Welcome to The Liberty Insider.
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This is the program
that brings you news, views,
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discussion, view point
and information on Religious
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Liberty in the United
States and around the world.
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My name, Lincoln Steed,
editor of "Liberty Magazine"
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and my guest on the
program is Kim Peckham,
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among author, raconteur and-
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I like that title.
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I haven't heard that one before.
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And Public
Relations Projectionist
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for The Review and Herald
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which probably could
have used a little PR.
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No, I'm indulging
myself a bit but the connection
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I should give to our viewers
is this until this last issued,
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The Review
Herald was the printer
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for Liberty Magazine
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so we've had a
close relationship
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and then I've
worked at the Review
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on two occasions and I
had great respect for the,
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this institution which
was the founding institution
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of the Seventh
Day Adventist Church.
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Yeah, even before
there was the name,
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Seventh Day Adventist.
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Absolutely and the church's
structure was formed around it.
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But enough of
that, let's talk about
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the Religious Liberty generally.
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But I'd like to
start Religious Liberty
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as I said in the introduction
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in the United
States and around the world
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but let's go around the
world and across the Atlantic.
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All right.
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As I've been a few times
and I know you were there
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very recently,
more recently than me.
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It was just a few
months ago or weeks ago now,
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you and your family did a
massive tour through Europe.
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Yeah, we went through
a few parts of Europe.
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Where did you go? Which
countries did you go to?
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We stopped in England
and in France, just in Paris
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for a short time
and then on to Italy,
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Northern Italy for a while
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and that was one of
the more interesting
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spots there in Northern Italy.
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They are by the border
of France and the Piedmont.
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My wife remembered going
there earlier to see the,
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where the Waldensians were,
the early Protestants there.
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And I said, well that doesn't
sound terrible interesting
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to me but turned
out to be a highlight.
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It's a beautiful spot there.
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Beautiful,
especially in the Torre Pellice.
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Yes, Torre Pellice
which happens to be the name
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of the Italian
guy on the MythBusters
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by the way so that
can help you remember.
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A tattoo guy.
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Yeah, his name is
Torre Pellice Tutus.
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And I watched the
MythBusters on occasions.
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The tower, which Torre
Pellice team mean literally?
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Excuse me, so had no--
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an Italian to
be on this program?
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Yes, you should
read the form you signed.
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I should.
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Anyhow, yeah, it
wasn't that long ago,
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I was there and I
was bowled over too.
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It was a beautiful atmospheric
location up in the hills,
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'cause I remember
it was up from Torrent.
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Isn't Torrent.
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Yeah, about an
hour, west of Torrent.
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And you can see the
mountains from Torrens there
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on the horizon, as
you come closer and closer
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and they just
start to envelope you.
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Yeah, very sharp
rugged rock, rocky peaks.
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And I'm sure you
went into the caves
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there where they
have the church services.
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The caves they
kind of represents
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where they escaped to have
an unnoticed church service
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and we went there with our son
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who just loved crawling
around in the mud and said,
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"Hey, there's a
cavern over here."
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He found a few extras for you.
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So I think kids would
love cave church services.
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I don't think adults so much.
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We were mostly like, when can
we get out of here and go home
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to lunch which is pretty much
how we do in regular church so.
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Yeah, that's another story.
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We need to have a
program on that some time.
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But yeah, it was good to
walk there in the foot steps
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of these early
Protestants and get a picture
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for how different they were.
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I mean, of course
just a little later
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we were in Milan
and we were there
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in the fabulous
marble Cathedral you know,
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going up to the sky
where there's with its white
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faA ade and while we
were there in the mountains,
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we were able to
just walk into their
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thier small
Waldensian churches there.
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Well, they have
their, it's actually their,
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not their head
quarters church for the Waldens,
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World Waldensian
Fellowship down in the city.
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Yeah, that's right.
Their college there-
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No, I don't think
you could fit more than
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two, three hundred
people in that church.
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A little different
than the Cathedrals.
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We also went up to like
the smaller towns, upper,
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up towards the mountains
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and they had
small, smaller churches.
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There was a
little smaller churches,
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there was a chapel that they
might have 50 people are really.
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Is that the one with the
white washed walls, interior,
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Yes, very clean, wooden benches,
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the Ten Commandments
up there on the wall
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and it made such a
contrast is you could see
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that they were
kind of probably trying
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to make a point
there that it's not about
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the ostentation in
the wealth and all that.
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It's just a simple worship,
worshiping of God there.
