Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break
with Greg Hamilton,
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we were rowing through history
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and drawing some
parallels, not direct parallels,
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but some intimations of
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where our
present troubles might be
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eerily like what
happened in Weimar Germany
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which led up to
the Nazi takeover.
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And of course, the
parallels are legitimate I think
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because there was a
dysfunctional society
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under great stress,
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and it could have
gone several ways,
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but it went the Nazi way.
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There's no question that
we're living under a society
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that's feel stressed,
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not to stress the
Syrians and all the rest
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but this is not
business as usual.
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Right.
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Well, it seems like the people
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are afraid to
speak up for some reason.
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Yeah, you see protests
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in different
places and everything
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but in the end, you know,
that's all going to calm down
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and we'll get
back to some normalcy.
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Will consider
what's going on right now
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is just part of the fabric
of what we've always been,
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and Donald Trump will probably
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settle into the presidency
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like other presidents
before him or will he?
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I mean, it's like the dilemma
that much of the media has had,
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even Fox News says,
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"Well, is he going
to be a different person
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than when he
was in the campaign,
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will he be presidential?"
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Yeah, we conclude
he'll be presidential.
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So, I think the whole
country and the whole world
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is waiting to see
whether that's true or not.
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I'll give you my two predictions
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as to what's likely to
happen not so much domestically.
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I think the signs are all there
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and President
Trump will probably
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not resist a chance to
do something preemptively
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with North Korea,
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and I think the
West will miscalculate
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on their personality
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and rather than lose face,
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Korea will lash out at the US,
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and then anyone's guess
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is as good as anyone else.
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Well, that's interesting,
for me it's a little different.
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I think Vice
President Mike Pence is a factor
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that we don't often consider.
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You know, a lot
of people knock his
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Free Exercise of Religion Act
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or his State Religious Freedom
Restoration Act in the Indiana,
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was actually
started out as a good bill.
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But the same sex
marriage community came in
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and got him to back pedal
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and basically turn it
into a law that's ineffective.
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That's a good point,
but I'm not suggesting
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it's because of the
president we actually have.
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This is not an
attack on administration,
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you know, it's
for them to decide.
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I think events are
just moving that way
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and this new administration
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will likely give
in to the military
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and the think-tanks
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who are pushing that way
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and I think it's a
very dangerous problem.
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Where I was going with this
is this, Mike Pence represents,
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the vice president represents
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the wing of the
evangelical right,
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essentially he's very much imbed
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with evangelical right,
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he's a convert to
Catholicism and...
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Excuse me, he's a Catholic
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who's become more
evangelical lately
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so he attends an
evangelical church.
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I mean, we have no reason
to doubt his personal feelings.
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Exactly.
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He seems someone of
spiritual integrity.
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Exactly, exactly.
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And I think he is well
meaning and he's sincere.
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But I think that what
happens throughout history
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I've seen when strong men,
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strong leaders come into power
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for their moral
failings in the past,
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they seek atonement,
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and what better
way to find atonement
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than to yield their powers
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that be to religious
powers to make them the leaders,
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the guides as to
what the president
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should do or not do.
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It's certainly a
danger for the US,
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my other prediction.
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That seems to be that
what I'm saying is that
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dynamic is at play
very strongly right now.
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My other
prediction, it's more in line
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with our religious
liberty agenda or concerns.
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Well, that might,
what I just shared was
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religious liberty concerns.
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I know, but I want
to add my second one.
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Okay.
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It's actually
fortuitous on one level that,
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was it Jared Kushner,
the president's son-in-law.
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Yes
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Has close
connections to Israel and the...
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The Jewish fellow.
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Ivanka. Ivanka's husband.
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Husband is
converted, that's good,
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but that seems to be emboldening
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this new
administration to synthesize
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US interest with
Israel in a way that
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we haven't seen before,
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and even the off
the cuff declaration
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that the US embassy
will be sighted in Jerusalem.
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This has the
potential to like throw gasoline
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on an already situation,
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it's already a conflagration.
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Well, it has a potential
for a crusade against...
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And so you know
that religious right
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for a long time now
have the soft spot for Israel
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and the apocalypse
that they believe is coming
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and they want to be part of it.
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And it seeds, sows the seeds
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towards the
potential of a crusade,
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and to me that mentality
is very much alive and well.
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Yeah, so I
think one or the other
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is going to
overtake us very soon
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and, you know,
the world will go on,
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that won't be
the end of the world
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but things will follow from that
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and I believe both of those
potential crises and others
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we haven't thought of
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have the immediate potential
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to radically change
civil liberties and religious,
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and the
religious liberty situation
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will harden very quickly
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if either of
those gets out of hand
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which is very likely.
