I Will Fear no Evil

Jeremy Walker (00:23):

And welcome back to another episode of The Last Kingdom. I am your host, Jeremy Walker. This is episode number four, February 19th, 2024, and our episode is entitled, I Will Fear No Evil. We're going to be talking about a lot of things, Ellis Island, immigration and evangelism, the truth about inflation, many quotes from people like Ayn Rand and Mike Tyson, the systematic destruction of parental authority, and even a few other subjects.

(01:02):

Welcome, welcome, welcome, my friends to another episode of The Last Kingdom. I wanted to get started with this because here in The Last Kingdom, this is all about giving Christians perspective, godly, biblical perspective. And our perspective is not negative, far, far from it. We're going to be talking today about God's providential care and it's not necessarily mystical as so much as it is practical most of the time. I want to start with Psalms 23. And for some reason this Psalm is, I'm not sure why, but I remember growing up and the place I saw it the most was at a funeral home. That's where I saw it probably the first time opened up in a Bible, laid out in the foyer.

(01:58):

And this passage, Psalms 23, verses one through six, is usually meant kind of as a last consolation upon death, where far from it. This passage is about confidence in life, in victory, in providential care and not just for those who have passed on or for you to find solace in God's providential care of our loved ones who have passed on before us. I want to start by quoting Psalms 23 just in case you don't know it yourself. Let's start, "The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leaveth me beside the steel waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yay though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

(03:29):

See, I don't know why people utilize this passage only to give comfort to those in the time of death. This is a passage of constant comfort, of victory, not just consolation for those who are mourning, but a victory for those who are living, moving forward in this life. It is difficult, the world is full of evil, but it's also full of righteousness, of God's providential plan, moving forward and cutting through all the darkness. Eventually the darkness will be fully gone and that is the path we are currently headed towards. What I love here is not just that the passage itself talks about those difficult moments where when you're passing through the valley of the shadow of death, those troubled times in your life, you don't have to worry about evil. You don't have to fear it because God is there with his rod and his staff to give comfort.

(04:42):

And on top of that, I know that maybe you as the listener haven't thought about this concept, but think about a table laid out, everything you could possibly want to eat laid upon this table, every type of meat, every type of pastry, every type of bread, desserts, drinks all around, the most decadent setup you could possibly have and around the table is not just you as one of God's saints but all the rest of God's saints, and sitting at the head of the table is our Lord and Savior, sitting there as our comfort. There is not only the lavish decadence of God's table for his people, but then there is a cup that runs over. It's so much there in your cup that it's just pouring out and onto the ground, complete, absolute decadence. And who is standing around not with a seat at the table? Your enemies. There they are having to watch you sit in complete peace, complete comfort, complete assurance, complete victory, complete safety, and you are just a feasting right in front of their eyes.

(05:59):

They can look on or they can hate, but they can't touch you and that's what it means to be a Christian, victory in this life and victory assured in the life to come in the resurrection, the second life where we will live for eternity in a world swept clean of evil, where we will sit and feast in peace. People always talk about things like the Book of Revelation as an apocalypse, some evil, terrible thing that's going to happen in the future, something to be worried about and, "What's going to happen in the end times? Terrible things!" Well far from it. That's only for those people who don't have a seat at the table. For us who have a seat at the table, God's people, the saints of God, it is not the apocalypse, the end times, it is victory, it's when everything that is dirty and disgusting, detestable, every single pain is wiped away.

(07:09):

And the sad part is because us as people only know a world of sin and death and pain, it's almost impossible to even convey the concept and fully understand such a peace, a peace with the earth, a peace with the animals, not having to worry about the creatures who might try to harm you like we do now, where the lion lays down with the lamb, where the child lays down with the asp and is not bitten. This is a world completely at peace and completely under God's protection and control. This is our future, Christians. You need to stop having the mentality that the future is something to be concerned about, to be worried about, to not know what's going to happen and somehow it's something that you can't possibly wrap your mind around and you're just frustrated about the future. Far from it. We sit at the master's table if we are the saints of God, and there is nothing but peace at his table. No enemies can touch us, we can eat to our fill, our cup runs over because our shepherd is at the head of the table.

