Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is the program
that brings you news, views,
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discussion, insights,
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and information you need
to know on religious liberty.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty Magazine
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and my guest on
the program is Andy Im.
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You're a communications man,
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working with the Seventh-day
Adventist Church in Michigan,
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and youth leader
with Campus Ministry.
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That's right. Let's
talk about our world.
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Yes, let's do it. I
originally from Australia.
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Your forebear's
from Korea. Mm-hmm.
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You know, this is the world
where people move to and fro
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and we more and more see it
as a single entity, don't we?
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Mm-hmm.
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And so it wasn't a
natural thing recently
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when the pope of Rome,
itself a city far away,
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used to be the
centre of the world
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once upon a time but not now.
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But the pope of Rome came up
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with an encyclical
on the environment.
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It made sense
to a lot of people,
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don't you think?
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Because he spoke about something
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that's concerning to all of us.
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We're in a global village,
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a little sphere in
the middle of space.
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Mm-hmm.
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And yet it just seems
to be running down on us
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pretty quick.
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The Bible says, earth
wheeze out like a gum,
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waxes all like a gum, isn't it?
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It does, yes.
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And another text that
impresses me, it says,
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God is coming to destroy
those that destroy the earth.
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Mm-hmm.
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I don't think that
would have been said
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if it wasn't as we've seen now
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that mankind literally is
able to destroy the world.
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Mm-hmm.
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And beyond just
degradation through bad habits,
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what if we have a nuclear war?
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You know, is what we
fear all of our lives,
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would it take place
between Russia and the US
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and they shot off,
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let's just say 10 percent
of their nuclear arsenal,
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we'll have nuclear winter here.
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The world would
effectively be destroyed.
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Yes.
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I do think that the
environment, you know,
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it's the political hot topic
and so it's very, you know...
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There was no planning
there, was it a global warming?
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No, no. I didn't
mean it that way.
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But the Bible's very
clear that, you know,
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we were created to be
stewards of this earth.
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And to dress it, to
keep it, to maintain it.
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Like as Adam in the garden,
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it was his job
to take care of it.
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That's right, the
original plan for this earth
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and so I do think
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that protecting the environment
is something that's biblical.
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And we as
Christians should do our utmost
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in protecting and so forth.
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I'm also happy, for example,
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and I'm not endorsing
any political party here
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but, you know, President Obama
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is expanding the national parks.
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And I'm one that appreciates
the parks that we do have.
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I just got back
from the Grand Canyon
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not too long ago
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and what a
beautiful, beautiful place,
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and certainly I
appreciate it because it's God,
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of course that's result
of the flood and so forth.
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But at the same time and
something so destructive,
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there's also a beauty there.
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You see there, the grandeur,
the power of God as well.
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It's almost beyond
imagining how big that is.
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It is.
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That like gully to use a
little word is through the...
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It is.
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May be it's
something I should say,
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for me the Grand
Canyon has two moments.
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When we first
came from Australia,
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my father board a car
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and we drove across
the US from west to east.
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And we stopped
at the Grand Canyon.
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It was in November at a motel,
we knew it was quite close.
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We didn't realize
till the next morning
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when we woke up
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and it has
snowed the night before,
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the edge of the Grand Canyon
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was just behind our
car we parked there.
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And there's a little fence
like 18 inches high back then
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and here it dropped the way
straight into the Grand Canyon.
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Ain't that's something?
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But for me the image
that I'll never forget
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is before 9/11 flying in
a United wide-body plane,
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it was a clear day
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and the president was actually
visiting the Grand Canyon.
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And so the
pilot told us about it
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and pointed out
the lodge on the rim,
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that's in Grand Canyon
where the president was.
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And he says we're bit early,
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we'll take a tour
around the Grand Canyon.
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And this plane just
went on a big circle
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around the Grand Canyon.
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Wow! Nice. Quite low.
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And it was a dream on
that crystal clear day
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with the cars there, with
the president's entourage,
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then president.
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I forget who was to be honest.
