- 00:03
- Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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- This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture and media from a Reformed perspective.
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- Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
- 00:21
- Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
- 00:25
- Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
- 00:27
- My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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- I'm coming to you today from Grace Point Church and I am sitting with Pastor Austin Tucker of Grace Point Church.
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- Pastor, how are you today? Man, I am good and it's good to be here.
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- I am so thankful to be here.
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- I've been here for the last few days.
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- I was able to preach to your people on Sunday morning.
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- Then we had a great, wonderful Bible study on Sunday evening.
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- And we've been talking about the Reformation, had an opportunity to preach about the life of Luther on Sunday morning, had an opportunity to talk about Calvin on Sunday evening.
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- And now I'm here at the school.
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- Grace Point has a school here on campus and I've been talking to your students for the last two days.
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- I got one more day tomorrow and I've really been blessed to be here.
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- And again, I want to thank you so much for having me this week.
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- Man, it's been an honor to have you.
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- You've done a wonderful job with them.
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- I appreciate that very much.
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- So when we are talking and when you and I were talking, we said we want to have a I want to do a podcast anytime I have an opportunity to sit down with another pastor and talk about about the life of the church and ministry.
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- We I want to do that.
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- And because I'm here with you and we were able to pull out the microphones and do it, I was real excited.
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- But I've already had you on the podcast one other time.
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- I had you when I first started.
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- You remember that? Yes.
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- Yeah.
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- And so you've been here before.
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- And so I don't want to talk about what normally when I have a pastor on, I talk about their their life and how they got saved and how they got called into ministry.
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- But we've already talked about that.
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- So if anybody's interested in how Pastor Austin got saved and how he became the pastor of this church and what it's like to pastor this church, we talked about that on the last program.
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- Yeah, I believe we talked about my journey to reformation.
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- Yes, absolutely.
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- Absolutely.
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- So today we're going to go a little bit different route and we're going to deal with the question of conspiracy theories.
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- This is something that we both talked about and said that we both see as an issue in the church and an issue that we think is worth dealing with as far as from a pastoral perspective, because as we all know, Jeffrey Epstein could not have killed himself.
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- No, no, absolutely.
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- So that's one of the things that that's one of the talking points that most of us see on social media.
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- We see the sort of the joking memes of Epstein didn't kill himself.
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- And and and I personally don't believe that he did.
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- Do you believe that he killed himself? I'm convinced that it was definitely a conspiracy.
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- OK, and we will only know in glory.
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- Yeah.
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- But yeah, he didn't kill himself.
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- Yeah.
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- And the reason why I bring that up is because when we talk about conspiracy theories, the first thing I wanted to note for anybody who's listening is we're not going to deny that there are conspiracies out there.
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- No.
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- And in fact, many conspiracy theories that have been pushed over the years and people have been criticized for believing have often come up true.
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- And that that's where the conundrum is for the Christian walk, because we're called to be men and women of truth.
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- And oftentimes conspiracies are hinged on less truthful things with just enough truth to draw you in.
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- Are you a sucker for a conspiracy theory? I I can I can tell you this.
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- There have been many times where when I hear something, I say, boy, that sounds like it must be right.
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- There's so much there's so many hanging threads that it seems like if you pull one, the whole thing's going to come apart.
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- And I'll give you an example of an old one.
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- And this is certainly not the topic of today.
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- Nobody really talks about this much today, but the but the killing of JFK.
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- Yeah.
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- You know, obviously, when that happened, that was a huge conspiracy.
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- Everybody wanted to talk about the fact that there had to been a second gunman on the grass.
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- You know, I heard the coolest answer to this, though.
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- And when I say coolest, I mean, obviously we're talking about the death of someone.
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- So I guess we have to be a little a little careful with how we say cool.
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- But I heard someone say that it was actually an accident that that he was truly shot at by the gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, but that in responding, one of his secret servicemen actually shot JFK.
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- And that's why it was so gruesome and point blank and everything.
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- And that the conspiracy was that the reason why they they didn't want that out is because they didn't want that man to have to suffer the consequences of having made such a heinous mistake.
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- And there's this whole like cover up for the Secret Service guy.
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- Now, I don't think that's true, but that's just like one more like that, like that on top of the grassy knoll on top of the, you know, and that's one of those perfect examples.
