Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider,
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where we're
continuing with my guest here,
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a very interesting discussion
about Christian leadership
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and some of the
ramifications in,
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particularly in
the United States
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where we have
separation of church and state.
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But we now have
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a politically
active Christian group
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who are wanting
more and more power,
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more government involvement.
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So Christian leadership becomes
hyper critical in this context,
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isn't it?
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Yes.
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Well, when you have
Christian leadership
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that is ignoring
the plainly expressed
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principles of the Bible,
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and particularly in
the area of economics,
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you know, I
don't know if you heard
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what Pat Robertson said
about the murder of Khashoggi.
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Yeah, I didn't
hear that comment.
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So tell our viewers what...
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The Saudi Arabian journalist
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who was murdered
brutally in Turkey...
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That was a state-organized
tip hit operation.
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Right.
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And Congress
was outraged by this
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and they were going to
thinking of cutting off aid to,
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or the relations
with Saudi Arabia.
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And he said in an interview,
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"Well, we've got $100 billion
arms deal with Saudi Arabia,
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and you know, it's
terrible what they did to him
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but you can't blow up
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a $100 billion
deal over one man."
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Do you remember what
Jesus and the high priest said?
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"Better that one man die
than the nation should perish."
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Well, that's
interesting because...
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It's the same thinking.
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This comedian Stephen
Colbert said on his show,
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he said, "Thank you,
Reverend for elucidating
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that central
principles of Christianity.
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How important can
one man's death be?"
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Yeah, yeah.
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Now we're in a
strangely relativistic age,
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there's no question.
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And it's not a time
that lends itself easy
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to people with
unchanging moral principles.
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You know, this
is what I believe,
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I'll die on it, you
know, for it if necessary.
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We are actually,
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since we're
watching Islamic terrorism
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in its extreme form,
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those are the sort of
people that we tend to see that,
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you know, kill themselves
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and someone
else for their faith.
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So what used to be a
Christian commitment,
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you know, go to the
flames if necessary,
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is easily equated with that.
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So nobody wants to be
that sort of doctrinaire
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and one dimensional.
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Well, but the difference
is that those people are dying
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to force people to be like them.
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There's a
difference where you're dying
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for your faith or
killing for your faith.
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Right. There's
a huge difference.
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The martyrs of the Christian era
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were dying because they refused
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to surrender their
own individual faith.
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Yeah.
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And that's a very
different dynamic.
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And I think I have a hard time
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imagining many of
these Christian leaders
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would be willing to actually die
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for what they believe in.
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Well, not too many people.
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As Jesus says, you
know, hardly a person
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will give up their
life for someone else.
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Well, yes.
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It goes against the graining
of natural human impulse.
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That's definitely true.
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But that's the whole
point of Christianity,
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is it goes against our
grain and more and more
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it reminds me, I don't remember
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whether it's Isaiah or Jeremiah,
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it talks about
woe to the shepherds
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who are fleecing the flock.
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And I see a lot of fleecing
going on in Christianity.
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Well, it's become
big business, of course.
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And which has been
happening for a long time
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but when that
sort of big business
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takes on a political agenda,
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the route even accelerates.
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Well, yes. Even
with good intentions.
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I think the dynamic is working
against true spirituality.
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Yes, well, you know,
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the old
statement, "Power corrupts
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and absolute power
corrupts absolutely."
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But I'll state what I
said on another program,
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I still believe,
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if not the leadership
because that's a personal thing
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and we don't know
one person's heart.
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But as a
movement, I still believe
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the vast
majority of the Christians
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that have allied
themselves under this banner
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have legitimate
Christian concerns
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with where society's
gone, they're troubled by it.
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The Bible speaks highly
of people that sigh and cry
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for the
abominations done in the land.
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But they've
embraced the wrong solution
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rather than seeking God,
and seeking social justice,
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and becoming a salt
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and, you know,
all the other images
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to change society
through their own witness.
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They've decided to seize power
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and basically
apply by legal mandate
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on other people
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what they imperfectly
even do in their own life.
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And that's a
corrupting sort of dynamic.
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Well, exactly.
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And Christians are called to be
the salt of the earth by being,
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by exemplifying the
principles of Christianity.
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And if that's how
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the early
Christians changed the world,
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not by trying to
force other people
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to become Christians,
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but by living the example
of Christianity to the extent
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that people were drawn to it
and were willing to embrace it
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and actually die for it.
