Matt (00:00.879)
Hey everybody and welcome to the Latter Day Lens. It's so good to have you with us this week. I'm your host, Matt. With me as always is Sean. And of course, Levi is back with us. Welcome Levi, it's good to have you.

Levi Barnes (00:11.854)
Hey, it's good to be here. I have some news. A friend of mine, Matt Miles, published his book. He published it last October, but I just learned about it. So I bought a copy.

Matt (00:21.623)
Okay. All right. Yeah. It's called the metrics of faith. It's, it's currently out of stock at Amazon, but you can buy it from the publisher if you want to. That's it's a good read. It's a good read. Levi, if you're interested in religion and politics.

Shawn (00:21.956)
Yes. Nice.

Shawn (00:33.179)
I want to.

Levi Barnes (00:38.574)
I haven't read it, but I like the first one. I mean, I gotta say, the first one lost me a little bit in the middle. I'm not great at statistics, but brought me back at the end. first one was good.

Matt (00:49.219)
Yeah, I learned, I learned from my first book to this one's a lot more accessible and a lot less statistics talk. I think, I think, I hope. Okay. Well, there's, something that I know Sean didn't want me to bring this up, but there's a link I'm going to put in the show notes, a little C-span link where the reporters ask Trump on Air Force One, what they think about Obama's declaration that aliens are real. And Trump basically says, Hey, he,

Levi Barnes (00:57.005)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (01:17.601)
leaked classified information he shouldn't have done that and like I think

Shawn (01:21.912)
You pounced on that and said Trump confirms there's aliens. That's what you took it as That's what you took it as right?

Matt (01:27.373)
Well, I mean, I've listened to Trump enough to know that like if he's going to if he's going to deny something, he has pretty firm denials where it's like fake news. That's like a witch hunt. That's like a hoax. Like none of that. Just he shouldn't have talked about that. That's classified information. Like that's a pretty good confirmation from the Trump plan.

Levi Barnes (01:48.792)
Well, not as much as if he'd said it was fake news. If he said it was fake news, we'd know it's real news, so...

Shawn (01:48.902)
Yeah, I have no response to your topic.

Matt (01:54.693)
That's right. He could have at least said something like that. Okay, let's get to the mailbag. So one listener wrote in and said, the prediction platform Polymarket, users are currently wagering on whether the second coming of Jesus Christ will occur by the end of 2026. This bet has seen over $20 million in trading volume. Sean says prediction markets might be more accurate than polling. He also says that Jesus isn't coming anytime soon.

Are you guys willing to put your money on it? No, my answer is no.

Shawn (02:27.484)
I don't understand this whatsoever. Literally there are that many people and 30 million dollars betting on that he'll come. Like what if he does come and you win? Are you gonna be able to spend that money? Like what are you talking about? This can't be real. It can't be.

Matt (02:35.341)
You

Matt (02:43.139)
No, it's real. It's a, if you can put down, if you put down 94 cents that he's not coming and then he doesn't come, you get a dollar payout on your 94 cent bet. So I think a lot of money is coming in on the, he's not coming again, but there's still a lot that are saying he is. There's enough that, so if I put down six cents saying Jesus is coming again and he comes again, I get a dollar for every six cent bet that I put down. That's good. That's a good return on investment.

Shawn (03:11.573)
Levi's getting excited. Look at him. He's like, thanks for doing the math.

Levi Barnes (03:13.709)
Well, no, I'm fascinated by this too. like I was looking at this one and thinking, what is everyone thinking? And I think I finally concluded that people who are paying 96 cents, it's 96 cents right now, 96 cents to get a dollar at the end of 2027, they're just like, ah, it seems like a guaranteed 2 % per year return. It's not a great return actually, right? So.

Matt (03:36.133)
Rather than putting it in my savings account, I'll put it on Jesus is not coming again.

Levi Barnes (03:42.458)
Yeah, I guess so. The people buying Yes, I don't know exactly what's in your head there. But I think mostly people putting it on Yes are betting that somebody else is going to buy it, right? It's this greater fool theory that they're like, okay, I'll buy it for 3.8 cents, and then it'll go up to five cents, and then I'll sell it. A lot of markets work this way, right? I feel like a lot of crypto is this way.

Matt (04:00.997)
She's-

Yeah.

Well, I would put my money on on Jesus is coming again because he is coming again, Sean 20, but I'm not going to put money on it because I think I'm not supposed to do that. I think that's wrong to it's like you told me what am I going to spend it on after Jesus comes again? I would have to give it all away anyways. And so what's the point? What's the point of making so much money on that bet?

Shawn (04:09.094)
That's crazy.

Shawn (04:28.284)
Well, this is, I mean, it makes sense that you would bet that with your whole theory on aliens and these crazy prediction things. Yeah, I had a discussion with a guy yesterday who was saying that he's an atheist, unless there can be proof that our Creator's an alien and they've come and they've organized humankind. You might like the guy, Matt. How about putting a bet on the fact that when Jesus comes in 2026, we'll find out he's an alien. How about that? Does that make you excited?

Matt (04:34.693)
You

Matt (04:49.625)
No!

Matt (04:55.479)
No, because that's not consistent with scripture. Like Jesus will sing that song.

Shawn (04:58.276)
but him coming in 2026 is consistent with scripture.

Matt (05:03.301)
Well, I'm just following the signs. That's right, just following the signs.

Levi Barnes (05:04.845)
That inconsistent. So the market for will the US confirm that aliens exist before 2027 is at 14 % now. So 14 % of money says you're going to confirm they exist.

Shawn (05:09.396)
Ha

Matt (05:17.776)
Whoa. What, what, what has to happen for me to make my money on that? What is the yes? Half what has to happen? Does it have to be like the unofficial thing?

Levi Barnes (05:31.63)
Well, and this is interesting. They have these resolvers, right? And these are all on the blockchain. And so I don't even know what, you know, maybe somebody's betting on being able to corrupt these resolvers, but it says the primary blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The primary resolution source of this market will be information from the U.S. government. However, consensus of credible reporting will also be used. So any member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or any U.S. federal agency definitively states

Matt (05:36.089)
Yeah.

Matt (05:44.805)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (05:54.915)
Okay, okay.

Levi Barnes (05:59.682)
that extraterrestrial life or technology exists before December 31st, 2026.

Matt (06:05.699)
I'm gonna go no on that, that's not gonna happen. Although Trump, Trump said he's gonna declassify all that information, but there's not gonna be anything official that says it.

Levi Barnes (06:09.495)
Trump's not gonna say it?

Levi Barnes (06:18.003)
maybe it's gotta be official, right? I could see him like showing up at some rally and saying, an aliens exists now, by the way.

Matt (06:19.781)
Yeah.

Yeah, right. Yeah. If he wants to get Sean's vote back because Sean turned on him. Okay, let's move to let's move to the thought provoker.

Shawn (06:33.326)
I can't turn on someone I was never for.

Matt (06:35.621)
Okay, so first up listeners, just so you know, we're going to be talking property rights. We're going to be talking markets and then we're going to move into Israel at the end. But for a while here, it's going to be all about property rights and what God says about property and what is property and all that sort of stuff. So dig in and

Shawn (06:53.532)
And listeners, as a qualifier, there's no better friends than the three of us. And I think Matt in this episode is just poking the bears, because he knows Levi has one stance and I have an opposite stance, and it's going to be super fun. But I think Matt's just, this is just pure entertainment. I don't think Matt cares or has an opinion on any of this.

