family. And it doesn't have to be a boring, drab, dusty thing. It's got to be exciting. For us. It's the covenant. That was all the way back to Adam. I'm on board with you. We're teaching each other the same thing. We're basically talking to all the folks that are listening. If you have desires for women, I don't want you to suborn, pervert, corrupt, or turn away from them. I want you to become moral clean. I want you to become covenant and go. I would suggest not.

2:02:41 I want, I would suggest you go out and engage that into the raising of a posterity to the Lord, because that will take all of your desires and hone them into a good way. I'm not for the destruction of desire. I'm for the direction of it in the proper direction. And when I say loins gird about with truth, it doesn't say loins gird about with with abstinence or loins gird about with with what's that called where they cut everything off, You know, like, you know, we're not trying to. Yeah. They're not saying gird your loins about with castration. They're saying gird it with truth in the direction. And if I wish we were in a temple where we could talk about the blessing of the loins, where we could talk about the truth of the garment and how it activates and does that. We are a procreative.

2:03:32 We are a fruitful multiplying. We, we are a, a Kingdom of priests and priestesses or gods and goddesses. I'll be very direct because we are an embryo right now and we cannot kill our procreative urges and expect to maintain some moral attitude. So all of you young men and you young women, prepare yourselves and your desires and gear them towards the raising and rearing of seed into the Father in a covenant home where there's love and commitment to the Lord. That's what I would say. If you want to talk about loins, I would take it in that direction. I think we are. But if you were both agreed, I agree with you strongly. You know, I want to say this.

2:04:14 We've talked about the bad things that can happen by not being protected in that way. Now I want to talk the blessings of being protected because I don't like ending things just on a nasty note. When you've entered a relationship, a celestial relationship, you've made that your goal with your wife or your husband or wives, whatever the case is, it's different. And then when you add posterity to that mix, it's way different. I just had a baby after not having one for 20 years. I held that child in my arms in the hospital and I just wept and I looked at my wife Tanya and my love for her. I don't think I could love her anymore now than I already do. But I know that's not true.

2:05:07 And I feel the very same feelings about Amber when your relationship, as one of its pillars is bringing up children and recognizing children as the blessing they are into this world, and you have safeguarded that part of yourself for that purpose. That is where joy is found. That is where you can have true peace. Do it the temple itself, the the Lord actually speaks to animals and says that they might find joy in their posterity. He says it to the animals as well as to the animals finding joy in your post. And please don't edit this even if it. That's exactly where I was going. The Lord's last command or last bit of instruction to Adam before He leaves the garden and leaves Adam and Eve in the garden is to have joy and rejoicing in your posterity. I am here to witness in the most personal of ways and testify that you will find no greater joy than when you hold your child in your arms that first time. And then as you get to teach that child and spend time with that child and watch that child grow and even go through the hard times with them when they become teenagers and they get a bit lippy and mouthy.

2:06:32 It's all part of the plan and it's beautiful and I wish people could feel that all the time when they are tempted to use those sacred powers for something else than other than what they were designed. And then as you look at your wife years later as you're having grandchildren, and you realize that that whole line starts with you and it's covenant between you, your wife and the Lord, and that together the three of you working to bring this his children into this world. And they become your children as well. And you hold them and you protect them and you love them. There is no greater rejoicing in all the world then that when you feel the heft of your babies in your hands and your grandchildren in your arms that you know that has been blessed and ratified by the Lord.

2:07:34 I cannot plead with people strong enough understands the times that we live in. Understand the slings and the arrows that are going to be cast your direction. Understand that those fiery darts are there to burn out the most sacred parts of you, of your existence as human, as a human being on this, on this earth, as children of a loving Heavenly Father. I can't say it any other way than that. Josh. I'll turn it back over to you to wrap all this up. I was going to. I'm not here to talk about anything else. I did want to say that the temple clothing that I told you about, it matches every single piece of armor save only, save only the sword and the shield.

2:08:18 But there are metaphors for that. And I'm not trying to guide the future people. I'm saying the armor of God is the covenants. The covenants are reflected and indicative in the clothing that we wear. The clothing should represent these covenants. I can't say anything any better than you you have. I just want to, I want to admonish if I can, in whatever capacity that people want to listen to. If you're younger or if you're, if you're, if you're grown now and you're feeling the despondence of relationships. If you're looking at a long term career plan and you're thinking about just moving along with that plan and giving up the idea of family or children. If there's even an inkling. And I'm talking to the fundamentalist too, because it's it's in our people too, but the mainstream and, and anybody else you know that follows the covenants of the Lord. Please see that your struggles here, your careers and the rest of it, unless they are subordinate to the raising of posterity for the joy and the raising of them to the Father, your living is going to become a little less more less purposeful.

2:09:21 Please reclaim your purpose and I'm talking, I think, to people that need to listen to this. I feel it. Please, if you're praying and crying and wanting that know that the Lord hears your prayers that you can find this. Find purpose and raising posterity to the Lord in a loving arrangement, preferably celestially plural, but definitely to the raising of the kids to the Lord. Girt your loins, Girt the loins brethren. Girt the loins with truth sisters as well, girt the loins. Make it tight, make it make it positive and directionalize that desire. And I say this in Jesus name, Amen. Amen. There's one last thing I want to add here before I wrap up, Josh, and say Amen to that. And that's this.

2:10:07 If you find yourself in the place where you have made those mistakes, come back. There is nothing that the Atonement of Jesus Christ can't fix to make those things right. You just have to take the first step in acknowledging you messed up, forsake that sin, and move on. There's hope in the atonement. I don't want anyone walking away from this feeling like, oh man, I've messed up and there's no hope. That's not true. There's always hope with the Savior. As long as you're drawing air, the atonement can still work in your behalf. Josh, that was good stuff, brother. I really appreciate you coming on. That was a hard one to to track, but I knew you were the man for the job. Well, you know, I, I get to, I get to chat with you, you know, maybe we'll, we'll be seeing you.

2:10:51 I don't know if you know this, I probably shouldn't out this. I'll throw a teaser. I guess Drew and the guys and I are well, we're actually in it. So we're actually doing it. There's going to be a Joseph Smith translation coming out on the RV. So I'm letting you know this first. It's way perfunctory. We don't even have the original the the triple out as far as in the physical, even though it's been ordered in. So, but that's the direction we're going now. And the JST is amazing. It is the temple covenant. It is that when you read Joseph Smith's Genesis, it is the temple right in front of your eyes. It's the covenant, 2 covenant men throughout the ages. It's amazing. I don't, I don't, I don't think it's, I don't know why anybody would want the JST.

2:11:38 Excuse me, would not want the JST over the King James Version. I mean, the Joseph Smith translation correctly done is an adequate explanation of our faith, no matter what denomination, including mainstream that you are. So anyway, just a little teaser. Awesome. Well, when that gets close, let me know and I'll have you and Drew back on to talk about that. Perfect. Hey brother, blessings to you and your new child and much love. All right, man, I appreciate you hang out for just 5 minutes, all right? Got it. Right, Bye everybody.