Radio Lux Lucet Ep 24

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Welcome to Radio Luke's List. I'm your host Steve Matthews. Thanks for joining me today. This is episode 24.
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I'm going to call this News of Note, week ending 12 -8 -2018. Yes, I'm going to try something new here for this week's podcast.
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I want to try to do a sort of weekly news wrap -up. That's not something that I've done before, at least not done recently.
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Now, I've done some of that in years past. I've done some blog features. I've done a few podcasts,
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I think, that were basically weekly news sorts of wrap -up shows.
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But this is something that I'm going to try to do, Lord willing, on a regular basis going forward. We'll see.
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I've always been a bit of a news junkie, so actually following the news and commenting on it is really something that comes pretty naturally to me.
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It's sort of a natural area of interest. So I think that this will work pretty well in a podcast format.
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One of the things that's a challenge, I find, in going through the news of the week is not finding enough to talk about, but finding too much to talk about.
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There's just so much interesting stuff going on in the world. It's really hard to sometimes focus in on the things that maybe are most important, especially to those who are the listeners here.
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So anyway, we'll give it a shot and see how this goes. I may tweak the format a little bit going forward, but we'll see what happens.
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Okay, so the first story that I want to talk about this week is the stock market.
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If you follow finances at all, you may have noticed it's been kind of a rocky week on the stock market.
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I think this headline, and this was actually taken from CNBC, this is from yesterday,
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Friday, December the 7th. There's a headline here in CNBC and it says, stocks could be set up for another violent week of selling.
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Now they're talking about the coming week. So I'm recording this on December 8th, 2018. So this would be the week, the
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Monday beginning, Monday, December the 10th, is what they're talking about here.
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And just a few bullet points that they bring out in this article. The author says that stocks are set up to test recent lows in the week ahead, coming off one of the worst weeks of selling this year.
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The S &P 500 was just two points above its November low, a key technical area, and was down 4 .6
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% for the week. So the S &P, the Standard & Poor's 500, that's probably the most widely watched index, stock index,
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U .S. stock index, I should say, among investment professionals is the S &P 500. Probably most people who are not financial professionals, they probably look at the
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Dow. Now I don't know how much the Dow was down this week. It was down probably pretty close to that.
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I don't know exactly, but I think probably 4 .6 % is probably pretty close for the weekly decline on the
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Dow Jones Industrial Average as well. The article continues here, analysts will be watching retail sales and inflation data, but the most important developments for markets would be in U .S.-China
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trade relations. And treasury yields continue to move lower after the biggest one -week move in the 10 years since 2015.
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OK, so the stock market, and I have argued this before in some things that I've read, and maybe even some commentary that I've done, that in my opinion, the stock market is way overvalued.
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I mean, if you look at historical measures that are used to devalue the stock market, the stock market is far too high.
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And the reason for that is because interest rates are artificially held far too low.
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The stock market and interest rates tend to move in opposite directions.
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So when interest rates go low, stock prices tend to go high. As interest rates tend to move up, stock prices tend to come down.
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And not only has the Fed, the Federal Reserve, the U .S.
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Central Bank, not only has the Fed been raising interest rates here over the past couple of years, but other central banks, other major central banks around the world have been raising interest rates.
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And this is starting to, it appears that this is starting to have its effect upon the stock market.
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There are some very gifted analysts that I follow who are very much concerned about major drops in the stock market.
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And one of the reasons that's given for that is not just the interest rates. That's one thing that I think is certainly going on here.
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But the underlying economy appears not to be doing particularly well right now. For example, the
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International Business Daily or the, excuse me, the Investor's Business Daily, I get this straight.
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The Investor's Business Daily has a headline that says GM layoffs. The tragedy caused by embracing government subsidies, not markets.
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And in this particular article, they talk about General Motors has recently announced a decision to close four
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U .S. plants and lay off 14 ,700 workers. Now, according to this
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Investor's Business Daily article, that's 15 percent of its domestic workforce. Now, interestingly enough, the
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Investor's Business Daily blames the GM layoffs on GM's embracing of government subsidies.
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Of course, they got bailed out during the last big financial crisis in 2008. And that may be some of it.
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I'm not going to say that that's not that that's not necessarily true, but I don't know that that's necessarily the whole story either, because Bloomberg Business predicts or has a headline that ran this past week that says this.