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And is something
spectacular, a creation of God
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as part of the
punishment I guess of the earth
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but still wonderful
landmark that reminds us
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of the grandeur in the
size of God's creation.
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That's right.
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And, but yet all
of that is at risk,
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even the Grand Canyon.
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You can read some dark articles
about the rates of erosion
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and the water changes
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because of dams
and all the rest.
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Mm-hmm.
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And of course these
plants for mining near the rim
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that could despoil it.
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Mm-hmm.
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So it's not
inappropriate for people
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to have an
environmental concern, is it?
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No, absolutely not.
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And I think I took
you a little bit off track
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so I don't know maybe...
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Well, no, I'm heading
for the earth is at threat
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and efforts that
have been made to save it
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and in particular in that vein,
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a document the pope of
Rome issued last year in 19...
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sorry, 2006,
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no when, no,
sorry early in 2016.
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Mm-hmm. Yes. I'm
already thinking ahead.
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For 17, Laudato si' it's called,
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they're always in Latin.
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But praise be to thee. I
think it means literally.
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But he addresses
this issue and, you know,
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I have to commend
them on one level.
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Mm-hmm.
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Wonderful. Mm-hmm.
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This is not inappropriate
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for people of
faith to speak of things
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that concern the
whole of humanity,
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degradation of the earth.
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And he threw in some
good practical advice
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as well as
theological narrative.
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But you've read the
document, what did you see?
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I wouldn't say that I read...
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But you looked at it.
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What jumped out of
you from that document?
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Well, it's, what
struck out at me...
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It's a long
document for our viewers.
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You can get a long one,
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it's about 120 pages
about their paging system,
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a little book sized document.
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I only read some sections of it
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and certainly he is making
attempt to unify the world.
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It's directed to all people.
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It's not just
Catholics, not just Christians,
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all peoples.
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Yes, and I think
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you're gonna have to
refresh my memory a little bit
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'cause it was some months
ago that I read that document.
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Oh, what caught my attention
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because first of all
I'm a Seventh-day Adventist.
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This Seventh-day
Sabbath is vital to me.
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When you read
the Bible literally,
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and remember the history
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of God's dealings with the Jews,
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the Sabbath was central.
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And the Sabbath as part
of the Ten Commandments,
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there's just no textual
reason for it to be changed
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even given to the Jews,
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it said, remember,
it wasn't, you know,
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the Sabbath day is
now a day I give to you.
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It was the day that
in the Genesis account,
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God sanctified it.
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They weren't Jewish back in...
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Creation. Adam
and Eve were not Jews.
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That's right.
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So it's...
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Even though it's been done,
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and even the pope of
Rome has done it recently.
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You say well,
it's a Jewish Sabbath,
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it's not really biblically true.
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Mm-hmm.
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It's just become
true in these latter days
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where
Christians to differentiate
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have gone to Sunday.
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And so in this document
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the pope seizes upon
something very apt biblically.
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He said this
earth is wearing out,
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we're despoiling this worth.
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He says, it may collapse on us.
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And he says, God,
when He created man
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understood that the
earth needs to rest,
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animals need to rest,
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there's a rest cycle,
and man needs to rest.
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And then he recites
the Seventh-day Sabbath
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as part of this rest cycle.
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And he applies
it to the animals,
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to the earth.
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And several times in the text
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and these may be had
been sections that you saw.
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He come backs to
this biblical injunction,
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the principle of rest
even the Jew believe rest,
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which just goes multiplying
on the seven principle.
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And it's all wonderful
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and as the Seventh-day
Adventist I thought great,
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he has put it in there.
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He's picked up the model.
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The unfortunate thing
is that then at the end,
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the pope sort
of moves that logic
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of the seventh day Old Testament
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quote Jewish Sabbath.
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He moves and applies it
to the Eucharistic Sunday.
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Mm-hmm.
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Well, he can do that
as the figure of speech
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but it's not really possible
as the matter of theology.
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And then, I think to
myself this is not good
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because here is
a religious leader
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moving into a secular
area giving a solution,
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more than a
solution and imperative
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that without
which we will all die.
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Mm-hmm.
