RLL 83

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You're listening to Radio Luke's List, I'm your host Steve Matthews. Thanks for joining me for episode 83, and the title of this episode is,
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He Did It, Holy Cow! Pope Francis Consecrates Russia to the Immaculate Heart of, quote,
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Mary. All right, so I hope that that picked your interest here, that particular title, and we're going to talk about something that was pretty interesting here.
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It's a story I've been following here, it's kind of been developing over the past week, and I got the title actually from a tweet from a guy, his name's
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Timothy Gordon, he's a, you get the sense, he's sort of a traditional Roman Catholic, and he actually wrote this tweet, he says, he did it, holy cow, and he was talking about Pope Francis, that's the he in this, and what he meant by that is that Pope Francis did something that Popes have been trying to do for, well,
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I guess maybe about a hundred years, and he did something on Friday, March 25th, and we're going to talk about that here today, but before we get into all that heavy stuff,
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I had a story, kind of a funny story I wanted to tell on myself. You know, this is a
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DMV story, you know, Department of Motor Vehicles. Now, the DMV, you know, they always have this, not the best reputation, right?
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I mean, when people think of the DMV, you always think of some surly lady, you know, that kind of glares at you from underneath her glasses, and, you know, doesn't really seem to be terribly interested or terribly much in a hurry to try to help you out of your extremely difficult and dire problem, and so here's my story.
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And what I wanted to do, I had to renew my driver's license this year, my birthday was here in March, and I had my driver's license was due, and, you know,
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I got a letter last fall or so, and it said, oh, you know, you got to renew your driver's license, and I'm like, yeah, okay, yeah,
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I know that. Now, one thing about me, about my driver's license is it's a little different than most.
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I actually have a commercial driver's license, and this goes way back, back in the 90s, mid -90s,
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I mean, I'm really dating myself here, but, you know, probably a good 25 years ago, maybe a little bit longer than that,
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I did drive delivery trucks, drove a straight truck, and I got a
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CDL to help me, you know, have some opportunities that I would not have had if I didn't have a
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CDL, and when you get a CDL, when you get a commercial driver's license, you can get different endorsements on it, and one of the endorsements that I got at that time was a hazardous materials endorsement, you know, like sometimes you go down the highway, and you see these trucks, and they have these sort of diamond -shaped placards on it, it'll say something like flammable, or dangerous, or corrosive, or something like that.
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Well, those are hazardous materials warning placards, and that's all part of what you learn when you study for your hazmat, and there, as I say, there's more to it than just placards, but,
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I mean, there's, you learn processes and things you can do, you know, legally and whatnot to make sure that you keep yourself safe, but also that you keep the general public safe as well from some of the materials you transport.
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Anyway, every time I renew my driver's license, I have to go back and have to take a test. I have to re -up, and one of the things
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I have to do in addition to taking a test is I have to get fingerprinted, and I have to ship that off to the TSA, and they have to review my record to make sure that, you know,
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I'm not a really bad person who shouldn't be driving around with hazardous materials.
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So anyway, I knew this was coming up, and I knew the way that the process works, and come
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December or so, I hadn't received a letter from the TSA, the Transportation Safety Administration.
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I hadn't gotten my letter, and I always got that letter. Well, I started doing a little bit of digging, and I realized that the process had changed for getting your
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CDL, or for getting the TSA approval. It used to be I could make an appointment, there was a place
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I could get fingerprinted five minutes from my house, and I could get in pretty much any day of the week, any time I wanted to, and it was no big deal.
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Well, it turns out that they've got this whole new process, and there is quite literally one place in the entire city of Cincinnati where you can go to get fingerprinted for the
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TSA, and when I went to sign up to get an appointment, it was six weeks out.
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So this is like mid -December I'm looking at this, and it's going to be the end of January before I can get in and get fingerprinted.
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So long story short, I go in at the end of January, I get fingerprinted, and I say, well, how long is it going to take to get my results back?
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Well, it might be a month, might be two months, you know, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so I got that done, and at the same time,
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I took my hazardous materials test, and I passed that. But the thing with the catch here is that that hazmat test is only good for 60 days.
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Well, I wait, and I wait, and I wait, and I wait, and a month goes by, nothing from the TSA. Five weeks, six weeks, seven weeks go by, nothing from the
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TSA, and I'm checking my email. Oh, maybe I missed it. I didn't see the email response or something like this.
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I was getting worried because my two months was up on my hazmat test, and that was about to go bad, and I was going to have to retake that, and I still hadn't heard anything back.
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So Monday, I go in, I look at my email, one last time, and I go all the way back to January 27th, which was the date that I took my hazmat.
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I got my fingerprints. Sure enough, what do I find there? I find the response from the TSA that I received the very evening that I took my fingerprints, saying, oh, well, you passed, and you're good to go ahead and, you know, apply for your license.
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Good grief. I had no idea, and I had double -checked, triple -checked, quadruple -checked my email, but I didn't go all the way back to January 27th because I wasn't looking for it in that time frame because that wasn't what
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I was told. I didn't expect it to come through that same night. So this thing had been sitting in my email inbox for almost two months.
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I could have taken care of this thing back in January, early February. Instead, you know, here it is at the end of March, and I'm upset because, oh,
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I'm going to have to go back and take my hazmat test and all this other stuff. So anyway, I go over Tuesday. No, I went over Monday.
