Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is your program
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that will bring
you up-to-date news,
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views, discussion,
analysis on religious liberty
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in the US and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
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and I'm editor
of Liberty Magazine.
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And my guest on this
program is Pati Lawrence.
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Pati, welcome. Thank you.
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And I could characterize you
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as a religious liberty advocate.
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You're a Seventh-day Adventist.
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A very Seventh-day Adventist.
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But, you know, I'd like to,
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before we talk
about some of the things
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that you've done
recently and experienced,
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because I know you're just
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full of the
excitement of possibilities
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in the religious
liberty advocacy work
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in contacting government leaders
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and officials in the community.
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How did you come
to where you are?
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How did you become even
a Seventh-day Adventist?
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What's your background?
Well, I'm glad you asked.
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But first, thank
you for having me.
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And it's always good to see you.
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It's always good.
Yeah. We had many contacts.
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Oh, great conversations also.
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I grew up in a home
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where we didn't
have prayer in the home.
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My parents were Catholic.
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I was baptized
Catholic as a baby,
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which I didn't have any
upbringing in the church.
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I think the only
time we went to church
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was if there was a
wedding or a funeral.
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But I can remember I
was about 10 years old.
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And I started to feel that
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there's something somewhere that
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I should worship, but what?
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I had no idea.
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So I started my journey.
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And it may sound
strange, but when I was 10,
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I'm going to age myself
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but the Beatles
were coming to America.
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The Beatles, and
they started studying,
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I'd see on television,
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Maharishi Mahesh
and I thought that's it.
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That's who I'm supposed to.
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And what did your
parents say about this?
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They were oblivious.
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They really didn't
pay any attention there.
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I don't think I ever heard
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the word God or
Jesus in the home.
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We didn't own a
Bible in the home.
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So they were Catholic you
said they were born into...
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They were born into.
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Into sort of an identity
rather than the calling.
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Exactly.
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And so I would try to
watch the off channels.
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I think it was
5428 with a static
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when the Beatles
would sit cross leg
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with the Maharishi
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and I would do the
same 10, 11, 12 years old.
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And after a while, I
thought, "No, this can't be it."
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It just felt
like it was shallow.
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It was empty.
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Then Hare Krishna
emerged on the scene.
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Okay, so there I was.
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That's it. Uh-huh. That's it.
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That's what I'm
supposed to worship.
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Again emptiness.
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So I went through the years
of Jehovah Witness, Mormon.
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So you really
didn't get involved
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with Hare Krishnas,
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you just were
attracted to it briefly.
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I would begin the study.
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And I would learn a
little bit about it.
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But I would then
start to feel this pullback
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where it just didn't feel
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that there was
any substance to it.
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I didn't feel any connection.
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It was empty. It
was really empty.
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I've got to tell you something.
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You know, I grew up
in roughly the same era.
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And I do remember the attraction
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of the not so much the Maharishi
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but the Hare Krishnas.
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And I remember I was back
in Australia at that time,
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and one Christmas time,
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I was sitting at the
town square in Melbourne.
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Just sort of watching
the crowd and suddenly,
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I hear tambourines
banging in and I look around,
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and here is a
crowd of Santa Clauses,
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probably 30 or 40
of them all dressed
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in beautiful
Santa Claus outfits,
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with tambourines came along.
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And then I looked and
they were all barefoot.
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They were Hare Krishnas dressed
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of the Santa
Claus to attract people
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to the season wandering funds.
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And which was sort of
crazy, but it shared the appeal.
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And I do remember in that era,
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there was a
great spiritual hunger
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with young people.
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And this is what was going on.
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And many older people
saw this, sneered at it,
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but even then I took it that
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there was
something serious going on.
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And, of course, it
manifested itself later
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with the Jesus
movement if you remember.
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Keep going. Exactly, exactly.
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And the barefootness
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I think I still hold on to that.
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I love being, I'm barefoot
and in flip flops that I...
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Well, I got cured of it
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when I got
plantar warts on my foot.
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Okay, yeah.
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There's a lot of bugs
that you could pick up.
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Exactly.
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So I just, then I
stopped for a while.
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I sort of gave up
and I thought, all right,
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I'm not meant to worship
or know who God Jesus creator,
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I didn't know.
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I was married.
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My daughter was
turning five years old.
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And then this calling again.
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And there's something
inside me that kept saying,
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"Don't put her
in a public school.
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Find a private school for her."
