Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is your program,
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bringing you up-to-date
news, views, analysis,
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and general
information on religious liberty
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and conscience
issues around the world,
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and often in the United States.
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My name is Lincoln Steed.
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For 22 years, I was
editor of Liberty Magazine,
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and almost as long
running this program, welcome.
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And my guest on the
program is a repeat guest,
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my son Christopher Steed.
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And I'm so happy that
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you could be on this
program, Christopher.
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You've enjoyed it
before, haven't you?
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It's not so shocking, right?
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Not really.
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And I know it's gone well,
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because the very
first time you were on,
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I don't think you were more than
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about 8-10 years old.
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And you had a cameo... I was 11.
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Eleven. You had a cameo walk on.
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And we exchanged a few words.
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And for months after
that I had very nice letters,
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mostly from older women.
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So you appealed to the women.
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And one of them said,
"Oh, that dear, dear boy."
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And I said, "Yes,
absolutely, my dear son."
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But that was many years ago.
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You're out and
around and grown up now.
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And I value your opinion.
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So I want to
talk with you about...
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Twelve years ago?
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Yeah, I want to...
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I'm 23 now, yeah, 12 years ago.
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You've been on the
program more recently than that,
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but I want to talk
with you a bit about
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what you're doing lately
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and get your feedback
on the issues of the moment
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in some ways related to COVID.
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Now, I titled this
program Out and Around.
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Yeah.
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Most of us have
not been out and around
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for well over a year with COVID.
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You know, in the US a little bit
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but in other
countries very much so people
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were literally
locked in their homes.
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Yeah.
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But what does your Bible say
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about Christian's responsibility
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even in the difficult time?
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That we got to get out there.
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And I actually did get
out there for nine months.
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I was in a
program in Pennsylvania
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in the Hamburg area called Core
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where I was learning
how to do Bible work.
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So our first
part of the semester,
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we had "two semesters,"
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the first one was
learning how to go door-to-door
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so we would learn how
to do colporteur ministry
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through asking some donations.
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It's an old way of
book selling door-to-door
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and witnessing door-to-door.
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So we had our
backpacks and everything.
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And we would go door-to-door,
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we had to wear
masks and everything.
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But we were still out and about,
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I mean, we were
started giving Bible studies
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right after
Christmas break, we got back,
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started giving Bible studies.
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We had a few,
actually people get baptized
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at one of the
seminary series we had,
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because of those Bible studies.
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Felt pretty good.
Felt really good. Yeah.
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Now tell me, you
know, in this environment,
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it even came over me
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you'd start to feel
suspicious of everybody
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in the store or
wherever you were,
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you think, is that
person going to give me
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what's going to kill me.
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And so there's a
social distancing
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by mandate,
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but also in our own minds,
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we were learning to
distrust other people.
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How did you
find it door-to-door?
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Did people welcome you,
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or did you have open discussion?
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At first, when
people saw us at the door,
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they did the one eye
peeking out, "Hello."
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"Hi, my name is
Chris. I'm a Bible worker."
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"Oh, you're a Bible worker."
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The doors just opened up.
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That's interesting.
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So that
disarmed their inhibition
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and their suspicion.
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Well... Sometimes.
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I'd say at least 75% of the time
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we had a very
welcoming experience.
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Other people
were still a little,
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"Oh, do you guys sanitize?
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You guys wear
your mask properly."
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But I'd say 75-85% of the people
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open their doors
lovingly and widely, prayed.
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I prayed with
quite a few people.
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And I'm still in contact
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with one of our
Bible study contacts.
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And we still talk to this
day about stuff that's going on
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and she actually said that,
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you know that you guys
actually did a lot of good
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in the community.
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Because while we were there we
weren't only like just working
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at the one place where we were,
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we had our own
church that we went to.
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So we were holding
church services like
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I was up front
doing special music,
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scripture
readings, children's stories.
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We held a VBS, we helped there.
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Vacation Bible
School for those...
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Yeah, for its...
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I know the acronym.
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Camp meeting for
little kids, pretty much.
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And then we helped set up
the camp meeting right before
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the camp meeting started.
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And then I went
up to Pennsylvania
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again for a summer camp...
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Very good. For fun.
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So, you know, the message I
get out of this is at a time
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of social
separation and restriction,
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you were part of an experience
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where you saw firsthand
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the people still not everybody,
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but people still
have spiritual needs
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and were still responding.
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And you alluded
to the Bible text,
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but as I remember the
text, I don't know references,
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always bad on references.
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But Paul says,
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"Forsake not the assembling
of yourselves together."
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Many people since
COVID, I've spoken to,
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they seem to remember that,
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but they forget what comes next.
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And he says next,
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and the more so as you
see the day approaching.
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So it seems to me
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the need to
communicate and to meet
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but not just in church,
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to reach out and to
talk about spiritual things
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with people is more important,
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as things get more dangerous.
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And that's the great irony.
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I mean, doesn't, isn't one
of the signs from Ellen White,
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where the devil
will cast a great cloud
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over the earth or great mist...