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It says Morgan Stanley predicts Ford to cut 25 ,000 jobs in overhaul. So Ford, which did not take a bailout during the 2008 crisis,
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Ford famously did not. Both GM and Chrysler took a bailout, but Ford did not take a bailout.
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And Ford's talking about an $11 billion restructuring that could cost 25 ,000 employees their jobs.
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So that's quite a bit more employees that may lose their jobs at Ford, which didn't take a bailout, than are losing their jobs at GM, which did take a bailout.
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So I'm not sure necessarily that the headline in the Investor's Business Daily really tells the whole story or maybe is completely accurate.
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But the reason that I bring up those two stories is the fact that right there you're talking about very nearly 40 ,000 well -paying jobs.
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You know, these are not jobs, you know, this isn't a low -wage type of jobs. These are, I think, what you would call breadwinner type jobs, well -paying jobs for people.
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And these appear to be on the brink of going away. We're talking about 40 ,000 of those. Now, and of course, when
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Ford and GM lay off 40 ,000 workers, that's also going to have knock -on effects. And their suppliers and other supporting businesses that support those plans are also going to close down.
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So there's going to be a lot more than just 40 ,000 people losing their jobs. And again, we're talking about jobs that pay well, jobs that you can support a family on.
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So the underlying economy appears not to be doing all that well. And one of my favorite market analysts is a gentleman by the name of Dave Kranzler.
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I think he does really good work. And this is what he says. He says, irrespective of the trade war, the dollar index level, interest rates, and the price of gold, the stock market is headed much lower.
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This is because, notwithstanding the incessant propaganda which purports a, quote, booming economy, end quote, the economy is starting to collapse.
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The housing stocks foreshadowed this, just like they did in 2005 and 2006. And he goes on, he talks about how the stock values in the construction industry, the home construction industry, are going down.
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So anyway, it appears that we are looking at a pretty significant slowdown in the economy.
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Take a look, for instance, at GE stock. I mean, GE was, not that many years ago, was the most valuable company in the
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United States. I think right now Microsoft just took that title from Apple. But, you know,
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GE isn't even close to either one of those companies right now. And the stock is trading at,
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I think, less than 25 % of what it did maybe a year and a half ago.
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It was around a $30 stock. It's down around $7 a share right now. And there's some talk about GE maybe going bankrupt.
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Or at least, you know, having further declines in the stock value.
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And GE's having a hard time accessing credit. Lenders don't want to lend money to GE right now, because it's really perceived as being pretty high risk.
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GE of all places. I mean, we're not talking about some small little company. This was a company that was one of the original components in the
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Dow Industrial Average going back to 1896. And they just got booted out of the Dow. So they're no longer included in the
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Dow Index. One of the most famous companies, one of the really iconic industrial companies in American history.
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And GE is in serious trouble right now. We hope that they're able to right the ship.
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But here we go. We have GM, Ford, GE. Three major historic
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American manufacturing companies, all of them in having some very serious difficulties right now.
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And it's kind of hard to look at those companies having those sorts of problems and say, yeah, we got a booming economy.
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I don't think that we do. And well, this is something we'll watch a little bit closer. But I wanted to at least bring up a few of those things here for you to consider.
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You know, it's one of the things too, you know, if you've got, this is something that concerns all of us, because, you know, probably most of us, or many of us anyway, have some kind of stock investments, whether it's something we own in a brokerage account, or maybe something in our 401k plans, or other type of retirement account.
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And when you see reports like this, it's enough to make you kind of consider, you know, possibly maybe looking at something that's a little bit safer.
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And I know that it certainly has made me rethink some things as I watch some of the struggles of some of these big companies and the struggles of the market overall.
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At any rate, that's enough of that for right now. Now moving on, I had another story that I wanted to talk about here.
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And that is the UN climate meeting in Poland.
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There was an interesting article I found on Breitbart from this past week.
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This is from December the 4th. And it has a headline and it says, Vatican stresses great sense of urgency to battle climate change.
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And it goes on, it talks about an attitude of denial of the perils of climate change must not prevail if mankind is to successfully combat global warming.
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The Vatican's Secretary of State warned Tuesday. In his message on behalf of Pope Francis to participants in the
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UN COP24 climate meeting in Katowice, Poland, I guess
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I'm saying that right, Katowice, Poland, Cardinal Pietro Perlin said that information from the
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UN's most recent climate change report is, quote, even more worrying given the current commitments made by states to migrate, mitigate and adapt to climate change are not sufficient to achieve the objectives set by the
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Paris Agreement, end quote. So these
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Vaticanites are very much pushing hard for climate control. And one of the things that you have to understand, maybe a question that you need to ask yourself is why?
