Has Depression Caused The Church to Lose Its Mind?

AD Robles

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Hello there, this is A .D. Robles and you're listening to A .D. on the Fight Laugh Feast Network.

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All right, well, let's jump into it today. I feel so bad. I feel like I've been neglecting the Fight Laugh Feast Club.

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I'm sorry. I'm going to try to be more consistent with these uploads on the podcast. But in any case,

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I hope you had a great weekend. I hope you had a great Lord's Day. I definitely did. I actually went ice fishing twice this weekend,

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Friday morning and also Saturday morning. And I got three fish total, which, you know, they're all on the smaller side,

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I would say. But but, you know, it's cool to be successful at something that you're new at. But I'll tell you what, man,

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I was I was just getting used to like the booming sound of the ice expanding under the under the under the well under the ice,

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I guess. I was just getting used to the sound like it sounds like little explosions underneath your feet.

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And I had a buddy there. It was the first time he was ice fishing, too. And I was telling him, oh, yeah, you know, that's normal.

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That's normal. And then we heard this hugely loud cracking sound. And we both kind of were like, we kind of laughed it off very nervously.

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But man, that was a I don't know if I'll ever get used to that one. But in any case, it was fun and a good time and all of that like negative six degrees out there.

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But I got some new like warm snow gear and it was I was nice and toasty.

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In any case, I wanted to talk about a very interesting video that I had watched and I want to I want to connect it to the social justice controversy in the church.

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I'm not I don't know if it is connected or not. But it's just a let's do a thought experiment a little a little thought experiment if you don't, if you don't mind.

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But this video I saw it on Friday. And it's from George Gammon, the rebel capitalist channel on YouTube.

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By the way, if you're interested in in economics or capitalism in general, the George Gammon channel, rebel capitalist is really interesting.

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He's he talks about some very interesting stuff. And he's able to break down very complicated things into very kind of bite sized chunks that are helpful for increasing understanding.

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I highly recommend him. But in any case, this video is called economic mass formation psychosis, leading us to societal collapse.

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How's that for a doomsaying title? You know, here's the here's the thing, right?

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So we've we've we've all kind of been asking ourselves, you know, how, how has how have so many people been convinced that COVID is like the worst disease ever and you gotta we gotta treat it differently than we've treated anything in our past, you know, we can shut down businesses shut down church when when you know, we all kind of remember a year or two ago when when every flu season would come around.

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We all knew how to do this, you know, like if we were sick, we didn't go to work, we didn't go to church, whatever it was.

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And if we weren't sick, then we, you know, we kind of, you know, minded our business the way we normally would, maybe we wash our hands a little more, maybe we have no hand sanitizer, whatever.

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But you know, we went about our business. And then COVID comes out, allegedly, and everything, all the rules change, all of a sudden, people can't be responsible enough to, you know, not go to work when they're sick, we got to shut it down, people can't be responsible enough to make a decision on a vaccine or not, we got to mandate it.

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You know, it's like, everything changed. And we're asking ourselves, well, how did this happen? How did everyone just seemingly lose their minds, all of a sudden, at the same time.

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And, you know, we've seen, you know, lots of people try to explain this. And the one of the most popular explanations, at least right now, is this idea of mass formation psychosis, where people are, this is the theory that people have been literally hypnotized, hypnotized into believing things that are untenable, that are just unrealistic, you know, not believable.

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And but yet, they're believing them. And they've literally been hypnotized by the television to believe this stuff.

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The thing about hypnotism is it's not like a mystical sort of weird thing, per se.

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It's something that is, it's very easy to happen. So one example, this is an example that I've heard, you know, when you're driving, sometimes you'll be driving.

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And you'll be thinking about something very intently, maybe you have an issue in your life or at work or something like that.

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And you're you're, you're focused on this one idea. And, and you're, you're working it out in your brain, and all of a sudden, you're home.

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And you think back about your drive. And you're like, I don't remember any part of this drive.

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How am I alive? Have you ever had that experience where you're like, man, I don't remember the whole drive.

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I've been I was focused on this problem in my life. And all of a sudden, it's like I time warped home.

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I don't remember stopping at stoplights. I don't remember making turns. I don't. But I did it all because here

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I am at home. Well, that's hypnotism, right? You're, you're, you're, you're, you're consciously making these turns and stopping at stoplights and doing all kinds of stuff that you're not really aware that you're doing, but you're doing them.