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Well, I always get troubled
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at different parts in the world,
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particularly Italy but you
can see plenty of big church
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edifices around the world
and in Europe, particularly.
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And it always troubles me
to go into these huge monuments
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of human attainment of statuary
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and flying buttresses
and all that sort of stuff
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and I don't find God there.
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It actually I find it
offensive to create something
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that Jesus said, "No
where to lay His head."
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What would you think of
such places erected for faith,
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they're not
really emulating Christ?
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And yet, you know, there's
another way to look at it.
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Just to kind of take
the other point of view is-
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Of course, we need
the other point of view.
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It is your line.
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Not to stir but I can
understand why people would
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say we were here to do our best.
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It's a human tendency.
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To do our best for God,
why am I living in a house
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that is more ostentatious
than the Lord's house
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where I'm worshipping at?
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So it makes sense to put all
this wealth and all this effort
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and all this talent into
the place you make for the Lord.
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But I think probably
some times it gets tied up
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in personal
pride and civic pride.
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Not to mention that many of
those countries at that time
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when they were built,
you know, the peasants
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and others were living around
and pretty substandard housing
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and they were being
dried to built that.
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Well, no, there's a whole-
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Not to mention, since
we're talking about religion
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and Religious Liberty,
you know, Martin Luther,
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his great objection,
95 points he came up with
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and I'm not sure
or any of us know
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all of those points but
they were pretty important,
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that it was
precipitated by Monk Tetzel,
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remember, doing the
rounds throughout Europe,
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raising money and people
forget really what was going on.
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It was over indulgences.
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He was selling what the church
at the time felt that it had
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the right to grant you
spiritual dispensation,
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in this case a little
less time in purgatory
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on your way to heaven for money.
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Some people remember
that. For building program if--
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That's where I'm
really gonna get.
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It was all the
buildings at St. Peters.
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Yes, talk about a,
you know, a real premium
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for your donations is
to get into heaven free.
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Although I've been in the
few churches where the building
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program was about as extortive.
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In fact for the point of
view of Liberty Magazine,
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I, you know, once a year,
for the first quarter at least
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I do the rounds of a lot
of mostly Adventist churches
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trying to pump up interest
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and get
sponsorship for the magazine
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and what we're
doing and we're always
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at counterpoints with
the local building program
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and their
aspirations for building
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and supporting their structure.
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Yeah, so we can be
sort of sympathetic
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with their needs-
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Sympathetic but
all, wealth, thank you,
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for giving me
the benefit of doubt.
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It doesn't give me
sympathy because I, you know,
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these are the greater things
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that Jesus
says, you've done this
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but you've neglected
the real important things.
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It's projecting the values
and the character of Jesus
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that we should be about,
right? Not building a wall.
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Yes, absolutely, but
and it's so interesting
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that how the Waldensians
as they got into the Bible
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and that it all began there
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with Peter Waldo
studying the Bible
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that they went in
such a different path
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and I imagine some
of it was a reaction
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to the excesses of
the established church
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but they really went
into a different path
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and then ofcourse
it's so impressive,
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their dedication to that
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in the face of like
serious persecution,
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they've been
thrown out of their homes,
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somebody losing their property,
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been thrown out often into
dead of winter which is worst.
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But they weren't just,
even though they ended being--
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it into those
caves and smoked out,
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or not smoked out,
smoked to death on an occasion.
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But really their
approach was to branch out
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and go places
they were going out.
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They were, we have a
term in the Adventist church
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for our literature ministry
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which The Review
was closely tied to,
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Culp Ordering.
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I don't know really where that
word came from to be honest.
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Sounds freakish to me. It
does sound a little freakish.
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But, you know, these have been
or Culp Orders have been Bible
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and religious literature
sales people that could go out
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door to door and in
selling these materials,
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have a chance to witness
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to their faith to
those individuals.
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It's a great dynamic.
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That's what the
Waldensians did wasn't it?
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That's right.
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Every Culp Order looks
back to the Waldensians
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as sort of their modal
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and well, the
Waldensians didn't do it
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for money, of
course or to raise money
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but to just share the scriptures
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which it's just hard
to imagine at time when-
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Just that would be illegal.
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It would be illegal for
you to actually have a copy
00:10:01.10\00:10:03.90
of this scripture
in your own language.
00:10:03.93\00:10:06.03
Because you are too dumb
to understand it, you know,
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which might be
true for I don't know
00:10:08.94\00:10:10.97
who but that was the idea
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that you people
couldn't understand this
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so it is
actually against the law
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for you to read the scriptures.
