Our sermon title this morning is To Those Who Receive Him. To Those Who Receive Him. And as is our process each week, we just preach verse by verse by verse through Scripture. We want to know what the Word of God has to say, not concerned with hearing or speaking my own opinions. We want to know what the Word of God has to say. We want to obey what the Word of God has to say to honor Him and live for Him. And so as we have been doing, we've been working verse by verse by verse through the Gospel of John, and we are in the prologue, what is called the prologue in John chapter 1, which runs from verses 1 through 18. And today we come to this paragraph, beginning in verse 10. John 1 chapter 10 where the Bible says, He Christ the light was in the world and the world was made through Him and the world did not know Him. He came to His own and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And so today as we come to this paragraph and we begin to look at John chapter 1 verses 10 through 13, we see if you will the master artist, John the evangelist, who is adjusting his canvas, you know, setting up his pedestal, adjusting his canvas. He's selecting his palette and he begins to develop a shape and outline on the canvas. And at first in verses 1 through 5, we saw a portrait being painted, if you will, of Christ and of Christ in all His glory, in all His splendor. And we see also the forerunner then, the herald, the last and greatest of the prophets of the Old Testament, John the Baptist. And then now as we enter into verse 10, we see two more distinct portraits beginning to come into view. With each stroke of the author's brush, he paints his way through the Gospel of John and we see more clearly with every passing verse the glory of Christ. But in seeing the glory of Christ, we also begin to see the total depravity of man. We see the necessity of God's sovereign and unconditional election as the basis for our salvation. It is a necessity because man is totally depraved. And with that palette of colors at his disposal, the evangelist John now begins to paint a portrait of the children of wrath and the children of God. And with all people as children of wrath, apart from Christ, God doesn't come into the world to appeal to man's better nature, so to speak. Not come into the world to merely persuade men to see their own foolishness and to accept the light and turn to Christ. He, John the Evangelist, must paint man as they are as children of wrath, as totally depraved. In their radical lostness, he must paint the picture of man as dead and blind, dead in their sins and trespasses. In this condition, we then more clearly see man's complete need, total need for a complete change of heart. We see the necessity of a supernatural work of God to produce a new nature in man. We need to change so great, so radical, if you will, so complete, that the only words that really express fully what this is all about are the words, New Birth. We must be born again. We need to be made over, made a new being. We need to be given a new nature, new wants, new desires. And if this is going to be done, then God's going to have to take the initiative to do it. God is the only one who can, and God must therefore send his son.  Outside of Christ in our old natures, Christ is both unrecognized and unwelcome. We need a new nature. And all of this, these portraits that are being painted, will be filled in with with technicolor splendor as we work through the verses of this gospel. Be brought into high definition as we go verse by verse by verse through the gospel of John and see what John has to say here. But first today in verse 10, we're going to look point one on your notes at the children of wrath. We see in verse 10 and 11 a portrait of the children of wrath. Christ is unknown to them and unwelcome.  This is a portrait of those who are spiritually blind. They're dead in their sins and trespasses. This is a bleak picture again of the total depravity of man. But secondly on your notes in verses 12 and 13, we're going to see a portrait of the children of God. These are said to receive Christ. We'll find that that is through faith in Christ and through believing in his name. And in receiving Christ through faith and believing in his name, God gives these the privilege of being his children. And all of that after having been born again of God. So let's begin in verse 10 with children of wrath. Verse 10 and 11 says this. He was in the world, that's Christ. And the world was made through him and the world did not know him. He came to his own and his own did not receive him. Now verse 10 begins, he was in the world. This is the true light that's already been stated. The true light coming into the world that shines for every man to see. This is Jesus Christ, the only mediator between God and man. It's the only name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. And it was that true light, that light and life of men that became flesh and came into the world that he made. So Jesus Christ then comes and he tabernacles with us. He pitches his tent so to speak and lives here and dwelling with men for the 33 years of his short earthly life. Now him coming into the world, this was not some secretive subversive infiltration of enemy territory. This world is his own, he made it. This is not an example of good versus evil with both powers being equal and nobody knows who wins. In other words, this is not an evil heresy called dualism. We know who wins. This is almighty sovereign God. And this is his world and he made it and he owns everything and everyone in it. You are his possession. He has even Satan who is called the God of this age, facetiously I might add. He has Satan on a choke chain and he's going to come again one day, Christ is, to execute judgment on wicked rebels. Everything that has been created has been created to fulfill his purpose and for the purpose of displaying his glory. This world is his own. That's notable in John chapter one. When we were back in verse three that the creation we saw in verse three is described as all things that were created through him. Jesus Christ literally created all things. Time and space, matter, everything was created by Christ. But now in verse 10, we see that all things now restricted or narrowed and it's narrowed in verse 10 to just the world. If you will, there is a concentric circle beginning with all things that Christ created. Now that being narrowed to the world that he created. And we're going to see that there are various uses in the Greek that word cosmos or world in verse 10, various uses for that word. The world that he came to that he was in and the world made through him in verse 10 begins initially to be the physical earth that he created. He came to the earth. He came to this world. Now the world that did not know him in verse 10 refers to the rebellious people he created that live in this world and are hostile toward him and are blind and are dead in their sins and trespasses. And so even in verse 10 you see the double use of that word world. He came to this world. The world did not know him. They didn't recognize him. They were not, it was not welcome to them. He was in the world. It's interesting as Christ comes into the world. The true light that was the light in life of men came into this world not to be served but to serve. I'll let this sink in for a moment. He didn't come as a tyrant, but he came as a common man and very uncommon man. He came not to judge the world, he said, but to save that the world might be saved through him. And he came and he had no form or comeliness as the prophet says that when we saw him there was no beauty that we should desire him. He had done no violence nor was any deceit in his mouth. Christ came as the author of Hebrews says, holy, harmless and undefiled. He came to bear our griefs as prophet Isaiah said to carry our sorrows. Shouldn't that glorious coming have received a glorious welcome? He was in the world. Who was? The one who made it. And how was he received? Did men gather from the four corners of the earth to come and to fall on their face and worship him? Did wicked sinners, did you, did I? Did we bury our head in our hands and weep over the sins that we had committed against him? Over the many offenses that you've committed against him? Confronted with God's justice? Confronted with the necessity of Christ's humiliation? Confronted with the necessity of his condescension? Did wicked men feel the weight of their guilt and their shame against him for how they rebelled against him? Did people rejoice at his coming? Did all the world swept up in who Christ is and what Christ has done? Did they fall on their face and worship him? Rejoice at his coming and believe? No, from verse 10, he came unrecognized. He came unknown and unwelcome. The world he created did not know him. You know what the response of the world is to the goodness of God in Christ Jesus our Lord? The response of the fallen world is the cross that crucified him. The children of Israel had been looking for him and missed him, did not know him. He said himself one greater than Solomon was among them and they did not know him. Herod was looking for him, couldn't find him, had all the children under the age of two killed trying to seek him out. Paul went to Athens to preach and he has to preach to an unknown God. Christ came to Bethlehem and there wasn't even room made for him in an inn. You know what there's not room for him in Orlando either. The world doesn't know him here either.  