This Week in Witchcraft (S1 E4)

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Welcome to This Week in Witchcraft. The elements have been conquered with intense heat and witchcraft has become more cosmopolitan.

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Can you spot it out in the wild? I'm Dylan Hamilton and with me are

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Michael Durham, David Kassin, and Andrew Hudson. I think Michael has our witchcraft that he has spotted out in the wild that he is going to analyze for us today.

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Yeah, I came across a story that earlier this year USA Today devoted an entire

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Twitter thread and article to trying to normalize pedophilia by talking about not pedophiles that are so roundly, apparently hated and despised in our society, but trying to say they're just misunderstood.

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In fact, we should consider them minor attracted persons instead of pedophiles.

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We need to change the name to make it less offensive. We need to do what we can to understand them.

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They need help, surely, but more than anything, they need understanding. Part of the reason why they do the things that they do is probably because of the negative environment that we place upon them because of our bias and prejudice and hatred of them.

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It's the attempt to try to normalize that which has been abhorrent.

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You recall in, I think it was 1 Corinthians 5, or was it 2

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Corinthians 5, I always get this mixed up, where Paul has to rebuke the church because they have allowed to remain within their midst a man who has his father's wife, 1

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Corinthians 5, thank you Andrew. Paul says, and this incest, this sexual abomination is not even tolerated among the pagans, among the

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Gentiles, and Corinth was one of the most sexually perverse cities, a city with two seaports and all sorts of horridness going on, and yet notice that Corinth had lines that they had drawn that, oh, that's a bridge too far.

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That is definitely perversion there, but they had accepted so many other things.

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We see this in our own culture that is devoid of the fear of the Lord, that there are these lines that people appreciate and say, oh, anything past that line, that would be reprehensible, that would be bad.

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Thus, by having that line, that extremity out there that is just so bad and nobody should ever do

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X, Y, or Z, allows them to do everything else in the alphabet because it's not

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X, Y, or Z. That kind of mentality is a false type of righteousness.

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But in this particular push, USA Today is something of a pawn sacrifice in the chess game of normalizing pedophilia to be simply minor attracted persons.

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These pedophiles, all these people getting busted for having child porn in their possession, and pedophiles go to prison and die by beatings by their fellow prisoners.

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I do believe we have some very high -profile court trials going on right now concerning this topic, and some of the presidential moments have not been very presidential.

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This is a theme that needs to be normalized in the estimation of some. These aren't ...

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Dragons, they have scales, and they torch people, and they burn everything to the ground sometimes, and they're sharp and pointy, and they don't care how many people they kill.

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But the point is, they need to be understood. In fact, they need to be welcomed as a part of our society, and things will change.

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In fact, they need to be tamed and brought under the, well, probably the restorative, reconciling, saving acts of the state.

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So this is another bit of witchcraft going on in our society today. I will say that many people were very happy to virtue signal and push back against this article by USA Today, and how dare they even suggest these things.

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But don't be confused by the fervor of rejection of this idea.

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This was a pawn sacrifice. This is easily dealt with. This was simply getting the conversation going.

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Many many people who rage against something being said, this is just virtue signaling.

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This is support for a former satellite country of the

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Soviet Union. Lots of social media support, but we're still going to fund their enemies by buying their oil.

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I would say this is a symptom of by what standard. So you're talking about different types of standards going on with this.

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I would say some of those people who are objecting are using the standard set forth by God, and then yet others who have their own lines in the sand that have been drawn that are easily changed at their own capricious whims, and that the sand that they would have drawn has been brushed over the wall that's been etched in stone.

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So how long is it going to take for, you know, recent studies have shown, or we've done research into this area, and it's shown, you know, here are the numbers, that minor attracted persons are born that way.

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They are from the womb, and you know, I know people had a lot of issues with that when it first came out, but how long is it going to be before that view has data and quote unquote science behind it so that the sand can go over that wall?

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Exactly. Half the time it took them to do the same thing with sodomy. Right. So this is where everybody who compromised in the church, you know,

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Al Muller being the most notable among them, having publicly repented at an ERLC conference, publicly repented of denying the use of the term as sexual orientation.