Matt (07:12.697)
Okay, I'm being totally honest. I don't know what your positions are on these issues. Maybe it seems like I should. I really don't. And by the way, like, like last night I was like, what do I even, I haven't even, I don't know what I think about these issues. So I still haven't decided what I think about these yet. So they're just, they're just topics that are out there like.

Shawn (07:17.404)
Oh, you liar! You liar! Okay.

Shawn (07:30.328)
Okay, so Levi, the fake points that Matt deemed so valuable don't matter in this episode. We really are trying to convince Matt of our opposing opinions. So that's fun. That's fun.

Matt (07:40.045)
Yes, that's right. They're not fake. They're not fake. Okay. So there's a man named Martin Shkreli. He bought the Wu Tang Clan album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin in 2015 for $2 million in a private cell. Okay. First I have to say, I don't know who Wu Tang Clan is or Martin Shkreli, but I know. just, so,

Levi Barnes (07:42.635)
No, I'm in it for the fake points. What fake points? I'm- I'm- I'm cashing these in!

Shawn (07:48.956)
you

Shawn (08:05.748)
my gosh, Matt! Matt! You really don't know who Wu-Tang Clan is? Were you live in the 90s? Levi, don't you dare Google Wu-Tang Clan!

Matt (08:09.413)
Just so everybody's... Do they sing?

Levi Barnes (08:16.365)
Oh no, no, no, I'm Googling once upon a time in Shaolin. Is that a thing we can hear? Can I hear it?

Matt (08:17.966)
Okay.

Matt (08:21.381)
It was a special album. so the group only made one copy of this album. They only made one copy. And Martin Shkreli did something wrong. And so the federal government like convicted him of a crime and they took the physical copy of this album that he purchased after his conviction. He argues that the government did not take his copyright ownership. He says he still owns 50 % of the copyright because of this original contract.

Shawn (08:26.447)
Yeah

Matt (08:49.369)
Since copyright is different from owning the physical object, he owns that the people who sold hit the rights to this, to a company called Pleaser Dayo. It's like one of these crypto like, I don't know. That's one of the, anyhow, the people that sold his rights did so without his permission. He has asked the court to confirm his rights, dismiss this person's complaint and award monetary damages. So here's the question. Are copyrights an intellectual property?

the kinds of property that God says governments should protect.

Shawn (09:22.748)
Okay, so at least we're starting with the premise that God says we should protect property. Right? We all agree on that? No?

Matt (09:31.415)
We all agree that in doctrine

Levi Barnes (09:31.512)
Well, at least Matt pronounced Wu-Tang right. He didn't say the Wu-Tang Clan. The Wu-Tang Clan. No, that was good. He clearly knows who Wu-Tang Clan is. Okay, so, I mean, clearly... You got to fight for your right to party? That's surely them, right? There were three Jewish men, right? So, clearly, God...

Matt (09:36.959)
Yeah, I know they are. Do they sing tonight we're gonna party like it's 1999? Is that them?

Matt (09:52.933)
Okay, go ahead Levi.

Levi Barnes (10:00.759)
think some kinds of property are important. And I think a lot of this episode can be maybe parsing out, maybe challenging what falls into that category and what doesn't. And I think the question of intellectual property is a really good one. You guys talked about this a few weeks ago, that there was, you talked about how sometimes we give up one right in order to secure another. And I feel like,

Shawn (10:17.305)
interesting.

Levi Barnes (10:27.383)
Property really like intellectual property rights are kind of this way right that that if you know if I've patented a mousetrap, right then Sean even if he owns all the wood and the metal and the Whatever I'm gonna make it out of all the nylon all the whatever he can't make my mousetrap and sell it It's total those objects are totally his property, but I own sort of the idea. So in one sense Sean

sort of gives up the right to do with his physical property, whatever he wants, right? In order to secure for all of us the idea of owning an idea, right? And we like that because we like money in science and we like money in art and we like cool looking logos, you know, that kind of thing. So I think that this is a place where, we have two kinds of property and we have to decide which of those kinds of property are more important to us.

Shawn (10:59.452)
Wow.

Shawn (11:05.627)
Wow.

Shawn (11:23.696)
Wow, dude, that's great, Leroy. I like that.

Matt (11:23.831)
And it's easy because God does not protect intellectual property. That's where my position is. The way that Levi just described it, that's.

Shawn (11:29.594)
wait, wait. You gotta let me try and persuade you.

Matt (11:34.689)
okay, go ahead, Sean.

Shawn (11:37.788)
I love your answer. That was fascinating. And that makes me think like you always make me think. here's, let me give you my premise. have to give you a little bit of a premise for like, it's such a weird concept that God, to me that God would say we need to protect property. But I think it does clearly say it. So in diving deep, I wanted to find out why. And I think there's three sets of elements or scripture that kind of inform us. And one piece of non-scripture. So the King Follett discourse, I don't know, you may be a fan, may not be a fan.

But that, I like that Joseph Smith establishes right away the first words in the Bible and the word create, that it doesn't mean create from nothing, instead it means organize existing eternal material, matter. And then later on in D &C 92 or 93 and 131, he explains that matter is always existent. It can't be created, it can't be destroyed. And then he says, within the matter is all the glory.

Matt (12:06.671)
Love it.

Shawn (12:35.746)
We talk about how the goal of our religion is exaltation. We are meant to exalt ourselves through Jesus Christ, and rather He's exalting us, and then we are exalting God. And it's fascinating that exalting means more glory added upon forever and ever and ever, but the glory is in the matter, is what it says. That's a fascinating concept to me. And so when I read these things, and when Joseph talks about how this sacred matter, and I'm going to call it sacred matter,

The sacred matter can not be destroyed or created. It can just be reorganized and reorganized and reorganized. I think about what Levi said and I thought, okay, well then if we're saying that this intellectual property perhaps is God protected property, is the Wu-Tang Clan's song, is music? know Levi would explain music as not matter, right? It's, what is it, energy? Organization of vibrations? What is it? Right, so my argument would be,

Matt (13:30.083)
Music is art.

Levi Barnes (13:31.053)
It's not even that they're not even trying to copyright the physical sound waves, right? They're not trying to copy the energy. They're trying to copyright the information.

Shawn (13:39.228)
But they are trying to copy the recording. They are trying to copyright. is that what the recording is information? There's two things they're trying to copy. But there's two things they're trying to copyright. One, the original idea, which I think is initially what you talked about. And then two, the actual recording. Those are the two things that they're trying to copyright. so again, if I'm trying to inform myself from scripture and go, well, matter, the element I think that God talks about with property is matter.

Matt (13:48.505)
Well, it's not the physical CD.

Levi Barnes (13:49.088)
Yeah.

Levi Barnes (13:57.101)
Yeah.

Shawn (14:08.634)
And I, and it goes, pushes me forward to go, okay, well then matter, the reason I'm supposed to keep it sacred property is because this eternal sacred matter, I'm supposed to learn how to organize it and treat it sacredly and protect it and use it. So in a crude way, maybe that's why I'm supposed to take this wood in this house. And I don't know, but intellectual property then Matt, I don't know that if it does fall under, if it's not matter, maybe it's not as sacred. And so maybe we should be a little more lenient on those laws.

