Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break here
with guest John Ashmeade.
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We really had Daniel
as our guest, didn't we?
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Yes.
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We were invoking that
great hero of Bible times
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but a very important
time of bible history.
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People forget it.
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You know, Babylon is a kingdom.
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That was one of the...
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Well, it was the
first great kingdom
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in that image
that Nebuchadnezzar
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was shown that includes a
description of only kingdoms
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right down to our
present convoluted weakened...
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Well, it's very strong
nations with iron and of clay.
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So the strongest
metal of the statue
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mixed with the weakest,
and that's the modern world.
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But at the same
time, his nation,
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his church was in disarray.
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You know, you intercede
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for Adventists in the workplace,
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and some of
them get satisfaction
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knowing they have an
organization behind them,
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and you and other lawyers.
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That's a certain security.
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Daniel didn't have that.
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His nation was in
captivity or living in hovels,
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the ones that were left
behind back in Jerusalem.
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They were finished.
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So his faith was
directly with God,
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and yet he was
empowered to respectfully deal
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with the potent
types of the time
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who had total parallel life
or death over at any moment.
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Right.
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I mean, I think, you know,
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Daniel's life is
quite a testimony of faith
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when you're in a circumstance
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where you can believe
that God has abandoned you.
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I mean, you've been taken
captive in a foreign land,
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and you look up now,
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and you're being
targeted, you know?
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They want you to pledge
your loyalty to the nation.
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That's right.
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And you understand exactly,
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most people don't
get it out of the story.
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I remember being
shocked first time
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a preacher mentioned it,
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but the chances are,
it's almost foregone fact
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that he and his
friends had been neutralized,
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they were eunuchs
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because it was common
practice to take the...
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Not just the
brightest but the aristocracy,
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the sons and
daughters of the aristocracy
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of the other country,
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which would denature,
would take away their future.
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They would be
made unable to breathe
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because the Babylonians
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didn't want them to
breathe into this stuff.
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They wanted
what they could give,
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service and an expertise.
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Oh, we never hear
about a Mrs. Daniel, do we?
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No.
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And I have no
burden to make that point,
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but the point is the
level of disempowerment
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was incredible.
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He was turned into a cog
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in the machinery
of another nation
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to serve them.
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It would seem that
he was being trained
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to be loyal to Babylon
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and to lead his people to
be loyal to Babylon as well.
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And, you know, we
see that happening today.
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I mean, you know,
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the education that we
receive trains us to be loyal.
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You're thinking exactly like me.
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Right.
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People don't
realize it, it's not that
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we should oppose
the education system,
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but it's not to
train people to be God
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fearing citizens of heaven,
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it's to be useful functionaries
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of a modern day
machine of industry
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and all the rest
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that fit into that to
serve the state needs,
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secular needs.
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And the pull toward
compromises is overwhelming,
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and it's intentional.
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And, you know, when you look
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at the whole
situation with the statue,
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and bowing
down, and the worship,
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you know, I wonder
if we are, as a country,
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heading in that direction
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where we are upholding
these symbols of loyalty,
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you know, like the
flag, the national anthem,
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and we are sort of demanding
that everyone accept these
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in the same way
under the same terms.
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I wonder if we're
heading that way as a country
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and is that dangerous.
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And the Supreme Court
helped us a little to fight it,
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but, you know, the
pledge of allegiance,
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which is a fine thing.
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But from the...
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Was it 1950-some on,
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they mixed God into the deal.
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So it's the state talismans
and religion, and you're...
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It's all one and the same,
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loyalty to this
country is loyalty to God.
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Well, maybe not,
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but it's claiming
that it is, and this is,
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you know,
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I've preached a number of
times on the plains of Dura,
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there with the statue
and the fire and all those.
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And
Nebuchadnezzar says, "You know,
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why don't you bow down
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and worship my
image and my Gods?"
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He mixed both in.
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It clearly was a status
symbol and a religious symbol,
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and one was the
same as the other.
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The state's not
inclined to be religious,
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but it likes to have
sanctimony around, it's,
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you know, the
eagle and always...
