This Week in Witchcraft - S1:E16

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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

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Can you spot it out in the wild? Welcome back to This Week in Witchcraft. I'm Dylan Hamilton and with me are

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Michael Durham and Andrew Hudson. Today we are dealing with the idea or concept of living in a pagan world and finding a answer to it, a counter to it, in the way that we have witchcraft thrown at us left and right and how we might either avoid it, flee from it, or counter it with our own

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Christian content creation as well. So we'll kick it over to Michael and see how he wants to start us off.

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Right. So it's important to recognize that we live in a culture that is pagan, essentially pagan.

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That there is a sense of the oneness of everything, there's a fungibility to everybody and everything.

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A funny story I just heard about, a California court ruled that bees are fish.

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What? Bees are fish. And the reason why bees are fish is because they already have laws on the books that protect fish in the way that they want to protect bees, but because they couldn't come up with any laws about bees, they just ruled that bees are fish.

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And this makes so much sense in a pagan world where anything can be anything else, and so bees are fish.

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This is a sign that we're living in a pagan world and that little bit of witchcraft in the name of save the bees is, well, we see witchcraft everywhere in the name of, hey, we need to save these people or help these people or do this right thing over here and so we're going to demonically appropriate alternate authority and we're going to speak words and change realities in rebellion to God.

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So witchcraft is everywhere and very often we encounter concentrations of this witchcraft and we have to decide what we're going to do about it.

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And perhaps we're at a job where witchcraft is rampant. The question is, am

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I going to counter it with my conversation?

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Am I going to expose the folly of it, the absurdity of it? Am I going to take this as a sign that Christ must be preached here?

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You know, Paul noticed and was burdened, his heart was just grieved at the level of paganism in Athens and he used this as an opportunity to preach

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Christ, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, to preach the unknown God to these idolatrous

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Athenians. And then of course there's the concern of Sodom, right? You know, hey, look, this place is so pagan, we've, you know, it's, it's time to leave.

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Let's, let's, uh, let's break from this pagan place before, you know, why would we invest in this place that's doomed for disaster, you know, and so on.

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We've got to make these decisions in our, in our Christian walk and again, some of it's about approach and tactics and preference and Christian liberty, but there has been a lot of discussion as of late about the overt pagan witchcraft, the sexual perversion that seems to be the celebrated program in various media companies.

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For example, Disney has been under fire lately from some quarters saying, this is a bridge too far.

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You, you know, the things that you're saying and advocating for and doing is just ridiculous and we're done with you, you know?

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And so a lot of people have been redirecting their funds away from Disney though this has happened many times over and over and over again concerning Disney and concerning other companies as well.

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Personally Netflix, I was a subscriber for quite a long time and then eventually things started creeping onto their platform.

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I really didn't pay much attention to that cause I'm not, I'm not buying it for that, their service. However, they came out with a corporate stance of not doing business in a specific state because it was a supporting of more limitations on abortion on a child murder, which

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I believe the limitation on child murder should be an absolute limitation. I, there's no good reason.

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And so I canceled my account and for the reason I support unborn children, that's what

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I left them as the note. But that's just one example and many people come to a conclusion at different points in time.

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Yeah. So people have begun to, you know, Christians and even some people who not necessarily

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Christian as their primary identity, but maybe in a political leaning towards the right or something, there's been a lot of pushback against the, the perverse agenda of Disney and their media platform of Disney plus and so on.

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So the question is, what do you do about this? You know, we have situations where the

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Christians in the early church, we read about their unique situations that sometimes we can get caught up with the specific details of what they're going through about, you know, meet offered to idols and you know, hairstyles and you know, different activities and so on and so forth, you know, but what were they doing?

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They were trying to figure out how to love one another and live holy in the midst of a pagan society where there was demonic activity, witchcraft everywhere.

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Hey, well we can relate. This is the situation we're in right now.

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And so we, you know, we've got three options, right? We engage with the witchcraft to repudiate it, to expose it for its absurdity, to show it as it's in this deception and it's lies.

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We avoid the witchcraft. We move ourselves and our families away from it, isolating ourselves from it, which by the way, whenever someone does that and then later on they're exposed to the witchcraft again, it comes as much more of a shock having been isolated from it instead of growing accustomed to it.

