Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break,
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I was going over
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some of the details
of the English Civil War
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that I feel so influenced,
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not just the
American War of Independence
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but events right up to our day.
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And one of the
most significant aspects
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was their sense of
prophetic timeliness.
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On another program,
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I've railed a bit
against the dispensationalists
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in the evangelical community
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who are allowing
their views of prophecy
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to bleed over into
their political views,
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and indeed a rush to
war in the Middle East
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because they
think it's inevitable,
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might as well bring it about.
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There's no question
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that during the
English Civil War,
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many factions of the Puritans
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believed they were
at the end of time,
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they were at the
moment of God's judgment,
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the millennium was to follow,
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and so there were
factions that represented that,
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there were the Levelers,
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a major faction that
believe they would stand shortly
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before the judgment bear of
God at the last trump as equals.
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So in advance so
that you leveled society,
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leveled the
hedges, we were all...
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They were proto communists
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if you wanted to
twist it that way,
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but it was from a
religious point of view.
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Then they were the ranters,
who were ranting and railing,
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they were the sort of the
ones with the end of the world,
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you know, "The end of the
world is upon us," type stuff.
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Most significantly for me
as a Seventh-day Adventist
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and my views of prophecy,
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they were the
Fifth Monarchy Men.
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Oliver Cromwell
was most sympathetic
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to this group.
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They believe they
were at the end of history,
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as represented by
the image of Daniel 2
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and they were in the
fifth and final kingdom,
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soon to be replaced
by the kingdom of God.
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And, of course,
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that has an incredibly
self fulfilling aspect to it.
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But let me go back to
this figure of John Milton
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and his involvement in
this apocalyptic mindset.
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He outlived Oliver Cromwell.
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He nearly lost his life
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as a signatory
to the death penalty
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for the king when
the king's son came back.
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He hunted down those
regicides as they were called,
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but John Milton was so famous
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and so well
protected by well placed people
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that he escaped with his life.
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And went into some
obscurity but kept writing.
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And amazingly,
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even though he
lost his sight in 1652,
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he was only, I think
in his 40s at that time,
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lost his sight completely.
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In his blind condition
dictating to his daughter,
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he wrote,
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arguably the greatest
poem in the English language,
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a book length
poem called great...
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Sorry, called Paradise Lost.
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Just to give in other
word, Paradise Lost, 12 books.
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And Samuel Johnson,
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the literary figure of the time
said, "None wished it longer,"
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I believe as a
Seventh-day Adventist
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that it was
influential even in the thinking
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that characterizes my church,
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the so called
Great Controversy thing.
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And I want to read you
in the little time left
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an excerpt from
book 12 toward the end.
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And it just tells the story
of the rebellion in heaven,
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the creation of man, the
temptation and fall of man,
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and his expulsion from Eden.
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That's the whole book
of how paradise was lost.
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And at the end of this,
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he has the angel
explaining God's purposes.
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And I think this is
the succinct summary
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of the Great Controversy
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because the angel
speaks and then Adam says this,
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"But say, if our deliverer
up to heaven must re-ascend,
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what will betide
the few, His faithful,
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left among the unfaithful
herd, the enemies of truth?
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Who then shall guide His people?
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Who defend?
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Will they not deal
worse with His followers
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than with Him they dealt?
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"Be sure they
will," said the angel,
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"But from heaven he to
His own comfortable ascend
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the promise of the Father,
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who shall dwell
His spirit within them.
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And the law of faith
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working through
love upon their hearts,
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shall right to
guide them in all truth,
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and also armed
with spiritual armor,
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able to resist Satan's assaults
and quenches fiery darts.
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What man can do
against them, not afraid,
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go to the death
against such cruelties
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within what
consolations recompensed
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and often supported,
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so as shall amaze
their proudest persecutors,
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for the spirit
powered first on His apostles,
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whom He sends to
evangelize the nations.
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Then on all baptized,
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shell them with wondrous gifts
and you to speak old tongues
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and do old miracles as
did the Lord before them.
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Thus they win great
numbers of each nation
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to receive with joy,
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the tidings brought from heaven.
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At length their
ministry performed
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and race well run,
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their doctrine
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and their story
written left they die,
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but in their room
as they fall worn,
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wolves shall
succeed for teachers.
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Grievers wolves,
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who hold the
sacred mysteries of heaven
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to their own vile
advantage shall turn
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of lucre, and ambition,
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and the truth with superstitions
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and traditions taint.
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Left only in those
written records pure,
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though not but by
the spirit understood.
