Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is the program
bringing you insights,
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news, analysis,
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and all around
information on religious liberty
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around the world,
starting in the United States.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
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I edited Liberty
Magazine until recently,
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for a total of 22 years,
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and I've done this
program for nearly as long.
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There's many things
that I could share with you.
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But sitting here
preparing for this program,
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I started
casting back a few years
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over part of that period.
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And I remember very clearly,
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as 2012 came to an end,
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many people in the media world
and those that were watching
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the times and seasons
that Jesus spoke about,
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not just religious people,
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those that were concerned
about where the world was going
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were troubled
because the Mayan calendar,
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which a lot of non-Christians
got really enamored of,
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the Mayan
calendar came to an end
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at the end of
2012, as I remember.
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Came to an end.
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The Mayans never said directly
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that that was
the end of the world,
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but it was odd for a group
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that had a civilization
over many thousands of years,
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their calendar
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and all of this
permutations came to a,
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just a permanent
stop in that year.
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And maybe I noticed the
Mayan calendar more than
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most would because my
wife was from Guatemala.
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She's not Mayan,
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but that's the
land of the Mayans.
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And I visited there many times
and been overwhelmed by the,
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some of the
pyramids and the structures
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from that vanished civilization.
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And as far as the Hispanic rule,
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even of Guatemala
that was the center
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of the Spanish
Empire of Latin America,
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once upon a time,
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until it moved
further north into Mexico
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and stole much of
Guatemalan land and left,
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just that
little rump state left.
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But the Mayan calendar, a
big moment of disillusionment
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for many of those
ascension rock, new ages,
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who thought that
something fantastic
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was about to happen.
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Of course, nothing happened.
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The Mayans didn't
know any more than,
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than the
average person knows now
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about when the world will end
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and certainly far less
than a Bible reading student
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of prophecy would know.
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You and I, if we read Revelation
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must know of a
certainty that the,
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as Jesus said that
the fields are ripe,
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even unto the harvest,
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and as Paul said,
the earth groans together
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until the day of its
redemption draws nigh.
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We're at the
end where everything
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is coming to the end of a cycle,
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and the signs are thick,
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mostly because of
spiritual declension.
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The signs are thick that Christ
is about to reveal Himself.
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But the day and the hour,
as Jesus said, no man knoweth.
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This used to trouble me a
bit editing Liberty Magazine
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and trying to
communicate the imperative
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of the soon return of Christ,
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how could we
signal that visually,
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and then, as
usual, in the editorial
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and other articles explain that?
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At the World Headquarters
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of the
Seventh-day Adventist Church
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for many years,
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there's been a very well done,
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but sometimes misinterpreted
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combination of
painting in a sort of a diorama,
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and statues illustrating
the end of the world,
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but the beginning
of the world to come
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with the return of Jesus Christ.
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In the foyer, they're
not quite life sized statues,
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which I think is
the first mistake
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standing in a group
looking up into the sky,
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which happens to be halfway up
the wall of the opposite wall,
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and there on that wall
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is a little sort
of either bas-relief
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or icon, if you like,
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of Jesus with some
rays shining out from Him
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with a few angels around
and coming in heaven distant,
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and here, they're all
looking up to it, it's good.
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I know a few people criticize
that as the type of statuary
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that you might
find in cathedrals
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and other such places.
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But I thought in
Liberty, what can we do?
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Because to paint an idea
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of Heavenly Host coming,
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at worse looks sort of quaint
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and at best looks
sort of new agey UFOE.
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And we don't want to suggest
that we're imagining things
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that are like the
limited imaginations
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of those that are into,
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you know, the little
gray men and the lizard people
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and all that sort
of fantastical stuff.
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So in the end I
assigned to an artist,
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a large painting, was
probably about five, six foot
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long by four foot
high of the Second Coming
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as seen in the faces of
those that experienced it.
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And we made it a cover
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and a back cover
of Liberty Magazine.
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And you can see if the camera,
yes, it's well enough there.
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See, there's a
woman with her child
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and the child's got
that bemuse look at something
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it can see up ahead in the sky.
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The mother looks hopeful.
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He is a widow.
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Her husband obviously
had been killed in the war,
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and she's looking
hopefully up there
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and we'll meet in the clouds
with her beloved one, perhaps.
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He is an older
person, an old man,
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the end of human life anyway,
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seeing a wonderful hope coming
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and along married
couple, a minority couple.
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Again, this is a hope
beyond this existence.
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They're standing
in the field of wheat.
