Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider
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with guest Elder Ted Wilson,
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President of the
Seventh-day Adventist church.
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I really
appreciated your closing comment
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there about the incredible value
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and privilege to be
occupied with religious liberty
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while we can before
things, even perhaps,
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in the liberal West closes in.
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The Seventh-day
Adventist church headquarters
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is based in the United States.
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It's not a US church,
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but looking out from this point,
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what do you say and
say in the last year,
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in the last few months,
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is a rosy picture
for religious liberty
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or there are some storm clouds?
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What's your personal judgment?
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Obviously, nobody can speak
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for the whole of
Seventh-day Adventist church
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in that sense,
but what do you see?
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Well, as we view the
entire world's situation,
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of course, the last
two, three years especially,
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we have seen an intense effort
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to limit freedom
in different places
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by oppression, by warfare,
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by many other types of,
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oppressing types of many...
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And religion's nearly
always the key in this...
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And religion is,
plays a huge factor in this,
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or people's at least,
people's background in that,
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and the cultural identities
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They fight for
identity in Israel.
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And, of course,
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that puts everybody
at an uneasy setting,
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and people are
really kind of unsure
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as to what's going to happen.
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When that kind of thing happens,
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then, of course,
national governments attempt
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to reassure people,
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they try to
implement certain kinds of laws
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and measures that
will protect people.
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And unfortunately,
in those situations,
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people are then willing
to give up certain aspects
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of their personal
liberty and freedom
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which they have
enjoyed in order to have
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that overarching
presence of supposed security.
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And unfortunately,
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I see that's
drifting very rapidly
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not only in the United
States but in many other places,
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towards a herd mentality where,
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people are
gonna ask politicians,
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and national
leaders, civic leaders,
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"Protect us, take care of us.
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And even if you
take away some liberties,
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that's not a real problem
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because we want
to be in security."
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And I'm afraid that
this kind of instability
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is fostering a
lack of understanding
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regarding religious liberty,
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even though sometimes,
Lincoln, people are stating,
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we are gonna get
these measures in place
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in order to protect
your religious liberty.
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It's an irony there,
and it does seem to me,
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we're just on the
cusp of religion itself
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being invoked as a protection
against the other religion.
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And I'm sure you read the
news, there's some public talk,
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I hope it's just
talk about perhaps,
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detaining groups,
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they're defined from a
religious point of view
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and that just
sets my teeth on it.
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That's the wrong way
to do with it, isn't it?
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No, we need to
respect the rights of everyone
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and to respect the
religious rights of everyone,
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unless those religious rights
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are involving some
type of terrible warfare
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against people...
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Civil wars take care of that.
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Exactly.
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So the respect of a person
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and their religious convictions
is at the very foundation
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of the constitution
of the United States
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and of many other
national governments.
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In some places, of course,
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there's no liberty
for religious freedom
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in terms of certain
countries of the world.
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But most countries have at least
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some window-dressing
that they might say,
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"Yes, we provide
religious freedom."
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But for a Christian,
for a Seventh-day Adventist,
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for those of us who are involved
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in trying to promote
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and nurture this kind
of thing in the minds,
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especially of national
leaders, of state leaders,
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I think it's
important to remember
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that this is part and parcel
of Christ's ministry Himself.
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And now when Jesus got up
and spoke in the synagogue,
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and He took the scrolls,
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and He read from
the book of Isaiah,
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it was actually from Isaiah 61.
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I could see
you're ready to read it,
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it's a powerful passage.
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It is.
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And it was the formal
list from the gospel camp,
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the formal
beginning of His ministry,
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so it characterized it.
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It's found in
Luke 4:18-19 where,
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"The Spirit of
the Lord is upon me,
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He anointed me
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to preach the gospel to the poor
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and heal the broken hearted,
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preach
deliverance to the captives,
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recovery of sight to the blind,
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and set at liberty
them that are bruised,
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and then to preach
the acceptable year
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of the Lord."
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Now that comes directly
from Isaiah 61 and in 61:1,
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it actually says,
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"Proclaim
liberty to the captives."
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Now that's what
Liberty Magazine is all about,
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that's what religious freedom...
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And they're captive to sin,
not to the political system.
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All kinds of captivity.
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I mean, captivity to
improper physical habits,
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to mental difficulties,
to interpersonal challenges,
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to some kind of a
block on understanding
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what religious connection
means to Christ Himself.