There's no room for him in your schedules. You call yourself a Christian. There's no room for him at the top of your priority list. No time left for prayer. No time left for Bible study. No time left for communion with God. No time left for evangelism. Grace and mercy of God. The light and life of men enters the world and there's no time in our schedule, no time in our heart. No time at the top of our priority list. He was in the world and the world was made through him and the world did not know him. It's amazing. The word for know is the Greek word genosco. That word know is more than just an intellectual knowing. It's a relational knowing. It's a relational knowing. It's rooted in the heart, rooted in the will, rooted in the resolve to know. And therefore this not knowing then is a willful rejection. A willful refusal to believe and receive the light. Romans 1 19 says that what may be known of God is manifest in them. For God has shown it to them and they are without excuse. God has made his presence clear. God has sent his son of the world. The world should have known him. The world didn't know him. Apart from God knowing us, we didn't know him. The world failed to know him. And the world failed to know him not because he was a stranger. The world failed to know him because he was estranged. The world was estranged from him. He didn't come as a stranger. The world was estranged from him. The world is hostile toward him. Hebrews 12 says, Consider him. Consider Christ who endured such hostility from sinners against himself. This world is blind. It loves darkness rather than light because its deeds are evil. A good question to ask yourself this morning is do you know the Lord? And better, more clearly, more appropriately phrased, is the Lord know you. One day he's going to come back in judgment. And those wicked rebels will stand before him as he says, Depart from me, you workers of iniquity, I never what? I never knew you. I never knew you. Question to ask is does the Lord know you? Outside of Christ, men are children of wrath. Does the Lord know you this morning? How do you know? How do you know? Does the Lord know you? How do you know? If the Lord knows you and has done a work of grace in your heart, you'll produce the fruit that that grace is intended to produce. You'll produce fruits of faith. You'll live for him. You'll have new affections, new desires. You'll have a love in your heart that you can't fake, that desires Christ and hates your sin. Who delights in his word. In verse 11, as we move from verse 10 into verse 11, these concentric circles get smaller. All things that he created in verse 3. Now he comes to the world, the world didn't know him in verse 10. Now in verse 11, he came to his own and his own did not receive him. Not only was Jesus rejected by the world at large, made through him, he was now rejected by a people specially and specifically chosen by God as his very own. The apple of his eye, his treasured possession. The very ones that should have received him. Reminds me of Matthew chapter 4 verse 44, Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. In the very same way that the word cosmos or world in verse 10 is used first of the physical world and then of the people that inhabits it, that inhabit it, John does that with his own again in verse 11. The first his own there in verse 11 is neuter. Anytime it's used in the neuter case there in the New Testament, it's giving the sense of a place here, home. Giving the sense of home or a homeland. Jesus Christ came to his home. The second use of his own in verse 11 is masculine, meaning his people. Jesus Christ came to his own home, to his own people and they did not receive him. It's like saying I came to Florida and the Floridians didn't know me and so I came to Orlando to my own family and my own family didn't receive me. That's what it's like saying. He came as an illegal alien. He came home and to his own people and he came to Israel, the very people that should have welcomed him in with open arms and they didn't know him. Rather than welcome him, the children of Israel, his own people did not receive him. It points to the fact that there is no excuse, there is no exception to total depravity. The world at large doesn't know him. He was unrecognized and unwelcome. His own people didn't know him. He was unrecognized and unwelcome. All, even his own, are totally depraved. It doesn't matter if your husband is a Christian.  It doesn't matter if you grew up in a Christian home. It doesn't matter if your dad is a pastor. It doesn't matter if you think you grew up as a pretty good kid and didn't do anything that bad. You are totally depraved. Outside of Christ, your will is depraved. Your emotions are depraved. Your reasoning is depraved. You desperately need a savior. The Jewish people had the best possible pedigree. The most advantages, the most blessings, the most benefits, they were given the oracles of God. And yet they did not know him. Even the religious elite among them didn't know Christ when he came. They did not receive him. And their story is this. This is their story. Then what does that mean? What conclusions can you draw for the rest of the world? They were to be priests to the world, and they didn't know him. We see this repeated throughout the Bible. There's this constant pattern in Scripture of rejection of this recalcitrance against God, not knowing him, not recognizing him. And then the Lord, by necessity, having to take matters into his own hands to redeem fallen man. We see that pattern throughout Scripture. Turn with me to Isaiah 65. And let's look at a couple of examples of this. Isaiah 65. Now think about this as you read these passages that these are the children of God. God's own special people that God had elected from among all the other nations of the world, given them his law, spoke audibly at times to them, demonstrated great signs and wonders before their eyes, and the people of Israel didn't know him. Look at Isaiah 65 and look beginning at verse 1. Here the Bible says, God says, I was sought by those who did not ask for me. I was found by those who did not seek me. I said, here I am, here I am to a nation that was not called by my name. Now the original reference of this verse are the children of Israel. This is a nation that he called to himself. He made them a nation, made them his treasured possession. We know from Romans chapter 10 that this also has reference to Gentiles. His own did not receive him, but to as many as did receive him, he gave them the right to become children of God. This is also opening up the Gentiles to be found by him, so to speak. Look at verse 2. I have stretched out my hands all day long to a rebellious people who walk in a way that is not good according to their own thoughts. Does that not describe children of wrath? Everyone outside of Christ, everyone outside of the divine intervention of God, changing the heart, changing the mind. He, God, in his infinite patience, stretches out his hands all day long to a rebellious people. It's said that to a lost person, one of the most glorious attributes of God is his patience.   Here in another sermon, he just stretches out his hands. Someone shares the gospel to you. He is stretching out his hands. Someone talks to you, tells you about the love of Christ, the forgiveness of Christ, the fact that Christ can grant forgiveness and grant repentance, and he stretches out his hands, and he stretches out his hands to a people that walk in their own way according to their own thoughts. A people, verse 3, who provoke me to anger continually to my face, God says. That was you and I outside of Christ offending God continuously to his face to sacrifice in gardens. They burn incense on altars of brick. Listen to this, who sit among the graves and spend the night in tombs. They were seeking mediums. They were practicing sorcery. This is witchcraft. They were consulting the dead. They eat swine's flesh and the broth of abominable things in their vessels. God graciously gives his law so that they might know him and they just completely disregarded altogether. No concern whatsoever for the dietary laws in the Old Testament that the Lord had commanded them to keep. Who say, verse 5, keep to yourself. Do not come near me, for I am holier than you.  They're a stench to him. It's Isaiah 65. Turn a few chapters to the right to Jeremiah chapter 7. Jeremiah chapter 7. The patience of God. It's the forbearance of God that should lead you to repentance. Jeremiah chapter 7. And drop down and look at verse 23. Jeremiah chapter 7, verse 23. We see the same expressed here.  And walk in all the ways that I have commanded you that it may be well with you. And here's their response, verse 24. Yet they did not obey or incline their ear but followed the councils and the dictates of their evil hearts. That's what men do apart from the grace and mercy of God. They follow the dictates of their own wicked hearts. They do what is right in their own eyes. They live life for themselves. Follow their own counsel. They don't incline their ear toward God. It says at the end of verse 24 that they went backward and not forward. Literally in the Hebrew there, it means that they turned their back to him. God says, in his mercy, in his grace, incline your ear to me. In his stretching out his hand to his stiff neck people, he says, come back to me. Follow me, obey my voice. Listen to me and hear God's own people. They give him their back. That's what rebels do outside of Christ. Verse 25, since the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt until this day. I have even sent to you all my servants the prophets. Daily, he says, rising up early and sending them. And yet they did not obey me or incline their ear but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers. They didn't do just evil in a sight. They had to do farther than that, do more than that. They did worse than their fathers before them. Just a stiff neck people. Go over to the New Testament. Look at Luke, Luke chapter 20. Just a few pages to the left from our passage in John chapter 1. Luke chapter 20. And we have the same sentiment here expressed in a parable from Christ himself. Luke chapter 20. Look down beginning at verse 9. Here, chapter 20, verse 9, Christ tells a parable. He began to tell the people this parable. A certain man planted a vineyard, leased it to vine dressers and went into a far country for a long time. Now, just as the audience to this parable could, as you listen to the parable, you can tell who the characters are, right? You can listen and tell who is the vine dresser or who is the owner, who are the vine dressers. You can tell who the son refers to. Even in this verse, in verse 9, he went into a far country for a long time. It's describing now the church age. We are in a long period of time before Christ comes back. Listen to what he says, verse 10. Now, at vintage time, he sent a servant to the vine dressers that they might give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. But the vine dressers beat him and sent him away empty-handed. That's how the wicked vine dressers treated the prophets that were sent to them. God stretching out his hand, rising early and sending them prophets. Verse 11, again, he sent another servant and they beat him also, treated him shamefully and sent him away empty-handed. And again, he sent a third and they wounded him also and cast him out. And then the owner of the vineyard. Who's the owner of the vineyard? God, patient and kind and gracious and merciful. His patience with these wicked vine dressers would have been scandalous to those listening to the parable. The owner of the vineyard said, What shall I do? I'll send my beloved son. Probably they will respect him when they see him. But when the vine dressers saw him, they reason amongst themselves saying, This is the air. Come, let us kill him. That the inheritance may be ours. And so they cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore, what will the owner of the vineyard do to them? Verse 16, he will come and destroy those vine dressers. Isn't that justice? Isn't that just? He'll destroy those vine dressers and give the vineyard to others. And when they heard it, they said, certainly not. And then he looked at them and said, When that is this, when then, is this that is written? The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. Christ, most important to the Jewish nation, their Messiah. Christ, most important became that which was rejected. And that which was rejected, which in reality is most important, becomes the chief cornerstone. Verse 18, whoever falls on that stone will be broken. But on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder. Christ will be the means of judging these wicked rebels. He'll be the means of judging the children of wrath that rebel against him today. The chief priests and the scribes that very hour sought to lay hands on him because they, but they feared the people for they knew that he had spoken this parable against them. The wicked hypocrites. The point here that Christians would have had to press home continuously evangelizing in the first century is that the Bible, God's plan, because of the wickedness of man required that the Lord and Savior they proclaimed had to be largely rejected by his own people and then crucified. They are children of wrath as are all apart from Christ. In the parable, God sends them multiple opportunities to repent and they stopped their ears. They just didn't want to listen. The longer they heard, the harder their hearts became and the more diligently they tried to stop their ears. And as they became harder and harder, the greater became their eternal danger. This is also true of you. The longer that you sit at Cornerstone Baptist Church and hear and yet stop your ears to the command of God in Christ to repent and believe the gospel, the harder and harder and harder your heart becomes and the more dangerous, the more dangerous, the more dangerous your position is. This is an eternal danger. If you're still alive, the judgment of God hasn't fallen yet. That is the amazing patience, the glorious patience and forbearance of God, the kindness of God in Christ that should lead you to repentance. God's kindness is revealed in his patience to you. God's kindness is revealed in the preaching of God's word to you. God's kindness is certainly revealed to you in him sending his son. It's the kindness of God that should lead you to repentance. But in contrast to that, these wicked sinners, the children of wrath, look at the amazing, blessed sacrifice of Christ. The amazing, blessed submission to the Father on the part of Christ. The mercy and grace and goodness of Christ in enduring hostility against himself, enduring the shame, suffering hostility from wicked sinners that he came to redeem. The condescension, the love. It is amazing. He came to his own and his own did not receive him. Did God's plan here fail? Did God's plan fail? Was it undermined in some way? No. It's exactly according to plan. It's exactly according to God's plan that all these things should come to pass. Look with me quickly at Romans chapter 11. Can't resist turning there to go through this with you. Romans chapter 11. This is all according to the predetermined plan of God. This is glorious. His redemptive plan. Romans chapter 11. You might ask yourself, when he came to his own, his own treated him that shamefully. Certainly God was going to cast off the people of Israel. Is that what God did? God, despite the wickedness of men, despite the fact that we were all born into this world as children of wrath, as sons of disobedience, God is gloriously merciful. God is gloriously kind. He keeps his promises. He keeps his covenant. And he's going to keep his covenant with the children of Israel.  His promises are irrevocable. Look at chapter 11. Romans chapter 11. Look at verse 1. This may be a question that we would have. I say then, Paul asks, has God cast away his people? Certainly not. For I also, Paul says, am in Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away his people whom he foreknew. The Lord's promises are based in his foreknowledge of them, his foreloving them, his choosing them. It's according to his own good pleasure that he does these things. He's not going to cast them away. Or do you not know, Paul says, what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel saying, Lord, they have killed your prophets, torn down your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life. But what does the divine response say to Elijah in that circumstance? Listen, I have reserved for myself 7,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Even so then, at this present time, it is a remnant according to the election of grace. It is the necessity of God's unconditional election that we can rest on for our salvation, is the basis for our salvation. It must be that way. It's God's unconditional election. Election has to be unconditional. Look at the rejection and rebellion of men. Drop down to verse 11. Paul says again, have they stumbled, these children of Israel, these children of wrath, that they should fall? Certainly not. But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles. The wisdom of God, the brilliance, the magnificence of this plan, to provoke the children, these children of wrath, to provoke his own people, the children of Israel to jealousy. God opens the Gospel and just the floodgates come pouring and Gentiles coming to faith in Christ, Gentiles being saved. God, in his wisdom, in his plan, provoking the children of Israel to jealousy by saving the Gentiles. Drop down to verse 25. For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved as it is written. The deliverer will come out of Zion and he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob. For this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins. Has God done that yet? This is still future. There's a future for Israel because our God is a covenant keeping God. Our God will, as he says, save Israel. He'll turn away iniquity from Jacob. Concerning this Gospel, verse 28, they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For as you were once disobedient to God, yet now have obtained mercy through their disobedience. Even so, these also have now been disobedient that through the mercy shown you, they also may obtain mercy. For God has committed them all to disobedience that he might have mercy on all. And Paul just coming to grips with this plan being laid out before him, this glorious redemption, this great salvation that God has provided for, just worships, right? Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. This is not a religion created by man. This is not a religion fabricated in the imagination of men. This is Almighty God. How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. He goes on to ask, back in John chapter one, verse 11, or back in Romans chapter 11, sorry, they stumbled they should fall, certainly not. You know, despite this sweeping rejection from his own people, there was a remnant of the children of wrath that would receive him. To those who receive him, to them, he gave the right to become children of God. Point two on your notes, we see a portrait then in verses 12 and 13 of the children of God, the children of God. But as many as received him, to them, he gave the right to become children of God. To those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Now, this is a glorious verse, because this is written to you and I. This describes those that by grace, through faith, break against the current of this world and follow Christ. And they're defined here in four ways. They receive him, they are given a right, they believe in his name, and they are born of God. Now in this, in these four points, again, is displayed the perfect balance between God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. The first is they receive him. That's man's responsibility. No one goes to heaven who doesn't receive Christ. Right? A man's responsibility to receive him for who he is, for all that he's done. But they're also given the right to become children of God. Given the right by whom? God's sovereignty. God gives them, grants them the right, the authority to become children of God. And then they believe, they believe in his name. That's man's responsibility. No one goes to heaven that doesn't believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and call on him to be saved. They believe, and then lastly, they are born of God. And again, that is God's sovereignty. They are born of God. So let's look at those individually quickly. Verse 12, but as many as received him. That word, Lombano for received there in verse 12, isn't simply acceptance. It is a laying hold of. It's a taking hold of. It's a seize upon. And again, it's emphasizing man's responsibility. It's equivalent to believing in his name. Basically means the same thing. It's not mere intellectual believing. It's a grasping. It's a trusting. And then it's a committing of yourself, a reliance in Christ. The word received there implies both a gift and a giver. The gift is eternal life in our Lord Jesus Christ. The giver is God. He is the giver of every good and perfect gift, as James says. And this gift is a beautiful, free offer. Listen, all the work has already been done. All the work has been complete. When Christ said it is finished on the cross, he meant it. All the work is done. All that is left for you and I is to simply receive that which has been done. By faith, just to receive it by trusting in Christ alone. And you've been saved by grace. Through the vehicle of faith, this receiving of Christ of all that he is, for all that he's done, trusting in him, trusting in him alone to save you. And this receiving, although it points to man's responsibility, listen, is also a gift of God. In 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verse 14, the Bible says that the natural man, these children of wrath, they don't receive the things of the Spirit of God, they don't receive them for they are foolishness to them nor can they know them because they are spiritually discerned. In order to receive the things of the Spirit of God, the natural man must be given a new nature by God. It points forward to the truth that we'll find in verse 13 that all men, in order to exercise faith, in order to receive him, in order to repent, they must be born again. Secondly, in verse 12, as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God. Thank God for the butts in the Bible, but as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God. This word for right would better be translated a privilege or blessing. Luther translates it dignity. It's an honor that God bestows. In verse 12, an honor is bestowed on those that receive him. To receive him is to receive authority or privilege from him. And to receive him is to receive the spirit of adoption by whom we become sons in the household of God by which we cry out Abba Father. To become means a change in status.  You were once children of wrath. You were once of your father the devil and now you become children of God. As Ephesians says, you were predestined to be that. Adopted as sons by Jesus Christ to himself according to the good pleasure of his will. In this granting of privilege, again we see the sovereignty of God in salvation toward dead and blind sinners. It's those that God appoints to eternal life that receive this blessing of privilege. James Montgomery Boyce told a story of Napoleon after a battle once. Napoleon is on his horse in the midst of his men and his horse gets a little out of control. Rears up, almost unseats Napoleon from the horse. So there's a corporal, a corporal standing nearby.  