Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break,
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I was explaining at
some length for our program
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but really much
shorter than could be taken
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with a complicated case
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about the Lindy Chamberlain case
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of a dingo taking her
child and then the ramifications
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both for the
church and for the general
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society's civil liberties
culminating in this proposal
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as a counter to
direct political force
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being used by some of
her followers to gain office
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and then deal with
those that had railroaded
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Lindy
Chamberlain and to free her.
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As a direct result of that,
there was an anti-terrorism law
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that would have
really short circuited all
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Western civil liberties
for anybody on the wrong side
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of those in authority,
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particularly with a
secret proscribed was the way
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there is the secret proscribed
list of terrorist organizations
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and as a member,
you could be rounded up.
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And as we've seen
since 9/11, in the US,
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some religious activist groups,
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ones that I'm not
comfortable with obviously,
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but from their
religious perspective,
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they just religious programs
and they put on the list
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and then anyone
belonging to them is in trouble.
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And right now, with the US
withdrawal from Afghanistan,
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we sort of left with
an ambiguity on this,
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the Haqqani Network for example.
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We've sort of toyed
with them from time to time
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and they might be
opposed to the Taliban,
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but we see them as trouble.
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Thankfully, this legal
initiative frittered away,
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and thankfully and
praise be the Lord,
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after many years
unfortunately though,
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Lindy Chamberlain was released,
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and all it took
was an English tourists
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was climbing
that same Ayer's Rock,
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slipped off the
precipitous sides,
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fell into the
bushes and was killed.
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And when they
found his body nearby
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was a little inner
jacket that Lindy had
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always maintained the baby
had been wearing with signs
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of being chewed and
torn by the animals.
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And it didn't
really prove anything
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other than cast
her as more truthful.
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But on that alone, she
was summarily released,
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and the
government made apologies.
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And as I said,
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I saw all along the government
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was an
embarrassment of the government,
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they would have
gladly released her,
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but a function of the law
is if you say you're innocent,
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you're declared
guilty without remorse,
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government's not
very sympathetic.
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So they couldn't
easily dismiss it
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when she had had this stance,
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but they clearly wanted
to remove this embarrassment.
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It just tells me
though that the...
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In these latter days,
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speaking as the Seventh-day
Adventist student of prophecy,
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in these latter
days, these end times,
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a times of distress and stress
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of social panic,
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and disaster on
every hand, it's very easy,
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very easily developed,
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where the
prejudices that always exist,
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and the
misinformation can be spun
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and spin out of control,
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and different
groups suddenly appear
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as the enemy within
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and gross injustice
be brought upon them.
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And the Jewish
people have experienced this
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over and over again,
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they're the perpetual fall
guys for many, many things.
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But with Australia,
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very much like the United States
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or Western democracy with a...
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If not a clean record
then a pretty upstanding
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intention to be
a land of justice
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to see there how easily
in this particular case,
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it could sort of
warp into a classic
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religious persecution,
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and then the extra rebound
against the people for daring
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to challenge authority.
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You know, we're living
in very interesting times,
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very interesting times.
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And the stresses that we
see in different countries
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come from many
different reasons,
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but over and over again,
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I have seen that
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when you feed
religion into the mix,
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and it nearly
always is in the mix,
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the more traditionalist society
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is the more certain
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that you're dealing
with religion sometimes
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and/or but religion
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and tribal or
ethnic distinctions.
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But once you mix religion in,
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it can get very
nasty very quickly.
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But the advice that Jesus gave
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or the
prediction that Jesus gave
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when His disciples
came to Him, and they said,
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"You know, can you tell us
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when are the
signs of Your coming
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and at the end of the age?"
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And I've read and
reread that statement
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and it's not really clear
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whether they meant
it to be synonymous.
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You know, Jewish writings,
particularly the Old Testament,
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and this is the
new, had parallelism.
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And on that level,
you could say, well,
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you're coming and
the end of the age
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is synonymous.
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But I'm inclined to think
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they were seeing
them as separate.
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The Romans, and they
were in the rough times
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of the Roman Empire,
had a concept of time,
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divided up into
100 years, a saeculum,
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was a little more than
100, but roughly 100 years.
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The time that four
generations would pass,
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and more
importantly, the time period,
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that was enough to
mean that nobody alive
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at the beginning of that period
would be alive at the end.
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So the timespan of human memory.
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And then, since no one alive
could remember how it began,
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they would repeat
the same problems.
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And I really
believe that the disciples
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were thinking in the
model of their times,
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you know, "When are we going
to get to the end of things
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as we know them,
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when it'll be the
shift into another way
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of dealing with stuff but
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and of the sign of Your coming?"
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Because Jesus
said, "No man knows.
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I can't tell you when that is."
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And Jesus outlined
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all of the things
that we are experiencing,
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the natural
disasters, the pestilences,
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the earthquakes,
the fires, and so on.
