Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break,
with guest Elijah Mvundura,
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we were talking about fake news
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and the underlying
lack of spirituality
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that has enabled it.
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But, of course, it
has its antecedents
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in philosophical declension
in Western thought, I think.
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Yes.
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But, you know, I
tried to bring it back
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to the here and now.
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And perhaps, you and I
don't have immediate answers,
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but the average person is
faced with a real conundrum,
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fake news is not
just from a year ago
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but now that they're well aware
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that there's so much
fake news floating around.
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How does a person
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look through the
forest of dead trees
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to see some greenery?
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That's a tough one.
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I've been
reflecting a lot on it.
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And I don't think
I have a major bullet
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because there is so much.
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If you cannot trust
venerable institutions
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like the New York
Times and Washington Post,
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then what do you trust?
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But what I see...
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However, if you ever see,
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it seems to me
that the real conflict
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is not so much on
the news themselves,
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as in terms of the
meaning, what does this mean?
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I think that because the
people resort to fake news
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when the news
reveals the meanings
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that they do not want.
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I think maybe this is
exactly the way it is.
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There is a basic, I think,
agreement on what has happened.
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But it is about the meaning,
what does this thing mean?
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And it is because we
cannot be able to process that,
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put that within a
meaningful framework,
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that's why
people ultimately reject
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what they cannot put within...
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You're getting close
to what I was fishing for.
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We need a framework.
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So how do you
establish the framework
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to at least sift
through this debris field?
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Yes.
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And now,
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you know, when we
speak about a framework,
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we're also speaking
about the world view.
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You need something to filter
the things that you're seeing.
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Because, remember,
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the Bible says,
"The day will come
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when it will deceive
the very elect if possible."
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Yes.
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So it's a deceptive time,
generally, on every level.
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And we're talking
about actual news now,
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but the ideas floating
around are quite deceptive.
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Yes, maybe I think we
can then go back again
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to the whole issue of
the Great Controversy.
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Adventists, they call
it the Great Controversy
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or maybe the great
war between good and evil.
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The importance of the
books of Daniel and Revelation
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is actually to give us a
framework of world events
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so that you can actually see
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that behind all
these world events,
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there are forces
that are mobilizing.
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The devil has
got his strategies.
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So maybe if I can even use
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the metaphor of
the jigsaw puzzle,
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there is a puzzle
that is taking place,
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a picture that is taking place.
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And whether it's fake
news, whether it's social media,
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whether it's the
things in the economic field,
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it's all pieces of a puzzle.
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And unless we have got
that Great Controversy motive,
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that cosmic war motive,
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we won't be able to see
what all these things mean.
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I believe that you'll be
able to accept hard things
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if you know what it means.
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The more you
understand what is taking place.
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Yeah. Right?
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Even if you see a lion coming,
it's really a scary thing
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but, at least, you know
that this is a lion coming,
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you can, "Okay, maybe
let me rush for a tree."
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But if you don't
know what is coming,
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it becomes really, really scary.
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And the reason why
the primitive people
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in ancient civilization
were afraid of everything
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is because they didn't know,
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they didn't know even
how to understand nature
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and the like so
everything became a monster.
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And that's why
when you read mythology,
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mythology is
filled with monsters.
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And I think
there's a Spanish painter
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who said, "The sleep of
reason produces monsters."
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And what has
happened in the Western world
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is where our rational faculties
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have literally
been put to sleep,
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and no wonder why we now
have monsters everywhere.
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I agree with you.
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And yet at the same time,
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there are
monsters to be afraid of.
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And I was talking to
a group a few days ago
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and told them
about artificial reality
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that's coming at us in
all fronts, not just...
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When you say artificial reality,
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what do you mean?
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Well, not just the
goggles that the kids like
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where they immerse themselves
with technology of projection
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of apparently
solid living figures...
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Like at a
concert, a few years ago
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even, Michael Jackson
was performing on stage,
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he's dead, he was
performing on stage
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with live performers.
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And from the audience,
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they could hardly
tell the difference.
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Oh, yes.
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That's old technology. Yes.
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There's new technology
where there can be projection
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of realities into
the clouds and so on.
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I think things
that are apparently
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almost mystical and magic
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derive from real
technological reality
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and people can be
very quickly deceived.
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Yeah.
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But what has happened
actually when you look
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at all those things
that we're talking about,
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they're actually not
just creating these things
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from thin air,
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they're going back to mythology.
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Yes. Yeah.
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And mythology doesn't
make that distinction.
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That's why, again,
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the conflict
actually in our civilization
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is between
paganism and Christianity.
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It's divulging. Yes.
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We need to know that
there is always that conflict
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between paganism...
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Devolving, not
divulging, devolving.
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Yes, yes.
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Between religion,
between paganism and religion.
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I wanted to say that
most of the polarities
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that we're seeing in the world,
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I've always thought that
they are false polarities.
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People, for example,
in the African experience,
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they are anchors of
realities between...
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The polarity
between black and white,
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and in politics as
Democrats and Republicans.
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And if you go maybe to Europe,
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it's maybe the
Polish and the immigrants
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or it's between the
Christians and the Muslims.
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And for me, all
these are false polarities.
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The underlying polarity
is between good and evil,
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it's the war
between good and evil.
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And I think it's a
Russian author who said
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that, "Evil does
not run between nations,
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it does not run between nations,
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it runs through
the human heart."
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That's where the conflict is,
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the conflict
between good and evil.
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And the more that we are
with that conflict is within us.