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Why is the Vatican so interested in climate change? Why are they so interested in supporting the
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Paris Climate Agreement? Well, the simple answer to that is this, world government.
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That is, it's the same reason that they push immigration, migration and refugee resettlement. The way this is often stated is they say that the climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution.
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And of course, the Vatican is very quick to pick up on that because the Vatican is all about creating world government.
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The Vatican, these guys are the original globalists. And I've said this before, I'm going to say this again here, one of the great frustrations that I have with media coverage of the
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Vatican, when I say media coverage, I'm not just talking about the mainstream media, you know, the
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ABC, CBS, NBC, Time magazines, Washington Post, New York Times.
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I'm not just talking about this. I'm also talking about even the alternate press.
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We're talking here about the bloggers and YouTubers and podcasters, things of this sort.
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You very rarely ever hear direct criticism of the Vatican. You very rarely ever hear them pointed out as being the ultimate globalists.
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I mean, you hear some of these guys, these independent journalists, yeah, they talk a lot about the
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Council on Foreign Relations. They talk a great deal about George Soros. They talk about the
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Rockefellers and the Rothschilds. There were some of these other groups or people, individuals that push globalism.
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I'm not saying that those people aren't globalists. I think they're bad actors. But the ultimate bad actor in globalism,
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I think the ultimate force behind this is the Vatican. These guys are just amazing. And they parade their globalism around in broad daylight, and nobody seems to ever want to actually call them out to point out their desire for world government.
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I want to read you something here. This will show to you the close connection between the Vatican support for the
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Paris Climate Agreement and world government. I'm going to read for you a little bit of an extended quote.
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This is from Pope Francis' recent papal encyclical,
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Encyclical Laudato Si. I believe this came out in 2015. So I'm going to read this quote to you here.
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And I think you'll get a sense of just how much the Vatican views climate change issues and world government as being one thing.
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So here we go. Quote, the same mindset which stands in the way of making radical decisions to reverse the trend of global warming also stands in the way of achieving the goal of eliminating poverty.
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A more responsible overall approach is needed to deal with both problems. The reduction of pollution in the development of poor countries and regions.
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The 21st century, while maintaining systems of governance inherited from the past, is witnessing a weakening of the power of nation states, chiefly because the economic and financial sectors, being transnational, tends to prevail over the political.
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Given the situation, it is essential to devise stronger and more efficiently organized international institutions with functionaries who are appointed fairly by agreement among national governments and empowered to promote imposed sanctions.
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As Benedict XVI has affirmed in continuity with the social teaching of the Church, and here
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Pope Francis is going to quote Benedict, to manage the global economy, to revive economies hit by the crisis, to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis, and the greater imbalances that would result, to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security, and peace, to guarantee the protection of the environment, and to regulate migration.
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For all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority. As my predecessor,
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Blessed John XXIII, indicated some years ago. So there you have one
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Antichrist quoting a prior Antichrist, who actually cited a prior Antichrist. So here's
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Pope Francis quoting Pope Benedict XVI, who was working in some concepts put out by Pope John XXIII.
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But I want to read the very sort of the end of that to you again. This is, again,
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Pope Francis quoting Benedict XVI in Pope Francis' encyclical
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Laudato Si. This is what he quotes. This is what Francis says. There is urgent need of a true world political authority.
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That's global government, folks. That's world government. And these Vaticanites, these guys parade this stuff around, and they don't even try to hide it.
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That's the thing that's really amazing about it. When you talk about the Vatican and global government, a lot of people seem to think, oh, you know, that's just conspiracy theory, you know, blah, blah, blah.
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Well, no, I mean, these guys actually come right out and call for world government. And everybody just kind of applauds and says, yeah, yeah, that's really awesome stuff.
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And it doesn't seem like very often, very many people are willing to actually point out the fact of what these people are really saying.
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I mean, this is stock and trade of the teaching of the Roman Church state. This is the kind of thing that Antichrist pushes.
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Now, I know not everybody wants to sit down and read a papal document. Quite frankly, reading papal documents are painful. So see, this is my service to the body of Christ.
