Our discussion with Attorney, Don Hart and Medical Doctor, Dr. Tom Kendall will focus on the jurisdictional matters of family life in medical decisions. Over the past few decades, we have seen increasing involvement in the government in health care. How should Christians think and respond to these trends? How should they think about jurisdictional overreach? What are Biblical jurisdictional boundaries? How are they violated?

Hey, thanks for joining us for the Church and Family Life podcast. But before we get going with the podcast, I want to tell you about a few things. First, we have a remarkable conference coming up called Jurisdictions Under Fire, church and family in the balance. That is gonna happen October 28th through 30th in the evenings, it'll be live streamed. Hope you can join us with that.

We have some really remarkable communicators that will help us deal with that issue. Also, I just wrote a book called The Family at Church, How Parents Are Tour Guides for Joy. This is a book that is designed to help families fully engage in local church life and make it the sweetest thing ever. Also, our national conference has been scheduled for May 20th next year at Ridgecrest, Theology of the Family. But just before that conference, we're gonna have a singles conference on May 19th.

And I hope you all can come and join us with that as well. And with that, go to our website. We have thousands of resources to equip churches and families to be ordered by the word of God and the word of God alone. And you can get there by going to churchandfamilylife.com. ["Church and Family Life"] Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast.

I'm Scott Brown and with me is Jason Dome, pastor at Sovereign Redeemer Community Church and longtime friend and all that kind of stuff. Welcome, Jason. Hi, good to see you. I really appreciate you joining us. Church and family life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture for the spread of the gospel across the generations through biblically ordered churches and families.

And so this week we're going to discuss medical tyranny with Tom Kendall and Don Hart. We are wanting to speak to the issues concerning the jurisdictions of the family, particularly in this broadcast. The Church and the Family are two great institutions for the spread of the gospel and for the raising of the younger generation. And we're here to talk about medical tyranny because in recent months, particularly, governors all around our nation have issued orders related to health care and they've been shocking, although it's not altogether new. Don Hart, thank you for joining us.

I'll tell you a little about Don. Don is an attorney and founder and president of Heritage Defense, where he defends the parental rights of Christian homeschooling families around the country against threats by social services. Don is also an elder in his local church for the past 18 years. He's a husband and a father of seven. Heritage Defense is a nonprofit legal advocacy organization which defends the rights of parents to raise their children and the nurture and the admonition of the Lord.

And so for the past 10 years, they have protected member families in all 50 states from jurisdictional abuse by child protective services as member families stand together to encourage and empower one another to teach biblical truth in a culture which is increasingly hostile to Christianity. So Don, thank you for joining us. I really appreciate your time. Thank you, Scott. I'm delighted to be with you.

And we also have Dr. Tom Kendall, longtime friend, collaborator. Tom is a family doctor, has been for 44 years. He's the son of an evangelist and an evangelist at heart. I can tell you that.

He's been married for 48 years with seven living children and 28, count them, 28 grandchildren. And he and his wife reside in Greenville, South Carolina. Tom, so good to see you. Thank you, Scott. So before COVID-19 unfolded, I really personally was not very well aware of the state of emergency health powers act that gave governors discretion, sole discretion to declare public health emergencies.

I just wasn't aware of the powers of surveillance and quarantine and isolation and medical care demanded, medical care withheld, and even in some senses, a medical martial law. So we're here to talk about that, particularly, I think, surrounding what we have seen to be tyranny. What's medical tyranny? I think we'll try to define that, but I think that it's the imposition of unwanted healthcare on the citizens and or perhaps, you know, unnecessary healthcare inappropriate healthcare demands. So we want to talk all around this issue, and we're going to start with the theological considerations.

Let's begin laying a foundation of the biblical case for the jurisdiction of the family as primary in these matters of medical care and how it relates to medical tyranny. So, brothers, let's talk about that. What are the theological considerations that we need to pay attention to in this whole subject. Well, Scott, I'm grateful that you began our discussion, helping us to really define a foundation that's needed. The more you consider jurisdictional overlap and exclusive areas of jurisdiction with respect to the state, the family, the church, the more you come to realize that you really cannot address one jurisdiction without talking about the other two.

And one of the things I'm grateful that you are really desiring to accomplish with this podcast and this discussion is not only to talk about the theory and the theology that is involved, but to seek to apply that to current events and to answer the question, so what do Christian families do in times like these? And I think that's what so many Christian families with whom we come into contact with Heritage Defense and in in pastoring local church and in just everyday life that we live here in Texas. That's the burning question on so many people's minds is what do we do? How, how do these things apply? And, and certainly we're in a season where there's great concern, with respect to overreach, jurisdictional overreach by the state and federal, even local examples of the state, especially as related to these health emergencies, or at least what have been described as and declared health emergencies.

