Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider
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with my guest
Clifford Goldstein,
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we'd been ranging
over the whole world
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and maybe going on a
few different tangents,
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but all from a point
of religious liberty.
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Ellen White, the
Seventh-day Adventist visionary
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enlarging on some of
the prophetic understandings
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of Adventists about the role
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that the United
States would play in prophecy
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and picking up from Revelation
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where it speaks
of coercing people
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to worship a certain way
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under ultimately
punishment of death.
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Ellen White used the term
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that this would go out
throughout Christendom.
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In some places,
and in some you get
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the impression it's
talking about the world.
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Yes, but mostly
I've gone and counted up,
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mostly Christendom.
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But I don't so
much want to discuss
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whether how much of it,
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but that's an interesting term.
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You don't hear
that any to remember.
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No, no.
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In fact, you mostly
get it in history books
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talk about the crusades.
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But she wrote it
probably 100 years ago.
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Yes.
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But even then, I don't
think it was that common.
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Yeah.
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But, you know,
what's Christendom?
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I don't know
it's a hard question
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when you got Christianity
everywhere to some degree.
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That's true.
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Maybe the cultures
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where it's most
in a Western America,
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Western Europe,
parts of Latin America,
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Australia.
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But I have, I hear people that
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I think should know
better, but it's their view.
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They maintain resolutely
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that Europe is
not Christian anymore.
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Yeah, well, in a certain sense,
but they're still the vestiges.
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I used to work in
Switzerland illegally.
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I was an illegal.
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Statute of limitations I hope.
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Yeah, I used to work
over there illegally.
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And the people that I work with
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would never let me go with them.
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They used to work on Sundays.
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And they had
strict Sunday closing laws
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in a very secular
society, so even Holland.
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You're confirming
what I'm about to say.
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Oh, my goodness, Holland,
oh, and they're so liberal.
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Oh, my goodness,
that anything goes.
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But they have
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a lot of
closing laws in Holland,
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and these are vestiges,
vestiges of the Christian past.
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I think they're
more than vestiges.
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The people may not be
practicing their faith,
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but I put it to you,
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see if you differ
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because you've
traveled around on years ago,
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but still in experiential level
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where I literally
had to been a tourist
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when I went through Europe,
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you know, just flitting through.
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But I believe most,
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every people group
in Europe know exactly
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what their
religious affiliation is.
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Not their membership,
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but what they are
like in Northern Ireland,
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Roman Catholic
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other than the
Protestant immigrates that...
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If you go to Scandinavia,
they're all Lutherans.
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They're all in, I mean, Sweden.
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It was funny, I lived in Sweden
when I was about 20 years old,
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long before I
was, became a believer.
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And I'll never forget one day.
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I'm just walking somewhere.
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And I said to myself,
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"Man, this is the
most godless place
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I had ever been."
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Where was this again?
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Sweden, and I was like,
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the Swedish were just
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and yet it's
Lutheran from top to bottom,
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beginning to end
and Christmas Yule time.
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Man, everything shuts
down and there's Christian.
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And yet, these people
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really were just
about as secular,
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I'll use the kinder term secular
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as you're gonna meet.
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But their identification?
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Now they'll say
they are Lutherans.
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Those who have been
never to church in their life.
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Christendom
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is not a perfect
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but somewhat of an
analogue to the Islamic world
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where people are
born into something,
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they may not practice it.
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Islam is a little more rigorous.
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The culture is
shaped by religion,
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but they're not all observant.
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But you are
Muslim in many countries,
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just by virtue
of being born there.
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You're coming from
a Jewish perspective,
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before you know more.
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If you're not Jewish,
and you're not a Muslim,
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and you're not a Buddhist,
then you're a Christian period,
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whether you ever go to church,
that's how we always viewed it.
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And I think the US
Census which is just over,
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a lot of that follows there.
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There are many people
that put themselves down
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as one belief or another.
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They have no affiliation,
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but that's what
they come to with,
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sort of they
something inherited.
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And the type of
legislation that's imagined,
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but maybe that's the wrong word
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because it says imaginary.
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Yeah. You know, that's foreseen.
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Yeah.
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I think could carry very easily
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on this residual identification,
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it doesn't require a population
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that that's jumping up and down
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and yelling jihad
or crusade or whatever.
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And you mix that
together with the COVID thing,
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and just how...
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A little panic,
things sharpened greatly.
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I mean, imagine if it was,
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I think we said
in another program,
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imagine if this had a
5 or 10 or 20% death rate
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with COVID,
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can you imagine
what would be and...
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Well, you don't
have to imagine how,
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I think I mentioned it
earlier in another program.
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But right now,
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it doesn't seem to
spread but in the Middle East,
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they have MERS another COVID,
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another Coronavirus.