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- There are TV show after TV show releases where people have hooked up lasers, have tracked all this down and it doesn't make sense.
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- Yeah.
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- And so we know it don't make sense.
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- But at the same time, as a Christian, the question is, can we get stuck up on that kind of theory? Yeah.
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- I mean, that's a danger.
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- Yeah.
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- The Christian.
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- Did you ever watch Seinfeld? Oh, yeah.
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- That's one magic loogie.
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- Remember, you know, I'm talking about anybody who's listening, who listens Seinfeld notice.
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- Yeah.
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- And it's based on the JFK theory.
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- Yeah.
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- But a more modern conspiracy might be the QAnon stuff.
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- Are you dealing with QAnon at your church? I have.
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- We actually have a lot of QAnon people.
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- Not a lot.
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- I shouldn't say that.
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- We have a few QAnon people in our church.
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- And I've I've went and looked and followed and read out of curiosity.
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- And here's the thing.
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- What I have discovered is that there is a big group of people who want these things to be true to the point where they are inserting all this information.
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- However, QAnon kind of puts you on to Pizzagate and the pedophile trafficking that was going on and the Russian hoax.
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- And as you research this stuff out and for me, I'm one of those people.
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- I'll grab something and I try to go back to the original resource.
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- And what I discovered is that there is some evidence on pedophilia and Pizzagate, but not as much as what QAnon is pushing.
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- There's some evidence on the Russia hoax.
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- In fact, you I don't know if you've been following the news.
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- More emails just got released just this past week.
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- Well, that's isn't this the Joe Biden thing? Yes.
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- Or the Hunter Biden's laptop.
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- His laptop.
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- Correct me if I'm wrong, because, again, I've been here with you for the last few days.
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- I haven't been keeping up with the news as much.
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- Isn't it that he put his like he hocked his computer? Yes.
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- And they found it in a pawn shop.
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- This sounds like something from the X-Files.
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- I mean, they found a pawn shop computer.
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- It goes back to conspiracies.
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- I'm not I'm not.
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- That's one of those things that these these agencies purposely get a hold of his laptop and put it somewhere where it can be found.
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- Who knows? Supposedly, he took it in to be repaired, never picked it up, and then it ended up going for sale.
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- And that's how it was found.
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- That just sounds so random.
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- I mean, I'm not saying it didn't happen.
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- I don't know.
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- It's like the Anthony Weiner laptop.
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- Now, that name of that man matches him so well.
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- It's just like Creflo Dollar and Freddie Price.
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- It is.
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- It's it's right there.
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- Ironic of ironic names.
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- But his laptop was found near, I believe I want to say, a phone booth.
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- Where do you find phone booths nowadays? Exactly.
- 07:37
- You know, I was, you know, reared on movies.
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- I watched a lot of movies growing up.
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- I think I mentioned you at dinner the other night.
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- John Hughes wrote the wrote the soundtrack of my life.
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- So every time I hear the soundtrack from Great Outdoors or when I hear the soundtrack from Ferris Bueller or something like that, like like those those movies are so ingrained in me.
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- But there were also other movies that were the conspiratorial movies like you ever see the movie Shooter with Mark Wahlberg? Yes.
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- They you know, the Bob Lee Swagger is the character from a set of books.
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- That movie is based on a set of books.
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- Yeah.
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- And they actually did a TV show that that followed the story of the book more than the movie, because movie, of course, they condense it down.
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- But the whole idea was the government gets a guy to shoot at the president because they want him to actually kill somebody else or to plan the shooting.
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- And just the idea of how deeply embedded there are.
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- I mean, that's the kind of thing.
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- And of course, it's Hollywood.
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- Right.
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- But that's I think that gets ingrained, just like the song from the John Hughes movies got ingrained in my psyche.
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- And now when somebody says Ducky or Pretty in Pink, I you know, my mind goes to to those movies.
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- I think people get the assumption is it must be true because it's so much a part of our culture.
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- Yeah.
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- Well, I would say American culture in general, we we came to be by going after the man.
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- Yeah.
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- And it's just it's just ingrained in the American psyche.
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- We don't trust the big guy.
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- We don't trust Big Brother.
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- And here's the problem is Big Brother has given us reasons not to trust him over the years.
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- Yes.