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He said that he had rejected that as he properly should have back in the day. It was an obvious piece of witchcraft to say we're not going to talk about perverse desires and abominable desires and thoughts.

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No, no, no, no. We're going to call them sexual orientations. And so Muller, repents of rejecting that, accepts now the language of sexual orientation with regard to same -sex attracted

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Christians, okay, having accepted that now and saying, well, you know, this is part of the fall, you know, that people would be born this way.

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You know, this isn't God's best and so on. So this is all part of Genesis 3. You know, we can, we can make sense of this biblically, can't we?

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Well, okay. All right. Next up, I was born trans. Okay.

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We're still waiting on him to repent about that. Okay. Here comes minor attracted persons. Okay. Time to repent about that.

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These are all just sexual orientations. They're born this way. This is all part of Genesis 3. And so we are going to support those who have these inherent desires, you know, encouraging all sorts of Christian synergy with this.

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But, but there's no end in sight. There's no end in sight. If you are born this way, then it becomes a civil rights issue.

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Well, that, and I think that's where the angle is for USA Today and those who are pushing for this. I mean, people were called a nutcase because we noted that there was a plus at the end of the alphabet soup.

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You know, well, what's in the plus? You know, you're just homophobic. You're xenophobic, right?

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That's Mary Poppins bag. Yeah. You can just keep on pulling stuff out of it. You know, like how, where in the world did this come from?

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Well, it came out of the plus, but this is witchcraft to try to change the names of this and then to try to call, you know, say this, what this needs is understanding and getting this conversation going.

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This is, this happens from the womb and sourcing the ethics in a completely new way. Again, the question is by what standard.

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And if we're going to use the standards that are in operation today, there is no argument against having minor attracted persons as part of the parade during pride month this year.

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There is no argument against bestiality. There is no argument against rape.

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There is no argument against any sexual perversion that has ever been brought under the sad depraved curse of mankind.

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There's no argument against it because they have, they've completely surrendered everything. Are you saying that's because they define it as a social construct?

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Right. Something that is, you know, as long as everybody starts buying into a change, then it's okay that it changes.

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Right. You know, at some point, and then of course people are making the arguments and they're tossed aside.

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What are you saying? You saying that is people who murder others, they're born that way? And someone says, well, that's, that's going to be, that's a false analogy.

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You can't say that. This is about, as you pointed out, David, this is about their civil rights. Do you really think that it's going to stop with sexual orientation?

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Isn't it going to be all sorts of other kinds of orientations? All manners of depravity. Yeah, absolutely.

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So this is about the, this is about the state again, you know, eventually it's like, you know, getting, if you can get legal protection for something under the state, then this is the sanctifying of it, the acknowledging that this is now holy, this is now to be protected and celebrated and so on and so forth.

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And this is the next thing. And this out of a, notice how fast this turns, this out of a culture that, you know, watches the reality shows of catching predators.

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And we know what happens to pedophiles when they go to jail and so on and so forth. And then all of a sudden it's going to turn around and all of a sudden minor attractive people are going to be protected class.

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Same thing happened with, you know, all the, um, the, the talk and the loose talk, let's just be honest, the loose talk about, about gays, right?

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I hate that term. Right. Well, a lot of negative, a lot of negative talk and a lot of loose talk and insults and so on about the gays.

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And then all of a sudden it turns around and all of a sudden they're celebrated. How does that work? Well, there's, there's a, there's a model in play, right?

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It's classic paganism, it's classic witchcraft. You keep on saying the spells over and over and over again until they finally take hold.

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You keep on talking about it, familiarizing everybody with it. Keep on saying the same thing over and over and over again and get enough people saying the same thing over.

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This is how witchcraft works. People repeat the mantras or repeat the spells over and over and over again until you get enough people saying it and then it comes to pass.

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Back to the timing that you asked though, and I kindly kind of just made a quick comment to that though.

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I think we do see an acceleration of these things where the more lies that you take in, the quicker the next one comes and the quicker you're, you're able to gobble it up because now you have a taste for lies.

