Welcome to the
"Liberty Insider."
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This is the program
bringing you discussion,
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news, views, and updates
on religious liberty events
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around the world and of
course in the United States
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where we are based.
My name Lincoln Stead,
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editor of Liberty Magazine,
and my guest of the program is
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Scott Christiansen, author
of a very provocative book.
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Now, before I start you
off-- it doesn't take much
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for an author to
talk about his book.
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That's true.
Before I starts you off,
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I need to tell
you and the viewers
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that years and years
ago when I was in Australia
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and working on a division
paper that came out weekly,
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we used to get a lot of
letters from the constituency.
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And for-- I'd say
three-four months,
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no, maybe even as much long as
a year, we had people writing in
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and letters
built on other letters,
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all debating whether
or not we should move
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out of this city
into the country.
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Ellen White
writing to early Adventists
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recommended that has
become to the end of times.
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The collapse of
systems, which you wrote about,
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that we should perhaps be
thinking about retiring from
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the city environment
to homes in the country
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where the most self-sufficient
and beyond the troubles.
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What do you think
about that? Oh, well---
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Hypothetically. Well,
not, not, not hypothetically.
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I pointed this in the book.
I think, with all due respect,
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I think you self-pedaled
a bit. Because she said,
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we should begin to remove
ourselves from the cities,
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And this is over
100 years ago. Right.
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And we should begin to
leave the cities. And you know,
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The interesting thing
is-- I'll interrupt to you.
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Yeah, The reason
I'm self-pedaling it
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and I talk about these
often as I travel around
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and after the meetings. I
have a radical view on this.
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I think it's almost too
late for the average person.
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Well, we're the average person,
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if you talk about
getting up and leaving,
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which means
upsetting economically,
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upsetting the economic basis,
trying to reestablish oneself,
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trying to live a simpler
life, trying to, you know,
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can you do that, maybe you
can do it if you're debt free,
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which is one more
reason we've been counseled
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to be debt free. Absolutely.
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It gets more and
more difficult everyday.
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But here is the thing.
We've been talking about
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the collapse, the declining
collapse of global system.
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This is what your books about.
This is what the books about,
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"Planet in Distress."
It's what the book is about.
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And we've been
talking about how the systems
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that God created that really
keep the planet operating.
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The oceanic system,
the atmospheric system,
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the fresh water system,
our food production system,
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how all of these
to the effects of sin-
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And there all interconnected.
Interconnected and becoming--
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It was like
Disney on the Lion King,
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the web of life or
whatever, God did that.
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And it's a one thing,
nothing exits to itself,
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every system it relates.
And if one is attracted from it,
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it pulls another
down, doesn't it?
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And as they,
and what we see then
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is an exhilarating
decline in all of these systems.
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You know, we've lived
upto this point in an era
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of increasing goods,
increasing abundance.
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Since World War
II. Since World War II.
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Well, when I say,
you know, in our time
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I'm talking about
my lifetime. Yeah.
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And maybe my father's
lifetime but you know,
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we've reached the
peak in a going over and--
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and this as tremendous
implications. And one of the--
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to speak to what
you were just saying,
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one of the
implications is, if the people
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who live in cities, in an
era of declining resources,
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what you get is
people who cannot create
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any of their resources.
They can't grow their own food.
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They can't
create their own energy.
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They can't chop a tree down.
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And the trouble
has been greatly about
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the United States, to be honest,
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and this is
where I'm living now,
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even though I'm
originally from Australia.
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The climate is
severe in places like Maine.
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In Maine? From
where I hailed from.
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That was a
lifeline. Well, you know,
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when I left to come to this
program, it was four degrees.
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So...yes, it's a
severe climate. But, you know
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there is fairly severe
so assured of growing season
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as well as, you
know, the firewood season.
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But what-- I thought what
will happen and you don't even
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have to think of the end
of time to be in this monsoon.
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What would happen
in a huge dislocation,
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if there was another World
War? The international trade
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would suffer and the things
like computers and that might
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not be so reliable and
you'd be on your own resources.
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Well, you look at power grid
to get down. How do you survive?
