On the Death of Fred Price

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Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture and media from a Reformed perspective.
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Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
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Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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According to reports in the news, this past weekend, February 14th, Valentine's Day, was the day of the passing of Frederick Price.
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And on today's program, I want to talk about Price, I want to talk about my experience with his ministry and the things that he taught, and I want to talk about the fact that according to reports, some are saying he didn't actually die of the disease, but he chose to basically chose to let himself pass away.
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And I think the whole situation is interesting.
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I thought it would be important to talk about on the program today.
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And but I want to, again, I want to sort of preface this by saying, I want to, I'm going to be careful with my language today, because of course, Frederick Price had a family, he had people who loved him, he had people who thought he was a man of God.
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I personally think that he was a false teacher.
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I've spoken about some of his false teachings in the past.
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And so personally, I think he was, in regard to his biblical teaching, in error.
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I think he was a ultimately a dangerous teacher because he held to the prosperity gospel.
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And this is not something that is a secret.
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In fact, one of the sort of the jokes that would often come up is that the two of the most famous prosperity preachers have names that are aptly given, Frederick Price and Creflo Dollar, you know, Price and Dollar, both, of course, being referential to money.
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And so the idea that Freddie Price is a prosperity preacher should not come as a surprise for me to say that to anyone.
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And anyone who thinks that it is that somehow I'm being, you know, kind of negative and speaking about him in a bad way after his death, understand, I, again, I understand he was a man, he was a soul, he was a person who had a family and his family loved him.
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So I'm sure there's grief there.
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And I'm not intending to add to grief, but I want to make a few points about Frederick Price and his passing that I think are important for us to all consider.
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The first thing, just I'm going to read from the New York Times or I'm sorry, the L.A.
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Times article.
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It says the Reverend Frederick Casey Price, a televangelist who founded the Crenshaw Christian Center, a South Los Angeles megachurch with a 10,000 seat sanctuary, died Friday from COVID-19.
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He was 89.
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His family said he had been in the hospital suffering from the virus infection for the last five weeks.
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And then it goes on to talk about his ministry and the things he did there at the Crenshaw Christian Center.
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There's even a picture of him in the L.A.
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Times sitting next to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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So apparently he was not only a man who had a large church, but he had obviously had ties to the political community as well.
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He's sitting alongside the former governor of the state of California.
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So just kind of from the outset, I want to address this issue of the fact that often in prosperity gospel circles, there is this concept that if you have enough faith that you're always going to be healed.
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I've heard this from several people.
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You know, the only reason people get sick, the only reason why people have sicknesses is because they don't have enough faith.
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I remember hearing a very famous televangelist one time say that he never got sick.
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He hadn't had a cold in decades.
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He never got sick.
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He never felt bad because he woke up every morning and he proclaimed his own health.
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And because he was naming and claiming his health and naming and claiming his physical as well as financial prosperity, that he was going to not endure sickness.
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He was not going to endure any kind of dangerous attacks against his health.
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But of course, it's just not true.
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Everyone gets sick from the person with the most faith to the person with the least faith.
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Everyone has to deal with sickness.
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Everyone has to deal with pain and suffering.
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In fact, the Bible tells us that believers are going to suffer.
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And I think some of that includes sometimes physical sicknesses and things like that, that we are not going to be immune from them.
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But even more so, the grim specter of death resides over everyone.
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No one is going to escape death.
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You know, from a historical perspective, only two men that we know of biblically didn't die.
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They were translated into eternity.
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One was Enoch and the other was Elijah.
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Aside from that, everybody dies.
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And so Frederick Price is a testimony to a person who said, you know, they believed in prosperity, they believed in health and wealth, and yet they died.
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And so that's an important reality for us to consider.
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Now, again, going back to what some of the reports that came out said that his spokesman or family or whatever said that he didn't actually die of the disease or he did, but he made the choice to die of the disease.
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As if he had the power, as if he had the, as it were, the ability to name and claim the way in which he would die.
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And outside of the Lord Jesus Christ, I don't believe any of us are able to name and claim the exact way that we are going to die.
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You know, the Lord Jesus said, no man takes my life from me.
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I lay it down on my own accord.
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And he did.
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The Bible says when he was on the cross, he gave up the ghost.
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He gave up his spirit.
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And so in that sense, Jesus made the ability or had the ability to make the proclamation of when he would die and how he would die.
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But aside from that, the idea that we have the power to proclaim our own death and when we're going to die and those things, I think that is a myth of the false prosperity gospel.
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I think it's a myth to understand it that way.
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And I certainly don't think that's what happened here with Freddie Price.
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I think Freddie Price got COVID-19.
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Apparently, according to one of the articles I was reading, his church was a center where people came to get testing.
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So it's likely that there was people who were infected who were coming.
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And so this may have led to his receiving of the disease.
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I don't know that.
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I'm just sort of speculating at that point that if his church is a place where people are coming to get tested, certainly people who come to get tested often have symptoms and sickness.
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And there's all kinds of reasons why he may have gotten the disease.
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And no one, I don't want anyone to get this terrible disease.
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Even people who I would be opposed to, I don't want anybody to get a disease.
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I don't want anybody to get sick.
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I don't want anybody to suffer.
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I don't want anybody to undergo this pandemic.
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It's an awful thing.
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And so, in that sense, I feel bad that whatever led to him receiving this disease, that's a bad thing.
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But for a health and wealth preacher to undergo sickness and then to ultimately succumb to that sickness is a testimony to the fact that the health and wealth prosperity movement, the prosperity, quote unquote, gospel, end quote, is a false teaching.
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And if this is not enough to remind us of that and convince us of that, I don't know what else could be.
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It has been shown over and over and over again that men like Freddy Price, who are preaching a false gospel of prosperity, are not preaching the gospel that Jesus Christ taught.