(08:35):

He has a plan and he has complete authority over heaven and earth. No, no, no fellow Christians, you need to teach this to your family. You need to get this through your head. You need to have a proper vision for the future that awaits us and everyone else. For the saints of God, nothing but peace, purpose, and perfection. For the enemies of God, well, it is the apocalypse for them. Their world is about to crumble. They sit with an expiration date and we have everything to look forward to, a world free of sin. That's what this podcast is all about. I want us to have confidence in our lives and move forward. And as I mentioned at the beginning, God's providential care is not necessarily some mystical thing where God up in the clouds decides to just rain down blessings upon you. No, it's very practical actually. See, as we obey God's commandments in our lives, it helps us navigate through life with very limited problems and danger in general because we have this hedge of protection as God's people. No one and nothing can touch you.

(10:00):

For something terrible to happen, it must be your fault, you have to rot from the inside, but nothing on the outside can touch you. Your enemies can sit there and sneer at you as you sit at the table enjoying the Lord's feast, but they can't interrupt the meal. As we keep God's commandments, it keeps us safe. As we break God's commandments, not only does it leave us vulnerable to our enemies, but also it leaves us without God's protection. This is a very biblical subject from the beginning to the end of the Bible. It is you who must step outside of God's protection by disobedience, but if you're going to obey God, then God promises you the wings of safety are with him.

(10:49):

Now I want to go on as we're continuing to try to encourage us Christians and give us a proper perspective, and I'd like to discuss things that are happening in the world on this podcast, because as I said, it's not all the spiritual stuff but very practical things that are going on. Right now all around the United States, we're talking about immigration. In particular, we're talking about illegal immigration, and of course all the worries of people coming in and the dangers associated with that, ad nauseum. I want to talk very briefly about Ellis Island. Ellis Island is very interesting because between 1892 to 1924, Ellis Island was America's largest and most active immigration station. There are more than 12 million immigrants who were processed through there, 12 million immigrants, and this was only between 1892 and 1924, just a little over 30 years and 12 million people came through.

(11:58):

There's only, according to the stats, about 2% of people who are not allowed entry into the United States to become Americans. These are people from all over. And how long did it take on average for the inspection process to go from a complete non-American outsider to now being entered into America and become a United States citizen? Well, according to the information, the inspection process took about three to seven hours. That's it, three to seven hours. It's amazing. Where we are at now, it takes years. Not only on top of that, it takes immigration attorneys because government bureaucracies have gotten in the way and they've taken the concept where originally, there at Ellis Island, the concept was this, "Give me your tired, you're poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teaming shores. Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door." This was on the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island Foundation, Inc. This was the engravement. "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses."

(13:26):

America didn't have a problem with immigration, never has. In fact, instead of a problem, it saw it as a opportunity for evangelism to grow your nation. Now what is the difference here? See, Christians and humanists have two different objectives. For Christians, we like to try to convert those who despise us, maybe even our enemies, convert them to our side. Your enemies become your friends, and that really is the definition of Christianity. However, humanism tries to only destroy and to kill those who are not part of the team, you could say. They're not like you, wipe them out. But that's not Christianity. See, the problem with America today is that one, it's lost its religious foundation that it started with. People try to say that America was never a Christian nation. This is one of the big talking points. Far from it, of course it was, and part of it was this stance on immigration. Bring us in the people that you don't want. We'll convert them and then we'll make them productive members of society and build the greatest nation on planet earth. Even to this day.

(14:50):

Why do you think people are coming here? Because America is so terrible, such a horrible place to live? You have celebrities and politicians saying, "I don't think I want to live in America anymore. I think I want to go someplace else." That's just the most ridiculous thing on the planet. Of course you want to live here. This is the best place in the world to live and it has been since it started. The reason for it? Because it was founded on Christian principles. And so if Christians want to have a nation where they can be proud of again, it's not an immigration problem, it's a religious problem. We have to once again get back to our religious roots. Make Christianity great again in America, you could say.

(15:36):

I want to move on to another topic, the truth about inflation. I saw a little meme, memes are wonderful and the meme was two people talking and it said, "You don't have a housing market problem. It's not that the houses are worth more, it's not that the eggs are worth more or cost more, it's that your money is worth less." Inflation. Our currency that we utilize, the US dollar, is worth less than it used to be, increasingly so. But what do people do? Do they ever talk about inflation and how it actually takes place? It takes place because people are creating fiat money, money out of thin air. If we want more money, we just print more money. That's what we do. Let's go to the Federal Reserve Bank, we'll just print some more. Now if you did that, that would be illegal. They do that and that is just business as usual. See, America does have a problem and it has lost its religious roots. We used to have a hard money system, gold, silver, and otherwise. The dollar bills used to say, "This is a silver note," On it.

