News Roundup: Is the New Pope Leftist? The ERLC's Future & Solutions to Our Social Crisis

Conversations That Matter

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Reading and the gospel make very clear a message which

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Pope Francis has been hammering home time and again since his very first trip as Pope, when he went to this little community, an island in Southern Italy, the town of Lampedusa, where all these immigrants continue to come.

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It's a huge problem, and it's a problem worldwide, not only in this country. There's gotta be a way both to solve the problem, but also to treat people with respect.

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Every one of us, whether we were born in the United States of America or on the

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North Pole, we all are given that gift of being created, the image and likeness of God.

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And the day we forget that is the day we forget who we are. We forget who

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Christ has called us to be. All right, welcome to the

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Conversations That Matter podcast. That was the new Pope, the new Pope who was elected yesterday around this time, actually,

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I think it was. So about 24 hours after he made the announcement and the

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Vatican made the announcement. And it's Pope Leo XIV. The last Pope Leo, Pope Leo XIII was

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Pope in the late 1800s. And actually some of his encyclicals are some of the earliest, at least

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English translations of them are some of the earliest references to social justice. So like Rerum Novarum, I think is the most popular or famous one.

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I remember doing my book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict. I had to talk about Rerum Novarum, if I'm pronouncing that right, it's in Latin, of course.

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But this was the previous Pope Leo. And it's funny because that term was, there was an attempt to reappropriate that term, to rescue that term from the clutches of the left.

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I remember even Al Mohler was in on that maybe 15 years ago, Heritage Foundation did this whole thing. Social justice is good.

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And it's going back to this Catholic social teaching. And it's different than what

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Walter Rauschenbusch and others brought with them to the United States from England, which was a

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Fabian socialism that they seemed to like, but they realized, oh, you can't do that in the United States. It's too associated with atheism.

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So let's call it, I don't know, social justice. Christian nationalism, by the way, was another word that was used to describe it.

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Fun fact. But anyway, we're not here to talk about that. We're here to talk about this Pope Leo, Pope Leo XIV.

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And this particular Pope Leo, let's just say, I'm not sure this is a great improvement over Pope Francis from what

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I've seen online. And I'll show you some of that as the program unfolds, but you never know.

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And there's some conservative Catholics out there, some trad cats out there saying, no, this is great.

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Just wait, it's gonna be okay. This is way better than Pope Francis. I don't know why they're saying that.

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I haven't actually been able to sink my teeth into anything substantial, except for the fact that, well, his immigration stuff is kind of understandable given his context.

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I mean, he was in South America. And well, he's also not quite as, he's actually opposed to Pope Francis on a few things.

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So he's not quite as to the left as Pope Francis was. It could be, it could be.

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And there's talk amongst some insiders that this was somewhat of a compromise and that the pendulum is swinging back towards conservative or traditional church doctrine, including on social teaching.

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And we just have to wait. If we just wait and be patient, the Pope after this is gonna even be more conservative.

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And I just think, guys, I think you gotta deal with the Pope that's in front of you if you're a Roman Catholic.

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I understand the wanting it to be different. I understand the coping mechanisms. And I understand,

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I understand, I get it. He is the Pope though. And I still have to ask the question, is the

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Pope Catholic? Because that was, I mean, with Pope Francis, you didn't even have to argue with Catholics.

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You just whip out a picture of Pope Francis, at least if you're online, and just say, this is your Pope. Conservative ones, at least.

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You know, if they start criticizing Protestantism, which is a very common thing, by the way. Roman Catholic intellectuals and Eastern Orthodox intellectuals love to blame

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Protestantism for liberalism. Say, that's when it all went downhill. Luther just broke the authority of the church.

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And because the church authority was broken, we have chaos everywhere. But everyone can just interpret the Bible how they want.

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And that means they can just do whatever they want. They can switch genders if they want, right? This is the essence of Protestantism.

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And obviously Protestants say that's not exactly right. In fact,

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Luther didn't want to create a new church. He wasn't trying to do anything innovative. In fact, he was saying the

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Roman Catholics were becoming innovative and he wanted to go back to right, good, and true tradition.