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I went over Monday during lunch to see if I could get my license taken care of, and I thought
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I was going to have to retake my test. I go over there in the office where you take your hazmat test.
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Well, they're closed, of course, and right next to that is the office where you get your driver's license.
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So I thought, well, you know, what's the off chance that maybe that test is still valid? So I go over there.
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I go in. There's only like three people in front of me. I sit down, and within less than five minutes,
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I get called up to the place where you get your license, and I tell the guy, you know,
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I said, hey, you know, my hazmat test may be bad, etc.,
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etc., etc. Well, he goes through, and everything looks good, and then he looks at me, and he says, well,
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I need some additional proof of identification. Do you have a passport with you?
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Now, you know what? This is kind of interesting, because when I went over on Monday to the DMV, I was getting ready to leave, and I got to thinking to myself, you know, before I leave, what are the odds that they're going to ask me for a passport or some kind of an
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ID? I mean, I can't imagine that they would ask me for that, but you know what? I've just been through these kinds of things enough that I'm just going to play it safe.
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I'm going to take my passport with me anyway. So, he asked me that question.
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I was like, yes, I did one thing smart. You know, I may have messed this thing up. I could have gotten my license taken care of two months ago, but I did one smart thing, and that is
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I took my passport with me. So, I whip out that passport, boom, give that to him.
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Anyway, he gives me this piece of paper. I fill this thing out, and I go through all this stuff to, you know, get the paperwork done to get my license.
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Well, it's going to take four to six weeks for them to mail me my driver's license. Well, my driver's license already expired, but at least they gave me a printout of my new license.
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So, I guess if something happens, at least I have proof that I have a driver's license. But, you know,
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I will say this. You know, people have this really bad, a lot of bad experiences with the
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DMV, but I'll say this. That particular DMV office, they have their act together pretty well.
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I mean, the guy that I talked to, I mean, he knew his stuff. He was right on top of things. I was actually pretty impressed with the operation they had over there.
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So, I have to say I was impressed with the DMV, and I take back all those bad things
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I said about the TSA as well, because they sent me results so fast I didn't even see them.
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And here I was, you know, going around, and let's just say this. I wasn't really very happy with the TSA. I was like, what's the matter with you people?
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It's been two months, and I'm waiting on this thing. Well, you know, the dumb answer had been in my inbox the whole time. So, I felt a little silly, but I was actually relieved to get that.
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At least that was one thing I was able to get off my plate and feel good about. I guess the other thing this month is
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I got my taxes done. So, I got all my taxes done. I got those things filed. My federal, state, local taxes, boosh, they're all done.
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Yes, we have local taxes here in Ohio, and state income taxes too.
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That's a whole other subject now, isn't it? So, I won't get distracted with that. But anyway, I'm thankful to have my taxes done, and I got my driver's license taken care of.
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Oh, I also got my concealed carry renewed this month too, my Ohio concealed carry. So, that's kind of awesome. Yeah, I'm a bad person.
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I have one of those too. Anyway, so let's see here. I wanted to go on.
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Why don't we go ahead and talk a little bit about today's topic here, and that is Pope Francis consecrating
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Russia, and not just Russia, but also Ukraine, and the Church, and I guess the entire world.
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He consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. There is some real excitement in certain
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Roman Catholic circles for this particular action done by Pope Francis.
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Let me see here. I'm going to bring up, I'm going to share, do a screen share here. Okay, so here's a tweet.
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This was put out by a fellow by the name of Timothy Gordon. He is, you can tell from his Twitter bio, he's a pretty strict,
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I guess, traditional Catholic, I suppose you would call him. He's a lawyer. He's got a degree in philosophy,
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I believe. So, he's a bright guy. He's definitely a bright guy. And he puts this tweet out.
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He says, he did it. Holy cow. And it's in reference to, if you can see here on the video, it's in reference to Pope Francis consecrating
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Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And like I said, I put
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Mary in quotation marks here. And this same fellow, a few hours later, again, this is
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Timothy Gordon, he says, today's consecration appears to have been done properly. Deus vult.
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Deus vult, that's Latin, and that just means God wills it. So, this consecration of Russia and Ukraine and the whole world was done, and God willed that it be done.
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So, he's pretty excited about that. And of course, he wasn't the only one who was excited about that, or who thought that this was a big deal.
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So, let's talk a little bit about that. Now, you know, one of the things, and this is something with those of us who are
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Protestants, or maybe just non -Catholics in general, but I know that's certainly true with Protestants, is that you can see something like this and you think, well, this isn't really something that I put any stock in, therefore, it's not important.
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Now, as Christians, of course, we would reject the idea that the
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Pope has any authority to consecrate any part of the world to, quote,
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Mary. He has no authority to do such a thing. And the person or persons to whom he's consecrating
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Russia isn't Mary, if that person is anything.
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I mean, you're dealing with some demonic forces there, but you're not dealing with Mary, Mary, the mother of Jesus, the person in the
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Scriptures. That's not what he's doing at all. And even if he were doing what he purported to be doing, it's not
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Mary to whom these nations are being consecrated, it's to devils.
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As Christians, as I said, it's easy sometimes to look at something like this and maybe not think too much of it.
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But this is actually a pretty big deal. And one of the things that I want you to get out of as we go through and discuss this activity, this consecration, is
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I want you to understand that it actually is a pretty big deal. And I hope to maybe show you some of the reasons why it's a big deal.