The corporal jumps up, grabs the bridle of the horse and brings the horse under submission, brings the horse under control. Saves Napoleon from an embarrassing moment falling off his horse. So Napoleon looks down at the corporal and says, thank you captain. Think about it for a moment. What would you do? The corporal doesn't hesitate. He says, of what unit, sire? And Napoleon says, of my guards, captain. So the corporal immediately dropped everything he had, went right over to the officer's barracks and sat with the officers. An officer comes up to him, what are you doing here? I'm here because I'm a captain of the emperor's guard. And so the guy asked him, on whose authority? On the authority of the emperor. We have blessed privilege, blessed honor, blessed dignity in being children of God, and yet oftentimes, don't we Christians, forget their place and live like beggars. Will you, on the testimony of God's word, on the testimony of God's promises to you, turn from your sin, put your faith and trust in Christ, and then assume the glorious blessing that has been laid on you by God Almighty to be children of God. When the Lord says you'll not have sin that will have dominion over you? Do you trust in the promises of God? I'm a child of the kingdom. I'm not going to let this sin have dominion over me. I'm not a slave to my sin any longer. I'm a slave of righteousness. I'm a slave of Christ. When the Lord promises you eternal life, do you take him in his word and believe? And so, believing, purify yourself such that you're not caught up in the trappings of this wicked world? We have blessed privilege. 1 John chapter 3 verse 1, Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God. Don't you just hear in that verse, listen, I was a child of wrath. I didn't know him. I was a child against him. I was a wicked rebel. An enemy of his by my wicked works. And he bestowed on me the blessing of being called a child of God. The glorious, glorious salvation that God has given us. Do you believe it? Do you believe it? Will you lay hold on that? Take it, receive it. Grab the horse by the bridle. And trust Christ. Those privileges, those blessings are yours. Thirdly, they are to those, those gifts of God, to those who believe in his name. John 2031, the purpose for which John is writing. These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. The word believing there, present tense participle is referring to a continual believing. A Christian will not cease from believing. A backslider in Scripture is referring to a lost person in apostate. Believing is referring here to saving faith. And although man must exercise saving faith to be saved, it is a gift from God. Saving faith is believing that there is such a person as Christ. And that's not nearly all. Saving faith is believing in all that he said, all that he's done, and that that's true. But that's not nearly all. Saving faith is believing that which leads to trusting him in all things. That's not all. Saving faith is also relying on him in all things.  It bears the fruit of following him in all things, obeying him in all things. The demons believe in Christ. So what makes your faith any different than the demons? His name, believing in his name, that name there is more than merely a label. It's representative of the character of Christ.  And lastly, all this is possible because the children of God are born of God. Their children of God are those who receive him. Those who believe in his name. All of those are those who have been born of God. They were born of God and became children of God. They were born of God and they received Christ, they received him. They were born of God and then they believed in his name. They were born of God and then they repented and believed in the gospel. You must be born again. These are not born of blood. Grace doesn't pass from the parents to the children. It's not given based on ethnicity as the Jews thought. Physical descent from Abraham means nothing. You must reproduce Abraham's faith. Heritage, race, family are all irrelevant when it comes to being born again. They're not born of the will of the flesh. The spiritual new birth, salvation does not come as a result of man's decision. It comes as a result of God's decision. It doesn't come by natural processes. Salvation comes by supernatural processes. So for all the intensive children of wrath to take out the miracle power, the life transforming power of the gospel, it stands. It's not a natural process. It is a supernatural process. The Bible says that which is born of flesh is flesh. Flesh cannot change itself. You cannot change your own nature.   They're not born of the will of man. The will of the natural man is opposed to God. God has, or man has, no Godward will whatsoever apart from being born again. It's not by his own exertion. It's not by the exertion of well-intentioned friends. It's not by the exertion of a sermon of pastor preachers. It's not by someone coming along and zapping you into being saved. It's entirely of God's grace. Man cannot regenerate hearts. When man fell in the garden, he fell all the way to the bottom.  Donald Gray Barnhouse talks about those that believe that men are dead, they're lying in the coffin, but they somehow have one arm sticking out of the coffin that's working for it. That's not how it works. That's not what this is talking about. It's not what the Bible teaches. The remedy to this tragedy is the new creation. We must be born again. Jesus told Nicodemus, we're going to get there in John chapter 3, that unless he is born of spirit, of water in the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. It's not a question of only life to him, it's an inability. He is unable, powerless to do anything to save himself. He must be born again. Born of God means a spiritual transformation from top to bottom. Exclusively from above. You were born physically. You had nothing to do with your physical birth.  I want to be born now. I've been in here long enough. I'm ready to be born. I want my name to be Mark. I want my parents to be Mike and Becky. It doesn't happen that way. You don't have anything to do with your physical birth. You're not going to have anything to do with your spiritual birth. It is entirely God's work. God came seeking us. We love him because what? He first loved us. He first loved us. When Adam fell into sin in the garden and hit himself, God came seeking Adam. Adam, where are you? And he's been seeking wicked sinners ever since. To those that receive him. To those that believe in his name. To those that are given the privilege of being a child of God. It's all possible because God, by his spirit, causes them to be born again. Not by their own effort, not by their own decision, but entirely by the sovereign grace of God according to his plan, his good pleasure, his will. Listen. This is so, so important, right? Let's talk about man's responsibility for just a moment. How are you to respond to these biblical truths? How are you to receive him? How do you receive him? Do you pray to receive Christ? The Bible never says that that's how you receive him. Never. Never. No one goes to heaven that doesn't pray. But is that how we're to respond to the gospel? Do we pray to receive him? You know that although that is nowhere in the Bible, that is the most common way that getting saved is described in churches today. You're to pray to receive Christ. Ask Jesus in your heart. It's nowhere in the Bible. Did you know that? Do you believe that? Don't rest your eternity on some prayer that isn't even in the Bible. Don't go back and trust in the sincerity of the prayer that you made to get you saved. You can trust in Christ alone. How does the Bible tell you to respond to this glorious free offer? It's a free offer of salvation in Christ. Does the Bible tell you to clean up your act so that you can be saved? No. Does the Bible say that you have to work to be a good person to be saved? No. Does the Bible simply say to admit that you're a sinner and ask for forgiveness? No. No one goes to heaven that doesn't admit they're a sinner. No one goes to heaven that doesn't ask for forgiveness. But is that clearly the way that we're to respond to these truths? No. The Bible tells you. Christ tells you. Paul tells you. Peter tells you. All the apostles tell you. There may be many in this room who have told you. You are to repent and to believe in the gospel. Sometimes you hear repent alone. It means turn away from your sin. For sake, your sin. Abandon that wicked life you were living. And that means to turn from sin. Sometimes you hear believe in Scripture. Trust in Christ. Rely upon Him alone. Commit to Him. Trust in Him alone. And often in Scripture you hear them both together. There are two sides of the same coin. When you savingly believe in Christ it is a repenting belief. When you repent with that repentance that leads to life like Paul says in 2 Corinthians. It is a believing repentance. You're to repent and believe the gospel. One thing for sure. When the Lord causes you to be born again and grants you, gifts you repentance and faith your life will never be the same. It is a radical transformation of God, of man's heart. A radical transformation of man's nature. Your life will radically change and you will never be the same again. Cry out to God for mercy now. He says now is the time. Today is the day. Turn from your sin. Don't stop crying out until you are certain that you have grace. Keep crying out to God. The patience of God is salvation the Bible says. If you are genuinely saved you are going to see the radical work of grace in your heart. You will see the radical work of grace in your life. You will bear fruits and the Lord will confirm it. Allow the Lord to confirm it. You don't want to believe that you are saved because you picked up some worldly wise method of being saved. You want to have assurance of your salvation because the Lord has granted it to you because of the evidence that the Lord by His grace, by His Spirit has produced in your life. Don't you want that? God will make you a new creation in Christ. It is an awesome thought. We want to be in Christ worshiping with Him in heaven forever. Amen. Let's take a few moments. I want you to bow your heads and let's pray silently for just a second for God to apply the truths that He's taught us in this passage to our hearts. Just ask that He would do that, okay? Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you Lord for Christ. Thank you for the miracle of new birth. God, thank you for changing our heart, changing our nature, giving us new wants, new desires, new appetites. We're thank you for granting us a hungry and a thirsting for righteousness. Thank you Lord for opening our eyes to see the preciousness of Christ. We might believe on Him and Him alone to save us from sin, from the wrath of God. Thank you Lord for the great salvation that you've provided for. It is amazing in our eyes. Lord, I pray save lost sinners for your glory. Lord, grant them repentance and faith and cause them, Lord by your spirit to worship you for all eternity. Thank you Lord for this time together. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.