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So I searched, I tried
the Lutheran schools didn't,
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I didn't care for it.
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Catholicism, I tried
the Catholic and nope,
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that's not going to work.
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So one evening, my father owned
a lot of rental properties.
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And one evening
I was at his home,
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and he's
playing with my daughter
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and everybody's having fun.
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And I said, "Dad,
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do you have any
books that I can read?"
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Then he says, "You know,
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I just cleaned out an apartment.
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There's a box of
books they left behind.
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Go on the garage,
you'll see a big box of books."
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Well, yes.
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This was in about 1980/81.
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And I found a book
called "The Legacy."
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Now, The Legacy
was about Kellogg,
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and it was about
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Adventist hospitals and schools.
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A little bit about the church,
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but more about the hospitals
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and the schools
and I said, "Schools."
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Where are
Seventh-day Adventists?
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I didn't know.
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I had no, I'd never heard
about Seventh-day Adventists.
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I read the book
took it home with me.
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I started calling around
the closest Adventists school
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was West Covina Hills,
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but at the time we were renting,
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we were renting, this church
still hadn't been built there
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in West Covina Hills.
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My wife's sister
used to live in that area
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so I know it very, very well.
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Okay.
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I lived in Claremont.
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I lived in the Clermont area.
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So I called and I
spoke with the pastor's wife,
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and she was very
friendly and said,
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"Come on down, come visit us."
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So I did and I felt
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just the acceptance
of the sincerity of her
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and many of the other
mothers that were there.
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I said, "This is it.
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I'm putting her
in the school here."
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She went through K
through eight West Covina Hills
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and I went through
the years with her.
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The pastor and his wife,
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his family, they
took us under their wing.
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It was and the pastor's
wife would always say to me,
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John 3:16.
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And I was like, "Okay."
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I would listen to
her through the years.
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But I enrolled
her in the school,
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I think 1980/81 like I said,
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we were building our church,
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the church was finally
built, the school was built,
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she was one of the first classes
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in the school.
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And it didn't,
it took until 1989
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that I was baptized.
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And I'll tell you
why it took that long.
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I don't know
why it took so long.
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I was, she was
in the adventurers,
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she was in the school, we
were active in the church,
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but there was
something I don't know.
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I found a book one
day at an antique store
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called Synopsis
of the Present Truth
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by Uriah Smith, 1884.
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You're throwing
me at every point.
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When you found the first book
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I thought you're going
to say Great Controversy,
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because I know
this, many of those
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that have been
sold and put on shelves,
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and I've myself seen them
in sight on sidewalk sales
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and just sort of
been cleared out.
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And on one level
yes, they weren't used.
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But they disseminated,
they're just in the system.
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And many people
have discovered truth
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because of them.
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But yeah, you're right.
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It was The Legacy of a
Kellogg and the health message.
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You were getting at the source.
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Uriah Smith. Yeah.
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Synopsis of the
Present Truth, 1884.
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It's an original copy.
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And that started with Daniel
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and then
Revelation that convicted me.
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I said, "Thank you, God.
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Thank you, God."
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And I was baptized,
I still have the book.
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And I did a search recently.
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And the search I found
said there aren't many copies
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or any, any around.
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And it's very rare.
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And I think one
article I read said,
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there is one copy around,
I thought I have that copy.
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I won't tell you my
address, I have that copy.
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Should check
with the White Estate
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that keep a
record of these things.
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I should.
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Well, they might try
to steal it from you,
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but that's a treasure.
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And more than just the book
what it contains, of course,
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that's the root thinking
that established our church.
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Exactly.
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And I hold on to our
pioneers on my refrigerator.
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I have a
article on Joseph Bates,
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Our Core Values,
Back To Our Core Values.
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And what do you
know, discovering naturally
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that Adventism
is not Ellen White.
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Ellen White was a major pioneer,
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but they were a number of others
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that were deeply
studying the Bible
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and prophecies and
arrived at these determinations.
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And then there
was the confirmation
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we believe divinely
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but it's not
right at all to think
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that it was sort of a
singular prophetic voice
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and everyone getting around.
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No, that's like Joseph
Bates, Uriah Smith, James White.
00:09:14.92\00:09:18.52
Yes. So I was convicting.
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Even A.T. Jones, first editor
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of our
religious liberty channel.
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I have one of his books
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I believe it's
called Rights of the People.
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I have read his books. Yes.
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And he wrote
about the two kingdoms.