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They are not preaching the truth.
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And again, I mean, just thinking back over some of the things that Fred Price has said over the years, I remember specifically one of the things he said, he said, quote, if it be thy will or thy will be done, if you have to say that, then you're calling God a fool, end quote.
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That's a quote from TBN, November 16th, 1990, when he was basically saying, any of us who pray, if it's God's will, then let it be done.
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Anybody who prays that is a fool.
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And then, of course, you go to the Bible and you find out that actually we're commanded to say just that.
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In James chapter four, it tells us, you know, some are going to say today or tomorrow, we're going to go here or there, do this or that.
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And yet what we should say is, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.
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Why? Because ultimately it is in the hands of the Lord.
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We cannot command the Lord.
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God does not bear the burden of bowing to my will.
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God is under no obligation to listen to my demands.
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God is sovereign and I submit to him.
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He does not submit to me.
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And if nothing else in the scripture should tell us that we should be praying, thy will be done, it's when Jesus was the night before his crucifixion.
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He says, Father, not my will, but thine be done.
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And, of course, that, you know, the prosperity gospel preachers try to explain that away.
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Even Freddie Price tried to explain that away.
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He explains it away as essentially, from what I understand, Jesus had died spiritually at that point before he went to the cross.
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And so there's this understanding that Jesus had basically given up faith at that point.
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It's such a strange doctrine because you have to contort the scriptures to arrive at a prosperity position.
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And that's what men like Freddie Price and others have done.
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They have made their life, and many times their very extravagant lives, by twisting, contorting, and manipulating the scripture to say things that it never intended us to believe.
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And that's where I want to bring in, I said earlier I had my own experience with Freddie Price, and I want to talk about that today.
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And that's where I'm going to draw the program to a close.
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I want to tell a story.
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Several years ago, and I'm thinking probably about 12, 13 years ago, it's been many, many moons, I was hosting an in-home Bible study.
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I was talking to a group of young people, and at that time I had satellite television.
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And when I had satellite television, I had all of the religious stations.
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So everything from the Mormon channel to the Roman Catholic channel to, I mean, there was a station for every faith and every denomination had a station.
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And of course, there were multiple versions of TBN, which is the Trinity Broadcasting Network, which is known for promoting false teachers and particularly health and wealth prosperity teachers.
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And I said to the group of young people that were at my home, I said at any time during the day, I can turn on my television set and pull up someone teaching false theology, someone teaching a false gospel.
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And they said, oh no, you're exaggerating.
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That's not real.
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It's not that prominent.
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And I said, well, let me just see if I can prove myself correct.
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And I pulled out my television remote.
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I turned on the TV and I went right to the, there was a block of Christian channels and I went to the Christian channels.
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And lo and behold, the first one that came up was Freddie Price.
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Now at that point, I didn't know who Frederick Price was.
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I don't even think I'd ever heard his name.
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Again, this was a long time ago.
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And, but I just said, well, let's listen to what this guy has to say.
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I just saw this man on the television preaching.
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I said, I don't know what he's going to say, but for the next five minutes, let's listen to his message and see if what he's preaching is gospel and Christocentric, if it's based on Christ, or let's see if he preaches something that's false and ungodly.
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And so we started to listen.
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And wouldn't you know it, it didn't take 30 seconds before the sermon that we were listening to, quote unquote, sermon, went directly into the area of horrendous false teaching.
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And what Frederick Price said was this, I'll never forget.
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He said to his congregation of thousands of people sitting in the audience, he said, I know some of you are upset that I have a new black Maserati in the that I, I bought that black Maserati with my own money.
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And I want you to know that this very morning, I put $10,000 in the offering plate.
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And unless you match my $10,000 offering into the offering plate, then you shouldn't have anything to say about my black Maserati.
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That was Freddie Price.
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That was his statement.
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So again, what do we think about a statement like that? What do we think about someone who would announce to his congregation, yes, I have this very expensive vehicle.
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But I give more than you.
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So you shouldn't have any word to say about my vehicle.
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I give more than you did.
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Therefore, you shouldn't have anything to say.
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Well, you know, when I was talking to the kids in that youth group, not when they weren't kids or young adults, but we were talking, I mean, they were all amazed.
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Couldn't believe that a man who was supposed to be preaching would say such a thing.
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And I just remember saying, this is an example of the prosperity gospel that has risen.
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And it is a gospel of not only financial prosperity, but it's often a gospel of great hubris, great pride.
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I'm not going to get sick.
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I'm not going to be poor.
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I'm not going to suffer because I'm a quote unquote, child of the king, or I'm a son of God or whatever.
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And it just leads to many false understandings of God and many false understandings of what it means to be part of the family of God.
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So my thoughts on the passing of Freddie Price is that he was a man who taught falsely about the gospel.
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He is a man who taught falsely about the way in which and how a person is to understand their relationship with God.
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And therefore, I would be very concerned about the state of Freddie's soul.
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And again, I say that knowing that he has family who was grieving, and I know that they're likely been misled by him, misunderstanding a lot about the gospel and a lot of where we place our hope.
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So I would pray for his family.
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I would pray that they would have a change of heart if they do believe his false theology.
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And again, I would pray that anyone who has been misled by Freddie Price's teaching would repent and would come out of that.
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One of the things in our world is oftentimes when someone dies, we feel the necessity to justify everything they did to try to find some way to say, oh, but he was still a good man, even though.
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And that's not what I'm going to do today.
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I'm going to say this.
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I'm going to say it's sad that a man has died of COVID.
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It's sad that the situation arose that led to his death, and it's sad that his family is grieving, but there is no justification in life or in death for preaching a false gospel.
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And that's my word for today.
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So thank you for listening today to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.
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May God bless you.
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As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
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May God be with you.