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And that's exactly what Protestants have been saying ever since then. That they obviously, they claim to be more in keeping with the true church.

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And so the battle is really, that's a sidestep, that objection to the real battle. Because the battle is over whether or not the doctrine of the

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Catholic church today, the Roman Catholic church, is in accord with the apostolic tradition and the scriptures, of course, being the prime authority there, the final authority.

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So that is the question. And these turf wars don't necessarily get into that.

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But I do think it is telling that you have Pope Francis and Pope Leo, and both of them certainly progressive on some social issues, which

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I will show you as the program unfolds. Romans eight, I believe is correct.

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They're saying it because they're coping. I think you're right. Didn't this new Pope defend a

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Como Bishop? A Como, I'm not sure exactly what that's referring to.

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Sorry. Christian nationalism was called patriotic in the 80s, Martin Campos says.

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You know, I didn't see the term Christian nationalism come up during that time period when I was studying it, but could be.

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Conceptual clarity, the Catholics have quit electing spiritual leaders and are now on their second straight politician

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Pope. You know, that's a good point. And I think that's probably true. I think there's a lot of politicking going on.

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And that's true. I don't know what to say against that. I don't know of any objection to that.

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We'll get into it. I want to talk about, let's see, let's do this stuff first.

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Let's do the Twitter stuff. We'll get to the hot stuff. And then I'll read you an article about this from the Christian Post.

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But of course you already heard, it was very low tone, but you did hear at the beginning of this program,

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Pope Leo saying essentially, hey, I agree with what Pope Francis is saying about immigration.

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And it's just terrible what's happening to the immigrants out there. And of course he makes the Russell Moore, Tim Keller argument that this is about the

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Imago Dei guys. This is the image of God. I mean, how does he sound any different than Russell Moore? And I'm sorry,

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Catholics, Russell Moore does not bind any Protestants to anything because we don't have a Pope, but the

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Pope kind of does. And I know he's not speaking ex cathedra or however you pronounce that. I've heard it pronounced two different ways, but I say ex cathedra.

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He's not doing it with the authority that's on par with the tradition in scripture necessarily.

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But come on. I mean, Pope Francis said that you could or should bless same -sex unions.

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There's some kind of a blessing, not marriages, but it's really weird, really weird halfway measure that an atheist could be in heaven because really it's just good people that go to heaven.

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He's constantly hammering the United States, but ignoring China. You wanna talk about quote unquote human rights violations.

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I mean, come on. But that was Pope Francis, right? And we could go on and on about Pope Francis. I mean, he came to the

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United States and gave Nancy Pelosi of all people, the communion when her own local

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Bishop did not want to give her communion. He just went rough shot over that and signaled, yeah, we'll support her even though she is a horror show when it comes to her ethics, not in keeping with Catholic doctrine at all, radically pro -abortion, radically pro -LGBT.

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But you know what? We're just gonna sidestep all that because I'm the Pope. Don't tell me that doesn't affect the

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Catholic church. It certainly does. And there's more than a few Catholics out there that would love to blur the lines on these things so they can have their cake and eat it.

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They wanna be able to be thought of as good Catholics and go to church maybe, maybe on just Christmas and Easter.

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I don't know, but at least they wanna be able to go there when they wanna go there, be seen there. It's a cultural thing, a family thing perhaps.

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It's maybe a status symbol in the community and they want that status symbol. They wanna be thought of as a good person but at the same time,

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I mean, how can I politically navigate this environment with these antiquated beliefs that they have? And how can

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I navigate my personal life when I want to have unlimited sexual exposure and experience?

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I don't wanna be a Catholic. So they'd love to blur the lines in those things. There's no doubt about it. Anyway, let's show you some

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Pope Francis. Sorry, I'm still getting confused here. I'm getting adjusted to Pope Leo. Let's show you

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Cardinal Prevost, Robert Prevost. That's his actual name. He's from Chicago. He's the first American Pope.

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Let's show you some of the things. This is just some of the things that he has put on social media. So this is on his ex account.

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I mean, can you imagine this? Is this the first Pope with an ex account with a social media account?