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So it's...
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Christianity is
an individual thing.
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It's an individual commitment
that you make and morality...
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Through Christianity.
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Right.
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Morality can only be individual,
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morality can never be corporate.
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You can't...
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By definition, you
can't enforce morality.
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Well, there are corporate mores,
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social norms,
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and there's an undeniable
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bleed through, if you
like, between the moral views
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that say
religious community have
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and what society may
accept as the social mores
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but they're not
one and the same.
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No.
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And I think
there's some confusion
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drifting into American society,
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particularly about that
sort of separation if you like.
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Right. Right.
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And Christianity allows freedom,
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allows people to
make their own choices
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even if they're
the wrong choices.
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Yeah. Yeah.
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And, you know,
back to our discussions
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of the US Constitution,
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with the dynamic
resting in the individual
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and the people's power
being granted to the government.
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I think it's consistent
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with the highest
ideals of Christianity.
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Yes, I do too.
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And at least as envisioned,
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not as practiced at
any time in history but...
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They're back to leadership.
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In the United
States at the moment,
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we appear to
have strong leadership
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with the capitalists on strong.
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I would argue with
the strong part but...
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Well, I said, appear.
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Right, right.
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But we have
aggressive leadership.
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Okay. Yeah, I agree with that.
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Does the answer to
moral revitalization
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lie in that direction?
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Clearly not,
because as I said before,
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moral regeneration is
an individual process,
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it doesn't happen
on a corporate level.
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It can happen with
many individuals together.
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But it doesn't happen...
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It cannot be
enforced from above.
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We're running
out of time quickly.
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But some well meaning
people have created an analog
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between our present leadership
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and an Old Testament
dynamics of Darius and his...
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It's Cyrus.
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I'm sorry, Cyrus, yeah,
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his friendliness toward the Jews
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and helping the
rebuilding of Jerusalem.
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What do you think of that?
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I just think it's a
red herring analogy.
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I think that it's
completely inappropriate.
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I think that Cyrus,
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if you look at the
histories of the kings,
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I mean, for example,
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Nebuchadnezzar
actually became a follower...
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And he is another one that...
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He became a follower of God.
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And he was...
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And God actually
had to humble him.
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He had to
basically knock him down
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to make him a follower of God.
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So it seems clear to
me that even if Cyrus
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was not exactly
a follower of God,
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he was certainly
amenable to God's suggestions.
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And he was...
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He believed, or at
least he had faith,
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sympathy, toward...
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But surely it's not necessary
to sanctify a civil ruler
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just because
some of their actions
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free of advantageous for faith,
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that's really...
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Oh, absolutely not. Wait, wait.
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So leadership,
we need leadership.
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What would you hope
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would happen with
the Christian community?
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How will we find a way
where we look for leadership?
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Well, I think it's important
to recognize again, that it's,
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Christianity is
an individual thing,
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and it can't be enforced by law.
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In fact, the attempt
to enforce religion by law
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always fails
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because you cannot
really make people moral
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by creating laws.
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In the Book of Revelation
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it speaks of the
judgment being set
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and the books being opened.
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Many people are
afraid of such a judgment.
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But I look
forward to a divine judge
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looking at my case with
a little charity as well.
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But here on earth and
here in the United States,
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way too many people
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have unreal
expectations of a Supreme Court.
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And far too many people
are willing to manipulate it.
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There are many court watches
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and as we've
discussed on this program,
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there's a good
argument to be made
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that certain
voices and influences
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have been inordinately
deleteriously influential
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in court discussions.
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We need to make
sure in our feedback
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in the United States
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and similarly
in other countries,
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that we don't fulfill
what also the Bible says
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will
characterize the end of time,
00:10:00.63\00:10:02.66
a time when the
judges pervert justice.
00:10:02.70\00:10:06.00
We want good and
well administered justice,
00:10:06.03\00:10:10.01
well reasoned, judicial inquiry,
00:10:10.04\00:10:13.21
and decisions
that reflect the best
00:10:13.24\00:10:15.21
that men can have, an offer,
00:10:15.24\00:10:17.91
but at the same time it's far,
far short of divine judgment
00:10:17.95\00:10:22.12
and a divine determination.
00:10:22.15\00:10:25.15
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:10:25.19\00:10:28.79