Should Christians Rejoice at The Death of A Pope?

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Alright Tim, the question for today's episode is, should Christians rejoice at the death of a

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Pope? One of the things the Bible says is, do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles, lest the

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Lord see it and be displeased, and turn away His anger from Him towards you, is the implied answer there.

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I think as you think about an enemy falling, our posture shouldn't really be one of rejoicing in general, because we are all sinners, and there should be the reality of the knowledge that, particularly if one of your enemies is unsaved, they will be going to a place that you shouldn't really wish for them to go.

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So we fundamentally should be having some sort of forgiving posture. Jesus instructs us to pray for our enemies, bless those who persecute us, bless and do not curse.

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If your enemy hungers, feed him, if he thirsts, give him drink, and so doing, he repels fire upon their head.

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So we should have a posture that basically is praying for our enemies and hopes the best things for them, and we shouldn't just be filled with delight when they fall.

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But then, I think when you think about a situation like this, I think there's a lot more to these verses than what

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I've just described. So there's a simplistic kind of reading of these things to say, no, you shouldn't rejoice whatsoever.

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And then there might be scenarios, though, that we can imagine where rejoicing would be appropriate, and you have to make certain distinctions along these lines to try to talk about the difference between different types of scenarios.

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Yeah, I mean, my mind immediately jumps to Revelation, for example, where it describes the saints rejoicing, because basically they're crying out for justice against their persecutors, and God is finally bringing them to justice.

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And it's definitely not really painted as a scene of mourning. It's painted more as a scene of rejoicing, if anything.

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Right. So you have a lot of different verses that are factoring into this sort of equation.

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So I just gave you a list of verses that would basically discourage you from rejoicing. And then you have

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Revelation, the kind of verses you're talking about in the book of Revelation, where we are crying out for justice, essentially.

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Mm -hmm, yeah. And once we do get to heaven, God's going to wipe every tear from our eye.

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And the smoke of the torment of unbelievers will go up for all eternity. And we're not just going to be weeping for them for all eternity.

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All of our tears will be gone at that point, and we will be filled with joy over all of it.

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So there's a sense in which we want God to be justified, not in a theological sense in that way, but God to be vindicated.

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We want God to be seen to be in the right. And we also, as individuals, we're called not to pursue vengeance on our own end, but to leave vengeance to God, not because God will not deal out vengeance, but because we know that he will.

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So vengeance is not a bad thing. It's just we shouldn't take it in our own hands. He's instituted the government to take care of, to be an avenger of wrongdoing, and then ultimately he himself will be the final avenger of all wrongs.

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And so we want everything to be set right. We want justice to be done. So those kind of verses are also factoring into a situation like this.

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And then many people read the first set of verses I mentioned as well as verses which basically say we shouldn't have any enemies even, right?

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So many of your gospel coalition types, they almost deny the reality of the existence of an enemy.

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And that's not what the Bible is saying. The Bible is not saying that you shouldn't have any enemies. It's saying you will have enemies and you shouldn't rejoice when they fall.

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Does that make sense? Yeah. So you have different kinds of passages. You have the kind of passages that are telling you don't rejoice when your enemy falls, and to do good to your enemies, and to love your enemies, and to try to convert your enemies.

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And then you have other kind of passages which say that, hey, we should long for justice, and we should long for God to be vindicated, and we should long for the day when everything is set right, and where justice is finally seen to be done.

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And so how do you navigate all these waters with a situation like with the Pope? And that's something that maybe

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I can give a little bit of a path forward because you're asking me to. Yeah, yeah. So I think—

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Oh, and I guess one more thing to think about is you do have— so you have

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Jesus, for example, who when he's laying his life down of his own will,

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Peter cuts the guy's ear off, right? And then Jesus immediately heals it, and he basically rebukes

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Peter. Those who live by the sword will die by it. Right. And so you have examples like that, and then obviously he's asking, as he's being murdered on the cross, he's asking

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God to forgive them, right? So you seem to have— so Jesus is taking a very much like a love your enemies type of position, right?

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Even as he's being murdered on the cross. But then you read the Old Testament, and you see the

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Israelites and their response to all of their political enemies, the various countries surrounding them, and they're constantly asking

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God to destroy them. Right. For the Israelites, or grant them strength to destroy their enemies.

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And so it seems like there is sort of a— even just beyond final judgment type things, it seems like you do have a lot of— even in this life, there's a lot of different responses.

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So I just wanted to bring those up as well, so people didn't think we're only talking about like, hey, on the last day of judgment.