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And that the point
really, in our life,
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is not so much to
mobilize the forces of good
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but to make sure
that you yourself
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you are standing
on the right side
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and you can only
stand on the right side
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as you recognize
God as your what?
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As your maker.
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I think it's
Abraham Lincoln who says it.
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That both sides
of the Civil War,
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they are sides with God.
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They believe
they were right. Yes.
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Prayed to the same God. Yes.
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They believe that they...
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They spoke of the
good angel of that nature
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and the contrasting evil.
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Yes. And the nature, yes.
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But the issue then
ultimately was not so much
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on whose side God is on,
but who is on God's side.
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And that's why on that point
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where I'm very
critical of the many Christians
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who want to involve
themselves in politics
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because it's actually
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as if they're domesticating God,
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they're making
that God is on our side.
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And God is not on anybody's...
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They're chosen
men rather than God.
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Yes. But God is God.
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But there's something else,
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and you probably
haven't thought about it.
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Yes.
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You and I agree that
there's a threat of evil
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that's running through men
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more strongly
than any previous ages.
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Rulers as
recently as Adolf Hitler,
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in spite, of the fact
that he mobilized the nation
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to his evil purpose,
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he came to believe
they had failed him
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and that they were the problem.
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He was ready to sacrifice
his whole country as punishment
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because they hadn't
been worthy of him, right?
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You don't want rulers
or parties or factions
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seeing other human
beings on mass as evil,
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they have evil within them.
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Yes.
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And I'm going to
look to something
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you might not have thought of.
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There's a huge phenomenon
growing in popular culture now,
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the zombie mentality.
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A large part of population
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are going to be, if not already,
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a zombie nation.
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They're
dehumanized, they're not humans,
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they're dangerous,
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and they need to be exterminated
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because they're inherently evil.
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I really think
something's being prepared
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for whole swathes
of the population.
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So how do we
separate that acknowledgement
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that we all have
an evil tendency,
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but we can't turn that
against a fellow man, right?
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Yes, I think that
that's very, very crucial
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because what Hitler did,
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he actually stated
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that the Jews
belong to another God.
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Oh, with that, but he
also said of his own people,
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"You failed me, you're
going to have to die now
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because you're not
worthy of my leadership."
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Yes, yes.
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But then, of course,
that shows the demonic origins
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of Nazi philosophy because...
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Absolutely.
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And people forget
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that Hitler had
many references to God,
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he always spoke
about providence.
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He even said that Nazism
was founded on Christianity.
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Yes. Falsely.
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He believed in the Almighty.
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Again, that's why I
think the Great Controversy
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is very, very important
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because if you
don't know the distinction
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between the God of this world
and the God up there in heaven,
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you are likely to
confuse God with the devil,
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the divine and the demonic.
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And so when you speak
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about the
separation of state and church,
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you are also
speaking about the distinction
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between good and evil.
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The distinction
between the divine
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and the demonic,
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this is very, very,
very crucial because...
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It's a very interesting insight.
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I appreciate your insight.
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Yeah, when people talk
about church and state,
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they only think
of church and state,
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we also have church and state,
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we also speak
about the distinction
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between religion and politics,
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between the
divine and the demonic.
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Once we lose the consciousness
of that distinction,
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there's going to be confusion.
00:10:02.16\00:10:03.50
And the devil's
strategy is to confuse us
00:10:03.53\00:10:09.67
that we do not
make these distinctions,
00:10:09.70\00:10:11.71
that we may worship him as God,
00:10:11.74\00:10:13.51
and, in fact, that is
the very central thing
00:10:13.54\00:10:16.51
about the Revelation,
the Book of Revelation,
00:10:16.54\00:10:18.45
it speaks of how the devil
is going to masquerade as God,
00:10:18.48\00:10:22.58
and people are going
to worship him as God.
00:10:22.62\00:10:25.02
So that's why we need
to read the Book of Daniel
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and Revelation that we
may know where we stand,
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and how to react to
the many, many false things
00:10:31.46\00:10:35.16
that are coming up around us.
00:10:35.20\00:10:37.07
We live in an era
00:10:40.40\00:10:41.74
where it's very hard
to understand real truth.
00:10:41.77\00:10:45.97
And, of course,
pilot said rhetorically,
00:10:46.01\00:10:49.48
what is truth.
00:10:49.51\00:10:51.55
I think if people are
grounded on God and His Word
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and have a deep
and abiding faith
00:10:55.92\00:10:58.92
in heavenly things,
00:10:58.95\00:11:01.99
they will be able to
perceive the essential truth
00:11:02.02\00:11:05.46
in any situation.
00:11:05.49\00:11:07.26
But when we're dealing
with hard and simple facts
00:11:07.30\00:11:09.70
about the reality
around us, it is possible,
00:11:09.73\00:11:13.27
as the Bible warns,
00:11:13.30\00:11:14.64
that the very
elect will be deceived.
00:11:14.67\00:11:17.87
Each of us need to dedicate
ourselves to being truthful,
00:11:17.91\00:11:21.98
and ultimately that writ large
will create a truthful society.
00:11:22.01\00:11:26.48
But, in the interim,
00:11:26.51\00:11:27.98
the illusions and
deceptions of evil writ large
00:11:28.02\00:11:31.82
are going to magnify fake news
00:11:31.85\00:11:34.89
into the worst
possible deception,
00:11:34.92\00:11:37.43
even for the very elect.
00:11:37.46\00:11:39.89
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:11:39.93\00:11:43.00