Matt (14:39.375)
We shouldn't even have the laws. The laws are just a made up thing to make rich people more rich. There's nothing that is divine or good or inherent. In the scriptures you just shared, Sean, God figures out a process of how to create life, how to create a world. He doesn't patent that and copyright that and then say, you could learn this too, but you're going to have to pay me money every time you do it. It's like, that's not the way God is.

Shawn (15:04.923)
But how can you be a steward over matter or property if there isn't some sort of ownership to it? Isn't that the point? Is that, yeah.

Matt (15:17.347)
that's easy, Sean. That's the law of consecration. That's the law of consecration. Yeah, but we're stewards. Yeah, that's right. We take care of God's things and we grow and we develop and we share and all of that stuff. Not so that we can become rich, not so that we can own it, but so that we can learn how to be good stewards.

Shawn (15:23.098)
I'm supposed to take care of the matter so that

Shawn (15:38.972)
See, but it's in conflict in my mind because how can you be a good steward over something that you don't have stewardship over? How can you consecrate something that you don't have stewardship over? How can I be faithful to the law of consecration if I have nothing to consecrate?

Matt (15:53.637)
We have to get you outside of this like Western capitalist mindset, Sean. We have to broaden your horizon to say that you can take care of things that you don't own, right? You don't have to own something to care about it and take care of it. You can, it can just be communal ownership.

Levi Barnes (15:58.414)
it

Levi Barnes (16:02.967)
huh, yeah, that's true.

Shawn (16:08.06)
How can you be a steward over Wu-Tang Clan's intellectual property if you have zero claim to it, you have zero effect on it, you have zero understanding of even what it is? You can't be, you can't consecrate something that has no value, that has no ownership to you. can't consecrate, your consecration is worthless.

Matt (16:22.031)
I'll explain, I'll explain.

Matt (16:30.873)
Right? You can't. I'll explain it. Let me explain it to you. Behind my house, there's some people that own some land and they don't live in town. They're never here. and somebody came to them and said, what if we were to take this land that you own and we were to improve upon it and we were to develop a mountain biking race course and a walking path for people in the community? And they said, well, there's all these liability issues and things like that. And they said, don't worry, we'll put up signs.

Shawn (16:35.803)
Okay.

Matt (17:00.749)
and we'll take care of it and we'll make sure that you guys have no liability. And so like about six or seven months ago, I saw people out there with backhoes and people with shovels creating a walking mountain bike path on somebody else's property. And now that it's all developed and now there's these signs and there's all of this and the community loves it and they enjoy it. Nobody has ownership of it. Nobody has.

Levi Barnes (17:08.109)
you

Matt (17:24.579)
like a duty over it, but we enjoy it. And so we go out regularly and we clean up trash that we see out there. Sometimes people's dogs leave messes. We clean that up because we all feel stewardship over something that we don't own.

Shawn (17:39.408)
Guess what, Matt, you don't know about this meeting, happened yesterday. The owners of that property and I met yesterday and I offered them $2,000 and they're going to sell me that property. I'm going to destroy everything that you just did. And there will be no, because I have the opportunity to build a Vaughn supermarket there to make, you know, and that's going to serve the community much better than your bike trails. So.

What good was your consecrated labor when you don't have any stewardship over that property and you've just lost it all?

Matt (18:04.655)
Well, so you just explained why owners-

Matt (18:11.299)
I do have stewardship, but it's not my property. have stewardship because I care about it. So that's why I'm saying property ownership, property ownership, but like that is not of God, God doesn't want us to behave that way. And God doesn't want people to come in and say, wow, look at this neat thing you created. I want it all for myself. I'm going to just drop my cash and own it. And especially not intellectual property.

Shawn (18:13.318)
NANIMORI I JUST BOUGHT IT

Yeah, but I just bought it and you have no access to it anymore.

Shawn (18:27.46)
OK. All right.

Okay, Matt, what if, well, I was joking about me buying it because it's actually the church that is buying it and they're going to establish a bishop storehouse there.

Matt (18:41.761)
Okay, I'm again, you're not persuading me, Sean. I'm giving the points. Go ahead Levi.

Shawn (18:45.755)
Okay.

Levi Barnes (18:46.061)
But I think independent of these scenarios that Sean is presenting, the reality is that all of the time, and especially in something like music or ideas, we do have sort of collective ownership of stuff. And we do try to make our world better given those things that we have, right? Sean, I'm sure you see that in music where somebody says, you know what? Here's the thing that somebody else created.

I'm going to cover that because that's what that makes it awesome, right? Cause it's just awesome to do. And we do this with physical property. We do this with intellectual property. all collectively create value, right? Like Matt's community has collectively created that value and now they collectively enjoy it. And whether you think that's right or wrong, it definitely does happen that Matt's community is doing that, right?

Shawn (19:39.26)
I do think it's awesome. I love your scenario and I think that is beautiful and our society should do that. My point is it's not being a great steward to invest in our time and energy into something that there's no ownership. That's why God says get the ownership. Then you really have stewardship over it you can make this thing truly valuable. Otherwise tomorrow he'll just sell the property and all your good efforts are for naught. They don't benefit society because you can't protect it because you don't own it.

Matt (20:05.495)
Okay, let me ask you this, Sean. When Jesus comes again, who's going to own that property?

Shawn (20:13.166)
I don't know. I don't know.

Matt (20:14.543)
Yeah, right. Property ownership is a myth. It's just something created by people.

Levi Barnes (20:15.777)
Nobody.

Shawn (20:18.732)
Whoa, whoa, whoa, then why in D &C in three spots does the Lord say property is sacred and it is to be protected? In fact, you're allowed to protect it with the law and with physicality. Like you're allowed to protect it. You're supposed to protect it.

Matt (20:35.917)
Well, I'm going to just say in this particular case, intellectual property isn't what he's talking about in those verses. Intellectual property is something that is, you can't really claim ownership of it because no thought you have, no thing you create is 100 % you. And so you can't legally or even like in any kind of a, an official way, divvy out the correct percentages of who contributed to your ownership of that. So you shouldn't be able to own it. That's what I'm going to say.

Shawn (20:41.702)
Okay.

Levi Barnes (20:54.572)
Mmm.

Shawn (21:05.817)
But Levi disagrees, right? You think that we should protect that intellectual property.

Levi Barnes (21:06.071)
So.

Levi Barnes (21:11.479)
Well, I think that the arguments for intellectual property are almost always pragmatic as we say, okay, yeah, I mean, I can't come up with any sort of first principles justification for this, but if we protect intellectual property, then we get better science, better art. You know what I mean? Like it enables somebody who's put a lot of effort into a piece of art to pay their bills, right? And that's why we, that's why we create laws around intellectual property, not from any

first principles. I mean, one thing that is pointed out about intellectual property is that when somebody uses my art or my music or my computer program without my permission, they actually haven't taken anything from me, right? If I write a program that's useful to me and somebody else steals it, well, it's still just as useful to me as it always was, right? They didn't take anything from me. And so people say, well, the reason we protect other property is because

Shawn (21:43.398)
Mmm.