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I don't know. It may be. Here we have Robert Prevost retweeting

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Bishop Burbidge. And this is, I think this year, May 20th.

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We continue to, no, sorry. This would have had to have been 2020. We continue to pray for Mr. George Floyd and his family.

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In his honor, as we prepare for Pentecost, we ask the Holy Spirit to unite us and heal our wounds. May all hatred, violence, and prejudice be eradicated so that we may live in harmony and in the peace of our

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Lord Jesus. Interesting. We also have around the same time,

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Robert Prevost, Publio, retweeting Bishop Michael Olson. I join my voice in prayers to those of my brother bishops that we might work hard to end racism in our hearts and in society.

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May God give comfort to the family of George Floyd in this time of anguish. We got recently

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Robert Prevost saying JD Vance is wrong. Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our loves for others.

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Talking about the Ordo Amoris doctrine. JD Vance, of course, is Roman Catholic. And he was just going back to this guy named

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St. Augustine and what he said about the order of loves, which is a Christian doctrine. It's certainly in the teachings of Christ.

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The Good Samaritan is part of that. It was the person you're in proximity to, the person you meet on the road.

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That's who you have a responsibility towards. It's Jesus himself, wept over Jerusalem.

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What did he say to the Syrophoenician woman, right? He came to the Jews first. And you see this theme throughout all of scripture.

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There is nothing out of step with Jesus saying, look, fathers have responsibilities to their kids.

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Even the evil father gives his kids a fish when he asked for fish and not a snake. Even the rich man in Lazarus parable, what does the rich man do?

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He's on his way to hell, but look what he wants to do. Hey, can you help the whole world? No, can you help my family?

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And this is, I don't even know what to say. Obviously the Ordo Amoris has been in Roman Catholic and just broadly

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Christian doctrine for a long time. It is common sense on top of that.

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But here we have the current Pope saying, hey, J .D. Vance is wrong about this. And of course, which is all linked to immigration policy.

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Who should we care about? The person we don't know, the person we don't share a language and a culture and responsibility towards, or the person that we do share those things with.

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And of course, there's a strain of Christianity now that wants to just be radical and revolutionary and consider first those whom we have less in common with and less actual obligation to.

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Robert Prevost also said Pope Francis's letter. This is kind of the same thing. J .D. Vance's Ordo Amoris and what the gospel asks of us all on immigration.

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It's just a supportive post to back up what Pope Francis was saying about immigration in the

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United States and his chiding of President Donald Trump and the immigration policies of Donald Trump. So this is what's going on out there.

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This is what Robert Prevost, Pope Leo, the new Pope believes. He is not by any stretch of the imagination, politically conservative.

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Don't get excited about this. I do see some Catholics out there getting really excited. Even pro -life folks, pro -life activists.

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I don't quite understand it. I don't, maybe it's just because Pope Francis was so bad, but don't get too excited about this.

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This is an article. This is from the Christian Post I thought was helpful. It's pretty much a summary, but it's five things to know about Pope Leo the 14th, who is the 267th

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Pope of the Roman Catholic Church. And he is 69 years old and he is the first American Pope.

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He's from Chicago. He was in the order of St. Augustine. Now maybe that should get some Protestants excited because you know who else was in the order of St.

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Augustine. That's right, Martin Luther. Martin Luther was in the order of St. Augustine. And he also spent a considerable amount of time in Latin America.

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He was a missionary there, a priest down there. And this is possibly part of why he has this social justice bent because in Latin America, for those who are familiar,

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Roman Catholic teaching came from, social justice teaching came from that area of the world.

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And so going to a place like Peru, spending as much time there as he did, I'm sure he got a full dose of social justice.

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He opposes female deacons, but has mixed views on LGBT issues, the article says. I wanna read this to you.

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He said, after Pope Francis authorized priests to bless same -sex couples in 2023, that African bishops who pushed back against the move were,

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I guess, okay, but this is what his quote is. It wasn't rejecting the teaching authority of Rome. It was saying that our cultural situation is such that the application of this document is just not going to work.

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You have to remember, there are still places in Africa that apply the death penalty, for example, to people who are living in homosexual relationships.