(16:54):

What that meant was you could take that dollar bill, the silver note, and you could take it to any bank in the United States of America and get that amount of silver. It was backed by a hard currency. You cannot inflate a hard currency. You'd have to create more silver, you'd have to find more gold, but when you have a fiat currency like paper money, they stopped being IOUs. And that's what they used to be, just an IOU because we used to have silver. If we are going to get back to where we need to be, it's not necessarily the hard money system that is what we are looking for, but we are looking for thou shalt not steal and that is a Christian doctrine and standard, and we're not allowed to steal from people by devaluing their money. When you take money and you stick it in your bank account, as inflation rises, that money becomes worth less and less and less. $5,000 a hundred years ago was a lot of money, and now $500 will barely get you anything.

(18:07):

The reason for it is artificial theft and inflation, and this is something that [inaudible 00:18:13] Americans, normal grassroots people don't want to be thieves, then they're not going to have politicians and people who are in governance that aren't thieves. It starts at the bottom, not the top. I want to talk about two different quotes that I thought were hysterical. One was from Ayn Rand and one was from Mike Tyson. Ayn Rand's comment said this, "We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality," From Ayn Rand. Now, I'm no big fan of hers, she was very much so a non-Christian humanist, but she had a lot of good things to say about certain subjects, and this is one that she is correct about. There are consequences to attempting to ignore reality. And right now, especially in the United States, we're seeing that all over the place. And some of the stuff is about people who are trying to tell people that men can be women, women can be men.

(19:17):

And just today, I was seeing that people were trying to have studies in the news and media saying that men who've gone through hormone therapies and are producing some form of liquid from their bodies are the same as biological women who can breastfeed, and these are both exactly the same, perfectly nutritious for children. Absolutely. Once again, Ayn Rand has a point, you can ignore reality, but there are going to be consequences for attempting to do this.

(19:51):

Mike Tyson's comment is this, "Social media made y'all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for doing it." Mike Tyson wasn't a person to, by any stretch of the imagination, be soft with his words, but he's got a point. Social media, people get used to being insulting and not having the consequences that follow with that insult. You cannot walk around this world and be disrespectful. You cannot walk around this world and it not affect everything about you. As I mentioned before, God's providential care is not mystical, it's very practical. If you want to get along with people, if you want to live at peace with people, by obeying God's commandments and interacting with people the way that God tells you to, watching your mouth is one of them, you are going to have a much more peaceful life. If not, you might just open up your mouth and be rude to the wrong person and God forbid somebody insults Mike Tyson to his face, that indeed would be a very, very big mistake.

(21:06):

And lastly, I would like to talk about our media subject today. One of my most favorite movies of all time was the Book of Eli, had Denzel Washington in it and is a wonderful, wonderful flick. If you have not watched the Book of Eli, which I do suggest that you do that, I suggest that you stop listening at the moment because there are going to be spoilers here about that film in particular. Now, it is a very religious movie. Lots of people think about Christian movies that they have to be over the top Christian, over the top. And I have to admit, most of the ones that are over the top are terrible movies. The vast majority of them are very, very bad. The ones that are not trying to be over the top religious Christian movies, those ones turn out fantastic because the ideas and the meaning shine through them even though they're not necessarily trying to push too hard. But when you have a good Christian concept, it will shine brightly.

(22:17):

See, this one here had the concept of Eli had a book, and you guessed it, the book is the Bible, King James version. For 30 years, he has been the keeper of this book and traveling west in the United States seeking its home. And for 30 years he's been traveling through the apocalyptic wasteland and he ends up running into one of the main protagonist bad guys. And here, the bad guy was looking for a book too. He was looking for the Bible and he saw this as a form of religious control, control that he could use in these post apocalyptic times to control people by having the right words, and he believed that the Bible had the right words to help him do that. Well, the entire concept plays on the idea of God's plan versus man's attempts to thwart God. The entire movie is about that, how God reveals his truth to his people, but he hides his truth from his enemies, how God leads his people towards prosperity and his enemies to their own destruction. It really is one of my favorite movies of all time. I loved the message.

(23:38):

I encourage you to go watch that movie and see if you don't see the same thing. See, God has laid for us a path and just as we were discussing in Psalms 23, he is sitting at the head of the table. Our enemies are all around us in this world, but guess what? We are sitting and feasting. We have a wonderful future ahead of us and we can also have wonderful victories now. Christians are victories in Christ. We are the winners. We are going to be sitting at the table eating to our hearts content and we are going to live forever in a world without sin. Now this is Jeremy Walker for The Last Kingdom. I want to thank you again for joining me. Come back next episode for more content, for more encouragement and how to live a Christian life now and to have victory. Thank you and God bless.