Levi Barnes (22:10.603)
When you take my bike, then I can't ride my bike. But intellectual property isn't that way. But just from a practical standpoint, think, you know, I think I favor a world where an author, an artist, a logo designer, a computer programmer can, can pay their bills, can make a living.

Shawn (22:28.156)
So Matt, is it fair to say that per Levi's discussion that intellectual property laws would be malum prohibitum as opposed to malum and say? You like those terms. You like the Greek.

Matt (22:38.575)
I don't want to use those words. I will say this, that a lot of the inequality that people are concerned about today come because people developed intellectual ownership of property that they didn't develop, that their slaves developed, that their employees developed, that other people developed, and they somehow got ownership over something that they did not create on their own.

and the people who actually created it are not able to benefit from it today. So I see intellectual property as a huge source of inequality that God would not be in favor of.

Shawn (23:07.952)
But but Matt, how but how does that? But how would that have possibly been resolved if, as you're suggesting, there should be no laws that protect intellectual property that that would have made things worse?

Matt (23:21.125)
There should be no laws. would be fine. Sean, who owns the intellectual property of how to make a fire?

Shawn (23:24.988)
That's what saying. that,

Shawn (23:31.738)
I do? That was a secret I didn't want to let out? No, I don't know. Nobody, right?

Matt (23:33.105)
Sure, Right. Right. Who owns the intellectual property of like how to push your foot on a pedal and make the vehicle drive? Who owns the intellectual property of how to ride a bike? There are so many things that are just human knowledge that somebody hasn't been able to legally make some claim that they own that somehow. Like why does Pat Riley get paid every time somebody says three Pete? Was he really the genius that invented the term three Pete?

Levi Barnes (23:36.173)
you

Matt (24:00.761)
And so we should give him money every time somebody says three P because somehow he, no, he didn't think of it. He went through the legal process to claim ownership of it. And in my opinion, that's what intellectual property always is. I don't believe that anybody creates intellectual property on their own. And so it just advantages those who understand the system well enough to take something and claim ownership over something that they don't really own.

Shawn (24:01.114)
Yeah, right. Yeah.

Shawn (24:12.262)
Interesting.

Shawn (24:24.218)
Interesting. Well, get off this tough.

Levi Barnes (24:26.113)
Well, and I one thing that I think just to bring it up, because I think it comes up later, is that these are very arbitrary rules, right? As we say, you know, and a work of literature, you own the patent on that for you on the copyright on that for 100 years, right? But then, you know, an invention you only own for seven years. But if it's an international patent, then it's longer and those kinds of things. And these are very

arbitrary rules. So sometimes we think of property as a thing that we all understand in all the same way. And one thing Matt's pointing out is that that's not true at all. have very, you know, throughout time, these have changed. We don't all agree on what is property and what isn't.

Matt (25:10.689)
Okay, all right, so next topic, because you guys don't want fake points, so I won't give you guys fake points.

Levi Barnes (25:18.027)
Wait, but I did like you, I... No, I'd love fake... I like fake points. I'll take all your fake points and I'll give my fake points to Matt.

Shawn (25:18.192)
Levi wants fake points.

Matt (25:23.799)
Okay, Levi gets the points. Okay. All right, so this is a very interesting article that I read by a man named Matthew Call. He says, many workers worry that artificial intelligence will take their jobs, but he says the bigger danger is different. The real problem is that companies can use enterprise AI systems to collect and store employees' knowledge. These systems record how workers write, how they solve problems, how they make decisions.

Levi Barnes (25:49.133)
you

Matt (25:52.525)
And over time, the company can use this information to train artificial intelligence tools or to help other workers do the same job. This can make employees easier to replace. The important question is not, AI take my job, but who controls the knowledge I create? So here's the question. Does the restored gospel give us any insight into who controls the knowledge that we create?

Shawn (26:19.152)
So again, I have to go back to like Latter-day Lens premise. So if I inform myself through scripture that matter is the property that needs to be protected, knowledge isn't matter. And so I would say, okay, this is free game to interpretation. But then I would go back to the concept that Joseph taught about how matter is never destroyed or created. Is knowledge destroyed or created? Your question here is, or is it just all existing and it's we just discovering it? And in that case,

Matt (26:41.893)
You can definitely

Shawn (26:48.698)
I don't own any of it, I'm just discovering it and reorganizing it. The same is matter.

Matt (26:53.669)
Okay, well I'll throw a scripture at you, Sean. Doctrine and Covenants, section 130, I don't know the verses, but it says that basically that we can take three things with us after we die. And one of them is our intelligence. And it says that if a person has gained more knowledge and intelligence in this life through their diligence and obedience, they will have so much the advantage in the world to come. So that sounds to me like through my diligence and my obedience,

Shawn (26:56.134)
Okay.

Levi Barnes (27:18.701)
So, let's see.

Matt (27:22.583)
I can gain intelligence and knowledge. And that should be then something that I own since I can take that with me after I die. I own the knowledge that I develop and create in this life.

Shawn (27:29.062)
I love it. I love it.

Shawn (27:34.524)
I love it. So you're taking the opposite stance now. Wu-Tang Clan song, no one owns it, but my knowledge, I own it. No touchy. I like Levi. Levi, I never thought of it the way you described it. If this thing, whether it be knowledge or matter or a car or whatever, if someone takes it from me, but it doesn't remove anything from me, then maybe that's okay. As opposed to if they take my bike, it's gone. I don't have it anymore. Knowledge is that way. Levi, would you argue against what Matt just said and say, well,

Your knowledge is something that you will always retain. No one can take your knowledge from you. So you can't own it. Everyone can benefit from it. Likewise, that any different Matt than your scenario with your backyard and the bike trails. Let the knowledge that you obtain, you can't own it. Share it with everyone.

Matt (28:16.105)
So what-

Matt (28:19.597)
So what's different here is if I go to work and I'm doing a job and they're monitoring me and they're saying, look at all of these brilliant things. Like let's say I'm in a sales job and they're like, whoa, he's so good at sales. Let's watch what he does. And then we're going to train some computer program that we're going to then claim ownership of later on and call that ours. That's what's wrong. I own my knowledge. can't

copyright my knowledge. can't say to other people, you can't know the things I know, but I can say to someone, you can't record everything I do and then based on that, create something else and claim ownership of that when it's my knowledge and my work that develop that you're using to develop that.

Shawn (29:05.659)
But if I create a plot of land, own it and create a beautiful whatever, store or whatever, I'm not supposed to own that. But the idea that created, no, but I can create what's on the land. organize, again, matter. No one can create or destroy anything. So when we talk about the word create biblically or scripturally, we're talking about just reorganizing. So yeah, I can in the scriptural sense create land in that I take the existing element that can't be destroyed or created.

Levi Barnes (29:06.263)
Well, that

Levi Barnes (29:13.799)
Nobody creates land. That's for sure,

Matt (29:16.388)
Yay.

Shawn (29:33.52)
And I reorganize it, and then I own what I organize. No?

Matt (29:37.125)
Okay, but Sean, if you put something on a plot of land, that has to be maintained, right? And so as long as you're maintaining it and taking care of it or whatever, and you wanna call that your little space that you bought and you're taking care of that little plot of land, fine. But if you're not there and you're not taking care of it, you're not doing anybody any good by owning some piece of land. So if you're not there or working on it, it's not yours.

