Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a program designed
to get you thinking about
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religious liberty in
the US and around the world
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and to bring you some
up-to-date information
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on religious freedom
and how you can relate
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to this very
important principle.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
Editor of Liberty Magazine,
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and my guest on the program
is Alden Ho, Pastor Alden Ho.
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Interesting
background, Singapore, Canada,
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now pastor in the US and Texas,
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and I know, a man of a
lot of technological insight.
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So let's talk about
something that we've touched
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on a few times in
the past on this program.
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But I think in the
wake of the COVID pandemic
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or not in the wake, but
we're in the middle of it.
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We're right in it.
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Electronics is
not to be dismissed.
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And, of course,
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we're now
communicating primarily
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through all sorts
of social networks
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and Zoom for meetings and so on.
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So we're very
beholden, very under the thumb,
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if you like of technology.
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Do you see a
role or a possibility
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as we move into all of this,
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that the very
technology that we need
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and love could really inhibit
freedom in religious practice?
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You know, I was...
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As you're
talking, I'm thinking about
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how would the world be
today amidst this COVID-19 thing
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if there was no
internet right now?
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People would go
stir crazy literally,
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they would because
people don't even know
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how to go outside and
do the regular things.
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But today with all
this that's going on.
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Everything is
getting down to control,
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getting down to
passing on information.
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The national centre for
whatever that they have...
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Disease.
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No, no, no, it's where
they collect information.
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It's a data collection
place, and they're just dumping
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lots and lots of
information about you and I
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and everybody else.
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Well, I don't know
if you've studied it,
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but it's a few decades now
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since the US government decided
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as an aspiration
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which they are making a reality
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to collect all information.
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Everything, as
much as they can, yeah.
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Everything, they
haven't limited their scope,
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everything, all electronic data.
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And it's being
sucked up like a vacuum
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and kept in giant
memory storage devices
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and then sifted
through in more and more
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sophisticated manner.
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I remember when it
first came up in Washington,
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it was called Project Carnivore.
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Carnivore.
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And that
bothered a lot of people
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'cause that
sounds rather sinister.
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Yeah. So they
had to change that.
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But, you know, we're in an
era where the craziest things,
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at least for a time,
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some of them are
given respectability.
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I can remember early on,
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I think, it was in
the Bush administration.
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I listened to a lot
of hearings in Congress,
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and it came out that
out of the White House,
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they were running a
terrorism futures operation.
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They were having people invest
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in paying or putting money on
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this date for a
terrorist thing or that date,
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and they had a very
complicated algorithm,
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and they believe that
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the investment
pattern itself would predict
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when the event would take place.
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That's crazy.
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And it was shut down
quickly when the Senate has got
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an inkling of it.
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But I think in some ways
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through a lot of the
sifting of information
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and the seeing patterns
of visiting different sites
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and the choices that people see.
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We're basically being
double guests in a group way
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by the electronic medium,
or those that control it,
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the high priests
of the new technology.
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So why do you
think they're doing this?
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Why do you think
they're collecting this?
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I don't think there's
always a bad intention,
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but a tool has been
handed to the modern overseers
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to control populations
or not so much control,
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to oversee, and to understand
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even almost
what you're thinking.
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But, you know, all this,
we know that all these things
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are going to be used against us,
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for God's
people in the end time.
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I mean, even just not even
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dealing with the World Wide Web,
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even the credit card.
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They know,
through American Express,
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my spending habit,
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they know where I
go, they know what I buy.
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And if I go to a place
that I not normally go,
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I get a phone call
while I swipe that card
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or insert that
card, I get a phone call
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from American
Express and they said,
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"Mr. Ho, we're just making sure
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are you at such
and such a place?"
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They're
collecting this, they know.
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They know my spending habit,
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they know that I don't go out
and buy things on the Sabbath.
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All this is being collected.
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And I think one of these days
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it's going to
be used against us.
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Of course, and in all societies,
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information that comes
up is used, it's evidence.