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That's a form of hypnotism. Watching television is a form of as well.

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And so anyway, the whole the whole idea here is that, that that we've got this situation where tons of people have lost their minds a little bit simultaneously.

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And it's all kind of been intentional. Now, this video from George Gammon, sort of seeks to explain how how we were in a state where this we were susceptible to this, right.

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And it explains it in economic terms that honestly, this blew my mind when I heard this. The case being made here is that we have been in an economic depression since the great financial crisis.

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So like since 2008 2009, we've been in an extended protracted period of depressed

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GDP growth for like a decade. And it's a significant depression in the sense that the

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GDP has been suppressed by one or $2 trillion per year. So if you take that times 10 years, we're talking 10 trillion $12 trillion or $20 trillion in 10 years.

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And so what it's saying is that, that this, this, this, this depression has, you know, had societal impact.

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In other words, you know, when people are have a lower standard of living, they have access to less capital, they have less ability to buy things and to do normal, you know, things that people do in the economy.

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You know, they have less children, for example, which is something we've definitely seen, they start less families, which is, again, something we've definitely seen in our society.

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And, you know, they increase drug use, you know, in the old days, it was primarily alcohol and other things.

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Now it's, you know, it's alcohol, it's crystal meth, you know, heroin, things like that. That's something we've definitely seen.

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And so you've got sort of a societal decay, because of economics, because there's less opportunities available, less capital available, less everything available.

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And so you you kind of reap the societal kind of degradation of the economy just being in a complete depression.

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And the idea is, when you're in an economic depression, and then you're in a kind of a social depression as well.

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And people are kind of in this state of sort of, you know, depression, you're very malleable.

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That's the idea. So you're very open to suggestion, you're open to, you know, you know, someone telling you there's a boogeyman out there, you're open to hearing about hearing them out about this boogeyman, you know, when you're in a depressed state economically and socially, it's very easy for someone to come in and say,

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Oh, well, those are the bad people that are doing it to you. And you're just kind of, you're ready to hear that, you know, you're in a state where you're ready to hear that.

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Now, the instant question that you're going to ask me is, is ad how can this be right?

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How can we be in a depression? I you know, my life is good. I've got Netflix, you know,

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I've got three TVs and a cell phone, like, what are you talking about? I remember when I was a kid, you know,

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I'd see the bread lines, and I'd see the pictures of the depression where, you know, 100 people are in line to apply for one job.

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And you know, there's soup kitchens with lines around the block, like, I don't see any of that stuff. And this is this is the amazing thing, right?

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This is, this is, this was what blew my mind about this video, the video in the video, he makes the case that we have all that, except it's the 2021 or sorry, 2022 version of all that.

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So we don't have soup kitchen lines the way we used to, but how many people are on food stamps, see food stamps are the new soup kitchen line, you know, you just get it put into your debit card, you have your debit card in your wallet, just like everybody else.

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It's called an EBT card, your, your benefits card. And nobody can see that you're on the bread line, because you're just doing the same thing everyone's doing, you're taking out your card, and you're putting it there.

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But really, you're on a bread line, because that's a welfare card. That's that that's money that the government just gave you kind of thing to so you could eat.

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So we have bread lines, they're just unseen. That's the case that this person's making. We also have job lines, right?

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So we don't have, you know, you know, we the way we apply to jobs these days, we don't do it in person. So we don't have a line of 100 people applying to one job.

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But what we do have is Craigslist is the point that this guy makes. So he says, Look, if you've ever posted a job on Craigslist before, which this this struck me, because I have posted jobs on Craigslist before, you post the job.

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And literally, within a day, you'll have 1000 applications. And everyone will apply this job, even if they're not qualified, just, it's just the desperation apply.

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And that's the new line. That's the new job line. They don't do it physically, it's all digitally, you do it on Craigslist.

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So instead of the pictures of people lined up for the job, what you have is an inbox that's totally full of people applying to your position.

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So that kind of blew my mind a little bit, because we're in sort of this depression that is unseen, in the sense that we don't, it's not in our face all the time.

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Now, here's the, here's the, the graph that shows real GDP growth, the total economic activity of the country, and expressed in a line graph.

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And this goes back to like to 1940, or something like that 1945.

