Evangelist Tim Lee on Ergun Caner's “Misstatements”

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is the Dividing Line.
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The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll -free across the
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United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Well, here we are on the, well, it's the 24th of May.
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And I've got two things I have to talk about, and I have to talk about them. I don't want to talk about them,
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I'll be perfectly honest with you, but I don't see much of a choice if we're going to remain on the cutting edge of apologetic whatever it is we do.
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But I'm not going to start where you expect me to start, even though we have 75 people in our chat show. I'm not sure why we have 75 people in there today.
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Maybe there are some people fleeing the end of the world, I don't know. But we'll get to that incredible mess, which
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I even saw on the Today Show this morning in a minute. But first, we need to do an update on the great evangelical cover -up.
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I mentioned last week the news, the big news. In fact, we need a press release on Ergin Kanner's website to let us know that Ergin Kanner, though he has never lied, was not only dismissed as president of Liberty Theological Seminary, but now has been dismissed by Liberty University and TOTO.
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Even though we're told that a teaching contract was extended to him, he has left Liberty and has gone to Arlington Baptist Bible College, a school with a little less than 150 students.
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I would imagine Kanner had some classes at Liberty with more than 150 students. But a
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King James -only fundamentalist Bible college. I mentioned last week, I don't see that as a real good fit.
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Can you tase somebody when they're wearing a white shirt and a dark tie? Is that really possible? I'm not sure how that works.
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But anyway, that was interesting in and of itself. But then yesterday or the day before yesterday, one of the two, a blog article appeared at the
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FBC Jack's Watchdog blog that pretty much paralleled the information
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I have received from inside Liberty. We've always said that Radio Free Geneva was from a bunker deep beneath Liberty University.
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So we might be able to hear things that other people can't hear. You never know. You never know. Has anyone really looked?
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Anyway, that's what he was so busy doing last year. Where is that thing? Anyway, anyhow, the information pretty much paralleled what
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I had been told. And basically, the idea was that Kanner was given a certain amount of time to find some place to go, but he needed to go.
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And what is really interesting were the comments that were posted that give us some more insight specifically comments by one evangelist,
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Tim Lee. And this fellow looks like he's a
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Marine and he lost his legs, I think, in Vietnam. I don't know his whole story.
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I've never heard him speak. Don't know anything about him. All I know is, according to him, quote,
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I was the chairman of the committee that crafted the statement concerning Ergen.
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We wondered who was on the committee. We wondered who did the investigation and all the rest of these things that resulted in his no longer being president, but still teaching at Liberty.
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And he is quoted on Kanner's website about being so excited that Ergen Kanner had gone to Arlington Baptist Bible College.
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But twice in his comments, evangelist
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Tim Lee says, we never once found that he lied.
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We never once found that he lied. Instead, we did find numerous instances of misspeaking.
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Misspeaking, one word. He was rebuked and reprimanded. And I can promise you much more care about what he says and how he says it.
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He was rebuked and reprimanded for misstatements, for misspeaking. Why do you rebuke people for misspeaking?
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I mean, all the examples. For example, he himself gave an example of what he means by misspeaking.
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He said in front of 10 ,000 people that day, I said, I stepped on a 60 pound mine and it blew me several feet in the air, ripping both of my bodies off my leg.
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Now the mine didn't rip both of my bodies off my leg, as I only have one body. It ripped both of my legs off my body.
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I'd said it right hundreds and hundreds of times, but that day I got it wrong. My children were listening back in Dallas via internet. They were on the floor with laughter.
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That's a misstatement. That's a misstatement. You meant to say certain words, and other words got in the way.
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We've all done that. There are different kinds of misstatements. I've given you an example of a misstatement that I made a number of times.
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I got a wrong date from history stuck in my mind, and I don't know how it got there, but I many times talked about the 1555
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Stephanus text of 1550. I had an extra five in there. I've corrected that now, but it was a misstatement.
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Honest. I wasn't trying to create a persona about myself or anything else in the process.
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Those are misstatements. We've even heard Ergen Kanner talking about, well, you could get the names of your kids wrong.
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I will admit, that's something I've never done. I don't know how you would do that, but hey, okay.
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These are misstatements, but we all know that for it to be true that we never once found that he lied, that means this committee, the chairman of this committee, a man with a proud service record, a war hero, has a level of naivete that is absolutely shocking and should mean that he should never be allowed to go to a used car store by himself.
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That's the only way I can put it. Folks, we can tell the difference between lies and misstatements.
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If you're a police detective, you're trained to be able to detect, what, inconsistencies in people's stories and be able to detect misstatements versus lies.
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Now, a misstatement like the one that he gave about blowing his bodies off of his leg, that's an obvious one.
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That's just a tongue -gets -in -front -of -your -eye -teeth -can't -see -what -you're -saying type situation. Those are easy.