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Depending on how
free the society is,
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it's used more and more,
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or more or less aggressively,
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but it'll be cited, I'm sure.
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Yeah, years ago,
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and I've
mentioned on this program,
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a fellow church member
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who worked in
some major downtown
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Washington
government office of...
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I don't know the
title but, you know,
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the computer processing center,
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he would come and he
says "You have no idea."
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He says that they
understand everything about you,
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what you're
just saying, he says,
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"You don't have to know
who's a member of the church
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or a political
organization or whatever."
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He says, "For example
a Seventh-day Adventist,"
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he says, "Your car
has got a built in GPS,"
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not the one that
people know about.
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There's a GPS in every car
and the car companies told me
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about it years ago,
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they can switch
your car off remotely,
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anywhere and it
tells where it is.
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The GPS, your buying
habits, your phone tracks you.
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And so you put all that
into a matrix and he says,
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"When that's all put
in, there's a huge hole
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around the
Sabbath in your travel,
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your buying
habits, your location,
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the whole deal."
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Hopefully,
there's a hole around you.
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No, I don't mind
that. That's great.
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I'm self-identified as
a Seventh-day Adventist.
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I think.
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But you must
remember, information cut loose
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from context
can be very damning.
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And I remember
hearing an FBI agent
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once on YouTube
explaining this and he says,
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"Just remember," he says,
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"You're not the
one that gets to decide
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what is right or
wrong about what you do."
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But I think...
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It's a construction
someone else puts on it.
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The greater concern
that we have to have
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is not so much about
Uncle Sam watching over us
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but to understand
that even more so,
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even more not just
where we go and what we do...
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Now first of all the watchers,
that used to be the term
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for the angels,
the heavily beings.
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Right. They watch but...
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But our thoughts are
even being recorded in heaven.
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Right.
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So that should be
a greater concern.
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Absolutely.
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And I always try
to point this out,
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you know, the mark
of the beast, which...
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Adventists are only one group
that read that in the Bible,
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and, you know, people
can run amuck on that.
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Not that important,
it's a matter of loyalty
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and whether or not
it's some sort of barcode
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or a tattoo on your
arm, doesn't really matter.
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If you understand the dynamic,
we have to be loyal to the God.
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And when we talk about
these mechanisms of control,
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you can't be so
paranoid that, you know,
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in the worst case people
wear a tin hat, the cut out,
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the, you know, the
attempt to hack their brain.
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But may or may not have
some validity in some cases.
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But, you know, if
you live in such fear,
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there's no escaping,
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I mean, because
it's crowding in on us,
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that I think we need to know.
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As Jesus said, "We're coming
to a time of such hazard."
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He says, "Unless
those days be shortened,
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no flesh will survive."
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He didn't just say
no faith would survive.
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Right, yeah.
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These are hazardous times
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and I think man
and his progress,
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which is wonderful, you know,
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we're going through a period of,
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I mean, COVID's a bad
period, but, you know,
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generally speaking,
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the progress of
man has been great.
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I mean, even kings didn't have
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a toilet in their
palace in old days.
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You look back at, you
know, the Roman Emperor,
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he didn't live as good
as someone in the tenements
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of New York, you know.
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But we're creating a
situation that has a downside.
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And this is why I'm so bothered
about the social distancing.
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We shouldn't let
the worst aspects
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of this takeover
from the clear advantages,
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practical
advantages that modernization
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has brought to us.
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But this is all
brought about now
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because everybody
has their electronics,
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unless you're on
an old flip phone or,
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you know, what
they call a dumb phone,
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today everything
is being ramped up
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so that they can
collect more information,
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supposedly, to be able to
know everything about you that
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even you don't
even know yourself.
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Well, that's the
theory of these algorithms
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that they work,
that supposedly they can,
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you know, Hollywood
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is not very
sophisticated in many areas.
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I think it's a cesspool
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of unchristian behavior.