I think as more information becomes available, we start to sort of sift out whether or not the true emergency nature of things is as it has been represented, or perhaps may well be less. But the truth is, we have got to connect all these jurisdictions in order to talk about the theology and get to the answer to the question of what do people do at times like these in the times in which we live. And so, in my view, to do that, we have to talk about biblical jurisdictions. And to talk about biblical jurisdictions, we really have to define what we mean by that. And in some ways, it's easiest to do that by talking about what we don't mean.

What we don't mean when we're talking about jurisdictions, in my understanding, is frankly what most people are used to. Part of the problem is also, frankly, the most encouraging part of the solution. And that is that this problem in which we find ourselves really began with us. It started in the family and it started in the church in many ways. And lots of folks now are pretty exercised about the overreach of jurisdiction by the state, but we really have to ask the question, how did we get here?

And part of the way that we got here is that instead of biblical jurisdictions, we have become really accustomed to jurisdictions that are really, really unbiblical jurisdictions where the family has frankly abdicated much of its jurisdiction and failed in much of its duty before the Lord with respect to how Christians are to live. And frankly, churches are wrestling with many of the same problems. And often families are having a hard time with this because their church is having a difficult time with this and because their elders are not speaking clearly to these kinds of issues. And what has happened by and large is that because of abdication for whatever reason, whether it's ignorance or whether it's laziness, whether it's materialism, whether it's a lack of understanding of biblical jurisdictions, the family and the church has created a vacuum jurisdictionally, and the state is only too happy to step in and occupy that vacuum. And honestly, the solution to this, in my view, to sort of talk backwards from our end goal is that this really has to start, The solutions to these problems really have to start at the most grassroots levels.

They need to start in the family and they need to start in the church. And often people's eyes glaze over when you start talking about jurisdictions. And we've really got to muscle through that and get past that. It's not something just for lawyers, it's something for pastors to understand. It's something for pastors to teach their churches to understand because these jurisdictions are so connected and have such impact on each other.

We really can't talk about biblical jurisdiction without talking about how many aspects of that, that God given jurisdiction has, has been abdicated. And that's really what's led to a great deal of the overreach and tyranny that we're, that we're dealing with right now. So it really is not enough to just start with the big bad state and say, you know, what has happened? You know, there's steamrolling everyone and they know no bounds. And how has this happened?

Well, I think we have to answer that question because what the state has been happy to fill is a vacuum, a void created because families and churches have not understood their jurisdictions and haven't stepped up biblically to do their duty. If we vacate jurisdiction and if we shirk duty, that creates a situation where we're begging for judgment. And we're experiencing some of that in my understanding right now. And I hope during this podcast we'll be able to talk about how and why some of those things are so true. The jurisdiction of the state is one of the easiest for us to define.

We can look at Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2, and we see very quickly that the jurisdiction of the state is to bear the sword to restrain evil. And Christians in that context are to be exemplary, law-abiding citizens, subject joyfully to the authorities that exist and have been ordained and put in place by God, And so far as those authorities exercise their God-given authority and jurisdiction. And where does that start and stop? As delegated by God. And so certainly that jurisdiction does not include the authority to call on the family or the church to not do something that God has instructed them to do or to do something that God has forbidden that they do.

And so the jurisdiction of the state, as it is described scripturally, is to bear that sword to protect innocent life, to restrain evil, and as they do so, as empowered by God to do so, Christians joyfully submit to that, and are salt and light in terms of law-abiding examples of being subject to the authorities ordained by God. Right. And Don, I think I really appreciate you beginning with this whole matter of the abdication of the jurisdictions in the church and the family. I mean, we have an environment where churches very, very rarely practice church discipline. There's tremendous trouble in homes where husbands and wives don't exercise proper jurisdiction over their children, even to raise them, even to teach them the Word of God.

So while you have these these three jurisdictions that are overlapping, because they do overlap, and they are somewhat independent, they're not completely independent, but they're very complementary at the same time. But when you have the church and the family abdicating their authority, then as you said, the state gobbles it up. And I think that's what we've been seeing, but it does go back to unfaithfulness in church and family life. It really does. And it really is multifaceted in how it impacts families, churches, and our country.

One of the most glaring abdications on the part of churches, for example, is in just defining who and what the church is. You've described some of the theological foundation, the biblical authority in the church to do the things that the church is called to do, the preaching of the word, the fellowship that Christians have in the context of the church's ordinances, Lord's Supper, baptism, biblical authority to deal with sin, as you've just described, and to exercise discipline, to be that salt and light. One of the things that the church has done that really ill defines what the church can and should be is live and act as though she is really what she is, and that is the blood-bought bride of Christ. You know, most professing Christian churches in America are 501c3s. That's a corporation.

That is, by definition, an entity which exists at the good pleasure of the state, which acknowledges as her head and the very one that allows her to exist, the state. The state's not the head of the church. The Lord Jesus Christ is the head of the church, and he bought her at a very dear price with his own blood. And yet the vast majority of churches in the United States who now would like to speak to these jurisdictional issues have misdefined themselves such that they are not defined legally as churches at all, but instead is instruments of the state existing at the good pleasure of the state rather than the blood bought bride of Christ owned by the Lord Jesus Christ. I would pay for dearly.