Well, let me begin by explaining a little bit about how I came to write this book. I had been active in the left movement in Pakistan since 1998. And whenever one would meet with other intellectuals, progressive intellectuals, they would often say, well, you know, you're doing all this wonderful activity amongst trade unions and workers and peasants and so on. But there is no analysis of, you know, what are the different classes in Pakistan, what are their quantities, you know, what is the mode of production of this economy. There seems to be absolutely nothing with respect to any of this work. So, you know, the first step seems to us to be to make an analysis of what exists in society, you know, such as Lenin did with his famous book, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, and many others have done subsequently in their societies. And there isn't a single one in the context of Pakistan. So one felt a very strong, you know, it felt that there was a very strong dearth in the literature on this, on the subject. And indeed, when I looked around, I went for my doctorate, and I looked around, I saw that while there were certainly many studies that were undertaken in certain areas. For instance, Sagheer Ahmed had done a bit of work and Hamzal, we had done a bit of work, and others had done some work, etcetera. But the problem with these studies was that either they were very specific to certain areas, they could be looking at the Landi Kurangi, you know, sort of working class area in Karachi or whatever, or they could be looking at one or two villages, etcetera. Or they were very specific in relation to the time frame that they were looking at. And so a more holistic sort of analysis of the class structure of Pakistan really hasn't been attempted, or hadn't been attempted when I began this book. And so I felt that, you know, I could arguably address that gap in the literature. Now, of course, addressing that gap meant that one had to reinvent the wheel, or rather to really begin at square one, because kusthaii nahi. So that led me into a process of, well, to examine the contemporary class structure of Pakistan. Let's also look at what existed historically. Let's look at what existed before the creation of Pakistan, and then, of course, before the British colonial rule as well. And I think that process of looking at what was already available, you know, rereading what had been written on the subject in particular, the fantastic debate published here in India on the, you know, the famous debate, the mode of production debate here in India. Looking at that literature and other literature, what I came to realize was that the majority of studies were basically looking at whether or not the transition from feudalism to capitalism had occurred, and to what extent it had occurred. And it is the same, more or less, in Pakistan as well. If you look at the literature that is available in Pakistan, specifically within the field of agrarian studies, like Mahmood Hassan Khan, or Akbar Azad, et cetera, you will see that the debate is pretty, mirrors the debate in India. The problem that I had with most of these studies was that, of course, the framework within which that was, this whole debate was occurring was whatever exists before capitalism must be feudalism. That was more or less taken for granted, it seemed to me. And when I began to study the literature on the subject, especially studying some of what Marx had written and others had written angles, et cetera, I discovered that they had a very different view of Indian history, of history, of the history of South Asia. And so I began to research that view. I read Crader and many other people, and I came to an understanding that there was something in that literature and in that basic theory, which we had ignored and that we needed to review. So let me first also tell you what this book is not, because whenever one talks about the class structure of Pakistan, the impression that any layman I think would have is that this could be a sociological study about various ethical mores that people have, how they interact, et cetera. It could be a cultural study. It could be a political study about the structure of the state, about the form of politics, et cetera. It's none of those things. It's really very much firmly within the context of the mode of production debate. And it's really a political economy book rather than a book on culture or on politics or even on history or on sociology. It's none of those aspects. So if one approaches the book with expecting to find those sorts of answers, I think one would be disappointed, because that's not what the book is about. As my friend today was remarking and others have also remarked, kis me to nambari bozhat hain. So it is partially based on a statistical analysis and a political economy analysis. But the first two chapters I think arguably are most applicable also to an Indian audience. The second two chapters are much more empirical and look specifically at Pakistan. And the first two chapters are building the framework within which I proceed to examine Pakistan. So I think in that context, since the first two chapters are looking at pre-colonial history and colonial history, they are open to greater interest within India as well. So what's the main idea behind the book? The main idea behind the book is that we as Marxists seem to be working with, oh, and I also want to say something about the methodology before I go into the book as well, which is that, of course, one has read quite a bit of the literature that has come out in the last two, three decades, which is post-modernist or post-structuralist. So challenges, basic assumptions about class, about base and superstructure, about this whole debate about economic determinism and agency, and so on and so forth. And let me be a bit, some would say orthodox, some would say unorthodox, but let me be very blunt and say that the methodology of this particular study is basically what one would call unreconstructed classical Marxism, which is what I myself personally adhere to, and I'm convinced of. So how should one put it, strongly reject some of the new recent work that has come out which, in the way of challenging economic determinism and challenging what would be considered mechanical, mechanistic Marxism goes all the way to the other extreme and I think throws out the baby with the bathwater and takes out the real sort of meat and bones out of doing social sciences, and doing social sciences, where I would emphasize the science aspect of it. So I like to consider this to be a work of orthodox Marxism, in terms of its methodology. I don't think that's very problematic, because I think the actual methodology of Marxism is quite nuanced and quite complex, and one needs to understand it in its dialectical interconnection. So having said that, the basic idea that one is challenging, I'm challenging in this book, is this concept of the unilinear development of history, which is essentially that all societies, more or less, develop through the same five periods or modes of production history. Whether that's India, whether that's China, whether that's Vietnam, Turkey, or whether it's Latin America, or whatever, they must have each experienced the same five or six, if you want, modes of production, the primitive communist mode of production, slave society, feudalism, capitalism, and then on to socialism. And when one actually examines Marx himself, he is very clear, and says very openly and explicitly, that this particular sort of schema is something that I have taken by examining European history. It is not something that I would like people to apply to world history or to other societies as a ready-made sort of schema that can be applied to any society. And one discovers then that that's arguably what many of us have been doing, which is that whatever is not capitalism, it seems to me, having read the literature, must be feudalism. So I went back into that debate and tried to unearth how that came to be, given that Marx himself, Engels, Lenin, Kautsky, nearly all the Rosa Luxemburg, nearly all the early Marxists that we call from that classical period, none of them adhere to the view that India or China are feudal societies. So how did it come to pass that this massive intellectual transformation within the Marxist movement occurred? I'll tell you, it occurs in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It occurs within the Soviet Union itself and debates within the Soviet Union and then makes its way and makes its presence felt throughout the Marxist movement in the world. So let's just consider you've got all these diverse societies, each of which have very, very diverse and different material conditions. And yet we are led to believe that all of them have passed through the exact same modes of production in history. It sounds even at that level to be improbable, even just at that level, where you have such diversity in terms of, well, you certainly don't have a lot of diversity in terms of the universalization of capitalism. But is it true that the slave mode of production was a universal mode of production? Would it be true that the feudal mode of production is a universal mode of production? Let's look at origins of the family, for instance, and look at how Engels speaks about the transition from slave society to feudal society. When he talks about that particular transition, we see that there's a lot of historical contingency there. There are very specific events that he speaks about. For instance, the conquest of Rome by the Barbarians, the actual constitution of the German Barbarians themselves, their own sort of mode of production, their own sort of the way in which their armies are organized, and how that merges into the colonized system of the Romans and a mixture of the two forms feudalism. Well, if that is the way feudalism evolves in the context of Europe, where it is so specifically tied to this synthesis between the constitution of the Mark, the German-Germanic Barbarian community, the Romans used to call them Barbarians, et cetera, and the system that existed in Rome, if that is how feudalism emerged, then it seems to me that those historical contingencies certainly do not exist in our context. And then we see so many different problems with respect to the periodization that we often try and construct for our own history. All right, so if feudalism was overthrown after the Permanent Settlement Act and with the coming of the British colonialists, when did we make the transition from slave society to feudal society? Now, in European history, that's a very straightforward point in time. That's a very straightforward nodal position. And that is, of course, the fall of Rome, the eventual collapse of the Roman Empire. But in Indian history, in South Asian history, in Chinese history, in Turkish history, where would we put that point? When we look at the literature, we see that everybody is sort of all over the place with it. Some people are saying it begins in the second century. Some people are saying it begins with the Mughals. Some people are saying it begins with the Gupta. Some people are saying it begins with the Islamic, the Delhi Sultanate, et cetera, all that period. This is all over the place. So there's no consensus in the field with respect to where that transition occurs. And there's no consensus, really, because there isn't that nodal point, a very well-accepted nodal point for European historians. Everybody will sort of consider the fall of Rome to be a very key transition in European history. Where is that nodal point in our history? We're not too sure. So what is it that really sort of clenches the matter as far as my thesis is concerned? Is a central point that Marx and Engels drove home, which is that if you look at the forms of property, which, of course, Marx and Engels considered to be juridical expressions of relations of production, if you look at the forms of property that exist and the consequent form of the surplus, which is always going to be connected very deeply and integrally to the relations of production and the forms of property, the very manner in which the relations of production of a society are constituted are going to determine the forms of surplus that are going to come out, whether that's going to be in the form of use value with respect to slavery, where you directly appropriated the labor of the slave as use value, whether it's going to be in the form of Corvi rent, as was the case, for instance, in the feudal mode of production where the serfs would work on Sundays, on the commons, and on the rest of the days on the land of the feudal lord, where they performed Corvi labor for the feudal lord, et cetera, forced labor, unfree labor, or whether it's going to be in some other form. The surplus value, as is the case in a mode of production which is dominated by private property, et cetera. So when we examine these different things with respect to, let's say, Mughal India, first thing we discover is there's no private property in land. Yes, of course, there's private possession of land, but possession is not necessarily property. There is certainly some exchange of land as well, but that is more incidental rather than being something more permanent. The form of surplus is certainly totally different from the kind that exists in European history. It is in the form of land revenue