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Now, one of the things, of course, as Protestants, to the degree that we think about Rome and about the
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Pope and about the Roman Catholic churches, we tend to think of Rome as, say, another Christian church. And you might get some people say, oh, yeah, they've got some odd ideas about certain things, things that maybe we don't agree with.
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But hey, they're our brothers in Christ. The Pope is our brother in Christ. There was a headline from a story that was run back in 2015.
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This was when Pope Francis visited the United States. It was a story in Christianity today, and it said, from Antichrist to brother in Christ.
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It used to be back in the day that there were a lot of Christians, and I would say correctly, they identified the
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Pope, that is the office of the papacy, so not just a single Pope, but the whole line of Popes, that they identified the office of the papacy as the seat of Antichrist, the office of Antichrist.
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But all that really began to change. It all got kind of thrown out the door back in the early 1900s, and we've forgotten about that.
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Now, it used to be I'm Presbyterian, and I have to admit, frankly, Presbyterians are to blame for a lot of this, because they have abandoned the historic stance of the
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Westminster Confession of Faith on the papacy. Now, the original Westminster Confession of Faith, the 1648
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Westminster Confession of Faith, had a wonderful statement on Antichrist, on the identity of Antichrist.
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I'll just read it to you here. This is what it says. There is no other head of the Church but the
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Lord Jesus Christ, nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense behead thereof, but it is that Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, who exalteth himself in the
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Church against Christ, and all that is called God. Now, back in the first decade of the 1900s, it's over a century at this point, that was changed, and the main line, the most common version of the
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Westminster Confession of Faith that's used, it has a much shorter statement. It simply reads this, there is no other head of the
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Church but the Lord Jesus Christ, nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense behead thereof. Full stop.
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That's it. Everything that came after that, you know, but is that Antichrist, that man of sin, son of perdition, all of that stuff, that's all been cut.
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All been completely cut. I mean, basically what you do is you have a, in my opinion, you have a neutered
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Westminster Confession of Faith. That's a very serious mistake that was made.
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And again, we'll talk a little bit about that here today. Now, the original, as I said, the original Westminster Confession had it right.
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Charles Spurgeon, of course, that's somebody that, of course, Charles Spurgeon was a Reformed Baptist, so he wasn't
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Presbyterian, but he had the same view of Antichrist. That view that the
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Presbyterians had, that was not unique to Presbyterians. I mean, if you talk to people, whether they were Baptists, whether they were
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Congregationalists, whether even they were many people in the Church of England, also had that same view.
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And Charles Spurgeon said this, he said, it is the bound and duty of every Christian to pray against Antichrist, and as to what
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Antichrist is, no sane man ought to raise a question. If it be not the Popery in the Church of Rome, there is nothing in the world that can be called by that name."
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Now, in preparing for today, I actually had an opportunity to talk to a dear brother in Christ, Timothy Kaufman.
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Hi there, Timothy, in case you're listening. I know you listen to this podcast, so shout out to Timothy Kaufman.
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And Timothy Kaufman, he is one of my real go -to people when it comes to any questions about the
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Roman Catholic Church. He was raised Roman Catholic. He was saved, he came out of Rome, and he's a
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Reformed brother now. He's done tremendous work over the past, oh goodness, I'd say maybe 30 years, well, maybe 20 years, 25 years or so, because I'd have to ask him specifically.
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But I know he's spoken at at least one Trinity Foundation conference, he's written a couple books, he has a blog site, and he's done a
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Trinity Foundation has published several of his essays as Trinity Reviews. And in fact, I had an opportunity to interview him a couple years ago about his paper that he did on one of the early church fathers,
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Irenaeus. Also, he did a live stream, I had an opportunity to have him on Trinity Foundation radio, and he gave a presentation about an hour, maybe almost an hour and a half presentation that he gave for Reformation Day last fall.
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So if you get a chance, you may want to check that out. I'm going to see if I can put a link in the show notes to that presentation he gave for Reformation Day.
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It was really good. So anyway, it's always great to have Timothy to bounce some ideas off of. There's nobody
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I know that knows more about this sort of thing than he does. And it's kind of interesting when
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I was doing some back and forth with him, I was messaging him today for a bit, and one of the points he made about Rome, he said this, he said,
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Roman Catholicism is in league with the devil. And he's right about that. He's absolutely right about that.
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But this is something that people, and I'm talking about Protestants, about evangelicals, people who are Bible believers,
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I'm not talking about the liberals. I mean, we know the liberals long ago rejected the scriptures, rejected the
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Bible. I'm talking here about those people who would claim, those people, those churches, ministers, who would claim to be
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Bible -believing and conservative and biblical in their doctrine and their theology.
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They have rejected this whole idea of this view of Antichrist as well. And maybe one of the reasons why that's the case is because the
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Protestant Church, even the conservative Protestant Church, the conservative evangelical church, we have become confused and substantially rejected the
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Reformation view of the gospel, the gospel of justification by belief alone. Now, Martin Luther called that the doctrine of the standing or the falling church.
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So, I mean, that was the doctrine on which a church stood or fell. And there was a stark contrast between what the
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Protestants, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin and others were teaching about how one is justified.
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And when I say justified, how one is accepted by God, how one is accepted by God, how one is saved, essentially.