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I read papal documents and explain them, so you don't have to read them. Although I would encourage, actually, I would encourage
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Christians to read them. I think that it's important to understand and see how these popes talk.
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And these guys are mega globalists. And you cannot ignore this. I mean, this stuff is in your face.
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So what the Roman Catholic Church sees in the environmental movement is a way for them to promote global government.
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I don't think these guys really care about climate change, but it's a useful tool for them to advance their agenda of world government.
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With, of course, Rome itself sitting at the top.
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You know, the woman wants to ride the beast. Now, I think it's kind of interesting, too, that over the past week here, we've seen riots in Paris.
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You've probably seen some of this stuff on the news. There's this group, they call themselves the Yellow Vests or the
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Yellow Jackets. And what they're doing is they're protesting the policy of the
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French government, I guess, to impose taxes on gasoline, which have really raised the price of gasoline in France.
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And apparently, the motive behind doing this was to bring the country into,
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I guess, lower the carbon emissions in France and sort of bring the country into compliance with the
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Paris Climate Agreement. I'm going to quote here to you a piece from a gentleman by the name of James Corbett.
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Now, some of you may not be familiar with James Corbett. If you haven't ever seen his stuff, I would really recommend it to you.
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And let me read this, his quote here to you, because I think he does some very good work. This is, again, a little bit of an extended quote here.
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Yes, it was just three scant years ago that we were treated to all the ballyhoo and tosh about the Paris Agreement and how it was going to save the world.
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Who could forget those scenes of the UN bureaucrats holding hands with the political fat cats congratulating themselves for having saved the world by making the bold decision to control the world's temperature?
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Yes, the politicians and unelected UN bureaucrats can do anything they want, cried the masses. They are our rulers, after all.
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But how exactly do they intend to do this? Why, by appeasing the weather gods, of course, came the response.
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And, it turns out, the weather gods can only be appeased by giving more money to the government. So dutifully,
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Macron and his government went about raising carbon taxes, sending already sky -high gasoline prices in France rocketing into the stratosphere.
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There's just one problem with all this. The people have decided that, on the whole, they'd rather not pay $7 .06
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per gallon of gasoline to appease those weather gods.
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In fact, Levin had projected €8 billion per year tax on a workforce already complaining about high unemployment and high taxes in order to reduce global emissions of the life -giving carbon dioxide in a country that accounts for less than 1 % of global carbon dioxide emissions anyway might just be a teensy -weensy bit unproductive.
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End quote. So that's James Corbett. I really like James Corbett's work. I think he's one of the best researchers
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I've come across on the web. Now, I don't think he's a Christian. At least I've never heard him come out and say that he is.
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In following his work over the years, I get a sense I had to describe his politics and his thinking.
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He's a libertarian. But for all that, as a libertarian, he's very much for small government.
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He's very much for liberty, personal liberty.
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And he's also very dogged in pursuing the truth. He's someone who's done some deep research into some things that a lot of people would consider to be conspiracy theory.
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But if you read his work, you'll find that he does a really good job substantiating what he has to say.
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He's not a hack journalist. He's a real journalist. And he's one of the best, most gifted researchers
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I've seen. He does a lot of writing. He does typically at least one video a week.
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And from time to time, he will produce a series of longer videos, maybe things that are about an hour long or so on a particular topic.
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He's just recently released a series of videos. I think there's at least two that are out right now on World War I.
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It's really brilliant stuff and very nicely produced. And I would recommend that you check out his website.
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It's called the Corbett Report. And again, his name is James Corbett. And I've enjoyed his work over the years.
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And I find the more that I read him, the more I really appreciate just what a brilliant guy he is.
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And I think what a remarkable researcher he is. And so as a Christian, you know, I don't have any problem recommending reading his work to you.
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Even though I, as I said, I don't think he necessarily is a Christian, but I think he does really top -notch work.
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So again, I don't have a problem recommending, checking out his site. So please do if you get a chance, check out.
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That's James Corbett at thecorbettreport .com. Now, another area of interest here this past week is some things related to immigration.
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Of course, I've been writing quite a bit about that, in particular, things having to do with the caravan that's been coming up from Mexico here over the past few months and is now sort of parked on the border.
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It's been out of the headlines a little bit this past week. And I think it's kind of interesting, of course, how stories can be like the most important thing in the history of the world one week and then completely vanish the next week.
