Government Overreach, Anti Christian Bigotry, and Absent Big Eva

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. It is now week three,

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I believe, of the quarantine. Of course, if you're looking at a Christian calendar, this is Holy Week. So last Sunday was

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Palm Sunday. We have Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and then Resurrection Sunday this coming Sunday.

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And so this is a really good time for us to meditate on the hope that Jesus Christ brings in his conquering of death.

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And whether COVID -19 gets you or something else, you will die at some point. You will be separated from your physical body, but life does go on.

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And it's either heaven or hell, and Jesus Christ has made it possible for you and I to go to heaven if we repent and we put our trust in him.

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And if you don't know what I'm talking about, please reach out to me. I would love to send you some information, maybe share my story with you a little bit, and give you some of that hope and assurance.

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And really only God can give it, but I can certainly introduce you to him.

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So how's that for starting out the podcast? You know, this is a good opportunity.

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I was just thinking this this morning. I was talking to, texting with a friend of mine who's a nurse at a hospital who's a

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Christian, and he's using this time to pick up extra shifts. He's witnessing. He's a great encouragement.

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And I know it doesn't look like that for everyone. Some of you are in the thick of it, and praise

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God for you. Others are delivering groceries for people and helping check up on the elderly, and you know, praise

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God for that. One pastor I know had a great idea. He was doing Christmas caroling, only he wasn't singing

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Christmas carols. He was singing hymns with his family, but they're just going to, you know, different houses for shut -ins and, you know, giving them food, keeping their distance, standing outside and singing, and then going to the next place.

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And so, you know, there's a lot of opportunities. If you're a construction worker and you thought,

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I could never fast because I need my energy, I'd faint. Well, now you're at home. Now maybe you can do some of those things that you hadn't wanted to do.

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So there are opportunities out there depending on your situation. I'd encourage you to look for those. Look for those things.

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We're gonna be talking today about hierarchy, and believe me, there was a lot of things I wanted to say.

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I never run out of things to say, and I don't know if that's good or bad, but, you know,

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I had like five different thoughts, and I thought, I gotta save some of these or put some of these on the table.

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I mean, I wanted to talk about this whole, hey, the church is not a building, it's the people, and so the online church is good.

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And I really, man, I have so many thoughts on that that I really want to address, and I'm not seeing anyone address them.

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And I want to talk about, some of you may not know what I'm talking about right now, but I might make an episode on it, just the

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Jeffersonian tradition, the Southern tradition, if you want to call it that, and this idea that self -sufficiency and self -government are linked, and how

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I think the current situation is showing us that Jefferson had a point. And I told my wife,

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I think a lot of people are gonna be moving out of New York City. We saw that after 9 -11, but I think it's gonna happen again, because they're not gonna be one of, they're not gonna want to be stuck in an area where, you know, they don't have any means by which to provide for themselves.

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They're kind of, you know, if you live in an apartment in New York and you can't work anymore, you know, what do you do? And you're kind of locked in.

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So I just think people, I hope, and I could be wrong about this, but I hope people will start looking at ways that can be more self -sufficient, maybe investing in some land, maybe kind of getting back to that, and maybe we'll have a baby boom in nine months.

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You know, that's another thing that's encouraging that I haven't heard anyone talk about it, you know. I said it to my neighbor,

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I said, you know, I think in nine months we'll see a baby boom. And he goes, yeah, and a divorce boom. And I was like, well, way to damper that.

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We'll see. We'll see who's right. Maybe we're both right. But anyway, anyway, all that to say, you know, those are some little sneak peeks at maybe future shows.

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But for this show, I really wanted to talk about, I think, the pressing thing. This is more important in my mind than those topics, and that is hierarchy.

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Hierarchy. Not the concept of hierarchy. I'm gonna, I'll introduce that to you, but more so, what hierarchies are good and what hierarchies are bad.

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What hierarchies are good and what hierarchies are bad. In other words, what hierarchies do we put under the microscope and we say, there's abuse in this hierarchy.

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You know, let's deconstruct this hierarchy. Let's get rid of it. Let's replace it with something else. And then what hierarchies do we look to when we say, that's a good hierarchy.

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We need to, we need to submit to everything this hierarchy says without any kind of criticism.

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I'm seeing that happen. I'm seeing, and one of the reasons I noticed this was because I'm watching some of the more progressive -leaning evangelicals, or those who have at least accommodated the progressive movement and evangelicalism, the social justice movement, and I'm watching what they're saying.

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And it's very interesting to me that at a time when you would think it's concerning, depending on where you are in the country, some of the measures that governments have taken in overreaching, in limiting civil liberties unnecessarily, etc.

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You would think this is the time to sort of put the brakes on and to say, hey, let's have a debate about this.

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I'm not seeing it. Not one bit. In fact, just the opposite. The narrative is, fall into line.

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And if you don't, you're a big problem. And at the same time, though, some of the same people are critical of other hierarchies they see.

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So let's do a really brief crash course on hierarchies. If you follow me on Twitter, you know I did a very long thread on this the other day.

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I gave biblical examples. This is why you should follow me on Facebook and Twitter. I had them on both of them, actually, and it was longer.

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So I'm not gonna go to the length that I had posted, but I'll briefly explain.

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Hierarchies are something that are inescapable. No matter what culture you're from, Christian, non -Christian, doesn't matter.

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You're gonna have hierarchies. For example, in a biblical family, you would have Christ as the head, and that's where all hierarchies ultimately answer.

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But you have the husband loving the wife, and the wife submitting to his loving care, ideally.

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And children submitting to their parents, as their parents also nurture them. And each person in this relationship has a different function.

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And you can see how this manifests itself at your job. So your boss, if you're not self -employed, he can't come and discipline your kids.

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There's limits to his authority, but on the job, he's the boss. In church, we are commanded in Scripture to submit to our elders.

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So there's actually a number of these relationships, and in Scripture you do see the parent -child, the husband -wife, the slave -master relationship, even.

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You have the church hierarchy that I just mentioned, and you have government. And we've been reminded, in fact, two episodes ago

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I talked about it, I interviewed Kerry Gordon on the relationship of the church as an institution to the government.

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And so we understand that, hopefully. It's inescapable. And for a paleo -conservative like myself, probably the most terrifying thought would be all the mediating influences, like all the, you know, state and local authorities and voluntary associations being wiped off the map, and it just being the individual and the state, you know, as big as the modern state is.

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That would be the terrifying thing, because at that point the state is God. The state has wiped away all the other responsibilities

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God has ordained, and they become the sole authority, not answerable really to anyone.

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And so hierarchies are important, and I'm not gonna belabor the point and talk more about them.

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We could spend a whole hour really on why they're important, but they exist, and the interesting part to me of this whole thing is the evangelical progressives that I've watched, and what hierarchies right now they are putting under the microscope, attempting to deconstruct in some way, and then what hierarchies they don't want to question and they want to tell us, we got to, you know, obey these hierarchies, even if they are outside perhaps their boundaries as far as their responsibilities are concerned.

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So in my opinion, now is a really good time to take our microscopes out, examine what is happening in our country in regards to government overreach, and then highlighting as well anti -christian bigotry, because it's coming out of the woodwork, and let's compare that to what evangelical elites, ministry leaders, denomination heads are saying, and ask if that response is adequate.

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And this is important for a few reasons. I think number one, if you're part of these denominations, organizations, associations, and you give money especially, you want to know if they're representing you, what you would want them to represent in this situation.

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Number two, and this is important to me, you know, in times of trial, we are tested, and in a battlefield situation,

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I keep thinking of this from a historical perspective, but there's so many men, famous generals, I mean think of George Washington.

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Would we have known who he was if it weren't for the fact that there was an American war for independence? Maybe not.

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But he was tested, and he took an enormous risk.

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He sacrificed tremendously for the cause that he believed in, and for his fellow man, really.

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It's for the people he loved, his family, his community. And so we remember him for that, and he gained respect, and he became president.

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And so there's a lot of examples of men and women who have shown through.

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And now is an opportunity for us as Christians to show what we're made of, show that we're not afraid.

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You know, Jesus Christ has conquered the grave, so we're smart, we're cautious, we're not stupid, but at the same time, we have a confidence and a hope, and we're not afraid to ask the hard questions.

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We're not afraid to have debates about important things, and we're certainly not afraid, even if it costs us, to challenge government overreach, and to challenge anti -christian bigotry.

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And I want to ask you, is that happening? At this critical moment, when we see so much of those things, are the supposed leaders in Christianity and evangelicalism actually taking sacrifices?

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And are they responding? Are they, the questions you have in your mind, are they addressing those questions? Or are they talking about something else?

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Now is not the time to be ripping down, you know, pastors, and the patriarchy, and whatever other hierarchies.

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Now is the time to be looking at the immediate threat. I'm not saying there's not a time to address abuse, every human institution has abuse, and to address that.

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But I'm saying, look at this critical moment, and ask yourself, where's the triage? So I'm gonna take you through some of these things.

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Let's do it. So I had a friend of mine who really got back to me in top -notch speed, and I asked him,

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I said, could you just get a list for me of the states, and what their freedom to worship status is in each state, like for church services.

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And so he got a list for me, and he broke it down into four different categories. Church services allowed, church services banned de jure, church services banned de facto, and then state of legality unclear.

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And so, of course, where churches are allowed, there's exceptions. You know, we've shut down the businesses and institutions that are not vital, but we consider churches to be necessary.

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They're vital. Then you have church services banned de jure, and so this is actually a situation where it is impossible to meet for church.

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Either churches are specifically identified, and it says you can't go to church, or the constraints are so that, you know, it's not specifically identified, but it's included in kind of a lockdown with just about everything else, with the exception, you know, they've highlighted their exceptions, like grocery stores, or in many states,

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Planned Parenthood, unfortunately. And then you have church services banned de facto, and that's places where, you know, they're limiting services to like 10 people.

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So yeah, if you want to have church, go have church with 10 people, you know. So it's not, you know, specifically against churches meeting, but there's guidelines that have to be met, and well, they might be more than guidelines.

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You may be arrested if you don't meet them. And then, of course, a few that it's uncertain kind of what the situation is.

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So I want to start with a state that is friendly to religious institutions, Ohio. The governor there has put religion under the category of essential businesses and operations.

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So you can, in effect, go to church if your church is holding a service in Ohio, hopefully operating by those

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CDC guidelines. I'm sure most churches probably are not meeting or doing drive in church or, you know, something else.

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Now, there's two things I need to preface this with, because there's two working issues.

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The first working issue is Romans 13, and whether or not the government has jurisdictional authority over the institution of the church.

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Now, I got to be clear about this. The question is actually not whether government has the authority to quarantine.

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I think everyone concedes that, as far as I know. The question is whether inside that church building the government can say, you're not allowed to worship, or another publicly gathered place.

