Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a program
consciously designed
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to clarify things for
you on religious liberty.
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While we often feature
events in the United States,
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it's a global concern.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
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for 22 years editor
of Liberty magazine,
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and nearly as long as
the host of this show,
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and those of you
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that have
regularly watched this know
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that our normal setup is for me
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to have a guest and
to dialogue with them.
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But on this
program and several others,
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I intend to just
talk directly to you.
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I'm sure over the
years you've heard me
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mention the book,
The Great Controversy.
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And for Seventh-day Adventists,
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this is a rather important book.
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It was written by Ellen White,
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who together with
her husband James White
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were in essence the co-founders
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of the
Seventh-day Adventist Church.
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They and others of their era
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had gone through what was known
as The Great Disappointment.
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They had followed
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a Bible teacher and
leader, William Miller,
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who was studying
prophecy and became convinced
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that 1844 was to be the return,
literal return of Jesus Christ.
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Obviously, they had
their numbers wrong.
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And even before
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the Adventist Church was formed,
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Ellen and James
White and others saw this
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at first on a bitter
experience of standing, waiting
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at the moment
that it was predicted
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that didn't happen.
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And then in looking more closely
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at how prophecies
to be interpreted,
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she realized that I think
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all honest Christians
see now that as Jesus said,
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"It's not given to you to
know the day and the hour."
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He says, "He
will come like a thief
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in the night."
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But it is given to us as
the upbraid of the Pharisees
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for not understanding
the time of His appearance.
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He says, "You study the seasons,
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you should know
the appropriate time
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for the
fulfillment of these events."
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And I think it's
arguable that we are living
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in the end times
portrayed in the Bible,
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and in particular in
the Book of Revelation.
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And Ellen White
wrote Great Controversy
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at a very
interesting time in US history
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and in Adventist history.
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In the year 1888,
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the Adventist
Church was very small,
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was only a few tens
of thousands of members.
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It was growing quickly.
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And today it's
many millions of people,
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I think, somewhere
around 15 million worldwide.
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But it was very small back then.
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They had just established
a religious liberty work,
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and Alonzo T. Jones, AT
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which used to be the style
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and someone that was powerful,
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you know, just have
their initials AT Jones
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was editing that
magazine, the Liberty precursor.
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And suddenly religious liberty
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which had always
been important for a group
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that had come
through the ridicule
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of the failed expectation
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who had been
injected from their churches,
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many of them
because they believe things
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that were objectionable,
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who had been
harassed by authorities
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for disobeying the blue laws,
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which were common back then
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and are still on the books
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in about 20
states blue laws that,
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that find
criminalized on occasion work
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and different
activities on Sunday,
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the nominal Lord's
Day of the society,
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never biblically correct
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and certainly not
legally appropriate
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since the First Amendment
grants religious freedom,
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but the states back
then were penalizing people
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that didn't
worship on the Sunday.
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So Seventh-day Adventists
had this long concern,
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but in 1888,
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something quite
galvanizing happened.
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There was a
proposal in the Senate
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for a national Sunday
law and not a blue law
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that might find
you for doing this
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and that and the other.
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A law that overtly said
that that day was to be...
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It was under pain
of loyal forbidden
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from doing any commercial
or regular secular activities.
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And you were to
worship on the...
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As I said the Lord's Day.
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It was a Sunday
law which Adventists
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already by
studying prophecy had said,
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"A strong push to
enforce a false day of worship."
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And I must tell you,
on religious liberty,
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by definition,
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any enforced day
of worship is false.
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Biblically, the
seventh day Sabbath
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is the day given
under the Ten Commandments
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and no direct command
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as the papal
document Dies Domini says,
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"There's no direct command
of the Lord to change it."
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I mean, they did.
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And the early Christians,
some of them felt free to,
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but there was no command.
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So it's a binding day,
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but from the
principle of religious liberty,
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if the United States
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or any country
would bring in a law,
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compelling worship on
the seventh day Sabbath,
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it would be wrong,
because that is not the way
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that God ever worked
with man to compel them
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against their will,
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to worship Him in the way
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He would find acceptable,
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because it even says
in the Old Testament,
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you know, I find no pleasure
in the sacrifice of animals,
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you know, He
wanted heart worship.
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But still,
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to add further
insult to the wrong dynamic,
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it was on a Sunday, a false day,
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and AT Jones was quite involved
in challenging this legally.
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He gave testimony
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before a
congressional committee.
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And then spoke many, many
times to the Adventist community
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about the danger of this
and the prophetic significance
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that it signaled
the very imminent
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return of Christ.