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Yes. And that's the kind of experience we've had before. And then also there's the, another alternative is that in this pagan world, these people are still made in the image of God and they, they still have this impulse to worship and to create things that are beautiful and they want to make something of value and good.

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And they're just doing a terrible job at it in the rejection of Christ. But it is a human thing. It is a

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God glorifying thing for those made in his image to create things that are good and beautiful and true to work art and to do things that do these kinds of things.

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And there needs to be an alternative to the witchcraft that is so rampant, isn't there? Yes. Yeah.

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So in our home, we, we kind of view where we take our money to buy subscriptions from content creators as handing over of maybe grains of seed and stories to be cast and out into the soil and they, they bring back yield.

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And so we decided to quit sending our seed, our portion off to some of those places like Netflix and Disney.

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And we decided to give those seeds to somewhere else. And that may be at the heart of some of the alternative that Christians sometimes are reticent to do is understand that once you take it away from the pagans to cast the seed, we should probably be giving it to somebody who does better at casting that seed.

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And we don't always do a great job of that. Sometimes we look at the subscription and the cost of the subscriptions and maybe those

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Christian content creators don't have as much content as Disney. Well, that's because they don't have the money or the funds or the capabilities or the, they don't have the staff or the budget or the property, right?

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Like I mean, Disney is living off of the capital of their property from the twenties and thirties still. Whereas we're just getting started and there needs to be injections of capital, injections of that seed.

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That way we can hand it over to our best content creators to sell it for us and give. And what we need to look at it too, as they're creating stories for our children to consume.

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And if they do a good job at it, why not give them more to get back more yield of, of story or of, of content for our children to receive as well.

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My family is, we have, how can I put this in a way that doesn't sound a sanctimonious.

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I'm not trying to say that. Along the lines of supporting Christian content creators, we support a

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David Wood who is very active and involved in apologetics against, I would say counter

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Muslim apologetics. That is a content that is currently being delivered on YouTube where it's a place of censorship and he needs all the help he can get.

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But in the same lines, if you're not appreciative of the content, so whenever you view this, this light in the darkness and you're, and you go past it and you say, thank

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God for those people, maybe consider in what way can I benefit them?

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And in many times they need help making this a full time thing. And we can do that.

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If you are blessed with being able to have more than what you need on a daily basis, being able to invest that into the kingdom to counter this pagan culture, we have to build one for ourselves.

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So why not start with something that you value? Yeah. One of the things that I'm kind of thinking about here when we're, we're talking about supporting

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Christian content creators, we all here, even at this table have our favorite content creators or we have our interest and we seem to really decentralize those funds to different places, right?

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Well, the pagans have really backed one or two horses a lot of times. And at this point it, let's be honest, it's

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Disney. They own Disney ESPN. I mean, they're, as far as content goes, they are the behemoth that we're looking at that we're staring down, but we kind of decentralized a lot of our, our funds to different areas and different content creators, just based on our preferences.

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And this may look more like a slower March for us to maybe win affections in different areas of other people or to support these people as they create a very broad range of content for everybody to consume.

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Yeah. I think it's important to recognize the cultural moment. We're in a Gutenberg moment where with the

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Gutenberg press came the decentralization of content creation. It wasn't just the church anymore.

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It was in people who disagreed with the church and not just the state anymore, but those who disagreed with the state had content creation ability because of the

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Gutenberg press. And we're in that situation now in a digital information internet age. And, and as Dylan rightly notes, there's a lot of capital that was built up in the analog centralization of media, but that doesn't have to be the way that it is anymore.

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And that in the decentralization of content creation, we have more options than we can even learn about.

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And, and there's so many options out there that, that we can find and reward and enjoy and give thanks to God for.

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We also have ourselves in a situation where we're still much like the early Christians living in a pagan society.

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That's, um, been built up with pagan infrastructure. You know, Paul, uh, walked on Roman roads that were built by Roman oppression and, uh, the blood of the slaves that built the roads, you know, in a very real sense, stained the walkway, but he still uses the roads to go preach the gospel, you know?

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And he go, he went to very pagan places and preach the word. And he took on some of the, the pagan sayings to get his point across.

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But he wasn't compromising the message he brought at all, but he had a facility with what was going on and he rejected the pagan world.