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Figuratively, like the fields
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that Jesus said
ripen to harvest.
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Behind them is a dark sky.
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And ahead that brightening
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appearance of
the Lord Jesus Christ
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that's flooding
their faces with light.
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I thought of this a day ago,
driving into the 3ABN studios
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across flyover
country, beautiful farmland.
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My son and I
driving to the studios
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had gone through a long period
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where there was no phone signal,
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not any very obvious
signs of towns or anything
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other than the scattered
farmhouse now and then.
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And then we noticed ahead of us,
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the sky was
darkening and filling in
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and we figured we
were going to get rain
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and we got it so bad
that even ahead of us
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sporty brand new Mustang
stopped dead in his tracks,
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couldn't see anything.
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The sky fell around us
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and then just when I
thought we'd have to stop too,
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I saw a little
break in the cloud ahead.
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That is we then moved
ahead at nearly the speed limit,
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which is another
story, broke open,
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and soon there was
sunlight everywhere
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and the dark
clouds were far behind us.
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I believe that's how
Jesus return will be.
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At a time of darkest
night, stormiest moment,
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there'll be that possibility
of eternal bliss and of glory.
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And that will
enlarge, enlarge rapidly.
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And it'll bring a
glorious alternative
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to what we're living through.
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I wrote an
editorial at that time
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talking about the Mayans
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and I want to share that
in the time we have left.
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This is what I wrote.
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Remember, this
is eight years ago.
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And I must say
it was a privilege
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I felt and a good excuse
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to put on the back cover a quote
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from my own editorial,
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not that I want to
always quote myself,
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but usually we have a
quote from Jefferson or Adams
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or some justice,
Supreme Court Justice,
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something to do
with religious freedom,
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but some court
case or something,
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but here I quoted
from the editorial
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and this is what I quoted
before I even read it to you,
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"Since there may be
stormy days more blustery
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than any mega storm yet seen."
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And as I remember, the Sandy,
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the big storm on the East
Coast have just recently come
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and its destruction was massive.
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I said there may be
stormy days more blustery
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than any mega storm we had seen.
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But we must keep
our eyes on the horizon.
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The Second
Coming of Jesus Christ
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is the only perfect
solution to all that ails
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the world and our nation.
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And after
January 6, I'm reminded
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that we need to rediscover
this sort of thinking.
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This is what I
wrote, "Another year,
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but hardly business as usual,
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the world ended on
December 21 last year,
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or so, they were
telling us right up to the day,
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those pesky Mayans, who knew
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that they had it so
wrong about the apocalypse.
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Of course, a
certain family radio speaker
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had backdated the event
to a few months earlier,
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but is equally silent
now about what happened
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or didn't happen."
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There was a full page
newspaper ad proclaiming
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the Second Coming of
Christ on a certain day.
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Someone once said that making
predictions is very difficult,
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especially about the future.
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"We had an
election at year's end,"
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not the one you
and I most remember,
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but another important one,
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"and I had
thought this editorial
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could comment on
the surge of optimism
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that we'd be riding by now.
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I can hardly remember as
flat a reelection moment.
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Certainly the
reelected President
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has made no
overweening comments about
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wanting to use
political capital.
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Maybe that's bad
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or at least a number
of web prognosticators
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have characterized the strategy
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as stand back and let it happen.
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But is that fair?
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Not even a
president controls reality.
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Bruce Springsteen in
Tonight in Jungleland,
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veers toward the
Simon and Garfunkel imagery,
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where they wrote,
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"The words of the prophets
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are written on the subway walls,
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when he sings
outside the streets on fire,
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in a real death waltz,
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between what's
flesh and what's fantasy,
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and the poet stand here,
don't write nothing at all.
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They just stand
back and let it all be."
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Ignoring that Beatles allusion,
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I have to say
the imagery is apt.
00:10:57.52\00:11:00.96
"Outside our own
shaky neighborhood,
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the streets of the
world are increasingly
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on fire, literally.
00:11:06.56\00:11:09.63
And let's not kid ourselves
there is the smell of smoke,
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and more than the odd crackle
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on our own
increasingly unquiet streets."
00:11:16.04\00:11:20.14
I recently watched a relatively
even handed documentary
00:11:20.18\00:11:23.21
about the abortion
woes in the United States.
00:11:23.24\00:11:25.25
It was titled, Lake of Fire.
00:11:25.28\00:11:29.15
And I wonder,
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what is our culture
about to be thrown into?
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"So often in the past,
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we have called
upon the guardians
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of the American
experiment for their advice
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on what they meant by
such things as democracy,
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freedom and religious liberty.