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So that's the difference. In theory, the government could block the road and say, this is a taxpayer -funded road.

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We're blocking it, right? I'm sure that would make some people mad, but that's actually different.

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You may think this is a stupid differentiation, but it does matter. That is different than saying, inside that building that you own, that is the place where you worship, you're not allowed to publicly gather.

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So that's one issue, right? That's one working issue, and wherever you fall within that, you know, that's fine.

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You know, I'm not gonna belabor that point or go into it any farther. The second point, and this may be the more important point, and I think

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I brought this up as well, is whether or not churches are essential. And this is where the secularism comes in.

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So if you're gonna shut down everything, shut down everything, right? But if you make exceptions, if you say, well

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Planned Parenthood can be open, well grocery stores, you know, surely can be open, Lowe's can be open, you're gonna need, you know, essential things from Lowe's.

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If you start making a list of exceptions and say, well these are the things that we need, but churches are not, we don't need those, then you are making a decision about what your culture values.

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And so I'm just pointing out that that decision to, in many states, to qualify let's say a

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Planned Parenthood, but say to a church that's not essential, that is in effect a decision towards secularism.

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Very strongly so. And so we have to be aware of this.

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This is kind of a barometer for where our culture is at, and various states are reacting differently because various states are at different levels in kind of how far they've conceded to secularism.

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Now, I want to show you this video. I see both sides of the story. You do see both sides though.

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Oh yeah, I see both sides. Why not just pray on the internet, pray with your family right now to keep people...

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It's called, it's called values and liberty. You have the choice as an

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American. But if you're infected, sir, and you go into the grocery store and you run into someone and get them infected...

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Why not flip it the other way? That could happen too. You're increasing your chance of getting them sick, right?

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Could be. So that was from a church in Ohio recently, and CNN set up microphones and cameras on the road that led in, and were interviewing people who were going to a service.

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And a few observations. The reporter said, why don't you just like pray online or something?

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You know, don't come to church. One of the things that we're going to have to be aware of as Christians right now is the fact that we live in a culture that does dating online and does, lives online, many people.

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And we need to, if there's any time to do it, reinforce the importance of meeting for the gathered body.

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Where you can have the ordinances, where the full spectrum of the gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 are present. If your church is taking a break, which, you know, if they've chosen to do that, then okay, that's fine.

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No judgment there. By the way, I should probably say that, because there was a few people, it wasn't many, but a few people reached out to me and said, you know, you're judging my church because you had

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Kerry Gordon on, and Kerry Gordon was adamant that we needed to meet. Of course, Kerry was doing a drive -in church, but Kerry was just very concerned that the government can't tell me not to have the gathered assembly, because God's told me to do the gathered assembly.

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And I respect Kerry for that. Every church is making different decisions based on where they are. The important thing to me is you're making it for the right reasons.

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If you're making it because, yeah, we want to protect our people, you know, that's a good reason to say temporarily we're not going to meet.

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I mean, we do that in emergencies anyway. But if you're doing it because the only reason is the government's told us, and I've seen some things like that, probably not the best reason.

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You want to do it because, I agree with what the government is saying in this case. But the reporter has no understanding of what the gathered body actually is, and the secular world doesn't, and our churches aren't soon if we don't reinforce this.

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And now is the time to reinforce it. So if you're not going to meet, at least teach people it's important to me.

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What we're doing online right now, it's not really church. It is a service, and we're doing our best under the circumstances, but we're looking forward to when we can actually meet as a body.

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So the other thing you should notice is that the reporter actually has an anti -Christian bias, and you might say, what are you talking about?

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Well, it's more obvious than something like this. This is from The Onion, April 3rd. Southern governors argue COVID -19, good

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Christian virus that wouldn't dare spread during church. So what they're saying are Christians are dumb, they don't believe in science, their religion is prioritized in their minds over the common public good, and that's just who

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Christians are. Well, and there's a lot more examples of this, by the way. The reporter, though, he asked this question.

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He says, well, if you go to church, and you get the virus, and you go to the store, you could give it to someone.

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And the driver asked, and I thought this was a very good question, why can't it be the other way around? Both the church and the grocery store are both essential services.

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And this was at a church that said, at least that they were practicing the CDC guidelines inside, and they were distancing, which by the way, grocery stores, my local grocery store that I've been going to, didn't even start limiting the number of people until like a few days ago.

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I mean, there was no attempt. So why aren't reporters outside grocery stores saying, you know, if you go in there, then you're going to get the disease, and you're going to spread it to someone maybe in church.

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Well, the reason is because there's an anti -Christian bias. That's essential in their minds, but the church, that can't be essential.

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That's extraneous. That's wasteful. That's negligent. That's even wicked in some cases.

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Here's Michael Shermer. He's a famous atheist, but April 4th, he's commenting on the same video and some of the other interviews, and I guess these are some of the things that were said.

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I'm covered in Jesus' blood. It's about values and liberty. You saw that clip. The blood of Jesus cures every disease.

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Better not print no fake news, or he'll hear from me. He's making fun of them. He's saying, here's what it sounds like to be trapped in a delusion.

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I'm telling you, this is an opportunity for the secularists in their minds to show that Christians are stupid.

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If they can just find one church meeting in their state, Christians are dumb. They're not going to go to the grocery stores and say the same thing, because they think that the physical world is important.

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Eating and drinking is important. The spiritual world, not important. It has no relationship to the physical world.

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It is the epitome of privatized, personal faith that doesn't affect anything else.

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And that's the world we're living in now, and it's becoming more and more that way. Now this is what's happening in California, where church services are banned at du jour.

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Governor Gavin Newsom has closed businesses unless they are part of the 16 critical infrastructure sectors identified by the federal government as essential critical infrastructure.

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So unless people are getting food, picking up prescriptions, seeking health care, or traveling to an essential job, or doing one of the first three on someone else's behalf, they are ordered to remain at home.

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Failure to comply is punishable by law, and so this means that you can't go for a hike. Hiking trails are blocked off in California.

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You can't go for a swim in the ocean, even if you're the only one. This is really big overreach.

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Here's a paddle boarder in the Pacific Ocean who was arrested.

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And you can see from this video, he's the only one out there. And then you can see from the picture, he is in a cop sandwich, as the article that I founded on PJ Media shows.

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So he's being arrested because he's not social distancing. So in order to arrest him, they violate the social distancing guidelines.

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Even, you know, one cop has his hand on him, and they're escorting him away from the beach, so I guess the fish don't get

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COVID -19. But here's the video. Look at this. He cut him off.

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Throw the tacks down. Pop the tires. Now, of course,

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California is also the state that just recently in the news had some police departments saying they were going to use these new

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Chinese -made drones to essentially spy on the citizens to make sure they're not breaking the quarantine.

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So I know this was going to be at some beaches, I think, or at least one beach. And I know

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I saw some footage on Twitter on a highway where they were doing this. I had trouble today.

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I was looking a little bit for it, and I couldn't find it. But these are from the Orange County Register and the

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Daily Mail, March 23rd, talking about the Laguna Beach Police Department and also the

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Chula Vista Police Department using drones. I did, however, see this video, not really looking for it, but this is,

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I guess, happening right now in New York City. Now, I'm sure we feel a whole lot better knowing that a government robot is telling us that we're all in this together.

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Very, very helpful. Of course, not everyone feels that way. A Pakistani immigrant,

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Khan, is organizing efforts to oppose drone use by law enforcement because he feels there's too much racism in the

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U .S. So I think it was imperative for me as an individual and as a part of an immigrant community that, you know, what true values in the

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United States do I really learn? And the true values came from building a cultural resistance.

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I think the drone would just be a new way of seeing what me and people like me are doing that are not doing anything.

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So that video from Vox was actually first put out there in 2017.

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So not a current video, but the only reason I play it is because if Russell Moore and others who are telling us we just got to follow everything the government says and they have our best interest in mind, essentially, if they're not going to oppose things like drones because of privacy concerns and civil liberty concerns, maybe, maybe, just maybe

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I can convince them to oppose them because let's face it, drones are racist and they're spying on people who aren't doing anything.

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So there you go. Thought I would throw that in there. Now, back to 2020 and what's going on currently.

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This is a recent news report from a church in Lodi, California. Back here in Northern California, members of a

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Lodi church appear headed for a showdown tomorrow with health and law enforcement officials.

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This week, the Bethel Open Bible Church was ordered to cease in -person worship services all because they violate the state's ban on group gatherings in an attempt to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

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But the church has fought that order, citing the Bill of Rights and saying services will be safely held tomorrow morning.

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In a statement to KCRA 3, an attorney for the church says the church intends on continuing to safely gather for worship during Christianity's most holy week, exercising unalienable and fundamental rights protected by the

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First Amendment while simultaneously observing CDC -recommended COVID -19 social distancing guidelines.

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This is one of the reasons that we need to be paying attention to what's going on. Lodi is a small town towards central

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Northern California, more in the Central Valley. And what happens in Lodi, what people think in Lodi is going to be much different than what's happening in LA or San Francisco.

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And so they're probably not going to think that it's as much of a threat probably in their community.

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And they're going to wonder why if these other businesses are open and Planned Parenthood in California, why can't they be open?

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Why can't they practice healthy, safe distancing following the

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CDC guidelines and still have church? And if evangelical leaders aren't going to address this topic, someone will because the questions are already being raised.

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And that's kind of my point in this whole video is these questions are coming up whether we want them to or not.

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We're going to have to figure out some things. Let's move now to New York. This is a state actually

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I grew up in. And this one actually was a little more complicated. But the long and short of it is a lobbyist group, a

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Christian group that lobbies for religious freedom in New York did get an admission from Andrew Cuomo, the governor, that houses of worship are actually not ordered to close.

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However, it is strongly recommended that no congregant services be held and social distance maintained.

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And so, so technically, you can go to church in New York.

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Now, New York is also the state that has this going on.

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They are I don't know if this has happened yet. But Cuomo, the governor signed an executive order that says that essentially they can seize ventilators.

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So if you privately own a ventilator, or your business and you have a ventilator, the government can just go in and take it.

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No private property there. And also in New York, which is one of the states that I saw this happening in,

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Google is launching a tool that will publicly track people movements, allowing health officials to check whether their communities are abiding by social distancing measures.

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And so now we have Google and the government's working to track our cell phones to make sure if you're in New York, I don't know, you have to check it to see if your state's doing that.

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But yeah, these are these are things that we haven't really navigated before. And we need to and is that something the government should should have information on where you're going tracking your cell phone data.

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Now maybe what is what I've heard is that the cell phone carriers are they're not identifying who these people are.

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It's just showing phones. Well, how much of a jump it is for them to not give the government information about who people are, and track everyone.