rather than in the form of Corvi labor. There is Corvi labor, Beghar, as we call it in Pakistan, but that's not the main form of surplus as the system itself is driven. And consequently, there are also many differences in the forms of the state, how the ruling class itself is structured in relation to the working classes. And of course, how can we forget that the whole system, at least in the context of India and also in the context of Egypt, is structured on the caste system. So given all of these really, really important factors, how is it that these vastly different, in my opinion, ways of organizing social life can be fitted into one category? The only way that can be theoretically or intellectually accomplished is if we widen that category to such an extent that it can include features of European history as well as features of Indian history. And that's exactly what's happened, I feel, within Marxist studies with respect to the term that we call feudalism. We have universalized feudalism not because feudalism itself was a universal system, but by an intellectual play of hands, let's say, or by redefining it, let's say, by widening that category to include features that exist in China, to include features that exist in India, to include features that exist in Turkey, to include features that exist in Arabia, exist and also exist in Europe. Now what happens in social science is when we widen the term, of course, it loses explanatory power. That's not the way the term sort of scientifically really, that's not what it means. And of course, you widen any term, you widen the term capitalism, you can include all of history into it. If you widen it sufficiently such as to include different modes of surplus appropriation, every mode of production can be some mode of surplus appropriation, you can include all of them. And what happens as a result, you, of course, by widening those categories lose explanatory power. So that's problematic in my view. So let's examine in just a little bit of detail some of the features of the Asiatic mode of production. And as Marx and Engels have identified them and others after them have also identified them and how they differ from European feudalism or don't differ. Well, the first one, the four in particular that I'd like you to think of, the first one is that this is a natural economy. What does that mean? It's an old political economy term. Irfan Habib, of course, writes about this and refutes this in his book that India was not a natural economy, says, because there is evidence of currency exchange. But that's a complete misunderstanding, as I've written in the book, demonstrated in the book, of what Marx and Engels and classical political economy, in fact, meant by the term natural economy. What they meant by the term natural economy was an economy in which the division of labor is not formed by exchange, by market exchange. Rather, it is formed by mechanisms other than demand and supply and exchange. Now, that, of course, is the case, definitely, with respect to India, with respect to South Asia, because we know that the division of labor is not driven by the market in pre-colonial India. It is driven by, of course, the caste system. It is driven by traditions. It is justified by an ideological system that we call religion, or we call tradition, or we call culture, et cetera. But it's not market driven. That's a given.  That is not driven by the market that is driven by tradition and by kinship association, and so on, so forth. It may be impacted by certain market conditions, but that's not the main driving force. That condition, though, is true not only for India, but also for European feudalism and also for slave society. So that is something that is true for all pre-capitalist modes of production, not just the Asiatic mode of production, not just the feudal or the slave mode of production. So that's something that is common to all pre-capitalist modes of production. The second very important point is private property in land. Now here, of course, there's been a lot of scholarship. I was just reading another book, I forget the name of the author right now, but on the early history of India. And there is scholarship available which says, for instance, that there is private property of land. But what I find problematic in some of that scholarship is that we seem to be, in that scholarship, I would put forward the position that it seems to me to be the case that we are not making a strong distinction between possession and property. Property implies a degree of juridical and social stamp of approval. It implies something much more firm than what exists, in my opinion, in the context of pre-Colonial India. When we look at European feudal property, for instance, we see that the lord of the manor lives, has a castle. That castle is most of the time situated right in the center of his fief, of his manor, of his fields, et cetera, which are all around. It's at the center of that. The families that have been living on those castles, et cetera, have been living there for generations. There is not necessarily in agriculture, there is a gentleman of leisure or a knight, et cetera. So he's not participating in reorganizing the mode of production itself, a feature that's common to many pre-capitalist modes of production. But certainly he is not only in possession of the land, but in ownership of the land, which, of course, is also given to that person through a royal edict, et cetera, et cetera. And a third of the land in Europe, of course, is owned directly by the Catholic Church itself, in addition to the tithes and other things that they collect. And Engels, of course, and Marx both, call that the center of European feudalism, particularly because they own a third of European agricultural land. And what do we have here, let's say, in Mughal India? I didn't go into ancient Indian history. But in my book, I only look at Mughal India, which is the sort of system directly preceding the British system. One could go further back in history. What do we see here? That every three or four years, the king does, in fact, not just scan, but does, in fact, reshuffle the Jagirdars across India. So you can have a Jagirdar come in from Bengal, and he could be sitting in Punjab, and you can have a Jagirdar from Punjab, and they could be sitting in UP, et cetera, et cetera. And every three, four years, the kingdom shuffles those Jagirdars around. What is a Jagirdar? A Jagirdar is a Mansabdar, Allah is a Mansabdar, basically, a general of the army. That is its primary purpose. The Jagirdar never lives on the land. Never. Historically, what we call absentee landlordism, we may call it absentee landlordism, because we feel that the landlords of India or Pakistan are doing something that they ought not to be doing. They ought to be living on the land. But that is something that's historically been there. The Jagirdars have always lived in the cities with their troops. They have only derived a certain amount of surplus, a surplus which was commensurate. The Jagirdar was always made commensurate with the number of their troops, especially during Akbar's period, commensurate to their troops. So if I have 500 Shah-Sawar's and 2,000 soldiers, et cetera, then I will be given the Jagirdar of a certain size for its maintenance, and for the maintenance of my family and the rest of it. So a very different system once again, we can see. And the third thing is the state and public works. Now, in those historians that are opposed to the idea of a mode of production or oriental despotism, I've written a great lens about this and said, well, look at the fact that the state in certain parts of our history has been incredibly centralized. Let's say Akbar's period was a very centralized period. But throughout most of Indian history, we've seen that the state has been very decentralized in the sense that also in the sense that they've not just been one state, but there's not just been one state, but there have been so many different states. The periods in which there, in fact, has been a centralized all India state has been rare rather than the exception rather than the rule. So given that, should we consider the theory of oriental despotism, as it was called in classical political economy? Should we consider that theory? We can scrap the name because it's become a very loaded term today. But in terms of its concept, can we accept that as a concept? Well, I think I've also written about this. And I feel that there is something there that is worth considering. What is that worth considering? What Marx and Engels, I think, were driving at was the fact that when we look at the formation of ancient states anywhere in the world, we see that the communities that existed in primitive communism, when there was no property of any sort, also had a certain division of labor. In the sense that there were people who were leaders in times of war. There were people who were leaders in times of peace. There were people who did certain types of work and other people who did other types of work. The division between the genders, of course, had already begun to come about, et cetera. There was not a class division of labor yet, but there certainly were people who acted in the name of the tribe, would engage with other tribes, negotiate with other tribes, and would represent those tribes, et cetera. They were, in that time, more or less subservient to the tribes. These tribes were, relatively speaking, much more democratic, precisely for the reason that property had not emerged. And these tribal leaders had no property through which they could control surplus as such. So what they relied upon to represent the tribe were their personal characteristics, strength in battle, experience, wisdom, foresight, whatever, earning the respect of those ancient tribes and therefore, acting as leaders of those tribes. Slowly, those public angles says in origins of the family, he says, slowly these public officials who were acting in the name of the tribe or public servants turned into public masters. And they began to then control the flock. They began to control the land. They began to control the water or whatever it may be. And in addition to the work that the tribe itself had given to these representatives, they appropriated other roles to themselves and became more and more powerful and immersed into a ruling class. Now, what angles and marks are trying to push forward, in my view, is that in the formation of states in India, Pakistan, and other parts of the world, in addition to the tasks that we see, European tribal representatives performing, which would be common to many tribes, i.e., being a war leader, being a leader in peace, educating within the tribe, educating outside of the tribe, et cetera, et cetera. In addition to those roles, there is one more very important role that these primitive communist communities must have played, had to have played, which would have been a key ingredient in the formation of the state. And that is organizing large bodies of collective labor in order to channelize or in order to build artificial irrigation. Given that precipitation in our part of the world, 80% of it occurs within one month. Now, 80% of your rainfall occurs within one month. It's not spread out evenly over the year, as is the case in London, which is always sort of grey, where it rains every third day and every fourth day. Here, it rains in one season, and then it's dry throughout. That's the case. There must be some method, mechanism, through which these tribes are able to utilize rainwater and water generally in a more efficient economical way, such that it's used throughout the year or used better. Now, to build artificial irrigation, these tribes must have organized collective labor to do that. Some people must have organized that collective labor, must have been the organizers of that collective labor. And the organizers of that collective labor, in turn, also became part of one of the works that, amongst many other public functions that tribal leaders were doing, this was one of an additional thing that they were doing in the context of Asia. And that also plays a key role in the development of the state. That, I think, as I like to say, that is the rational kernel to use a Marxist expression in the husk or whatever. That, I think, in my view, would form a key factor in trying to understand and decipher the Asiatic state. Now, I don't do that, actually, in this particular book, because I tried to stay with the economy, and I didn't want to venture into understanding the state, because that would have taken me into a completely different direction. And I have to write an entire book on that. Maybe I can do that in the future. But I think that's very important. And last but not least, the fourth point is the form of surplus value, which, of course, is the tribute. Sameer Amin and many others have even written about the mode of production in India as the tributary mode of production. India-Pakistan is a tributary mode of production. And many others have as well. Now, that's just another name for the Asiatic mode of production, because the term Asiatic itself strikes us as being from a different era, and indeed, it is. In fact, there's a debate where Lenin also says that I'd rather use the term patriarchal mode of production rather than Asiatic during the debates with respect to the colonial question. When he says