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And misstating a date from ancient church history, getting the date of the
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Council of Constantinople wrong or something like that, those are easy. But you see, all of us, all of us adults anyways, know that there are certain telltale signs to lies.
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Misstatements are random. Misstatements do not have connection with other misstatements that just happen to be on the same subject.
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And you don't generally repeat misstatements over and over again, unless it's the type of thing where I got the wrong date in my mind.
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You don't tend to repeat them and then you never expand upon them. If you do, they're not misstatements.
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You are saying those words purposely and for a meaning. So let's think about some of Ergenkanner's misspeaking and misstatements.
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Not only did he make the statements, but he also put them in print.
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Now, do you really think that evangelist Tim Lee would put his misstatement into print so that it appeared on his website in his bio for years on end?
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More than one website? When Ergenkanner claimed to have come to the
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United States in 1978 or 1979, when his bio said 1979 on the Liberty webpage for months, if not years on end, and he repeated this in numerous contexts in numerous places, how can that be a misstatement when it was a decade off?
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Did he not know what was on his websites? When you have something in print and that is repeated over and over again in numerous different contexts, how can that be a misstatement?
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Can you really get the difference between when you were a teenager and when you were just a two -year -old kid mixed up in your mind so that you keep repeating the wrong thing and even put it into printed material?
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Is that a misstatement? And given that it's connected with other misstatements, like I was born in Istanbul, which he repeated more than once in different contexts, and misstatements generally are one -time thing, did he really think he was born in Istanbul?
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And he makes the argument, Mr. Lee makes the argument, well, 98 out of 100 times, he got it right.
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Really? How many times does he give us where he really was born in his testimonies before he was between, say, 2001 and 2010,
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February of 2010, specifically, when yours truly started blogging about this stuff?
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Where did he get it right? Now, he did get it right. And this is further evidence this wasn't a misstatement, because when you make misstatements, you don't say the correct thing to certain groups and misstatements to other groups.
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And that's exactly what Ergin Kanter did. When speaking to a Turkish newspaper, all of a sudden he was honest.
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No misstatements. He didn't claim to be able to speak Arabic or Turkish. And he knew where he was born.
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He knew he was born in Sweden, not in Turkey. And he knew he grew up in Ohio, not in Turkey or Istanbul.
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Never made any claims about training in madrasas in Beirut or Cairo or Istanbul, did he?
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Not when talking to people who could check him out. No, no, he didn't do that. But when talking to gullible groups, large groups who would feed on his stories, all of a sudden, misstatements come popping out all over the place again.
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You see, I bet you Evangelist Tim Lee doesn't appreciate it when people are discovered, as many people have been discovered recently, about claiming to be military personnel with war service, various people in politics, people claim to be
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Navy SEALs, and they weren't Navy SEALs. And I'm sure that Evangelist Tim Lee doesn't like that.
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And I bet you he'd be able to recognize anybody who claimed to have served in Vietnam, but didn't.
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I bet you he'd be able to sort of sort of root him out, don't you think? He'd be able to tell where the errors are in the story, don't you think?
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And yet. He'll accept Ergen Kanner's story and say he never lied. He never lied about training in madrasas in Beirut and Cairo.
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What about what about those videos where he's he's talking about speaking Arabic and what about his website where it talks about him debating imams in mosques in Arabic?
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It's really hard to do when you can't actually speak Arabic. And when we have no evidence of any
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Muslim imam that will come forward and say, oh, yes, I debated Ergen Kanner, no one will do that because he doesn't do debates.
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Was it a misstatement to say that his father brought his wives with him to America?
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When he only had had one. And you notice that the theme here, they're all related, the same thing to create this persona of Ergen Kanner being this expert on on Islam.
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Do misstatements, do they breed other misstatements on the same subjects? Evangelist Tim Lee knows that none of that's true.
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And that's why it's really hard for me to understand. How the chairman of the committee that drafted the statement, which was a non -statement, it was a political statement, it was a a statement that only made the situation worse, it didn't make it better.
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Evangelist Tim Lee knows that Ergen Kanner did lie. And if you say that someone didn't lie.
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When you know they did lie, is that a lie itself or is that just a misstatement? That would be the question.
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I wrote to evangelist Tim Lee, I've invited him to come on the program. I would like to talk to him about that. I'd like to ask him about these things.
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He could he could really shed some light on all this. But as long as people keep saying misstatement, just as a misstatement, this great evangelical cover up will continue on.
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And all those, quote unquote, discernment ministries that have been involved in propagating this cover up will demonstrate once again that there's not much in the way of discernment going on there.
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It's interesting, the blog had said, hey, way to go, Liberty, you did something right. And then the chairman of the committee comes along and says, well, not really.