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I mean, this almost reads like a dystopian novel at this point. But that's what's happening in New York.

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Now, concerning the church, this is what was taking place in New York City.

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This is Bill de Blasio. And here's what he had to say. Everyone has been instructed that if they see worship services going services going on, they will go to the officials of that congregation to inform them they need to stop the services and disperse.

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If that does not happen, they will take additional action up to the point of fines and potentially closing the building permanently.

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You did not hear that wrong. The mayor of New York said that he would close possibly a building, whether it's a church, mosque, temple permanently, if that congregation decided to meet against,

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I guess, the order of the city of New York or something. So as far as I know, he has not retracted that.

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And he did say what you think he said. Close the building permanently. Now, this is also what's going on in New York.

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Samaritan's Purse is there. So that's, you know, Franklin Graham's organization, and they're helping people. They're humanitarian relief, which you'd think is a really good thing.

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And the people of New York, I'm sure, are mostly grateful for that. They should be, at least. And I know that there was a number of officials who were very concerned, including

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Bill de Blasio. And here, Jonathan Merritt. Now, Jonathan Merritt still has some pull in evangelical circles,

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I guess. And he identifies, I guess, I don't know what term he'd use, but as a homosexual or a gay

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Christian of some variety in his mind. But this is what he says. Samaritan's Purse is running a makeshift hospital in Central Park.

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New York City Mayor de Blasio and many residents I've spoken with are very concerned that there is an anti -gay evangelical relief organization setting up shop in their backyard.

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And he, I could have put more here, but he takes their side, essentially.

30:53

That, yeah, this is a problem. Think about that for a minute. An organization coming, not to spread a message of an anti -gay, like this is why we're here, is to just focus on homosexuals and say how that's a sin.

31:06

No. This is an organization that's there because they want to help people who are in a pandemic. And yes, they believe in the gospel message and the

31:14

Bible and what the Bible teaches on that sin. But why is that even being brought up?

31:20

If you don't think there's anti -Christian bigotry coming out of the woodwork, then you're sadly mistaken.

31:26

It's coming out everywhere. Now, this is what's going on in Virginia. All public and private in -person gatherings of more than 10 individuals are prohibited.

31:36

This would include religious gatherings. And not only that, but they shall be punishable if it happens as a class one misdemeanor, if that happens, which is an up to $2 ,500 fine.

31:48

And so this is what's going on in Virginia. Now, this is a picture from last

31:53

Sunday. My wife and I went to a drive -in church. This isn't the church we normally go to.

31:59

They've just been doing online stuff, which again, I should probably reiterate. If your church is choosing to do this temporarily, and they have good reasons for it, and they're not just doing it because government says we must, but they actually care for their people and they have reasons.

32:14

I'm not judging anyone for that. Every church is different, and every size of the church, how many people have pre -existing conditions and are older in the church, where the church is located, rural, urban.

32:26

I mean, all those things have to be taken into account. But we happened to find a church, and I felt very safe.

32:32

I just stayed in my car. I talked to some people at a distance from the car, and this was happening in Virginia.

32:39

But technically, I guess according to that law, the police could show up here and say, this is a gathering of 10 or more people, and they could potentially shut it down.

32:49

I mean, we're in uncharted waters. This is untested stuff at this point. But hey, kudos to them for doing that.

32:58

Now, this is something more personal for me. Governor Northam called out

33:03

Liberty University, essentially, and not only him, but the Lynchburg City manager as well, said they were very disappointed that Jerry Falwell is telling students they can come back.

33:14

This is now two weeks ago. This is from the 25th. But the story develops, and I'm going to show you, and yes, there's anti -Christian bigotry all over this.

33:25

Governor Northam saying that he's heard mixed messages, but essentially,

33:30

Jerry Falwell needs to take the lead of the other college campuses, and they need to follow state and federal guidelines.

33:36

So he's assuming they're not doing that. And he tried to, and I don't know,

33:42

I didn't watch this whole video, but apparently in the article, it said he was citing scripture to tell

33:47

Liberty University, essentially, what to do. And I've seen a couple instances of this. There's some I'm going to even share with you later.

33:54

Probably loving your neighbor or something. And so, not happy with Liberty University.

34:01

And there was a big outcry on Twitter, I think it was that day, 25th. It was like the number one trending thing on Twitter, how terrible

34:07

Liberty University is, and they're just going to spread this disease, and they don't believe in science. Well, right around this time, so this is now going back about a week and a half,

34:14

I took this video. I was on campus. And this video got more traction than any of my videos,

34:21

I think, in the last year or so. I mean, like, it's probably got close to 20 ,000 views at this point,

34:27

I don't know. But here's just my little five -minute video from a study break I was taking.

34:33

And by the way, this is not all current information. It's much more shut down and locked down than even then, when

34:39

I took this a week and a half ago. But check this out. All right, guys. I am at Liberty University right now.

34:45

And Liberty University is getting some bad press right now. Needless to say, most of you have probably seen it if you're on Twitter.

34:51

I think yesterday it was like the number one trending thing, that they're being reckless, and they're not taking the proper precautions, letting students come back.

34:59

I want to show you some things. I'm just going to walk around campus for a minute and show you the precautions Liberty University is taking.

35:06

So, I'm in one of the dining rooms right now. And as you can see, most of the seating, actually all the seating, is blocked off.

35:16

There's only one restaurant open. Not because of danger from coronavirus, but because the other companies knew they wouldn't make any money.

35:26

And the reason for that is because it's a ghost town. There's not many students even in the vicinity right now.

35:32

And the reality is, most of the students that were on spring break, they should be back by now.

35:39

Many of them came back early because of the coronavirus scare, or most of them actually went home.

35:46

So, some of them came back to campus, some of them went home. But as you can see, just walking around campus, not a lot of students.

35:55

The other thing that you should notice as well is, there's a lot of places where chairs like this are overturned.

36:02

If you go upstairs in certain levels of the library, there's signs everywhere saying, you know, this chair is off limits for social distancing.

36:10

Every room has limitations on it pretty much. So, I'm at the entrance to the library, which of course there's hand sanitizer here.

36:19

And you walk in and immediately there are signs everywhere you go to encourage and require social distancing.

36:35

And it's really every single room. Every room is a different size, so you're going to see different requirements for how many people.

36:42

This particular room is nine. I'm going to walk out right now to the quad.

36:48

So, this is the area that is normally very crowded because students should be walking to class. But the classes now, the vast majority of them are online.

36:57

And so, of course, there's hardly anyone out here currently. The way that the university is handling food and necessities like that is actually pretty brilliant.

37:10

You actually can't see it here, but there's some tents on the other side. And there are restaurants open and spread out among the various buildings.

37:20

There's a few in there. I just showed you one in the library. And students are able to go and get food from those restaurants while also social distancing.

37:33

If you walk in most of those other buildings that I'm showing you, you're going to find security guards all over the place making sure that people are social distancing.

37:43

But it really honestly doesn't require force because the people who are here, the few of us that are here, are just voluntarily doing this.

37:52

I know if you go to the gym, you can still work out, but you have to be on a waiting list. And it's a huge facility, but they're only letting 10 people in at a time.

38:00

So, they're going, in my opinion, above and beyond the requirements that are put on them by the state of Virginia currently and doing really a masterful job, in my opinion.

38:11

And one thing I wanted to say about this whole situation is, you know, some of these students don't actually have places that they can go that they call home.

38:23

Some of them, this is their home. And so, I don't think Liberty University wanted to tell them they just couldn't come home.

38:31

And the reality is, this disease affects the elderly and those with pre -existing conditions more than any other segment of the population.

38:40

And here at Liberty, you have young, mostly healthy students. So, if they're going to be, you know, not affecting anyone, this is probably the best place for them to be.

38:51

Because if a student does have Corona, and if they, for some reason, ignore every sign that's on campus, and they don't use, you know,

39:00

Purell stations, and the security guard doesn't catch it, so you have to get across all those barriers, then, at worst, they're going to be infecting other students who are young and healthy like them, most likely.

39:15

And so, instead of coming from spring break, you know, at the beach in Florida or something, and going back home to mom and dad or grandma and grandpa, they're going to be at a place like this.

39:24

And so, there's a variety of reasons I think Liberty made this decision, and they're actually smart reasons. Unfortunately, the mainstream media is not reporting that because they have another agenda.

39:34

Needless to say, I got eaten alive for posting that video, but Jerry Falwell and I should probably make it clear at this point,

39:44

I wasn't making the video because I was trying to defend Jerry Falwell, or necessarily even Liberty University.

39:50

I was just trying to show the local community that, hey, it's not as bad as what you're hearing.

39:56

And there was a local Facebook group where people were just going nuts, these crazy Christians are just going to, you know, not follow the guidelines and just make us all sick, and their students are going to go to Walmart and infect all of us.

40:08

And I was kind of like, hold on, like, this isn't what you think. This isn't what the media is portraying it as.

40:14

I'm there. Let me just help you calm down. Let me give you some good news. Well, some people did not take it that way, needless to say.

40:21

Now, here's some of the things that were being said about Jerry Falwell and Liberty University in particular.

40:28

Michael Steele, I remember him as the, you know, he used to be the chairman, I think, of the Republican National Committee.

40:35

But he said, yeah, you know, the governor of Virginia has closed schools for the year. Jerry Falwell has reopened Liberty, endangering students and the community.

40:42

He says we're conservative, we're Christian, and therefore we're being attacked. No, you're just being selfish and stupid. That's what he had to say.

40:49

Adam Serwer, I think is how you say it, this is a form of human sacrifice, is what he says. Barstool Sports, stupid is as stupid does.

40:58

Liberty reopened their campus. Sherry Jacobs, I hope Liberty University, especially

41:04

Jerry Falwell Jr., gets sued from here to Timbuktu. And, you know, the list just goes on.

41:10

There's the Politico. I just, you know, got sick of even looking at this stuff because so much of it was just from complete ignorance of what was actually going on on campus.

41:22

And now, I should probably mention this on campus, you know, there's no going to the gym, even with the limitations that were put on with, you know, 10 people.

41:29

There's nothing. There's, the security guards are patrolling. They even see people that are closer than six feet.

41:36

They shout at them. I've seen it once, once, because the students really don't violate that.

41:43

There's, I mean, it's, it's, it's on lockdown. It's really, but, you know, like I said in the video, they have international students.

41:51

They have students that have nowhere else to go. And so, you know, of course, they're, they're accommodating, but there's only about 1 ,000.

41:58

I think it's 1 ,100 or 1 ,200 students on campus out of the over 15 ,000 that are normally there.

42:03

So most of them did go home. But you see the New York Times on the 29th of March put out a story.

42:13

Liberty University brings back its students and coronavirus too. So they're scaring everyone. Coronavirus is on campus.

