Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a program
bringing information
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on religious
liberty events in the past
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and right up till the present
in the US and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty magazine.
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And I want to share
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something special with you today
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about the world we live in and,
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well, I'll cut to the
chase, an environmental concern.
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It's certainly been the
marker of the last generation
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that there's been an increasing
environmental awareness,
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even as some
major political forces
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in the US deny that
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there's anything to worry about.
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And even though I might say
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as natural
calamities abound and multiply,
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but I want to
start by sharing a poem
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that I think sets
the scene in many ways,
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by what it says
and when it's said.
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There was a Roman Catholic poet
called Gerard Manley Hopkins,
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wrote some interesting poems,
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and one of them
was God's Grandeur,
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and he wrote it in 1877,
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which to me is a
very fraught time
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because the
Seventh-day Adventist Church
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was organized in 1863,
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right in the context
of the American Civil War,
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when everything was going crazy.
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You know, million people died
in a very small, young country.
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But yet the
Adventist doctrine at that time
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and now was predicated
on several basic things,
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including the
three angels' messages
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of Revelation 14.
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And the first one says,
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"It's a call to
one of the Creator God
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that created heaven and earth,
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and everything that in them is."
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In other words, the
Creator and His creation,
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that was the
central rationality.
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We're quite aware
now, as the Bible says that
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all creation is
groaning together
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in travail for its redemption.
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And we should be
aware as Adventists were
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when they were talking
about the end of all things
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that God has promised to come
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and destroy those
that destroy the earth.
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Unfortunately, it
hasn't fully reached
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that awareness in the US,
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many Christians
are into dominionism,
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which, while it touches
on our custody of the earth
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really sees it
more from a dominionist
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or controlling point
of view, like it's our
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bounty to harvest the
news as we see fit, rather than
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in a
stewardship relation to God.
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But how Hopkins put it this
way in this very short poem,
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he says "The world is charged
with the grandeur of God.
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It will flame out, like
shining from shook foil,
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it gathers to a greatness,
like the ooze of oil crushed.
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Why do men then
now not reck his rod.
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Generations have
trod, have trod, have trod.
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And all is seared with trade,
bleared, smeared with toil.
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And wears man's smudge
and shares man's smell,
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the soil is bare now, nor
can foot feel, being shod.
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And for all this,
nature is never spent,
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there lives the dearest
freshness deep down things.
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And though the last
lights off the black west went,
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oh, morning,
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at the brown
brink eastward, springs.
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Because the Holy Ghost
over the bent world broods
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with warm breast and with ah!
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Bright wings.
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You know, it's
a message of hope.
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And an interesting...
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well, not that that caught to me
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but separating the destruction
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and the shopworn
nature of this world,
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with the fact that
God's Spirit is not yet
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withdrawn from
us and His creation
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With that in mind,
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let me go
through three documents
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that Rome has
come up with lately
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that end on this
concern, the environment.
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The first one
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Caritas in veritate,
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charity in truth
came out in 19...
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Sorry, not 19, 2008.
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No wonder I was stumbling on it.
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Came out in 2008, which
was a very important year
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because that was
the year of the...
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You could define it as
the last great depression.
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It was never defined that
way, but it was pretty much
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a depression in
an economic meltdown,
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I remember at one point,
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reading and seeing
graphics to illustrate it
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that 60% of the
world's merchant fleet
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was at anchor, the
world economy broke.
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It just collapsed.
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And, you know, God's
mercy endures forever,
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and the
mechanisms of many people
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were successful too
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that we've
bounced back and things,
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according to the president
"Have never been better,"
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whether that's true or
not remains to be seen,
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but we have
struggled back from the brink,
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but it was pretty bad in 2008.
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And that year,
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as newly elected president Obama
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headed off for his
first meeting of the G8.
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He stopped in at Rome,
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as has been the
want of presidents
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and other leaders of late.