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So we're in very different worlds. Each Episcopal conference needs to have a certain authority in terms of saying, how are we going to understand this in the concrete reality in which we're living?

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Now, I'm sorry, there are certain things that are very specific to context. There are certain universal principles you apply in different ways, in different contexts.

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This ain't one of them. Marriage is universal across time and space. It's a heterosexual union.

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It is not homosexual. And of course, this is maybe not marriage. This is a couple, but any sexual relationship, any kind of partnership that is romantic in nature ought to be marriage.

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I mean, it's almost doubly bad. Can I say that, doubly bad? It's worse for Pope Francis to say, hey, look,

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I'm just going to ensure that it's same -sex unions that are blessed, not same -sex marriages.

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Well, what are you doing? You're blessing these romantic unions that don't exist in the context of marriage.

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I mean, isn't that against Catholic doctrine too? But here we have the current Pope Leo, supposedly giving an argument against this, supposedly being judicious and more conservative.

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And isn't he better than Pope Francis? And yet, what we have here is the words of a politician. That's what I see here.

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Africa's got its different cultural sensibilities and the local people, they need to interpret for themselves what this means.

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And we could do that on anything, I suppose. This was the time to actually take a whack at what

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Pope Francis was saying. And he didn't do it. In my opinion, this is swing and miss. And I understand politics, but look, this is a non -negotiable if you're a

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Roman Catholic. Five things to know about Pope Leo XIV continued. He has expressed concern over Trump's immigration policies.

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I showed you some of that. And it gets into that a little bit. And then he has faced allegations of not responding adequately to sex abuse allegations.

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I don't know as much about this, but the article says that Prevost becoming Pope began to emerge that there was a publication,

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Info Vaticana, they reported on the contents of a March, 2024 letter to Pope Francis.

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The correspondence maintains that during his tenure as Bishop of Chicaloi, I can't say it,

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Chicleo. I think that's how you say it, Chicleo. I think that's in Peru. The future Pope took no action against a priest who allegedly sexually assaulted three minors.

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So anyway, they paid the diocese 150 ,000 to abuse victims.

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Now, if that's true, this does sound to me, again, like you probably have a politician.

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And to even navigate that whole situation, to get elected to this position, you have to be,

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I think, somewhat of a politician. There's no doubt about that in my mind. And whoever they were gonna get was going to be someone who has to have a broad appeal, and to have a broad appeal across all the various factions.

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I know the Roman Catholic Church isn't supposed to be faction, they totally are. You have to be able to navigate that in a very prudent way.

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And normally that means you're not gonna be taking very hard stands. It's not the good kind of prudence, it's more like a cunningness,

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I would say, that you have to have. I'm not very positive about this. I understand, oh, he's the first American Pope, he's from Chicago, isn't this great?

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No, I don't think it's great. I'm not a Roman Catholic though, so I don't have to really deal with them. And the question I have is do Roman Catholics in the

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United States even really care that much? I don't know, I really don't know. I mean,

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I think this does pull the Roman Catholic world in a direction, but I just don't know to what extent.

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I'm not a Roman Catholic though. Maybe a Roman Catholic who's listening, I know I have a few Catholics who listen in the audience, maybe they can weigh in.

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But I wouldn't be too excited about this guy. In order to stop what was going on in the

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Catholic church, you would have to have someone that I think was willing to really take a hard stand and this just ain't it.

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Now, switching gears. Now, before I switch gears, let's see if there's any comments on here. Conceptual Clarity says some

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Catholics are excited because they have good reason to hope he will be much more tolerant of the Latin mass than Francis was. Oh, that's a good point, yeah.

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He might be more traditional and that's another thing to look at. I mean, yes, conservatism politically and religiously, there's a whole different set of issues sometimes, even though there's overlap.

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So being more traditional in the Catholic sense means supporting a more Latin mass. Pre -Vatican

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II stuff, maybe he'll be more traditional in that sense. That's a good point.