Shawn (29:59.516)
Says who? Says who? Says you? You can't tell me what's what what the good of my property is. What if I enjoy going there every five years and sitting on that empty land and going, look, I've preserved nature instead of Matt's pollution and his bikes going all over. Who says? Says you? Says you? But you can't but you can't tell me what's good for my property or my or the society that I'm trying to build.

Levi Barnes (30:02.893)
That's it. Fru-don, actually.

Matt (30:13.317)
It's better for society. It's better for society. It's better for society for other people to

Matt (30:28.823)
Okay, this is, this is, go ahead Levi.

Levi Barnes (30:31.885)
Well, I was going to say, I know I think we've drifted a little bit from, I was going to ask Matt, what would you propose to remedy this? Do you think it's a bad idea to let like, cause I think companies have been allowed to record the things that you do forever. Right. That that's always been like my company knows what email I've sent. They, maybe they even know every key I click. don't know. They potentially could do that. Right. I think it puts software on my computer that the records everything that I do.

Would you stop that? Where would you or would you say you can record everyone's movements or whatever you just can't use it in specific ways? What would you say?

Matt (31:10.371)
own it. You can't own it. That's right. You can't own it. You cannot, again, if we go back to the three-peat example, you can't say, you know what I noticed when I was tracking everybody at work that they were all saying the word three-peat. I'm going to take advantage of that and I'm going to go copyright that phrase and say that I own it because I figured it out through all these, whatever tracking I was doing of my employees. You can't own it. There's just some things you can't own. I can own my own knowledge.

But I can't profit off of my own knowledge in a way, right? So what I'm saying, Sean, the difference of this and intellectual property is intellectual property allows me to profit anytime somebody uses something that I create. I'm saying that that's immoral. But I can own the things that I create. I can use them for my own personal benefit. I can use them in whatever way I see fit to use them. But other people can't use my stuff and profit off of it. So it's all about who owns the stuff that we.

Shawn (32:03.814)
For example, a song or an album.

Levi Barnes (32:04.427)
Wait, whoa. That sounded exactly like intellectual property when you said that, Matt. You were like, I can own the things that I create, but nobody else can use the knowledge I create, like your song or your book or your...

Matt (32:16.76)
I, you can't, no, no, you can use it. You can't profit off of it. That's what I'm saying. It's all about, it, so like, right, no, that's not copyright law. No, that's not copyright law. That's saying, I'm saying we should have no copyright law, right? So again, let's say that I come up with this phrase three-peat and I'm saying three-peat all the time. And I feel like I own the phrase three-peat.

Shawn (32:25.852)
That's copyright law. That's exactly what the protection... Sure it is.

Matt (32:45.271)
I can own it for myself. I can use it for myself. I can do whatever I want to with myself. I can even put it on t-shirts if I want. I can put it on hats if I want. Also, somebody else can do it. Because I didn't invent that. It's just knowledge that I've discovered somehow. So that's what I'm saying. Saying that you can profit off of, that you can create limits around who can use your knowledge and who can't use your knowledge. Or say, I own this knowledge. No, we can own it ourselves, but nobody else gets to own it.

Levi Barnes (32:59.757)
Mm-hmm.

Shawn (33:12.828)
I'm going to try and, I like that Levi said, look, are there first principles that can govern this? I'm going to go back to knowledge isn't created or destroyed. It already exists and we're just discovering it. And if I go to the principle of the King Follett discourse, either matter or knowledge can be taken and reorganized. So if I take knowledge, words, meanings, and I organize three Pete, I organize that. Or if I organize words in a book like you've done, or if I organized

sound waves or recordings into a song, then I think it's okay for us to own those things. I think Levi nailed it. It's just a social agreement that we're gonna, it is arbitrary that we're going to own those things. It's not like matter or property in the same sense, but I think it's worth having some protection over.

Matt (34:03.333)
Okay, here's my example. This will test whether you agree with me on this. Okay, let's say Sean stands up in church and gives an amazing sacrament meeting talk. Would God say, Sean, that was an amazing talk. You should copyright that, you should own that. And anyone who uses any of your words in that talk, like they should pay you a royalty or something like that. Is that how God would do it?

Levi Barnes (34:15.373)
So, thank you very much.

Shawn (34:26.832)
Well, I'm to answer this and say, you have, you have no idea, Matt, you have led me to do that exact thing. You have said, Sean, you've got something cool to say when it comes to preparing missionaries, go create a podcast on that podcast. And I have, so you have told me to take my knowledge and organize it in a way that profits me and others.

Levi Barnes (34:29.421)
That's a good point.

Matt (34:48.985)
But I'm... Go ahead Levi. No, no, go ahead.

Levi Barnes (34:49.409)
Well, go ahead, Matt. Well, and do we suffer? we have worse? Because that was my argument, as I thought, well, if we don't protect intellectual property, then we get worse ideas. get nobody's motivated to develop new patents, new inventions, new programs, new music, new art, because they can't profit off of it. Are we getting worse sacrament talks because we don't allow people to copyright them?

Shawn (35:14.306)
Nice, interesting. That's fascinating. has someone written a book like Terrell Givens has written some fantastic books. The prospect of him going, you know what? I need to feed my family, make a living. Wow, if I reorganize the knowledge that I have into a book and I own it and can profit off of that, maybe that's helped him come up with

Matt (35:15.848)
You

Levi Barnes (35:16.918)
Yeah, it's a very good point. It's true, right? There's so many things where people do without profit, right? Yeah.

Shawn (35:42.694)
greater ideas that have really helped millions of us.

Matt (35:46.393)
Well, I think it's because I'm an academic and I live in this world where we share knowledge with each other and it's behind a paywall. And there's this new model emerging that's like, we should do, open source publishing. should publish in a way that are open access is what we call it. And instead of paying a book publisher who will own the rights to that information and they up, they front the costs. say, we're going to pay for the cost to publish this on our own and make it available to everybody.

And what I see is that we're better off in a world where everybody has access to the information and it's not behind a paywall and it's not owned by a copyright. And there is a cost to publishing those things, but I think we're better off with shared knowledge rather than owned knowledge.

Shawn (36:26.854)
Do you? Matt.

Shawn (36:32.22)
Do you remember when chat GPT came to the market and there became this legal battle between Sam Altman and Elon Musk, whereas Elon Musk was saying, this should be open source. This should be free to everyone. And Sam Altman was like, no, no, no, no, I want to own this and profit off this. This should be a for-profit company so we can grow and expand. And Elon Musk lost that battle. Do you remember that?

Matt (36:51.475)
That's the same battle as what happened with Microsoft and Apple too, right?

Shawn (36:55.024)
But would you be on the side of Elon Musk there to be like, yeah, certain knowledge is so valuable that it should be shared. does that sentiment still apply there?

Matt (37:01.859)
More importantly than that, Sean, would say God is on that side. God is on the side that says, if you have something of value, share it with other people for free. Now, maybe you need to support a family in some way.

Shawn (37:12.218)
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, where does God say for free? He does say share, but where does he say for free?

Matt (37:16.611)
He says in the scriptures, what is property unto me, saith the Lord. He gives us at the law of consecration where we give all of our time, talents, everything we have to the church. So God, when Jesus comes again, there's not gonna be this fight over like who owns Jesus's words or who owns this stuff. All things were had in common among the early saints, both in the restoration and in the time of Jesus.

