Hi friends and welcome to Robcast 58. This is part five of a series called politics and guns and

you know what I'm having so much fun doing this series we're gonna keep going. So there will be

a part six maybe I'll wrap it up at part six and then maybe somewhere down the road will be a part

seven. But this is part five and this one is called the question at the heart of empire. And

so here's what I want to do. In the last episode I talked about the United States of America. I

talked about weapons. I talked about military bases. I want to give some history to the whole

issue of weapons and guns and politics and what I want to do is tell you an ancient story from

the scriptures. Because what's really interesting is that there's a the Bible has a lot to say about

weapons. The Bible has a lot to say about the accumulation of power and money and its relation

to weapons. It's actually in some senses a recurring theme throughout the scriptures. And for many

people what's interesting is they haven't heard this before. Oftentimes of course for many people

the Bible is simply a story about how you can believe the right things and then go somewhere when

you die. But if you read the Bible carefully you discover that it's much much more profound

and relevant than that. It actually speaks to some of the fundamental struggles of humanity

in regards to governments, nations, weapons, people, refugees, taxes. It's a book about the

blood, sweat, toil of this world. And so here's what I want to do. I'm going to tell you this story

and walk you through it. And you may even have heard pieces of the story but I want to show you

some elements that perhaps you haven't. And I think it's one of the most I actually think it's one

of the most powerful moments in the entire scripture because of what it speaks to. And then from there

we will well you know what let me just get at it and let's see what happens. Shall we? Okay so

book of first kings chapter 10, relatively earlier in the Bible. There's a queen of Shiba

and the queen of Shiba. And by the way there's some fascinating sort of history around the queen

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