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You know, the devil,
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and I believe
that there is a devil,
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I believe he's very active,
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and he is trying to
counteract every good thing
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that the Lord is wanting to do.
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So the Lord is
wanting to set at liberty
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those who are
captives by sin and by Satan.
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And by God's grace, all
of us have that privilege.
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We need to be freed,
to be set at liberty.
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So Liberty Magazine is
not only a wonderful vehicle
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for just alerting
State House leaders
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and national
leaders about things,
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it's actually a
call to all of us
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to be part of helping everyone
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who is a captive and, of course,
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unfortunately, we are as well.
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We're all sinners
in need of Jesus Christ
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and the Lord liberates us.
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Yeah, I
appreciate you're taking it
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back to basics, it's the gospel.
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Gospel is the
message of liberation.
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It's troubled me lately
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that everyone talks
about religious liberty,
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nobody is against that.
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You worked for
some time in Russia,
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when it was under
the Soviet Union, right?
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Or what it was...
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Just after the collapse of...
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Sorry, yes, it
was a transition time,
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but, you know, the Soviet Union
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was still an echo there.
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Soviet Union guaranteed
religious liberty in writing,
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not in practice.
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Right.
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And today in the US,
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there's much talk
of religious liberty.
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And I've come to believe,
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it means different
things to different people
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and in our society in the West,
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more and more it
means religious privilege,
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entitlement,
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that's not what
Jesus was talking about,
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that's not what your
church, my church is bounded,
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it's the
Seventh-day Adventist church
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began Liberty Magazine,
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even though it's
mostly distributed
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to non-Adventists.
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Let me ask you of a
ticklish part of it,
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because it goes
back to the reformation.
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Martin Luther,
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when he brought
out his great truths,
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he was a Catholic priest,
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because Protestantism ended
up being a different entity.
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But he was
within the Adventists,
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just the Catholic church.
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And the Adventist church,
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like all other
churches has its own bubbling,
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cauldron of ideas
and people's initiatives
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and I think
they need to be heard
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and change the church.
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How do we relate
internally to dissent?
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Is it a religious liberty issue,
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'cause I think there's a
bit of a fallacy at work here?
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Well, first of all,
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within a
Christian community of faith
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and the Seventh-day
Adventist church in particular,
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certainly there's an
opportunity for people
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to share opinions.
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We don't work lockstep.
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We don't have
uniformity in everything,
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but we do strive for unity
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and those
principles have to be based
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on the word of God.
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And...
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A shared goal.
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Exactly, and on understanding
that God has a purpose
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for this movement,
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I'd like to refer
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to the
Seventh-day Adventist church
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is not just a
denomination, it is a movement,
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an Advent movement,
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propelling people towards
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the soon coming of Jesus Christ
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and all that that involves.
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Christ is the
center, Christ is the focus,
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all of the doctrines
and the beautiful truths
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that we have are all
centered in Jesus Christ.
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Now the challenge
comes when some aspects
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which scripture
is not as clear on,
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develop into some discussion
and differences of opinion,
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but we should always remember
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we need to come back to the word
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and to a simple humble faith.
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And I think
Pentecost explains that
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when people have this
shared spiritual direction
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reaching toward God,
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it minimizes the dissension,
that they weren't vying,
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after Pentecost, the
disciples weren't vying anymore
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who'll be the
greatest in the kingdom.
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But the other thing,
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I want to tell our
viewers while you're on camera,
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many people that write to me,
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not just within
our church, others,
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they think
internal church squabbles
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are a religious liberty
issue in the classic sense
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because it's a free association,
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there is no compulsion.
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That's the key.
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If there's compulsion
even to a Seventh-day Sabbath
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that is so
important for our church,
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that would be
wrong, wouldn't it?
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You don't require
or force people to do
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even the right thing.
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You leave it up
to the conscience,
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and if it's
spirit-directed, God,
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we can trust that God
will lead people toward truth,
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it's the Spirit of truth.
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And the Holy Spirit does that.
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There's also a
very important element
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of humility in
discussion as well
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and surrender to the will of God
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and to the
influence of the Holy Spirit.
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Because if you believe
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that the Lord is
leading in a movement,
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you then are able to surrender
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even your own hard held
opinion to that of the body,
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if you believe that
this is truly God's church,
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and a remnant people
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who will be awaiting
Christ's soon return.