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So in that context,
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Ellen White wrote this
book Great Controversy,
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which tells the
great sweep of human events
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and God's dealings with humans,
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really from the earliest times
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right through
till His appearance,
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tell the story
of the reformation
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of efforts to
restrict liberty of conscience.
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It tells in
advance, and we believe
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it was divinely
explicated to her,
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tell us in advance how
even in the United States,
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religious liberty
will be restricted,
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and people will
turn against those
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who persist in keeping
the Lord's Day as Saturday
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and honoring it.
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I want to read you
a couple of selections
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from this book.
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But before I do,
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let me just
tell you one example,
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where I found it
most illuminating
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to be familiar with this book.
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In 2015, I think it
was, the Pope of Rome
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came and addressed the
joint session of Congress.
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To me, that was
a massive moment.
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Massive historically,
because up until that point,
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no religious leader had
ever spoken to a joint session.
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The few that
addressed legislators
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were like Lafayette,
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the Prime Minister of
Israel a couple of times,
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you know, major world
figures, Winston Churchill,
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I think twice,
no religious leader.
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And in fact, a few
months before the pope came,
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there was a
suggestion that the Dalai Lama
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might address Congress.
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And that was quickly nixed,
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because it was said he
would be a divisive figure.
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Why? I don't know.
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I mean, I don't personally
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go along with his
whole Buddhist philosophy,
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but he's certainly a
benign grandfatherly figure.
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But it would be wrong for
such prominence to be given
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to religious leader in Congress,
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as it was wrong
for the pope to speak,
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but it was agreed and
it was a historic moment.
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As I say, no
other religious leader
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beyond that...
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No Catholic in previous years
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would have ever
been let near Congress,
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which was a sign of prejudice.
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You can't endorse
the previous attitudes.
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But given that the
United States society
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was so
overwhelmingly Protestant,
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and at times
violently, anti-Catholic,
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the Ku Klux Klan
was not just racist,
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it was
anti-Catholic and anti-Jew.
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They wanted a
white Protestant America.
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Roman Catholics were persecuted
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openly in New York
City in the mid 1800s.
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I remember reading about
one crowd of several thousand
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that rampaged
for a whole weekend
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through New York,
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killing every Catholic
like the lay their hands on.
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Bad history.
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But given all of that,
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now the pope brought
in as a conquering hero,
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amazing.
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So, and then from a Seventh-day
Adventist perspective,
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we are told that when Romanism,
the Church of the Medieval Era,
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which by its own
accounting did things
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that were horribly wrong.
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Now there's a
document that Rome came out
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with called Memory
and Reconciliation,
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where they
apologized for the Inquisition,
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for the persecution of
the Jews and on and on.
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Unfortunately, they
kept the magisterium intact,
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their sign of authority,
their right to do that,
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but they
apologized for what they did.
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But the point is,
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there's no defense
of what happened then.
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And this was the mainline church
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and
Protestantism separated from it
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for problems of
doctrinal disharmony
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or disturbances, false
day of worship and so on.
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And also because
of its corruption
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and paganism.
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So for the United States,
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once Protestant country to then
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think very benignly on Romanism.
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Seventh-day Adventists felt,
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and are convinced is a
fulfillment of prophecy.
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In Revelation it's, and
in Daniel it speaks about
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a power that has been wounded,
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and speaking
against the Most High
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and changing times and seasons,
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all markers of
false Sabbaths and so on,
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that it will, the whole
world will wonder after it,
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and it will be reinstated.
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And Seventh-day
Adventist see in the elevation
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of the modern papacy,
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which has every right to exist.
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All religions, and
on this whole spectrum
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under the principle
of religious liberty
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absolutely should
be allowed to function.
00:11:25.91\00:11:28.38
You restrict any religion,
00:11:28.42\00:11:30.05
and you're struck
against the principle
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of religious freedom.
00:11:31.65\00:11:32.99
But from an
Adventist perspective,
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looking at truth and error
and prophetic developments,
00:11:34.96\00:11:38.76
this was very problematic.
00:11:38.79\00:11:40.83
And I can remember on that day
00:11:40.86\00:11:42.33
after I went and
heard the pope speech,
00:11:42.36\00:11:45.13
that pope's speech
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which was benign
on the face of it,
00:11:46.53\00:11:49.37
but he was
lecturing the legislators.
00:11:49.40\00:11:52.11
And when I came
back to the office,
00:11:52.14\00:11:54.38
we had a board meeting.