42:20

And then Liberty University responded that night. Liberty is not aware of any students in the residence halls testing positive for COVID -19 or in fact being tested at all, much less any residence hall students having sufficient symptoms of COVID -19 to get tested.

42:34

The New York Times the next day changes the headline. Liberty University brings back its students and coronavirus fears.

42:42

If you can't see the fake news, the way that you are being played by the media on some of this stuff, you need to.

42:51

This is, I mean, maybe I'm a little closer to this situation, but this is awful.

42:57

And whether you think that, you know, every single thing Liberty University did was, was perfect and no one is,

43:05

I was amazed at honestly the job that they did at just making sure there, there were social distancing going on.

43:13

But whether you're impressed with that or not, to, to print fake headlines like that, and then, you know, to retract it, but not actually retract it, just change your headline.

43:25

And, you know, after the fanfares passed, I mean, when the New York Times put that out, it was again, the number one treading thing on Twitter.

43:31

And people were just up in arms about this Christian university and how crazy they were.

43:38

Now, this is the same New York Times. I just want to point this out. I already talked about this article from Russell Moore and the flaw.

43:43

This is a terrible article on the pro -life movement. It is not a pro -life issue. This is a calculated risk issue.

43:51

And, you know, if we were going and purposely killing people who might have the virus or could get the virus or something, yeah, that'd be a pro -life issue at that point.

44:00

But Russell Moore put out this article about, you know, basically, you know, us trying to distance and making sure that we shut the economy down for the common good.

44:12

You know, he put that out through the New York Times. This is the same New York Times that, you know, Russell Moore retweeted this on March 29th.

44:19

His article in the New York Times that he wrote, that the New York Times let him write. This is the same

44:25

New York Times on the 29th, same day, right, is going after a Christian university hard.

44:33

And check this out. This is two days before Russell Moore retweeted his New York Times article.

44:39

This is the 27th. Here's an opinion column in the New York Times. The religious right's hostility to science is crippling our coronavirus response.

44:47

Trump's response to the pandemic has been haunted by the science denialism of his ultra -conservative religious allies.

44:52

Well, what's that about? There's a picture of him with all his, you know, pastors and faith leaders that, you know, are praying with him.

45:00

And it's mocking. It's saying, well, you know, and whether you agree with all those people or not is irrelevant.

45:06

Whether even they're false teachers is not the point. The point is, New York Times is taking an anti -religious bent.

45:14

And they're saying that these are the same people who deny Darwinian evolution. These are the same people who are climate deniers.

45:20

And now they're going to get us all killed with COVID -19. And Jerry Falwell and Trump are, they're the same.

45:26

And Trump's influenced by these people. You need to pay attention to this stuff.

45:31

And you need to mark down the fact that Russell Moore, at the same time this was going on, is writing in the pages of the

45:38

New York Times. And instead of talking about the anti -Christian bigotry or the potential for anti -Christian bigotry and government overreach, instead he's co -opting the pro -life movement and expanding it so that we can justify shutting the whole economy down.

45:59

I'm just saying, not a peep from him. I looked. I did look because I was like, I gotta give this guy the benefit of the doubt.

46:04

Maybe like somewhere he posted something critical of the New York Times and not seeing it.

46:10

Now in the state of Florida there was a situation that got a lot of attention. And that was a church that continued to meet.

46:17

Now in the state of Florida, attending a religious service conducted in churches, synagogues, houses of worship, is actually listed under essential activities.

46:25

So you're allowed to do it. But however, in Tampa Bay, the local sheriff there did not want

46:32

Rodney Howard Brown, a pastor there, to meet. And so he arrested him and held a press conference,

46:41

I guess during and after the arrest or right after it. And this is what a pastor who was there had to say.

46:50

He had pastors with him at the press conference. This is missed for the afternoon. I would like to introduce

46:55

Pastor Ken Whitten from the Ottawa Baptist Church to make a few comments. Thank you,

47:02

Sheriff, and thank you all for being here and for all of our medical enforcement, law enforcement and what you're doing.

47:08

Let me just say this. First of all, as a pastor and as a fellow pastor, I don't think any of us pastors are trying to question

47:15

Rodney Howard Brown's motive or his heart. I know he believes in the gospel.

47:20

I know he believes in a big God. I know he believes that God can not only save, but God can heal.

47:26

I don't think that's the issue. And I think we need to understand what the issue is. The issue here is not religious freedom because churches are not the ones being singled out.

47:38

Everybody is shut down right now. There is no basketball. There is no football. There is no hockey.

47:43

There is no March Madness. There is no Masters. All of us are doing our part.

47:51

This is not a religious freedom issue, nor is this a real faith issue, that if you believed in God and you believe that he heals.

47:58

Let me tell you something. I'm a pastor that believes God heals. I believe God heals instantaneously. I believe he can heal in time.

48:05

God can heal by miracle and God can heal by medicine. This is not a real faith issue. If you believe in God, then you believe he can heal.

48:13

This is not a real faith issue. This is not a religious freedom issue. This is a responsible friend issue.

48:21

That's what this is. And let me be quick to say this. In the Bible, quarantining is in the

48:27

Bible. It's in the book of Leviticus. And it was practiced. It was practiced by people.

48:33

And God has called us as believers in Jesus Christ to love our neighbor. In fact, it's the second commandment.

48:38

Thou shall love thy neighbor, how? As thyself. You can't fulfill that commandment and be a vector of infection to your neighbors to whom you say that you love.

48:49

And so I can't speak to Rodney Howard Brown's motive or his heart.

48:54

Wouldn't even try to. I can just tell you here at Idlewild that it isn't just Baptists. It's all denominations.

49:00

It's even people that we may not see eye to eye with theologically. Can I tell you something? We can walk hand in hand together as a community and as citizens together.

49:10

And that's what we're trying to do. We're not doing this out of fear. We're not doing this out of panic. We are doing this out of love.

49:18

Love for our neighbors. Love for the vulnerable. Love for the weak. Love for the elderly. I have pastor friends, many of them, who have

49:26

COVID -19 people within their church. They believe in the gospel. They believe in healing.

49:32

They believe God can. But they are not gonna tempt the Lord thy God. They're not going to tempt him to try to bring people together and do that.

49:41

And so I think this is a responsible friend issue. And I would beg all the churches to follow the people in Romans 13 that says they are our ministers, actually.

49:52

They're our authorities. And the medical and the professional and the social workers are trying to send a message to all of us.

50:01

And I would ask all of my brothers and sisters in Christ, let's follow, let's hear, let's curve, let's flatten this curve.

50:10

Thank you very much. The voice you heard there was Pastor Ken Witten, who, as far as I know, from what

50:18

I've heard, was the one who nominated J .D. Greer for president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

50:25

So that's part of the reason I played that whole clip. He's a big player in the SBC. And he said two things that were interesting.

50:32

You know, I had some people tell me, hey, it's great that, you know, this Rodney Howard Brown was a prosperity preacher, false gospel, so it's really great that they carted him off to jail.

50:43

And I'm like, well, they didn't cart him off for that reason. They carted him off because he held a service. But interestingly,

50:49

Ken Witten here is saying that Rodney Howard Brown actually does have a true gospel. I just thought that was interesting.

50:56

For those who were rejoicing that the prosperity gospel was being punished, because that's what you thought was maybe happening, the bigwigs in the

51:05

SBC may not agree with you. At least this one doesn't. The other thing, and this is more important, that was interesting, is how he made kind of like a dichotomy.

51:14

He said, well, you know, this isn't a religious freedom, religious liberty issue.

51:19

This is a love of your neighbor issue. This is being a good charitable neighbor, something to that effect.

51:26

And I'm hearing this all the time from a lot of people that, well, you know, social distancing and abiding by the guidelines and not having church and just doing online church is just because of love of neighbor.

51:39

And look, there may, like I said, there may be some reasons to temporarily not meet depending on your circumstance and to do it differently.

51:46

There's reasons for that. And some of those can be love of neighbor issues. You say, we want to love you.

51:53

We don't want to spread a disease. I get that. What we have to be very careful of here, because in this case, he was wrong.

52:01

Ken Witten was absolutely wrong. This pastor was being singled out. And not only that, this pastor,

52:10

Howard Brown, who runs, you know, this church also runs these inner city, you know, food ministries and so forth.

52:17

They teach classes to help people in the inner city, people that don't, that can't live stream, you know, they try to minister to them.

52:24

You know, Ken Witten, you know, is basically saying, well, he wasn't singled out. It's a love of neighbor issue, except he was singled out.

52:31

And what if Rodney Howard Brown were to come back and say, yeah, it is a love of neighbor issue, which is why we need to not only meet spiritual needs, but also physical needs, which my church is doing.

52:42

See how this works both ways? Love of neighbor is not a blank check you can just give to the government because they know better.

52:48

We have to think through that. And there are applications to the love of neighbor in the Old Testament. And oftentimes, if you've listened to me for long enough, you know that social justice warrior types, especially, and I'm not saying

52:59

Ken Witten is one, he might be, but they tend to latch on to very simple biblical principles and smuggle everything else in underneath that.

53:07

Their whole critical race theory and everything else comes in under something like, well, let justice roll down like waters.

53:14

Guess we need reparations. It's like, how did you make that jump? Well, because they're taking very simple principles and then they're applying them in the way that they see fit in a

53:23

Marxist way usually. So be aware of that. I'm seeing that verse pop up an awful lot.

53:30

And I'm not seeing verses about quarantine because the scripture does talk about that popping up, which you'd think, you know, for students of the

53:39

Bible, that's what we would be at least in part talking about. Now, the briefing Albert Moeller's daily show on March 31st addressed this issue.

53:49

And here's, I'm going to read for you some of this. This is Al Moeller. And he said, would it ever be valid for a pastor to be arrested merely for holding services at his church?

53:58

The answer is yes, sometimes, but it would have to be extremely rare. Rodney Howard Brown has argued before his church and the public that this is a religious liberty issue, but it is very important at this point that Christians understand there are real threats to religious liberty.

54:11

And we had better know what is a real threat and what is not a threat. You know what he's saying?

54:18

Read between the lines here. He's saying this isn't a real threat because he's saying there's, he's saying that, well, there's, there's real threats.

54:24

And then there's this, there's what's happening with Rodney Howard Brown. He's saying it's not a real threat to religious liberty. Let's keep going.

54:30

Now here's, and if you listen to my podcast long enough, you know, I've warned about this. He says, president Lincoln is often rightly criticized for the suspension of principles of habeas corpus.

54:39

It is also true that throughout American history, the federal government, local and state governments have taken action that were understood to be infringements of constitutional rights at the time.

54:48

Now this is, he's going to use this as like a, there's, there's these measures that you take in emergencies to suspend the constitution or something like that.