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And this is this is adjusted for inflation. So what you see here is, you've got a really nice trend line, right, our

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GDP is growing at a very consistent pace, you know, there's, there's ups and downs and things like that.

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But, but, but the line is very, very defined. So every time there's a down, we kind of get right back to trend once we fix it.

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And so here's the trend line. And then all of a sudden, there's a huge dip. And we never get back to trend line, we're now under the trend line.

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So trend line would be up here, where my where my arrow or my cursor is. And every year, we're one or $2 trillion less than that.

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And so this is the great financial crisis, right? This is this is where, you know, you know, Lehman Brothers, you know, fell apart, and all that kind of stuff.

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We never ever made up for it. We've, yes, we're growing, but we're growing below our potential, at least according to the trend line of GDP, right?

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And so you're like, Oh, well, what's the big deal? Right? I mean, this is just we're talking trillions of dollars here.

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Yeah, we're no, we're not as good as we used to be, but we're still great. Well, the big deal is that year after year, we're one or $2 trillion missing our potential, that has an impact on your standard of living, especially if you're on the margins, especially if you're not, you know, in the top 10 % of income earners or something like that, like you've got you're missing out on a lot of quality of life would because of those trillions of dollars, oops,

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I just messed that up. But that's okay. And so the idea is that we're in a depression, we've been in one for 10 or 12 years.

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And that's what made us so susceptible to hearing all of these, these ridiculous, quite frankly, ridiculous scenarios from our overlords.

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And we just kind of go with it, because we're already in this state of social and economic depression.

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Now, I'm not saying this is definitely true. But this is something highly that, at least in my opinion, that we should consider in the church as well, because I don't think that the visible church in the

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United States is immune to this. I really don't. Because in the church, we have people that their quality of life, their standard of living has severely dropped, we of course do.

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And the thing is, you can't miss your GDP targets by $2 trillion a year and have that not affect people in the church economically.

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And so here's what I'm thinking. All right, so just hear me out here. Just hear me out.

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I've thought the same thing that I've thought about COVID and COVID policy, how crazy it all is, and how like, very easily

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I can kind of take apart these arguments, but yet nobody seems to see it. I thought that same thing about the social justice controversy in the church.

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I've often wondered, it's like, how have people been fooled into thinking that we can show partiality in the present to make up for partiality in the past, and God will bless that, right?

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Like, how can people not see in Leviticus where it says, you shall not be partial to the poor or the rich, like they only see to the rich, they just kind of seem to skip over to the poor.

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And they're like, well, yeah, we can show partiality to the poor, if it's making up for an injustice in the past.

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How can people fall for that? Where it's like, we can sin our way out of previous sins, we can sin our way out of it.

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And they'll call Jamar Tisby to speak to their congregation. Jamar Tisby is an unbeliever, let's just face it.

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And he promotes sin in every presentation that he ever makes.

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He promotes, he wants you to sin. He wants you to sin. And how can people fall for this idea of whateness is wicked?

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And like, man, this is the church of Jesus Christ. Those white people that you're talking about, those are your people.

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At least that's what I thought. So it's like, these are your people, they're in the body. Jesus thought they were so valuable that he died to save them, those people in your church, right?

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And we've got Jamar over here, we've got Tabi 'i over here, we got Eric Mason over here, talking about how they've got this stain of whiteness.

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There's nothing they can do to get rid of it. And so they need to give us some money and some psychological help and stuff like that.

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How did we fall for that? Now I'm not saying this explains it, but this certainly seems to be an interesting option as far as how did the church fall for this, because I don't think that the church is immune to the economic calamity that is upon us.

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And the thing is, even if you don't believe the fact that we've been in a depression based on these numbers, because the thing is, depression is defined in a few different ways.

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Most people would define depression as like a super recession, right? Like a super recession and all of that.

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Well, that's not really what a depression is. Depression, when you kind of break it down, it's not just a super recession, it's an extended period of not meeting your potential, depressed growth, in other words.

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And even if it was a period of extended recession,

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I mean, I don't know how else to kind of explain this humongous chunk of missing economic activity.

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This is people's ability to access food. This is people's ability to buy a house. This is people's ability to feed their children and stuff like that.

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And it's just missing here. Even if it hasn't affected you, oh my goodness, even if it hasn't affected you, it's affected people that you know, there's just no question about this.