Shawn (37:39.868)
love that you preach that. I love that you preach that, you have to balance that with DNC 134. It says, the right of property can't be infringed. It says, believe that all men are justified in defending themselves, their friends, and their property.

Matt (37:47.128)
I mean...

Sean, you told me.

Matt (37:54.661)
You've told me Sean that sometimes there's dissonance in scripture and this would be one of those places where God is very clearly the early saints when Jesus set up his church in Jerusalem they had all things in common and when that couple sold land and lied about it they were killed and in the restoration of the gospel they had all things in common. So it's true there are verses where they said in Kirtland like the government should protect property but that doesn't mean that God feels that way all the time.

Shawn (37:58.833)
Yeah, it

Levi Barnes (38:23.693)
Well, I was just reading Jacob 2 verse 17, says, think of your brethren like unto yourselves and be familiar, root is family, right? Be familiar with all and free with your substance that they may be rich like unto you. So yeah, I think there's a lot of places where God says, he even says the word substance, which I thought was.

Shawn (38:39.772)
You know, I love.

Shawn (38:46.076)
But I can't share my substance if I don't learn to become a good steward over the organization of that substance. I think that's part of our existence. If matter is sacred and full of glory and God is teaching, like think of the battle we have every day with our spirits and our mortal elements. We are battling and when the spirit overcomes and wins the battle over the elements, that is what God is trying to teach us in mortality. Doesn't that apply to all matter? Are we not trying to become good stewards?

Matt (38:53.923)
You can't. You can't.

Shawn (39:14.948)
over the matter so that eventually we can organize it into worlds and populate those worlds. We have to have ownership and stewardship over them in order to share them.

Matt (39:21.113)
I'm, you don't, John. I'm saying you don't. I'll share this story. Like my son on his mission in his first area, he had a member invite him over for a meal and the member didn't have very much. In fact, all the member had was food from the bishop's storehouse. And what meal did he prepare for the missionaries? Food from the bishop's storehouse. You don't have to have a lot to learn the principle that you can share and give to other people.

Shawn (39:26.19)
OK. OK.

Shawn (39:47.196)
Great point. Great point.

Matt (39:48.429)
All right, let's go to the laws of inheritance. Why not talk about even more property? So in Numbers chapter 27, verses seven through 11, Moses gives the people the law regarding inheritance after someone dies. So he commands that if a son dies without a son, his property should go to his daughter. If he has no daughter, it should go to his brothers. If he has no brothers, it should go to his father's brothers. If there are none of them, it should go to the closest relative in his family.

This rule became the law for the people of Israel. So the question is, do these verses show that God is in favor of inheritance? Is it immoral to tax or take away things people have earned while they are alive and take it and give it to someone else after their death?

Shawn (40:31.75)
So the clarity here in scripture is that Jesus himself explicitly prohibited us from living this law. He told us that he has fulfilled it. It's not destroyed it, but fulfilled it. He has prohibited us from living that law of Moses. So I think that clarity gives us the good guidance that no, we're not supposed to live by that exact law. He commanded us not to, but it does open up the discussion. So what do you think, Levi?

Levi Barnes (40:57.101)
Well, Matt put this in here because he knows I think inheritance is rotten. I think it's terrible. I think it's worse than intellectual property. think nobody should, you know, mean children, right? If a parent dies and their children need to be supported, I'm in favor of that. But if you're a grown adult, earn your own living. What are you doing? Taking your daddy's money? Gross.

Matt (41:20.805)
What's up?

So the reason I think, I understand we don't live the law of Moses anymore, but I think of it in these terms, right? The law of Moses, land was life. If you didn't have land, you didn't have the ability to survive, right? And so the idea is if I'm a man and all I have is daughters and I die, they have to have a place to live. They have to be able to raise crops and raise animals and things like that. And so I think there is some value in saying like, parents should be able to pass on to their children.

some level of subsistence so that their family's not destitute when they die, right? I think that life insurance is good. Like I should have life insurance so that if I die, my family's not destitute. But I do think there comes a point at which we say, don't, your kids don't need this. They don't get everything. Like I think that there's, in this case, I think there's like a little bit of like, yeah, God wants us to be able to pass some things on to our kids, but not everything and not.

an excess of like what we need to pass on.

Shawn (42:22.94)
Who decides what's excess and what's not? Who gets to decide that?

Matt (42:28.101)
well that would be the government, Sean. the government. yeah, that's right. i don't care who decides. a council of elders, a council of children, a council- i don't care who decides. somebody- it's easy to f- no.

Levi Barnes (42:28.375)
Matt.

Shawn (42:32.421)
What?

Shawn (42:36.988)
That's the most important part. example, would you want Vladimir Ilyanovich Lenin to decide what happens with everyone's inheritance? Yes or no?

Matt (42:49.381)
Sean, when I'm gone, I don't care. of course, anybody, anybody can choose. Why do I care?

Shawn (42:55.17)
Matt, you said that we should treat the property as consecrated to the good of others and now you don't care. Now you're saying sure, let Lenin be the one that decides on the consecration of everything. That doesn't make any sense.

Matt (43:07.013)
If the government my kids reside in, if my kids live in the United States of America and for some reason Americans decide to vote in Lenin as their president or whatever, fine. Like I believe in the democratic process. So whoever we choose as leaders, let them decide. Sean, I'm living in the Trump administration right now.

Shawn (43:21.212)
I wish your daughter Melanie was on this episode right now too because she would pounce upon you.

Matt (43:33.667)
Don't talk to me about what it be like with Lenin. I'm living in the Trump administration, trying to just survive day to day, worried about what would happen if I were to die.

Shawn (43:40.624)
wow, Jordan! Are you okay? Are you alright?

Levi Barnes (43:43.81)
Now, I also would favor, like, I think that local governments or state governments could grab some of that too. Like, I think we should, we could have things that say, when you die, your children can inherit $300,000 and everything else goes to this fraction to state government, this fraction to local, this fraction goes to federal government. And yeah, and they use it for the good of everybody. Yeah.

Shawn (44:08.092)
believe I what if 10 years that what if that goes into place and then 20 years from now baron trump becomes the president and decides 300 000 is the limit let's make it 10 trillion dollars so really anyone can inherit anything but so now that matt you followed matt's advice of letting the government decide what the limit is now you're going to be unhappy with that limit right

Matt (44:30.725)
Okay, I'll let the Relief Society president decide.

Shawn (44:31.152)
So that's problem in letting people who...

Levi Barnes (44:34.147)
no, I was just meaning we set the limit and then we let government. I just think we should have draconian inheritance taxes. Tax it, tax it and tax it and tax it. It's so much better than income tax. Like, I can't believe we would tax income and not tax this money passed to people because of who their daddy is. It's gross. It's super lame.

Shawn (44:56.508)
It's a great, I like that thought. It's an interesting thought when you frame it that way. So you think you're.

Levi Barnes (45:01.629)
Just to give you some context here, when you run the numbers, it depends on how you run the numbers, but about 50 % of all wealth, 50 % of all wealth in the United States is inherited, belongs to somebody not because they made it, not because they did something good for anybody else, but because of who their daddy is. And that's terrible. Like, why would we let that happen? Of course it's ruining society.

Matt (45:25.945)
All done.

Shawn (45:27.526)
Wow, that's fascinating.