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You could even say justification is maybe a shorthand way of talking about salvation. How is a man saved?
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How is somebody justified? How is somebody brought into a sinner, like all of us are by nature, how is someone brought into a right relationship with God?
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Well, the Roman Catholic Church would say, well, you have to have faith. That's important. You got to have faith, but faith isn't alone.
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You also have to have good works. And you have to have the saints praying for you. And when you die, you have to have people buy indulgences and light candles and these sorts of things.
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And meritorious works of the saints get credited to you.
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And there's a lot of things that go into the mix. And you may have to burn in purgatory for a million years, and then maybe eventually you'll get into heaven.
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Sooner or later, you'll get there, but you're going to have to go through some really horrible stuff in the meantime, because you didn't do enough good works while you were alive.
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Now, of course, the biblical Christian answer, and this is the answer that Martin Luther, John Calvin, and others gave, is that your good works have nothing whatsoever to do with your salvation.
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Zip, zero, zilch. Your salvation is not the work of your hands. Your salvation is through faith in the
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Lord Jesus Christ alone. Now, do we as Christians do good works?
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Well, sure. I mean, Christians should be doing good works. But those good works don't save us.
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We're saved by the faith in Christ and by his righteousness that is ascribed, credited, imputed, reckoned to us.
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So when God looks at us, he doesn't see all of our sins and failures and foolishness.
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What he does is he sees the perfect righteousness of his Son, who never sinned.
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And our sins were punished, but they were punished in Christ on the cross. So our sins were ascribed to him.
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His righteousness is credited to us. And when we believe the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the work that Christ did to save his people, when we believe that, when we understand that work, when we agree with it, accept it as true, that we're saved.
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You know, that's what salvation is. It's believing the gospel of Jesus Christ. We're justified by belief alone.
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And the good works that we do, those flow from our justification. We don't do that in order to get justified.
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We do good works because we are justified. And that was the main dividing point at the time of the
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Reformation, that together with the doctrine of Scripture. You know, the Protestants, again,
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Luther and Calvin and these people, they believed that the 66 books of the Bible were the alone authority in the
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Church. And all of human writings, anything else that fell outside of that, that was of no authority in the
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Church. Now, of course, the Roman Catholic Church, you know, they had the Apocrypha, they had the Church Fathers, traditions, these sorts of things that they wanted to bring in and add in and add to Scriptures in order to justify a lot of their unbiblical practices.
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So it's justification by faith alone, Scripture alone as the sole authority in the
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Church. Those two things, those are the big doctrines of the Reformation. Those two things right there. But what's happened is in modern times and in recent times,
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I'm talking modern times, something like even the last 150 years, Protestants have apostatized from that.
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They've left their first love, if you want to use, maybe borrow some of the language out of Revelation.
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I can't remember which church Jesus said that, but he accused one of those churches of leaving its first love. Maybe it was
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Ephesus. I don't know. I'm going by memory here, so that may not be accurate. But I know one of those churches that the resurrected
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Lord Jesus Christ said that about, and I fear that in our own time that we've done something very much like that.
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What's ended up happening is that's blinded us. At the time of the
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Reformation, there was that sharp, very distinct divide between what the
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Protestants believed about justification and what Rome believed about justification, and they were as far apart as the
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East is from the West. But in our own day, 500 years after the Reformation, there are a lot of confused
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Protestants. They don't know what faith is, and they don't understand what justification is or how one is justified.
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And as a result, they look at Rome and they say, well, you know, Rome teaches a lot of the same things.
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It sounds a lot like some of the same things I believe. So they must be Christians. Well, Rome is not a Christian church, and that's one of the most important things.
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You have to understand this. And if you don't understand what Rome is, then you're also going to be fooled as to the identity of Antichrist.
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You know, that is a major problem. So what ends up happening is, you know, we have Antichrist, and by Antichrist, again,
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I'm talking about the Office of the Papacy. You've got the Pope doing the works of Antichrist right in front of your face and right in front of my face every single day, and yet the vast majority of people who go to church, a conservative,
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Bible -believing church on a Sunday morning, do not understand that. They don't understand that, and that is a tragedy, and that needs to change.
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This is something we as Protestants, we've got to get our act together on this. We've got to do better on this.
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So anyway, moving on from that. So we know that the Pope has decided to consecrate
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Russia and Ukraine in the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In fact, here's a story. This is from the
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Catholic News Agency. This is coming from, I would say, an official source here, and let's just read a little bit of that.
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It says, Pope Francis on Friday consecrated Russia and Ukraine in the Immaculate Heart of Mary with a prayer asking for peace in the world.
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At the end of the penitential service in St. Peter's Basilica on March 25th, the Pope carried out the act saying, quote,
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Mother of God and our Mother, to your Immaculate Heart we solemnly entrust and consecrate ourselves, the
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Church, and all humanity, especially Russia and Ukraine. So this was something that was done.
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This was just yesterday. I'm recording this on Saturday the 26th, and I apologize here.
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It looks like I've lost some of the video feed. Hopefully that'll come back up. I've been having problems with that here.
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Where was I? Okay, so, and I guess he continues here. He says, accept this act that we carry out with confidence and love.
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Grant that the war may end and peace spread throughout the world. He prayed on the same day that the
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Church celebrated the solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord. So that's what the Catholic News Agency said.