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We didn't do anything right. We didn't actually get rid of him. He never lied about anything. If you can look at Ergen Kanner's entire fallacious story, oh, no lies there.
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Why do you expect the world to take you seriously about anything else? I mean, really, why do you?
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I don't know. In the midst of all this,
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I'll have to admit that that story was all the more depressing because of what we all or at least some of us listen to.
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Yesterday, news came out during the day that Harold Camping was going to do an open forum broadcast of some type that would involve a statement.
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And I was honestly hoping, I really was,
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I'll be honest with you, I was hoping, I'm so tired of this whole thing. I was honestly hoping that he'd be willing to come out and say,
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I blew it. I was wrong. I was wrong in 94,
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I was wrong in 2011. It's time for me to stop being wrong and admit that I am not the world's greatest
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Bible teacher and I do not have access to the secret insights of Daniel chapter 12, the little book of Daniel chapter 12 opened at the end of the world and all the rest of this stuff.
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I wrote an open letter yesterday morning to Harold Camping and what we listened to was one of the most amazing, idiotic and despicable things
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I've ever listened to. Press were invited in to the little studio where Camping does the open forum and for the first about two thirds of the program for the first hour or so, he just rambled on and rambled on and rambled on.
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I don't think you could see the looks on the faces of the journalists.
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I would love to have seen that as they sat there with their eyes crossing and everything else. And then he started taking some questions from the audience and you could see he was he was defensive.
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Here is a man who has misled. I'm not going to say millions because I don't think he has millions of followers.
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I really don't. But some of you may have heard I was on Iron Sharpens Iron yesterday and a brother from India called in.
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He had been on Iron Sharpens Iron a couple of days ago and the
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Reformed men in India are struggling because of Harold Camping because they are painted with the same brush as Harold Camping.
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Because many people in India, the first thing they ever heard of a Calvinism was Merrill Camping years and years and years ago when he had a had a booklet on Tulip.
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And this man is destroying lives right and left around him.
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And he does. He seems to be absolutely blissfully unaware, doesn't care.
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There was no apology. He didn't apologize for misleading people.
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He didn't apologize for his attacks upon the church. There's no repentance in this man's heart. There wasn't after 94.
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There isn't now. Sadly, the press has treated him as you would expect it to treat anybody they think is just a nut.
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There has been exactly one station, a Christian station, that has contacted me about this subject.
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You would think that the press, if it did its due diligence, would go, hey, I wonder if anyone's written any books about this guy.
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I wonder if anyone's debated this guy. You know, I wonder if there's a responsible voice out there, someone who's actually interacted with this guy.
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And I don't care about that. That's irrelevant to them. This is a great opportunity to mock
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Christianity as a whole and especially Bible believers. And of course, Harold is like it's like he was designed to be a plague upon us all.
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For there he sits, blathering on about how he was right all along.
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The dates were perfectly right. We got the dates right. We were just a little off as to what was going to happen.
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Yeah, we were supposed to disappear, but we're still here. And folks, how else can
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I put it? But I told you so. I nailed this one to the ground. There are only certain directions he could go.
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And I said one of the directions that he could go is to spiritualize the coming of Christ, say the judgment has begun, but say that what he was wrong about was that there was going to be a rapture on May 21st.
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But keep his October 21 date, which has always been a part of it. And I listened to the
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Today Show this morning and they were saying, I was off by five months.
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No, that's not even his position. They don't even know what the whole argument was.
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We've always seen the October 21st date sitting there. And so it's become his fallback position.
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And he still said the universe ends on October 21st.
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Which, of course, can be taken spiritually as well. Just as we had a spiritual rapture, we'll have a spiritual end of the universe and he'll come up with some way of connecting that and just keep on going until the day he dies.
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I described it as absolutely despicable. Because of the destruction that he has brought in people's lives, he cares nothing about the fact that he is dragging the
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Bible through the mud, dragging the name of Christ through the mud, cares nothing for that. All that matters is his role as humble
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Bible teacher, Harold Camping. What an amazing thing.
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I don't even want to listen to this, but let's, I suppose we have to. I actually stayed here at the office, didn't want to, but record this whole thing.
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And this is what he had to say when he got started. Well, I can tell you very candidly that when
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May 21 came and went, it was a very difficult time for me, a very difficult time.
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I was truly, truly wondering what is going on.
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I went in my mind. I went back through all of the promises that God has made, all of the proofs.
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All the promises and all the proofs. That is my fertile imagination, twisting and distorting scripture.
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But God gave them. See, that's what even, did y 'all notice the Ezekiel 33 .3?
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That's another interesting, very interesting story. Remember, we were watching those videos. A number of us went, man, you know, there's something weird about this.
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I mean, either this is just a wild eyed Campingite, or it seems like this guy is even asking specific questions so that, man, this is all over with.