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Well, certainly on the last day, Jesus will come like a victorious warrior, and he will stamp his enemies under his boot like grapes at the harvest, right?

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In a winepress of the wrath of his fury. So as much as he turned the other cheek while he was here, he will come one day in judgment as well.

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Right, yeah. So I think what you want to do when you're thinking about one of these topics in general— so let's talk about the topic in general, and then we'll talk about the

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Pope. But just talking about the topic in general, I think what you want is you want to have kind of two different postures that are happening simultaneously at the same time.

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And the easiest way to conceptualize this kind of scenario is just to imagine what your moral response should be to Adolf Hitler.

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Okay. Hitler, I guess. During World War II, he's a good example, right?

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So there's a sense in which if you're applying the one set of passages, it's you're loving your enemy, you're doing good to your enemy.

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The problem, though, is that you have Hitler in the equation, but then you also have six million Jews that are in the equation too, right?

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Sure. So you have a personal posture towards Hitler yourself in that you want him to be saved, right?

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But then you have a posture of—he's not the only person in the equation.

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There are six million people he's killing, right? Depending on what the numbers are and everything else.

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There's six million Jews he's putting in a concentration camp. So what does love for them require, right?

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So there's love for Hitler, and there's love for the other people. Now, most people won't even—if you're talking about Hitler, there is no—it's all vengeance all the way down, right?

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Right, yeah. So I think even with someone as bad as Hitler, there's a sense in which you want him to—you just want him to go to hell, right?

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And I think that's where our first passage is getting at. So you have the personal enemy dynamic, right?

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That person did you wrong, right? And I think that's the kind of scenario that Proverbs 24 is talking about.

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That person did you wrong personally, and you want them to get what's coming to them.

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So you're motivated by vindictiveness on your part, right? Instead of being forgiving, instead of being merciful, instead of God's forgiven me a great debt,

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I can forgive. I can lay aside this personal offense. You want justice for them and vengeance for them personally, right?

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And I think that personal enemy posture is bad. You don't want to have a personal—it doesn't need to be a personal— the primary offense doesn't need to be just they offended you, okay?

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Okay, yeah. But now you imagine someone like Hitler. Yeah, I want him to be saved, but I also want him to be stopped.

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And the reason why I want him to be stopped is because I have love for the Jews that is required in this equation as well.

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Does that make sense? Mm -hmm. And so meaning like I have six million people that I'm supposed to love, and you're trying to kill them all.

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And so love for them demands I try to stop you. Does that make sense? Right, yeah. And then if suppose that we accomplish it, victory in Europe Day and all that, right?

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We win the fight. I don't see why at that point rejoicing at the

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Allied victory would be an inappropriate thing. I mean, that's what you've been praying towards. That's what you've been praying towards.

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But at that point, you're not rejoicing that Hitler went to hell, right?

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Yeah. That's not where you're rejoicing at. You're rejoicing that the monstrous evil was stopped and lives were saved, right?

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So the content of your rejoicing is not rejoicing that your enemy is falling.

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That's a byproduct of what's actually happening. Does that make sense? Yeah. Keep going.

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Keep going. It's like I'm not rejoicing that you're being at this moment tossed into the lake of fire for all eternity.

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What I'm doing is I'm rejoicing that God has given us the victory and we're able to stop this evil.

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We're able to save a lot of lives. Does that make sense? Yeah. So it's kind of like King David with Absalom.

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Right, Absalom? Is that his son who rebels? Yeah. So his son rebels.

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He's trying to conquer the kingdom. His hair gets caught in a tree and they stab him with a spear and then beat him to death for King David.

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And the Israelites, they're all rejoicing at this because the rebellion has essentially been ended at that point.

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But then King David is upset because his son has died.

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It seems like what you're saying is you need to have the

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King David response, but then you also need to have, depending on the situation, the

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Israelite response as well. Yeah, and I think the King David response is probably inappropriate.

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Okay. It's a good passage, but then I think the

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King David response. So Joab goes and rebukes him for weeping.

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He rebukes him for it. Because he's like, you would have been happier if all us

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Israelites were dead, but Absalom wasn't. Yeah, now that's what happens when you take this, don't rejoice when your enemy falls.

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And the only person involved in the equation is your enemy. Does that make sense? And you forget that there's a bunch of other people involved.

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And so David's problem was he had a stubborn, rebellious son. The law told him he needed to put to death his stubborn, rebellious son.

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He refused to do that because he loved his son more than he loved everyone else, right? And I think he had guilt over the

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Bathsheba incident, and he knew that God was going to raise up evil from within his own family. And so he knew that this was somehow connected with his own sin here too.

