Welcome to The Dividing Line on Tuesday afternoon, Thursday afternoon. I am Rob Bernanski. If you're tuning in, expecting to see Dr. James White, he is out of town, and they've graciously asked me to come back and fill in again. I was here in May, and so for those of you who saw the program in May, I would just like it to be noted that not only am I back, but I am back with more hair than I even had the first time I was on the show back in May. And so I don't want to scare anyone or frighten anyone, but that is just the way it is here in December. A lot has happened over the last several months in our country and in the church, and what an interesting and crazy time it's been. And I want to talk about a couple of questions that I've been getting asked a lot over the last several months as we've been going through the COVID stuff and the election, all of those things. And one of those questions is, why don't you wear a mask. And, you know, I know that James has spent some time talking about masks, and I don't wear a mask. I haven't worn a mask yet in the nine months. Nine months. Rich, can you believe that? Nine months? Yeah, two weeks to slow the spread. Nine months. We're almost a year. into this thing, nine months to slow the spread. And so I haven't worn a mask in nine months. Actually, I haven't worn one in my entire life, but over the last nine months, I haven't worn one. And people have asked why, why don't I do that? And, you know, it's a question I've had to give a lot of thought to because obviously that's the minority. Everywhere you go, you go to stores, restaurants, anywhere you go, a lot of churches, you see everybody wearing masks. And so the government has mandated that we wear masks in Maricopa County and in all the greater Phoenix area. why have I made the decision not to wear a mask? And I've got several reasons for that that I've thought through as people have asked that question. And it's so common, I thought, you know, I might as well address it as other people maybe are trying to work through this. Should they wear a mask? Shouldn't they wear a mask? What is going on with the masks? And so, let me give you a few reasons why I don't wear a mask. First of all, I don't trust the science, and I'm just going to come right out and say that, and if that makes it seem like I'm kind of nutty, maybe I'll defend that a little bit here, but I just don't trust the COVID-19 science. People say, well, follow the science. You've got to wear a mask. because we want to follow the science. That's the catchphrase. The government, you know, Biden, I will follow the science if I'm elected to the White House. And I say, I don't believe that wearing a mask helps slow the spread. People look at me when I say that, like I just claimed the moon was made out of cheese. You know, they can't believe that. that I would think that, in spite of all of the scientific evidence. I've read articles that people have sent me articles explaining how this helps to slow the spread. I don't trust any of those articles that I've read. And there's some reasons for that. You know, as Christians, we need an objective standard for measuring truth. How do you know if a claim is true? And obviously, the baseline test is Scripture. If it doesn't agree with Scripture, then it isn't true. Scripture gives us ways to determine things that are true that Scripture itself doesn't explicitly speak to, like whether wearing a mask slows the spread of COVID. And one of those tests in Scripture is the test of credible witnesses. Do the people that are telling us these things, do they have any credibility? Do they give us reason to believe that what they're saying is true? And how do we know if a witness is credible? Well, we know that based on their track record. Do they consistently tell us the truth? And when you think about science, you know, how do we know if science is telling us the truth about something? And, you know, one analogy I like to use is about children. You know, if you have a child who's generally honest, but every now and then they hang out with a friend, let's just call him Bobby, you know, your son hangs out with Bobby. And every time he hangs out with Bobby, you find out he's lying to you about what they're doing and where they're going and who they're with. You will trust him in most circumstances, unless he's been hanging out with Bobby. And when we think about science, we have to say, does science have any friends that cause it to tell us things that aren't true? And I think if we think through this, science loses credibility when it hangs out with its buddy politics. Whenever science and politics get together, they both end up lying to us. They don't tell us the truth. And when we think about COVID, COVID is as much political as it is scientific. It is maybe even more political than it is scientific. And so do we want to trust the science behind COVID when we know that the science is driven by politics? Let's take a look at some areas that science speaks to when it joins up with politics. Do scientists tell us the truth when they speak about the creation of the world and the significance of human life? Are they credible witnesses? Well, the answer to that is no. They fail the very first truth test, which is, do they agree with scripture? And science, as it is in the secular world, teaches that the earth is billions of years old, that man is not made in God's image, but is the result of an evolutionary process, and that human life has no inherent meaning. These views are taught throughout our nation in public schools, government-run schools, meaning these are politically biased viewpoints. They're also taught in many private schools, and they're taught as science, and yet science is lying to children throughout public schools and their parents and to the nation about creation, about the meaning of life, and who and what man is. What about when human life begins? Is science a credible witness as to when human life begins? If our government were really interested in following the science, like they claim to be about COVID, then the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade. They would overturn it today. Congress would ban abortion from the moment of conception for any reason, and the president would sign it into law. Because science, science objectively knows that a person is a human being from the moment of conception. And yet we are told that scientists are confused about this. They don't know exactly when human life begins. Kids graduate from public schools fully embracing a woman's right, so-called, to murder her own child. And the scientists are wrong about when human life begins. They lie. They consistently lie. Why do they lie about that? Because they don't know the facts. No, they lie because they're pushing a political agenda and they're unwilling to state the truth and educate the public about science. They don't follow the science when it comes to the meaning and value of human life. What about genetics? If we follow the science on genetics, do we learn from science that there is a clear difference between a boy and a girl? Well, I think it's obvious. It should be obvious to anyone that if we are looking at this in a vacuum of science, that boys are boys and girls are girls. There's scientific evidence for that. But it would seem like in our culture today, science doesn't know if there is an actual difference between a boy and a girl. Gender confusion proliferates through our culture. Nothing could be more obvious, as far as science should be concerned, than the difference between male and female, and yet how many kids graduate from high school going to science classes, graduate from college, taking their science classes, and they don't know the difference or why it matters that boys are boys and girls are girls. How do you get a high school diploma and have to take two or three years of science and not know that? Science gets it wrong again. Science conveniently distorts, ignores the truth because there's a political agenda behind it. Think about climate change. Is climate change, as scientists are telling us, a man-made