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I don't know if you've ever noticed that, but that seems to be the way it often works. Well, anyway, a few things that came to my notice here this past week, one of them was a story.
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And this isn't exactly about the caravan, but it's more generally about the immigration, the whole topic of immigration.
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This is something that appeared in the Washington Examiner. And there was a study done.
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In fact, I think this was the U .S. Census Bureau that where this information comes from.
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The headline reads this. It says, Census confirmed 63 percent of non -citizens on welfare, 4 .6
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million households. And reading through the article, and I'll just quote from it here, quote, majority of non -citizens, including those with legal green card rights, are tapping into the welfare program set up to help poor and ailing
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Americans, a Census Bureau finding that bolsters President Trump's concern about immigrants costing the nation.
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In a new analysis of the latest numbers from 2014, 63 percent of non -citizens are using a welfare program.
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Now, this is a real problem, because one of the things we've been told about immigration in the
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United States, at any rate, is that we have to have all these immigrants to come in, because if we don't, we won't be able to afford all the
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Social Security benefits. Who's baby boomers and people of this sort.
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You know, we have to bring in all these immigrants, but yet we bring in these people, and 63 percent of them are on welfare.
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Well, they're not in a position to support anybody. I mean, they themselves are dependents.
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And that 63 percent is after they've been in the country for five years. And it doesn't get any better, because what it says here, according to these numbers from the
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U .S. Census Bureau, that the percentage actually goes up to 70 percent for those who are here 10 years and more.
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And the article goes on, it says that that confirms another concern, that once immigrants tap in the welfare, they don't get off of it.
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So that's a real problem. And of course, it's, you know, the problem is, the real problem here is the fact that it's just a welfare state.
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One of the biggest factors, when we talk about immigration, there's an awful lot of ink that's been spilt.
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I know I've talked a lot about immigration myself, but one of the biggest problems is the fact that we have a welfare state here.
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I think it was, who was that? Oh, it was Milton Friedman. Yeah, the Nobel winning,
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Nobel Prize winning economist, American economist, Milton Friedman. There's a quote
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I found by him a while back, and it says, it's just obvious that you can't have a welfare state and open immigration.
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And I would agree with Milton Friedman. It's pretty obvious that you can't have that, because, I mean, essentially what this is, it's just this giant magnet for people to come and go on welfare and get their, you know, that's a pretty sweet deal, especially if you're coming from some country that's maybe a third world country that has a very low income.
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You can come here and live on the welfare state and probably live better than you could in your home country. You know, and why not do that?
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I mean, that's really a problem with the system that we have set up in this country of welfare.
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In my opinion, as a Christian, as a scripturalist, as someone who believes that the
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Bible is controlling, the Bible has a monopoly on truth, you know, the apostle Paul says, you know, he who will not work, let him not eat.
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You know, there is no place in the Bible for the welfare state. There's no support in Scripture for socialism.
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And I don't say that to be mean. You know, I don't think Americans should be on welfare. I don't think
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Americans should be on welfare. I don't think we should have a welfare state. I completely disagree with that as a
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Christian. I mean, one of the implications, if you believe the Bible, is you have to reject the welfare state.
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But one of the implications when you bring, when you add the welfare state is that there's a very good chance you're going to get a lot of welfare immigration.
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And this article really underscores that. And again, it kind of refutes one of the main points that you often hear about immigration.
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Oh, well, these people, we need to have these people because they're going to come in and they're supporting the economy, and they're paying taxes, and they're paying into the social security system, and all this other stuff.
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Well, no, I mean, it would appear that a pretty large percent of these people are a net drain. So that does, it does shoot a lot of, it does shoot a great big hole in the argument that are advanced by people who want to continue to defend the current immigration system that we have in this country.
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Now, for my part, you know, I'm someone who believes in open immigration, but you can't have that when you have this massive welfare state.
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So I mean, it's one or the other. But the thing is, some of these liberal social justice warrior types, and certainly the people at the
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Roman Catholic Church, and certainly some of these very foolish people at the evangelical immigration table, seem to think that you can have mass immigration and mass welfare, and everything's going to be great.
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It's a disaster. And it's going to lead to a bigger disaster. And this stuff has to stop.
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Another story that was in the news this past week had to do with, this has to do specifically with the caravan.
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And it's actually intersection of a number of problems here. There's a headline from a website called
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Patriot Fire. Here's the headline. It's from December 5th. It says, caravan woman gives birth to first anchor baby in US.