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Then shall they seek to
avail themselves of names,
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places and titles,
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and with these to
join secular power,
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the feigning still
to act by spiritual
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to themselves
appropriating the Spirit of God
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promised alike and
given to all believers,
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and from that pretense
spiritual laws by carnal power
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shall force on every conscience.
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Laws which none shall
find left in them and ruled,
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or what the spirit within
shall on the heart engrave.
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What will they then,
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but force the
spirit of grace itself
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and bind his consort liberty,
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what got and
build his living temples
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built by faith to stand,
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their own faith not another's,
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for on earth who
against faith and conscience
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can be heard infallible.
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Yet many will presume,
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whence heavy
persecution shall arise
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on all who in
the worship persevere
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of spirit and truth, the rest,
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far greater part
will deem in outward rites
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and specious forms
religion satisfied,
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truth shall retire,
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bestruck with slanderous darts
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and works of
faith rarely be found.
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So shall the
world go on to good,
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malignant to bad man benign,
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under her own weight
groaning till the day appear
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of respiration to the just
and vengeance to the wicked,
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at return of him,
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so lately promised to
thy aid the woman's seed,
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obscurely then foretold.
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Now amplier known
thy Savior and thy Lord.
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Last in the clouds from heaven
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to be revealed in
glory of the Father,
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to dissolve Satan
with his perverted world.
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Then raise from
the conflagrant mass,
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purged and refined,
new earth, new heavens,
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ages of endless date,
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founded in
righteousness and peace and love
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to bring forth fruits,
joy and eternal bliss."
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That's a fantastic summation
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of what the Bible tells
us in Revelation is to follow
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after this veil
of tears if you like.
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It's a fantastic
vision for a blind man
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dictating it in the real world.
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And as I read it, I
believe it's a verbal poem.
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It's not...
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Even though it's a
language of the King James Bible
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closer to that era than today,
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it's really got that dynamic
of someone reading it out
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and turning it rather than,
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you know,
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intellectually
putting words on paper.
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But he was speaking there
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of the religious
theological overlay
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that the Puritans had brought
to their conflict in England,
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and I believe in a certain way,
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but a slightly twisted
way brought to the new world
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because Milton stayed behind,
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escaped
execution and kept writing.
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When the king came back
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and started
hunting down the regicides
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and the revolutionaries
from the civil war
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that now were
on the losing side,
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many of them,
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thousands fled
to the United States
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to the new world,
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mostly down south,
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but they fled
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and seeded the United States
with views that in my view,
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characterized
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or brought to bear
American exceptionalism,
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the idea of
religious entitlement,
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the idea that this
was a promised land,
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and they brought with them
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what they still sing in England,
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from the poet William Blake,
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you know, that
those feet in ancient time
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walk upon England's
green and pleasant land.
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And he says, "I will not
rest till I have built Jerusalem
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here in England."
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Well, that's
shifted, and in many ways,
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American exceptionalism
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and the idea that
no American president
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can ever
apologies for what we do
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is all derived
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from this Puritan
ethic revolution were here
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we're going to establish
the kingdom of God on earth.
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And yet Milton himself
said, "It's in the heart.
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It's not through power
and prestige and money."
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It's...
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As Jesus said, "The
kingdom is within you."
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And it really escaped
the Puritan revolutionaries.
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While much was good about era
00:10:18.58\00:10:20.48
and I would
defend Oliver Cromwell
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on a certain level,
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he's not quite the desperate
00:10:23.52\00:10:24.85
that revisionist
historians have put forth.
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In fact, he's carved into
the stone Reformation wall
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in Geneva, Switzerland,
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one of the great
heroes of the Reformation,
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but they revolutionary,
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politically
revolutionary fervor,
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I think translates
badly in the new world,
00:10:40.20\00:10:43.61
particularly
into a secular dynamic
00:10:43.64\00:10:46.14
that has strengthened religion
00:10:46.17\00:10:48.51
purely by its insistence
00:10:48.54\00:10:50.35
on a separation
of church and state
00:10:50.38\00:10:51.98
because it is not a
separationist's viewpoint.
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It's a triumphalist view
that rolls the secular state
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and the coming
promised kingdom of God,
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all into one hole.
00:11:01.59\00:11:04.29
John Milton, Paradise
Lost, The Great Controversy,
00:11:04.33\00:11:08.26
it's all part of
the exciting theme
00:11:08.30\00:11:10.77
that we carry forward.
00:11:10.80\00:11:12.33
And we need to be very careful,
00:11:12.37\00:11:14.00
we keep the parts
discrete and separate
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and understand fully
the dynamic of then and now.
00:11:16.60\00:11:21.78
I'll be back shortly.
00:11:21.81\00:11:23.38