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Now, the Catholic News Agency adds something else here too. It says the act of consecration was also read simultaneously by Cardinal Conrad Kajewski, Kajewski, Kajewski, the papal almoner, at the sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal.
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So this adds another important detail here. So when the Pope consecrated
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Russia and Ukraine, but especially Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, this is something that is really important, that ties into the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima.
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Now again, you know, if you're a Protestant, you don't follow maybe closely the appearances of Mary, the apparitions of Mary.
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You know, there's a lot of appearances of Mary, supposedly. Somebody will see, you know, oh, it's the Virgin Mary on the bark of a tree.
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There was a few years ago, I think, that somebody claimed to see the shape of the
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Virgin Mary, I think it was on a grilled cheese sandwich or something like that. So there are a lot of various claims that are made for apparitions of Mary, but most of them are not actually officially acknowledged by the
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Roman Catholic Church state. Most of them are not, but there are a few that Rome has blessed with being authentic apparitions of, and again,
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I'll say, quote, Mary, because it's not Mary that's actually appearing, but something did happen at these particular appearances, and we'll talk a little bit about that.
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But one of the official, one of the most famous, one of the most important apparitions of, quote,
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Mary, acknowledged by the Roman Catholic Church, took place in 1917 in Fatima in Portugal.
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And the claim is that Mary appeared to three children over a period of a few months, beginning in May of 1917, and gave various revelations to them.
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Let's see. So talking here a little bit about Our Lady of Fatima, there are a number of things that are pretty interesting about this.
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As I said, it's one of the few officially accepted apparitions of Mary by the Roman Catholic Church. She appeared six times to three shepherd children in 1917, and also there was a remarkable miracle that was associated with the apparition.
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And that miracle was witnessed by, it's claimed, 70 ,000 people. I want to read you something.
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I mentioned Timothy Kaufman before, and I actually have a book of his. I'm going to hold that up here for the camera.
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Hopefully you can see that. It's called Quite Contrary, and the subtitle on it is
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A Biblical Reconsideration of the Apparitions of Mary, and it's by Timothy F. Kaufman, and I believe that was done, that was way back in, first edition was 1993, so that's been 29 years.
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So this was done a while ago, but yet there's a lot of important work in here, and I want to read you a bit here about the miracle that took place at the appearance of Our Lady of Fatima.
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I'm going to read here from his book. This is beginning on page 66 of Quite Contrary. The last month finally came, and William Thomas Walsh reports what happened in his book
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Our Lady of Fatima. In the middle of the clear blue sky of Fatima that day, 70 ,000 spectators saw the sun begin to spin, change to all colors of the rainbow in succession, and then hurl, quote, blood -red streamers of flame, end quote, across the sky.
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Finally the sun did something completely unheard of, not to mention astrophysically impossible. And here he quotes from Thomas Walsh's book.
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Interior quote, madly gyrating in this manner three times, the fiery orbs seemed to tremble, to shudder, and then plunge precipitously in a mighty zigzag toward the crowd.
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This had lasted about 10 minutes, perhaps. Then all the sun began to climb in the same zigzag manner to where it had appeared before.
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It became tranquil, then dazzling. No one could look at it any longer. It was the sun of every day.
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As early as May 1917, Jacinta and Lucia had been told that the lady they saw had promised a miracle on October 13th at the hour of noon as a sign of their sincerity.
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On the very day and hour they had foretold, some 70 ,000 persons testified that they had the unique experience of seeing the sun spin around and seem to fall.
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This phenomenon called the miracle of the sun or the dance of the sun by the faithful has happened in many locations of Marian apparitions.
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From Medjugorje, Bosnia, to Lubbock, Texas, Conyers, Georgia, USA, to Sabana Grande, Puerto Rico.
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And according to the visionaries, early said these are all signs for us to believe more, that all those who see them may better believe or believe better, excuse me, end quote.
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The interesting thing here is with Timothy Kaufman, of course, he doesn't deny that a miracle took place, but miracles do not prove that this was the biblical
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Mary or that this miracle was from God. I mean, Satan can do miracles and a lot of people forget that, but the real test of whether something is from God or not is a doctrinal test.
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You need to have a doctrinal test to confirm the source of a miracle. And it actually goes right back to the Old Testament.
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And I don't have the passage in front of me, but there's a passage and it talks about, you know, if a prophet comes to you and gives a prophecy and that prophecy comes true, but then that prophet goes on to teach doctrines that are contrary to the scriptures, that the
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Lord is testing his people and that people should reject that person. I think it even talks about that that prophet should be stoned.
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On the other hand, the real test of a prophet is, okay, if the prophet goes out and says something that is going to happen and it takes place, if he teaches true doctrine, then that's how you know that that sign is a sign from God.
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It's the doctrine that's taught by the prophet. That's how you distinguish that. And that's, of course, how
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Christians are to distinguish things today. So Timothy Kaufman doesn't deny that a miracle took place, but what he says is, is that the doctrine that is taught is false.
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And in fact, let me read to you, this is actually from page 138 of Quite Contrary. This is Timothy Kaufman writing again.
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He says, quote, the millions of people have gone on pilgrimages to Fatima, Lourdes, Conyers, Medjugorje, Phoenix, Denver, Lubbock, et cetera, have all placed their trust in something that is not even
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Mary, and who can do nothing to save them at all. As has already been discussed, these apparitions are demonic.