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There's a record of all this, you know? And the last one, day one, one day to go, definitely made it clear this guy did not believe
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Camping's thing. Then a couple of days later, he's in front of the camera.
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And not only does that believe in Camping things, he's not even a Christian. He's more of an Ermite type guy, like a
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Bart Ehrman perspective. And he had infiltrated, and I mean, he was in Camping's home, he was in Camping's car.
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And he plays a phone message from Camping. Zeke, thank you so much.
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Really appreciate all you've done. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Camping didn't, he is so focused on his own cult leadership, didn't even see it coming.
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I can, you know, I can understand it happening, but that was quite interesting as well.
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All of the signs and everything was fitting perfectly. What in the world happened?
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And I really, really was praying and praying and praying,
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Oh, Lord, what, what, what's going, what happened? Because all through this, we have,
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I have been just astounded at the way God had opened door after door after door.
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He had sent wonderful people to us to manage our caravan, to manage our, the putting out of billboards, the managing of our track distribution and so on and so on.
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Yeah, that proves everything. I mean, look at all the Mormons out there. That must mean something there too, right?
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Did you have something you wish to? Well, he asked a very important question. Very important question.
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What in the world happened? And I have the answer. You do? Nothing. Okay.
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You're just trying to stop the pain of having to listen to this, weren't you? I understand. And it was just marvelous the way everything was going to, going together.
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And until May 21 rolled around and then suddenly it looked like, what happened?
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What happened? Well, you know, I was, I stayed away from home for one night because I'll tell you, the pressure from that phone ringing and the phone and the pressure of people knocking on my door because they wanted an interview was more than I could stand.
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And so my wife and I, we went to a motel someplace and spent the night there and, uh, and, uh, watching
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TV, looking what the news media was doing and praying and praying.
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Well, then what is it like to be Mrs. Camping? I really, really do wonder at times.
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And then here comes the answer, folks. It comes from a man who used to be with Camping isn't any longer.
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And something he said in a newspaper article becomes the light that turns on, you know, the switch that turns on the light that gives
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Camping his way out of his false prophecy. Something interesting happened.
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We, I got home and I began to look at some of the news articles in the local papers and there was a news and you know, the media, you people know that as well as I do, that you are looking for, for information in any direction that you can go.
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And someone called a friend of mine, Dr. Gabriel Otero, and talked with him.
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And what he had to say was put in, at least in part was put in the newspaper. And when
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I read that, suddenly the light dawn, suddenly I felt way better.
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You know, let me talk about Otero for just a moment. He was a, he's been a dear friend of mine for over 30 years and he was the founder of our family radio school of the
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Bible. He was the Dean for many, many years. When I spoke at conferences, he very frequently was also speaking at the same conference.
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And, and even though he was in some ways, he didn't understand everything
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I was teaching. Nevertheless, he was one individual that I could sit down and talk with and talk very candidly.
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And there were never, never was any contention between us at all. Fact is every time he would visit family radio,
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I would, I would be delighted to have him come into my office and we'd spend an hour or so together going through the, like whatever it was.
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Well, then he was talking to the news media and he made a statement or the news did.
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I don't know whether the news media got it right, but at least this is what they claim he said. He says, you know, uh, when
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May, when, uh, uh, September 7th rolled around or, uh, uh, in 1994 at the time,
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I had claimed, was predicting then that there was a high probability that that might be the end of the world.
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He says, you know, I had a private discussion with camping at that time. And, uh, and this is what
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I read in the news report. Uh, uh, Otero said the Lord did return to earth on that date in a mystical way, taking the
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Holy spirit back to heaven. And suddenly I felt better.
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I felt the light dawned. Are we glad this quotation is, was not quite accurate, but I did remember the conversation, even though it was all maybe 20 years ago or 18 years ago.
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Uh, uh, because, uh, we, we talked very candidly to each other.
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Uh, what he should have, what he should have said is that I had said the
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Lord did not, did return to earth on that date to a mystical, in a mystical, mystical way, taking the
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Holy spirit here to again, begin to evangelize the world.
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Because on September 7th in 19, uh, in 1994, it is a fact that God again began to evangelize the world outside of the churches.
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And I thought, Oh, there's the answer. We're looking at the information in the
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Bible to earthly, to, to, uh, to like it, like it, uh, like it was actually physically going to happen when the
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Bible is a very spiritual book and there's a lot of things in it that are very factual.
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Of course, of course, you know, many people had called him. Is there any chance brother camping, any chance for the camp that may 21st will be a spiritual thing?
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There's no chance, no chance, very factual, but there's also a lot that is very spiritual.
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And, but how to know whether to look for it as a, in a spiritual understanding or it's physical understanding is a very, very difficult task.