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- And we were talking before this all started, some of the once conspiracy theories that when the Freedom Information Act had the CIA release a whole bunch of paperwork, we found out MKUltra was real, that the federal government was literally giving children and people in psych ward LSD to try to figure out how to do mind control here in America.
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- And what was the other one you mentioned? Tuskegee.
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- The Tuskegee experiment.
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- Giving and again, we wonder why there's so much aggravation, even race problems nowadays.
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- Yeah.
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- Picking a black neighborhood, giving them all syphilis just because they wanted to see what the long term response would be to a group of people having syphilis.
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- Yeah.
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- And our U.S.
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- government did this.
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- So what would happen is, is a lot of the doctors who came out about the Tuskegee project or the MKUltra, they were all those are conspiracy theorists.
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- Just ignore them.
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- And then we find out years later, the federal government finally releases its information due to the Freedom Information Act and the government actually did it.
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- Yeah.
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- So and that's the thing.
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- That's the danger.
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- And they called it a conspiracy at the time.
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- They called it conspiracy at the time.
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- And that's the thing.
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- As a Christian, I don't want to hurt the testimony of Christ with all the conspiracies that are going on.
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- And I think a Christian ought to be mindful of that.
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- But I think there's also a danger of attacking other people who are looking at these things.
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- There's there's a thin line between crazy and fact when you're looking at these theories.
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- Absolutely.
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- Yeah.
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- Do you know, you know, Dr.
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- D.
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- James Kennedy, who died? I know of him.
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- He was the pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.
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- He put out a film before he died on the eugenics movement.
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- Are you familiar with the eugenics movement? A little bit.
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- In the early part of the 20th century, the eugenics, eugenics means simply good genes.
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- And there was a there was an attempt to try to weed out of the population people who had bad genes.
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- Selective breeding.
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- Exactly.
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- It was basically Hitler.
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- Social Darwinism.
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- Yeah.
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- But it happened here.
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- Oh, not just over there.
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- There are there is evidence in the United States of forced sterilizations on certain segments of the population.
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- And this is what the movie was about.
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- What's funny is I saw this movie like 15 years ago and he and he was using it as an argument against evolution.
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- This was, you know, D.
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- James Kennedy was huge on apologetics and he started the evangelism explosion.
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- If you've ever.
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- I do know that.
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- Yeah.
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- If you've ever heard the if you died tomorrow, if you face Jesus and he said, why should I let you in the heaven? What would you say? That was his thing.
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- That was D.
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- James Kennedy and evangelism explosion.
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- Well, he was big on apologetics.
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- He was big on especially evolutionary issues.
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- And he was saying that basically what eugenics was, was social Darwinism.
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- It was a growth out of the idea that that the human beings are, you know, need to be.
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- We need to weed out the weak and the sick.
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- We're looking for the Aryan race.
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- Absolutely.
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- And but the evidences in the video were great.
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- But you know what? I have a hard time finding that movie now.
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- It's not on YouTube.
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- It's not available anywhere.
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- I don't know if Cole Ridge still sells it.
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- I know that after he died, his family, there were some issues with the next pastor, Tilly and Trevigian, who is the grandson.
- 12:37
- Yes.
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- Billy Graham became the pastor.
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- And from what I understand, there were some issues between sort of when the transfer power happened.
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- And so I don't know why it's hard to get ahold that movie.
- 12:51
- But that movie, like I said, I saw it back when he was still alive.
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- And I remember thinking if if only a quarter of this is true, it puts a major stain on the history of our nation.
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- And it's no longer a conspiracy.
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- We know for a fact that after World War II and Hitler was after we beat Germany, that many of the scientists that were doing a lot of these eugenic experiments were given sanctuary in the United States and continued working.
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- And again, that's all released public information now.
- 13:22
- Yeah.
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- So, I mean, it only makes sense.
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- These men who are doing these experiments over in Germany would bring them here.
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- Amen.
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- Amen.
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- So that's that's the thing is we have there's so much to consider in the history of the United States.
- 13:37
- That thing, some really bad junk has happened.
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- I mean, the nicest way to say it, we have we have done some bad things in some very, very bad ways.
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- And so when somebody comes out and says, hey, there's a pedophilia ring.
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- And Hollywood.
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- Yeah.
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- It's hard not to believe that's true.
- 13:55
- Well, and then the thing is, is what's the the the the lady, the young girl who was on the Smallville? Can't think of her name.
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- The blonde headed one.