I would agree with Don about that. I don't believe that churches should be tax exempt. They are rather tax immune to use a medical term. And and so so many churches are really, really afraid to speak to the issues of the day. They are clinging to this tax-exempt 501c3 status like their life depends on it, when frankly, as Dr.

Kendall has pointed out, they are tax-immune. And constitutionally, That is accurate. Churches which are not 501c3s receive tax deductible donations from their members all the time. And that is very normal. The biggest reason that churches give pragmatically for going down this road is the IRS and tax treatment.

But churches aren't required to call themselves instruments of the state and entities that exist at the good pleasure of the state. And honestly, that was instituted by LBJ with some pretty bad intentions, which we have seen work out, just as I think he perhaps anticipated that they might. But the church has got to understand, she's the church of the Lord Jesus Christ bought with his blood. And we don't have the freedom to call ourselves entities which are created or exist according to the good pleasure of the state. That's a major breakdown from the very get-go that helps us understand how we got here, how we got where we are today.

So friends, I think there's a single verse that drives home very powerfully the point that Don is making here, and it's from Acts chapter 20. And it's Paul exhorting the Ephesian elders, and he says this in Acts 20 verse 28, therefore take heed to yourselves, you Ephesian elders, and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. So there's an awful lot packed in that verse, but it starts with Jesus Christ being the ultimate head of the church and the Holy Spirit actually being the one who appoints those who are to exercise authority over local bodies. And it's not the civil magistrate, it's actually elders in a local church. So when the civil magistrate begins to say, you can meet now, you can't meet now, you can only meet under these circumstances, you can't sing when you meet.

They've stepped across a line that actually has been established by God. Right. And you've got the same thing in the family life codes in Ephesians five and six, you know, particularly where the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is head of the church and that children obey their parents and the Lord. These are jurisdictional authorities, you know, that God has established. Tom, talk to us about the jurisdiction of the family and, you know, theologically and also just, you know, how it relates to the medical environment we live in today.

Well, the Lord Christ spoke to the need of the disciples and those that he counseled to look to the law and the prophets. They speak of me. And of course, Moses' accounting of God's creative design when he created man for his glory. And the relationship that he had established an initial jurisdiction. Adam had to rule his own heart.

He had to submit himself to the creator of God. And then he oversaw with dominion the naming of all the animals after God had created them. And then he was given a wife, the beautiful Eve. And he was to be what God ordained him to be for her. So he established the family right there, And because he did it that way with that authority, we are not to discount that.

We are not to change it. And so it continues on from the origin of mankind to today where the marriage relationship is really the most precious institution that God has on this planet. The church is significant, of course, it is His body, but that man and wife relationship is what God ordained. And then, of course, to perpetuate humankind, he gave that creative ability, that procreative authority, which is for marriage. And yet, man has adulterated that, and many of the problems are subsequent to that adulteration.

And then he says, look at the prophets. Look at what I have told you through them. And of course, the majesty of Psalms speaks to us right now with Psalm 1, Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, and goes on to tell the counsel of the law of God, and he will delight in it if he's serving God. But then there's Psalm 2, and Psalm 2 is the antithesis. Why do the heathen rage?

Why do the nations imagine a vain thing? They want to cut the bands of heaven. They do not want that jurisdictional authority. They want to be independent of the Creator, the designer. And so Christ is telling us there is the battle.

It is that ordained purpose that He had established in righteousness and holiness, and then of course sin, the curse, the consequences of that. And now what we're dealing with today in this podcast is indeed that. It's the consequences of that failed jurisdictional oversight and privilege. But there's no question that God ordained the family. And as the family goes, so goes the social order.

So goes the community, the society. Someone has wisely said that culture is religion externalized, and so what's in the heart is what comes out on the lips and what comes out of the behavior. And so I think the issue of the family is essential here, and that is a matter of the Father's headship under Christ, and then he uses the doctrines that are sound and forever settled and true to give the individual applications of how those laws, how those doctrines are worked out. But no question about it. I thought Don did a very good job in presenting that the foundation is necessary.

The foundation of all jurisdiction is Christ. Right, and that's the jurisdictional design in the Bible. You have the supreme authority, Jesus Christ, and him alone. He's the head of the church. He is the head of the family.

And so the jurisdictional authority is established by the supreme authority of God. So churches and families have to hail to that authority first and then obey as best they can without disobeying that supreme authority in the other realms. Now, are there, in your view, are there times, are there any times when it's legitimate for a government to make medical demands? Where is the line? Is there a line?

Address that. Well, let me start by saying this. I'm not a healthcare provider. I'm a doctor. A doctor was trained in medical school to treat sick patients with medical diseases.