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But, you know, just
like science fiction books
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of another era,
they're sort of extrapolating
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what they know
00:09:53.52\00:09:54.86
and there was that
movie, was it Inception?
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I think was, but the idea
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that you can
identify a future crime.
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That's really
where we're heading now
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since 9/11.
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After the terrorist
incident that we saw
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there where
someone killed himself
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committing the crime.
00:10:08.54\00:10:09.87
You can't wait to
catch them doing it,
00:10:09.90\00:10:11.41
you need to look back
on a line of causality
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and identify someone
that might do such a thing.
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But China's
already doing these things
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by giving their
citizens certain reward points
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for their behavior.
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So are you a
good Chinese citizen?
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Is that coming to the US?
00:10:25.69\00:10:27.89
I spoke to a woman recently
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who had just come back
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from a visit to China,
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where she'd visited
several home churches.
00:10:36.10\00:10:38.50
And she said that the...
00:10:38.53\00:10:42.17
at least in the major areas,
00:10:42.20\00:10:43.64
when you're
travelling along the road,
00:10:43.67\00:10:45.11
the radar is
tracking not only your speed
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but photographing
you inside the car
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to see what you're
doing inside the car.
00:10:51.35\00:10:53.38
And when you turn off the road
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to go to a
little town to a church,
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it immediately tags that
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and it'll go back
to the central control
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and alert them that
00:11:02.59\00:11:04.69
you're now freelancing
so they can track you down.
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And I even saw an
English car program recently
00:11:07.80\00:11:11.13
and they were laughing about it.
00:11:11.17\00:11:12.70
They were driving it, not
along the freeway in China
00:11:12.73\00:11:17.24
and it was just
constant flash, ding, ding,
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every 100, 200 yards, no
more the light was going off
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and photographing their speed
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and what you're
doing inside the car.
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It's interesting 'cause
I was over there in China
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and I preached
several years ago.
00:11:30.02\00:11:31.92
And it was a hot
day but when I actually
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went to start
preaching on a second level
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with all these
Bible workers there
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and elders, they
closed all the blinds,
00:11:38.66\00:11:41.20
they closed the windows,
they closed all the drapery,
00:11:41.23\00:11:43.80
and then they turned
on the air conditioning,
00:11:43.83\00:11:45.97
so that my voice
could not be heard outside
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or anything like that
00:11:48.60\00:11:49.94
just to protect
me from speaking.
00:11:49.97\00:11:52.54
But there are
satellites that can have radar
00:11:52.57\00:11:57.01
that will see through a home
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and from space can
see who's in the home
00:11:59.15\00:12:01.52
and I think under
some circumstances
00:12:01.55\00:12:03.39
even pick up the sound.
00:12:03.42\00:12:04.75
It's phenomenal.
00:12:04.79\00:12:06.12
We're in an age of outstanding
scientific development.
00:12:06.15\00:12:09.72
And by the way
I thought of it...
00:12:09.76\00:12:12.16
A few years ago I
visited your church
00:12:12.19\00:12:15.36
and you had a
drone, as I remember,
00:12:15.40\00:12:17.73
pretty sophisticated drone.
00:12:17.77\00:12:19.10
I thought of you when
I saw one of the pictures
00:12:19.13\00:12:21.00
out of Wuhan.
00:12:21.04\00:12:22.37
They had drones on
the road holding up signs
00:12:22.40\00:12:26.04
telling people what to do,
but the drone was fixed there,
00:12:26.07\00:12:28.64
it wasn't travelling around.
00:12:28.68\00:12:30.75
And again, the drone's watching.
00:12:30.78\00:12:32.55
And actually, to come
to think of technology
00:12:32.58\00:12:34.95
I saw and you also were
born in Singapore, right?
00:12:34.98\00:12:40.12
In Singapore, they are using...
