Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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And before the
break, I was sharing
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the experiences
of Stanley Jones,
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a missionary to
India and his epiphany
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where he discovered the secret
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to communicating
Christ to an alien religion
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and a different
people, another place,
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but he particularized Jesus
to the context of the Indians
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without compromising his
message in the slightest,
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in fact, hardly he
went to the root of it.
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But I thought today,
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how do we do such a thing
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and particularly from the
point of religious liberty?
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How do we practice our faith
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in a way that
makes a difference?
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And we determined
to resist any effort
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to restrict our
allegiance to God.
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I'm very partial
to great preacher
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of 100 plus years ago,
Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
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He was a Baptist
preacher in England,
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called the Prince of Preachers.
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And, you know, I watch
a few television preachers
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and I don't think any of them
are threatening his dominance,
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but, you know,
he's sort of a classic
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like Shakespeare
in his own sphere
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and many, many sermons published
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and still available
online or in bookstores.
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I thought I've
got a print out here
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I thought would give
the number of the sermon,
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but I've seen numbers,
you know, in the thousands.
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And I don't wanna
share from one of them,
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it was titled Daniel
facing the lion's den.
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And, of course,
in religious liberty,
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you know, Daniel's
faithfulness is legendary,
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great illustration,
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whether it's
Daniel before Arioch
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the head of the eunuchs,
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where Daniel and his fellows
wouldn't eat the king's food,
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that was pretty heavy.
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They likely were
risking their lives even then.
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Then his companions
on the Plains of Dura,
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resisting the king's command
under pain of death to worship,
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he and his gods or his
God that he directed there
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the perverted image
given to him in a dream,
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and then Daniel
in the lion's den,
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which followed
from his faithfulness
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under an edict again of death,
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and that you had to
worship the king, nothing else.
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So he goes and praise publicly.
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To me, that's an
amazing act of defiance,
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not in a defined sense,
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but not being willing
to change his normal habit,
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his worship and
habits of worship to God
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because of an outside edict.
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He could have prayed silently.
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I don't think
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he would have been
compromising his faith,
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but Daniel saw
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that he would have been
compromising his integrity
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if he had not done that.
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So Spurgeon preached eloquently,
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very long sermon
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because that's
changed over the years.
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We like 15, 20
minutes sermons now
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or for the sake of this program,
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30 minutes is good,
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but I'll just share
with you a few paragraphs
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and he said something about this
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in the context of
Daniel's being faithful,
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and he says, "Men have declined
to carry a light burden,
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and been constrained
to bear a far heavier one.
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They have fled from the
bear, and the lion has met them,
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they have sought to
escape from the serpent,
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but the dragon
has devoured them.
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To shrink from duty
is always perilous."
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It's I think, sobering
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when you think about
that and he says further,
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"To demoralize
yourselves in a demoralized time
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is a desperate alternative.
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Better to go
forward, better to go forward.
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Better, I say,
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even though you
may have no armor.
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The safest thing is to go on.
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Even if there
are lions in front,
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it is better to go ahead
for if you turn your back
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the stars in their
courses will fight against you."
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And then he says
something that I've often quoted
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because I think of it directly
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on our religious
liberty challenge
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and even some of
the soft challenges
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of the COVID-19 era.
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He says, "Now it
is a great privilege
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that we enjoy civil
and religious liberty
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in our favored land."
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He's talking about England,
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but you can say
that about the US
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and I often tell people
tell us with I'm using on this,
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that on civil
liberties in general
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and religious
liberty in particular,
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nobody's against such things.
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I mean, people live
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under a whole
gamut of restrictions
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to great freedoms,
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but nobody's
against those restrictions.
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Everyone's for those principles.
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Even the Soviet Union
had religious liberty,
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ensconced in its constitution,
but we know very well,
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that was hardly
granted in a practical sense.
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And every country I've been to
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even some quite restrictive ones
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within the country,
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whenever the people are
talking among themselves
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in public rallies or whatever
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they always say
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this is the
greatest freest country
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in the world,
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of course, saying
it doesn't make it so,
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but they think it so.
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When you get in a
cultural echo chamber,
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that's what people say,
it's a rare country when I say,
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"Oh, this is the
worst country in the world."
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You know, maybe the, you know,
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there's a dark comedy
that did around LaBore
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at making fun of Kazakhstan,
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you know, maybe such a mythical
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or perverted take
on a little country
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that, you know,
they were horrible
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and all of that.
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Nobody says that.
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The smallest of
the largest country,
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they're the
greatest, the most favored,
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but it isn't so in reality.
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So he was talking about England.
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And he says, "Now we're in,
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it's a great
privilege that we enjoy
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civil and religious
liberty in our favored land,
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that we are not
under such cruel laws,
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as in other times
or in other countries
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laid
restrictions upon conscience,
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and that we may pray,
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according to the
conviction of our judgment
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and the desire of our heart."
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Certainly that's true in the US.