So then the nomenclature has actually changed. The paradigm has shifted. The individual is responsible to God for his health care. And that jurisdiction is extremely important. Yes, doctors are now brought into policy and decision-making because they've had experience in the medical arena and the science arena.

But I'm not a healthcare provider. I'm a doctor. And so when the state supersedes its privilege and responsibility to enter the relationship between a patient and a doctor, that's a violation of something that I think is really sacred. In fact, the foundational, reality of good medical care, the best medical care is the patient physician relationship. So relationship matters.

And when you have an introduction of third parties, be it insurance, be it government, be it agencies, be it licensure boards, these kinds of things, you've begun to interfere with the foundation of what makes good medical care. And that's the patient-physician relationship. So the government oversees to a measure the licensing of practitioners. In other words, there's a baseline necessity, which is looking at education, looking at experience, looking at training that then goes through a process of licensing. I'm licensed today by the state of South Carolina.

That gives me the authority to walk into an examining room and be a doctor to a patient. And there are certain spoken and unspoken responsibilities that I have. Morality enters that relationship. Propriety enters that relationship. How that relationship is carried out is very important.

Someone said our nation is going to be ruled when it's a moral nation. But when it becomes immoral, we will lose. And so we've seen that for for many decades now. But there really should be no intrusion into the physician decision-making as the patient and doctor make the decisions which are best for that patient. And there's a strong biblical foundation that supports that conclusion.

I'm so grateful that Dr. Kendall took us back to the beginning in examining the nature of these jurisdictions. And of course, you know, frankly, the fall of man and Satan being cast from heaven, every problem that we could identify with respect to sin and death that we deal with in this life really involves a violation of jurisdiction. Satan wasn't content with his jurisdiction and didn't respect God's, nor did Adam, nor do we. We are born with this nature that says, I'm not happy staying in my lane.

I want to get into someone else's jurisdiction, while at the same time so frequently a nature that says I really would prefer to shirk my duty rather than do it. But as we look at what the Bible has to say about the family in the application that Tom has brought before us, where is the instruction with respect to protecting and preserving the life of a family. To whom is it given in Scripture? Overwhelmingly, these things are given and placed in the jurisdiction of mothers and fathers. Fathers first, and by extension, their help meet suitable to them, their wife, a dad and a mom and a family.

When you start talking about provision, protection, discipleship, everything that is involved with respect to jurisdiction and child rearing and healthcare decisions and all the things that impact a family, Scripture places those responsibilities and those duties within the family unit itself. Responsibility for healthcare, for whatever we might name. Again, though, we've seen the quick abdication with respect to so many of these jurisdictions and perhaps nowhere so grievously as in the area of discipleship. And again, that connects to how things are playing out with respect to health care and medical tyranny. Yeah, so Don, you bring up a point I want to have you guys comment on, you know, and it's the answer to, I want you to answer the rebuttal to that.

What makes you qualified to take care of the health care of your child when the doctor has been to medical school? What makes a parent qualified? How do you answer that? God does. The word of God.

The fact that that jurisdiction to provide for and protect and care for a family is given to a father. And again, here's another example of the rampant abdication and how we got here. Sadly, in most professing Christian households in America, the dad has shifted a significant part, or perhaps sometimes all, of the burden of provision to his wife. He's not protecting a wife in the way that scripture instructs a husband to protect a wife. He sends her into the workplace to help bear the curse of the man, that of provision, as if the curse of childbearing and that that the woman involved, that is involved for the woman with respect to sin were not enough.

We are so frequently, for whatever reasons, whether it's ignorance, whether it's materialism, whether it's, you know, whatever the cause, you know, this is the reality and this is how we got here. Mothers are not keepers at home anymore. Wives don't do that anymore, by and large, in Christian households. And so what happens to the discipleship of children? Again, to whom were all those directions given in Scripture overwhelmingly to fathers with respect to discipling their children?

From the breadth of the New Testament, from Deuteronomy, from the establishment, from the time of creation with Adam and Eve, who was responsible to disciple a child? A Christian father, a Christian mother. That's the jurisdiction of the family. And yet again, for the great majority of Christian families, their Children are in the public schools, or perhaps they're in a private school. You know, again, here's one of the tragedies about how we got here.

The big bad state hasn't said you can't disciple your children. We can home educate in all 50 states. And yet so rarely do Christian families avail themselves of that opportunity. And so often they shirk that duty. And we have created this giant vacuum.

And we have said, stay, educate our children. And so of course we have an army of Marxists who have been turned out by those who have trained them to be so, who think that healthcare is not a matter for the family, but the duty of the state. But we got here somehow. And that's the tragedy, and that's the most encouraging part about this, is that it is something that we can do something about. There are solutions, there are answers.

We don't have to fix the federal government and every manifestation of the state. We need to start in our families and in our own households re-establishing and filling that vacuum that's been created that has been certainly moved into with great zeal by the government, but frankly, because families were happy to have them there educating their Children providing for health care, you know, telling churches what they can and can't talk about as as instruments of the state. You know, It's not an accident the way all these jurisdictions connect. And it's not coincidence that we are where we are with the track record that we have. And yet the great news is that this is something for which we can repent.