54:57

I, and I've, I've, Lincoln is one of the ones that's used often. And instead of people thinking, well, maybe

55:02

Lincoln was wrong. Maybe he shouldn't have suspended habeas corpus and jailed, whatever it was, thousands of journalists who disagreed with him and sent troops into Maryland.

55:11

And, you know, maybe instead of doing some of these things, you know, maybe he shouldn't have done that. Maybe that was wrong.

55:16

Instead of doing that, they say, well, he's Lincoln, so he must've been right. Therefore it's okay to suspend the constitution. Not a good argument, guys, not an original intent argument.

55:24

And Albert Mueller's going that direction. He's, you know, let's read the constitution through what Lincoln did. And then he says a false claim of necessity should be recognized as illegitimate and condemned as such.

55:35

But when their necessity is real, well, it becomes by definition necessity. Now that's, this is where I sometimes think

55:42

Albert Mueller's got a word salad problem. What he's saying there, let me interpret. He's saying Rodney Howard Brown did not have a legitimate reason to meet and to, to corporately meet for worship.

55:56

It wasn't a necessity. So he's, he's taking the sheriff's side in this particular case.

56:04

Now what actually, what, what's the other side of this? Because only one side was reported to the media. Well, the interestingly enough, the, uh,

56:12

I think it was Alliance Defending Freedom, Matt Staver, that's Liberty Alliance, Liberty Alliance, um, defended

56:17

Rodney Howard Brown. And I'm not sure what court they started at, but they won. They won immediately.

56:23

And so Rodney Howard Brown can, I guess, technically now he can meet for church, but he's not right this second because they've received death threats.

56:31

That's right. They've received death threats. So he's not meeting for church right now to protect his people, but he's trying to figure it out.

56:38

What are we going to do? But Alliance, uh, or Liberty Council, um, defended him.

56:44

One, here's the other side of the story. Briefly persons who were concerned for their health and had physical symptoms of any kind were encouraged to stay at home.

56:52

And this is, this was what Rodney Howard Brown, uh, attested to. This is, these are some of the things that won in court.

56:59

This is what Matt Staver used. Um, he also said every person who entered the church received hand sanitizer.

57:05

All the staff wore gloves. The church enforced the six foot distance between family groups in the auditorium as well in the overflow rooms in the farmer's market and coffee shops in the lobby.

57:14

The six foot distance was enforced with floor specifically marked. And remember, this is a church that apparently in their farmer's market,

57:20

I guess they give food to inner city people that need it. That's part of the reason they're meeting for church.

57:25

The church spent over $100 ,000 on a hospital grade purification system set up throughout the church that provided continuous infectious microbial microbial reduction that is rated to kill microbes, including those that are associated with COVID -19.

57:44

And, and so that that was what was going on at the church. Now to add insult to injury here, um, on March 27th, uh, the safer at home order,

57:55

I guess in the Tampa Bay area contains in paragraph three, uh, a, a line that says, and it's, it applies to religious personnel businesses, which are not described in this paragraph are able to maintain the required physical distance.

58:10

Six feet may operate. So actually by law he could still operate. He could still have a church if he abided by those guidelines.

58:18

Here's a quote. He said, we did not hold church to defy an order. Um, nor do we hold church to send a political message.

58:24

We did not hold church for self -promotion or financial motives. As some have wrongly accused, we held church because it is our mission to save souls and help people.

58:32

And because we in good faith did everything possible to comply with the executive order. Indeed. Sheriff, uh,

58:38

Chronister, um, told us last Thursday that we could hold church. And he talks about a phone call he had with the sheriff and his leaders.

58:47

And the sheriff said, you can hold church with all the measures you're taking. You can do it. And then the sheriff doesn't even call him to say you're under arrest, come down to the station.

58:55

None of that. He just shows up after church and arrests him after the service is over.

59:01

Second, because of the publicity, the vitriol and death threats. And I mentioned this before. Um, uh, the pastor says,

59:07

I feel compelled by those threats not to meet this upcoming Sunday. Uh, he says the river church provides many ministries more than services where we physically gather together at worship.

59:16

We have training schools, farmer's markets, uh, et cetera, et cetera. These people don't have the luxury of watching church online.

59:22

So, you know, here's why we did what we did essentially. So you have a situation here where not all the facts have been made known public or those who decided to go check out the facts didn't bother to actually get the full story.

59:39

And unfortunately that wound up with some big wig evangelicals condemning this guy, taking the side of the sheriff before they even knew the facts.

59:49

Pay attention to what people are saying, where they're lining up. Let's move on.

59:58

Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy, was recently at the White House and it became a

01:00:04

Twitter storm because he read the Bible and prayed. He's converting his factory into making,

01:00:12

I think it's masks, uh, for the country. So again, kind of like Samaritan's Purse, he's going to help with this crisis.

01:00:20

And, um, CNN, uh, cut away, uh, from the briefing when he started speaking and encouraged people to pray and read their

01:00:28

Bibles. Um, and, uh, and this is really the headline that went out there.

01:00:33

New York Post, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell tells Americans to read the Bible. Um, Sarah Reese Jones, uh,

01:00:40

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell says God put Trump in the White House and tells people to read the Bible while standing behind presidential seal of government property in a clear violation of the separation of church and state.

01:00:48

And this became a Twitter storm again. And again, um, the whole point of this was not, uh, to, uh, for Mike Lindell to go up there and say

01:00:57

Trump is appointed by God and we all just need to pray and get back to the Bible. Now, if he did do that,

01:01:03

I'd be okay with it. I mean, I think a pastor would, would be better, but, but, you know, I admire this guy's courage.

01:01:08

He's actually was up there and what he talked about was we're going to convert our factory to help the country. And I happen to be a religious person.

01:01:16

I happen to be a Christian. And so yeah, I'm going to pray. Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to read a portion of scripture.

01:01:21

I'm going to try to comfort you. And he's being mocked for it. This is anti -Christian bigotry.

01:01:28

Where are the Christian evangelical leaders on this though? Well, I'm going to show you where some of them are at.

01:01:36

Um, they're going after other hierarchies. Government is one hierarchy and government has a lane protecting people, but doing it through punishing evildoers.

01:01:46

That is the primary role of government, right? And we can talk about how that works out and whether there's other responsibilities, but government has a basic lane that it should stay in and there's potential for abuse.

01:01:57

But what's happening, and this is what I've noticed, this is the trend is other hierarchies are being put under the microscope.

01:02:04

Here's Jonathan Merritt, my Southern Baptist preacher friends after a whole two weeks of live streaming said, I am dying over here and I have this divine calling to pastor people and lead staff and preach

01:02:13

God's word, but I am not allowed to. It's torture. And a thousand women preachers stood up and said, how about that?

01:02:19

And there's a picture of Beth Moore. So he's taking aim at men who preach and don't allow women to preach, which as the

01:02:25

Bible says, well, guess who liked this? James Merritt. James Merritt liked it. That's his dad.

01:02:31

But this is, you know, the big wig in the Southern Baptist convention. Um, so, so let's, you know, let's, let's go after that hierarchy, you know, the, the patriarchy.

01:02:42

Um, there were a lot of arguments about the common good. I think I went, I went over this article, so I'm not going to belabor this point.

01:02:49

Um, how about going after racial hierarchy? There's a lot of that. Uh, Tim Keller, uh,

01:02:54

Ed Stetzer put out articles about that. Um, there's a, here's a statement on anti -Asian racism, statement on anti -Asian racism.

01:03:08

And not only is there a statement on it, but there is a place on the website where you can report a racist incident.

01:03:15

This is a, again, an evangelical statement, Asian American Christian collaborative put this together, statement on anti -Asian racism.

01:03:23

And on that website is a link to a place where you can report your incident of racism. If you're

01:03:28

Asian or something, or if you notice an Asian being discriminated against, put it online and, you know, share your story.

01:03:35

And, um, cause, cause that's, that's really, you know, what's needed right now. Here's, I'm going to read for you.

01:03:42

This, um, is the purpose of the statement. It says, thus we urge you to speak without ambiguity against racism of every kind.

01:03:50

Faithful Christian witness requires anti -racist work. Notice the word anti -racist. And silence only perpetuates the sins not addressed.

01:03:59

Uh, this includes going beyond shallow acknowledgement of the most obvious incidents of racism to taking responsibility and confronting the longstanding tendencies of people to discount and dismiss the realities of racism.

01:04:10

It also includes addressing the belief, the disbelief and disobedience of your constituents to continue to ignore members of the body of Christ who are in pain and under threat.

01:04:20

Many of us Asian American Christians have stood against anti -Asian racism during prominent incidents in and out of the church over the years.

01:04:26

And we now ask that you join us in this gospel driven work. So that's their purpose.

01:04:32

That's why this whole thing was put together. And if you notice the language in that, you can't sit on the sidelines.

01:04:39

That's, that's actually you being part of the problem. If you don't address this, even in its subtle forms and you practice the anti -racism work, you're complicit in it.

01:04:48

That's how this works, guys. You could be living in Nebraska and there, you know, you don't know any Asian people around you.

01:04:54

You've never seen an incident like that. Don't have the opportunity, but you're, you know, you, you gotta, you're complicit if you don't speak out and, and here, here's the call to action.

01:05:05

Engage in whole life discipleship in your churches. Embrace the teaching and work of Jesus by actively combating anti -Asian racism from the pulpit in congregational life and in the world.

01:05:13

Well, how do you do that? How do you do that? I get, I mean, teach people the Bible, right? That's what I would think. Well, here's what they say.

01:05:19

Increase awareness and education on anti, on Asian American issues. Anti -Asian bias in Asian American histories of oppression and resistance from pre -K through higher education.

01:05:30

So your whole educational experience must include a curriculum in which you learn about anti -Asian bias and the histories of oppression and resistance.

01:05:39

The critical race stuff is coming right out because, you know, that's what there is. I get, that's what being an Asian American, I guess, is.

01:05:45

It's just oppression and resistance. Provide culturally competent mental health services and resources for Asian American youth and their families in all public schools and agencies.

01:05:57

To what extent? What does that mean? Mental health? What about the church? Isn't this a church driven statement?

01:06:04

What is this about mental health and what? Support Asian businesses and enterprises that are disproportionately and negatively impacted by COVID -19 as well as Asian Americans in the workplace who are unfairly targeted and discriminated against.

01:06:19

I mean, look, if you see something, if you see someone, you know, whack someone because of their skin color or they're going to say bigoted things, you should stand up for them.

01:06:28

You should say that's not right or you should, you know, whack them back or something. Defend the defenseless. But is that, what exactly is happening?

01:06:36

Are Asians just getting jumped and beaten up all over the place? What's the situation? And for those who are already offended, just stay tuned.