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He rejected the idolatry, but he understood what was going on. He had to make use of pagan space, such as when he went to the

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Arapagos to preach the gospel. He was not in a Christian space when he proclaimed that word.

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He was in the place where everybody went to go talk new philosophy and it was all pagan idolatrous philosophy.

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The whole place was stained with it. Yet he was there and he was delivering his word, the word of the gospel.

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So we recognize that we may be led by the

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Holy spirit and we have liberty in this because where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. We have the freedom to cancel pagan media when we say,

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Hmm, yeah, I want to invest my funds somewhere else. That's, you know, this, uh, the witchcraft is so thick here.

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I mean, I'm not finding anything worth worthwhile. I don't think this is worth it. I don't want to give my money to these people anymore.

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And at the same time, you know, there's, we're still using the equivalent of the pagan infrastructure, right?

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I mean, Apple and windows and Google and Amazon and you know, you feeling me?

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Yeah. These are not somehow righteous corporations in comparison to Disney. No, you see what

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I mean? Um, and whereas the political moment is certainly put Disney front and center for our considerations.

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And we do have a choice to make about these things. We recognize that we still live in a pagan world.

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We still live in a world filled with all of these problems and all this idolatry going on.

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But here's the good news that in Christ we are set apart unto him sanctified that we're made clean, that we can live as saints in the middle of a filthy world.

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This is in no way saying, feel free to consume wherever you want. This is saying, this is saying that in Christ because of his

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Holy spirit, we are made clean and we are free to move about as Holy vessels in a pagan world and to even use the pagan infrastructure to bring forth the message of the gospel and to do things for the kingdom.

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This is not tarnishing. I think sometimes those hermits and monks of old just couldn't stomach it, right?

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And they just went away in disobedience to Christ. They saw holiness in a less robust way.

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So the answer is not to go live in a commune, right? No. And that's not what people think.

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If you cancel your subscription to Netflix, you can see your subscription to Disney plus. That's not what you're saying.

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You get the liberty to do that, right? Hey, I'm done with that. Let's do something different.

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Look at all the freedom I have and that's awesome. So when people do this,

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I think some people like, well, you just need to cancel and go away. You know, there's liberty here.

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Okay. But there's also recognizing that our holiness is bound up in our following after Christ.

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And he's called us to walk on dirty streets to proclaim the gospel. A good example would be the library system of Oklahoma city.

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They are very promoting of the month of June and what they call pride.

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A lot of the titles that they purchase, I would not support at all. Yet there are times that I find that if you would want to, let's say, do a critique of the witchcraft that you find in Harry Potter, star

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Wars, those types of titles as a way to counter to, to say, look, kids, this is against what the word says and to go through it yourself and to guide them into what the truth is.

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You're still using the library system, but I didn't necessarily have to pay for these pieces of content that I find to be objectionable.

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So there are many ways to counter witchcraft. You just have to be wise on how you do it.

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And in the very end, it's, it's about honoring your master. So follow your master.

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You talked off Mike Andrew about what was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back for everybody or for each individual family, which

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I found to be interesting because as I was thinking about it for me, there was a lot of things

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I could overlook about some of the content creation, but I think it came down to the points where I was watching things and it got so far away from the good and the true that I said, that is desecration.

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Like there's not an ounce of beauty in that. You may have like a beautiful shot, but you're desecrating it somehow with the way you're telling a story or you're desecrating it somehow with a lie about reality.

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And I think for me and my family personally, it was noticing that the beauty was sucked out of whatever we were watching or whatever we were consuming.

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And so for some people, it may be, they're seeing no goodness there first or truth there first.

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And they're, they're leaving right away. And then for some people it's recognizing that now that all that's taken away, there's no more beauty either.

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And I think Disney thrived on that for a long time because they were telling loads of lies, but they did things so much more beautifully than everybody else that we were just like, okay, we can, we can parse out the, the, the lies.

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We can parse out the badness in this in exchange for still having it look beautiful. But now we have nine -year -old girls outrunning her captors and running into head high logs that they should see in star

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Wars where you're just like, that's just bad storytelling. There's nothing beautiful about that. You're actually, we have to make so many conceits in order to believe this.

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And it's just, you can't stomach it anymore because it's just bad storytelling. There's no more willful suspension of disbelief.