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Of course, a
deception, deception.
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And that's, you're
talking about Ellen White,
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who was an early spiritual guide
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for the
Seventh-day Adventist Church.
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And we believe that she
was under some inspiration
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when she shared things,
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but actually,
that's from the Bible.
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It says the days are coming
where there'll be a famine
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of the Word of God.
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And it says, a great
blindness will come upon people,
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a spiritual blindness.
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I mean, that's pretty much
exactly what's happening now.
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'Cause I mean, a lot
of the people I talked to,
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there was a few
Catholics I talked to,
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there was even a...
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I can't remember
anything I think it's Jesuit.
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It's Roman Catholic.
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Roman Catholic,
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but they were part of
the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
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And they said,
their churches are closed,
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their cathedrals are
closed, like they won't meet.
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Yeah.
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Well, you know, I
have strong opinions.
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And I've got to be careful.
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This is not a
policy critique moment.
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Yeah.
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But I do think,
for many churches,
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and even our own
Seventh-day Adventist Church,
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in administrative sense,
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and many of the actual churches,
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I think it was a great mistake,
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and a lost
opportunity to sort of go back
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into our kennels on command.
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Like turtles.
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Yes. Yeah, I like that.
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I know why you're saying that.
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As we were
driving here yesterday
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in a fantastic rainstorm.
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You were driving, you
suddenly put your brake on,
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and leapt out of the car.
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And I thought, what's he seen?
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It's been an
accident or something.
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And here was this snapping
turtle about 18 inches long,
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making its way.
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Feisty little firecracker. Yes.
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And when we stopped,
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he turned around and came at us.
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I was trying to pick him up.
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So I put my hand on
top of the shell reached
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around and picked him up.
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And he was
trying to bite my hand.
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Yeah.
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But more than that,
when you're letting go,
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he would turn
around and come at you.
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But, yes, I mean,
I'm glad you see that.
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And I would hope
most people that have a,
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an urgency to share
something exciting spiritual,
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spiritually would,
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would be a little
troubled how quickly
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we sort of went to sleep.
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You could say,
pulled into our shell,
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shut the doors.
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And I have many
differences as a Protestant
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from the Roman Catholic Church.
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But one thing I've
admired about its policy,
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I don't think
always during COVID.
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But through the ages,
and in many countries,
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the doors of the church
were always literally open.
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Yeah.
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Usually empty.
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Yeah. And that's another point.
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But I think spiritual
needs actually increased during
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a time of stress, don't they?
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Oh, I agree. So this was...
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I mean, I saw it firsthand.
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I mean the need
that people express.
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I had one lady, I could
tell that she'd been crying.
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So I asked her, you know,
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right before I left, I was like,
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"Hey, is there
anything you need prayer for?"
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And she said, "Yeah,
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I just lost a family
member due to COVID."
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And I said, "Well,
let me pray for you."
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And I prayed for her.
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And when I said amen,
she had a smile on her face.
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And she looks at me and says,
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"Thank you. I
really needed that."
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And it was just
the most genuine smile
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I'd seen that takes.
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I've seen people that
come at you, Hi, how are you?
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You know that
they have to smile.
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Social smile.
Yeah, social smiles.
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Yeah.
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Well think about
what some of our neighbors
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and obviously a few Christians
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directly and even
Adventists have gone through.
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Family members died, member died
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and during COVID,
they were hospitalized,
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you weren't
allowed to go visit them.
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I know.
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When they died, you
weren't allowed to...
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See them. Often go to a funeral.
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They would just go on. Yeah.
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So there was a need
for spiritual comfort
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and some reassurance of this,
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of the, not of the salvation,
you can't assure them,
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that person's
gonna be in heaven.
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That's foolish.
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But you can certainly
give spiritual comfort
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that it's in the hands of God.
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And that, even though
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they might not
have said goodbye,
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that, you know, they rest
easy in the arms of Providence.
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But I have been
troubled by the way
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that we shut up so easily.
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And if nothing else,
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it may not be a
purely legal question
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or of religious
liberty in the classical sense,
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but it's clearly
a lost opportunity.
00:10:42.47\00:10:46.68
And I've always wondered
as the Seventh-day Adventist
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and the Bible
believing Christian
00:10:49.41\00:10:50.85
and more importantly
a Revelation reading.
00:10:50.88\00:10:54.48
You've read Revelation...
00:10:54.52\00:10:55.85
Yeah. Yes, I have.
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The good parts. Variety.
00:10:58.69\00:11:01.16
But you can't help
reading Revelation, you know,
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that difficult
times are predicted
00:11:03.63\00:11:05.39
for a world in decline.
00:11:05.43\00:11:07.20
Yeah.
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And even if
you're not a Christian,
00:11:09.00\00:11:10.67
or a Bible reader,
00:11:10.70\00:11:12.03
you know that the
world is sort of spiraling,
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somewhat out of control.
00:11:15.20\00:11:16.67
You know, many secularists
think that beyond this,
00:11:16.71\00:11:18.74
it'll organize and they might be
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a secular
paradise, but they don't,
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none of them say it's there now.