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I don't think we'll
set up to that but it's
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the salutary listed to
be, when I traveled to Europe,
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I can remember in
German cities, in Geneva,
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going to an area like a
city park where they divided
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the area up into the little
plots about 40x40 and anyone
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that owned the
home, had to access
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to that little plot.
They can grow the gardens.
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And I've read a
lot about World War II.
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Many people
survived World War II
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in those cities in Germany
and England for that matter,
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because they were able to grow
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their own
little personal garden.
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And in the U.S, there
were Victory Gardens so called.
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Yes. But I think we've
passed that level in the U.S
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that's not set up
for it. But, you know,
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it's easy to get from where
we're now, from our discussion
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with the point of our
discussion now to fanaticism.
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And it's easy to
loose the focus and say,
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my primary goal is
to survive. Absolutely.
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I'm glad you
brought that thing because
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I was gonna hit that
next. Well, you know,
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We-- it's we've been given
advice for more than 100 years
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to leave the cities
but we need to focus on
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the fact that the
reason we were given
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that advice was so that we could
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be continue to be
an effective witness
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and not get caught up
in the chaos. A city -
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And now we can create our own
chaos by living precipitously.
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Don't you believe
that? Well, not so much that.
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It could be a personal
disaster. It must be prayerful.
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I mean, we should all be let
of God in everything that we do.
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And we should absolutely
take this up in prayer.
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Any big move should not be
made on what appears to be.
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You know, my great
grandmother was convinced
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Christ was
coming in her lifetime.
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My grandmother the same.
They're both dead and buried.
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I believe Christis coming
in my lifetime on the basis of
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different evidence.
The evidence we see now.
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Yeah, I agree. But time
may go on and I could be wrong.
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The moves that we make,
should be made prayerfully.
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We should be led
by God. Absolutely.
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And...now I do tell people
that I think it's too late,
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not too late in very
case, but I think too late
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for general encouragement
because that could be
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socially disruptive in
this case for people to
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people to following
that biblical advice. Right.
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I was impressed some
years ago, before 9/11,
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in the United States
whereas there was a law
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that if you sold your house
you had to buy one of equal
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or greater value or else
you be taxed on the difference
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and only when you
retire do you get one time,
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I think it was 125,000
dollar tax-free profit.
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So it was very difficult
until the time of retirement
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to sort of
uptakes and take your list
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and dig and to use part of it
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to buy that home and
to live in the country.
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But then in one fell
sweep the law was changed.
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It said you could
turn your house into money.
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House was selling
at a historic level.
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The prices were
higher than ever.
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The sale of building was
there, The economy was good.
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I don't believe in, no
matter how long time goes on,
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in our lifetime it will
never be like that again.
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That was the
little golden moment.
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And I likened that
privately to sort of,
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The armies pulling
back from Jerusalem.
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That little golden
moment for those that were in
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the besiege city to get out
before the Rome was destroyed.
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Right. But that doesn't
mean that you're personally
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Or spiritually lost, It just
means life gets a little harder
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than it might have
been if you hadn't acted on
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before warning. You
know, in my book, I spent time.
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first part of the book
is looking at the science
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of the collapse of these systems
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and looking then
at the social impacts.
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What's coming and how
it alliance with prophecy.
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And towards the end of the book,
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I say, well
here's what we can do?
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Well, the very first
thing that I list that we can do
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is to get know Jesus
Christ as a friend. Absolutely
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You know, Lee Venden
says, it's not what you know
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it's who you know,
that gets you into heaven.
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And I list a number of
things that we should be doing.
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And almost aside
from planting a garden
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and getting out of the cities,
none of it has to do with
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self preservation
because that's not the point.
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I glad you bring that because
Ellen White also writing to
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Adventists pointed out
that at the very end of time,
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she must've been reading
a history if not listening
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to the angels that she said,
people come and take your God.
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They do. Yeah. And
that's gonna be case,
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When it's every man for
himself without the protection
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of angels, you pretty
much at the mercy of whatever
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marauding neighbor or faction
might come through you area.