And before the Lord, we have opportunity for that. And pastors need to be, stop fearing they're gonna lose their 501c3 status and start talking about these things. Start talking about the things that enable church members to act like good Americans and exercise their duty of citizenship in the way that they should. Where do they learn to do that? In churches.

But what are 501c3 churches forbidden from doing? Talking about political things. Doing the very things that create good citizens who are involved in government, who are involved in politics, who are involved in policy, who influence and who are active and present as good Americans, where are we sanctified and discipled and taught to do that? In the home with our families and in good Bible-believing churches. And yet, from pre-K, we're giving them our children, We're sending our wives out into the workplace and don't have keepers at home and our Christian homes are are so often empty shells of what they should be.

And of course there is a swelling majority that believes things that aren't true because we've allowed it. We've created the vacuum and government has filled it. But we still have the opportunity to step back into it and fill it. Scott, your question was what what father, you know, gives him what gives him the right? Well, you know, if the commode fills up and he doesn't know how to fix it, he's gonna call a good plump.

And so the wisdom to know how to oversee that jurisdictional privilege and responsibility is huge. Now, the issue of medical care and disease, that's a unique area, because life and health and suffering and all of that is part of God's providential hand in our lives. But he mentioned Marxism, And Lenin actually, with regard to the politic of humanism, stated that the keystone to the doorway to the arch to socialism is medicine. So there's a relationship that this privilege of dealing with the sacred relationship of a patient and a doctor, dealing with life and affliction, health, suffering, disease, all of that is something that we have abdicated. We have given that away because the issue of knowledge, the issue of experience matters.

Now, that doesn't mean that a father administers therapy to his child. It means he gets knowledge from someone who has had that experience. He consults with a physician that he has a relationship with, And that's really one of the things that has been destroyed today, because many physicians now are not working for the patient, they're working for the corporation, they're working for the institution. It's a corporatocracy. And that's a sad state today, because I don't think that's true medicine.

I personally believe that medicine is a core element of the gospel. Our Lord is the great physician, and He brings healing out of disease and life out of death. And so I believe that it is a big matter and it doesn't help to violate the jurisdictional boundaries that the Lord has set for that. And in fact, I believe that would be one of the reasons for a revival is when men recognize that. You know, they've been living without Christ as head.

And so they repent of that, and they turn to Him, and He readjusts their thinking about how to make those decisions of responsibility, privilege, and provision. Tom, you spoke earlier about the patient and physician relationship and how important that is and of course that's because you have no ability. A physician and a parent understands things about that patient that a government agency doesn't or some health care provider that doesn't really know the patient. Could you elaborate on the interaction that is appropriate between a physician? Because we're all four physicians, we visit physicians, we're grateful for the medical knowledge that exists.

At the same time, you have this authority of parents to make final decisions about that child. So it seems like we have a gradiation of intimacy. You have the parents who have the greatest amount of intimacy and knowledge of that particular child, and then you have a physician who actually has a relationship with that child. So could you comment on how the jurisdictions work with that as kind of a backdrop? Well, the relationship with a child is going to be dependent upon the relationship with the parent.

In other words, a doctor to violate the child's childhood by laying aside the parental oversight for that decision making. That would be a violation of medical ethic, in my opinion. But that's exactly what's happening today, because 15-year-olds are walking into the doctor's office, pediatrician, and saying, I'm going to change my gender. Well what's a what's a what's a moral doctor going to do with that? Now where's dad?

Where's mom? And so the nature of the patient-physician relationship is based upon integrity. It's based upon a morality, a truth, a purity. There was a wise doctor in the 19th century, or a wise theologian in the 19th century who spoke about doctors and said, to be a good doctor, you must first be a good Christian. Well, that would imply today that that's sort of, you know, out of context today because now physicians are more technicians, more informational system folk.

Praise God for the faithful who are still wanting to do good medical care, carry out that that physician responsibility, which is at once at one time was a very noble calling. I think it has been taken down, though, because of the nature of how it's turned. But that patient-physician relationship is the essence of good decision-making. I think the patient-physician relationship and that entering into that context is a window into the soul. And yes, the patient has a blood pressure, has a fever, has a pulse, has a weight, but that patient is a being created in the image of God.

And there's where the reality truly overlaps. And I think that's where physicians have a primary role and privilege to address the gospel, to address the consequences of the gospel and to really help a family reestablish proper jurisdiction and come from disease to health. One of the real conflicts that conscientious physicians and lots of other professionals experience. Dr. Kendall alluded to it.

Licensure. Interesting to note again as we just consider how we got here. There was a time when someone became an attorney by reading for the law and being certified as having had sufficient experience and knowledge to sit for the bar exam by another lawyer. And when that was accomplished, if that examination was successfully completed and that individual showed themselves to be competent to practice law, They were then enabled and free to go and practice law. In other words, their competence for their field was based on exactly that, their competence.