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So what he does, he goes on to say, we had, we, we didn't get anything wrong. We just did not yet understand, as we have now discovered, because we are so embarrassed.
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We just did not yet understand, um, that, uh, Christ was going to return invisibly in judgment.
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That's Edward Miller, 1844, Christ turns invisibly every false prophets, the only way around it, but, but everything winds up still on October 21st.
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So you got 152 days, uh, until the universe melts with a fervent heat.
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Now he does say it's going to happen physically, but if May 21st was spiritual, maybe
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October 21st is spiritual too. And I, I have absolutely no interest in doing so, but if someone is completely bored with life, you could be listening to him over the next, uh, few weeks.
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And I bet he'll come up with something out of first Samuel that will, he'll start developing something that will be his backdoor for some kind of spiritual end of the world scenario, uh, for October 21st, because October 22nd will come after October 21st in that way.
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And you know, what's going to happen, folks, people are gonna keep following him. Not as many, there are, you know, he's going to lose a lot of support.
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He's probably have to sell some stations. Um, that, that, that's, that's to be expected.
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And I just don't know how much time he has left. I mean, he's soon, he turns 90 this summer.
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He's had his three score in 10, uh, plus another score.
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So I obviously hold him accountable for his despicable behavior, for his being an enemy of all things godly.
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And he needs to be identified for that. He is bringing tremendous mockery and disrepute upon the cause of Christ and upon anyone who believes the
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Bible is the word of God. He is a plague upon the church.
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There's no question about it. But I likewise hold accountable every single person that follows after this man.
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I mean, you cannot have a picogram of discernment and follow this man.
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You have to be given over to utter foolishness to buy anything
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Harold Camping has to say anymore. I mean, it is absolutely incredible to me.
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You know, what shocked me over the weekend was the number of people that think just like him.
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Oh, yeah, there is a line of people that will be ready to pick up right where he leaves off if he kicks the bucket tomorrow.
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Yeah, but they don't have the vote. They don't have the control of the stations. They, they're, they're amazing.
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It was sad to watch that, uh, that black fella. Yeah. And then there was the guy out front.
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He's standing there talking to the press on Friday, if I recall, telling him, well, you know, I think
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Brother Camping's got this wrong. He's, I've already figured it out. I know where his mistake was. I've already got the date nailed down.
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And he needs to listen to me. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There are so many people like that out there. There's no question about it.
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No question about it. How many times have I used illustration? I've said this over and over again. And by the way, taking your phone calls, 877 -753 -3341, dividing that line on Skype, 877 -753 -3341, dividing that line on Skype, um,
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I have many times spoken about the fact that as an elder in the church, you, you sort of watch people and you listen to what they talk about and you listen to the conversations they have and people who are really satisfied with God's word and they're satisfied with God's revelation.
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They're satisfied with the gospel. You can tell who they are.
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And they're not always throwing out hypotheticals at you about some weird thing over here and some weird thing over there.
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And I've, I've likened it to people in a, in a building and the church building represents the truth of God.
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And you've got the people in the center that are satisfied with the truth of God and they're studying the truth of God. But then you've got those, those people over next to the windows and they're always staying at the window and they're looking out, they're looking beyond the realm of God's revelation.
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They're not satisfied with what's inside. They, they want to go beyond that. They're, they're not, they're not happy that God has only given us so much.
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They're not satisfied with the depth of that, which normally means they don't know much about what's actually there, but they think they do.
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And they're standing at the windows and they're looking out and they're always wondering about something over here and something over there.
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And those folks are always the people you need to keep your eyes on because they're the folks that are going to cause you the most problem in the ministry.
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And that is the description of a campingite. They have actually gone ahead and climbed outside the window and they're now outside and they think that anybody inside's lost and anybody inside doesn't have the
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Holy Spirit. And they have their great insights and their Gnostic knowledge. And, and what a lot of them are upset about right now is, well, my neighbor down the street,
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I've slowed down a few times since Saturday and looked over and they haven't, they haven't changed what's on the back of their car yet.
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You know, they haven't scraped the window, they had it professionally done. And it still says
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May 21st and they're still driving around town with that thing because sometimes the car is not there. And, you know, what are they going to do?
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Just, you know, put an X on May and put in October with squishy paint or something?
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You know, I don't know. But some people will. That's the amazing thing.
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And that's what the world looks at. They look at these people and they go, wow, if this doesn't show you how absolutely gullible and disconnected from truth and disconnected from reality
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Christians are. And that's not fair, but that's what the world's going to do. We have to get used to the not fair part.
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You know, we were, we, we stopped doing what we were doing in Salt Lake City and it wasn't fair that we had to do so.