crisis? It's not a man-made crisis. We can look at history and we can see that climate change has little, if anything, to do with driving cars, using fossil fuels, or spraying hairspray into the air at the beauty parlor. The climate of the earth changes over time. That is what happens. That's how it works. That's how God has designed it. And there's nothing that human beings can do to control the weather, to control the climate. And, you know, we might wonder, well, why do scientists, why does science, you know, so-called willingly and perpetually mislead people on these issues? If we really, as a society, were committed to following the science, our schools would teach the earth is young and God created it. Our schools would teach that boys are boys and girls are girls. Our schools would teach that human life begins at conception, and that God sovereignly rules over the planet through its ebbs and flows for his glory and our good, and we are to be good stewards of what God has given us. If we really followed the science, that's what we would believe and teach as a society. And yet our society, which claims to be so scientific, opposes every single one of these truth claims. Every single one. And they claim they're opposed to them, not because primarily of morals or ethics, but the excuse they use is because of science, because they're following the science. How can that be? Because these aren't scientific issues to them. These are political issues. These are issues of public policy. And when science and politics come together, they lie. It's always to the detriment of science. And each of these so-called scientific claims allows for an ungodly progressive agenda to dominate our landscape. That's what science is used for today. Science is no longer science. Science is a vehicle of progressives to push an ungodly agenda that is hostile towards biblical Christianity on this nation and really throughout the world. And it shouldn't be any surprise if it's worldwide, because 1 John says the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And so, it's not just a problem here, it's a problem all over the world. There are certainly areas where scientists tell the truth. Like my analogy about a generally truthful child, science can tell us the truth. But whenever it starts hanging out with politics, truth becomes secondary. Science becomes a liar. Suddenly the earth is billions of years old. No one knows the difference between a boy and a girl. No one knows when a human being actually becomes a human being. And we can control the weather. And none of those things are true. And scripture as well as just common sense would make that clear. So when we think about mask mandates as science, when the government gets involved in this, what happens consistently in all of these examples when science and government decide to link up? Well, science always takes a backseat. Science is left behind, politics dominates, and science is just used as a vehicle to push a progressive agenda. So just like you wouldn't trust your kid if he's been hanging out with Bobby, you shouldn't trust science when it merges with politics. And so until science begins telling the truth in the context of public policy, You can send me articles all day long about science proving that masks are effective, and I won't believe any of them. There's not an article you're going to send me that's going to change my mind because science can't figure out the difference between a boy and a girl. And so why would they be able to figure out whether a mask works? If we actually look at the science, it gets worse for mask mandates and following mask mandates. We have every reason as Christians to doubt the science. But then when we actually look at the county ordinances and we look at the science behind those ordinances, We find even more reason to doubt that, that this is a political thing. This is not a scientific thing. This is not a health thing. This is a political issue. And so here I've got the Maricopa County mask ordinance up here on the screen. And this is the mandate. I think it was from late June. And There's all these reasons why they put this mandate in place. And here it says, whereas currently there is no vaccine, treatment or cure for COVID-19. All right, so this was almost six months ago now. As far as I'm aware, there are vaccines. I don't plan on getting them, but I think that they are out there and will soon be available. There are most certainly treatments now for COVID-19, and I think the fact that Donald Trump recovered from COVID-19 so rapidly would indicate that there are treatments available for it. I don't know if any of those treatments would amount to a cure. I think they're more working on the therapeutics side of things. But the question is, now that this statement in the Maricopa mask mandate is no longer valid, why do we still have a mask mandate? Why is it still there? Are we following the science? Are we even following our own reasoning? It doesn't seem that way. The next reason why they have this mandate is because they found that mandated face coverings significantly reduce the number of infections. Significantly reduce the number of infections, Maricopa County claims. And then they cite this study, a rapid systematic review of the efficacy of face masks, et cetera, found at this link. Now, because I care about you, I read this study, so you don't have to. And I think Maricopa County is depending on people not actually reading the study. Let me pull this study up and I'll show you some of the things that they say here in this study. Here's the study that they explicitly refer to in the mandate. And so here they have this statement in the abstract that in the community, masks appeared to be effective with and without hygiene. Hand hygiene. Now that should raise some red flags. You don't even need to wash your hands anymore. Just wear a mask. Just wear the mask. You don't even need to wash your hands. And both together are more protective. Randomized controlled trials and healthcare workers showed that respirators, if worn continually during a shift, were effective, but not if worn intermittently. Medical masks were not effective. And cloth masks, even less effective. Now Maricopa County's ordinance says that they have found that these masks significantly reduce transmission. But the study that they cite, which they are hoping you will not read, says medical masks, medical masks are not effective. And I don't know how you get less effective than not effective. Actually, I do know, and I'm going to show you in the study here in a minute. But cloth masks are even less effective. When used by sick patients, randomized controlled trials suggested protection of well contacts. In other words, when scripture says quarantine the sick, if we do that, that can help protect well people. You didn't need a scientific study for that. You could have just read the book of Leviticus and found that out. And yeah, that's common sense, that if you quarantine sick people, you're going to protect people who are well. And studies suggest community mask use by well people could be beneficial, particularly for COVID-19, where transmission may be pre-symptomatic. It could be beneficial. It isn't necessarily. It's not proven to be beneficial. Transmission may be when people are pre-symptomatic. It's not that it is. It may be. And so here, they say the significant data, but there's no significant data there. All right. So let's see here if I can figure out how to work this app. All right. So we go through this study here. And we find this other, in the introduction, most authorities except the U.S. CDC are recommending that community members not wear a mask. and that a mask should only be worn by a sick person or a sick patient. So most authorities, in fact, authorities around the world, medical authorities, except the United States CDC, and this study was back in April and May, in the heat of the election season, so the United States alone, in the middle of a political season, decides that masks should be worn by everybody in the community. That's convenient. That's convenient. And