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They're from the pit of hell, and they want nothing more than to deceive people into trusting anyone but Jesus. And for all the apparition carriers, you can put your trust in anyone but Jesus alone, and it will be satisfied.
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This is why the apparition emphasizes meditation through Mary to Jesus to the Father, or just through Mary to the
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Father. But the apparition will never, ever emphasize a path of salvation from sinful man through Jesus only to the
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Father. Why? Because that's the only method the Bible teaches, and none other. So of course, if this is a demonic apparition, it is not going to teach you how to be saved.
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It's going to point you, there's a million ways not to be saved. There's only one way to be saved, and that's through faith alone in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. But I mean, no apparition, no demonic apparition is going to tell you that. That's something you get in the
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Scriptures. That's something that you might hear from a faithful preacher, or an evangelist, or just a friend who's witnessing to you.
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That's the biblical method, faith in Christ alone. And of course, that's the one thing that these apparitions will not teach.
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Now, you might wonder why Roman Catholics are so excited about this consecration of Russia and Ukraine to, quote,
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Mary. Well, this is actually the 11th attempt to consecrate
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Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Kind of interesting.
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There's a timeline that was given. There's a consecration timeline. This was put out by Eternal World Television Network, EWTN.
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So this is a pretty well -known Roman Catholic network.
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I know they do a lot of work here in the United States. I assume maybe they do things elsewhere. But this is certainly very well -known in the
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United States. And they give something here, it's called a consecration timeline. It says, history of the consecration and related events.
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Quote, if one is looking for the conversion of Russia to the Catholic faith and acceptance of the primacy of the
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Roman Pontiff, then this will be an unsatisfying timeline. However, Our Lady promised, in the end my
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Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, which will be converted and the world will be granted some time of peace.
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Okay. Now, there's a few things I think that are important to notice here. And that is, in the first place, by consecrating
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Russia to the Immaculate Heart of, quote, Mary, that the nation of Russia is supposed to convert to Roman Catholicism.
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So this is an ecclesiastical, a church power play by the Pope. Now, if you go back to Vatican II, I mean, of course, and maybe even before that, but certainly with Vatican II, the
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Roman Catholic Church, the system of Antichrist, has worked very hard to... They're almost kind of...
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I sometimes think of them as a bit of an ecclesiastical black hole. They're trying to suck every other religious organization, whether it's
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Protestants, whether it's the Orthodox, whether it's Muslims or Jews or Buddhists or any other particular faith.
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They're trying to use their gravitational pull to all suck them into its vortex and subjugate them to Rome.
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Because of course, Rome, they have designs, they have a goal, a dream of setting up a one -world religion with a one -world government and a one -world currency.
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This is what Rome wants to do. John Robbins talked about that quite a bit in his book, Ecclesiastical Megalomania.
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And a lot of people don't understand it. They think that somehow that when you talk about, oh, well, you know, the Roman Catholic Church wants to push for world government, that somehow that's a conspiracy theory.
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Well, that's not a conspiracy theory. I mean, these guys, these popes, these high church officials, I mean, they go around, they practically shout it from the rooftops.
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Yeah, we love world government. But a lot of people don't hear what they say. I mean, they're saying it right in front of their face.
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Antichrist is telling you this right to your face. But so many times Christians do not have ears to hear.
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So, yeah, this is an ecclesiastical, that is, it's a church power play by the pope.
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You know, they want to convert Rome to the Catholic faith, and they want those Orthodox to submit to the primacy of the
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Roman Pontiff. I would say it's also a political power play, because, of course, the Roman Catholic Church isn't just a church, it's also a state.
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John Robbins called it the Roman Catholic Church State, or just the Roman Church State, hyphen between church and state.
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But it's both. It's both a religious organization, it's a political organization. You know, think back in the Middle Ages. I mean, the pope was the theological as well as the temporal and political ruler of all of Europe, you know, before the
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Reformation. And, of course, that's what Rome wants to do once again on a global scale.
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So if you go here and, you know, kind of explain to you, you know, why so many Roman Catholics are excited about the idea of the pope consecrating
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Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, again, you have to go back, this whole thing was set in motion back in 1917.
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And if you look at this timeline, it says, July 13, 1917, Our Lady promises to come and ask the consecration of Russia to her
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Immaculate Heart. And then on June 13, 1929, a little bit over 12 years later,
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Our Lady fulfills her promise, asking for the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart, promising its conversion through this means and the hindering of the propagation of its errors, which, in talking to Timothy Kaufman, his view is that the errors in particular had to do with the atheism of the communist state.
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That was the big objection that the Roman Catholic Church had. And, of course, when you look at what's going to happen, supposedly, once the pope consecrates
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Russia, there's going to be a, the world would be granted some time of peace.
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So, you know, a lot of these people, you know, and I had mentioned to you Timothy Gordon before, the one that said, you know, holy cow, he did it.
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He did it, holy cow, talking about the pope and his consecration. Well, that's one of the reasons why
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Timothy Gordon's so excited about this, because he thinks this is going to usher in a period of peace in which, you know,
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Rome's going to, or Russia's going to give up, I guess, the Orthodox, the Russian Orthodox Church and become a
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Roman Catholic country and submit to the pope. And I guess everything's going to be wonderful, is their view.