01:06:45

I'm going to show you, I'm going to put the shoe on the other foot in a minute. Here's their last thing. Hold elected officials accountable for their words and actions.

01:06:52

Let them know that continued use of harmful rhetoric will not be tolerated. So this is

01:06:57

Trump guys. They're saying if you call it the China virus, that's what they're talking about. They're saying, calling it the China virus or the

01:07:04

Wuhan virus. That's racist. Pray that they would heed their responsibility, protect the vulnerable from violence and oppression and pursue justice and peace for the sake of the common good.

01:07:14

And there's that common good language again that so often comes up. Now, who signed this document?

01:07:20

I'm going to give you just a few. There's a lot. It's a lot of people. Here's a few. Justin Gaboney, president of the

01:07:25

AND Campaign. Jim Wallace, the Sojourners guy. A lot of 70s guys signed this. Thabiti Enabwile.

01:07:32

Matt Chandler. Esau McCauley. You might remember him as the guy who said, we need translations that have minorities on the committee.

01:07:41

Sandra, apparently the Reverend Sandra Maria Van Opstel. She said that she didn't understand

01:07:47

Amos until she went to a prison and read it through the lens of the oppressed. Dr.

01:07:52

Derwin L. Gray. He's also working with the coronavirus in the church, or at least he put out an article for them.

01:07:59

Big social justice guy. Ekamini Uwan. She's a big social justice advocate in the reform circles.

01:08:09

D .A. Horton goes to Southeastern, likes Theobonics. Ed Stetzer, Billy Graham Center at Wheaton.

01:08:19

Richard Mao, a big, big giant in the neo -Cyperian, neo -Calvinist world.

01:08:26

Sam Albury, right? Living Out, that guy. Michael Ware is on this list.

01:08:31

Again, the AND Campaign. And then, of course, there's Jamar Tisby. He helped draft this statement.

01:08:39

And so, yeah, it's all the big social justice types. And so instead of focusing on what actually brings us all together during this time, the fact that any of us could get this virus, and we're kind of all, we need to all pull ourselves together to help each other because it's affecting, it is affecting everyone differently, but we're all under an economic strain right now.

01:09:02

And, you know, there's like a big picture out there, and there's government overreach going on, and there's anti -Christian bigotry.

01:09:09

There's no statements about that. No statements about anti -Christian bigotry. No, it's this. And let me put this shoe on the other foot now, if I can.

01:09:19

What about bigotry against New Yorkers? Why isn't there a statement about this? Consider it for a minute.

01:09:25

Here's a story from Slate. New York City has not received an outpouring of national love and support.

01:09:32

Instead, it has been shunned. Here's one of the paragraphs. Think that's discrimination?

01:09:52

Just wait. New Yorkers.

01:10:04

At state airports last Wednesday, at a press conference, he asked how it was fair to Floridians for cities like New York to just be airdropping in people from the hot zones, bringing infections with them, and seeding the communities with new infections that they're trying to stamp out.

01:10:20

This is fascinating to me, and here's why. Because you're not going to see any of these evangelical woke types saying, well, we need to make a statement right now.

01:10:31

I mean, this is like the beginning of the Holocaust, right? They're going door to door. They're pulling cars over.

01:10:38

They're quarantining people. I mean, the narrative is ready for you right there. It's the state.

01:10:45

It's state governments that are doing this in Florida and Rhode Island. But New Yorkers are regional people.

01:10:55

They're every culture, but it's a region. It's not a race. And they're going to come out swinging against what they perceive as anti -Asian racism, which mostly involves, honestly, hey, our businesses didn't do well.

01:11:09

People associated me with the virus. People said the

01:11:14

China virus. I've looked at a lot of these videos that claim it, and usually the video starts in the middle of something.

01:11:19

You don't really know what was happening. And it's like someone, there's one, like a guy at a hotel who's saying, I don't want to admit these people from China.

01:11:26

And it was towards the beginning of this. He's like, I don't know if they have the virus. And it was like, this is racist.

01:11:31

Well, why does it have to be racist? Is there any other explanation for it? Because the people pulling over New Yorkers aren't racist.

01:11:39

They're making a calculated decision, and they're profiling based on the chances that this person may have the disease, may have the virus.

01:11:48

And it's the same thing when people say, this person's from China, or in the beginning, they're not, I don't think they're doing it as much anymore, or calling it the

01:11:55

China virus. It's just, it's a place of origin. It's where it came from. And to call that racist, and to use that, and to platform yourself, and when actual

01:12:04

Christian bigotry is going on, is disgusting. And because this is happening to New Yorkers, and they're not saying anything about it, it honestly, it goes to show and prove that the emperor just has no clothes in this.

01:12:16

They don't really, they're not really concerned about human lives, right? Humans, aren't New Yorkers made in God's image, like Russell Moore likes to say?

01:12:23

Aren't they made in God's image? It doesn't matter. This is a chance to virtue signal for these people.

01:12:29

And virtue signal they are. Now, I almost wasn't going to include this, but I feel like I need to now, because the video was pulled down.

01:12:39

I went to look for it, and I'm like, where did that video go? So, Ed Stetzer is heading up this coronavirus and the church thing.

01:12:47

And he did a recent Zoom meeting, and all

01:12:52

I have now is a screenshot. The video was up. They put it up, and then they took it down.

01:12:58

And as far as I know, they didn't take the other ones down. But this one was. And here's the proof, though.

01:13:04

I mean, it's in the screenshot. The moderator acknowledges it. So one of his guests, one of Ed Stetzer's guests, says, we need to move away from the concept of which truth is right, the right truth, and get closer to which truth works.

01:13:20

And then this person who was asking the question said, are you stating that truth depends on operational success as opposed to an objective standard that, regardless of your measures of success, should be held because it is actual, provable, testable, verifiable truth?

01:13:34

And so this is interesting to me, because the only reason I'm bringing this up is postmodernists think of truth as kind of a hierarchy.

01:13:43

It's the knowledge is power thing, and there's really not a truth. It's more who's in control and what narrative are they spinning, and those in control are able to spin their own hierarchy.

01:13:52

So I've been told by multiple, well, I shouldn't say multiple people. I've been told on good authority that Ed Stetzer is kind of on this postmodernist vein.

01:14:02

He's kind of like adopting some of these like emergent church concepts and stuff. And so there's another hierarchy there.

01:14:08

We've talked about the hierarchy, racial hierarchies, which, of course, as Christians, we would be against a racial hierarchy that says we are more important or better because we are this color.

01:14:17

But I don't see evidence that that's really happening, certainly not on a broad scale. So Christians are going against that right now.

01:14:25

We've got to take that down. There's an example of Christians going after the patriarchy right now in this context.

01:14:31

And then there's this, and this is a hierarchy. This is introducing subjectivity, which allows you to kind of have your own truth.

01:14:41

And I could go a lot longer on that, but we don't have the time right now. But it was interesting that they took it down, which

01:14:48

I wonder if that means they're trying to hide it. Here's some other stuff. Going after church hierarchical abuse.

01:14:55

Here's Bart Barber right here. Barber has been on the resolutions committee for the

01:15:04

Southern Baptist Convention. I know he gets around. He's kind of like got his hands on a lot of different things or has.

01:15:10

Big on Twitter. So this is what he says. And this is interesting to me.

01:15:19

If we could gather for worship without transgressing what Texas, Collin County, and the city of Farmersville have requested and urged us, then we would be gathering.

01:15:27

So he basically said it's not just because, you know, it's not like his people. He's doing it because he wants to protect his people.

01:15:33

That's not the primary reason. He'd be gathering. He said this on April 3rd. We'd be gathering if the state let us gather.

01:15:41

Wow. Okay. So I guess the state just kind of gets to tell him like whether they get together or not.

01:15:48

Now here's the hierarchical abuse thing though. Church hierarchical abuse. He says, I think this leadership of the church to meet is foolish.

01:15:56

There is no biblical requirement to meet without fail every seven days without regard to disaster or calamity.

01:16:02

There most certainly is a lethal risk present with this disease. I think this decision may have been self -serving, not meeting amounts to a severe financial stress test on a church.

01:16:12

But I'm going to have to wait for the legal case to come. And so he's talking, I think he's talking about the situation in Florida with Rodney Howard Brown.

01:16:23

And so he's saying, you know, basically this is, you know, this is foolish. This is bad leadership.

01:16:30

And it's probably selfish. He's probably doing it for money. And then basically I wait for the state to tell me whether I should meet or not.

01:16:38

That's his criteria. So this is starting to take aim at churches. It's saying this is the government's purview.

01:16:45

This is what the government should tell us when to open or not. That's their, it's in their hierarchy. That's their jurisdiction in Barber's mind.

01:16:50

It's not up to, the pastor can't do that. Even though this pastor was in the legal limits of the state and the region that he lived in, he was complying with everything.

01:17:01

It doesn't matter. That's the government's call. Susan Condon, you may have seen her on the stage at the

01:17:10

Southern Baptist Convention, I believe it was. I know she's spoken for the ERLC, but with Beth Moore and Russell Moore and Rachel Denhollander.

01:17:18

So she's, I guess, one of these victims of sexual abuse and speaks about it to pastors and so forth.

01:17:24

And here's what she said, April 4th. If a pastor asks a serious but sincere question about whether or not church meetings really violate

01:17:34

CDC guidelines, chances are that pastor cares only about not being able to preach and likely also disputes the seriousness of sexual abuse and domestic violence in the church.

01:17:48

That is shocking. If you even question whether your church is meeting CDC guidelines, you're not just telling everyone to stay home, you're probably okay with sexual abuse in the church.

01:18:00

And she says, this is the kind of time when narcissistic pastors deprived of attention will do anything to get yours.

01:18:06

Right. This time when the government is overreaching and when there's anti -Christian bigotry on full display, those aren't the things to worry about.

01:18:16

It's actually the time when narcissistic pastors deprived of attention will do anything to get yours.

01:18:21

What a jump. So I actually responded to this. I said, this is an obsession with no evidence, no logical consistency and no grace to pastors who follow the guidelines set forth in their communities and have concerns about edicts, which count abortions essential, but not corporately crying out to the trying

01:18:37

God of scripture. And she says, grace to pastors who question CDC guidelines in the midst of a pandemic is the very least of my concerns.

01:18:46

This is someone that Russell Moore puts on stage. Southern Baptists host her on stage.

01:18:53

Your money going to the ERLC gives her a platform to speak.

01:19:01

And this is the kind of thing that she is saying about pastors who would even question whether their church is meeting the

01:19:06

CDC guidelines. And, and this continues. Here's, you know, again, the timing of this guys, the timing of it.

01:19:16

I know Mike Krueger retweeted this and a number of other big Presbyterian PCA guys retweeted this.