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I don't know enough about it. The recent popes have been pro -illegal aliens at least, says

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Ann. How does this election play in eschatology? Oh, well,

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I'm sure that there's a lot of people speculating, I try not to, about that kind of thing. Of course,

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I mean, you had reformers referring to the Pope as the Antichrist. And one of the things about the

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Pope, I remember even at a young age, I was told is, hey, the Antichrist doesn't have a desire for women, so that must be the

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Pope. And the 10 Nation Confederacy, that's gotta be like European Union or something, because you do all these things.

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I don't do any of that. I've never really had done any of that. I've never been interested in any of that. And I don't think the

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Pope is, this particular Pope is, there's nothing about him that would indicate to me that he is necessarily the

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Antichrist in the pre -millennial scheme. All right, well, let's switch gears.

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I wanna talk about, oh, and I'll say one last thing about eschatology for those who are curious. I am gonna do a series on eschatology at some point.

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There's a bunch of series, right? So if you're a patron, you know that I am going to be doing a great book series on Anglo -American conservative thinkers, mostly

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American, but I am sneaking Edmund Burke in there because I kind of have to. And that is gonna be the first book, Reflections on the

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Revolution in France. I love Edmund Burke. He is one of my favorite thinkers of all time, political thinkers.

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He's just, I love him. And I know there's guys who don't, but I love him. And I'm looking forward to this.

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I think we're doing that in maybe two weeks and it's for patrons only. It's exclusive. This will not be exclusive though.

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I am planning on doing a series on different eschatological views. And I already confirmed someone from the dispensational perspective.

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And I'm really looking forward to that because there's, I think, especially dispensationalism and post -millennialism, both of those views are so charactered that, and I have done a little study.

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I mean, I went to seminary and had to study these things, but the little study that I've done, I just know that 90 % of what

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I see on X is garbage, especially on dispensationalism. But both of them, it's just garbage. It's people who don't understand the systems or just they already have a preconceived framework they're working from and they want to fit dispensationalism or post -millennialism into that.

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These are actually both serious views that should be taken seriously. And I intend to do that.

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I realize some people have a problem with that, but I don't. I think all the views on eschatology actually have points to be made.

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And I think that certain ones are stronger than others, but I think it's going to be a good, informative kind of series.

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So moving on though, we got to talk about the ERLC. Yeah, I knew this. Romans 8 saying, yeah, dispensationalism is not serious view, actually.

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I mean, I know. I mean, that's the view that's out there. There's scholars though who, that's the thing.

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You have to separate the pop level kind of stuff, the John Hagee stuff, when people roll their eyes when they hear, okay,

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John Hagee, right, from what serious scholars in the field are doing. People from Dallas Theological Seminary, people from,

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I'm trying to even think who else. There's not really like big dispensational seminaries other than Dallas, probably.

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I mean, I don't think the master seminary is that big, but I don't know. I'd have to look it up. But there certainly are guys who have done some good work.

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I've been actually going through slowly a book on historic pre -mill. And they trace, in the first chapter, it traces some of this out, including the history of dispensationalism and fascinating stuff.

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And it's, I just don't, I think if we're gonna represent these views, we gotta do it accurately, okay? That's my big thing.

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Do it accurately. And if you wanna destroy them, if you wanna go after them, absolutely, go ahead, have at it.

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But make sure that you're being accurate and it's not just straw men and cartoons. Because if you just go after straw men and cartoons, you're not helping anyone in those views.

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They're gonna be more rigid in their views because they realized they were just misrepresented. So steel man them.

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That's what we're gonna do on the podcast. We're gonna steel man some stuff. So yes, Pastor Michael Grant says that master's is dispensational, right?

23:52

I just don't, I don't know. Yeah, like I was thinking of a scholarship, like, okay, I'm getting into hot water here now.

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Is math, do I think of master's as like a big place for scholarship and stuff? In the academic world, it's not considered that.

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But yes, there is scholarship going on there. So anyway, I better get moving until before I get into some real problems here.

24:16

All right, we're gonna talk, we're gonna switch gears and talk about the ERLC, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

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Now, off the top of my head, the ERLC, I mean, I've tracked these guys for so long in the

24:27

Southern Baptist Convention. They are the most liberal entity in that denomination, the most progressive entity.