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It's called camel
flu, 40% mortality rate.
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So we could be in the
middle of something like that
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if it gets on a
plane and comes here.
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Well, that they have a 40,
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they got a disease
that's got a 40% mortal,
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a flu like disease?
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It's not flu like,
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it's the same
family as the Corona.
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It's another Coronavirus.
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Well, what makes you
think that won't spread?
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I don't think it won't spread.
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I hope not. But I'm
just saying right now.
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It only appeared in
the last, about last year.
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Simplization as we know
it would end if we had a 40%.
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That's what it
has. You know, yeah.
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I know you've heard of it.
How come I never heard of this?
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Some more of
your conspiracy stuff?
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No, no, go read on it.
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It's a
phenomenon right now. Yeah.
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Camel flu? MERS it's called.
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I've heard of MERS before.
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I know people
have had MERS. Okay.
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Forty percent.
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But we hope and pray
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that such a
thing doesn't happen.
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Although Revelation
speaks of a cycle of plagues
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that have that
sort of death rate.
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And in past history, remember,
Europe endured several phases,
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and in one phase,
about a third of Europe died.
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That was then and
this is now and...
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Why is it different now?
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Well, I think we've got,
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I think we're a little
more medically advanced
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than they were
in the 13th century.
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It's nearly a
year since this began,
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and there hasn't
been any antidote yet.
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And this isn't
much worse than the flu.
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Yeah.
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Flu kills up to 60,000
people a year in the US.
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Yeah, I know. I know.
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So it's an interesting world.
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But the takeaway,
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I think on this is that
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some of the same dynamics
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that existed in the
past is still there.
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The threats as
always sort of sharpen
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these rivalries or
these intolerances.
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And religious
liberty is an issue.
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It's heightened
under the COVID thing.
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And we need to be vigilant.
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There's a phrase
from the book of Solomon,
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Ecclesiastes Ein kol
chadash tachat hashemesh
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which is basically,
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"There's nothing
new under the sun,
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and let there
be enough trouble."
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What is history shown us
over and over and over again?
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People want
stability, people want safety,
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and they will give
up a lot to get it.
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And again, I don't know
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what this COVID
thing is gonna do.
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They could, you
know, six months from now,
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it could be all better,
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and we all got
our shots or whatever.
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And we all go on our merry way.
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But I'm not so sure
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anything is ever
gonna be the same again.
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And I think
it's opened the door.
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It's opened the
door to something
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and we step through a door
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that I'm not so sure
we're gonna step back through,
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walk through that door close,
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you know, turn around,
walk back, close the door,
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and things go on
the way they used to.
00:09:08.84\00:09:11.15
So, again, I don't know
I've learned a long time ago,
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someone once said,
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it's very difficult to
make an accurate prediction,
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especially about the future.
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And I wouldn't
want to guess on it.
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All I know is if
you don't know God,
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this is a better time than ever
00:09:28.83\00:09:31.23
to know the Lord
and to know His love
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because you're going to
need to hold on to something.
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If you never stirred
to differ from something
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that said on this program
or read in Liberty magazine,
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then I apologize,
00:09:46.72\00:09:48.35
because we should be
somewhat troublers in Israel
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to get people to
re-examine aspects
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of this very important
issue of religious liberty.
00:09:54.36\00:09:58.33
But it does
trouble me in the era
00:09:58.36\00:10:01.06
that the United
States has just come through
00:10:01.10\00:10:03.03
that so many people repeat
narrow sectarian viewpoints
00:10:03.06\00:10:08.44
that they heard
from someone else
00:10:08.47\00:10:10.07
and haven't thought through,
00:10:10.11\00:10:11.54
and then find a difference
00:10:11.57\00:10:13.14
with what we
put in our magazine.
00:10:13.17\00:10:15.14
I don't like that, I'm thinking
the leader sort of an approach.
00:10:15.18\00:10:20.72
We should be thinkers,
00:10:20.75\00:10:23.49
not reflectors of
other men's opinions.
00:10:23.52\00:10:26.62
And we should also exemplify
00:10:26.65\00:10:28.16
what Jesus said to
the woman taken in sin,
00:10:28.19\00:10:30.73
substitute
editor taken to correct.
00:10:30.76\00:10:34.43
He says, "Who's condemning you?"
00:10:34.46\00:10:36.03
He says, "No, I
don't condemn you.
00:10:36.06\00:10:37.97
Go and sin no more."
00:10:38.00\00:10:39.97
Liberty will dedicate itself
00:10:40.00\00:10:41.77
to presenting the
truth on religious freedom.
00:10:41.80\00:10:46.64
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:10:46.68\00:10:49.74