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And so then he's weeping over it. He's weeping over it. And at that point, he had a moral obligation to celebrate the victory.

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Everyone laid their life on the line in order to save his neck, right? And so in that moment, here's the thing.

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There's more to the equation than just... He was right in that he didn't take his son's rebellion personal, right?

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But he was wrong in that he didn't factor in all the other people involved in the scenario, right?

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It was an imbalanced response to the situation. So in a similar way, you stop

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Hitler, the response is rejoicing for the victory that everyone has won.

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And you stop the moral evil, you saved many lives. And so there should be a rejoicing that is appropriate to that kind of thing.

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Now, when you bring the Pope into it, right?

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I don't know that he really has a whole lot of authority at this point. I don't know that he's... He's not the current

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Pope. I don't know how much of a negative influence he is at the moment. He's just like an old villain that's kind of still hanging out, you know?

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He took the hat off and gave it to someone else. Right. So I mean, in some sense, it would be like if Obama died right now and you just rejoice over Obama dying.

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Now, unless you buy into the conspiracy theories to say that he's the real power behind the

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Biden stuff that's happening right now, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he may be a bad example because I know that he does still wield, you know, some...

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Some influence in some way. Some influence in some way that's very negative, you know? But maybe imagine like,

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I don't know if Carter is still alive or something like that. He's just an old guy out there doing nothing, you know, just barely, barely there.

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Maybe he died already. I can't remember. But, you know, but just think about like, I don't know if you're still holding on to it, you know, when they don't have any current influence and power and whatever, then you're probably more motivated by the vindictiveness kind of thing instead of stopping like a real threat and a real evil at this moment.

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Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. And so... So even if, you know, like, is there any room to say like, hey, sure.

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Like, they don't have influence now in the same way. Maybe they're not causing damage right now, but then that doesn't change the fact that they're the same evil person.

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Yeah. Well, so I think you have the two postures. You have the one posture that says you don't rejoice when your enemy falls, meaning it's not personal.

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It's not personal, right? Sure. Yeah. It's not like I'm mad at you, right? Yeah. And I'm holding a grudge and I want you to go to hell, right?

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As quick as possible because I hate your guts, right? Right. So no one who hates is born of God, right? So there's a personal kind of thing to it.

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I think there's like a justice component of it, you know, but I think as Christians, we should have a, you know, a little bit of a uncertain posture.

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Meaning if God gives everyone justice, like he gives us justice and, you know, we don't want pure justice for anyone.

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So I think there's a sense in which a person can say, hey, I want justice to be done.

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And I'm not doing it from like I'm riled up with anger about it personally. I want justice to be done, but it should be a sobering thought.

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And I think that would be different than, like, it would be a sobering thought, not like a rejoice moment, you know?

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Rejoice and be exceedingly glad because, you know, Pope Benedict XVI is now burning in hell, right?

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Like that seems imbalanced in the way that now, I mean, if he's, you know, I think like if Pope Francis is making a mess of things, you know, and if somehow he could be stopped and replaced with the new

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Antichrist, you know? Yeah. I don't know that it would help any, you know? Well, that's what

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I was going to ask you is, you know, because, you know, Hitler's one thing, because in order to stop him, you basically have to, in the process, you have to go to war.

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And at the end of that war, assuming you win, you remove him from power and basically restructure the country.

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With Catholicism, it's just, all right, next man up kind of thing.

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Right, right. So, is that really, are we really talking about the same thing? Yeah, no,

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I don't think we're talking about the same thing, but I'm just, I think that those are useful categories to think through when you're trying to apply to these kind of scenarios.

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And so, I think with, I mean, I think if you were to think about, I mean, I think the Catholic Church is, you know, full of false teachers and they're deceiving people.

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And the Bible says it's better a millstone hung around their neck and they're casting the seed and cause these little ones who believe in me to stumble.

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Right. So, there's a bad place in hell reserved for those individuals who have so much access to the truth.

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I mean, I do think they're a false religion, like the paradigm for a false religion, and they are sending many people to hell.

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And I think we should have a posture that says, hey, save them or stop them, kind of posture.

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In the same way with Hitler, save them or stop them, they're deceiving people, they're being used for these things. And so, throw a wrench in their plans.

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But I don't think we should be rejoicing in their own personal destruction, you know, as a personal affront in that way.

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But praying that the Lord would, you know, open up the eyes of the blind and those who are held captive in this false religious system and put an end to it and stop it and utterly destroy it.

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I think those are perfectly fine and correctory prayers. Right. Okay. Fair enough.

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