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It's become de
rigueur for religionists
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enamored of the
Christian nation model
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to quote the
more godly statements,
00:11:53.27\00:11:55.84
even as they
ignore the contrary ones
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and even worse,
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things that showed deist
views, Masonic confabulations,
00:12:00.38\00:12:05.02
and worse
still, outright support
00:12:05.05\00:12:07.26
of the French terror.
00:12:07.29\00:12:09.66
I was impressed by a late 2012
00:12:09.69\00:12:12.86
PBS special on religious freedom
00:12:12.89\00:12:15.10
that handled all this in a way
00:12:15.13\00:12:16.63
that was
uplifting and respectful
00:12:16.67\00:12:18.73
of the international
wonder that these men wrought.
00:12:18.77\00:12:21.14
Yet they feared pure
majoritarian democracy
00:12:21.17\00:12:24.87
and expected the people
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to easily and at some
point revert to the excesses
00:12:27.24\00:12:31.25
that led to the
revolution in the first place.
00:12:31.28\00:12:34.48
It is amazing to read
the late life correspondence
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between Adams and Jefferson,
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and come across
Jefferson's opinion
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that
Christianity would not survive
00:12:42.92\00:12:44.93
in the United States.
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Obviously, he was
wrong on that count.
00:12:46.53\00:12:50.13
But how is a
mere mortal to know?
00:12:50.17\00:12:52.23
Unless one is reading the Bible
and its prophecies, of course.
00:12:52.27\00:12:57.11
Could these men have seen us
00:12:57.14\00:12:59.07
hitting so deliberately
off the fiscal cliff?
00:12:59.11\00:13:03.75
Maybe Hamilton, I guess.
00:13:03.78\00:13:06.65
Could these men
have seen economic crash
00:13:06.68\00:13:09.18
and meltdown in our future?
00:13:09.22\00:13:11.39
Well, they had seen
00:13:11.42\00:13:12.75
the South Seas
Bubble burst in Europe.
00:13:12.79\00:13:15.92
But I doubt they ever
had intimations of a debt
00:13:15.96\00:13:19.26
that is expressed in trillions
00:13:19.29\00:13:21.43
or multiples of the
gross national product.
00:13:21.46\00:13:25.60
You've got to go to Revelation
to pick up on a global scenario
00:13:25.63\00:13:29.40
in which all
the merchants lament
00:13:29.44\00:13:32.41
because, "In a single hour,
00:13:32.44\00:13:35.08
all this wealth
has been laid waste."
00:13:35.11\00:13:37.78
That's from 18:17.
00:13:37.81\00:13:40.08
Sometime up
ahead that will happen,
00:13:40.12\00:13:44.89
though, even though
2008 gave us a little taste
00:13:44.92\00:13:48.36
of how it happens.
00:13:48.39\00:13:50.46
After the crash of 2008,
00:13:50.49\00:13:52.53
we wait to see what
will happen next time.
00:13:52.56\00:13:55.33
After the Arab
Spring, we wait to see
00:13:55.36\00:13:57.57
what a seemingly
unstoppable cycle of revolution
00:13:57.60\00:14:02.44
will bring to the
Middle East and Middle Earth.
00:14:02.47\00:14:05.61
And the bright star
over the Sea of Japan
00:14:05.64\00:14:08.58
this near Christmas brought
little hope for that region.
00:14:08.61\00:14:13.72
Help, what next?
00:14:13.75\00:14:16.42
Lewis Carroll of the
Alice in Wonderland fantasy,
00:14:16.45\00:14:19.89
but actually an
accomplished mathematician,
00:14:19.92\00:14:23.19
wrote that, "If you
don't know where you are going,
00:14:23.22\00:14:26.26
any road will take you there."
00:14:26.29\00:14:29.70
Too many of the roads
up ahead signal trouble.
00:14:29.73\00:14:33.47
We need to know
where we're going.
00:14:33.50\00:14:37.11
We need to know
where we're going,
00:14:37.14\00:14:38.77
not necessarily
00:14:38.81\00:14:40.34
whether the
world will end one day.
00:14:40.38\00:14:44.95
I often tell seminar attendees
00:14:44.98\00:14:47.05
that I can stake my
life on one prediction,
00:14:47.08\00:14:49.88
the world as we know
it is about to pass away.
00:14:49.92\00:14:55.02
Let's take a break
there and we'll be back
00:14:55.06\00:14:56.69
after a break to continue.
00:14:56.73\00:14:58.29