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We're not
different from the Romans,
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we parade and stand it on the...
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you know, you
genuflect before it.
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We got to...
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not so much resist
but be aware of this
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and keep our
ultimate loyalty in mind.
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You know, I think
the important thing
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under these circumstances,
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look, you should be
free if you want to engage
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and embrace these ideas.
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But if you choose
not to go with the flow,
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to run with the crowd,
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that you don't
suffer persecution for that,
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I think that's a mature
nation, a mature democracy,
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where people can protest
when they see the need to,
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when they feel like
they want to make a point
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or if they just
simply don't want to do it,
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you know?
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Yeah, I've
thought about this a lot,
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with necessity in this job.
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That sounds good,
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and the US has embraced
that from the beginning.
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But if you are a
rational secular leader,
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it's not self-evident that
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that's the good of
keeping a country together.
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And what I think it feeds toward
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which Jefferson and others saw,
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Jefferson more than most,
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it allows rebellion in
an essence to flourish.
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Jefferson just
thought that was great
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because you let it reveal itself
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and then you stop
at that now and...
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But if you're really
after continuing stable society,
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it's not the greatest
thing to allow dissidents
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to develop or even what we argue
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for internationally,
multiple religious allegiances
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because they all,
at the very least,
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bleed away monolithic
support for the state,
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which more and more
people want to support.
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You know, the basic protest
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is sort of a check
on government power.
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You know, the fact that...
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If you want to
check government power,
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no government
wants to be checked.
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But it's important, you know,
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for people to
be able to stand up
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in protest and say,
"No, you've gone too far,
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we want to bring
this to your attention.
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It's time to turn
back from the direction
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where you're going."
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And I think that's a
vital part of a healthy nation.
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And if we stamp that out,
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if we prevent
that from happening,
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it's a real threat to freedom.
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I agree with you.
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In the philosophical sense,
my point is, no government,
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even a democratic government,
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in the sense of those governing
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and the ones in the
system are happy with that,
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they inherently resist it.
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Oh, they do. They do.
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And religion has always
been a powerful dissonance
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towards the systems.
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Right.
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I think, you know,
there is always that tension
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between religion and
the state in the sense
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that, you know,
many religious people,
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their first loyalty is
to God and not to the state.
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And so if you go
in with that mindset,
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you know, whenever
the state enacts a law
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or, you know, wants
you to act in a certain way
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that's certainly inconsistent
with your religious practice,
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then you have that tension.
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And then you have that pull,
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and you don't have the loyalty
that the state often wants.
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Back to Daniel, where
do we see that tension?
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Of course, it's a
narrative, and not many words,
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maybe there's a lot unspoken.
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But there's not much.
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The only time I remember
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he seemed a little on it
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justifiably was when
the word went out to all,
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the wise men
would have been killed.
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Daniel begged for time,
and then spent the not praying,
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and he got the answer.
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Beyond that, he seemed to
be serene in any situation.
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You know, he seemed to
want to be a good citizen,
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and to fit in, and
to support the state.
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But, you know, I think whenever
the state crossed the line,
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he was willing to
bear the consequences.
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Well, the story at
the end of the book
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is amazing with
Belshazzar's feast.
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That was one occasion
Daniel didn't mince words
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'cause they weren't his words,
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but still he could have
soften the writing on the wall.
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But he says,
instead, you kingdom is...
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"You are weighed in the balance
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as your kingdom
is found wanting."
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Right.
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It's quite a contrast
between his interaction
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with Belteshazzar
and Nebuchadnezzar.
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There was a degree of respect
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with Nebuchadnezzar
that was not shown.
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And clearly Daniel
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realized that the
state had gone too far,
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had crossed the line,
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and he had to take a
firm stand and to be bold.
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And I think that we
should look at that example,
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you know, that there are times
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we don't have to
always be protesting,
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but there's a time
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when the state crosses the line,
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and we've got to be
bold in our condemnation
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of what's
taking place around us.
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Absolutely.
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You've given the takeaway from
this program two minutes early.
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But no, I believe it's not just
a kid's song or a kid's story.