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You have a taste for putting away shame that comes with those lies and you actually lose the taste of that shame.

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So it's much easier to swallow the next one quicker and quicker and quicker and I think that's why we see when states start approving these things quickly or they start promoting them quickly, their demise is short afterwards.

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It is an acceleration of them stepping out of their lane to make things holy, but it's also going to be an acceleration of their downfall as well.

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I like to think about this change dynamic as like the three different ways of gauging motion.

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So you have distance, distance over time and the rate of change of distance over time. I think what you're seeing is that people are objecting to the rate of change, not necessarily the speed or the distance that's been traveled.

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We've traveled so far past the standard quickly, but this, Oh, this is too fast, too fast.

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Well, the faux outrage against this, people had such backlash, whether it's this is happening too fast, they have no standard.

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The outrage was centered on, but kids can't consent. It was all about consent.

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That's why rape is still so bad. If you can accuse someone of rape, then you can take down political figures, you can take down sports stars, you can take down governors, case in point,

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New York. Or allow the state to say, you can murder your child because of it. Wow.

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I'm not saying it's consistent, but that was the foundation of their false outrage.

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They couldn't have consent. So could you guys kind of talk about that? That's the thing is that obviously this is not going to be initially the same kind of celebration that you would have in other types of sexual perversions, because how can the child consent?

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They're working on that. They're lowering the age of consent in all kinds of legislation all around.

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The idea of consent is being watered down. It is being made more and more easily attainable.

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I would say some of that is the goal of transgender rights with minors and not having to have parental assent.

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They can just tell any other adult, most specifically an agent of the state, and they can get whatever they wanted.

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Same with abortion. Yeah. And so consent is under attack as far as a concept being more and more watered down.

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It's no guard. It's a temporary break here, but it's not going to stick around, obviously, if you just track the history of it, of the progress of all of this.

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But you could say the same thing about bestiality, and you could say the same thing about rape, but that's not where they're going after.

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They're not going after that. The act of it, they can go ahead and say that's not acceptable.

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What they're going after is the orientation should be acknowledged.

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The orientation should be understood. The orientation needs to be handled in particular ways because, again, we have to restore.

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We have to redeem. We have to reconcile. The state has to save these people. And so in order to do that, we have to understand their orientations and then get them the help that they need so that they can be saved.

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And then we're not going to change them. We can't deny their sexual orientations, that they want to do these things.

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We don't want them to do these things, but we're going to understand them, okay?

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And that's the first step towards to acceptance and then celebration. Yes. Yeah.

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And so we have to tolerate them. In order to tolerate, you have to understand. And if you understand them, then you can accept what they do, but only certain conditions.

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Under certain conditions, they're allowed to do that until eventually it's celebrated. So eventually the whole freight train is too heavy and going too fast, and it will wreck.

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But is it the tail wagging the dog? I don't know. But the church themselves, the mainstream big

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Eva churches have taken the same tack, right? We're not going to call any of this perverse or abomination.

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We're not going to say this is sinful. We're going to say, we recognize you as an oppressed class, and we want to do justice.

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And so what we're going to do is we're going to make sure that we uphold you and honor you in your orientations as we show you what it means to be celibate in Christ.

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We don't approve of your actions, but we're certainly going to understand where you're coming from here, and we're not going to have any kind of condemning language.

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And we repent of not making the church friendly and accepting and promoting and healthy and honoring to those who are same -sex attracted or gay

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Christians or whatever the new terminology is, because it's always shifting. So you have that model in the church and in the state.

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All right. Well, now that we have wrapped up this week in Witchcraft, we would like to go on to our preferred or recommended content that we have for this week.

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Michael, we'll start with you. My recommendation is a book by Gary DeMar, The Gog and Magog End Time Alliance.

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Subtitle is Israel, Russia, and Syria in Bible Prophecy. And this was written a little bit ago.

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But of course, when Russia's in the news, the prophecy hawks start selling their wares. And this is a great book that helps as you read through Ezekiel chapters 37 and 38, and you read through the book of Esther, and you read through the book of Zechariah, and you read through various parts of Isaiah.