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And reading through the story, quote, a pregnant woman who spent weeks traveling with a caravan of migrants gave birth in San Diego after crossing illegally into the
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United States to seek asylum. Mary Urie was more than seven months pregnant when she left
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Honduras with her husband, Miguel, and their three -year -old son. The family spent weeks traveling north on foot and by bus until they arrived in Tijuana.
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He was born here in San Diego, Mary Urie said, holding her eight -day -old daughter, a US citizen by birth, in an interview with Telemundo 20.
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Okay, so we've got several, at least three major issues here. Sort of a nexus, sort of a collection of three major problems with the welfare system or with the immigration system.
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First of all, we have a problem with the asylum system. Donald Trump wanted to revise, actually did sign an executive order requiring those who were seeking asylum to come in through a
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US port of entry. And I think that's a very reasonable idea. In other words, they couldn't just sneak into the country, violate our immigration laws and say, oh, hey,
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I'm an asylee. But that's exactly what this woman and her family did. They came into the country illegally and then immediately they claimed asylum.
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That's a problem. And I think that Trump's executive order was very reasonable in light of that.
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But what ended up happening, this is a second problem, and that is we have a judiciary that seems to really actually have
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Americans' worst interest at heart. Because Trump's executive order requiring asylum seekers to legally come into the country was overturned by the
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Ninth Circuit Court. It said, no, no, no, no, no, you can't do that. If somebody wants to just, if they want to crash the border, if they come here illegally, however they choose to get here, those people can claim asylum.
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Well, that's an abuse of the system. You know, as an
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American, I'm glad that people feel that they can come to the United States and seek asylum.
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But number one, they need to do it in a legal fashion. And number two, they have no right to go on welfare.
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And of course, that's immediately what this woman did. She came here, she gave birth in San Diego. And I'm making an assumption here, the article doesn't specifically say this, but I'm sure that that birth was probably charged to the
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American, charged to the taxpayers. You know, when she went to San Diego, went to the hospital to give birth, I don't think she probably paid for that.
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I'm sure that the taxpayers paid for that. And not only that, but as an
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American citizen, this child that was born, the parents can request welfare on her behalf.
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And I'm sure that they will do so if they have not already done so. That is a major problem.
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So you've got the issue of welfare, you've got the issue of the legal system, really actually being against the
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American people. And then you have the issue of birthright citizenship. And this whole idea of birthright citizenship is one of the most frustrating things there is for me.
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There is no logical, moral, biblical sound reason why someone should be able to sneak in the
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United States, have a baby at taxpayer expense, and have that child declared an American citizen. Now, I've covered some of this in some of my writing, some of my blog posts.
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I don't think I've talked about this, though, in any sort of a podcast or a video format.
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So in researching and thinking about the whole issue of birthright citizenship,
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I think the guide that we really want to use, again, we can go back to Scripture. Now, I'm going to put on my
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Presbyterian cap here for a moment, as I am a Presbyterian, and I believe what the
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Westminster Confession of Faith teaches about church and about how the church is defined.
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The Westminster Confession defines the church as adult believers together with their children. That's the definition of the church.
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And in the Westminster Standards, it talks about, or asks the question, it's in the
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Longer Catechism, it asks the question about, you know, to whom is baptism to be administered? And it indicates that baptism is to be administered to adults who give a profession of faith, and to the children, at least one of whom are both parents, one of whose, or both parents are church members.
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So as long as either the mother or the father is a church member, that child is to be baptized. So you've got two categories.
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Adults make profession of faith, children are believers. And if you apply that concept to national government, and I believe that you can,
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I mean, think about this. Civil government and church government were both created by whom? And those are both created by God.
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And we find both of those institutions being set up in the scriptures. So we can apply what the
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Bible teaches about, quote, citizenship in the church, if you will, to also national citizenship.
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I believe the two are the same thing. Now I know some of my Baptist brethren are probably ready to throw rotten tomatoes at me.
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And I know I'm arguing like a Presbyterian, but I do believe this, and I think that you can make a very good argument for this. My point here isn't to pan all that out at this point, but maybe to throw this out and to give you something to think about.
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The whole idea of birthright citizenship is a farce. It's a scam. And it's something that costs
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American taxpayers a fortune. And I believe as Christians, I believe we can look to the Bible for a solution to that.