In comes the state, and again, there's a big historical buildup that leads to these kinds of things, but again, it ties back into the breakdowns in terms of how we understand things ought to operate. When licensure can be used to control a doctor-patient relationship, as it can be used to control an attorney-client relationship, all of a sudden it's not about competence and it's not about good medical counsel, and it's not about good legal counsel. It's about whether you have done what's politically correct according to the state. And that hammer is over the heads of professionals relentlessly, constantly. It's one of the things that creates a really tragic tension between patients and doctors is that doctors are all mandatory reporters to the state with respect to what the state thinks should be going on in families, not paying really often much respect at all to what parents understand is best with respect to the health of a family.

And you know, who is more connected, who knows better, who has a greater heart connection and love connection with a patient than, you know, than that patient's family. And yet we continue to see these insertions of those who have other agendas into those kinds of relationships. It's something which doctors, lawyers, all kinds of mandatory reporters wrestle with all the time. And yet, under threat of losing license, the state comes in and says, you know, these are the things that you must report to us if they are important to us. And it's just, it illustrates again that intrusion into jurisdiction, which has progressed because we have advocated jurisdiction and allowed it in so many ways.

And it just, we keep coming full circle to see how these things are connected and how we got here. And it is really a part of the tension now in terms of good medical care. Having that relationship with a doctor and that is one of the most important things a family can do. It is absolutely one of those critical things they can do is having that relationship not just being a patient not just being a customer not just being a client but being in relationship. I'm so grateful that Dr.

Kendall emphasized that and and for what he's saying about that. Let me, Scott, if I could just introduce another verse that brings us to another point that I think is critical. It's out of 2 Chronicles 16, verse 12. Just listen to this, 2 Chronicles 16 verse 12. And Asa became diseased in his feet, and his malady was severe, yet in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but the physicians.

We haven't really talked about this yet, but I think the state is offering something that it's not its to offer, which is safety and healing. The point of that verse isn't that it's inappropriate to see a doctor, but the point of that verse is it's inappropriate to look to the doctor as the primary cause of healing. Doctors have been ordained by God as secondary causes of healing, but God has healing to offer and he has safety to offer, And you can't look to the state or even to physicians for these things. And every time we do, every time we abdicate that jurisdiction and shirk that duty and say, you know, I'm not going to be the one who is going to step up and shoulder the responsibility for providing healthcare for my family. Every time we do that, we invite invasion into the jurisdiction of the family, far beyond what we advocate.

And that's what we have to begin to realize. That's what's really gotten us here in so many ways. Socialized medicine is socialized medicine. The strings which are attached are often more like chains. Yeah.

Yeah, all that's very true and very valuable. The truth also is though, you could get the jurisdictional things 100% right and look to the wrong thing for healing and protection. Absolutely. God is the one who's brought this sickness to us for his own wise purposes, and God is really the only one who can protect us and heal us. And we should be looking to him.

So, you know, we've covered a number of issues here, you know, that jurisdictional authority begins with God and God alone, and He delegates authority to the church and He delegates authority to the family and He delegates authority to individuals. And there is a sovereignty that they each have in their jurisdictional decision-making. What else should we say about the biblical case for this kind of order of jurisdiction that the Bible speaks about? Is there something that we haven't talked about yet? I think Don introduced this earlier, but it's how the jurisdictions ought to relate to each other.

I think under ideal circumstances, the jurisdictions, the different jurisdictions, civil government, family, and church have a sense that the other jurisdictions are acting in good faith, in which case you can be patient and gracious. But when you lose a sense that the other jurisdictions are acting in good faith, I think it's incumbent on the other jurisdictions that are being encroached upon and their authority is being usurped, they're gonna have to stand at the border and sort of protect the boundaries of the jurisdiction. I think we're, if we haven't already crossed that line, we're quickly coming to it where the different jurisdictions, the family jurisdiction and the church jurisdiction are going to need to stand at the border and protect the area of authority that's been given to them. Because the truth is, if you've been given authority by God, you're not even at liberty to abdicate that and give it to another jurisdiction, no matter how vigorously they're usurping what God has given to you. You know, I'm glad you brought up the matter of boundaries because there are boundaries to the jurisdictions.

For example, the church isn't completely without the authority of the civil government. If there are lawbreakers or abusers inside the church, the church cannot harbor them. Those within the church have exposed themselves to that higher authority. And the government does have the authority to come in and prosecute evildoers within a church. And so I think we have to recognize that there are limitations and boundaries to the jurisdictions.

But the Bible, as we had already mentioned before, actually speaks of the limitation of the jurisdiction of the government, and that is to prosecute evildoers. Now, you also have in the Old Testament law various laws regarding health care, laws of quarantine. You quarantine sick people. You don't quarantine healthy people in the law. If there is a house that has a plague or some kind of mold, it's not perfectly defined what the problem is, and remedies are engaged and they don't work, the priest had the authority to tear down that house.