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So these are just--the advice
I think to move to the country
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These are just sort of logical
steps to remove yourself from
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the immediate trauma
But for absolute protection,
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it has to be a
divine origin and even then,
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what's this all about?
we're turning this into more
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of a theological
discussion. We are. But really,
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it's not about whether you
or I are safe from trouble,
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whether we're able to
live comfortably verses
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under some distress.
The whole point of what
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we called to do by God
is to witness to his name,
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talk about, and now
we are back to your book.
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Seventh Adventists says,
the three angel's message
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is on the first one,
concerns proclamation
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of the creator, God.
We had to represent God
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correctly here to
facilitate His coming kingdom.
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But it is not
about us, it's about God.
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You know, if our
expectation of God
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is that he will give
us a comfortable life.
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He never promised
that. He never promised that.
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And if that's our expectation
then as times become more
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difficult and they already
are certainly in my lifetime,
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then we will fall
way from God. Now God,
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how dare you give me
inconvenience in my life?
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And so being
forewarned is being forearmed.
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In this case, it's the matter
of withdrawing from the world.
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When you take a look at the
collapse of the global systems
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and how we are having
much less food production
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or will have much less
food production and all of these
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other converging problems,
which we may wanna talk about
00:10:45.79\00:10:48.36
some more but when you take
a look at all of those things,
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the point then is to withdraw
from the world and withdraw
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spiritually and certainly
from the world but to the extent
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you can't withdraw from
being relied on the world.
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Who would want
to strap themselves
00:11:01.69\00:11:03.14
to the railing of
the Titanic? Absolutely.
00:11:03.15\00:11:05.99
Get away. Absolutely. Get away.
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And even talking
about food production.
00:11:07.57\00:11:09.28
You and I and others
Seventh Adventists particularly
00:11:09.29\00:11:14.24
being blessed by some advised
given hundred plus years ago
00:11:14.25\00:11:18.58
on health reform and natural
foods and the Bible-based diet
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But when I look up what's
happening especially in the U.S
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But the West
exemplifies it generally.
00:11:27.87\00:11:29.87
The food on the shelves
is sort of artificial food.
00:11:29.88\00:11:33.59
Yeah. And I believe
that's covered in some ways
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for a shortage of real
food. Yeah. I mean things are
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with fillers and
emulsifier Every, all of them.
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Who knows what's in
there? you know the ingredients.
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I remember being stattled
once when I was living back
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In Australia a few decades
ago to read in the news that
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The Peter's ice-cream, which
was the largest ice-cream maker
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of that time in Australia,
had struck at deal with
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the abattoirs or
the slaughterhouses
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to buy all their
blood. The way of the--
00:12:00.12\00:12:05.95
sorry the serum, the
white part of the blood
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and they were using that
to thicken the ice-cream.
00:12:10.50\00:12:12.79
Oh! Who knows what's
in it. And my wife did-
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You just put me off
ice-cream, by the way.
00:12:17.71\00:12:19.45
My wife did marketing studies
and they had a food expert
00:12:19.46\00:12:22.02
come and lectured them
once and he pointed out
00:12:22.03\00:12:24.58
that the hotdogs in
the U.S, have a certain
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percentage of earthworms.
It's another name for it,
00:12:26.61\00:12:29.04
but not just that
they happened to be there.
00:12:29.05\00:12:31.01
They put them in there to
raise the protein content.
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So who knows what
we're eating? Who knows?
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And I think some of it is not
just to make money. It's to--
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it's to make up the short
fall from the existence of real,
00:12:39.97\00:12:43.76
Nutritious, old-fashioned
food You know, you could laugh,
00:12:43.77\00:12:48.59
I hope we laugh about it
but at base this is sign of
00:12:48.60\00:12:51.71
a system collapse
of food production.
00:12:51.72\00:12:54.02
We'll be back after this break
to discuss further with aurthor
00:12:54.03\00:12:56.79
Scott Christensen, his
book on global system collapse,
00:12:56.80\00:13:01.11
"Planet in Distress," is
it's title. Stay with us.
00:13:01.12\00:13:04.59