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It's just, you're just left with this is unbelievable. Right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, but tied, tied with the, the art that is no good and total lack of verisimilitude.

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There's no truth there, right? It's no good. There's no truth. And it's not beautiful at all.

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Tied with it though, which is the especially insulting element here is that we're being told celebrate this, or you're a racist celebrate this, or you are a misogynist, right?

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That's what you're being told by. And they, they know it. They already know it so bad that they send out these preemptive warning labels, right?

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That if you, if you have something bad to say about this, it's because you're, you're part of the, the male white hegemony.

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And you're the problem. The reason why this art is, it looks no good to you. The reason why this art is not hitting you, right?

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The reason why this art is not beautiful to you is because you're the problem. They send out the

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Mott in the, in the review that comes out before the premiere, right? Like, Oh yes. Yeah.

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The critics advanced copy. When you, when you see that, I mean, that's, that's when it's like, you recognize that this is in a roundabout way, a

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Testament to the reality that there is an objective standard for beauty. There is an objective standard for truth.

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There is an objective standard for good. They know it too, but they're trying to suppress that in unrighteousness.

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Oh, to be known as those dirty Christians and their, their bigotry.

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What a, what a label to wear as a badge of honor for Christ's sake to, to oppose evil and to be maligned for his namesake.

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Amen to that. And to, for me to support the fact that beauty is objective, our

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God is beautiful and therefore beauty is an objective thing. And I think the, the paganism of subjective beauty, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

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I hear so many Christians like hold to that, like to the death. And I'm like, how can you say that when your

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God is ultimately beautiful? Like that does not, as long as it's God's eye that does the only beholding and I'm cool with that.

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But, but you see the witchcraft is in, in the, the demonic appropriation of alternate authority in the simple declaration.

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Oh, this is good. This is true. This is beautiful. You must say it to be so. You know, we're telling you what to say about this.

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It's very much like 1984. Yeah. I, I think about, uh, you talk about beauty, you know, the, the commercials, the sunset where the, the two dads are walking on the seashore with the child, they're ostensibly their child.

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You're, it, it looks beautiful, but when you see it, it's repulsive because it's not true.

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Maybe the, the true thing about that is that that homosexuality is, it's seen its sunset.

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It's in death rows right now and it will have its judgment. Like, I mean, like to a certain degree, sometimes they play their own jokes on themselves and they don't realize it.

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Like that's, that's what's sort of funny about some of this stuff, but it's also very, you see how that's true in Romans one.

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Well, there's a lot of humor that the Lord brings to pass in the absurdity of, of the wicked for laughter is the righteous response to absurdity.

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Yeah. Well, I think we have filled up our time on witchcraft today.

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What content do we have to suggest in return, Michael? I've got a book as part of the five solos series.

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You don't have to get all five. This one is a Christ alone has come out in 2017 at the 500 year anniversary, the reformation

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Christ alone, the uniqueness of Jesus as savior. It was written by Steven Willem and it is just an excellent biblical theology of the centrality preeminence of Christ in all the scriptures.

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A very refreshing devotional, even encouraging read. I'm going to take this a little bit different direction.

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There are many people who might be listening to this that still have their children in public schools or they may even orient their private or homeschools to have summer off.

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I would advocate a blessed time would be to engage in a summer reading program for your children for the

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Bible. I know that I have benefited from my wife doing that with my children. And, uh, recently being a teacher over some children here at the church and reengaging with the book of judges has been a wonderful time.

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So never underestimate the power of the word. Amen to that. Amen to that.

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We were talking about taking our money and placing it elsewhere and Christian content. And that's something that Heather and I have done recently moving away from Disney.

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And we decided to subscribe with cannon plus. And there is a treasure trove of things both new and old to enjoy and to mind the depths of over there.

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They tell wonderful stories. They do it beautifully. And wherever there's disagreement with them, we know that there's an excess of agreement that we have with those folks over at cannon.

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They just keep producing solid, solid stuff. And specifically one that I've listened to most recently is in the house of Tom Bombadil by C .R.

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Wiley. And that was just a fun, it was more fun than it was anything else because I'm partial to Tom Bombadil and I'm still a little sore that he was left out of the movies.

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So how dare they. But that was one specifically that I'd like to drop the recommendation for.

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

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