01:19:23

But there is this open letter to Orthodox Presbyterian Church. So the OPC regarding abuse,

01:19:30

I guess my OPC, I guess, but I, so I heard that some PCA guys were retweeting this as well, but here's what it says.

01:19:36

Jennifer Michelle Greenberg is someone who is kind of on the circuit, like the Russell Moore circuit speaking about abuse.

01:19:42

She's one of these she's, you know, she, she experienced it. And so she gets to tell pastors essentially and others, but pastors included what to do about it.

01:19:52

And here's what she says in her article. Unfortunately, because of how you've meaning the people in the

01:19:57

OPC handled men like my dad and who was abusive. And because of the way you handle pastors, other pastors, why would anyone trust you?

01:20:06

You preach, you know, pretty sermons. You do all these things, but you have no love.

01:20:12

She's telling like blanket statement, the whole denomination, you have no love. And I'm sorry that has come to this.

01:20:18

And I've tried to warn, no one listens, no one cares. All I can do is publish this open letter and motivate you to take this seriously.

01:20:26

And so, and then of course, you know, instead of being offended, these OPC guys and PCA guys, they, they retweet it.

01:20:34

And this is, again, this is I don't want to, some of their motives may be good. They may just think, oh yeah, you know, she's got a point.

01:20:40

Abuse happens. Look, abuse does happen. Abuse does happen. It's part of life. It's part of the fabric of life.

01:20:45

And it doesn't mean we shouldn't fight it. We should. But, you know, to make these kind of general and blanket statements about a denomination and then to have people in that denomination say, oh yeah, yeah, rush to, this is good.

01:20:59

And we need, we need to get this message out there. It's without any pushback is a little weird to me.

01:21:07

And I know the word virtue signal, I'm sure has come up in talking about this, but I can't help but wonder, is this like, you know, you're showing that you care because you're, you're, all you're doing is you're saying it's an important thing.

01:21:20

It happens. I care. You're, you're trying to raise some awareness, I guess, to it. But you're doing it at a weird time.

01:21:28

You're doing it like during a time when it's not actually the church that we should probably be as concerned about if we're looking at triage and abuse.

01:21:38

Although that's important. It's important that we don't have abuse, but you literally have the government infringing on the church now and you have anti -Christian bigotry in the broader culture.

01:21:48

But we're going to go after that hierarchy instead. You get praise from, from here to high heaven for going after that.

01:21:57

I mean, that's as easy as kicking a dead cat to say that you're against abuse within the church.

01:22:03

Probably doesn't do anything for actual abusers. They're probably still gonna, you know, a statement was made. It's not going to affect them much.

01:22:10

But you really want to feel, feel, feel the weight of pressure. Speak out against what, what's happening right now in California and Florida, what just happened and what

01:22:21

Mayor Bill de Blasio said. Speak out in no uncertain terms. Use the same terminology you would, you would use for anti -racism and see how it goes for you.

01:22:30

Now we would think government abuse should be the topic. That, this is the time, right? Let's talk about it. But here's what the bigwig evangelicals, some of them at least, are saying.

01:22:39

Here's Bart Barber again. One last thing. I know that the Bill of Rights can be an obstacle to good things the government is trying to do.

01:22:46

Oh my goodness. This is not getting on, off on the right foot. The Bill of Rights is an obstacle to the good things government is trying to do.

01:22:53

Yeah, that's the point. That's the point. Let me, let me say this before I even continue reading this. The Constitution and the

01:23:01

Bill of Rights they were enacted in a time when a national emergency, worse than what's going, what's happening right now, was in the recent memory of those who authored them.

01:23:14

Think about that with me for a minute. They were limiting government saying, federal government, you cannot go, national government, you can't go any farther than this.

01:23:25

With the Revolutionary War in their recent memory. So there, there isn't a time when the

01:23:35

Bill of Rights is an obstacle. But this is what Bart Barber thinks. And it is possible that once a century, so who's, really?

01:23:43

Is this, is this like a law that we should pass? Once a century or so, one situation arises, like a deadly virus, for which a totalitarian state would serve us better.

01:23:51

This is horrifying. And I know Bart, I read the thread. Bart was saying, well people are taking me out of context.

01:23:57

No, I read the thread. Yeah, you may not have wanted to say, because what you're saying is there's one exception.

01:24:06

That's why he said people are taking him out of context. I'm just saying there's this one exception, and then we can go back to normal. What makes you think the government will not have a constant stream of exceptions?

01:24:15

I mean, look, everything's an emergency. Flu season could be an emergency. Getting your car can be an emergency. Eating junky foods.

01:24:21

I mean, that's what Bloomberg wanted to limit the biggies, right, from New York City. You can't get a biggie because, you cigarettes.

01:24:30

We've already gone down that path. I mean, the government has an interest in everything because everything's an emergency. And the climate change crisis, right, that we're being told about?

01:24:38

What's not to say that the government needs to suspend the Bill of Rights, confiscate property to fight climate change?

01:24:45

This is deadly. And this is the thinking that we are under right now. Daniel Darling.

01:24:51

Viewing this coronavirus through a constant political lens is not helpful. Well, and he's an

01:24:57

ERLC guy. So what lens would you view it from? Like, it's totally political. Like, I don't even know how to respond to that.

01:25:07

I mean, viewing the Senate and executive orders and government functions through a political lens is not helpful.

01:25:16

I mean, that's kind of... Here's Mark Dever. And he, this is March 26, he retweets.

01:25:22

This is after Pelosi was being criticized for wanting to pass the Green New Deal through as coronavirus response.

01:25:30

And she deserved it. And this is what Mark Dever decides to tweet out. Civility, empathy, and kindness.

01:25:37

And it's George W. Bush. And George W. Bush is saying how great it was. It's an old video that we have a woman that's a speaker.

01:25:43

We have a madam speaker. And that is the greatest thing. And Mark Dever saying, well, that was civility, empathy, and kindness.

01:25:50

Now forget about the hierarchy thing that you have, you know, a woman serving a speaker and, you know, whatever you think about that, what the

01:25:56

Bible says about women in leadership, put that on the table for a minute and just put that to the side. At that moment, the timing is significant.

01:26:04

At that moment, when our, whatever freedoms we had were hanging by this much of a thread, and we did not pass that bill, and Pelosi was being criticized for wanting to diversify corporate boards and make that a law, wanting to bring in every element of the

01:26:27

Green New Deal that she could, that's when Mark Dever decides to say we just need to be civil, empathy, and kindness.

01:26:34

This is a Chamberlain attitude in a world where we need a Churchill, frankly. That's, I don't even know what to say.

01:26:42

I'm like dumbfounded that the reaction to all this is to go along and instead of to go after and to at least even have a debate about the larger picture here.

01:26:54

Now, here's what Russell Moore's been talking about nonstop. Do SBA -backed loans violate the separation of church and state?

01:27:03

Churches, like many businesses, are not meeting due to the good faith compliance with government recommendations and orders.

01:27:09

And he says, which I and almost every church I know fully supports. He's telling us, he's telling the government, hey, we're with you.

01:27:16

Almost no one opposes the concept of churches taking loans. And so he goes on and says, basically, here's the point.

01:27:22

You can take government money. You can take government money. And that's the big thing that he's pushing right now.

01:27:29

Here's Al Mohler and Tim Keller, and they're basically saying comply. Al Mohler says on April 4th, this may help some of you tonight,

01:27:36

New Washington Post article I wrote. So, again, Washington Post. You know what kind of things the Washington Post puts out there.

01:27:44

And then Al Mohler, though, is given space in it to write. And he says that mandatory social distancing is not a threat to religious liberty.

01:27:51

It's essential for humanity. Tim Keller.

01:27:57

Good article. Opinion. The Christian response to coronavirus. Stay at home. And it was written by the same guy who with Esau, the guy at,

01:28:08

I think it's Wheaton, who believes that we need to have a diverse Bible translation committee.

01:28:14

It was that guy. Eason, I think McNully's his last name. Same guy who I just showed you signed the statement on anti -Asian racism.

01:28:23

But the point of, you know, both these guys are saying their message is just a one -size -fits -all comply.

01:28:32

And it is possible, this is from the article that Tim Keller posted, it is possible that, strangely enough, the absence of the church will be a great testimony to the presence of God in our care for our neighbors.

01:28:41

What? The absence of the church? How about you're just going to be a great testimony to your neighbors? Why justify it with, well, we're doing something better.

01:28:50

That's why the absence of the church. No. No, no, no, no, no. A thousand times no.

01:28:57

Don't ever say that the absence of the church is a good thing because it opens us up to be. How about, you know, this is where, you know,

01:29:05

I get annoyed with the term sometimes, like, let's be the church because of how it's used. But this is probably an appropriate use of that term.

01:29:11

Let's be the church. Right? Let's actually, like, communicate. Do so responsibly.

01:29:17

Hopefully, if you can, meet in smaller groups and maintain that distance, so forth and so on.

01:29:23

Do it. And then go and help your community. Do exactly what he's advocating, but do it as a church. Do it in the name of Christ.

01:29:30

Don't suspend the church. And this is where I'm getting nervous a bit. Like, do these guys care about the church as an institution?

01:29:37

Or do they just bend over and immediately allow the government to just run the show without any questions asked and while trying to accommodate to such a degree that they're telling their people, like, this is the

01:29:54

Christian thing to do. It's just never to question it. But we're supposed to question the patriarchy. We're supposed to question, you know, any kind of racial hierarchy.

01:30:01

We're supposed to question, you know, church abuse. I mean, would the ERLC ever put on a conference, like, caring well and have it be about government abuse?

01:30:10

Here's where government has abused people. Caring well conference. They would never do it. And it's because these,

01:30:18

I'm going to suggest it, guys. I don't know if they're real leaders. I don't think these guys, some of them are not.

01:30:24

I don't think these guys are real leaders that can lead us through tough times. These are tough times, guys.

01:30:30

These are really tough times for people who have lost their jobs. I mean, look, staying in quarantine is a luxury for some of us.

01:30:38

There are people out there that need to work. It's either work or they're not, you know, where are they going to get food?

01:30:47

Where are they to do something? And, you know, for these guys, it comes off as so elitist to say, well, hey, you know, the

01:30:57

Christian thing to do is just to, you know, maintain this distance and comply and quarantine yourself.

01:31:02

And it's like, you know, not everyone has that luxury. Not everyone can live stream. You know, people, some people rely on the kind of help that the church can give, just humanitarian kind of help.

01:31:16

It befuddles me. It befuddles me and it annoys me. And you're probably hearing that, which, you know,

01:31:22

I don't, like A .D. Robles says, you know, I don't, I want to have no despair. But at the same time, guys, we need better leaders than this.

01:31:29

We need leaders who are going to ask these tough questions about the relationship of the church to the state. And they're not going to have a one size fits all answer.