again, science and politics joining hands together. and science losing out. And then we learn about a study conducted in Vietnam in a hospital to see the effectiveness of masks. Again, let me remind you, this is the study that Maricopa County is using to justify their mask mandate. A trial we conducted in Vietnam of two layered cotton cloth masks compared to medical masks showed a lower rate of infection in the medical mask group and a 13 times higher risk of infection in the cloth mask arm. You were 13 times more likely to get COVID if you wore a cloth mask. Well, what is everybody wearing when they go to the store? A cloth mask. Yeah, yep, it's all cloth masks. The study suggests cloth masks, note this now, may increase the risk of infection. This is not a right-wing propaganda website I'm pulling this from. This is the study cited by Maricopa County that says that cloth masks which include even a bandana, a bandana, a dirty bandana stuck in your garage somewhere. Throw that thing on. That will help significantly reduce the transmission of COVID. But the study they refer to actually says cloth masks may increase the risk of infection. And he says, and then they say, there are no other randomized controlled trial of cloth masks published at this time. This is the only controlled trial of cloth masks. We've made a policy. We've made a government policy that everyone has to go out with their cloth mask on. The study we've cited actually says cloth masks increase your risk of infection. And I guess if we look at the numbers in Maricopa County, it shouldn't be surprising to anybody that they're rising because everybody's out there with their cloth mask. And it's less than even a medical mask. And so this is problematic. It's problematic. Why are we wearing cloth masks in public? It doesn't do anything. It doesn't help anyone. And so, you know, this study here is very interesting. Now, on this page here, let me see if I can make this bigger. Now, here they're going to talk about social distancing in this study. And this isn't even about masks necessarily, but I just couldn't help but note this here. It says, further, the rule of one to two meters of spatial separation is not based on good evidence. with most research showing that droplets can travel further than two meters and that infections cannot be neatly separated into droplet and airborne. All right, so you've got a social distance because we're gonna follow the science, except the study that Maricopa County wants you to put your faith in says social distancing is not based on good evidence. There's no scientific evidence that it works. And even if they wanted to try to come up with something, they can't separate out infections from droplets and from microscopic airborne particles that are not contained by masks. So why are we doing this? Why are we wearing masks? Why are well people wearing masks. There's no reason for it. The science doesn't say that they should. Now, they'll end this article by saying, oh, in spite of all of that, we still think cloth masks should be worn to help slow the spread. Okay, but there's no good evidence. You actually say that in your article, that it's not based on good evidence. This was an earlier, that's the one Maricopa County published. And this is a more recent one that they didn't publish. I don't even know how I ran across this article. But this one here is another scientific article from the Annals of Internal Medicine. And this one was just from November, from a couple weeks ago. So it's all the latest information. And here they say, observational evidence suggests that mask wearing mitigates transmission of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. It is uncertain if this observed association arises through protection of uninfected wearers by a reduced transmission from infected mask wearers or both. So they don't know if their study that wearing a mask helps is because well people wear masks, sick people wear masks, or both. We're nine months into this thing, and they still don't know if masks work, how they work, who should wear them, why they should wear them. But here we are, six months later, and we're all being told that we need to wear masks to slow the spread and to follow the science. And it's just not supported. It's not supported by the document that the county itself gives. And so if that's the best, maybe someone at the county knows something that they haven't told us yet. But if that is the best the county can do, then I think everyone in Maricopa County should look at that study objectively and say, you know what, no. what you're saying is a lie. Your science has been hanging out with politics and you're lying to us. That's not true. In fact, social distancing, there's no good evidence even for that. Why are we doing that? There's no evidence for it, at least according to Maricopa County and the article that they put forward to justify this ordinance. All right, so another question that comes up then is people say, well, what about loving your neighbor? What about loving your neighbor? Okay, so even if the science is uncertain and maybe masks don't work, maybe they even increase the risk of infection. What about loving your neighbor? Shouldn't you wear a mask to love your neighbor? In fact, the way this has been phrased, I saw this on a church here in Phoenix on their billboard when I drove by on the freeway, it said, love your neighbor, wear a mask. And I teach a group of ninth graders Old Testament, and we're going through Deuteronomy, and we've talked about this in class this week, Deuteronomy chapter four, verse two. And Deuteronomy 4.2, you shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you. Here's Moses speaking to Israel as they're on the plains, they're ready to go into the promised land. Ready to take the promised land. These are his parting words. And he says to them, do not add to God's commands and don't take away from God's commands. Because if you do, you'll end up not obeying God's commands. You'll end up doing something that God doesn't want you to do. You'll be distracted from obedience. Even if you add to them, adding to them, people think they're helping out by adding to God's commands. When you say to someone, love your neighbor, wear a mask, what are you doing? you're adding to God's command because you're equating those two things, aren't you? You're equating love your neighbor and wear a mask as if those are both divine commands. And they're not divine commands. In fact, you're not commanded in scripture to wear a mask. You won't find that anywhere in scripture. Now, maybe there is an occasion where it would be a loving thing to do for someone to wear a mask. I'm not going to say that that could never be a loving thing to do, but It's not, that's an interpretation of the command. That's not the command. And that interpretation, if you make that binding, you are adding to the law of God. And if you add to the law of God, you're gonna end up breaking the law of God. Jesus demonstrated this with the Pharisees in Matthew 15. Matthew 15, it says, then some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread. Now, I personally think washing your hands before you eat is a good idea. I advocate that. I think it's healthy. It's a good thing to do. It's not the law of God. You can eat and not wash your hands beforehand, and you're not sinning. You know, you may get sick from doing that. Their concern wasn't bacteria. They didn't know what bacteria was. That was a religious tradition. But you can eat and not wash your hands and not break God's law. And Jesus answered and said to them, why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, honor your father and mother, and he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death. But you say, whoever says to his father or mother, whatever I have that would help you has been given to God. He is not to honor his father or his mother, and by this you invalidate the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you. This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men. Wear your mask is a precept of men. It's not a biblical