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You can believe that God Himself
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will direct that people
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and that group into
a harmonious approach,
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even if you may have
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some dissension
and disagreement,
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that level of
humility is also so important.
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I appreciate
your comment on that
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because the way I see it,
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your role and those
in other denominations
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that lead out,
they've got a double problem,
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projecting the
view to the larger world
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and then managing
the believers behind you,
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because human
existence is turbulent.
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It's not as simple as
this, us, and then, them,
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in reality under
God, it's all, we.
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But I think
people should see this
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and it's not necessary
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for any church to be
absolutely of a single,
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you know, an
unvarying viewpoint for it
00:11:08.30\00:11:10.17
to be consistent in
projecting what it stands for,
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because we're always gonna
to have a little dissonance.
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Yeah, but, you know, that
beautiful verse that says,
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"The Holy Spirit will
lead us into all truth."
00:11:19.84\00:11:21.81
Oh, I believe that.
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And that's where
the unity is found.
00:11:23.21\00:11:24.55
In John 17, Christ's
prayer for His disciples,
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not only for those disciples
but for those who would follow,
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which includes us,
that we be one in Christ,
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now that, of course, means,
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one in an
understanding of what truth is.
00:11:36.12\00:11:37.76
Even I need to
do another program
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because oneness,
a Christian oneness
00:11:39.16\00:11:41.13
is a loaded initiative now
00:11:41.16\00:11:43.83
and there
shouldn't be a unification
00:11:43.87\00:11:46.07
on a false common ground.
00:11:46.10\00:11:47.70
Well, let's do
another program. Yeah.
00:11:47.74\00:11:50.67
Well, thank you very much,
00:11:50.71\00:11:52.04
and thank you as always
for your ongoing support
00:11:52.07\00:11:54.44
of religious liberty
and Liberty Magazine.
00:11:54.48\00:11:56.61
Praise God.
00:11:56.64\00:11:58.41
This is the end of the program.
00:11:58.45\00:11:59.78
I'll have a little
stand up after this,
00:11:59.81\00:12:01.22
but thank you for this
time discussing together.
00:12:01.25\00:12:03.69
And great to be with you.
00:12:03.72\00:12:05.39
I hope you
enjoyed that interview
00:12:05.42\00:12:06.76
with Elder Wilson as much
as I did in conducting it.
00:12:06.79\00:12:10.16
And I'm hoping that
at some later point,
00:12:10.19\00:12:11.93
I can sit down with him again.
00:12:11.96\00:12:14.60
I grew up as a
Seventh-day Adventist
00:12:14.63\00:12:16.46
and as a young boy,
00:12:16.50\00:12:18.77
I often remember
reading Adventist material
00:12:18.80\00:12:23.20
that linked to the reformation,
00:12:23.24\00:12:24.91
in particular,
The Great Controversy,
00:12:24.94\00:12:28.11
one of the major books
00:12:28.14\00:12:29.54
written by early
Adventist pioneer Ellen White
00:12:29.58\00:12:33.45
and largely
that book is history,
00:12:33.48\00:12:35.92
and it was powerful
for me as a young person,
00:12:35.95\00:12:38.85
not knowing a lot of history,
00:12:38.89\00:12:40.22
not knowing a lot
of my church's history,
00:12:40.26\00:12:42.32
to read there the
re-telling of the story
00:12:42.36\00:12:45.59
of truth through the edges,
00:12:45.63\00:12:47.46
and then hitting that high point
00:12:47.50\00:12:49.16
in the reformation with Luther,
00:12:49.20\00:12:51.63
Hus, Zwingli and
other great reformers,
00:12:51.67\00:12:54.74
and to realizing that
what they did in their day,
00:12:54.77\00:12:58.41
I am inheriting in my day
00:12:58.44\00:13:00.44
as the Seventh-day
Adventist Christian
00:13:00.48\00:13:01.91
and of course,
many other Christians,
00:13:01.94\00:13:04.11
Protestants, have
inherited the things
00:13:04.15\00:13:07.62
that they fought for,
00:13:07.65\00:13:08.98
which most particularly
00:13:09.02\00:13:10.85
was religious
freedom and expression.
00:13:10.89\00:13:15.32
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:13:15.36\00:13:17.79