very explicitly, I don't want to use the term Asiatic anymore, because it might strike the people of Asia as being somewhat patronizing, et cetera, et cetera. So what is the form of surplus? The form of surplus is the tribute. What is the tribute? About 50% of the produce of a village or a set of villages goes to the Jagirdar. About 10% goes to the Zamidar, the local representative of the state, et cetera. And then, of course, the rest of it is very, very, of course, big generalization. It all depends on the productivity of land and regions and crops, et cetera, et cetera. And other sort of things. But broadly speaking, that is a rough breakup during the Mughal period. And that's not my statistic, that's Irfan, Habib, and others, et cetera. And the rest of it, of course, is divided by tradition, not by market forces or whatever. But by tradition, k, this caste will receive this mass, this brothery will receive this mass, this caste will receive this mass, et cetera, et cetera. And that's the case in Pakistan and India. It's common to Pakistan and India. I don't know about Bangladesh, but certainly Pakistan and India is common. It's probably common to Bangladesh as well. So those are the four things that characterize or differentiate, rather, the mode of production in, let's say, Europe from the mode of production here. What were they again? Natural economy. There's no division of labor based on the exchange. Secondly, private property. There's very different forms of property here and very different forms of property there. State and public works. In other words, there is a difference. There is some difference here that the need for collective labor forms an integral role in the formation of the state. And we need to study how that happens. I'm not saying Marx and Engels got it right. I'm just saying that they did get this aspect right. That's a key ingredient in the formation of the state. And we need to keep that in the picture to understand how the state was formed. And lastly, the form of surplus is so different. As I said, over there, you have the Kofi economy where the surf basically performs labor on the land of the landlord for five days or six days. And then works in the common. And whatever the produce on the commons belongs to the surf, that is what Marx called necessary labor, the amount of labor that is necessary for the reproduction of the working class. And all surplus labor is performed on the land of the landlord. So the division between necessary and surplus labor, which Marx draws in capital, is actually very neatly drawn in the context of European feudalism. If you just look at the division between the time of work spent on the commons versus the time of work spent on the land of the lord, none of that exists in the context of India. In fact, the system that we call, there are a few exceptions, there are some historians who do believe that un-free labor as it exists in India can be considered serfdom. But again, they're doing the same thing. They're widening the category of serfdom and making it as something it was not originally defined as. You can do that. But then we're talking at odds with each other. We're talking about two different things. Marx and Engels themselves write in a particular letter and in several other passages as well, in capital and other places, that they really consider these modes of production as being identical with these labor relations that I'm describing. In other words, they consider slavery to be identical with what they call the ancient mode of production. That is the basis of the ancient mode. They consider serfdom to be identical with feudalism. That is for them the definition of feudalism. Where serfdom does not exist, they will not say feudalism exists. They consider wage labor to be the definition of capitalism, where wage labor does not exist or is still coming around. They will say capitalism doesn't exist or is still coming around respectively. But that is really, and they very clearly state that wage labor is the flip side of capital. Capital is wage labor, you're looking at it either from the activity of labor or you're looking at it. And in fact, in German ideology, they use this expression. In fact, they say, if I recall the quotation exactly, they say something to the extent that the division of labor and forms of property are identical expressions. The first expresses the same phenomena in terms of the activity of labor, that is division of labor. And the second expresses the same phenomena in terms of the products of labor. In other words, private property or property forms of property. So we see therefore that the sort of connect that they make, the very strong connect that they make between modes of production and these labor relations. They would never consider a society without serfdom.  Give or take a bit, where of course there are, there may be certain influences. Like for example, they considered the American South to be capitalist despite the existence of chattel slavery only because it would have already been integrated into the international capitalist economy, et cetera, et cetera. That was the contingency. But if chattel slavery on its own existed without that interaction with the world, market, et cetera, they would not have considered it to be part of capitalism. So and even there, they very explicitly state that this is a transition. So that's the second point that I want to make. Now there's been, if we consider, if we accept the thesis that pre-colonial India is not, let's say, feudal, but something else. If you don't like the term Asiatic mode of production, use tributary mode of production, Indian mode of production, whatever. And by the way, I'm also not suggesting that China is necessarily now the Asiatic mode of production. Marx may have got that wrong, or Turkey, or whatever. We'd have to study that. But what I am suggesting is certainly, the strong thesis here, I'd say, is certainly that our own society, South Asia, I find it problematic to categorize it as feudalism. Now let's examine the next phase of history where the transition to capitalism occurs. How does this occur? Well, we see that, of course, there are three main features that I would identify within that. We see that the transition occurs mainly, though not exclusively, through foreign domination. Yes, there is some literature suggesting that there is trade and mercantile proto-capitalism developing, and the course of Bombay and other places, et cetera. And that certainly is true. And even on the other side, the Bengal Coast, et cetera, and that's certainly true. But as proto-capitalism, and everybody accepts that, it's what exists before capitalism proper. And there's a lot of speculation about whether it could have led to capitalism, et cetera, et cetera, amongst historians, et cetera. And again, I would suggest that that is speculation. And it could go either way. It could take another 1,000 years before capitalism emerges. It could take 100 years. Nobody can say anything about that, because, of course, that's the class struggle, and that's not deterministic in that shape or form. There are many events that determine that. And we've seen, for instance, even in European history, you see the reversal of class struggles.  And for 100, 150 years, you see the reversal of all the gains, progressive gains, that the reformation brings about, et cetera, et cetera. So you see many periods. And of course, we see the Soviet Union. We see the emergence of the Soviet Union. We see its collapse, which again militates against any linear interpretation of history, that history is just a straight line moving forward. No, we see history moves back and forward. It depends on the class struggle. It's not moving in a straight line at all. It's moving all over the place. It's a much more complex phenomena. And so the emergence of a mode of production is not as straightforward as the calculation of a simple equation or something like that. All right, so what were some of the main features? Number one, foreign domination. So you see that the British conquer South Asia, and they, of course, introduce into South Asia the mode of production on a vast scale that we call capitalism. First and foremost by introducing private property in lands with a permanent settlement act, beginning in 1793 and traveling all over South Asia, in Punjab, in Pakistan, in the 1860s, et cetera, et cetera. And that brings with it its own features, money taxes, the money economy, the indebtedness of the peasantry, the sale of land, a new judicial system to educate in these property cases and disputes, et cetera, et cetera. In the context of the Punjab, acts like the Land Elimination Act, where certain cars are not allowed to buy land, et cetera, et cetera. All sorts of other complexities and so on, so forth. And many different ways in which this transition is occurring in the Madras region and the Bombay presidency. It's occurring in one way. In Bengal, it's occurring in another way. In Punjab, after 1857, there's what's called the most of India, the aristocratic reaction. But in the Punjab, it's tempered, et cetera, et cetera. So there's all these complex things that are occurring, but nonetheless the transition is coming from the top down, is coming really from the colonial state. What does that imply? Well, two things, really. Number one, that capitalism really here is being planted on top of, literally on top of, another mode of production, which I use the classical Marxist term, the Asiatic mode of production. So we see the introduction of private property, the introduction of the commodity production, money taxes and the rest of it that come with that, although money taxes exist before as well. At the same time, we do not see the emergence of wage labor for a really, really, really long time. Even till today in agriculture, we see that wage labor is the exception rather than the rule. I'm talking about Pakistan. I don't know about India. We see that it's moving towards wage labor, but it's not wage labor yet. It's sharecropping and other forms of labor relations. And we still see the presence of, of course, the caste system, especially in Pakistan in rural areas. We see that very strongly. This person is from this Baradri, this family is from this Baradri, et cetera, et cetera. We cannot marry the two Baradris. You do this work, you do that kind of work. You live over there in those hamlets over there. And we live over here in these hamlets over here. All of that is present still. And yet you're dealing with private property land. You're dealing with commodity production. You're in cashcropping. You're selling in the market. So what is this system? How do we define it? How do we describe it? Well, two things I'd say on that. Number one is the idea that capitalism is developing in a distinct sphere. There's a feudal economy and a capitalist economy is unsustainable in this context. You can't say, OK, 50% of India's feudal relations are feudal and 40% are non-fuedal and 10% are this. You can't say that at all. Why? Because there's no capitalist sector as such that developing the whole of the economy is undergoing unmetamorphisms in the capitalist sector. So what does this all of this imply? Well, some people, some writers, Marxist writers, like Sameer Amin Agar and Bajki and others, have written that this should be categorized as a separate and distinct mode of production itself. Hence the term did the colonial mode of production. My take on that is, and the criticism of that from within the literature has been, well, if you call it a separate mode of production, then it must have a specific type of labor relation. And what is that? And they were unable to identify that. So in the 1980s and the late 1980s, it sort of went out of vogue because of that specific criticism. And I think that's correct. But I think there's something that they contributed to, Alvi and others, which is quite key, which is we may not accept this as a separate mode of production, but we can accept it as what I call a transitional form. In other words, that pre-capitalist modes of production can move from that mode of production to a capitalist mode of production through several different routes. Indeed, Lenin writes that there can be 1,000 different routes through which it can make that transition. So we can actually, in fact, talk about different types of transitions that occur. And Lenin talks about two types. He talks about the Republican path, or we can call it a path as well. He talks about the Republican path and the Junker's path. He says, and of course, Barrington Moore Jr. takes that up. He talks about how in Western Europe, specifically in France and in Britain and in the United States of America, capitalism takes roots at the bottom and then overthrows feudalism through a popular revolution. Whereas in most of continental Europe, Germany especially, when the revolutions occur and after 1789 when Napoleon starts to marches across Europe, these European states are forced to modernize their armies and to modernize their states. And in order to modernize their armies and states, they introduce new modes of production and new ways of production into their economies, hence bringing about a transition towards capitalism from the top down. And that, of course, Barrington Moore takes that further and says, the economies that made a top down transition were most susceptible to fascism than the