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- Yeah.
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- Yeah.
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- She ended up getting arrested for having that sex cult where they had those prostitutes and children on that island.
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- Yeah.
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- And that's not even Epstein related.
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- And that and again, that was just a small piece of these puzzles that keep coming out.
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- And I'm sitting there watching this.
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- And as a as a man, as a father.
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- Yeah.
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- As a man who's a pastor.
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- And you were at our church Sunday.
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- We've got kids coming out of our nose at Grace Point.
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- Amen.
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- With a school.
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- Praise the Lord.
- 14:32
- Yeah.
- 14:33
- Well, and the thing is, is part of me is if I find out somebody did that, I'm no longer a pastor.
- 14:39
- I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm going to lose it.
- 14:42
- And I have to say this.
- 14:44
- There's a video on my Facebook feed of a guy who gets in a he's a he's a football player and he literally gets into his shoulder pads and tackles deadbeat dads like he finds out where they live.
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- And when they come out of the house, he goes, whoa, boom, and tackled these.
- 15:00
- I don't know what I got.
- 15:01
- I got I will send it to you.
- 15:03
- It was the best thing I watched that day because I said, I want to do that to false teachers.
- 15:06
- I want to do that.
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- Heretics.
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- Oh, man, I just want to show up at like Joel Osteen's house.
- 15:12
- I can see you walking in the back of his church.
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- Blue 42.
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- Set Hutton.
- 15:18
- Yeah.
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- Run from both sides.
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- You know, we'll have some bodyguards on the way, but we'll get there.
- 15:22
- We get four or five us preachers.
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- One of us will get them.
- 15:24
- But that was that, you know, and going back.
- 15:26
- Yes.
- 15:27
- If someone hurt a child from my church, it would be very difficult to have any sense of grace or compassion.
- 15:34
- Yeah, it would be.
- 15:36
- I use a phrase a lot.
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- And people sometimes see me post this online is two words, no quarter and no quarter just means no mercy.
- 15:43
- It means that, you know, the guy who shot the little boy in front of his sister, no quarter.
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- No quarter.
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- He goes right to the chair.
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- He goes right to the to the needle.
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- Needle.
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- There's no there's no quarter.
- 15:53
- So we said, well, that's not very Christian.
- 15:54
- No, we have we have a standard of justice in Scripture.
- 15:59
- Romans 13 is very clear.
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- The government does not wield the sword in vain.
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- They're there for the punishment of evil.
- 16:06
- Yeah.
- 16:06
- And of course, now we're getting that's a whole nother podcast.
- 16:09
- Now we're getting a government that is punishing good and dismissing evil.
- 16:14
- Absolutely.
- 16:14
- We're starting to see that in this epidemic like we never thought we would see.
- 16:18
- And that's the heart of conspiracy.
- 16:20
- Yeah.
- 16:21
- Calling good evil, hiding evil under the shadow of something that or under the cloak.
- 16:27
- You know, Martin Luther said at the Diet of Worms, if I remember correctly, he said he said, if I were to recant the the tax that I have done against potpourri, he said I would be like a cloak that covered evil.
- 16:41
- That's good.
- 16:42
- That's that's a great quote.
- 16:43
- He said, if I were to recant, I would be like a cloak that covered evil.
- 16:47
- And so I think about that's you know, there are real things happening.
- 16:51
- And that's why when you know, I'm sure your church members are going to listen to this.
- 16:54
- My church members are going to listen to this.
- 16:55
- And some of them are probably, you know, wondering, well, where are these guys going to come out? We're not denying there's some evil stuff going on.
- 17:01
- Men are wicked and our government is ran by wicked men.
- 17:05
- Yeah, absolutely.
- 17:07
- And I honestly, I'll tell you the one that gets me.
- 17:10
- You mentioned the girl from Smallville, Corey Feldman.
- 17:14
- Do you know who that is? No.
- 17:16
- Corey Feldman was in Goonies.
- 17:18
- He was in License to Drive.
- 17:21
- Which one was he in Goonies? He was Mouth.
- 17:23
- OK.
- 17:24
- OK.
- 17:24
- And in this amazing those who are listening, like, yes, I got that one.
- 17:28
- Yeah, it is.
- 17:29
- OK.
- 17:30
- He was in a bunch of movies with a boy by the name of Corey Haim.