00:11:54.41\00:11:57.15
And I was quite excited
00:11:57.18\00:11:58.51
that I'd heard
this historic moment
00:11:58.55\00:12:01.45
for the United States
and this prophetic moment
00:12:01.48\00:12:03.89
for a Seventh-day Adventist.
00:12:03.92\00:12:05.92
And as I was talking about it,
00:12:05.95\00:12:08.82
two of the lawyers
that were in that group,
00:12:08.86\00:12:11.33
and I won't name
them for their protection
00:12:11.36\00:12:13.23
and not to embarrass them.
00:12:13.26\00:12:15.63
They started mocking me
and they said, "Big deal.
00:12:15.66\00:12:18.60
He's not
bringing the Sunday law."
00:12:18.63\00:12:21.17
And I said, well,
I didn't say that.
00:12:21.20\00:12:25.74
But I said, "You haven't
read The Great Controversy,
00:12:25.77\00:12:28.01
have you?"
00:12:28.04\00:12:29.84
And no answer.
00:12:29.88\00:12:31.71
And I realized in a moment
00:12:31.75\00:12:33.35
that it's likely
that they hadn't,
00:12:33.38\00:12:35.98
and it's certain that
many of my fellow members
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haven't read it.
00:12:39.12\00:12:40.46
And it's equally
certain that not enough
00:12:40.49\00:12:42.46
of the general populace
have been exposed to this book
00:12:42.49\00:12:45.46
that's been sold door
to door for 100 years.
00:12:45.49\00:12:49.66
It does lay it out very well.
00:12:49.70\00:12:51.70
And I want to share
with you after the break,
00:12:51.73\00:12:55.44
just a little bit
that's in the book.
00:12:55.47\00:12:57.61
I mean, it's hundreds of pages,
00:12:57.64\00:12:59.44
but just to give
you a flavor of it,
00:12:59.47\00:13:01.64
but we are living
through momentous times.
00:13:01.68\00:13:05.81
And on this program
before I've mentioned
00:13:05.85\00:13:08.05
a comment made by
ex-President Adams
00:13:08.08\00:13:12.25
in his dialogue by
mail with Thomas Jefferson,
00:13:12.29\00:13:16.06
interesting
characters of yesteryear
00:13:16.09\00:13:19.53
and the battles that they had,
00:13:19.56\00:13:20.90
bitter political enemies,
00:13:20.93\00:13:22.26
even though Jefferson had
been vice president under Adams.
00:13:22.30\00:13:27.54
But they were opposite
spectrums, politically.
00:13:27.57\00:13:30.44
But they wrote letters
00:13:30.47\00:13:31.81
until they died
on the very same day,
00:13:31.84\00:13:33.54
50 years after the
Declaration of Independence.
00:13:33.58\00:13:36.34
And as he died,
Adams cried out, he says,
00:13:36.38\00:13:39.95
"But he still lives."
00:13:39.98\00:13:42.18
And unknown to him,
Jefferson had preceded him
00:13:42.22\00:13:44.89
by some time a couple of hours.
00:13:44.92\00:13:48.72
In their dialogue,
they debated at one point
00:13:48.76\00:13:51.83
whether or not
Christianity would survive
00:13:51.86\00:13:54.53
in the United States.
00:13:54.56\00:13:55.90
An interesting question.
00:13:55.93\00:13:59.10
Jefferson didn't think it would.
00:13:59.13\00:14:00.84
But Adams said,
"Yes, it will survive."
00:14:04.14\00:14:06.27
But he said,
"First, for it to survive,
00:14:06.31\00:14:08.88
he says that
Hindu cabbalistic system
00:14:08.91\00:14:11.88
known as Roman
Catholicism must pass away."
00:14:11.91\00:14:16.55
But he says, "At
present it has a mortal wound,
00:14:16.58\00:14:19.45
but such is its strength
00:14:19.49\00:14:20.86
that it may last 200 years yet."
00:14:20.89\00:14:23.26
He was repeating the
outline from the Bible,
00:14:23.29\00:14:27.20
from the Book of Daniel,
and the Protestant concept
00:14:27.23\00:14:30.77
of the role of the
Roman Catholic Church.
00:14:30.80\00:14:33.23
And we're here 200 years later,
00:14:33.27\00:14:35.37
of course, Rome is dominant,
00:14:35.40\00:14:38.31
far more
dominant than any single
00:14:38.34\00:14:40.31
Protestant organization.
00:14:40.34\00:14:42.98
Stay with me
and after the break,
00:14:43.01\00:14:44.55
I'll share a few words with you.
00:14:44.58\00:14:46.88