doctrine, and it's being equated with the law of God. Love your neighbor, wear your mask. If you follow that, what's going to end up happening is the same thing that happened to the Pharisees. You are going to set aside the actual commandments of God to hold to a human tradition, and you're going to end up being a Pharisee. going to end up being a self-righteous Pharisee who thinks that you're honoring God by wearing your mask when your heart is really far away from him. Now, I'm not saying everybody who wears a mask is a Pharisee or self-righteous hypocrite. I'm not even suggesting that. But I am suggesting that if you begin to equate wear your mask with love your neighbor as being the law of God, that is where you will end up. You will end up departing from the law of God. You say, You know, what commands would I break by wearing a mask? How would this happen to me that I would end up not honoring God if I equate this with the law of God? Well, from what I've seen in my experience with people, masks perpetuate a fear of the virus rather than trust in God. They're a constant reminder to be afraid, be afraid, be afraid. And it's also very difficult, it's very difficult to do the one another commands in the New Testament, at least some of them with a mask on. How do you rejoice with those who rejoice through a mask? How do I rejoice with you if you can't see my expression on my face? How do you weep with those who weep while wearing a mask? There's this massive barrier that you really can't do that the way God intends you to do that. You can't have the human connection that is expected in those one another type commands through a mask. You simply can't. What about greeting one another property? You know, the New Testament says, greet one another with a holy kiss. And, you know, I'm not advocating that we go around kissing each other as, you know, as if that's the literal meaning of the text, but there's a warmth, there's a greeting, there's a facial expression, there's an interaction that God wants us to have with each other that you can't have in that greeting through a mask. And, you know, if you've greeted people that are wearing masks, or you've been wearing a mask and you greet somebody, you know the hindrance it is. to fellowship. You know that. In fact, I know it because when I talk to people who are wearing masks, usually within about 30 seconds, if they know the conversation is going to go for any length of time, the mask comes off because it inhibits communication. It inhibits fellowship. It makes it really impossible for us to have the human connection that is required for these one another commands. And so what are you going to do? You're going to invalidate commands of God for a tradition of men, for a precept of men. And there's a danger of that. You know, maybe you can wear a mask for a little while, but we're going on nine months here. Nine months! Some people haven't been able to do the one another commands of Scripture because they're behind the mask. Yeah, Rich? So, you mentioned the Korban rule. Yeah. Okay. And what's interesting is if you think about it, you got these guys walking around Israel and they got these square beards, okay, and their dress is perfect, on down the line, but they are following the traditions that Jesus is talking about. They're following the Mishnah. Okay, that's where the Corban rule is found. You don't find that in the Old Testament. It's not there. It's a violation. It's an interpretation, right? Yeah. Well, it's a political… Yeah, we can't separate the politics and the theology of the first century. But if you think about the idea that you've got these guys walking around, and they've got these boxes on their foreheads strapped to their wrists, and what are these boxes telling people? How holy they are. Because it's telling, these boxes have got all the verses that I've memorized stuffed in them. And look how big they are. And Jesus mocked them for enlarging their phylacteries and these boxes, making people think about how really cool they are. The phrase virtue signaling. That's what they were doing. That's right. That's what this is. And so, you know, before we get too far down the road of the mask, we've already divorced the medical and scientific need for them. I've seen all kinds of arguments between people to where they do what you just did. We just walk through the science. Okay, let's see what Maricopa County has to say. Let's go through the different things. So we take away all the different reasons that we're supposed to wear the mask and then the person is left with one thing. You need to do it out of respect. Right. You gotta love your neighbor. Okay, so isn't respect a two-way street? So when you're telling me to wear the mask on my face, where's the beef? Where's the substance to this? There isn't any. And that's what's going on here. You're basically telling all of us we need to walk around in submission for whatever reason we don't really know, but you're going to do it out of respect. But yet the idea that We just took all of your arguments away from you as you appealed to science and medicine and the smartest people on the planet. We just took all that away from you. Where's the respect for that? How is it that you still want me to submit to this? How is that not disrespect? But we don't want to go there. No, no. So we don't want to go there. And that's the problem, is all of this is modern virtue signaling. They are the modern versions of boxes on your forehead. Well, and that's why, you know, I think it's, I don't have an issue if somebody wants to wear a mask. I think where it becomes a problem is when they want to make that the law of God. and then enjoying that. Because I think it would be just, the Bible doesn't tell you not to wear a mask. I think we would go too far to tell people you can't wear a mask. If it makes you feel better, if it makes you feel safe, wear a mask. That's between you and the Lord. You can do that. There's nothing in scripture that prohibits it, but we have to have that mutual respect for one another that if I don't think I need to wear a mask, then you respect that. and there's a genuine love for one another in that. And again, it's not a mask if people understand that they are a preference, an issue that you can do or choose to do or not to do, and it doesn't honor the Lord to wear one, it doesn't dishonor the Lord not to wear one. And then we just go, well, what is your preference? I think that we can live in that space. Yeah, but when we get these mandates, that's when it takes a different level. And if you think about how this is propagated, it's propagated through shame and through fear. Shame and fear. And shame and fear are not from the Holy Spirit. They're not from God. Not this kind of fear. Fear of God is from the Holy Spirit, but the kind of fear of being shamed by your fellow man, being ridiculed, being thrown out of an establishment for not wearing a mask, that is not from the Lord. In fact, you know, if the pandemic was as bad as we're being led to believe that it is, and if wearing a mask were as helpful as we are told it is, no one would need to be shamed into wearing one. No one would need to be made afraid to wear one because it would be obvious that we should wear one, if things are what we're being told they are. You wouldn't need to manipulate people with shame and fear into wearing a mask. Now, the other issue that comes up is Romans 13. Well, you know, there is a mandate and so you should wear a mask. I mean, you're a pastor after all, you should wear a mask and lead by example because you need to obey the government in Romans 13. And, you know, I think prior to 2020, Matthew 7, judge not lest you be judged, was the most ripped out of context verse in the Bible. But I think 2020, another unique situation is Romans 13 has now surpassed Matthew 7 as the most taken out of context passage in the Bible. And Romans 13 indicates that we are to be subjection to the governing authorities. Romans 13 does not mean that God has given virtually unlimited authority to the government. and almost replaced himself with the government, with