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And a lot of political,
religio-political analysis.
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Yes.
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So there was the substance,
there was the truth for me,
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unlike any other thing
that I've ever dabbled with.
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And as you move
through the faith spectrum,
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you'd come
across even some more.
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I did.
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Well, my daughter was baptized.
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I was baptized in '89.
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Years later, I left
Adventism I don't know why,
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I still to this day try
to think why did I leave.
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And I embraced Islam,
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I became a Muslim
for quite a few years.
00:10:01.43\00:10:03.60
And what attracted you to Islam?
00:10:03.63\00:10:04.97
What was the contact on that?
00:10:05.00\00:10:06.47
You know, I met a
family, I worked with someone,
00:10:06.50\00:10:08.44
I met a family, and
the love that they had
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and there're
similarities to Adventism.
00:10:12.11\00:10:15.04
And it was after 9/11.
00:10:15.08\00:10:17.91
And my heart just was
drawn to these people.
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First of all,
just for compassion.
00:10:20.38\00:10:22.08
I saw some of the...
00:10:22.12\00:10:25.55
I saw some of the family
went through their teenage boy,
00:10:25.59\00:10:28.09
one day when I
was over visiting,
00:10:28.12\00:10:29.62
and he comes home,
00:10:29.66\00:10:31.06
and he didn't want
his mother to pick him up
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from school anymore.
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She wore the hijab, she wore,
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and he would be
teased in school.
00:10:35.30\00:10:36.90
He came home one day,
00:10:36.93\00:10:38.30
yelling and screaming
at his mother and say,
00:10:38.33\00:10:39.97
I'm ashamed of you,
don't dress like that,
00:10:40.00\00:10:41.57
I'm being picked on,
I'm being beat up in school.
00:10:41.60\00:10:43.97
And it was sad. It
just broke my heart.
00:10:44.01\00:10:45.71
But I had
already left the church,
00:10:45.74\00:10:48.58
I really can't say
why, but I embraced it.
00:10:48.61\00:10:52.38
And it was. I don't have...
00:10:52.41\00:10:55.55
You know you've
had a personal journey.
00:10:55.58\00:10:57.15
And there are so many
dynamic personal dynamics
00:10:57.19\00:11:01.39
that affect that.
00:11:01.42\00:11:02.76
But I think at the end,
00:11:02.79\00:11:04.13
it's given you more
than a typical understanding
00:11:04.16\00:11:07.30
of different faith viewpoints.
00:11:07.33\00:11:09.23
It has.
00:11:09.26\00:11:10.60
And this is and I'm
sure you understand,
00:11:10.63\00:11:12.53
but we need to
reiterate it for our viewers,
00:11:12.57\00:11:14.77
that religious liberty
is not a matter of defending
00:11:14.80\00:11:18.81
just any one religion.
00:11:18.84\00:11:21.24
It comes hard
to a lot of people.
00:11:21.28\00:11:23.45
At this point, you
and I are quite convinced
00:11:23.48\00:11:27.08
that we found the truth.
00:11:27.12\00:11:29.65
But with religious
liberty principles,
00:11:29.68\00:11:31.85
even knowing you have the truth,
00:11:31.89\00:11:33.29
you have to defend the right
00:11:33.32\00:11:34.92
of all other
believers of whatever system
00:11:34.96\00:11:37.99
because they're children of God,
00:11:38.03\00:11:39.36
they've made a choice of
conviction and conscience,
00:11:39.39\00:11:42.70
and you defend them
00:11:42.73\00:11:44.07
even to the death if necessary,
00:11:44.10\00:11:45.43
doesn't mean you
think they're right.
00:11:45.47\00:11:48.54
In fact, I think, you know,
some of the belief systems are,
00:11:48.57\00:11:52.44
you know, I almost wonder
how could anybody come with it,
00:11:52.47\00:11:55.84
you know, it's just craziness?
00:11:55.88\00:11:58.21
But they have a right
and I have to respect it
00:11:58.25\00:12:00.48
and the dignity of
humanity means that
00:12:00.52\00:12:04.02
they might think the same as me.
00:12:04.05\00:12:05.62
So I give them
00:12:05.65\00:12:07.06
the full freedom for protection.
00:12:07.09\00:12:08.76
Let's take a break now
00:12:08.79\00:12:10.19
and we'll come back
and talk a little bit more
00:12:10.23\00:12:12.69
with Pati about
her faith journey.
00:12:12.73\00:12:14.76