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They have been for a long time. It's debatable whether Southeastern at one time was a more trending left, but I think it's over the course of time, the

24:42

ERLC has been consistently more moving the needle in the leftist direction. And there's so many examples of that under Russell Moore, but under even

24:50

Bretton Leatherwood, who is sort of the Moore protege who's running the ERLC now. They push for red flag laws in the state of Tennessee.

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They have, they're the ones trying to block this transgender manifesto from coming out. So you didn't know what the motive was.

25:06

That was a big thing for Brent Leatherwood for some odd reason. And I think they claim no ERLC money went to it.

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Meanwhile, it's, I think in the ERLC, it might've been in their building, but their staff is all around. Brent Leatherwood, he thinks

25:19

Biden was, so he respects Biden. Biden's so brave for stepping down and all this. And it's just, it is a weird kind of signaling to the left, complimenting the left when there's really nothing to compliment there.

25:32

They foiled the pro, or I say pro -life, but really the equal protection.

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I think that's the term that a lot of the abolitionists are using, that this measure that would have essentially made abortion murder and the penalties for murder would have been the same, but the abortions murder in the state of Louisiana in 2022.

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And what didn't you know, Brent Leatherwood and the ERLC decided to file an amicus brief or join in the filing of,

25:57

I think it was an amicus brief, to say, we oppose this. We're not for this. We are against mothers being punished for killing their children.

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I mean, and the list just goes on. I mean, this is Brent Leatherwood's ERLC. It is certainly not anything conservative.

26:12

And I think last year, this scared some people because Tom Askell kind of on a whim decided, you know what, let's vote to end the

26:20

ERLC, or at least vote to look at whether or not the ERLC should be ended, and we'll come back next year, re -evaluate it.

26:27

And of course, Brent Leatherwood made an impassioned speech and Tom Askell's measure failed, but it got something like 38%, 40 % of the room.

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It was scary for them. They thought, man, this is like the closest they've ever come. And the conservatives generally have about a third of that room.

26:44

That's generally, and they can't seem to break out of that margin too often. The closest they got was the Mike Stone election.

26:50

But I think even then they're running in like the, you know, the 40, 48%.

26:57

They can't quite do it. And it's a complicated kind of math. That room, you have a certain factor, maybe a third of the people that are bound to, it's like voting.

27:08

If you're in the federal government, it's like voting against IRS employees, right? These guys are employed by NAM, by AIMB.

27:17

They're going to vote with the platform and they're already there. And then you have about a third who are more kind of like our guys.

27:23

They're more conservative. They want to see reform. And then you have this third that they're not really in the middle.

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They are more towards the left, but they're not aware. They're low information voters.

27:35

This is obviously very rough, but they're low information voters. And it depends on the issue kind of where they come down.

27:41

But most of the time they come down more on the left and they go with the platform. So generally speaking, about two thirds of that room that are going to go with the platform.

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This broke that a little bit. This got out of hand. Only 60 % of the room was for keeping the

27:56

ERLC or at least not examining whether they should be kept and coming back in a year and evaluating that.

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So with that, I think in mind, there was this post in this article from Daniel Darling.

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Here's the post. How ironic it is that while the current ERLC administration has prioritized defunding Planned Parenthood, some in our convention want to defund the

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ERLC. This is from Richard Land, the first president of the ERLC before it was the,

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I think the Christian Life Commission. And then Daniel Darling says prescient words in light of what we learned from live action and Lila Grace Rose yesterday about Planned Parenthood.

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I think what they did was they just, they dropped some information suggesting that Planned Parenthood is doing more abortions, about a thousand,

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I think a day, they said in the United States and less of the women's health things that they supposedly do and they should be defunded.

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So Daniel Darling is saying, hey, if you want to defund Planned Parenthood, check out this article from Richard Land from Baptist Press.

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It'll tell you that it should be defunded. And I don't really even want to read this to you because it's just, it's so typical political speak.

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It's trying to persuade you that the ERLC is this great organization that's done great work.

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They, it talks about issues. It doesn't really give specific examples. And I think that's my main gripe.

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So what are the big wins here? If they are simply, and he quotes Edmund Burke, he's really trying to get me on board.

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Man, history is a pack between the dead, the living and the yet to be the unborn. Oh my goodness, that is like my quote right there.