the exception of just some very specific commands. There is a sphere in which government has rightful authority. And if the government oversteps that authority, the government is in violation of God's law, not the one who is rejecting the ordinance of the government. And Romans 13 indicates the government's authority is to enforce what is right and wrong according to the will of God. And so if the government decides it's going to enforce arbitrary laws, or go beyond the law of God and contradict the law of God. You're not in any type of sin for rejecting those type of ordinances. And it's a difficult line to draw at times, but the authority of the government is limited. It's limited to what God has ordained. And we can see this in several examples in scripture. And Jesus himself, I think is a notable example. During his trials, Jesus was adjured by the governing authorities to answer questions. Did the law forbid Jesus from answering those questions? Not explicitly. He wasn't bound by Old Testament law to be silent before Herod. In fact, when he went before Herod, he didn't say a word. He did not say one single thing to Herod. He acted like Herod did not exist. Did Jesus break Romans 13? Because he just flat out ignored the authority. He flat out ignored it. When he was before Pilate, Pilate was overstepping his authority. And Jesus put Pilate back in his place and said, you have no authority. You would have no authority over me, except it was given to you from above. You have limits on your authority. And Jesus, when Pilate was going beyond the authority, he did not have to answer those questions. He was not bound to do that. And so, the Lord gives an example of this, that when the government overreaches in its authority, we are not bound to obey an arbitrary or a capricious government. In the book of Acts, we have another interesting example where Paul is before the council and he's on trial. And he says in Acts 23, brethren, I've lived my life with a perfectly good conscience before God up to this day. The high priest Ananias commanded those standing beside him to strike him on the mouth. Then Paul said to him, God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall. Do you sit to try me according to the law and in violation of the law order me to be struck? Paul, did you read Romans 13? It doesn't sound like you're honoring the high priest when you call him a whitewashed wall. I mean, this is name calling here, Paul. 1 Peter 2, honor the king. You just called the king a whitewashed wall. You just called the high priest a whitewashed wall. Is Paul breaking Romans 13? Goes on, bystanders said, do you revile God's high priest? And Paul said, I was not aware, brethren, that he was high priest. Now, I think the kids today have a term for that. I think it's called being starched. You know, the high priest there just got starched by Paul. He just got incinerated. Paul knew who the high priest was in Judaism. He was not unaware. Paul is the one who wrote 1 Timothy 2. 1 Timothy 2 says, you know, pray for kings and all who are in authority. I think Paul prayed for people who are in authority. He would have known the government leaders. The high priest would have been a government leader. And Paul here says, I didn't know you were the high priest. The subtext of that is I thought that was Jesus. I thought Jesus was God's high priest, not you. And then Paul goes to the council and he lights a fuse to blow this whole government up and to show what a sham it is. Because the next thing he does is he says, brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of the Pharisee, a son of Pharisees, and I am on trial for the hope and resurrection of the dead. And then this dissension occurs, the assembly is divided, and Paul exposes this government sham for what it is. He doesn't submit to it. He doesn't pretend like it's legitimate. He exposes it. He exposes the deeds of darkness, which is what scripture tells us to do, to have no part with the deeds of darkness, but actually to expose them. And that's what Paul was doing. Here are these people that are sitting and acting like they are doing things that are in accordance with God's will, things that are good for people. And Paul says, no, no, this is a lie. This is a sham. I'm going to expose this. And he does it in pretty dramatic terms. You know, I mean, just essentially saying the high priest is illegitimate. He's in an illegitimate office. He has no authority to strike Paul. And he has no authority over the assembly. And the whole assembly really is contrary to what God has ordained. And so, Romans 13, in this situation, you know, we think about this, we are, the laws of our country are not given by five members of a Maricopa County Board of Directors, right? There's a way that laws are, we live in a constitutional republic. And if they want to make a law regarding masks, there's a process to do that. But all of these things are not within the the government that we have. We're not a government of men, we're a government of laws. And so the actual authority that is in the wrong here is not the ones who are saying, no, those orders are illegitimate, but it's the ones who are giving illegitimate orders that are contrary to the way our government system is supposed to work. You know, we think about this system. We are, when we comply with these ordinances, I think we're choosing to give up our rights as Americans and to cede control to men rather than to the duly established authority of the Constitution. And, you know, people can choose to do that, but people are voluntarily giving up their freedom because of fear. And as a Christian, that concerns me. as an American, that concerns me. But when people want to know why don't I wear a mask, you know, it's because of all of these different factors. I can't wear a mask in good conscience and pretend like I'm doing something good when I think doing so is perpetuating a lie. I think doing so is engendering fear in others. I think it inhibits fellowship with my brothers and sisters in Christ. I think it erodes liberty. And I think it endangers the health of other people, both physically and mentally. And so, you know, people say, well, it's just a mask. It's just a piece of cloth. And prior to March of 2020, it was just a mask and just a piece of cloth. But now there's a whole political you know, loaded message that goes with that mass. There's an agenda behind it, and there's a progressive agenda that seeks to undermine not only the Constitution and the freedoms that we have as Americans, but it seeks to undermine our trust in God, God's sovereignty over governments, and it seeks to undermine the law of God and to target the church. Think about how many churches are closed or have people that are you know, 10 or 15 feet apart in church, and all the things that are going on now, months and months and months of these things happening. And people are being harmed by this. People are being harmed by this far more than we will know for many years. It's going to take a lot of time to see how much damage these ordinances and this way of living for now nine months and really no end in sight, how much damage this is doing in people's lives, both mentally and physically, and most importantly, the spiritual damage it does to people. When you think about church, that kind of brings me to the second question that I've been getting asked a lot. You know, I'm the pastor at Desert Hills Bible Church. I encourage you to go check out our YouTube channel if you haven't done that, and a number of sermons and different series on there, things on social justice and racial justice and all of those different issues that have come up, and Ephesians, series on Ephesians, series on Luke. And so there's a number of things if you're interested to check that out. I'd love for you to go to the YouTube channel. and do that. But Rich, he's at Desert Hills, and he's seen what's been going on at Desert Hills over the last nine months. And the church has, it's exploded. You know, we had, before the pandemic, a couple hundred people, and it's more than probably tripled in size