- 17:33
- It was the two Corys.
- 17:34
- They were in.
- 17:35
- Lost Boys.
- 17:36
- They were in License.
- 17:37
- Oh, I remember.
- 17:38
- OK, I know who you're talking about now.
- 17:40
- The two Corys.
- 17:40
- He was actually really good friends with Michael Jackson.
- 17:44
- And I don't want to go down that road.
- 17:46
- No, there's no there's no proof of anything that between them.
- 17:50
- But he has now because Corey, Corey Haim has died.
- 17:54
- Yes.
- 17:54
- As a very young man.
- 17:55
- Drug overdose.
- 17:56
- Right.
- 17:56
- I think so.
- 17:56
- Yes.
- 17:57
- And but Corey Feldman is is has for years tried to put out a documentary saying that Hollywood is saying that he was a part of it.
- 18:05
- He was one of the children that was molested.
- 18:07
- Yep.
- 18:08
- And that that is how children are treated.
- 18:10
- You know, it's funny.
- 18:11
- I couldn't remember.
- 18:12
- I'm very bad with names.
- 18:13
- But as soon as you said the two Corys, I've seen that poster in my head of those two guys.
- 18:18
- I don't know if you ever seen the poster where the two Corys are hanging on each other, like leaning on each other.
- 18:22
- Yeah.
- 18:22
- Yeah.
- 18:22
- Yeah.
- 18:23
- That's what came to my head.
- 18:24
- And I've seen I've seen a documentary where they talk about how he's been trying to push and the guy from The Hobbit.
- 18:32
- Yeah.
- 18:32
- He's in a lot of Christian movies now.
- 18:34
- Yeah.
- 18:34
- He came out and said the same.
- 18:36
- That's Sean Astin.
- 18:37
- He's in The Goonies, too.
- 18:38
- Oh, was he? He was Mikey.
- 18:42
- I wish I was better with this name.
- 18:43
- No, it's OK.
- 18:45
- Sean Astin is now doing a lot of Christian films and he's friends with Corey Feldman.
- 18:50
- And he came out and said there's a lot of pedophilia in Hollywood as well.
- 18:53
- It's hard to ignore and just say, nah, this is just a few guys who are trying to get their day in the sun again or something.
- 18:59
- It doesn't make sense.
- 19:00
- No.
- 19:01
- And again, I hesitate because the people I'll have people come to me, preach or what? I'm a sucker for a good conspiracy theory.
- 19:10
- Yes.
- 19:10
- Not because I believe them all, but because I find them interesting.
- 19:14
- Yeah, I find them very interesting.
- 19:16
- And the thing is, is I have a lot of people come to me and ask me.
- 19:21
- And a lot of times my answer is, well, we need to study this out.
- 19:24
- We need to wait and see.
- 19:26
- Yeah.
- 19:26
- And I think there's just I don't know.
- 19:28
- There's a thin line.
- 19:29
- I'm not going to be going on Facebook constantly pushing conspiracy theory.
- 19:34
- The government calls 9-11.
- 19:35
- That's a big one.
- 19:37
- OK? Yeah, absolutely.
- 19:38
- It's a huge one.
- 19:38
- Yeah.
- 19:38
- Yeah.
- 19:39
- And I have some friends who just, you know.
- 19:41
- Oh, I got some friends sold out on that, too.
- 19:43
- Absolutely.
- 19:44
- I'm not.
- 19:46
- I just there's no evidence that's really been seen other than theory.
- 19:50
- They talk about the metal theory and and and all that.
- 19:54
- No evidence at the Pentagon.
- 19:54
- But there's no actual evidence.
- 19:56
- Yeah.
- 19:57
- Yeah.
- 19:57
- So heard all that.
- 19:58
- It's one of those things as a Christian.
- 20:00
- I'm not going to hurt the testimony of Christ for the sake of a really cool story.
- 20:04
- Yeah.
- 20:05
- Yeah.
- 20:05
- Yeah, absolutely.
- 20:06
- And I think that's that's really where you and I, you know, when we're talking about doing this, that's what we wanted to make sure people understood that we can't we cannot deny that there are evil things that happen, that there are evil people.
- 20:20
- Several months ago, I preached a sermon on Genesis three, one on the identity of the serpent, and I was preaching.
- 20:26
- I said he was the great conspirator.