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And so I wonder if the church has kind of fallen victim to somebody getting up that sounded really sure of themselves and sounded very charismatic.

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And they kind of, even if they don't consciously know what's going on, they feel the weight of this depression.

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They feel the weight of this struggle. It's a struggle for them every single day.

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They feel the weight of that. And then somebody gets up, he's a smooth talker. And he talks like them and he looks like them.

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And he's got these buttery words, which is, by the way, this is how the

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Bible describes false teachers all the time. It doesn't describe them as those are the ones with the harsh words and stuff like that.

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No, no, no, no, no. It talks about how they're buttering you up and they've got smooth words. They sound really winsome.

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And they say, yeah, here's the problem, guys. It's the white man's fault.

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It's whiteness, the problem that you sense and you can't put your finger on it. It's whiteness is the problem.

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And because we're in this mental place where we're economically in a depression, we're socially in a depression, we see the decay all around us.

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I mean, we see it in our cities. I used to live in New York City. I lived in New York City during the Great Recession. And I've seen some of the decay that's happened in real time in New York City.

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And it's coming to the suburbs as well. And we're all kind of seeing this social decay. Everyone's addicted to crystal meth and everyone's on opiates and stuff like that.

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And we see this decay. And so we're like, we sense it. I mean, even if we don't know what's happening and we don't recognize we're in a depression, we see all the signs of depression, right?

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We see people having less kids. We see people starting less families. We see people addicted to opiates at record numbers.

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And so that has an effect on us. That's the idea. That has an effect on us. And so we're ready.

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We know something's not right. We're ready to hear a person that comes and sounds very charismatic and gives us a simple answer.

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It's Trump. That's the problem. It's whiteness that Trump represents. It's the white nationalists that have done this to you.

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And I'm here to tell you that that is not true. That's not what has happened here.

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And look, we can go into some of the economics of all of this. That's not what this video is about.

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But the reality is that I don't know that this is the answer.

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This is why this is all happening. But man, it sure seems to answer a lot of questions.

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It sure seems to answer the very uncomfortable reality that we all are facing.

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It's like, how have we come so far into authoritarianism so quickly?

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I know these people. We all thought we knew

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Jonathan Lehman and Nine Marks and all of these guys. We thought we knew

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Matt Chandler and stuff. And it's like, all of a sudden, overnight, they're like, okay with the government saying, no, no, no, shut down your church.

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And not only are they okay with it, but that they're like, yeah, and it's the holy, righteous thing to do.

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How could someone be so fooled? It's the righteous thing to do to stop the...

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I've heard people put a pious spin on it, where it's like, God has stopped us meeting.

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We must repent and sacklosh. God has not stopped you meeting unless you consider the voice of the government, the voice of your

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God. How have they been fooled into thinking this? And I think,

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I don't know. This theory would answer that question. Again, I'm not saying it's true, but it's something to consider.

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Have we been in an economic depression for 12 years? What kind of effect has that had on the populace, society at large?

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And then because this is a church, first and foremost, what effect has that had on the church?

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I'm not trying to say because of this, it's understandable that people are believing lies from Satan about social justice and stuff like that.

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I'm not saying I'm going to go soft on them, but maybe it'll help when we're talking to people to know that we're not necessarily dealing with someone who's completely all there.

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And I don't mean that as an insult. I mean that they've been beaten down over decades and they're in a tough spot.

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It's a little compassion. I don't know. I'm not really entirely sure what to do with this information. And again, I'm not even sure if it's the answer, but I just wanted to put that out there.

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And by the way, this doesn't discount spiritual problems as well because when God's judging a nation, there's economic calamity, there's physical calamities, wars, there's weather things, stuff like that.

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But there's also spiritual blindness that he brings because in God's reality, in the reality that we exist in, the spiritual and the physical are not completely disconnected.

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They're connected. And so the spiritual realities of drug addiction are definitely there, but they're not disconnected from the economic realities of them as well.

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And so if you solve the economic reality, you're not necessarily solving the spiritual ones. But I'll tell you what, if there's ever a time to repent in sackcloth and ashes and to pray and to beg

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God to not destroy us, this certainly seems like a good time. I hope you found this podcast helpful.

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God bless. Transcribed by https://otter .ai