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It's a bit like
in the Old Testament,
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it says "In the
spring of the year,
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when the kings will
want to go forth to war."
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Well, the kings that
want to go to Rome nowadays,
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and he stopped off in
Rome, and met with the pope.
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And it was Pope Benedict
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and he gave him
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a leather bound
copy of this document,
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Laudato si', just
released, and not Laudato si'.
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Caritas in
veritate, just released.
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And...
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Interesting document,
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I remember
reading a review of it
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in a secular magazine,
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they reviewed it as
though was a political document,
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which really was.
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Because it dealt with
issues of economic collapse,
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environmental degradation,
national sovereignty issues
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caused by things
like drone attacks,
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and assassinations
and so on and invasions.
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It dealt with capital and labor,
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the trade unions, minimum wage,
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the plight of
the poor and so on.
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But, of course,
economic collapse
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was top of the list.
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And the document was
evaluated by this magazine,
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I remember, and I
gave it pretty good marks.
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But at the end,
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they made a
very telling comment,
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not a religious magazine.
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I never found them
much concerned with anything
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except they had
a little softness
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for discussing the genocide
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against the
Jews in World War II,
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which we should all
have, it was a horrific time
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and an act by Nazi Germany.
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But other than that,
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they were never
interested in religious things.
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And they said this
is a great document.
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It's a pretty good take on
how to deal with these things.
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But they said the trouble
is, you accept this document,
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the pope comes with it.
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I thought that's
very perceptive of them.
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Because in Liberty magazine
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where I can't afford
to attack any religion,
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because religious
freedom means everyone
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has the right to exist.
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My angle on Rome is that
it's an existential threat
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to the separation
of church and state,
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which is a foundational
constitutional truth
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for the United States
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and that's so
because Rome is a state.
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Mussolini granted
them their own little state
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of a few hundred acres.
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So they function
without the political leaders,
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but it's also a church.
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So depending on its needs,
it can be a church or a state.
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It's the absolute threat
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to the separation
of church and state,
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it is the church and the state.
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And so I thought that
comment was very valid.
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And in the document
I read toward the end
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that says there is a
need for a global authority
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with the power to
act and to enforce.
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And coming from
the representative
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of a church that
in the mediaeval era
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was quite inclined to
force people into compliance
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with church views.
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I thought that's
not a nice statement,
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that's heading
the wrong direction.
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Well, only a few years ago
now, another document appeared
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under the papal
auspices, Laudato si'.
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And I almost think that
this is the payoff to that
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first Caritas in
veritate document
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that wasn't the first time
they discussed the environment,
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but it was a major aspect
after the economic collapse.
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Laudato si'
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is an environmental document
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and it starts off by saying that
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the earth is like
our youngest sister,
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she is dying,
she's in great distress.
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And unless we do
something, and by we,
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the document
makes it very plain,
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not just Catholics,
not just Christians,
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the whole world,
unless we do something,
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she will die.
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And in dying, we
will all die with her.
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So the stakes are pretty high.
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You know, when
the stakes are like
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that
extraordinary things happen.
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Talking about the
genocide against the Jews,
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I remember reading with horror.
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The story once
of a number of Jews
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who are hiding in a
crawlspace in a home.
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There weren't many of them,
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including a mother
who had a newborn child.
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I think the child
had actually been born
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while they were
hiding in this crawlspace.
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And while they're all
hiding there, you know,
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couldn't sneeze or speak,
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the Nazi troopers
came searching the house
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and the child began to cry.
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And what would they do about it?
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And so by mutual consent,
actually more than consent,
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demand, they told the
mother to suffocate the child.
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You know, those
are horrific tales,
00:11:22.21\00:11:24.91
and the choice that
they appeared to have
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was child's life or their own.
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If they let it cry,
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they would all die
including the child,
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but if they snuff
the life of that child
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out they would
survive and they did survive.