over the last nine months. And one of the questions that I've been getting asked pretty frequently is, why do you think Desert Hills is growing so much? What is going on at Desert Hills that so many people are coming and the church is growing? And, you know, I think it's important to be very clear that God builds the church. Men don't do that. Men can gather people together and get people together to sing and hear speeches and things like that. But only God can build a church. And so, you know, there's a sense in which when we say that, why is Desert Hills experiencing what it's experiencing? The only ultimate answer to that is because God is choosing to build the church. It's not anything that, you know, that we can say, follow these three steps and you too will have a church that's growing. It's not going to happen that way. But God does use means to grow the church, and He's using some means at Desert Hills right now that we're seeing. And it's very interesting because we're not doing anything different than we've been doing for nearly the 10 years that I've been in the church at Desert Hills. But what we are seeing is something very interesting, and that is that the most radical thing a Christian can do is simply be consistently faithful. You know, that is... That is the rare thing that happens in the world, is consistent faithfulness. And that's why, you know, when you have long-term ministries like Alpha and Omega Ministries, or Grace to You, or these other ministries that have been around for decades and have been faithful to the Word of God, they're such treasures and they're such gems, because that is kind of what stands out. That's what's unusual, is being faithful over a long stretch of time. And, you know, we stayed open at Desert Hills through the entire pandemic. We've never required or forbidden social distancing or masks or any of those other things. People are welcome to do that if they want. They don't have to if they don't want to do them. But we just continue to meet. And we're continuing to practice baptism and the Lord's Supper, and to preach the word, to fellowship together, and loving God, serving one another, seeking to reach the world with the gospel of Christ. And, you know, it's in times like these when there's a lot of change that's happening, and churches are altering what they're doing to accommodate whatever's happening in the world, that just that steady continuing to do what you've always done is the unusual thing. It's the rare thing that stands out. And, you know, I understand why some churches closed down early on when we didn't know a lot about the virus those first few weeks. But, you know, it's just this long-term faithfulness that people see that is so radical. You know, it's not necessarily going out and doing something radical in a short span of time, but just being faithful over the long haul. And, you know, another thing that people say, and it's consistent, whenever they come and they visit Desert Hills, one thing they say is there's just life among the congregation. There's life here. And some of the things I mentioned, there's children that are playing, and there's people that are talking to each other, and there's people that are hugging and shaking hands and enjoying being together. And I haven't seen anything like that in months. And it's You know, Rich, you see it every Sunday, just the incredible amount of life that is present at the church right now. And, you know, there's just an excitement that people have to be there because it's this place that they can come and worship and fellowship and all the things that are going on, all the chaos and order, it's become a refuge for people where they can come and be out of that storm for a little bit and be in the presence of God and the presence of His people focusing on God and His Word. And the presence of the Spirit is just really evident among us. One question that somebody asked me one time is, you know, how do you know if the Holy Spirit is present in a church? Now, that's a good question. People should ask that question, and they should evaluate that. How do you know that? And I think there's two things I would look at. Is the Word of God faithfully preached? Because you can't separate the Spirit from the Word. If you have a lot of good feelings, but you don't have the Word of God faithfully preached, you just have a lot of good feelings. And so, you have to have faithful preaching of the Word of God. But then you also want to look for the fruit of the Spirit. You know, if the Spirit is present, then His attributes are going to be manifest among people. His love, His joy, His peace, His patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, all of these things are going to be present. And we're just seeing that, just the joy that people have in hearing the Word of God, the joy that they have in being together. I think one of the things that's interesting is we probably never valued spending time together as the body of Christ. just as the body of Christ, like we do now, when so many of the relationships outside of that have been stripped away, or we see, you know, the distance that exists between everyone in the world, and even between us and people that are out in the world. And so, this joy that we have, it's become so precious to be able just to be together, just to fellowship, and just to have that level of intimacy with one another. You know, another thing that has been very encouraging is the unified and courageous leadership of the elders at Desert Hills. And one of the things that we've seen in some places is that there were cracks in the leadership that weren't as obvious. And then when this COVID event hit, some of those things became very evident. And there were a lot of problems surfaced that were always there, but just under the surface. And, you know, I'm just blessed to serve with three other godly elders who love Christ, who love His church, who are courageous and who will, you know, I told the guys at Thanksgiving, you know, I'll go to war with any of you guys anytime because you are, you know, they're just strong men of God, men of courage. And, you know, we haven't, like any other group of men, we have our differences of opinion about certain things, but there's a unity there and a bond in Christ. And, you know, one other thing that's been kind of unique during this time is singing and then more singing at Desert Hills. And one of the things that has been outlawed in some places, and churches have maybe reduced it a little bit or asked you to sing quietly, is, you know, this worship and song. And Maybe we're just contrarian at Deseret. I don't know. But we've actually instituted more singing at the church during this time. We've had these worship nights on the last Friday of every month, and we're, I think, going to try to resume that in the new year, where we've had these evenings where we just come together and we sing together for an hour. And I give a devotional from the Word of God, usually from Psalms for, I think it's supposed to be 10 minutes. I don't think it's ever been that short. We come together and we do these worships, and we're just singing our hearts out to the Lord. And people are there, they're just, they're in tears. They're literally in tears with joy, because they just haven't been able to do that. And they just need, there's so much stress, there's so much pressure because of all the things happening in society, that they come and they sing and they feel the presence of God. And, you know, it's just going kind of, I guess, a little bit contrary to the narrative, but it's going, when these days get more difficult, Hebrews 10, right, gather all the more. And we've actually called the worship nights, you know, the all the more worship nights, because we want to come together all the more as life gets harder, as the pressure increases on the church, and the pressure increases on us individually in the culture and in the world, we need to spend more time together worshiping and praising God, not less. And unfortunately, for many people over the last nine months, they've spent a lot less time