Welcome back to Liberty Insider.
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In the break, we were thinking
a little more about the topic
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and let's move on.
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Okay.
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But to repeat though,
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there are
significant developments
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in the relationship between
the United States and Israel,
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loaded with prophetic
and religious implications.
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And when we talk
about religious freedom,
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I think you and I can agree
that there is a lot at stake
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and these
recognitions of land taken
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and have a city occupied
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could actually stir up
sentiment on a religious level,
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particularly against
some Christians there,
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an antipathy
between Jews and Muslims.
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And it's...
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I think you made the
comment that, you know,
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a lot of people are
easily disturbed here.
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Yes, that's right.
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And we don't want to do that.
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We want continued
freedom for all people,
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to worship and
to live in freedom
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without fear of their lives
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because of religious or
political realities, right?
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Right.
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But you know, look
at the world at large.
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How would you characterize
our present world situation
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on religious liberty?
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And before you answer,
I'll just throw in something
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that's so passe now, it's scary.
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Remember, George
Bush Senior said,
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"Democracies
breaking out all over?"
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Remember that? Yes.
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That's sort of
a Fukuyama moment.
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You know, what
I'm talking about,
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Francis Fukuyama said,
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"We'd reached
the end of history,
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all the developments impeded."
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Oh, right.
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Well, yeah, I...
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It's disturbing because
this isn't relevant directly
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to religious liberty.
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But, certainly, the
rise of authoritarianism
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across the world,
even in traditionally,
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democratic societies
in Europe and other places
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is very disturbing.
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And you know, Brazil,
the dictator who's arisen,
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a Christian
dictator, who's arisen.
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It's very disturbing
that religion and religion
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may or may not be a
part of it, but often it is.
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It nearly always
is, yeah, the subtext,
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if not the main issue.
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So there is, there's
this right-wing nationalism,
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that is, that has
really swept across the world.
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And it's...
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And it does have
religious liberty implications,
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particularly as it
relates to Muslim immigrants,
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which seemed to be the
hotspot for a lot of cultures
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at this point,
especially in Europe.
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Because there are
many Muslim refugees
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because of the...
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What's going on
in the Middle East.
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So...
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You know, they
happen to be Muslim.
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That can't change that reality.
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But you know, as
I've studied history,
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it strikes me that,
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you know, these wars,
and battles, and invasions,
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that's the
tawdry tale of history.
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But the most
consequential things
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that really changed the
world are people movements.
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Immigrations or refugee floods,
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when they changed
the demographic balance.
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And I think
that's what we're seeing.
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I remember
reading, many years ago,
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a novel that was sort
of a science fiction novel,
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where the
Western world was fading
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from its
previous imperial glories
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or colonial glories.
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They were in great trouble.
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And their old holdings,
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in their old
holdings out and around,
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the people were getting in boats
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and en masse, just coming.
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Not with an army, but people
invading and flooding them
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demographically.
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That's what
we're living through.
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Whoever wrote that
was very prescient.
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I remember reading
the review on it too,
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and suggesting
that maybe such a thing
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would happen in the future,
but it was purely theoretical.
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This was, at a guess, I'd say,
easily 30, 30 some years ago,
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at least.
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But that's what we're seeing.
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And it is a threat.
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Well, not a threat,
maybe that's the wrong word.
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It's a challenge.
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Well, I think... A
daunting challenge.
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The government,
particularly the US government
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has destabilized the Middle East
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in such a way that it's...
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I think that's responsible
for a lot of the things
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that have forced the refugees
to leave their homelands.
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So that's something that
is a disturbing development
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that, it's essentially
created this problem.
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But many years ago,
in the weeks after 9/11,
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I was on a plane.
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Won't say the whole story,
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but I believe
we had an attempted
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event on the plane.
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And the guy sitting next
to me was a Pakistani Muslim
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who'd most recently been
in Afghanistan, radical guy.
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And as part of
the way to defuse him,
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I started
talking history to him.
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And I said, "Why are
you bothering America?"
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Because I said to him, I
said, "You trouble America,
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there'll be a
world war on this."
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He says, "Fine,
we want world war."
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And I said, "Why are
you bothering America?"
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I said, "England's
done far more to thwart
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the Arab
nationalist cause than America."
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He says, "We don't
care about England,
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England's finished.
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We want America."
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And I'm telling that
as a way to bring out.
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From a matter of history, yes,
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the US has
mishandled it pretty bad.
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But in my view,
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it's the English
imperial adventures
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there that laid the groundwork.
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Everything from the
Sykes-Picot Agreement,
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where they divvied
up the Middle East,
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not with any logic.
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Well, their own logic,
not with any consideration,
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but to weaken people
groups, the Kurds and so on,
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and to balkanize the situation,
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so it could be more easily
governed by England and France.
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I remember barely,
but I read about it,
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the Suez Canal crisis
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where England
tried to take it back.
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And it was America
that stopped England.
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So America has not been
the fall guy on all of it.
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But we've inherited
what England was once up to.
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And I think America's
sins have been twofold.