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It was the misbehavior of people who called themselves Christians, but didn't behave as Christians, that ended the outreach up there because we knew the
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Mormons were going to differentiate between us. And in this situation, the world's not going to differentiate. I mean, they're calling this guy an evangelical.
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He doesn't hold the evangel. He thinks that everybody but his followers are going to hell in a handbasket.
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He thinks Jesus died twice. He's, this, this is a cult.
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It has all the classic signs of a cult. But, hey, the world doesn't mind. Here is an evangelical.
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And he sits there with his big Bible and he says, the Bible tells us, the Bible tells us, and you wonder why when we say, well, the
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Bible says we get this immediate reaction out of people. Uh, this is judgment.
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This is judgment. He was right. He, he talks about the judgment of God, not realizing he is part of the judgment of God.
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It is truly an amazing thing. Eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one. I called for him to repent.
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But there's no evidence that he has any, any interest in that whatsoever. And as long as he can have even,
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I think, a small group of followers, a small group of people who'll still go to, Brother Kammack, Brother Kammack, Brother Kammack, what do you think of this?
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How about this verse, Brother Kammack? What about this, Brother Kammack? That is his nectar.
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That is, uh, his crack cocaine, shall we say. He is addicted to it and he will do anything he possibly can to continue that and to maintain that and to have that.
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And he does. And the thing that just disgusted me yesterday was he has absolutely no concern whatsoever for the cause of Christ.
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It's all about him. Eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one.
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Dividing that line on Skype in the midst of all this silliness, the great evangelical cover -up, the
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Harold Camping foolishness, I tweeted and blogged over the weekend on the fact that right before the weekend, a
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Gallup poll was released. That gave one of the many indicators of the collapse of Western society into moral anarchy and evermore into a settled detestation of godly values.
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I think it's, I think it's the only way to describe it is a settled detestation of godly values.
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And that was found in the poll that discovered that as of that particular poll, 53 % of the
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United States population supports the idea of same -sex marriage. 53%, for the first time, a majority.
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For the first time, it went over, I think it went from, was it 48? I forget what the number was.
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I provided it in the blog article, but I think it was actually a 7 % or 7 or 9 % rise since last year.
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So it was a large, large percentage that may have been only 45 last time. In any case, it was a amazing revelation of the speed at which this cultural collapse is taking place.
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It goes right along with the discussion we had with Michael Brown last week.
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And please, if you hear anything about this, realize those promoting the profanation of marriage, and that's what it is.
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It is a profaning, a destruction of marriage, a redefinition of marriage into its opposite.
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Those promoting that will not stop at its mere acceptance.
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They want to force those of us who believe that it is wrong to be silent in our belief.
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They would rather force out of us a confession of its goodness. And that's coming.
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That is coming. There is, the day is not, not far off yet. Not far in the distant future. 877 -753 -3341, dividing .line
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on Skype, if you want us to be able to hear the rustling of the pages of your
43:54
Bible. Dividing .line on Skype. But we do have some callers. Let's talk with Richard.
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Hi, Richard. Hi, Dr. White. Thanks for taking the call. Yes, sir. My call is about herald camping and discernment.
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And I guess Rich kind of wanted me to keep it just to one word, but how do we deal with Christians or people who call themselves
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Christians who don't want to exercise discernment with regard to herald camping and say, you know, well, he's still a brother.
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You know, we need to not judge him. God's going to judge him. And, you know, if he's teaching false doctrine, then
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God will handle that. But we just need to accept him, accept him in love. How do we deal with that?
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Accept him in love. He doesn't want to be accepted in love. I sound really, really weird here.
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He doesn't want to be accepted in love. He is the one saying that the Holy Spirit has abandoned the churches, that no one can be saved in the churches, that all the ministers and churches are servants of Satan.
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So he's not looking for fellowship with us. Right. I mean, I think the vast majority of these people are just ignorant of what the man is teaching.
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Do they know that he is teaching that Jesus died twice, that his death on Calvary's cross was not a perpetuatory sacrifice?
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Do they know he's teaching annihilationism? Do they have any idea what this man's doctrine is really all about?
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I mean, he's starting to make the Jehovah's Witnesses look orthodox. So when people say, well, we just we just need to we just need to accept him as our brother in Christ, he doesn't even claim that.
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I mean, how can he claim that I'm his brother in Christ when he says that I'm a servant of Satan for crying out loud?
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I mean, it's just it just seems that so many people today, discernment is a work of the
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Spirit of God and discernment is directly related to the the work of the
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Spirit and causing us to love the word of God and to be concerned about the truth of God and to be concerned about the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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And so many people today confuse discernment with, well, we just need to love everybody.
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Well, you know, the Apostle Paul loved the gospel so much he was willing to identify certain people as pseudo
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Delphoi, false brethren in Galatians chapter two, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with us.