So there are some boundaries that need to be recognized. And I think we don't wanna say that the state has nothing to say about the jurisdiction of the family. And we don't wanna say that the state has nothing to say about the jurisdiction of the family. And we don't want to say that the state has nothing to say about the jurisdiction of the church, but they have to operate within the boundaries that God has established. Brothers, what kind of comments do you have about that?

It's as well said, Scott, it, and I appreciate Jason, your reminder that we look to the good faith of those in a jurisdiction where authority is being exercised. I think that's one of the real struggles that we encounter right now. I don't think any of us would argue that if, you know, in the case of a genuine plague, like was taking the lives of you know, 40 50% of people who who contracted it or or in the case of disaster or fire or, you know, I've, you know, we're in Texas, if we were invaded from the south and the battle line was going to explode, you know, on the Sunday when our congregation was to meet, you know, the state may come in and say, hey, we're going to protect your lives, we're going to be shelling that area, y'all need not to meet this coming Lord's Day. There are all kinds of examples where we can see, again, what's the jurisdiction of the state, bear the sword to protect innocent life, to prosecute evildoers, to affect that end. And certainly, you know, it's easy to say you're doing something for a given reason.

It's easy to say, well, we're doing this to protect innocent life. It's part of what we've just come through as, you know, churches respected the initial information, the initial warnings that were given, were careful with respect to sickness and issues that may have arisen because of the COVID situation. And yet, as time goes and as things develop and as we see churches treated differently than, you know, than casinos and liquor stores and bars and grocery stores and fishing excursions and, you know, and all kinds of things that we could talk about, you begin to, you begin to ask the question, you know, yes, this is the analysis. Yes, there is jurisdiction and authority when exercise properly. And yes, you say you're exercising it properly.

You say this is for the protection of innocent life. But is it really? I like this happening in good faith. Yeah, I think that's really important. I'd like us to try to even elaborate a little bit more if we can on what legitimate authority the government might have in medical matters.

You know, We recently saw in the news this tragic explosion in Beirut. And after that explosion, the government came around and said, everybody needs to wear masks in this explosion zone because the air was foul with particulate matter that was really dangerous. Was that a legitimate exercise of authority? Yes, it was. Is that the same kind of protection that we're receiving now with the demand for masks, when there's so much controversy even over the efficacy of a mask.

And the truth is, most of us don't even know anybody who's died from this COVID-19 disease. It's almost impossible for you to even find the dead bodies. And at least that's been my experience and everybody's experience that I know. So the question I want us to ask is what are the legitimate healthcare demands that a government can make, conceding that there are certain circumstances. Don, you mentioned wartime, there are various tragedies, real, real plagues like in 1644 in London, where 30 to 40% of the population died, The dead bodies were everywhere.

None of us would say the government doesn't have anything to say to us about how to protect ourselves and protect one another. So what are the legitimate, measures that governments can take? Any, anything else that we haven't mentioned? Well, somebody said that there's not a lot of common sense, but you know, that should be the foundation. I mean, wisdom is application of knowledge and information.

And if the government is overseeing the wealth to a degree, how commerce goes on, if they're overseeing the general public health, then exercise common sense. And I believe there should be common sense. But we live in a time where things tend to be extreme, they tend to be polarized. That in and of itself is a is a politic, dividing people. And if you divide people, you can conquer.

And so here again, the issue of just propriety, the issue of sound, good decision-making, I don't think it violates the fact that government has a responsibility to see what are the boundaries of protecting them from invasion. You know, I think people who take an oath of office, they say, protect us from enemies, domestic and foreign. And so I think therein lies that jurisdictional privilege that government does have. Let's talk about the matter of wisdom and knowledge for a moment. We're all aware of the history of science.

We're all aware of the way that medical knowledge has changed over time. There are various scientific revolutions that replaced the previous regime of knowledge. There are many, many things that were done in the 18th century that we would never do, bleeding and all kinds of things like that. So there's a progress of medical knowledge. And one of the challenges that families have is that you have physicians that have different opinions about different maladies.

So if they're going to take authority over you, even though the jury is still kind of out on some of the truth about what kind of medical care should be given. How do families navigate that? This is one of the problems, if you have a government that's mandating a certain kind of medical care, how do we know it's actually wise? Not to over lawyer things, but credibility really does matter. And when you're talking about testimony, when you're talking about a witness, when you're talking about the veracity of information that's being put out, credibility matters.

And so, as we've watched this COVID situation unfold, only very recently did the CDC come out and say, fewer than 10,000 people have actually died of COVID who didn't have other medical issues, those who died exclusively because of COVID-19, the percentage is minuscule. It's very, very small. And yet we have seen this pandemic used in ways that that that certainly would would only be appropriate for something far, far, far more dangerous. You know, just around here, we've seen businesses, third, fourth generation businesses, around, you know, 80, 100 years shut down because a county judge came in and said, no, you can't operate. And They do so when other courts are closed and it's very difficult to challenge that authority.