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One, ignorance, good intentions,
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a better way to put
it, good intentions,
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but not understanding there.
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And the other, an
inordinate interest in the oil.
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Well, that's the big one.
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Right.
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And the oil, well,
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it has come and
it will go one day,
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but people remain.
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And, you know, I think we could
hope that the West and the US,
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in particular,
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takes more steps
to solidify that area.
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But meanwhile, religious turmoil
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is just bubbling and
boiling all over that area.
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It's interesting to live
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through it and
to see it, isn't it?
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Yes.
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Yes, it's.
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And so, as I said
before, it's the final expulsion
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in some ways of
Christians from that area,
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the West seems
powerless to help with.
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One of the most
damning statistics is in Iraq,
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reasons that made sense
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to the US
authorities at the time.
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You and I can't double guess it,
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we can have opinions
on it, but they did it.
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But unfortunately, they invaded
a country with the desperate,
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yes, but he was for
many complicated reasons
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protecting a
Christian population
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in Iraq.
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It's hard to get a handle on him
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and I've said for
years, a million Christians.
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But I read on an
Iraqi site, recently,
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there were million
and a half Christians,
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but certainly a
sizable number of Christians
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who were protected equally
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under the law with
Muslims and all other religions.
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After we invaded and
sort of broke the truce,
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both Islamic factions
turned on the Christians
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for religious and
for political reasons,
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seeing them as
sort of the fifth column
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for the foreigners.
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And then when ISIS
erupted in a dysfunctional Iraq,
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ISIS turned on the Christians.
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And in Mosul,
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they gave them the choice
after a 24 hour iffy period,
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where they at
first were just required
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to pay the
dhimmi or religious tax.
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They said, "They
had to convert or die."
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And I remember in
Time and Newsweek,
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pictures of
Christians on crosses.
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They were
crucified and beheaded.
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How many, we'll never know,
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but likely a
very high percentage
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because Mosul's the
second largest city in Iraq,
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and it was quickly
captured with whatever
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Christians were there.
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So, you know, we need to
spare a thought for this,
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the plight of, in
this case, Christians,
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but of any persecuted minority.
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There's Yazidis,
and even the Kurds now,
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who once
persecuted the Armenians.
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They've been
persecuted by Turkey,
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and Syria, and Iraq.
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It's just a mixed
bag of religious hatreds
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and ethnic rivalries.
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There's no question,
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that as we look
at the whole world,
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there's this religious conflict,
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and in particular,
in the Middle East,
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it's still bubbling and boiling,
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very much a
prophetic fulfillment
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of what we
expect the instability
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and especially God's
people being persecuted.
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But, you know,
as we move forward,
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how do you think we
should look at the situation?
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Do you think
there's a salutary lesson
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for people of faith and
Christians in particular?
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Yes, absolutely.
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It's important to
respect all faiths, and to,
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and also to avoid
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the conflation of
religion and politics,
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because that is what has
led to many of these problems.
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If we avoid, if
we think of religion
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as a separate
entity from the government,
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our country
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and other democracies have shown
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that that is the
most, the best way to avoid
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these kinds of
religious conflicts.
00:10:08.67\00:10:12.44
There was the old saying
that the Jews in times of need,
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especially when they
were in exile, they would say,
00:10:16.18\00:10:19.61
"Next year in Jerusalem."
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As the Seventh-day
Adventist Christian,
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I like that sentiment,
00:10:24.72\00:10:26.25
but picking up from
the Book of Revelation,
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where it speaks
of the New Jerusalem
00:10:28.69\00:10:31.13
come down from heaven.
00:10:31.16\00:10:33.19
I like to think, "Next
year, just over the horizon,
00:10:33.23\00:10:37.27
the New Jerusalem."
00:10:37.30\00:10:39.17
There's no getting
around that many Christians
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feel deeply attracted to Israel,
00:10:41.87\00:10:45.57
and to the scenes of
so much of what happened
00:10:45.61\00:10:49.44
in the New Testament
and the Old Testament,
00:10:49.48\00:10:52.28
that it's easy to get
swept up in what they call
00:10:52.31\00:10:55.28
Jerusalem Fever.
00:10:55.32\00:10:58.02
But as our
discussion brought out,
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it's necessary to keep
some perspective on this.
00:10:59.55\00:11:03.22
The modern state of Israel
00:11:03.26\00:11:04.93
begun as a socialist experiment.
00:11:04.96\00:11:07.56
And indeed the people
that have come back there
00:11:07.60\00:11:10.17
as needy as they were
in the day of Jesus' time
00:11:10.20\00:11:12.67
when He said that He
come to find the lost sheep
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of Israel.
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That is not the answer
to the present problem.
00:11:16.47\00:11:19.47
As always, it
was finding Christ,
00:11:19.51\00:11:22.04
as always,
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the Jerusalem
is where God dwells
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with His people.
00:11:26.82\00:11:28.18
And that time is
surely just around the corner,
00:11:28.22\00:11:31.92
as current events
clearly demonstrate.
00:11:31.95\00:11:35.92
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:11:35.96\00:11:38.83