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We don't have the right priorities because we don't really think about truth the way that the
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Bible reveals that to us. And so it's a sad thing, but you're right.
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That is exactly how people behave today. The, you know, my bringing this up, it touches on something else that you've mentioned in recent years, like in the past two years, the whole mere
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Christianity attitude. You know, and that's, I'm a
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Reformed believer, you know, I am still reforming. I was reared
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Roman Catholic. And, you know, it's a big switch, you know, going from Roman Catholicism to being a
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Reformed Christian. But I still have even people who aren't
47:26
Reformed Christians, they would, you know, I guess be called
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Arminians. There's just this, they have the mere Christianity attitude.
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Like, for example, some close friends of mine, they'll say to me, you know, Richard, we don't need to get caught up on doctrine.
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It's not about the unity of doctrine. It's about the unity of the faith. And then I'll ask them, though, what's the unity of the faith?
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What faith are you talking about? Yeah. It's as if they separate the faith from doctrine.
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Yes. When they do that, I don't know how to respond to them because they always go back to, it's really like, you know, the unity of the faith is just that Jesus is
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Lord and He died on the cross for your sins, and that's it. Right. Well, to me, people who are not engaging the culture and explaining what the
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Christian message is to people, those individuals can get away with that kind of surface level stuff.
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If they are actually engaging the culture and doing serious witnessing and attempting to respond to the culture and make application, they wouldn't be able to keep doing that.
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They wouldn't be able to make that kind of differentiation. It wouldn't make any sense.
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And so, you know, that's one of the issues that needs to be kept in mind is, you know, the faith has substance.
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And if they can't define what the substance is, well, that causes a problem.
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So, you know, when you say you don't know what to say about them, take them back to what the scriptures themselves teach on the subject of, especially the pastoral epistles, where the faith is defined as the entirety of whole and sound doctrine.
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And that is something that clearly Harold Camping has no idea what sound doctrine is any longer whatsoever.
49:31
So, got a couple of folks to sneak in before the end of the hour. Thanks for your call, Richard. Thanks a lot, Dr. White. All right,
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God bless. And let's talk with Mike. Yes, hello, Dr. White.
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Yes, sir. I'm one of the contributors to Christian Research Network. Yes, sir.
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And on my blog, I get an awful lot of people who come from churches that have been taken over basically by what they call purpose -driven stuff.
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And they're just distraught because, you know, they've lost their church. I get an awful lot of people that, from that distress, have fallen into thinking that what
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Harold Camping's talking about is true. And so, I had not really heard any of what
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Harold Camping had been teaching until you brought this stuff up. And I started listening to your debate with him that you did before, and also the press conference and stuff.
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And so, I really have not really known how to really address this, other than going to the
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Bible and this one. Well, this is what Jesus said. He'll continue to build his church, you know, and stuff like that.
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So, I really want to thank you for bringing this stuff up. It's not only enjoyable.
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No, it's not. And it's not on this side either, trust me. But it would really be helpful, you know, if we could just encourage pastors out there to quit going after what the world wants and going after what
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Jesus wants. Well, Mike, you know, believe me, when I heard Harold yesterday going after the churches again, saying there is no church on the earth that believes that the
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Bible is the very words of God, I wanted to throw something at that point. I was getting really upset.
51:26
But it's real easy. He went after, for example, last week the
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PCUSA voted to start ordaining homosexuals. The Church of Scotland just voted to start ordaining homosexuals.
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It's real easy to point to apostate churches and then use that nice broad brush to say that's everybody.
51:47
But you could have done that during the period of the apostles as well. I mean, you read 1st, 2nd and 3rd
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John and you get the feeling that the apostates have the upper hand. I mean, the false teachers seemingly have the megachurches at that point.
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That doesn't mean that there is not a true church when there are many false teachers that exist.
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Jesus warned us. I mean, how many times do we have to read the Gospels? There are going to be false prophets. There are going to be false
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Christs. And yet we get surprised when this type of thing happens. When Paul told us that men will be deceivers and they will grow worse and worse, being deceived and deceiving others.
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And when it actually happens, we're like, oh, no, it's right there.
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It's been there all along. And yet when it happens, we act like it's some new thing.
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And it's not new. Every generation has had to deal with it. And we're having to deal with it as well.
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It's just that I think one of the things that has changed a little bit is because of the context of the culture that we're in, we have such immediate contact.
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I mean, here we are. You're, I think, in Kansas. I'm in Arizona. Yet we are talking and other people all over the world are listening to us talking.
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That is a fairly modern development. And it has meant that we see the errors and the apostasy and the problems much more.
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It's magnified in comparison to the way it was only 50 or 60 years ago.
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And so I think it's easy for us to go, wow, it's just never been this bad before. Well, in some ways, maybe.
53:35
But, you know, look, there have been some pretty dark times during the history of the church.