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So, I mean, if the church counts as members, either adults who make a profession of faith or the children of believers,
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I believe the same concept applies to national citizenship. All right? So the child of at least one
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American parent is an American citizen. In like fashion, an adult who takes an oath of loyalty to the
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U .S. Constitution is also a citizen. And those are the only two ways, legitimate ways, that someone can become a citizen of the
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United States, or any other country. It was either take a citizenship oath, or be born to at least one parent who is a citizen.
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You know, this nonsense about coming into the, sneaking into the country illegally, having a child at taxpayer expense, and then presto chango, instant
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American citizen for whom you can request all the welfare benefits, is ridiculous.
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There's a gross abuse of American citizenship. There's a gross abuse of the American people.
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And it needs to stop. Now, Donald Trump talked a little bit about that when he was running for president.
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He hinted at it a little bit, but there was never really much follow -through. And I also remember the week before the congressional elections, this was back about a month ago, leading up to the midterm elections, he also mentioned it again right before those elections.
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Now, I haven't heard anything about it since then, and I don't know if there's really anything serious going on, whether that was something he just threw out as election fodder,
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I don't know. But this is an issue that needs to be looked at. And in my view, any sort of immigration reform has to include that.
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If it doesn't include that, it's a fraud. So that's about all
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I wanted to say about immigration for right now. And moving on to maybe the final topic of the week was the funeral for George H .W.
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Bush. Now, I'm going to admit, I'm not a big fan of the Bushes.
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And I'm certainly not a big fan of George H .W. Bush. He was a consummate deep stater.
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He was a CIA director. I didn't really realize, I didn't think that much about that back then. I voted for him back in 1988.
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And it's only been within the last few years that I've really come to appreciate the idea of the deep state, the idea of the globalists.
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I mean, of course, it was George H .W. Bush who introduced Americans to the term New World Order.
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Interestingly enough, I was looking at that this week, and I found that the actual speech that he gave, where he talked about the
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New World Order, was on September 11th. It was on 9 -11, 1991. So it was 10 years to the day before 9 -11, when the, of course, the attacks on the
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World Trade Center and the Pentagon took place. So yeah, he's not one of my favorite guys.
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He was a globalist. He also lost his re -election, and a lot of people will talk about, of course, he lost the 1992 election to Bill Clinton, George Bush, George H .W.
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Bush, 41. He was a one -term president.
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He was not re -elected for a second term. And most people think the reason he lost, and I think this is probably a fair assessment, is the fact that he reneged on his promise not to raise taxes.
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During the campaign in 1988, he famously said, read my lips, no new taxes.
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And then he went and he added new taxes. And then he got voted out, which I thought was pretty fair.
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So no, I'm not a big fan of George H .W. Bush. And I'm not a fan of the
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Bushes in general, I have to admit that. And I'm a Republican. But anyway, one of the things
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I wanted to comment on about that funeral was kind of an interesting dust -up with Donald Trump.
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There was, during the funeral that was held at the National Cathedral, there was a recitation of the
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Apostles' Creed. And the cameras noticed that all of the people sitting around Donald Trump, and I think that that was the the
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Obamas, the Clintons, all the people sitting around him went in and recited the
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Apostles' Creed, while Donald Trump and Melania Trump didn't. And here's a sort of a typical headline.
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I found this, this is from the Daily Mail. This is your Christian evangelical president. Trump is slammed for not reciting the
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Apostles' Creed during George H .W. Bush's funeral. It lists out some just quick bullet points here.
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Donald and Melania Trump did not recite the Apostles' Creed during George H .W. Bush's funeral on Wednesday. Video showed the first couple standing silent alongside three former presidents and first ladies as they all recited the creed.
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Ivanka Trump also read the prayer despite having converted to Judaism. The Apostles' Creed is considered
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Christianity's most core statement outlining the heart of Christian beliefs. Trump has said he's a Presbyterian and going to a
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Presbyterian church. Social media users pointed out the scene with some calling Trump a hypocrite for portraying himself as a devout evangelical
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Christian. Okay, so there are a lot of people who are upset that Trump on the one hand says that he's a
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Christian and on the other hand did not recite the Apostles' Creed. So here's my take on the
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Apostles' Creed. I don't recite the Apostles' Creed either and I don't refuse to cite the Apostles' Creed because I'm not a
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Christian. I refuse to recite the Apostles' Creed because I am a Christian. I think there's some very good reasons not to recite the
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Apostles' Creed. And by the way, it's not because I have an aversion to the concept of creeds or confessions.