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Daniel does speak to
today of the complication
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that serving the state
brings in more and more,
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you know, wanted or
not in modern societies,
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we can easily opt out.
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We're part of the
mesh of responsibility.
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But here's what
I'll also point out.
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And, you know, it just talks
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about our relationship with God.
00:09:41.41\00:09:43.91
I mean, Daniel was taken captive
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and lived in Babylon
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and lived in
Babylon all of his life.
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There's no
indication from the story
00:09:50.79\00:09:52.52
that he was ever able
to return to Jerusalem.
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And yet, despite that,
00:09:56.76\00:09:58.19
he lived under an
oppressive regime.
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For several year.
00:10:01.33\00:10:02.66
And yet under
those circumstances,
00:10:02.70\00:10:04.80
he remained faithful to God.
00:10:04.83\00:10:06.60
And that's quite a
testimony to us that,
00:10:06.63\00:10:08.80
you know,
00:10:08.84\00:10:10.17
just by the
oppression that we're facing,
00:10:10.21\00:10:11.97
the challenges
that we're dealing with,
00:10:12.01\00:10:13.78
God expects us to
rise under any circumstance
00:10:13.81\00:10:17.01
that we find ourselves in.
00:10:17.05\00:10:18.38
He went from the
bottom all the way
00:10:18.41\00:10:19.81
to the top in government
00:10:19.85\00:10:21.22
despite living in
an oppressive system.
00:10:21.25\00:10:23.42
I think that we
should do that as Christians.
00:10:23.45\00:10:26.65
With few exceptions,
integrity is recognized
00:10:26.69\00:10:29.72
even in a communist
regime or dictatorship.
00:10:29.76\00:10:32.36
They need people of integrity,
they don't need traitors.
00:10:32.39\00:10:35.56
But a Christian shouldn't
be a traitor to any system.
00:10:35.60\00:10:38.33
That's worth remembering
00:10:38.37\00:10:39.77
No, I think Daniel is
someone that we should admire,
00:10:39.80\00:10:42.94
we should emulate,
00:10:42.97\00:10:45.57
you know, he survived
in an oppressive system
00:10:45.61\00:10:49.21
and excelled.
00:10:49.24\00:10:50.58
Psalms 137 has the
captives in Babylon
00:10:54.35\00:10:59.15
but wailing
their fate saying that,
00:10:59.19\00:11:01.46
"By the rivers of Babylon,
00:11:01.49\00:11:02.82
we sat down,
00:11:02.86\00:11:04.19
and they that
brought us there in captivity
00:11:04.23\00:11:07.10
required of us a song."
00:11:07.13\00:11:09.16
And then dramatically,
they asked the question,
00:11:09.20\00:11:11.53
"How can we sing the Lord's song
00:11:11.57\00:11:13.80
in a strange land?"
00:11:13.84\00:11:15.80
The story of Babylon and
Daniel is quite an amazing one.
00:11:15.84\00:11:20.78
You can read it in
the book of Daniel.
00:11:20.81\00:11:23.31
But in my view, we today
are in the same position.
00:11:23.35\00:11:27.62
All Christians
should see themselves
00:11:27.65\00:11:29.65
as in a strange land.
00:11:29.68\00:11:31.25
This is not our home.
00:11:31.29\00:11:34.09
And the trick, the challenge,
00:11:34.12\00:11:36.89
the duty before us
00:11:36.93\00:11:39.13
is how do we stand for the Lord,
00:11:39.16\00:11:40.96
sing the song through our life,
00:11:41.00\00:11:42.96
a song that will
attract other people
00:11:43.00\00:11:44.77
by its melody
00:11:44.80\00:11:46.47
and its compelling
pattern of consistency to God.
00:11:46.50\00:11:50.44
How can we sing
that, attract other people,
00:11:50.47\00:11:52.87
live a life of character
00:11:52.91\00:11:55.04
that will be not just sung about
00:11:55.08\00:11:57.75
but celebrated
through the centuries.
00:11:57.78\00:12:00.95
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:12:00.98\00:12:03.62