Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break
with guest Ed Cooke,
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we were reaching
back to Nazi Germany
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and some of the
uncanny parallels.
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We're not really
making the parallels yet,
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but startling developments then
particularly involving religion
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and how people respond.
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You mentioned Bonheoffer,
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how people
respond with their faith
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in a time of great stress.
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And that is very
relevant to today, I think.
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Yep.
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And again, you know, I
just wanted to touch on
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the point that you
mentioned just before the break.
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So, the aspect of
Bonheoffer, as far as him seeing
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that there was a moral
wrong with Nazi Germany.
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Yes, that being a good point
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at the same time
like you pointed out.
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And as we have mentioned
in some prior programming,
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that as Christians
we are not involved
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in trying to
overthrow our government.
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You know, we let
God work things out
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and He's the ultimate ruler.
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He has the ultimate power
to fix those types of wrongs.
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But one of the things
about Hitler's Germany
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that I think is a
fascinating part of history
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is not only was he able to...
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We could use the word co-opt
the religions within Germany,
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but also he was on a mad pursuit
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and endeavor to
obtain religious relics,
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amulets, different things
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that he thought would
give he and The Third Reich
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the power they
needed to perceive.
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Well, and they believed,
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and I actually think
there's some truth in it
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that you know,
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the Greek legends of Thor
and his hammer, for example,
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they believed that
this was a remembrance
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of an actual weapon.
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And if they could find
out enough information,
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they could recreate that weapon.
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Or the Holy
Grail seeking after...
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Holy Grail, they believed
there was some secret power
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that the early Christians
had that derived from Christ.
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Or the Shekinah Glory?
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All sorts of stuff.
The Jewish box, you know.
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Yeah. They
wanted to get the ark.
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Indiana Jones
wasn't totally fabricated,
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it was reality,
was the Ananobe group
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that were hunting all this down,
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but it wasn't just to, to
get these icons of religiosity
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or to find the
secret behind them,
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so they had power.
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There's many things
written by the insiders.
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They planned on developing
a religion of the area
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and people's state religion,
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and then removing Christianity
and all of the religions.
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They wanted in essence, a state
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religion of the area and people,
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sort of shades of
Nebuchadnezzar in my view.
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Yes, definitely.
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That even
overtures that we might say
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are echoing, you
know, today where you've got
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groups that are
wanting to take a,
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whatever the
religion may be right,
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and make it the
dominant state religion.
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You know, maybe in
some of our programming,
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we can talk a little
bit about Hinduism in India.
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You know,
there's another example,
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or even Russian
Orthodox Church in Ukraine
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and overtures that way.
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Well, you know, on this program,
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I've said not inaccurately,
but I'll qualify it now.
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I've said for years after 9/11,
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that nationalism
had sort of ended.
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And, of course, Trumpism
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is a little bit
of a denial of that
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because it was make
America great again.
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That's Christian
sort of nationalism,
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but what's really
emerged is ethnic power,
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the religion of a people.
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And so religion plays into that,
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but it's the people group
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and that can manifest
in a pseudo nationalism,
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but Hitler was
clearly on the people power
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and area and nation and
their ancestral religion,
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and descends in
essence from the gods,
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Valhalla and all,
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not by accident
that he loved Wagner
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'cause Wagner himself
had done a lot of research
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into the Nordic gods
and legends of origin.
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Very true.
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So you know, we need
to stick to the Bible
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as the Protestant Reformer said,
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you know, to Sola
scriptura, the Word only,
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because once you
start moving away,
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even if you think
you're talking religion,
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you pretty soon
into mysticism and legend
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and a fatal
construct or a false construct.
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And, you know, one,
not to get off topic,
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but just to, to
note a parallel, right?
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Part of the
underlying issues in America
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that would go back
to the time period,
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leading up to the civil war
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is that you had a Protestant
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general understanding
where, there were individual
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I've actually I've read
writings of individuals,
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not only Christians,
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but also scholars
of that time period,
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where they would look
at passages in scripture
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and use that,
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even though it didn't say
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the area and race or
the Caucasian ethnicity.
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They would use that
to justify the dominance
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of a certain
class, like the Caucasians
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over the African slaves.
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And they would use
Scripture to do that.
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So, one can look at
that as an example, right?
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Of how religion can
be taken and misconstrued
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and individuals
maybe being sincere,
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but that's the way
they were educated.
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They were raised that way.
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So, in the deep thoughts.
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Well, the Bible talks
about the natural heart
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mixing the faith once
delivered to the saints,
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but with the natural heart,
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and it will
pervert it every time.
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Yep.
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And the natural person
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is loyal to family
and clan, and so on.
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It's not unnatural,
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but if that's
allowed to play out,
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and then we all like
religion, need religion,
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you mix it in, you
got a bad, bad mix.
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That's really what
happened in Germany in my view.
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They were led
step by step toward it.
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And, of course,
there was a whole process
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of social engineering.
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It didn't happen in a moment.
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You know, the hero
worshiper of the Fuhrer,
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training the youth,
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you know, all things
that the Seventh-day Adventist
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we should be grateful that
we'd been given advice on this,
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you know, the
schools of the prophets,
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of course, it's the
model in the Old Testament,
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but church schools,
training young people.
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The earlier you get young people
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and give them
values that will stick.
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And the Nazis understood that.
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They even got to the
point where they maybe had
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basically had baby factories
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with the Waffen-SS men,
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but, you know, the
archetype of Arians
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and then suitable
women and take the babies
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and farm them and then send them
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to the Hitler youth and so.
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No accident that
within a generation,
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they had
fanatic, fanatical Nazis,
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and then simultaneously
the cult of the leader,
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which I think is dangerous,
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whether it's
political or the church.
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You know, we've got powerful
quotes in religious liberty.
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You know, John F. Kennedy,
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poet, pope, or prelate
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not going to tell me what to do.
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We shouldn't have that
swapping of authority levels,
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but even within a church,
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you know, the Pope
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X is the regent of God on earth.
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The Bible doesn't
say any such thing.
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True.
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You know, whether it was
Saul trying to sacrifice,
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God says, your
kingdom's taken from you,
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whether it was,
you know, the priest,
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they fed him into the
Most Holy Place on a rope,
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because if he
stepped out of line,
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he would be struck down.
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They have to pull him out.
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You know,
there's just no argument,
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I think from the Bible
to elevate a singular person
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over a church or a state
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to see them like the king.
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The sole authority. Yeah.
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The kings came to say,
you know, divine, right,
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God, that's what the crown is.
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People have
forgotten all they assembled.
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That's the diadem of the power
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from on high on you.
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Don't believe in that.
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The interesting
thing about that is that,
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you know, when we look
at aspects of individuals
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and in relationship to God,
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we always have to fall back upon
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what Scripture
does teach us about us
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needing to have an individual
relationship with Christ
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and recognizing
Jesus as the sole authority
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in our lives.
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I believe that as we
take the time to cultivate
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that kind of
spiritual relationship,
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that is what can
help us avoid the errors
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of falling under
the dominance and power
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and control of powers
that would lead us astray.
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