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But He says,
"Don't worry," He says,
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"These are but the birth
pangs, the end is not yet."
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And elsewhere in the Bible,
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it says that there are
people that will come scoffers
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at the end of time and say,
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"Where is the
promise of His coming?"
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All things continuous
they have from the beginning,
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nothing's changed.
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And so even those climate change
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deniers are right to a point,
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storms and tornadoes,
they've always been with us,
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just like the poor.
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I think there's a
quantitative difference.
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We're seeing a rapid increase,
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scientists are tracking it.
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You know, the number
of earthquakes in the last
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few years is massively more
than all the known earthquakes
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in recorded history.
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Even not to mention
something like fracking,
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basically breaking
the back of the earth,
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there are thousands of
earthquakes on a given day,
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little ones.
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But, you know, the
earth is quivering.
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But Jesus said,
"These are not the signs
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of the end in themselves."
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They're markers,
and certainly frequency
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would lend you to
think we're coming to the end
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of the human age,
not just the 100 years,
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the time of man
and the time of Christ
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and His eternal
kingdom is about to begin.
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But he said that,
"Then they will give you up
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to be persecuted.
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And brother will hate
brother, family against family."
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And I thought of that,
with the Chamberlain thing.
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It wasn't as simple
as societal prejudice
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suddenly erupting
against Adventist,
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there was
Adventist against Adventist,
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disbelieving what
a brother had done,
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even some passing
judgment on the theology
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of this pastor.
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Did that have anything to
do with him being involved
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in this sort of a
theological guilt?
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Crazy sort of a way
of looking at stuff,
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but very much fulfilling
of what Jesus had said
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would be the type of times
that would predate His coming
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when every man's hand
is against his brother,
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and people believing
a lie, great deceptions,
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uncertainty about what
is truth and what is error.
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And in the US, we've
just gone through a period,
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I lived through it,
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but I hardly
believe it after seeing it,
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where everything was
told to be lies, lies,
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don't believe the
media, they lie to you.
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Meanwhile, the
president who lied
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more freely
than most politicians
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who are prone to it
at the best of times,
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so who was telling the truth?
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It got to the point
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where nothing was quite certain.
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News medias became
political propaganda units.
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The internet at
the best of times,
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unreliable and just
private interpretation,
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just full of the
most fantastical stuff,
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including a news and
video made from whole clips.
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Jesus' words are
very much coming true.
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What really matters at the
end of the day as Jesus says,
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"Let your light
so shine before men,
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that they will see your behavior
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and know that you
represent your Father."
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That's really the challenge.
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That was missing, I believe
in lies degree in Australia
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during the Chamberlain saga.
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It's often missing
today, but it's imperative
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that we who stand for
religious liberty proclaim,
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as the Bible says,
liberty from the housetops
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throughout the
land, because liberty
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is the liberation from God,
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as a matter of
theology given to us now
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and as a matter of expectation
soon to come forever.
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We need to proclaim liberty.
00:10:03.90\00:10:05.67
We need to speak
to our neighbors,
00:10:05.70\00:10:07.04
witness and prepare
the way of the Lord,
00:10:07.07\00:10:09.77
as was done in
the New Testament.
00:10:09.80\00:10:11.81
Starting with John
Milton's Paradise Regained,
00:10:15.64\00:10:18.81
it has long since struck
me that the great conflicts
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of the ages
happened in the desert.
00:10:22.42\00:10:25.29
It was in the desert wilderness
00:10:25.32\00:10:27.09
temptation that Christ
overcame on our behalf.
00:10:27.12\00:10:30.06
Children of Israel
wandered 40 years in the desert
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denying God most of the time,
00:10:32.73\00:10:35.23
and therefore they were not
allowed to cross the Jordan.
00:10:35.26\00:10:38.83
For the United States
and its westward journey,
00:10:38.87\00:10:41.97
it was really in the desert
00:10:42.00\00:10:43.34
that some of the
great conflicts took place.
00:10:43.37\00:10:45.57
And, of course,
00:10:45.61\00:10:47.11
the Mormons in
their westward trek saw it
00:10:47.14\00:10:50.35
as an escape from persecution.
00:10:50.38\00:10:52.85
And for Australia
with the Chamberlains,
00:10:52.88\00:10:55.35
it was a case of misapprehension
00:10:55.38\00:10:57.65
of belief in the desert.
00:10:57.69\00:10:59.55
We figuratively are facing
a desert time in the world
00:10:59.59\00:11:04.03
and how we will come out
of it remains to be seen.
00:11:04.06\00:11:07.43
But we need to
remember that despite
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of the swirling dust,
00:11:09.30\00:11:10.63
in spite of the
parching moments,
00:11:10.67\00:11:12.73
if we're faithful, God
will be faithful with us.
00:11:12.77\00:11:17.14
For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
00:11:17.17\00:11:19.64