Hang on, so Levi, pragmatically you're saying get rid of sales tax, get rid of income tax, get rid of all taxes, and let's just rely on an inheritance tax to feed the government.

Matt (45:30.991)
I'll tell you the other-

Levi Barnes (45:42.766)
I don't know if it's I haven't run the numbers on that so I don't think you can accomplish that but I do think yeah, let's let's Raise inheritance tax and raise it raise it raise it and then see if that alleviates some some of our income tax. Yeah

Matt (46:00.301)
Another interesting little fact because we can't let an episode go by without mentioning the Pareto principle. Did you know that right now in the US economy, 10 % of the people are making up 80 % of the spending in the US economy? So we've created a system in which a small, small group of people have enough money that they're buying virtually everything. Whereas most people aren't able to afford most of the things that are for sale in the US economy. So

Levi Barnes (46:21.037)
Thank

Matt (46:29.529)
There's is wisdom in saying, look, this wealth is being inherited. That means that 50 % of the wealth is inherited. That means we got a huge, the small group of people that are inheriting most of everything that's produced in the economy. And then they're just spending it on things that they want to buy. And, just like Sean and Sam think that it would be really bad to just give people money for not doing a job because it cankers their souls and they'll be lazy. Levi's just pointing out that

This idea of just giving money to rich kids is going to canker their souls and not teach them the value of labor and a thrift.

Shawn (47:07.844)
Yeah, I get that point. It's a fascinating point. just, again, back to first principles of, look, matter exists or resources or property exists and we can't create it or destroy it. We can just reorganize it and isn't inheritance one way, a good way potentially, to reorganize that. And it's true, it's gonna have a terrible effect on some people, but it's gonna have a beautiful effect on others. Some of the greatest things that have happened in this society have been from people who have

Levi Barnes (47:08.077)
Word.

Matt (47:08.323)
Yeah.

Shawn (47:37.2)
been able to take resources and do wonderful, great things. Blessed many.

Matt (47:41.349)
Okay. All right, we have to move on to the big question because we've got to see, can we get ourselves canceled today? So here's the big question. So again, I've been reading in the Old Testament and I was reading at the end of the book of Numbers and it's very clear in that book that God intends for the children of Israel to inhabit the land of Canaan. He commands them to kill the Midianites. He commands them to kill every one of them except for the young female virgins. They get to stay alive.

Shawn (48:02.352)
Ha ha ha ha!

Matt (48:09.701)
He takes all of their property and he divides it up among the people. He even says this is the 10 % that's going to go to the tribe of Levi and the priests. It's like a receipt, right? It lays it all out exactly. All of the spoils from the Midianites that they get to keep. And then in Numbers 33, God commands them to kick everybody out of the land of Canaan. Because he says it's for the children of Israel to inhabit forever. Article of faith number 10 says,

We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and the restoration of the 10 tribes, which to me that means that we believe that Israel is gonna inhabit that land in a literal way. So I am not a fan of the killing and destruction that took place in Gaza, but it seems like God has sanctioned similar destruction in the past, at least in the Old Testament. So two questions from this.

Was God really supportive of the most destructive bombing campaign in this century, which is what just happened in Gaza? Should we support Israel? Is this all part of the fulfillment of Latter-day Prophecy? So you can take any of those questions you want.

Shawn (49:19.932)
Well, so first bit of clarity, when referencing Israel in the Bible, we have to make a distinction between the House of Israel and the tribe of Judah, right? Because those terms were mixed over time throughout scripture, right? Sometimes Judah referred to the House of Israel or portions of the House of Israel.

Levi Barnes (49:22.472)
boy.

Shawn (49:46.79)
But if you're looking to tie the promises of Israel to ownership of some property, I don't think you can find that. Right? Because Israel is promised a land, but Judah, the Jews, the tribe of Judah is just one of those tribes. And when I study in Deuteronomy and Genesis what the promises are in the, the, you know, the promises of Abraham, the really the only one you could maybe argue is the scepter, thy scepter, the tribe of Judah, thy scepter shall not depart from Judah.

Matt (49:56.527)
So.

Shawn (50:16.602)
I think all that means in my studies is, yeah, they're going to be this like either political or, and they're going to be a political entity that will be scattered, but gathered scattered. That, that scepter will always be authoritative. There'll always be a people that won't like all of the other tribes. We can't identify these tribes, but the gathering is this stakes of Zion kind of gathering. So I don't think it promised personally, I don't think the tribe of Judah is promised the land of Israel. The house of Israel is promised the house of Israel or the land of Israel.

Matt (50:43.267)
Well.

Matt (50:46.561)
In the Old Testament maps, you could look at, so when the children of Israel go into Jerusalem or the land of Canaan, each tribe is given a section of land. And two of the tribes take some land that's not in what would be considered Israel, it's on the other side of the Jordan River. But every tribe is given land and it's their land. And then back to these inheritance laws, you could...

Shawn (50:46.651)
No?

Levi Barnes (50:50.678)
Mm-hmm.

Matt (51:09.569)
Inherit land, but if you married outside your tribe, you lost that land. So you had to give it. So this land was all given to one of the 10 tribes or 12 tribes. So there's like Levi doesn't get, Levi doesn't get any land and Dan, the tribe of Dan doesn't get any land, but all of the other ones get land. Well, yeah. Yeah.

Shawn (51:20.294)
Wait, Israel itself? Wait.

Sorry Levi. I'm so sorry Levi.

Levi Barnes (51:30.357)
Womp womp. But wait, I'm looking at a map and Dan's got land over here.

Matt (51:35.318)
okay. Dan has land. Well, there should be more tribes.

Shawn (51:37.98)
But are you saying that the current borders of Israel match some of the borders that the tribe of Judah were promised? Is that what you're saying?

Matt (51:49.305)
not just the tribe of Judah, if you go all of those tribes, the land that Israel, or at least the Zionist movement is trying to take over, is all of that land that used to belong to the tribes of Israel. And so when I read the literal gathering of Israel and the restoration of the 10 tribes, that says to me, if I was Jewish anyways, but that says to me even as a Christian, we believe that literally that land

Levi Barnes (51:51.981)
Shawn (52:04.838)
That's it.

Matt (52:18.349)
is going to go back to the tribes of Israel.

Shawn (52:19.484)
So what do think of this distinction? Currently, the tribe of Judah is apostate and not living the law with the promises of Abraham, the Abrahamic covenant. So really the inheritance that they are promised isn't in effect. So I don't think you can justify any sort of political actions biblically in today's situation. I think they have a right to try and defend themselves and support their

political entity, but I don't think you can say God is causing this or sanctioning this and their actions. I think these are man's choices.

Matt (52:54.885)
So you're this is not a fulfillment of Article of Faith number 10.

Shawn (53:00.762)
No, I don't think so at all. Absolutely not. No, because again, the tribe of Judah is not living the law of Abraham. are not getting, they're not promised the blessings if they're not, Like Peter and the Gentiles, if you don't live the covenants of Christ, then you're not at the house of Israel.

Matt (53:04.419)
What do you say Levi?

Matt (53:22.852)
Okay.

