Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break
with guest, Charles Mills,
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again we were
uphill and down there,
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but all to bring
out how can we involve
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young people in
religious liberty?
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I think it's the burning need
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certainly in
everything that I do
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for the
Seventh-day Adventist church,
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but bit large in the world.
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We need to get this
army of young people
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that are involved
with many, many things
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even political movements
like Occupy Wall Street in that,
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yes, there were a lot
of young people there,
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but lets get them speaking
up from moral principles,
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for defending
the right of anybody
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to believe anything they want.
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Now I'm gonna play
the devil advocate here.
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That's a sort of
liberalism that our world
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really has
trouble with nowadays.
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I'm gonna give you
a huge dose of reality
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and you already know this,
so I'm giving it you anyway.
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We want to teach
young people good morals
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as their parents
marriage falls apart,
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as there are affairs
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and as there is
pornography in the house,
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and its incredible
amount in our Christian world.
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We want to teach
young people to be honest
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as they watch their dad or
mom cheat on their income tax
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or go faster
than the speed limit.
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We wanted to teach young people,
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how if you
treat the opposite sex
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kindly as we watch
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what is so seen
in advertisements,
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what is seen in everything
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they look at on their
iPods or pads or on television
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which does not treat
the sexes equally at all
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which is demeaning.
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We want to make sure
that these young people
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come out of that
completely prepared
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to accept what you're saying.
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So where does it begin?
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Does it begin
with the young person?
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Does it begin with the parents?
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Where is it begin? I
probably better give up.
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Don't give up,
you can't give up.
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Where is it begin?
No, but you're right its--
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there is-- morality
is an old fashion word,
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moral declension on
every front end society
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and yes it's a toll ordered
to create a new generation
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that is broken
from the sins of--
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Is it DNA?
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Is it in your
genes that makes sure
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you're gonna be a nice person.
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Can you really be taught,
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can a bad person be really
taught and who teaches them?
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What I do think what we need
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and I spoke about
it before the break,
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we need renewal
in individual lives.
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You know the-- again
back to you as history,
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there's different ways to
explain US history on the--
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Interesting way putting it, yes.
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Well, the war of independence
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which I riffed on about earlier,
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probably made some enemies
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can be described different ways.
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You can commit it
from Paul Revere and so on.
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But you can also explain it
societally by recognize them
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that about 25 years
before that revolution,
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they'd been a massive religious
revival in the United States,
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the first grade awakening.
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Then in the mid 1800's
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there was the
second grade awakening.
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Those two
spiritual phenomena I think,
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explain an awful lot of what
happened in the United States.
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It doesn't explain well the war,
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but when a war began,
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why so many
Americans had high moral ideas,
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sawed as a moral absolute,
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why they selflessly
gave themselves to it,
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why in the mid 1800's
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so many
religious groups not only,
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so many
religious groups came about
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but things that came from that
like the temperance movement,
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like the health reform movements
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that led to a
better quality of life.
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They were many "social things"
that spring from the revival
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and I believe the United States
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is to use an
overarching description
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that was becoming
spiritually deselect,
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and yes it does
need to be healed
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but the way to heal
it is for individuals
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to recommit themselves
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in a life changing
way to a spiritual idea.
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And when that happens yes,
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even the
predictions of doom and gloom
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and to our own
church Ellen White,
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said I don't
know if you remember
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she says that this
country will at some point
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turn its back on every
principle of the constitution.
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We are halfway there already.
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But it doesn't
have to happen now,
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and it can be--
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that evil day can be
turn back with this process
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which would by definition
begin with the new generation.
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You know, I grew up in a
Seventh-day Adventist home,
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very Christian, very godly dad.
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My dad was the treasurer
of the Middle East division
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and he accused New York
at the different missions
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and conferences and unions
and this was the man of honor.
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I saw examples of what
we should be in his life.
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I remember at the camp meetings
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and he accused New York
at the Union Springs Academy
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and every Sabbath they
would take up the offering
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and my dad's cabin would
be piled high with money.
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The one side over there
were raided all of the business
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on the business
side of the cabin.
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There were dollar
bills stacked up there,
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stacked up
there, stacked up there
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and I knew beyond a doubt
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that every penny of that money
is gonna end up in the bank
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Monday morning
down the Union Springs
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because my dad was in charge.
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I never saw my
dad leer at any women.
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If something
came on the television
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that he didn't agree
with he turned it off.
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I got up walk crossed
room and turned it off.
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He wanted to make sure
that he was modeling for me
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what I needed to be
and I think that helped me
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understand what you're
saying about religious liberty
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and how Christ is
supposed to be our model.
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I have no problem with that.
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So probably I'm gonna
make some enemies here,
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but I'm gonna have to
say that a lot of the problem
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is that we are facing
not only in this country
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but also in our church, I
lay at the feet of parents.
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I'm sorry but I
have to say this.
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Teachers as
well, pastors as well,
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we need to be
models and that's hard work
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that's not easy to do.
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That is something we need
to dedicate ourselves to doing
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and the way we do that
is we look to our model
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and that model is Jesus Christ.