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When the issue
of environmentalism
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was presented on that
level, we're all about to die
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because the world's
dying, unless we do something.
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What if you don't go
along with such a prescription?
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I think it's very likely
and it's such an emergency,
00:11:56.58\00:12:00.32
there will be no option.
00:12:00.35\00:12:02.28
Likely no option given for those
00:12:02.32\00:12:04.25
that don't take the steps
that this global authority
00:12:04.29\00:12:07.72
with the power to act and
to enforce might recommend.
00:12:07.76\00:12:11.79
It's food for thought,
00:12:11.83\00:12:13.33
because we're
coming to extreme times.
00:12:13.36\00:12:15.96
And I know there are some that
00:12:16.00\00:12:17.37
don't even want to
talk about global warming.
00:12:17.40\00:12:20.14
And I think they will eventually
00:12:20.17\00:12:22.77
but I also think
it's been framed badly.
00:12:22.80\00:12:26.24
You can argue
whether man's actions
00:12:26.27\00:12:30.78
have caused this
warming and thereby
00:12:30.81\00:12:34.68
radical disruption
of climate patterns
00:12:34.72\00:12:36.85
and production of
extremes of hot and cold.
00:12:36.89\00:12:39.99
You can argue about whether
man had anything to do with it.
00:12:40.02\00:12:43.49
But if you take
that off the table
00:12:43.53\00:12:44.99
and just describe what
is and you can allow that
00:12:45.03\00:12:48.53
it could either be man's actions
00:12:48.56\00:12:51.47
or it could be a
cycle, natural or, you know,
00:12:51.50\00:12:57.11
created by
something beyond their kin.
00:12:57.14\00:12:59.47
Once you do that
00:12:59.51\00:13:00.84
then I think it's a
lot easier to discuss
00:13:00.88\00:13:02.21
because anybody
00:13:02.24\00:13:03.61
that's traveled
the world lately,
00:13:03.65\00:13:05.61
anybody that's lived other than
00:13:05.65\00:13:07.65
in their own little
corner of the universe,
00:13:07.68\00:13:09.82
anybody that's
watched the news knows that
00:13:09.85\00:13:12.95
the world is out of
whack, out of whack.
00:13:12.99\00:13:17.26
This year, fires in
Australia in a greater degree
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than seen in a lifetime,
00:13:22.70\00:13:25.40
earlier in the year than usual
00:13:25.43\00:13:26.80
'cause of
different rainfall patterns.
00:13:26.84\00:13:29.87
Last year, it was
the Amazon basin burning
00:13:29.90\00:13:34.54
as well as much of California.
00:13:34.58\00:13:37.15
And, you know,
this storm this year,
00:13:37.18\00:13:39.18
next year who knows?
00:13:39.21\00:13:41.78
At a limit of these calamities
is Ellen White writing,
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I think prophetically
00:13:45.82\00:13:47.16
to Seventh-day
Adventists in a book
00:13:47.19\00:13:48.52
called Great Controversy.
00:13:48.56\00:13:49.89
She says that the
sequence of natural calamities
00:13:49.92\00:13:53.60
is going to cause
people to say that
00:13:53.63\00:13:55.53
God's wrath is upon us
and that to save ourselves
00:13:55.56\00:13:59.83
we need to do some
extraordinary things
00:13:59.87\00:14:03.04
in public religion
and government support
00:14:03.07\00:14:06.11
of religious observance
00:14:06.14\00:14:07.54
and if you don't
go along with that,
00:14:07.58\00:14:09.44
you will be seen
as enemies of mankind.
00:14:09.48\00:14:11.98
It's not a farfetched scenario
00:14:12.01\00:14:14.78
from what we've
already seen in recent years.
00:14:14.82\00:14:18.45
I'll take a break now.
00:14:18.49\00:14:20.46
But come back, and
after a short break,
00:14:20.49\00:14:24.66
we'll continue this discussion.
00:14:24.69\00:14:26.33