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You know some rather miss...
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Some people would
rather misunderstand
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religious liberty
decry that you can't pray
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as you wish at public gatherings
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in a public school setting
under the government auspices,
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but they missed the whole point.
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You don't want the government
to tell you how to pray,
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but by no means
in the United States
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is an individual
forbidden to pray among friends,
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or in any place other than
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a government
controlled environment.
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And he says, you know,
we're not forbidden to pray.
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But he says, I want you...
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"But as I want you to
value the privilege very much,
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I will put a
supposition to you."
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And this is what I want
you viewer to think about.
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"Suppose there was
only one place in the world
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where a man might pray
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and offer his
supplication unto God.
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Well, I think there
is not a man among us
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that would not like to get there
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at some time or
other, at least to die there.
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What pains we would
take to reach the locality,
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and what
pressure we would endure
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to enter the edifice!
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If there were only
one house of prayer
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in all the world,
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and prayer could
be heard nowhere else,
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oh, what tugging and
squeezing and toiling,
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there would be to
get into that place!
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But now that
people may pray anywhere,
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how they slight the exercise
and neglect the privilege!"
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We're thinking,
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if in a tie or
put it another way,
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colloquially,
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if now, when it's
allowed everywhere,
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there's no overt restriction,
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and we're neglecting
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what lies behind
religious liberty,
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religious practice.
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If we're neglecting that,
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how will we ever know
when restriction comes?
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And I'll put it
even more directly.
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I thought it long
and hard about this
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in the great stream of history
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and the devolution of any system
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in the United States,
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some hundreds of years down
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from setting up a
great constitution idealists,
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some of them
religious, some not,
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but and put
within the Constitution,
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a great respect
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and an exaltation of
the value of conscience
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and religious liberty.
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Now so far down in history,
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where we have radical
changes are taking place,
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where as I said,
in another program,
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even the United States
is roaring like a dragon,
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controlling people's destinies,
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reaching out
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telling other
countries what to do,
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meddling in this than the
other sometimes with cause,
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but it's hardly
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a quiet
introspective country anymore
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where we're around
this prophecy is fulfilling
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religious persecutions
abroad are palpably obvious,
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and the dead
bodies lying in the...
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Whether it's
the Kurdish villages
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or the Yazidis,
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or the Christians
killed in the Middle East.
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It's been easily
characterized of late
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that this is the second
great killing persecution
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in the Christian era.
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We're living through it.
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And if what's happened
now hasn't stirred someone.
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I hardly think, in
the next and final phase,
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when someone
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practicing the true
religion as Daniel did,
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if such a person is
to present themselves,
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I hardly think
that the nominalist
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who are not troubled
by these times would know
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or even be in a position
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to see that as a
final restriction.
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I'll put it
another way in a figure
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that I've read somewhere once,
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but I've used under the Lord,
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you know, in pre
World War II Germany,
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the Jews,
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who were always a
little bit marginalized,
00:09:55.16\00:09:58.36
admittedly, not
the story of Germany,
00:09:58.39\00:10:00.10
but Dreyfus in
France was victimized
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because he was a Frenchman.
00:10:05.37\00:10:06.80
And that's a horrible
tragedy, but here in Germany,
00:10:06.84\00:10:09.80
they were marginalized.
00:10:09.84\00:10:11.17
The Nazis came in
restriction after restriction,
00:10:11.21\00:10:15.01
and each time they
accommodated figuring this will,
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it'll get
better, it'll get better.
00:10:17.85\00:10:20.28
And finally they were
sent off to the camps.
00:10:20.32\00:10:23.12
If at any midpoint
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when they were
smashing the windows,
00:10:24.52\00:10:25.85
when their
citizenship was taken away,
00:10:25.89\00:10:27.96
they had realized
what the end would be.
00:10:27.99\00:10:29.79
They would run for their
lives, but they adjusted,
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they recognized or
thought they recognize.
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Well, this will be
bearable, we'll hang tough.
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Same thing now when
we see the developments
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toward a very liberal approach
to anyone's practice of faith.
00:10:43.64\00:10:49.74
We've got to stand up,
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first of all, in
our own practice,
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do what's right, show
our faith to stand forth,
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and as Ellen White speaking
to Seventh-day Adventist
00:10:58.79\00:11:01.32
in the early day, she says,
00:11:01.36\00:11:02.69
show your colors
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the world has a right
to know what you believe.
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Don't hide it.
00:11:07.03\00:11:08.43
You know that not a survey
00:11:08.46\00:11:09.96
that talks about
what your health practices
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when we really want
to share spiritual faith.
00:11:11.83\00:11:14.37
This is important.
00:11:14.40\00:11:15.74
This is the time and
I'm absolutely convinced
00:11:15.77\00:11:19.37
that we need clear
perception, clear energy,
00:11:19.41\00:11:22.61
and a response
fitting the times.
00:11:22.64\00:11:26.41