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There's been a disconnect here.
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Yeah, and it's
not just the suddenly
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this generation
of parents lit down--
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No, it's been slipping,
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it's been
slipping more and more.
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It's been slipping but its--
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many of the reasons
beyond the families control
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but once they
recognize they can be reversed.
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There's no question,
well, there is no question
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but I'll go back
a little further.
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When you and I were growing up
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was under the
cloud of the threat
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from the Soviet
Union and global communist.
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Literal possible cloud, yes.
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Yes, the mushroom
cloud has come to at least--
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Oh, yes. Recent thing.
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But part of what we were told
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and it was true was that
it was an existential threat
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to western civilization
and all that we knew
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because they were,
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they were taking the children
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from the parents
and training them
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and secular
ways and all of that.
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And you know
that sound terrific.
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We saw that, that
was the end of the values
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that we held but in
reality, modernization,
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capitalism and the
social developments
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in the west have
done the same thing.
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There's day care, there's--
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you mentioned the television
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and the mainlining
of every abomination,
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murder and you know, the
studies of how many times
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in an hour a child sees
someone killed on television.
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So they could do on
how many times a minute?
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When murder becomes normal,
why not turn that thing off?
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I switch it, I switch
it, yes, I switch it on,
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when I given to the motel rooms
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and most channels have
got someone being killed.
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Oh, awful, awful.
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But the economic
structures since World War II,
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which is largely
required that women work
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has left the children at home,
has broken down the families.
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So there's many huge
stresses of modern life
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that have been
attacking the family
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and its ability to
inculcate these values
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that we are talking about.
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And some how we need to come--
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what I'm trying to do is
explain it in a real world
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but it doesn't just look like
an indictment on these people.
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You know, you let your
kids down and shame on you.
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Yes, they did but it
wasn't out of the blue,
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there's been something that
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I believe that devils behind it.
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I believe it's an
evil pulse in society
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to destroy all of
the good structures
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and do expose now
the new generation
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to selfishness, to
violence and to an activism
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with anything
but God's principles.
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And of course, I'm totally aware
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that very good kid is gonna come
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from a very bad
parents and vice-a-versa.
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You can have model
parents who live godly lives
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and their
children just go crazy,
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but it's the amount,
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it's the ratio I'm
talking about here.
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Absolutely, but, you know,
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there are something we're doing
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in religious liberty
to involve young people
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and the time is running out,
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but, you know, we have
the freedom class room program
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out of California where
young people in high school
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are taken under the wing
of religious liberty leaders
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or sent around to
all of the high spots
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in Washington and else where
brought to conferences trained
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and prepared like the
schools of the prophets
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if you like to be religious
liberty leaders of tomorrow.
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There are some good things,
its not like all hopeless
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but in the aggregate I think
we are in a difficult situation
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and we need to work methodically
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to involving and
educating and impairing
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and perhaps let
the Lord regenerate
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and create reborn young people.
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That's just an
old Nicodemus can say
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that a young person
can be born again too.
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I like that, that
is the message of hope
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for every one of us, we
need to take that to heart.
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We can affect what's
happening in the world.
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Just like an another
program we talked about,
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we can bring God
back to this world,
00:10:07.62\00:10:10.79
we can bring God and
His love back into society,
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we can also bring
that understanding
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of what love is
and tolerance is,
00:10:16.29\00:10:18.54
and what acceptance is
in religious liberty issues
00:10:18.57\00:10:21.97
when it comes to
our young people.
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But it against
with each one of us,
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each one of us has
responsibility to do that,
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and we begin by
finding a model for ourselves
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and of course that would
be a life of Jesus Christ.
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There's no question as we
read the story of Jesus calling
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is immediate
followers His disciples
00:10:40.18\00:10:43.97
that He tended
to choose young men.
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Peter perhaps accepted
but young men had the energy
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and the vision developed in
and then the Jesus intended,
00:10:50.84\00:10:54.73
but in some ways He was backing
the tendency of the times
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because for
millennia, thousands of years
00:10:58.62\00:11:02.12
it was the experience
of age that was respected.
00:11:02.15\00:11:05.70
The elders sitting at the gate
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could direct the
community in what to do,
00:11:07.61\00:11:09.91
they knew by experience
but we were in a model today
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and young people know how
to work the computer gizmos
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that the all
people are scared of.
00:11:18.04\00:11:19.89
Young people are
more connected socially
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to what's happen
through Twitter and so on.
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Young people have the
energies they always have,
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and I think it's imperative
00:11:28.99\00:11:30.66
that when we talk
about religious liberty
00:11:30.69\00:11:33.01
we include young people
and educate young people.
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How we do that
is beyond the scope
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of our half hour discussion,
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but I think as you
the listener who heard us
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you'd agree with us somehow,
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someway in the very near future
young people must be given,
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must catch and must
communicate the vision
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and the enthusiasm
for the religious liberty
00:11:55.62\00:11:58.06
for these times not an
old view but a new view.
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For Liberty Insider
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:12:03.38\00:12:06.76