00:12:40.16\00:12:43.32
Since they don't
want officials out
00:12:43.36\00:12:44.83
and around among the
population picking up COVID,
00:12:44.86\00:12:47.60
they have robotic
dogs that were developed
00:12:47.63\00:12:52.40
by the US military
roaming around in the parks
00:12:52.43\00:12:55.50
and they look very sinister
and in their fullest equipment,
00:12:55.54\00:12:59.87
you know, they have weaponry
00:12:59.91\00:13:02.61
where they will
kill you with them.
00:13:02.64\00:13:03.98
And they're taking pictures
00:13:04.01\00:13:05.35
and they're
recording what you're doing.
00:13:05.38\00:13:06.72
Right. And it's speaking
00:13:06.75\00:13:08.08
and it's
interacting with the people
00:13:08.12\00:13:09.45
and so this dog's...
00:13:09.48\00:13:10.82
And back in the control booth,
the guy's watching can see
00:13:10.85\00:13:13.66
how people react
and treat this dog.
00:13:13.69\00:13:17.33
But it's science
fiction, pure and simple.
00:13:17.36\00:13:20.00
And these dogs,
nothing can upend them.
00:13:20.03\00:13:22.36
They can climb any barrier,
00:13:22.40\00:13:25.63
go quite fast,
climb a hill, whatever.
00:13:25.67\00:13:28.40
It's not just, you know,
00:13:28.44\00:13:29.97
the Lost in
Space Robinson family
00:13:30.01\00:13:33.81
thing with their
robots, you know, little wheels,
00:13:33.84\00:13:35.84
or like in the
supermarket, checking inventory,
00:13:35.88\00:13:38.65
no, these are incredible,
00:13:38.68\00:13:40.68
almost surreal
looking creatures.
00:13:40.72\00:13:43.28
And we're talking sometimes
about even the Jetson family.
00:13:43.32\00:13:46.72
But this is...
00:13:46.76\00:13:48.29
These dogs are,
they're monitoring,
00:13:48.32\00:13:51.09
they're watching,
00:13:51.13\00:13:52.46
they're doing all these
things, and it makes you wonder,
00:13:52.49\00:13:55.23
once again, more information,
more data collection.
00:13:55.26\00:13:57.80
Yeah.
00:13:57.83\00:13:59.17
And what are they going
to do with all this stuff?
00:13:59.20\00:14:00.54
Right. And...
00:14:00.57\00:14:03.74
I mean, I started
in religious liberty,
00:14:03.77\00:14:09.11
quoting from Tale of Two Cities.
00:14:09.14\00:14:11.11
That was part of my
literary upbringing,
00:14:11.15\00:14:13.11
you know,
Charles Dickens novel set
00:14:13.15\00:14:15.58
in the time of the
French Revolution between,
00:14:15.62\00:14:18.02
the Tale of Two
Cities is London and Paris,
00:14:18.05\00:14:20.62
London at peace, democracy,
00:14:20.66\00:14:23.02
and revolution
just across the channel.
00:14:23.06\00:14:25.53
And he begins it by saying
00:14:25.56\00:14:27.13
"It was the best of times,
00:14:27.16\00:14:28.63
it was the worst of times,"
and that's what we live in.
00:14:28.66\00:14:31.63
On one level,
it's never been better,
00:14:31.67\00:14:33.80
these advances are fantastic.
00:14:33.84\00:14:36.30
You know, who
would do without them?
00:14:36.34\00:14:37.71
But we need to
realize the worst lurks there,
00:14:37.74\00:14:40.24
and when times turn bad,
00:14:40.28\00:14:42.14
and when
persecution rears again,
00:14:42.18\00:14:44.31
even in the West.
00:14:44.35\00:14:46.15
This will
complicate things radically.
00:14:46.18\00:14:48.68
Let's take a break
now. We'll be back shortly.
00:14:48.72\00:14:50.92
Interesting
discussion I think of our times,
00:14:50.95\00:14:54.06
but with the eternal principle
of religious liberty at stake.
00:14:54.09\00:14:57.16
Stay with us.
00:14:57.19\00:14:58.53