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But, you know, I had mentioned, you know, that this is the 11th attempt by the pope to try to consecrate
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Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I guess so they've choked 10 times in a row. I guess, you know, in sports, you call somebody like that a choke artist.
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I don't know, does that make Antichrist a choke artist? Maybe it does. And it's kind of interesting, something that Timothy Calfin wrote to me here today.
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He says, you know, this is the 11th attempt to consecrate Russia to Mary's Immaculate Heart after, quote, she requested it in 1929.
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And for the most part, Catholics have agreed that this 11th attempt, and that was the one just yesterday on March 25th, 2022, have agreed that this 11th attempt was finally successful.
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Just think of the implications of a religion that has tried 10 times to do what the demons said to do, hoping after 10 failed attempts, they had finally obeyed the demons to the demon satisfaction on the 11th try.
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How much sillier yet does it sound for evangelicals to respond? Well, at least they agree with us on abortion.
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Now, you know, that's one of the things that has just ensnared so many Protestants over the past,
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I guess, going on 50 years, certainly here in the United States, is the at least apparent pro -life stance of the
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Roman Catholic Church. Now, I've talked some about that, not extensively on the podcast. There is a really great book that was written, oh goodness,
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I guess, maybe at least 20 years ago, late 90s, something like that.
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It's called More Than These. It was written by a fellow named Ralph Ovadol. And he talks about, that whole book is dedicated to the ecumenical compromise that has taken place among evangelicals who look at these
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Roman Catholic, these priests, these bishops who claim to be against abortion, and then joining in prayer and protest, and in fact doing what these evangelicals, these confused evangelicals, and many times sincere people, but these confused people, they engage in all of this ecumenical activity with unbelievers.
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And this has created enormous problems in the Protestant Church over the past 50 years.
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So yeah, abortion has been a big stumbling stone, and it's actually been part of the outreach strategy of Antichrist to pull
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Protestants, to pull evangelicals under the authority of Rome. We talked here about how the
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Pope is trying to bring Russia into his sphere of influence. Well, the Pope's doing the same thing with Protestants, with evangelicals, and they're actually being pretty successful.
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You know, and this is why it's important as Protestants to not be deceived. You know, Christ said, take heed that no man deceive you.
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Well, too many of us have been deceived, and we need to get undeceived.
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We need to have eyes to see what's going on right in front of our face. But anyway, this timeline, it talks here about the various attempts to obey this demon's request to consecrate
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Russia to itself. So in 1929, the demon fulfilled the promise to ask for the consecration of Russia.
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Let's see, 1937, Pius XI, informed of this request by the Bishop of Leria. I guess was informed of this request by the
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Bishop of, I guess, Leria. I don't know if I'm saying that correctly. This bishop's name was Dom José Alves Correa da
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Silva. And in 1938, Portuguese bishops asked Pius XI for the consecration of the world to the
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Immaculate Heart. It said they were influenced to do this by the spiritual director of Bel, I'm not sure what that is,
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Alexandria da Costa. Then in 1940, a request made to Pius XII through the
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Bishop of Macau a little later, through Father Gonzaga de Fonseca, mentions made of Our Lady asking the consecrating of Russia to her
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Immaculate Heart. And it goes on and talks about some things like this.
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Now, what's interesting, yeah, I started to wonder to myself as I was researching this, okay, so how do they know if they did it right or they did it wrong?
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Now, Timothy Gordon is certainly of the opinion that Pope Francis finally did it right, you know, after all these years, you know, say going back to 1929, and he finally got it right.
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Well, so what constitutes actually getting it right? I did a little bit of research and I found that there's another fellow, his name's
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Dr. Taylor Marshall, who's a bright guy. He actually used to be a Presbyterian, but he swam the
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Tiber, as the saying goes, and he is now a Roman Catholic and a fairly prominent
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Roman Catholic apologist now. And he gave four, he broke it down and gave, he broke down the consecration process and gave four criteria.
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These are the four criteria he gave. The consecration must be done by a Pope, it must be ordered in union with the bishops, it must mention
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Russia specifically, and it also must be made to the Immaculate Heart.
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Taylor Marshall, he was certainly satisfied on three. The one where he had a little bit of question was ordered in union with the bishops.
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And what he said is, I guess the Pope had requested that the bishops be in attendance or listen in or this type of thing.
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And I guess the understanding is when the Pope requests that you do something, that's an order.
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And that's at least what some people in Rome are saying. So he seemed to lean,
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Taylor Marshall, he seemed to lean to the idea that the bishops were included, but yeah, he expressed a little bit of doubt.
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But I think he went on later to say, you kind of got the sense when you listen to him that he was really hoping, okay, yeah,
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I think they probably did it right, that I'm summarizing what he said.
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So those are the four criteria. Must be done by a Pope, ordered in union with the bishops, mentioned Russia, and made to the
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Immaculate Heart. And if you look through what the Pope had to say, you know, certainly those criteria were met.
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You know, again, was it ordered by the bishops? Well, most people seem to think it probably was. So let's see what else we have here.
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I guess that's really about all I wanted to talk about today. When I talked to Timothy today, I had an opportunity to, as we were doing some back and forth,
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I think what, Lord willing, what we're going to try to do is maybe do a podcast sometime here, maybe in the next month or so, hopefully, if we can get some time and get together and talk about this maybe a little bit more depth.
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But I wanted to at least present some of this to you. And I want to leave you with some takeaways here today as well, because I think this is a pretty important subject.