Levi Barnes (53:24.235)
Yeah, so I would say a couple of things. First of all, I like the point that Judah is actually not occupying the land that anciently belonged to Judah, right? They're occupying everybody's land. I don't hear anybody over there saying, you know what? That's probably right. We'll probably just take this little piece that used to belong to Judah. maybe Netanyahu is not going to agree to that. But the other thing I think is interesting. So we say they have like a right to this land.

And we have such a violent concept of that as we think, well, if you have a right to that land, then it means you get to kill people that won't grant you that right. And I wish that we had a scenario where people around the world that thought that Israel deserved that land would really lean in and would say, OK, you know what? I think Israel deserves that land. I think we need.

Anybody of Palestinian descent anyone from Gaza is free to immigrate to the United States and gets an inheritance here in the United States because it means so darn much to us and Yes, it will cost us money and yes, somebody's gonna have to give up the the land that used to be theirs But but it means that much to us that we're gonna support it But instead the United States says no it means enough to us to kill gauze and children That's that's really missing the missing the point if you think they have a right to it, then let's

Find a way to do that peacefully, right? Can we do that without naming any children?

Matt (54:53.562)
The eye-

Shawn (54:54.874)
Well done, Levi. I like that, man. That's great.

Matt (54:57.209)
The irony is the reason that the nation of Israel exists is because after World War II and the Holocaust, nobody wanted to let the Jews in their country. And so they said, let's just put them over in that area there and we'll let them have that land. And by the way, it was supposed to be a really small chunk of land that they've now expanded that territory. So I don't know, like, I just think that's an interesting little irony of history. But I actually, go ahead.

Levi Barnes (55:02.891)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Shawn (55:22.138)
Matt, don't you.

Levi Barnes (55:22.615)
Well, we said the Jews deserve an inheritance and that was right, right? The Jews deserved a place where they could feel safe. And then we said, well, these Brown people over here have some land. Let's maybe give them that land. Instead of saying these people deserve to be safe, why don't we give them Tennessee? Why don't we give them Oregon? And we'll all move away and they can have Oregon. Yeah, that should have been the play, but we don't do hard things.

Matt (55:46.863)
Yeah.

Shawn (55:48.912)
Hahaha.

Matt (55:49.541)
Well, I'm on the side that sees this as a fulfillment of prophecy. I have a friend who's, he fought in the Israeli defense forces, his children have fought in the Israeli defense forces, and I have a good friend who's a Palestinian. So for me, it is a personal conflict as I see the struggles of both of these people. I wish there was a way to find peace in the Middle East. I know people have been trying

people who live there, people who don't live there, they would love to find a peaceful resolution. And I don't believe that anything that's happening now is gonna lead to the peaceful resolution. But I'm just on the side that says, like some things are fulfillment of prophecy. And that means awful things happen in order to fulfill that prophecy. And I guess I'd say there's nothing I can do about it. I can complain, I can be upset, I can say, hey, people are hurting, but fulfillment of prophecy is fulfillment of prophecy.

Shawn (56:41.18)
Yeah.

Shawn (56:47.046)
Matt, but don't you think though that the prophecy that says that in the latter days, before the second coming of Christ, I will gather Israel, don't you think that it's been made pretty clear that what the gathering of Israel means is a person from Ephraim is found and converted and then joins a stake of Zion, which means they've been gathered under Israel. Same applies to any person under the tribe of Judah, right? The gathering of Israel in this sense means that someone in New York who is from the tribe of Judah converts to the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, they are gathered.

It doesn't mean the literal, I know we believe in the oracle of faith that eventually the literal gathering will happen, but I think that happens with Jesus Christ's coming. I don't know that it happens in this world.

Matt (57:28.237)
I in the literal gathering of Israel, Sean, and the restoration of the 10 tribes. And I believe that will be, that Judah will control Jerusalem. And I don't know that like, I don't know that everyone who calls themselves Jewish today is of the tribe of Judah. I think there are probably people from all 10 tribes of Israel that identify as Israelis today and live in that region. So I just, I believe that it's literal.

Shawn (57:54.938)
Matt, do you believe that happens before the second coming of Christ is what I'm asking? You do.

Matt (57:57.285)
Because we said literal.

Matt (58:02.405)
Yeah, of course. That's one of the signs of his coming. I don't have the scripture with me right now offhand, but yeah, there will be a highway open up and the 10 tribes of Israel are going to come out and it'll be just like when Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt. There'll be something that literal that happens where there's the restoration of the 10 tribes in the land of Israel.

Shawn (58:19.42)
Okay, so that is.

So full circle, is, go for it

Levi Barnes (58:23.949)
I think I have it. here's Jeremiah 23, seven and eight. Therefore, behold, the days come and saith the Lord that they shall no more say, I love the scripture by the way, they shall no more say the Lord liveth which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, but the Lord liveth which brought up and led and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the North country and from all countries, whether I had driven them and they shall dwell in their own land. And so, yeah, we're anticipating a miracle on that kind of level.

where people will say, ah, parting the Red Sea, bah, that's not great. What he did then in gathering Israel, that was great.

Shawn (59:02.672)
Wow, geez, that is deep and heavy.

Matt (59:02.863)
Yeah, well, I also believe that before Jesus comes again, all the world will be fighting against Israel. I also believe that that's gonna happen.

Shawn (59:13.436)
not the tribe of Judah, but Israel. So all of the tribes is what you're saying.

Matt (59:17.795)
I mean, there's not a distinction in the Old Testament, right? Every nation of the earth, or this would be maybe revelations, but all the nations of the earth will be fighting against Israel, I think it says.

Shawn (59:28.668)
That is, there is a distinction. Israel is not the tribe of Judah. It is the 12 tribes.

Levi Barnes (59:31.191)
Yeah.

Matt (59:34.105)
But for all we know, these people are part of those tribes of Israel.

Shawn (59:38.348)
whoa!

Levi Barnes (59:39.127)
But for all we know, the Palestinians are, the, you know, for all we know, like the point of the, the point of the scattering might have been to invite everybody into the Abrahamic covenant, right? That, that the seed of, right, the seed of Israel will be so spread that everybody's Israel, right? Everybody's, yeah, yeah.

Shawn (59:44.006)
Yes, yes.

Shawn (59:51.31)
Wow, dude!

Shawn (59:58.222)
Wow. Or the definition of becoming of Israel is conversion of the gospel, right? I'm a Gentile, I, or the Palestinians or modern day Jews or Gentiles who convert to Israel. And wow, dude, this is deep stuff, man.

Levi Barnes (01:00:14.221)
Well, one thing I think is worth saying on this topic is I sometimes see the justification of the violence that Israel perpetrates as coming from a place of a lot of fear. think that, you know, we had some friends that were Jewish and they said, yeah, I don't care what kind of a president you have if he supports Israel. He said, the way he phrased it was he said if Godzilla ran for president, but he supported Israel, I'd vote for that guy.

And I see it as arising from a real fear of things that happen to them. There's a generational memory of that. And so the solution sometimes I think to violence in Israel is to be welcoming. Right, sorry to make sure that people know that they're safe here, right? That they don't have to fear that we learned about the Holocaust, that we learned about pogroms and we know they're members of our community and safe here always. So they won't be afraid.

Matt (01:01:11.159)
Awesome, we're gonna have that be the last word. Thank you Levi, that was great. Hey everybody, thanks for listening and we'll talk to you again next week.

Shawn (01:01:11.398)
That's powerful, Levi. That's really powerful.