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And yet Christ has continued to build his church. And so we have to, you know, you're right.
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I mean, it's terrible to see people collapsing on the gospel and giving into postmodernism.
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But hey, if they're coming out of seminaries that are infected with that stuff, why are we shocked by that? Why are we surprised by that at all?
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I mean, that's not surprising in any way, shape or form. So our call is to remain faithful where we are without then becoming imbalanced and saying, ah, the church is all lost.
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No, Christ isn't going to lose his church. It may be more difficult to find a faithful fellowship than it was once before.
54:17
And it may be painful to drive by the places that are filled with cars that, you know, oh, we wish the gospel was being preached there, but it's not anymore.
54:26
Well, you know, that's, again, not something that's unusual. It has happened in the past. And we just have to be faithful where we are.
54:34
That's right. OK, thank you for your time. Thanks, Mike. All right. God bless. Bye bye. One more call.
54:39
Let's talk with Barry in Phoenix. Hello, Dr. White.
54:45
How are you? It's a pleasure to actually get to speak with you on the telephone. Yes, I appreciate that.
54:51
What can I do for you, Barry in Phoenix? Well, Tarzan fan sort of beat me to the punch in Channel.
54:57
My question is... I haven't been watching Channel, however. Yes, that's... All right. I love the letter you sent to Harold Camping calling him to repentance.
55:05
Now, Family Radios is a corporation. He has to have some sort of a board.
55:12
And my question is, when asked who could be saved at his press conference, you know, he gave clear indication that simply those who call out to God and to God who shows mercy, whether they're
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Hindus or Muslims or whomever, God gets to basically decide that. And is that not a departure from just any, you know, possible biblical stand that he's ever taken in the past?
55:39
Because there was nothing mentioned of Jesus Christ, repentance and acceptance of him as Savior.
55:46
And so knowing that, is there not a board or is there not any kind of leadership at Family Radio?
55:52
I mean, they must have just been aghast when they heard that. You would wonder. I mean, when I heard that,
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I was sitting there wondering, is there anybody left? But no, there, as far as I can tell, there isn't anybody left.
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He, cult leaders tend to drive people out over time that do not implicitly submit to their ultimate authority.
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And if there was a board at Family Radio that had Christians on it, that had any level of discernment,
56:22
Harold Camping would have been out in 1994. But he wasn't. And they have allowed him to continue to, you know, pick this stuff up and run with this stuff and all the rest.
56:36
No, I get the feeling that what you have with Harold Camping is he has purged
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Family Radio of anybody who could hold him accountable and who could actually rescue it from the inevitable disaster.
56:53
The cliff that, you know, the front wheels are dangling over it.
56:59
And yesterday he tromped on the accelerator. And I just don't think there's anybody there that can pull the emergency brake.
57:07
I really don't. The only guy from the board that I've heard speaking, I don't have the article up right now.
57:13
I have it on my other computer in my office. But that fellow likewise, you know, said, well, you know, we don't know, but, you know, we still trust the
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Lord and we're just going to keep doing what we're doing. And there was no repentance. There was no, we're really sorry, we're going to turn and try to be a servant to the church again.
57:30
Nothing like that. It's a one man show and it will be until Harold Camping dies.
57:37
And after Harold Camping dies, and I think he will probably keel over on the set of Open Forum because he's not going to give up that religious authority he has over other people.
57:46
He's just he proved yesterday that that is his all in all. That is the greatest.
57:52
He has given up earthly wealth and power to have that kind of power.
57:58
He's not going to give it to anybody else. And so when he dies, then we'll see what happens.
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But up till then, I just don't think there's anything to be done about it. Yeah, well, thanks a lot for your comments and your work at the ministry.
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All right. Thank you very much. Barry in Phoenix. And thank you for listening to Dividing Line today.
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I would much rather have talked about something really uplifting, but we've got to learn from these things.
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And look, there's got to be one thing is for sure. If you open your mouth about the gospel of belief in the
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Bible today, what's the first thing you're going to hear back from people? We've got to think about it. Be prepared for it. Let our witness shine despite the darkness around us.
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We'll see you on Thursday. God bless. We were standing at the crossroads, let this momentous flow away.
58:58
We must contend for the faith above us fought for. We need a new Reformation day.
59:07
It's a sign of the times, the truth is being trampled in a new age paradigm.
59:14
Won't you lift up your voice? Are you tired of plain religion? It's time to make some noise.
59:20
I'm no wimper, I'm no wimper,
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I stand up for the truth, won't you lift up the Lord? The Dividing Line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.
59:38
If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at P .O.
59:43
Box 37106, Phoenix, Arizona, 85069. You can also find us on the
59:49
World Wide Web at AOMIN .org, that's A -O -M -I -N dot O -R -G, where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.