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I know that's kind of a lot of material to throw at you, probably a lot of that sounds kind of new. So, you know, the question is, you know, what's the application as Protestants, as Christians?
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What do we do with this information? You can say, okay, well, we know the Pope's, you know, the Antichrist, the man of sin, the son of perdition, you know, we know that this apparition, it's not
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Mary, it's demonic. So what does that mean for us? What does that mean for you? And for me? I think one important thing about eschatology is that you and I cannot properly understand what's going on in the world without a correct understanding of who
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Antichrist is. Again, you and I, we can't understand what's going on in the world without a proper understanding of who
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Antichrist is. Now, that sounds kind of an amazing thing. And I didn't, I have to admit, you know, when I became a
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Christian, I didn't really, I didn't think that way. I used to say, well, you know, eschatology is one of those really complicated things that people argue about.
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And, you know, I knew the gospel and I understand the regeneration precedes faith. And at least
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I've gotten my hands on that. But, you know, the longer I've been a Christian, the more and more that I've seen that having, that as the
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Protestant church has fallen away from a proper understanding of eschatology, it's created a world of problems for ourselves.
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And basically we've left ourselves open to being attacked and no way of fighting back.
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I think back when I was a kid, I was growing up during the Cold War, since we're talking about Russia here. And, you know, you had these kind of hippy -dippy folks out there and they were always saying, oh, well, you know, what we need to do is stop provoking the
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Soviet Union. And, you know, and if we just beat all our swords in the plowshares and, you know, and get rid of all of our nukes and all of our tanks and guns and planes and all this other stuff, why, you know, that the communists will see that we have goodwill and they're, you know, they're, you know,
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I don't know, get in a big circle and hug each other and sing Kumbaya or something. You know, there were people who thought that way.
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That was pretty foolish. Communism is an aggressive ideology and you have to, you know, you have to be able to push back on it.
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Now, I'm not saying that everything in the Cold War was done correctly. I'm not going to defend all the things that were done in the
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Cold War, but I think certainly, you know, they called it unilateral disarmament. I think simply just getting rid of all of your weapons when the communists, you know, have missiles stacked up to the sky and nuclear bombs and all this stuff, well, that's probably not a wise idea.
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You know, I'm not saying that there's no value at all in peace talks or diplomacy or arms control talks.
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You know, quite frankly, I wish we had more of that going on right now, rather than the kinds of things that the Biden administration is doing, but it can't be foolish.
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I mean, and one of the divinely authorized duties that a government has is to, you know, is national defense.
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Yeah, I think you could certainly make that case. So, so no, I mean, I don't think we necessarily had, you know, back in the
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Cold War era. No, I don't think unilateral disarmament would have been wise. But, you know, what's happened to Protestant churches is they've unilaterally disarmed themselves.
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They said, oh, you know, you know, the Pope, well, you know, he's our brother in Christ, and we're not going to do anything to try to stand up to him.
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We're not going to, we're done with the rebuking and reproving and correcting, and we don't want all that nasty stuff that went on back in the
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Reformation, all those people thundering from the pulpit about the Pope's the antichrist and this kind of thing. No, we don't want that.
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We want to be kinder and gentler. And what we've done is we've left ourselves wide open and basically set ourselves up as sheep to be sheared.
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And that's not doing our job. So, I mean, one big takeaway here is you and I, and, you know, as believing
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Christians, you know, we need to stop being deceived. You know, we need to raise our game.
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You know, that's one of the big takeaways right now, because you've got these forces that are going on in the world.
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And as I said, you know, antichrist is doing his work right in front of our face, but hardly anybody sees that.
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That includes people who are in the believing Protestant church, and that needs to change.
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You know, we're repeatedly warning the Scriptures not to be deceived, but we've been quite deceived on many occasions, and that's something that we need to repent of.
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I would say that's really the big takeaway. I hope also one of the big takeaways too is that you can see,
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I mean, when Rome talks about, you know, the Mariolatry, they're very serious about this.
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This is not a minor doctrine with them. This is a battering ram that they use to overthrow and subvert nations.
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I mean, they're trying to subvert Russia right now with their demonic doctrine of, quote,
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Mary. That's what they're trying to do. It's going on right in front of our face, and you have to be able to recognize it for what it is. Now, you're saying, oh, you're trying to defend
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Vladimir Putin. No, I'm not here to defend Vladimir Putin or the Russian Orthodox Church, but this is something that is going on.
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This is something that's being done, and as Christians, we need to be aware of this, because the same thing the Pope is doing to Russia, they are also doing here to the
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United States. They are also doing to those of us who are, you know, Bible -believing
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Christians. If you can't recognize it going on over there, you're not going to recognize it when it's happening to you either.
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So we need to be able to recognize the false teaching of Antichrist. We need to be able to refute it from the scriptures.
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We need to be able to stand our ground. So anyway, I think that's probably enough for one night here. I think my voice is going a little bit scratchy.
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Anyway, thanks so much for joining me for the podcast. As always, I really enjoy doing these things, and I hope and I pray that you got something out of that.
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Until next time, and hopefully it'll be sooner, you know, it's been a month since I've done one of these things, and I've been tired, and I just had to recharge my batteries a little bit.
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But Lord willing, I'll be back next week, and we'll go over this again. Until next time, may the