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And he's saying, we need to obey
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the principle of the seventh,
but he applies it to Sunday.
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Mm-hmm.
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And in a previous document
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by his predecessor,
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I'm trying to
think what it was called,
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that was given,
that Benedict gave
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to actually
President Obama in 2008.
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It was a document that addressed
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all the world's
problems and it said there,
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was problems of
economics and of capital,
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labor and of
national autonomy and so on.
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And it said there
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that there's a need
for a global authority
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with the power to
act and to enforce.
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So I don't have to guess
up where they're coming from.
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So here on the environment,
when they lay it all out
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and it's fulfilled and
us obeying the rest cycle
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that ends with Sunday,
not the biblical Sabbath.
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That's bad on the
religious liberty level.
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He can have
whatever theology he likes.
00:11:45.90\00:11:47.77
Yeah.
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On this program we
can't restrict the Muslim,
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or Hindu or
variations of Christianity
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for the different doctrines.
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They have the right to be wrong
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or I have the right to be wrong
depending on your viewpoint.
00:11:59.75\00:12:02.18
That's right.
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But you don't have the
right to force it on people
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and this is the grand scheme
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to make it a
matter of human survival
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to do what he says.
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So he doesn't need
to say the next step
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that if this is adopted
and you don't go along with it,
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you're an enemy of mankind.
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Mm-hmm.
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You know... The
stakes are very high.
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What's very
interesting is that the logic
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that is utilized
is our good values
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that the broad
Christian community agrees with,
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you know, we do need to rest.
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Another thing that
he's stating the pope
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is how we need to move
from a materialistic mentality
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that the American
dream has caused us
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to focus too much
on material wealth
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and that kind of thing.
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And we need to, we need
to focus on the spiritual
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and that's something
that we as Christians...
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Oh, this was very good.
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He mostly mentioned
in that, in his speech...
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It followed from the document
which picked up on the things
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but that's when he
became very direct in his speech
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to Congress.
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Yeah.
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That did flow
out of what he said
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on the environment but
he didn't say that much
00:13:13.32\00:13:16.66
on the materialism or he didn't,
00:13:16.69\00:13:18.03
at least didn't
take direct swipes
00:13:18.06\00:13:20.53
at capitalism in
modern life in the document.
00:13:20.56\00:13:27.20
No, not in that
document but I...
00:13:27.24\00:13:28.64
In his speech in to
Congress, absolutely.
00:13:28.67\00:13:30.41
And he certainly, you know,
and I believe we as Christians,
00:13:30.44\00:13:34.18
you know, I preached a
sermon not too long ago
00:13:34.21\00:13:37.05
about the American dream.
00:13:37.08\00:13:38.91
And we've kind of
adopted that as a Christian goal
00:13:38.95\00:13:43.22
or end for all of humanity
and especially us as Americans,
00:13:43.25\00:13:47.62
but I really think
that we need to think hard
00:13:47.66\00:13:52.19
about some f these values
00:13:52.23\00:13:53.90
that are
espoused by our culture.
00:13:53.93\00:13:58.50
And the pope is
rightly pointing out
00:13:58.53\00:14:01.34
that we all have
become too materialistic,
00:14:01.37\00:14:03.94
too, you know, driven by
the accumulation of wealth
00:14:03.97\00:14:08.94
and that's the
end in all of life.
00:14:08.98\00:14:12.58
And those are not values that
the Bible endorses for example,
00:14:12.61\00:14:17.59
and so he is
utilizing Christian principles
00:14:17.62\00:14:22.76
using these things
00:14:22.79\00:14:25.63
that we would all
agree with for his own end.
00:14:25.66\00:14:31.63
We need to take a break
on that, very good point.
00:14:31.67\00:14:34.10
We'll be back after short break.
00:14:34.14\00:14:35.70
Come back and
we'll keep discussing
00:14:35.74\00:14:37.41
this view of the environment
00:14:37.44\00:14:39.67
and religious
liberty implications.
00:14:39.71\00:14:44.18
Stay with us.
00:14:44.21\00:14:45.55