- 20:28
- What was his first? What was his first thing that he did? He caused Eve to question the word of God.
- 20:32
- You shall not really say.
- 20:34
- Yeah.
- 20:34
- Did God really say you will not surely die? This was Satan's doing what Satan does.
- 20:40
- And that is causing doubt, causing contention, causing people to disbelieve what God has said.
- 20:46
- And I think that where we are now is at a place where we have we have two types of people that we deal with in our church.
- 20:54
- We have the what I would say is the and it's naivete on both sides and the people who are listening to this.
- 21:01
- I love you.
- 21:01
- But, you know, it's it's those who are so naive to think there are no conspiracy theories that everything that CNN says is true or everything that Fox says is true.
- 21:09
- Yeah, I don't have as many of those.
- 21:10
- Yeah, but they're there.
- 21:12
- But then you have those on the other side that would say everything that I read on the darkest pit of the Web is true.
- 21:20
- And and that's dangerous, too.
- 21:22
- Yeah, I think it's dangerous to be on either side and to be to be willing to believe whatever you read because it agrees with you.
- 21:29
- Yeah, we got to seek the truth.
- 21:31
- Absolutely.
- 21:32
- So how would you if you if if somebody came to you and said, well, pastor, what should I do if I hear something that sounds right? What what's what would how what would you point them to? I know that's a good question.
- 21:43
- I honestly like with the pizza gate and the pedophilia, that is one of those things that I have been following really closely.
- 21:55
- And I have found several evidences and truth that are public publicly noted, even stuff that has been published in major newspapers like New York Times has done things on several of the pieces of the puzzle, if you will, to pizza gate.
- 22:09
- But at the same time, when they get into some of the crazy story like the frizzle snap, I don't know if you've heard of that.
- 22:16
- I haven't.
- 22:16
- OK.
- 22:17
- Supposedly there's a video over the dark web where Hillary Clinton is molesting and hurting a child.
- 22:23
- OK.
- 22:23
- OK.
- 22:24
- But it's and my question is, and they're like, you know about frizzle snap? I'll be like, no news media has ever seen it.
- 22:30
- Nobody knows it exists.
- 22:32
- That's where we get in trouble.
- 22:34
- When you look at actual news and you see these pedophilia rings that have actually been busted.
- 22:39
- Thousands of people been arrested over this last year.
- 22:41
- That's one good thing that the Trump administration has done.
- 22:44
- Amen.
- 22:46
- That is truth.
- 22:48
- Yeah.
- 22:48
- But this video and with deep fakes and everything nowadays, I'm I'm going to hold my judgment.
- 22:55
- I'm not going to hitch my cart to theories where there's no evidence and there's no public recognization of that.
- 23:05
- I don't know how to word it.
- 23:07
- You know, I love you because I have I hadn't heard the thing about Hillary Clinton.
- 23:10
- Yeah.
- 23:11
- But apparently just this morning on Facebook, someone was posting something and it was just a it was just a post.
- 23:18
- It wasn't it wasn't a news outlet.
- 23:20
- It wasn't anything, but it was a post that talked about Hunter Biden supposedly being in a video on his computer using Chinese using Chinese children.
- 23:27
- And and my response is people want that to be true.
- 23:31
- Yeah.
- 23:31
- We haven't seen the video yet.
- 23:32
- That's right.
- 23:32
- And we don't know.
- 23:33
- And and it may very well be true.
- 23:36
- Well, and the interesting thing about that, I believe the New York Times actually ran an article about the Hunter Biden laptop, but it don't talk about the video.
- 23:44
- It talks about the emails and the Russian collusion.
- 23:47
- Yeah.
- 23:47
- That his father, you know, the video came later on by the conspiracy theorist.
- 23:52
- Yeah.
- 23:52
- When no major in media or FBI agents or anybody else has said there's been videos of molestations or anything like that.
- 24:01
- Yeah.
- 24:01
- So and that's the thing is that's the problem with conspiracy theories is there is a truth.
- 24:05
- There was a laptop found.
- 24:06
- There were emails.
- 24:07
- There's information about the Russian collusion on there.
- 24:10
- But then that leads to people coming along and coming up some crazy stories.
- 24:15
- And next thing you know, you see on Facebook something like this.
- 24:18
- I have this on authority from a high up person.
- 24:22
- Yeah.
- 24:22
- Who has seen it.