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I mean, I'm almost, he's really pulling the strings here. Anyway, he's saying that, look, we've got this responsibility.

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You've got this obligation, Southern Baptist, to keep this going. It's been going for however many years in the form of the

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Christian Life Commission. I don't even remember when that started in the late 60s, 70s, but it's been going.

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We've been having this presence in the political sphere, but he can't, he doesn't name any big wins.

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Nothing recent. There's nothing here. It's just, we need to be involved in politics.

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The church needs to be involved. That's basically the argument here and Southern Baptist are no exception. Well, I agree. They do need to be involved.

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The problem is the ERLC stinks at the way they involve themselves and it pushes the needle in the opposite direction.

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If you had a team that kicked the ball into the other guy's net and symbolically said, well, you know, we'd really like to get it in, sorry, not to their net.

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You had a team that kicked the ball into their net and they, in a soccer team, and they say, you know, I'd really love to kick it into the other team's net and let's get together and talk about it.

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Let's have some symbolic gestures that they never really do anything substantial, hardly at all.

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I mean, they do, they kick more goals into their own net than the enemy team.

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Is it worth it? Is it worth it to have that team? I mean, you might as well get rid of them and not play the game.

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So this is basically an argument. You got to play the game. Southern Baptist got to be in the game. It's like, okay, yeah, but our team is kicking the ball into our net and they're doing it more times than they are into the other guy's net.

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Why play the game? If you want to play the game, then you're going to have to figure out,

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A, a way to reform the ERLC. That means clean house there. There's no way to do that.

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There's no mechanism to do that. Conservatives haven't been able to get the presidency. Clint Presley is, some conservatives kind of like him, but I think it's like Pope Francis.

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It's like, oh, the others are so bad. What has Clint Presley done substantially other than,

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I mean, maybe he's gotten a few guys on some committees, but he's still shading or shielding the entities from actual accountability.

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I'm not, I had guys telling me before the election, you know, Clint's our guy kind of thing. No, I don't think he is our guy.

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I don't think he is our guy. That's the closest we've been able to get too, right? So you're not going to get a clean house at the

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ERLC. You've got a sort of a yes man, a politician type guy in the position of president.

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And you would need a continuation of presidents to be able to do that. Multiple presidents over multiple years.

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ERLC has been bad forever. So you either do that, or you could disband the ERLC. That might be the best way to, by the way, do this.

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Disband them. And then later on, when you have better leadership, maybe then examine what you can do to have an influence in Washington, DC or wherever.

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But by that, but you sidestep the whole like trying to sort of inch by inch get your way in this organization.

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You could just wholesale get rid of it and may later on start from scratch, contingent on whether you can get an actual good president.

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But right now it's like you're in a boat. You gotta stop the leaking, right? You gotta stop the leaking.

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So that's all I really wanted to say about the ERLC. I wanted to talk in closing here, just kind of briefly.

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I've been doing, I decided by the way, I told the patrons, I would try to do my Bible study on James and upload it for them.

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It's not really possible. And I've realized in a small group Bible study that's really hard anyway, because it sort of diminishes the amount of involvement people have when there's a camera going.

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They don't feel as likely like they want to talk. And of course my, I'm not just preaching.

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I am doing more of a discussional kind of model. And so anyway, I decided not to do it, but I might drop some things from the book of James into the podcast.

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And one of the things that stood out to me, I'm gonna turn there right now in James chapter one. One of the things that stood out to me is the perspective we ought to have on trials.

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And this is something that concerns me. Let me just read for you what James chapter one says. James, a bondservant of God and of the

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Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes who are dispersed abroad greetings, consider it all joy my brethren when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its perfect result so that you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing.

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But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God. He gives to all generously and without reproach and it will be given to him.

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But he must ask in faith without any doubting for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.

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For that man ought not to expect he will receive anything from the Lord. Being a double -minded man unstable in all his ways.

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And that's all those eight verses are all as far as we got on Wednesday. But I was thinking about this.