together in praise and worship. And that's only going to get worse over time. There's this this article here that someone sent me the other day, and Gospel Coalition, and you know, I don't even know why they write some of these things, but, is it wise to sing Christmas carols in church this year? And so, you know, here we are, we're singing more than ever and louder than ever. We've got two choirs at the church now, one for children and one for adults and teenagers, and we're just singing our hearts out. And these are the kinds of questions, though, that are inhibiting, I think, believers from growing and enjoying their walk with the Lord, enjoying their relationship with other believers. Is it wise to sing Christmas carols in church this year? Is it risky, the article begins, to sing together during the coronavirus pandemic, especially as we look forward to cherished Christmas carols? Now, right off the bat, this is an absurd question. Is it risky sing together. I mean, where does that come into play in Scripture as a decision-making paradigm for Christians? Why do we begin by asking, is it risky? Is it risky to share the gospel with your unbelieving neighbor? Is it risky to get in your car and drive to church? Is it risky to go do missions work among various peoples here and abroad? You know, is it risky to take a stand for Christ at my job? I mean, this is the wrong question to ask. And when you begin to ask questions like this, you're going to end up getting a wrong kind of answer. And, you know, they go through all of these things that we've learned about the virus and these studies on singing. And, you know, the gist of this here studies on singing is, well, you know, if you're going to sing, sing quiet. Sing quietly. Because the louder you sing, the more aerosols are produced by you. And, you know, if you just sing your heart out, you're going to be spewing all kinds of things everywhere and sending all of these. particles everywhere, even if you have a face mask, even if you have a face mask, all these particles are going to go right through your face mask. And in fact, it says here the median particle emission rate, if you sing your heart out with the face mask on, is 410 particles per second are coming out of your mouth, even with the mask on, it's getting through your mask, 410. I don't know how many particles you need to get infected with COVID, but You know, if you have a room full of 400 people and 410 particles per second going out of their mouths with masks for an hour, you probably have a lot of particles floating around. And, you know, then there's all of these discussions of, you know, is it dangerous and all of these. And then the mitigation strategies. And here's some suggestions offered by the experts. If you haven't already, start with the basics. Social distancing virtually eliminates the risk of droplet transmission. Now, if you were here at the beginning of the show, You saw the article that says that that is based on no good evidence. But here we are being told that social distancing virtually eliminates this risk. It doesn't eliminate the risk, at least as far as science is concerned. Masks reduce airborne transmission drastically. And again, we've seen that actually the cloth masks don't do anything. Well, you're still at 410 particles per second, even with a mask on. So, I don't know what it would be without it, but that still seems like a lot to me. So, make sure you do those things. Get to know your building's ventilation. What is the cubic volume of the room? Rich, what's the cubic volume of the worship center at Desert Hills? Oh, I don't know. In seminary, they didn't teach me how to measure cubic volume of auditorium where we worship. I'm sure if I would have paid more attention in high school physics, I could have answered this question. How many times per hour does the air change? I don't have any clue how I would even figure that out. What percentage of that is fresh air do you need to open the windows? Well, our windows don't open unless you throw a brick through them. So that's not an option. And should you consider high-efficiency filters? I think we might have those. I don't know. If a room seems risky, you can take further steps to measure it. And some researchers have built risk calculators based on the statistics found in a variety of scientific papers where you can get a CO2 meter to measure ventilation in a room. although there are limitations for singing, and so all of these mitigation measures. And, you know, essentially what ends up happening here, if you're just an average pastor like me who isn't an astrophysicist, you don't know the cubic volume of the room. You don't know how many times the air changes over in the room. You don't know what percentage is fresh air. You don't have windows to open. And, you know, I'm not even sure how to get to the filters. There's people, thankfully, at church that do know how to do that, but I don't know where they are, how you get to them. But what do you end up doing? Well, you end up not singing because you've got so many restrictions here, so many questions that are going to cost you a pretty significant amount of money probably to get an answer and then a solution that you're going to end up not singing because it's risky. And so, you know, at the end of the day, You know, he advocates, sing safely at church together, which again we've seen is essentially, according to this article, nearly impossible to do, very unreasonable. Or just make a joyful noise at home, along with the streamed worship service. Or turn up the volume of singing worship music in the car. I've done those last two things. They don't replace singing with the people of God. It's not remotely similar to that. You know, this is the kind of stuff you're going to hear this Christmas season. Don't sing Christmas carols unless you know the cubic volume of air and how often it turns over and all these other things that essentially make it impossible for you to function in that environment. And my encouragement to every believer this year is sing. sing Christmas carols to the Lord and do it with other believers. Get together with other Christians and sing loud, sing praise to God and trust the Lord. Trust the Lord. You know, he will take care of you. And if you get COVID, that was the Lord's will. But, you know, I would rather get sick obeying the Lord then stay physically healthy, but be disobedient and not gathering for worship and not singing to one another. That's another one of the one another's in the New Testament, sing to one another. It's hard to do that if I'm alone in my car or in my house, singing along to a stream worship service. And so it's been, you know, nine months, nine months. Are you singing to one another? Are you doing that? Are you able to do that? And is it wise to sing Christmas carols in church this year? Is it wise to obey the Lord? I think it is. Is it risky to sing Christmas carols? Yeah, it's risky. It's risky to get in your car and drive to church. For some of our brothers and sisters, it's risky to go and walk to their church in a country where Christianity is illegal, but they're going to do it anyways, because they love Christ and they love the people of God. And so, you know, as we kind of wrap up today, I just want to encourage you, you see an article like this, is it wise to sing Christmas carols in church this year? Yes. Is it risky? Yes. Yes, it is. Do it anyways. Honor the Lord and encourage one another, be obedient to scripture. So I want to jump in here. I want to have a little back and forth here. All right, go ahead. Because as we were talking before the show about the apologetic value of this subject. And I've had some phone calls, you know, we've been talking about this on and off for nine months now. And What a lot of people are not putting together, some in social media are actually concluding that we're anti-vaxxers, and no. The point of all of this, apologetically, is that there is a virus out there, and it has been politicized. Okay, well we're not politics here, but the problem is that it is the secularization of it, the secular