- 24:23
- And the manager at Taco Bell.
- 24:25
- Yeah.
- 24:25
- Yeah.
- 24:26
- And that's the thing is, as I go as a scholar and I don't consider myself a scholar, but as a pastor, we are called to be a scholar and a gentleman.
- 24:34
- Yeah.
- 24:35
- As a pastor, I'm called to be a scholar.
- 24:37
- And if I wrote papers at seminary level back when I was working at my seminary level, I'm working on some more stuff on the side.
- 24:45
- If I wrote papers and said just because so and so said so without actually referencing where it came from, you get dismissed.
- 24:54
- Amen.
- 24:54
- They don't play with that.
- 24:56
- And that's what we're seeing on Facebook.
- 24:57
- We're seeing a lot.
- 24:58
- And Facebook is really the I think what's caused the conspiracy theory to get a hold like it's never been before.
- 25:05
- Amen.
- 25:05
- I want to I want to back that up.
- 25:07
- I'm going to say something just to just to reinforce what you just said over the years as a pastor.
- 25:15
- You know, I write my sermons out.
- 25:17
- I don't manuscript, but I do.
- 25:18
- I have a heavy outline that I write before I preach.
- 25:22
- And when I am quoting something or when I'm referencing a historical event that is not a well-known historical event, you know, if I say, you know, Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776 or whatever.
- 25:35
- I don't have to cite that.
- 25:36
- Everybody knows.
- 25:37
- But if I say something about like Luther, I've mentioned twice this last couple of days at your church that Luther had a little brother who died and the mother thought it was a witch.
- 25:50
- I didn't know about that.
- 25:51
- My wife is actually reading a biography of Luther, and she's reading it because she wanted to read it this year for Reformation Day and she's teaching our children.
- 26:01
- And she told me that story from the book.
- 26:03
- So in my notes, I'm citing that book as my reference because I had not known that story.
- 26:10
- And so my point being, if somebody came back to me and said, where did you get that? Just like the other night, the brother asked me.
- 26:17
- He said, how do you know this is true? One of my fellow elders.
- 26:20
- It was a great question because he said, how do we know that's not just something someone made up? And I said, well, I'm quoting Calvin.
- 26:27
- These are Calvin's words.
- 26:29
- Yeah.
- 26:30
- You know that.
- 26:30
- So I it's my responsibility as the teacher, pastor, elder, like you said, scholar.
- 26:38
- It is my responsibility to be able to back up what I say.
- 26:42
- And there have been times where I've had to come back.
- 26:44
- Oh, yeah.
- 26:45
- And say, you know what? I said this about this and I was incorrect.
- 26:49
- The source that I looked at was wrong, was faulty.
- 26:52
- Or, you know, I even tell you this.
- 26:55
- If I quote like MacArthur.
- 26:57
- Yeah.
- 26:58
- I will search for his source.
- 27:01
- You have to.
- 27:02
- Not because I don't trust MacArthur.
- 27:04
- And see, we're getting off track.
- 27:05
- But I will tell you this.
- 27:06
- I grew up in the independent fundamental Baptist background.
- 27:10
- And needless to say, I've had a lot of training on King James only position.
- 27:14
- Sure.
- 27:14
- I have on the bottom of my shelf one of the most famous King James only books, as well as the more concurrent ones by Gary Plinger and stuff.
- 27:22
- And they quote all these stories about the TR and all that.
- 27:26
- And an eye opener.
- 27:29
- I all of a sudden realized I was going to look for the source of all these books, a lot of Mark quoting the source.
- 27:37
- And then a lot of these stories I started researching.
- 27:40
- And then I found James White's King James only controversy and which he actually gives a link.
- 27:46
- And and gives references to everything.
- 27:49
- And so like the story about the the snack ice being found in the trash can.
- 27:55
- Yeah.
- 27:56
- And yeah, and that's a fake story that is very popular among the King James only.
- 28:00
- In fact, what was found in the trash can trash.
- 28:03
- Yeah, that's where it should have stayed.
- 28:05
- And and then when you read the actual translators and the actual men who found the transcript, they say, oh, no, it was it was a copy of the sub two agent, a rare copy of this two agent that was found in the trash, not the text.
- 28:18
- And but I have learned real quick and being being raised in that.
- 28:23
- I am so obsessive.