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As a Presbyterian, I subscribe to Westminster standards. I think they're wonderful.
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So I don't have a problem with the idea of having doctrine written down, a summary of doctrine written down.
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My problem is with the Apostles' Creed itself. I think there's some very good reasons for not reciting it. Now I don't know why
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Trump didn't recite it. I don't know that I've seen an explanation for that. So it's hard to say exactly what his thinking was, why he didn't go along with saying that.
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But I think there are some very good reasons not to recite the Apostles' Creed. And I'm going to cite here, just going to read a few bullet points from an article.
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This is something that was published by the Trinity Foundation back in, wow, I think it was maybe 2003.
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Yeah, it was April 2003. It's a Trinity Review titled, Rethinking the Apostles' Creed.
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It's written by a gentleman named Clifton R. Loucks. I think I'm saying his name correctly.
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But the Apostles' Creed, he actually gives a very devastating critique of the
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Creed. And I want to read through for you just maybe a few of the reasons that he gives why this is a problem.
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He actually lists out 13 of them. I'll read through these briefly.
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Number one, the Creed is silent on Christ's satisfaction of the Father's justice. The term and concept of propitiation are absent.
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The Creed is silent on Christ's substitutionary death. The term and concept of atonement are absent.
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The Creed is silent on the purpose of Christ's death. His death is mentioned but as an historical event without an explanation of its meaning.
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It's not a Christian confession. The Pharisees also believe Christ died. Christians must confess
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Christ died for our sins. The Creed is silent on Scripture. In his summary of the
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Gospel, Paul wrote, Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. How can a Creed derive its authority from Scripture if it does not even mention it?
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Perhaps this is one reason why the Pope can confess the Apostles' Creed too. Belief in Scripture is omitted, but belief in the
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Holy Catholic Church is included. The Creed is silent on the inspiration of Scripture, the authority of Scripture, the sufficiency of Scripture, the necessity of Scripture, the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture, the perpiscuity, that is, the clarity of Scripture, the power of Scripture, the coherence of Scripture, etc.
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The Apostles' Creed describes the Catholic Church as holy, but not the Word of God. The Creed is silent on the
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Trinity. Although all three persons are mentioned, the unity of the Godhead is not expressed, and only one person is confessed as God.
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The Creed is so vague that its confessors may believe in three gods, or that only God the Father is
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God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are lesser beings. The Creed is silent on the
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Gospel. The term and concept are absent. It makes no reference to the method and means of salvation. Salvation by God's grace alone is not mentioned.
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The Creed is silent on justification by faith in Christ alone. One would think that a Creed would say something about justification and faith.
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The Apostles' Creed does not. The Creed is silent on predestination and election.
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It contains not even a hint of an eternal divine plan for the salvation of God's people. The Creed is silent on regeneration and sanctification, the new birth, and the
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Christian life. The Creed is silent on confession of sin to God and offers no definition of sin.
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The Creed mentions Pontius Pilate but is silent on the person of the Holy Spirit. I believe in the Holy Ghost and do not express much of anything.
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Would any listener figure out who he is or what he does? The Apostles' Creed does not even say that the Holy Ghost is
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God. Amazing, isn't it? Did I say amazing? I meant appalling. The Creed implies that only the
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Father is creator. John says, quote, all things were made by him, the Logos, end quote.
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Job in the Psalms proclaimed the Spirit made the heavens and all the hosts of them. So those were 13 reasons that Clifton Laux gave for, or 13 serious problems that Clifton Laux raised with the
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Apostles' Creed. There was actually some other ones, but those were some nice bullet points that he provided for the readers.
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I would really encourage you to read this article. Again, the title of this is Rethinking the Apostles' Creed. It's by Clifton R.
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Laux. His last name is spelled L -O -U -C -K -S. It's available on the Trinity Foundation website, and I'd really recommend that you read through that.
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I think it might give you a whole new, make you see the Apostles' Creed in a whole new light.
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Well, that about wraps it up for this week. I wanted to say thanks very much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you do, please let me know.
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I always enjoy listener feedback. So hopefully, like I say, this format, Lord will, it'll be something that I can use moving forward in weeks ahead.
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Again, thanks very much for listening. I really appreciate that. And join me again next time for the next episode of Radio Luke's Lucid. Until then, may the