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Well, and that brings
up an interesting point
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because
domestically the United States
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is, is very much tied
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to its civil
religious traditions.
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And when you look at the flag,
you look at God and country,
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when you look at mom, apple
pie and Chevrolet if you will
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and baseball,
don't forget baseball,
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don't you ever forget baseball,
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anyway that, that's
really what makes...
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It's trouble because I
tend to forget baseball.
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You're from Australia.
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And soccer and Aussie rules.
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Yes, yes, yes and cricket, yes.
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Cricket, whoever
heard of cricket?
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No, I don't like cricket.
Oh, you don't like cricket.
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Cricket can break bones.
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Anyway, the point is that
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with America's
civil religious traditions
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that are so strong
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we embedded that this notion
of American exceptionalism,
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this notion that our country
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is at stake here
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and we're the
indispensable nation
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which I would agree
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we are the indispensable
nation throughout the world,
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but I think that this
tendency towards populism,
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this tendency
towards isolationism
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to make America great again is,
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is maybe not equivalent to
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what happened in
Nazi Germany obviously,
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but who knows maybe it is.
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My point is that
when we turn on ourselves
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the country when,
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when leaders turn the
country in and of itself,
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the country will
turn in on itself.
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And when that happens
that's, that's the seeds of
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potential civil
war and revolution...
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And paranoia...
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Yes, yes.
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And it could be a
constitutional revolution,
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which to me is
again very prophetic
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and we as Seventh-day Adventists
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of all people
should be awake to this,
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if we're not I wonder
what Kool-Aid we're drinking.
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And there's not much
that we can do individually
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or even as a church to stop it,
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but our response should be
to be more heavenly minded,
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to be more prophetically aware.
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Yes.
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And as far as civil
and religious liberties
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speak out on this, we
have an obligations on that.
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Our loyalties are
be, to be to God first
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and country second.
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Yes. Yeah.
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But that's not to
diminish country loyalty...
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Right.
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As any true
patriot, we need to speak up.
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We're not called
to be revolutionaries,
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but I think we're all
called as the Bible says
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to proclaim liberty
throughout the land.
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I'm proud of my heritage
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being directly
related to Ulysses S. Grant
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and also to Alexander Hamilton
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so, you know, I mean, I'm
very proud of my heritage.
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I'm proud to be an American,
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but ultimately my loyalty
has to be to Jesus Christ
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and the Three Angels'
Messages of Revelation 14.
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Absolutely.
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And that's really
where we need to be
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both as a church as a people
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and as people who
are looking forward
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to the soon coming of Christ.
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Yeah.
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And the fire that we
should be worried about
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is not the
Reichstag or the capital.
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The fire that we
should be worried about
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it's the fire of the end
times that destroys evil.
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We don't want to be
part of that, do we?
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No, and we don't want...
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We're preparing
for a better new world.
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And we don't want to
receive a counterfeit spirit,
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a counterfeit religion
that causes us to be deceived.
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When we look at
the Reichstag fire,
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we must be careful of propaganda
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and to be quite frank fake news
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which we've heard
a lot about lately.
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But as we head down this path
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of these last days we call them,
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what we have called
it that for a long time.
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We need to be
careful that we put God first
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and country second.
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Our loyalty must be to
Jesus Christ and Him alone,
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not through any manmade schemes
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to save ourselves or our nation.
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At the end of his
ministry, Jesus warned
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that at the end of time
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there would be
wars and rumors of wars.
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There's no question that
the United States in particular
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is going through
a tumultuous period.
00:09:27.70\00:09:30.33
In this program we invoked
the Reichstag fire of Germany
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which was a major event
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that catapulted
Germany into Nazism
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and of course, Europe into
the horrors of World War II.
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I don't know that the
US is quite at that stage,
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but there are
some uncanny parallels.
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Where as the
Nazis consolidated power
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with the Night
of the Long Knives
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about the worst you could
say of the US at the moment
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is that we're into
the day of the long tithes
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but underneath all of this,
there is a troubling change,
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a forgetfulness
of the constitution
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of a Protestant heritage
00:10:07.54\00:10:09.67
and the reliance on God
not to guide the country,
00:10:09.70\00:10:14.54
but to guide each
person in their individual
00:10:14.58\00:10:17.65
spiritual journey.
00:10:17.68\00:10:20.82
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:10:20.85\00:10:23.82