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A lot of these things all have textual connections and similar themes. And when you read, for instance, about Gog and Magog and Ezekiel, and they're all on horses and they're using bows and arrows and swords to wage war to capture cattle, this does not exactly sound like Blackhawk helicopters and MiGs and surface -to -air missile sites and fighting over oil.

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This is not the same thing. In fact, there's a lot of textual connections between the prophecy of a big battle against Israel and the big battle that happened against Israel and Esther.

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A lot of connections. And it would make sense that a big threat that was neutralized against the

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God's people of Israel, prophesied of in Ezekiel 37 and 38, came to pass and was fulfilled in the book of Esther and was celebrated with echoes in Zechariah.

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I mean, it makes sense. You read through it. It's all the language that is used of that time period.

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And this book helpfully walks through the argument for that, gives the evidence for it, and deals with objections to it.

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Is that the one where he mentions Haman being directly referenced? A Gogite.

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Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Saul. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

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So that's my recommendation. So there's a book called The Heresy of Orthodoxy.

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It's by Andreas Kolstenberger out of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Michael Kruger is

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RTS Charlotte. This book, The Heresy of Orthodoxy, is written in contrast to Heresy and Orthodoxy by Walter Bauer.

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The Bauer thesis is that there were multiple Christianities in the ancient church and the one that we have now is just the one that kind of won out, but there were sort of local versions and we've lost some texts of some of those and then you have some

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Gnostic texts and you have others. And the one that we consider Orthodox is just the one that kind of won out and thank you

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Constantine for giving us that one. That's kind of the Bauer thesis and what

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Kolstenberger and Kruger do is they masterfully go through not just the text of scripture itself, but the ancient church in the first couple of centuries and show that the

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Orthodox position is the not just the oldest, but the one that is consistent and the mere existence of heresies doesn't mean that just they were equally viable.

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This one is the one that flows best from the available evidence. And by the way, those

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Gnostic texts were written at least 100 years afterwards of the earliest writings that we do have.

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That kind of neo -Platonism really wasn't around until about 150. And Constantine died an

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Arian. So he took this out of the heretics in the end. It's an untenable thesis, but the

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Bauer thesis is repeated by people like Millen Pagels and others, but the

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Orthodox position is now considered heretical in many seminaries. So the

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Bauer position is the one that is now Orthodox. It's a more modern position. The liberal modern position should be

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Orthodox. So heresy of Orthodoxy, if you love ancient church,

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I think they do a really good job of breaking down the very complex subject that has a lot of writing to it.

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And I think they break it down pretty well to a layman's level. I'm a big fan of Gary DeMar's podcast because it is a quick way to get some familiarity with the concepts of partial preterism in that perspective of eschatology.

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I didn't know that's what I was until I ran across people like him that had a term associated with it.

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When I read the Bible and I saw things like at hand and soon, you know, I just trusted that's what people believe.

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So coming across their content helped me to understand more of a systematic way of understanding what it means to be someone who believes that at least a portion of the prophetic scriptures of the

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New Testament have been fulfilled. Partial preterism. Very good. So I read this,

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I don't know, a couple of months ago when it was suggested to me on Twitter, but my suggestion is a, it's a 13 page plan for sustained prayer for sustained revival by Gary North.

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And he lays out a very decentralized view of how to precede revival with prayer.

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And it's a very interesting read first of all, but it's also intriguing as far as how a lot of the principles and tenets are applied in the local body, but also as a church

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Catholic. I'd recommend that just to, it's a short read and you can look at it, pick it apart, get some good stuff out of it.

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And I believe he, did he recently? He died. He's in glory.

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So that's why I wanted to kind of mark that out and give a suggestion his way because his works are still out there and we should eat them up while we can.

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And that wraps it up for today. We're always very thankful for our listeners tuning in every week and for supporting us by rating, reviewing, and sharing the show.

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And we hope you can join us again for another week of uncovering and rebuking witchcraft in the modern world.