01:31:36

And so in the spirit of that, I have actually decided that I want to share with you my solution.

01:31:47

And my solution is not, I say this knowing there's no solution. The only reason I'm ending with this is because I was challenged on it.

01:31:54

You know, basically, OK, Smarty Pants, you don't like how everything's being done right now and how the show is being run.

01:32:00

What would you do? And so I'll tell you what my plan, if I had to make a plan, would be. And here's the thing. It's going to be different depending on where you are.

01:32:07

There is no one size fits all. And I'm showing my localist kind of, I have a

01:32:12

Jeffersonian kind of localist way of thinking about this. You know, Thomas Jefferson, I think

01:32:19

I said in the beginning, he said that, you know, essentially he envisioned a country where people were self -sufficient, an agrarian culture essentially, where personal liberty, self -government was tied to self -reliance.

01:32:35

Self -government was tied to self -reliance. And I like that. And I hope people will start getting back to that more. That being said, there's agricultural communities where this isn't going to be affecting them much.

01:32:45

There's also communities where, you know, like think of a place out in like, you know,

01:32:51

North Dakota. No one's coming into town. You're all part of the same farmer community and you're all, basically your job requires you to be isolated and you come together on Sunday.

01:33:03

Why should that church shut down? No one news coming into town. I mean, think about it, but are they not doing their

01:33:10

Christian duty if they meet for church? I mean, there is no one size fits all response to this.

01:33:16

So first of all, it's important to realize we don't know exactly what we're dealing with. The lag measures and the limited pool of data has not given us numbers that seem to be accurate.

01:33:28

The Imperial College study for the UK initially said 500 ,000 deaths. Now it's saying 20 ,000 or it was,

01:33:34

I don't know what it's saying now. Dr. Fauci had initially estimated 240 ,000 to 620 ,000 deaths.

01:33:41

And now he's saying that he doesn't trust models. But at the end of March, it was between 100 ,000 and 200 ,000.

01:33:51

And then on the 30th of March, the IHME model said 82 ,000.

01:33:56

And then Fauci said on April 2nd, I've looked at the models. I've spent a lot of time on the models. They don't tell you anything.

01:34:02

You can't really rely upon models. And, you know, we've decided to change a lot of things about our culture and how just even shutting down our economy mostly based on these models, essentially.

01:34:18

You know, the flat and the curve, but we don't know. It's unknown. Where are the numbers on this?

01:34:23

So we're dealing with something we don't really know. And I don't know if it, you know, the situation doesn't seem to merit the one size fits all approach, then it's going to be embarrassing for politicians.

01:34:35

And what they're going to do is probably try to save face by touting, and this includes Trump, all the good things they did and how it was necessary and how, you know, as we come out of flu season, how, you know, the reduction in the numbers is due to their efforts.

01:34:49

And I'm sure it helps probably being home and not interacting in some ways. But at the same time, we have really done a lot of damage to our country economically, which means also that's related to defense and a lot of other things because of these models.

01:35:11

And my suggestion would be to take a more localist approach as much as possible and focus on what we do know.

01:35:19

And what we do know, and we've known this now for a little while, we have little bitty representations of what the virus can do.

01:35:28

So if you remember the Diamond cruise ship off San Francisco Bay was all the rage a month ago.

01:35:36

That's what everyone was talking about. This horrible, you know, and the media was like, it's horrible to be trapped inside a cruise ship.

01:35:42

You know, I agree. But if we look at that example, because I never heard any follow -up.

01:35:49

If we look at the numbers that came out of that, the Diamond Princess was the name of the ship.

01:35:55

It had 3 ,711 passengers and crew. And the population was subject to 3 ,068 polymerase chain reaction tests.

01:36:07

So they tested that many people and identified 634 individuals, 17 % as infected, with over half of these infections producing no symptoms.

01:36:18

Seven infected passengers died, all of them over the age of 70. And, you know, there's other examples of this.

01:36:23

I know there's other cruise ships. I haven't done all the research on it, but, you know, taking models like that and saying, okay, like this is what the virus can do.

01:36:30

It can definitely really harm people that are older, people with pre -existing conditions. There's no question about this, but there seems to be a resilience with people who are healthy and especially if they're healthy and young.

01:36:43

Now that's one cruise ship. It doesn't give you a full picture, but it's a little microcosm and it's a good control group.

01:36:51

And so what kinds of measures would I want to see in place? And I want to approach this in a way just to even get a conversation going, because as paleo conservatives, as conservatives in general, there's just not a lot of,

01:37:03

I mean, I think most are just kind of looking at the president and being like, well, whatever he says. And we need to have a bigger discussion about this.

01:37:11

And so I know my plan may have flaws. It's not perfect, but I'm just going to share with you what

01:37:16

I would do in this circumstance. And I put a little Twitter thread together. I would take a localist approach.

01:37:24

I would take a localist approach. And you can see real quickly why I would do that. Here's some news headlines.

01:37:30

Beds empty. Revenues slowed at hospitals in West Virginia. They're reducing hours.

01:37:36

I've already been reached out to personally by people that are saying, hey, my shifts are being cut. They hired more people because they were expecting this apocalypse.

01:37:43

It didn't happen where I am. Florida hospital update. Another three, this is today, I think, or yesterday, another 1300 beds opened up overnight.

01:37:51

The hospitals are now almost half empty. And then you have, you know, CBS News was caught using footage from Italian hospitals to describe conditions in New York City.

01:38:00

So they're talking about New York City and they're showing you what's happening in Italy. And so all

01:38:07

I'm showing you is that it's different depending on where you are in the country. And look, I know that things are getting crazy in New York.

01:38:14

I just was texting, like I said, with a friend of mine who's a nurse there this morning. And yeah, they're pretty full, but they do have overflow.

01:38:22

They do have other places that they're setting, they're setting beds up and, you know, they're dealing with it.

01:38:30

And New York is being hit worse right now than as far as I know in this country anywhere else.

01:38:36

So am I going to have a solution for New York that's going to be the same as it is for Kansas? Probably not.

01:38:43

No. So here's what I would do. And I'm just going to go through this and tell you my rationale. My principles.

01:38:50

The public should be informed about the threat. Information, I think, is really important. Descriptions of leprosy in Leviticus 13.

01:38:56

So, you know, educating on the disease. They should be given advice on keeping from catching it.

01:39:03

This would include strongly advising elderly and those with pre -existing conditions to quarantine themselves. I'd want testing centers set up for anyone who wanted to get tested voluntarily.

01:39:13

So that's the priestly role in Leviticus 13. If I was a mayor of a public location and partner with private businesses,

01:39:22

I'd float the idea, if necessary, that mandatory tests, provided the businesses agreed, be implemented. Those who tested, and it depends on how bad it is, those who tested positive would be under quarantine orders.

01:39:34

A voluntary list of quarantined individuals would be provided to local charities in order to provide for them.

01:39:40

Their family members would be asked to get tested as well. Public and voluntary private buildings would be converted into health centers in case the pandemic worsened to the point where they needed it.

01:39:51

I would not destroy the economy, thereby crippling our national defense, violating private property, contributing to the present and future suicide rates, robbing the working class of their dignity, and destroying the tax base needed to respond to the pandemics.

01:40:04

I would try to foster a local sense of public trust by asking businesses to consider closing if they were not essential, if the pandemic was bad.

01:40:12

I would never categorize churches as nonessential. I would call for prayer and repentance.

01:40:17

And I just add, there's no perfect plan out there, but mine is more of an organic plan, which respects private property.

01:40:24

And I'll just add a few things to that. Number one, I realize the tests aren't necessarily available.

01:40:29

We're, you know, trying to get more tests and there's limited supply, so I get that.

01:40:35

So, the only thing you can do at that point is based on symptoms.

01:40:40

You can quarantine based on symptoms. And of course, someone knows if they have regular allergies or whether this is something different.

01:40:47

But that would be, you know, if you feel sick, you know, take a day. Don't work today. You know, go home and quarantine yourself.

01:40:56

You know, wait a few days. See if it's a normal kind of thing or see if you actually have something. And if you do, then, you know, you're going to be quarantined for 15 days or whatever the case may be.

01:41:07

So, that's, you know, that's really the best plan I can think of. You could use hospitals. Hospitals are empty right now.

01:41:13

Not hospitals, sorry. Some hospitals are empty, depending where you are. Hotels are empty right now because no one's staying anywhere.

01:41:20

Why not use that? Why not use those as, like, a quarantine center? This was an idea that was sent to me by email.

01:41:26

Why not take elderly and people that with preexisting conditions and say that, you know, they can live in a hotel and the hotel gets a big tax write -off for allowing this?

01:41:34

The hotel's not doing anything right now. Contact local charities. Get them involved in cooking for these people. I mean, you know, if you live in a family and there's, you know, one person that has chemo or, you know, is older, they can go to the hotel.

01:41:47

You know, why not be creative about this approach and try to be as localist and as free market as possible and not put ourselves in a vulnerable position of setting a precedent for the violation of civil liberties or crashing our entire economy?

01:42:04

I mean, work is dignity. Work is, I mean, this is treated that way in the Old Testament even. You know, you can't, you know, rob someone of their tools that they need to use in order to survive.

01:42:14

That's their life. I think it was A .D. Robles recently I heard was saying something about how, you know, he couldn't even go and buy seed to feed his family.

01:42:25

You know, the places that sold that were closed. So, you know, we're getting a little crazy in some areas here.

01:42:33

And this idea that it's just across the board, everyone, one size fits all, you know, that's not right.

01:42:39

It really isn't. And we shouldn't be judging those who do it a little differently depending on where they are.

01:42:46

So, that's my attempt at least starting a discussion. Hey, if you have a better idea, if you have creative ideas, put a comment down there.

01:42:52

But the takeaway from this is that you're not hearing that kind of rhetoric coming from, at least

01:42:59

I'm not hearing it, from even, you know, your local politicians, your conservative politicians. You're not hearing it certainly from people that are, you know, big wigs in the church.

01:43:10

They're not even resisting any of this or asking questions about it. But more importantly than that, they are attempting to rip down and, you know, deconstruct all these other hierarchies when the one that actually is the issue, the one higher government, the hierarchy that we're concerned with infringing, that's the actual threat, not saying anything.

01:43:35

The only thing they're saying is that it's the Christian's duty to follow them. One size fits all.

01:43:41

I hope you're seeing this, guys. I hope you're seeing where a lot of those who are accommodating to the social justice movement are going to go.

01:43:50

And it seems like they're going to go wherever the authority figures go.

01:43:55

I hope that's not true. I hope we wake up because chances are we're going to have more situations like what happened in Florida with Rodney Howard Brown.

01:44:05

And I know this was a long episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I've been putting out a mixture of things, short and long, and this was to satisfy those who really like the long ones.