- 28:24
- I want to know where this is coming from.
- 28:28
- Absolutely.
- 28:28
- Is it true? What are the resources? And I like to go see the resources with my own eyes.
- 28:33
- And I would encourage Christians.
- 28:35
- And this is where I kind of I would encourage Christians not to dismiss every conspiracy theory.
- 28:41
- But I will also encourage them to dismiss some of it and look with your own eyes, because there is some truth in some of this stuff.
- 28:48
- But there's also a lot of lies.
- 28:50
- Amen.
- 28:50
- And we need to dig through it as good Christians, as people of the truth.
- 28:53
- Yes.
- 28:54
- And knowing the difference between a primary source and a secondary source, a big one.
- 28:59
- And a lot of people don't even know what I mean when I say primary sources.
- 29:03
- And so I would encourage you look that up.
- 29:05
- Listener, look up what it means to actually look at where this came from, not the person who quoted the person who quoted the person.
- 29:11
- Yeah.
- 29:11
- You get five quotes down.
- 29:13
- You're playing telephone.
- 29:14
- Absolutely.
- 29:15
- Absolutely.
- 29:15
- And you're no longer in the context of the original statement.
- 29:18
- And and I hope that that's what people get out of today.
- 29:21
- We're not denying the possibility that there are conspiracies.
- 29:25
- We agree there are.
- 29:26
- We're not saying that there's not a grand conspirator.
- 29:29
- I say there is a grand conspirator.
- 29:30
- His name is the devil.
- 29:31
- And he's always seeking whom he may devour.
- 29:34
- And so none of this is a denial of that.
- 29:37
- But we are saying, especially within the church, where we are to be people of the truth, where we are to be people who are known for for for proclaiming that which is founded on the truth.
- 29:50
- And as John said, thy word is truth.
- 29:53
- Amen.
- 29:54
- And that's where we have to rest.
- 29:56
- Yes.
- 29:56
- So I would encourage you, listener, and whether you are a member of one of our churches or maybe a member of a church that we don't know, or maybe you are not a member of a church and you should be if you're a believer.
- 30:06
- We would say to you before you get wrapped up in any conspiracy theories, make sure that you're doing the research that needs to be done.
- 30:13
- And a YouTube video does not a research paper make.
- 30:16
- No.
- 30:17
- And Wikipedia.
- 30:18
- Yeah.
- 30:18
- Just keep keep reading somewhere else.
- 30:21
- Be careful where you go and what you search.
- 30:25
- And just because it agrees with what you think doesn't mean it's the truth.
- 30:30
- Yeah, I would say that's the the first and foremost thing.
- 30:34
- Look for what is true, not just what agrees with you.
- 30:38
- All right, brother.
- 30:39
- Thank you.
- 30:40
- Thank you for doing this.
- 30:41
- I've enjoyed it.
- 30:42
- We're going to do this again in the future, but probably next time we'll be through Zoom.
- 30:45
- So hopefully this sounds good.
- 30:47
- And I hope everybody enjoyed it.
- 30:48
- Did you enjoy it? I enjoyed it.
- 30:50
- It was fun.
- 30:50
- Well, I want to thank you again for having me at your church this week and at your school.
- 30:54
- And I want to thank you, listener, for being with us today on this.
- 30:57
- What looks like now is going to be an extended edition of Coffee with the Calvinists.
- 31:00
- We went over 30 minutes, but I hope you hung with us the whole time.
- 31:03
- I hope this has been an encouragement to you, and I hope that it has reminded you always, always, always seek to be a person of the truth.
- 31:11
- We have been called to be people of the truth.
- 31:14
- And as my brother just said, the word of God is our truth.
- 31:19
- Thank you for listening to Coffee with the Calvinist.
- 31:21
- My name is Keith Foskey, and I have been your Calvinist.
- 31:25
- May God bless you.
- 31:27
- Thank you for listening to today's episode of Coffee with the Calvinist.
- 31:32
- If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe and provide us feedback.
- 31:37
- We love to receive your comments and questions and may even engage with them in a future episode.
- 31:44
- As you go about your day, remember this.
- 31:48
- Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
- 31:51
- All who come to him in repentance and faith will find him to be a perfect savior.
- 31:57
- He is the way, the truth and the life.
- 31:59
- And no one comes to the Father except through him.
- 32:03
- May God be with you.