economies that made a Republican transition. So we see already that this idea, this concept of a transitory form is available in the literature. At least in the context of classical Marxism, there is sort of this big division between these two parts. It's there in Lenin's famous book, Development of Capitalism in Russia. What I contribute in that regard is to suggest that there may be at least one big third alternative to these two, which shares certain features with these two but is also distinct from them. What are the features it shares? It shares certain features with the Junkers path in so far as it is a transition from above. It is a state bringing about a capitalist transition rather than capitalism coming from the villages and from the towns and from the grass roots up or something. That is common to the Junkers path. But what is uncommon with respect to the Junkers path is the fact that this is via a foreign conquest. This is a conquest that this is occurring. And that means there's built into that the siphoning of enormous surplus, a state which is driven, created, structured for the colonial elite, for the conquering colonial elite, et cetera, et cetera, with all its consequent issues and problems. So with that framework in mind, I then proceed in chapter three and chapter four to examine the very specific class structure of Pakistan looking statistically at the sort of looking at the government data about the presence of industrial workers versus the presence of agricultural proletariat, sharecroppers, peasant proprietors, landlords, rich peasants, et cetera, et cetera. All of that data is over here. I won't go through that because, well, it might be a bit boring, number one. And it's also quite detailed. But of course, I think maybe the data will be useful. There are many problems with that data as well. The biggest problem being that all of that data, most of that data is government data. And there are big problems with government data, which is big biases and poor data collecting techniques and the rest of it. But it is the only data at that scale which can be used. There's no other data which is available on that level. So one has to use that with whatever the limitations of that data are. Now the big thing that I discover in that data, which I want to share with you, is in fact the lack of development of wage labor, both in the cities as well as in the countryside. In Pakistan, again, I'm speaking very specifically about Pakistan in these chapters, that the industrial proletariat is really conspicuous by its absence. Pakistan's cities are really cities dominated by the petty bourgeois, dominated by small proprietors. And Pakistan's countryside is dominated by sharecroppers. And sharecropping here, again, is a bit of a misnomer in marketing, because it's not pure sharecropping either. It's mixed in with the caste system. So it's not capitalist sharecropping in the conventional sense that the term suggests. It's mixed in with the caste system. So what I am suggesting here is that those transitional forms continue to exist. And with respect to the petty bourgeois as well, I would suggest that this is the kind of petty bourgeois. There are different types of petty bourgeois. There is a petty bourgeois that is generated by capitalism itself, such as, let's say, middle ranking sort of outsourced capitalist enterprises. But there is a petty bourgeois, a middle strata, small proprietors, merchants, et cetera, that have existed even from the time of slave society. It's a different type of, it's a pre-capitalist petty bourgeois. So for example, when we talk about Rome, we see that there are many, there's a whole merchant class there. We talk about India, there's a whole merchant. It's a pre-capitalist. We talk about Arabia, there's a whole class of people which, Hazrat Mohammad, of course, sort of writes against and says, you know, they sort of take too much interest, et cetera, et cetera. So there is petty bourgeois, and there's petty bourgeois, what I'm trying to say. And there's petty bourgeois in which pre-capitalist modes of production can continue to exist and even thrive in small manufacturing. So for instance, if I can have a small manufacturing unit in which I set people of my biradri to work who are connected to me via biradri, I haven't sort of hired them off the market as such, like I would do with sort of traditional open market wage labor. They're connected to me by kinship, et cetera. They're working under me. I am both their employer. I have the putting out system with them. I may be giving them a place to stay. And I have a kinship association with them which ties them to me in ways in which you would not expect proletarians to be tied to their bosses. So finally, what does all of this imply? I think what all of this implies is something that I read, again in the mode of production debate with respect to India, that the continuing existence of things such as honor killings, which you were talking about, of cultural traditions such as, well, the whole caste system, as we see it, the oppression with respect to women and minorities, the culture that we may have with respect to working people, and just a general culture with respect to music, or theater, or art, or cinema, or film, or the whole politics, of course, how can one forget? The whole thing is still so informed by, driven by, attitudes, cultural norms that one would typically associate not with capitalism, but with systems that exist before capitalism, not because they have a degree of relative autonomy from the mode of production. It is not the case that these forms of this super structure of, to be blunt, this Asiatic super structure doesn't continue to exist merely because it has somehow become relatively autonomous from its economic base and is still existing, even though the economic base has become purely capitalist. But what I am arguing in fact, is that it is still rooted very much in the economic basis of our societies and derives its strength from there. And that's what we have missed out when we consider that this is merely a superstructural phenomenon. We have to fight it at the level of the super structure, but it's not merely a superstructural phenomenon. It is very much part of the political economy of Pakistan and India even today. And by understanding that, understanding that what we see in the super structure is emerging from the political economy and the class structure of our societies, we can then begin to, as Marxists and as revolutionaries, begin to address it and begin to sort of revolutionize it through a strategy that attacks or that transforms it both at the superstructural level as well as at the level of its political economy. Understands it for that and is therefore able to address it in that, through that understanding. For the transformation of society, one requires an understanding that deals with these phenomena, both at the superstructural level as well as at the level of political economy. I believe that if we understand that the superstructural phenomena is rooted in the economic basis, then we can address it as such from both sides. We can understand it as such from both sides. We can address it at the level of the economy. We can address it at the level of the super structure. We can address it at the level of the super structure by understanding how it has emerged from the economy and so on. And for the construction of a socialist society, which is what I stand for and we all stand for, I hope that this understanding can be of use to all of us.


And we move on, 33 people have been arrested under a criminal investigation into a very accident of Gabon last week that claimed 24 lives. That's according to rescue coordinators. Rescue teams have been looking for another 13 lists said as missing after a small passenger boat. The rest of the miracle sank off the capital Liberville on March 9 with 161 on board. Those detained included officials at the Ministry of Transport, the merchant marine and the vessels owner, Royal Coast Marine according to public prosecutor, Andrew Patrick Ropponant. Many survivors said they received negligible help or guidance from the crew. Some spent hours at sea clinging onto inflatable rafts before they were rescued by a fault tiller of motorized canals and a supply barge for the oil industry.


Next question is from Jassian G. What are some muscle building tips for teenagers? Oh boy, when it comes to muscle building, the best advice I can give to a teenager, and this of course is with appropriate form and technique, the best advice I could give you is just focus on getting stronger at the big five lifts, at your squat, your deadlift, your overhead press, your bench press, and your row. Just get strong at those lifts and that alone will build more muscle on your body than any other training style or methodology or technique that I could possibly think of. There's a lot of things running through my head right now as far as the things that go back and tell my teenage self. One of them would be the over application of intensity. As a young teenage boy, full of testosterone, lots of energy, motivated to change my body, I went thinking that, okay, the more I do, the more results I'm gonna get. And for a kid that was really active, I played sports and in addition to that, I was training six, seven days a week. It's extremely difficult to feed the body enough calories and nutrients to even let the body recover and repair and grow like you need it to. So that was like the first mistake. And what goes hand in hand with that is the second thing I would tell myself, which is track. Today, we have these tools that didn't exist when I was a kid. When I was a kid, it was calorieking.com book was caloriekingbookbefore.com. I remember those. Yeah, the calorie king book. And then it was just a notepad and paper and I would write out and then figure out where I was. And then I'd have to guesstimate, based off of whatever I was reading, whatever book I was reading at the time of, oh, based off my age and how much I was moving, I'm probably burning this much, which God, I can't imagine how inaccurate that was today. We have tools today that are like 90% accurate to what you're burning on a regular basis. So that information was huge. And I didn't get that into my 20s. And then when I got into my 20s, body bug came out.  But when you think about I was 20-something years old, playing sports, personal training, eight hours a day, it's pretty typical for a kid. If you're 25, young man training eight clients a day. And you already have a fast battalion. Yeah, and I mean, so the amount of food I needed to eat to make my body grow, I wasn't missing, it wasn't the gym. I didn't need to hit more weights to grow. It was, I needed to either one, move less so my body wasn't burning as much or significantly increase my calories. So I would definitely go back and tell myself that. And then the third big like, game changer or paradigm shattering moment for me as a trainer was learning that how important the big lifts were. I was your typical teenage boy who, if I did legs, it was leg press and leg extensions. Bench press, sure I did bench press every once in a while like barbell stuff, but I always loved to do hammer strength and cables. I loved every time I went to a gym, all the new machines. And I really neglected the big five. I'd go back and if I could go back and do it over again, I would tell teenage me, I'd say, listen, all I want you to do are those five movements for the next five years. That's it, you don't have to do anything else. Just those five movements, get great at it. Well, that was my entire answer, so thanks. Yeah, no, seriously though, keep it simple. That would have been my best advice to myself because you're drawn towards a lot of the flashy stuff, especially when you're younger. You see, especially me being in like the athletic realm, you always try to again emulate what your favorite athlete is doing and whatever workout they're promoting in their magazine, you know, very similar with bodybuilding. I'm sure, you know, same type of a thing where you're gonna look and idolize these behemoths. But for me, it would really have been to just stay there, stay in the big five, really master the technique. This isn't about overloading the technique, this is really gradually progressing your way up after you've really ironed out and sharpened that technique to the point where you're a master of them. Cause that's what you're gonna carry on for the rest of your life. That's the foundation, that's the basis of what you build off of. And it builds the most muscle. I mean, from the, for me, between sophomore and junior year of high school, that's when I started to focus on those. There was a group of power lifters, older guys, that gave me great advice and they were big, strong dudes. So of course I listened to them and they literally said, get really good at squats, get really good at dead lifts, get good at bench, overhead press and barbell row, practice them often, so like three days a week. Don't go to failure, that's what they told me. Have perfect form and just get strong and then feed yourself. And from in between those two years, sophomore to junior year, I gained over 15 pounds of muscle. Literally grew out of my pants. I remember I had to buy new clothes and it was like the most growth I'd ever seen in my entire life and it was 100% because of that.