00:11:21.94\00:11:23.51
Yeah.
00:11:23.55\00:11:24.88
And, you know, I went
to communist countries,
00:11:24.91\00:11:28.88
I'm trying to think,
yeah, by the time you were born,
00:11:28.92\00:11:32.02
the Soviet Union
already collapsed.
00:11:32.05\00:11:34.39
But at its peak, you know,
00:11:34.42\00:11:35.76
the idea was that socialism
in the communist sense,
00:11:35.79\00:11:39.63
this Communist Revolution
was going to engulf the world
00:11:39.66\00:11:42.50
and it would bring
in a secular paradise.
00:11:42.53\00:11:44.27
Never happened. Never.
00:11:44.30\00:11:46.53
The theory was not
always totally wrong,
00:11:46.57\00:11:49.30
but the practice was impossible,
00:11:49.34\00:11:51.07
because it was dealing with,
00:11:51.11\00:11:53.61
you know, the
aspirations of human beings
00:11:53.64\00:11:55.54
that's full of
jealousy and violence
00:11:55.58\00:11:57.68
and greed and so
on and couldn't work.
00:11:57.71\00:12:01.55
So not communists
anymore, not necessarily,
00:12:01.58\00:12:05.29
or even capitalists
see, you know, a great,
00:12:05.32\00:12:08.42
wonderful horizon.
00:12:08.46\00:12:10.03
Right now the world
is sort of in a, in a...
00:12:10.06\00:12:12.93
You're a good swimmer.
00:12:12.96\00:12:14.30
That's that summer school,
00:12:14.33\00:12:17.30
you were a
lifeguard and swim instructor.
00:12:17.33\00:12:20.97
So you know that,
00:12:21.00\00:12:22.34
don't you agree
the world right now
00:12:22.37\00:12:23.71
is sort of treading water.
00:12:23.74\00:12:25.07
It's not going
strongly anywhere, but it's...
00:12:25.11\00:12:28.04
Dog paddling.
00:12:28.08\00:12:29.41
Yes, dog paddling.
00:12:29.44\00:12:31.78
And, you know,
00:12:31.81\00:12:33.45
part of the dog paddling
00:12:33.48\00:12:34.82
is get as many injections
and people as you can,
00:12:34.85\00:12:38.05
and many weren't,
00:12:38.09\00:12:39.42
they're sort of like
the ones that's dog paddling
00:12:39.45\00:12:41.09
with the missing foot.
00:12:41.12\00:12:43.06
Harder to stay afloat, isn't it?
00:12:43.09\00:12:45.69
So we need spiritual hope.
00:12:45.73\00:12:47.73
And what's your take
away after going those
00:12:47.76\00:12:52.10
door-to-door contacts,
00:12:52.13\00:12:54.84
did that make you feel good?
00:12:54.87\00:12:57.01
I mean, as a person,
00:12:57.04\00:12:58.37
I'm going to do a quick
plug for Core real quick because
00:12:58.41\00:13:01.24
it was a great experience
shot at to Dee Casper.
00:13:01.28\00:13:04.78
He was one of the organizers.
00:13:04.81\00:13:06.15
He was the organizer.
00:13:06.18\00:13:07.52
He was the director. It was a...
00:13:07.55\00:13:09.48
It was an amazing program.
00:13:09.52\00:13:11.79
Not only where you learn
a skill that you can use,
00:13:11.82\00:13:16.16
but as well as you
learn how to love Jesus
00:13:16.19\00:13:21.00
on your own personal ways.
00:13:21.03\00:13:23.73
You learn how to
accept that He is a friend.
00:13:23.77\00:13:28.14
It's life changing.
00:13:28.17\00:13:30.51
I mean, I went, you know,
00:13:30.54\00:13:33.14
not thinking that I was
going to learn much of anything.
00:13:33.17\00:13:35.74
Come back knowing that now
00:13:35.78\00:13:38.41
I can go door-to-door
selling whatever I need to sell,
00:13:38.45\00:13:44.29
books, hope and hope as well.
00:13:44.32\00:13:46.39
No, but hope. That's the point.
00:13:46.42\00:13:47.76
Yeah, yeah.
00:13:47.79\00:13:49.12
You're not just selling
books or lessons or anything.
00:13:49.16\00:13:51.66
You're giving
people hope, uplift.
00:13:51.69\00:13:53.80
And the smiles I saw on kids'
00:13:53.83\00:13:55.90
faces whenever I gave books
00:13:55.93\00:13:58.17
or on adults'
faces was just amazing.
00:13:58.20\00:14:00.57
Wonderful.
00:14:00.60\00:14:01.94
We'll take a break.
00:14:01.97\00:14:03.30
But stay with us.
00:14:03.34\00:14:04.67
We'll be back shortly
to continue this discussion
00:14:04.71\00:14:06.34
with my guest Christopher Steed.
00:14:06.37\00:14:08.68
Great last name by the way.
00:14:08.71\00:14:10.18