00:10:17.75\00:10:19.58
And I mean, I'm just
I'm trying to imagine
00:10:19.61\00:10:21.45
the courage that would
take to take illegal documents
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and go to
strangers and try to see
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if they would be open to this.
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It's not a direct comparison
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but the risk is sort
of roughly equivalent to,
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now I'm forgetting
the guy's, Snowden.
00:10:35.13\00:10:37.37
Well, yeah.
00:10:37.40\00:10:38.87
Really, the
social disapprobation
00:10:38.90\00:10:42.87
would be the same.
00:10:42.90\00:10:44.24
Everyone's hand
would be against them
00:10:44.27\00:10:45.61
because they'll
threat, what it was though was
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they were
threatening the social order.
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The control of the church
through the state depended
00:10:49.28\00:10:53.05
on their dictates being followed
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rather than any freelance ideas
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that might come
from the holy words
00:10:59.39\00:11:01.22
that they were representing.
00:11:01.26\00:11:03.12
They threatened their power.
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It's an awkward position
for the church to be in.
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It kind of reminds you of
the back in the time of Jesus
00:11:06.96\00:11:09.66
that like if they know
too much about the Bible,
00:11:09.70\00:11:12.13
it's going to be
a problem for us.
00:11:12.17\00:11:14.27
So we gotta keep
that under control.
00:11:14.30\00:11:16.47
And then in
defense of the prolets
00:11:16.50\00:11:20.04
and the princes that
they're biding back then,
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there an--of truth in their fear
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like a lot of other editors
I get letters from people
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who have been
reading from people perhaps
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not well educated,
doesn't always follow
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but some of them
clearly not well educated
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nor
knowledgeable about how to read
00:11:41.46\00:11:46.10
a piece of literature
and get the sense out of it.
00:11:46.13\00:11:48.50
They read the
Bible and over and over
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fixate on certain things
00:11:50.97\00:11:52.31
and I get these letters
that they're sort of evidence
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of a disordered mind,
you know, the text bubble art
00:11:56.64\00:12:00.22
and the logic, you
know, just swirls around this
00:12:00.25\00:12:03.45
and they'd literally
00:12:03.49\00:12:06.05
what Agrippa I
think said to Paul
00:12:06.09\00:12:08.66
when he was brought
before him and he says,
00:12:08.69\00:12:10.13
"Your great learning
has made you mad, Paul."
00:12:10.16\00:12:12.06
He said. Do you
remember that statement?
00:12:12.09\00:12:14.70
So there is a danger
that someone uncritically
00:12:14.73\00:12:19.17
and in a simplistic,
simplistic we need but you know,
00:12:19.20\00:12:23.20
are not reasoned why
00:12:23.24\00:12:25.27
and I think also not
truly Spirit-informed way,
00:12:25.31\00:12:30.11
read in the
Bible that they could
00:12:30.15\00:12:31.48
come to dangerous conclusions.
00:12:31.51\00:12:32.91
They are not
what the authorities
00:12:32.95\00:12:34.55
in the church where
concerned about then.
00:12:34.58\00:12:36.52
The simple people would
read this and you know, run off
00:12:36.55\00:12:41.29
and tear down the
church and all the rest and-
00:12:41.32\00:12:43.79
Yeah, they sort of
turned out to be right.
00:12:43.83\00:12:45.49
You're right.
00:12:45.53\00:12:46.86
It was like when
Luther read Romans--
00:12:46.90\00:12:48.90
Led to the peasants' rebellion.
00:12:48.93\00:12:50.97
You're right, all
kind of things happened.
00:12:51.00\00:12:52.33
And to his shame,
what he did inside of them
00:12:52.37\00:12:55.57
to what he then condemned them
00:12:55.60\00:12:56.94
and said God's,
they were going to hell.
00:12:56.97\00:12:59.41
They literally
dedicated them to hell.
00:12:59.44\00:13:02.18
But there was
some truth in the fear.
00:13:02.21\00:13:04.61
We need, I'm getting
into this discussion so much
00:13:04.65\00:13:07.02
that I'm forgetting our time
00:13:07.05\00:13:08.65
so we need to take
a break, stay with us.
00:13:08.68\00:13:10.62
We'll be back
shortly to continue
00:13:10.65\00:13:12.52
the European odyssey,
the Yellow Brick Road story.
00:13:12.55\00:13:15.56