movement out there in the world has grabbed this. They see its value. And they see its value as a baseball bat to whip all of society into submission. That's number one. But number two, they also see, more importantly, the same value in it in whipping religious people into submission. And that's where we come in, because the facts of the matter in the virtue signaling that they're doing, all these things are to one particular end, and that is that the government, the secularists, are able to use it in such a way as to get the population to submit to it. And it is a whole lot easier to get that population, if you can get the population to submit peacefully and willingly through guilt and fear. Yeah, and shame. And shame. What have we been talking about? We've been talking about it the whole time here. Guilt, fear, and shame. And follow the science. Well, you went through the science. Explain it. Well, I think, Rich, we could agree that if They said, you know, hey, masks may or may not help, and if you want to wear one, wear one, and if you don't, don't. I don't think either of us would have an issue with that. No, not at all. But my thing is— And I don't mind if other people wear masks. I give my reasons why I don't, but it would contradict my own principles for me to tell people not to. If the secularists keep taking us down this road, and they are in the driver's seat, We think about secularism, we think about atheism, we think about agnosticism, and then you come into the politicians and the bureaucrats who just like the idea of ruling over people, being able to tell everybody how to live and how they should live, and they won't do what they're told, so we're going to force them to do it. Like I said earlier, it's easier to get them to do it through guilt and fear and shame than it is by force. It's a whole lot easier. Yeah. And the ultimate endgame is to take over the church. Right. That's the ultimate endgame. And all of society. And then if you look at Revelation, what is it that they're seeking to, what is the government seeking to usurp? Well, it's the place of God. They want to run the church. Right. So the end game in all of this, though, if they keep taking us down that road as they're in the driver's seat, we may all be wearing masks. We may be wearing masks for a different purpose, though, so that we can travel about incognito in society, with big glasses looking kind of like the Unabomber, you know what I'm saying? as we just be able to try to move about as we try to sneak in off to church take that walk and and and not be you know, followed by the modern version of the KGB. I have mentioned this movie before. You can find it on YouTube. If you have not watched this movie, you really need to do it. I'm wrong. It's not on YouTube. It's on Vimeo. And you can find it. It's called The Printing. And it was done during the late 1970s and early 1980s. And it tells a story of Christians in the Soviet Union who were resisting that secular government that was keeping the church down. And you see depictions of state-approved churches in there. You see depiction of churches that are not state-approved having to meet in forests. But the focus of the movie was about people who were smuggling printing press parts around, setting them up in people's attics. Remember, in the Soviet Union, you didn't own your own home. They told you where to live. Right. The government owned everything. Yeah. And they're printing Bibles, and they're smuggling those Bibles out the back window as the KGB is coming in the front door. Yeah. I'm old enough to remember a guy named Brother Andrew. Yeah, I remember Brother Andrew. And the comics that used to come out about Brother Andrew was him at the border of the Iron Curtain hoping and praying that God will keep them from searching the car because of all the Bibles that he's got beneath the seats, smuggling Bibles into the country. We're not coming up with stuff in a vacuum here. Societies in our own lifetimes have sought and fought to be able to do these things, to hold Christians and the religious part of society under their thumb. We see this around here, and we see whether it's the virtue signaling, whether it's the woke church, the social justice movement, so many different factions going at the church all at once. all of these things, we need to not be putting our trust in them. I came up, I haven't run this by you, so don't laugh too hard. I came up with a new hymn. A new hymn? Yeah, I wouldn't drink right now. I'm going to wait for it. My hope is built on nothing less than medicine and scientists. Is this not what is being propagated today by so many? And yet, like you said, you pull the curtain back, and the guy behind the curtain is not wearing a mask, and he's not appealing to science. Right. And he's not staying home for Christmas. He's traveling, even though he's told everyone else not to travel. At the same time, those are real concerns. But I think it's just as problematic if we approach those from a perspective of fear as those who would approach COVID from a perspective of fear. Right? I mean, we can be aware that, hey, this is a path that we could be going down as a society, and we'll pray that God intervenes and that doesn't happen. But if it does happen, we're not going to be afraid. You know, we're not... Right. And the point here is we're not stirring up fear here. That's not what we're trying to do. Right. We're trying to stir up awareness that we're not Open your eyes and look at what's going on around you in the world. Open your worldview up to a Christian worldview. Stop thinking like the world. Right. Be transformed in the renewing of your mind. Renewing of your minds. And so with that, in that scenario, you become part of the resistance and you become that man or woman of God who looks to the things of God, the created order, and the law of God as it was given, not out of context or not snipped out of context like Romans 13 is so often done. And so as we move forward, the apologetic here is, again, we think nine months ago. Think a year ago. If either one of us would have told each other, this is what's coming, we'd have called the guys in the white coats. We really would have. But who knows what's coming over the next six months? We don't. But if you haven't learned this, learn it now. We need to change our perspective and our attitude, and we need to be equipped for whatever may come. Yeah. Whatever may come. Yeah. In whatever form it is. That's right. And I appreciate what you said about Desert Hills being a refuge. I do, in a lot of ways, feel like, see and hear the folks that I'm meeting that have come our way in the last nine months, so many of them, that they are refugees. They have that same message from whatever direction they came. Absolutely. There's that, you know, we're looking for a refuge, we're looking for a lighthouse, we're looking for a place where we can have safe harbor. And that's what we've been doing. That's right. Yeah, and it comes just from promoting the truth of God's Word. And yeah, there could be tough days ahead, but we're not fearful of that. You know, we understand that in this world we will have tribulation, but we don't fear it because Christ has overcome the world. And so, yeah, and we do want to encourage Christians, hey, yeah, think biblically about what's going on. When the county puts an ordinance out and they give you a scientific study to back it up, maybe read the study to see if they're telling you the truth. You know, but at the same time, don't be afraid of the virus and don't be afraid of what could come. Also, on the other side, if the country goes off a cliff, you know, hey, that's, Christians have endured it before, they'll endure it in the future, and maybe we'll be called to endure it ourselves and Christ will be glorified in that. So, all right. Well, everyone have a good weekend. And I think I'm going to be back Tuesday. Is that right? I didn't do so terribly that you're kicking me off for next week. All right. All right, so we'll see you all on Tuesday. Have a blessed weekend worshiping the Lord with His people this Lord's Day. you