And there's real impact and there's real harm. And you do look back historically to see what's the credibility of the witness who's testifying to this thing. And when you see a progression where the state comes in and says, hey, if you're gonna get on an airplane, you're gonna subject your wife to being viewed naked by a stranger before she can get on the plane and travel. When such things as that then progress to, we're going to tell you how you can and cannot breathe. We have to ask the question, what's really going on here and is the reason matching up to the action that is being taken?

Or are we involved in an elaborate dress rehearsal for absolute and complete control by governmental authority? And to me, that's a wisdom application. You look at how much truth is being told. That's what churches look at when within a single state, casinos and bars and liquor stores and all kinds of things are permitted to operate with very little restriction or at 50% capacities, and yet churches are held to groups of 10 only with masks, or maybe a group of 50 even if your facilities would host 5,000. And when you start seeing vast disparities in how things are treated, Wisdom kicks in.

It's fascinating to watch now the CDC making a massive case for children returning to school. And all the reasons why it's so much more dangerous for children not to return to school this fall. And yet out of the other side of their mouth saying, you know, but our economy has to shut down. We can't operate businesses. We can't, you know, we can't return to things that are consistent with a robust economy where families can actually provide.

You have to start asking, you know, what's really going on here and is there credibility? Don, I'm gonna one-up you on this, you know, what's really going on. There's a dear family in our church who the woman's father died, had been sick for a while, we'd been praying for her father, and then he did finally die, and the family went to the funeral, they opened up the casket, and they had put a mask on his dead body. What is going on? You know, I asked one of their daughters how she interpreted that, and she said immediately, this is about control, this isn't about healthcare.

So there are matters of wisdom, there's matters of information, but I think what seems to be at the heart of some of the controversy about medical care is really located in this matter of the history of science and the history of the progress of our medical knowledge, because you have different views of particular things. Some people say some one thing about a vaccine, others might say something about antibiotics or other forms of medical care. So what are we to do with the diversity of, I'm just going to call it medical knowledge and the tyranny that's imposed on people even when you have systems that aren't absolutely perfectly verified? Well, as an overview of this, Israel asked for a king. God said, no, No, but we will have a king." So he gave them a king.

He told them what kind of king it would be, what he would do. The consequences of that were real. They were palpable. And Israel asked for certain things. God gave them to them, but He gave leanness to their soul.

Well, what has America been asking for? It's been asking for independence from righteousness. It's been asking for the liberty to destroy humankind in the womb. We've been going down this road of unrighteousness for a long time. Now there's nothing new under the sun, we know that, But God is dealing with America righteously.

And we really, you know, I've said so many times, He was merciful to give us Donald Trump as president. It could have been Hillary Clinton. I mean, my mind. And so, as God's righteousness is being violated daily in our country, we're listening to people whose counsel is consistent with the destruction of the unborn. We're listening to people whose counsel is consistent with the destruction of the unborn.

We're listening to people whose counsel is consistent with the transhuman ideas, the altered genetic code that our Lord has given us to distinguish male and female. And so here we go. God is not mocked. What a man sows, he reaps. What a nation sows, it reaps.

And that's part of what we're dealing with right now. But my island of freedom, my home, my office, my island of freedom, as long as we can muster the energy and the courage and the distinction to be dealing with these things with a matter of credibility, with a matter of dependability, with a matter of reproducibility. And that's the beauty of science, the beauty of math. Two plus two is four. With new math, you can make it say five, but it doesn't change it.

It's still four. And true science is that. It's observable. It's reproducible. But when data is used to accomplish an agenda rather than to reveal the glory of God, to reveal what He's doing, There's a real problem there.

And so that's the issue of true science versus what Paul said in 1 Timothy chapter 6 verse 20 about science falsely called. I believe we're seeing a lot of that today, the interpretation of data to accomplish a humanistic outcome rather than that which points man to God. Tom, that's so helpful. You know, what I want to do is I'd like to wind us up here and then we're going to continue to talk about these matters in the next session. But we've talked about matters of the jurisdiction of the church, matters of jurisdiction of the family, the authority of Jesus Christ over all, and some of the nuances that we have to grapple with.

I'd like for us in the next session to deal with specifically some of the present dangers, listing some of the particular examples of medical tyranny and how they are usurpations of these jurisdictions, dealing with various kinds of medical treatments and vaccines and things like that. I'd like to, in the next session, discuss the prospect of mass COVID vaccination requirements, and then to talk about what are the biblical responses that Christians need to consider in navigating these things wisely. So let's close the discussion now on jurisdictions and thank you for joining us. I really appreciate it and we will be back in the next session to talk about very practical matters of medical tyranny. So until next time, remember, scripture is sufficient for church and family life for the glory of God.

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