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The Bible has a perspective on trials. James went through them. James, I mean,

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James, the brother of Christ was a leader and elder in the Jerusalem church died in 62

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AD from getting stoned and different accounts say different things. Eusebius said he was actually pushed off a building and then stoned, but he suffered for his faith.

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He knows what trials are like. He knows in this church in its infancy period is in a vulnerable state.

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And he writes this book as the first book in the New Testament canon. It's like maybe a decade after Christ ascended and he's giving them

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Christians advice on Christian living. And one of the things he says, he opens up the whole book with that, with basically have a heavenly perspective on your trials.

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Look at it through this frame of through heaven's eye and not through your earthly circumstances.

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And I think that's something that's really helpful for us to realize. We're a link in a chain, we're a breath of air as Ecclesiastes says, we're not here very long and we serve

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God while we're here, but we don't always get to see the results of that. And we are reaping the results of other people's sacrifices while we're here on this earth.

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As Edmund Burke did say, right? Society is this relationship between the dead and those yet to be born with the living.

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So in the book of James, we're given this big picture, this bird's eye view. And I'm concerned a little bit.

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I'm not, you know, concerned, bro. Oh no, no, I mean, I'm not, I don't think, I don't know to what extent this is a problem, but I definitely have seen this problem online, especially on X with guys who are getting really discouraged, black pill they call it, over things like marriage, things like the church.

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I mean, I look at feminists and how feminists said that the institution of marriage was a raw ideal because men were abusive and we should just ditch it.

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And you look at some guys online and I do have examples, but there's no reason for me to embarrass anyone.

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These are lower level accounts. There's just a lot of them though, who say things like, you know, there's really are no local pastors worth following.

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There's no local churches worth attending. There are just, there isn't.

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And it strikes me as the kind of same thing like, oh no, there were pastors in 2020 especially who wielded their authority wrong.

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This wasn't across the board. In fact, I'd say the most resistance to the COVID stuff was coming from local church pastors.

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But they, you know, every institution kind of failed us, but they'll say that because of their bad experiences that pastors shouldn't be trusted.

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And it's the same kind of thing the feminists say about marriage. It's like, well, someone abused their authority, therefore that institution's bad and we shouldn't have followed their authority.

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And guess what? Actually, that's an institution from God. The church is an institution from God, just like marriage.

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And it's not going anywhere. We should be seeking to reinforce it. Maybe you're the guy that should, if there's no good churches in your area, start one.

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Maybe you're the guy that needs to rise to the occasion, be the man of virtue that is talked about in the book of Titus.

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Maybe you need to go out and plan a church or maybe you need to move. That's not hopefully your first thing.

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Maybe you need to change your standards. Maybe it's not the Calvinist church that's got the, you know, every denominational fine point that you want.

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Maybe you gotta go to a church that's a little different on some things, but it's still a true church.

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And they at least have some of these creation things, right? And they have virtue. I don't know. I don't know what the solution for you is.

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And maybe you had a good church. And if you're listening to have a good church, thank God for that. Hold tight to your pastor, encourage them.

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But for those who don't and are discouraged about that, you need to know there are good churches. God has not abandoned you.

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And James gives us a template for facing trials, whatever they are, including that. And this providential perspective is what got our forefathers through wars and traveling across oceans, major sacrifices.

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And we are, to our own peril, throwing that aside,

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I think, at times. I say we, as in Christians who get blackmailed on these things, who get too discouraged.

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I mean, I am one of the people that probably has more reason to be discouraged than a lot on this.

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Not just because of local church experiences, which I'm not gonna get into, but also just what

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I've studied in regards to institutions. Institutions, I mean, that's not the church necessarily.

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Those are parachurches, and many of them are corrupt. But I am still committed to God's church.

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I still think there's great men out there, many of them you've never heard of. I just was with some last weekend.

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I was with Seth Brickley. I was with Jeff Clewer, Craig Chambers. I mean, they all spoke.

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Andrew Rappaport was there. There's a bunch of guys who spoke. And these are guys you probably haven't heard of, but they have taken stands against these things.

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They have shown some real virtues, some real skin in the game. They didn't just come by later when it was advantageous to take stands.

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And they're not the kind of people that are self -promoting. So that's another reason you're not gonna hear from them. They don't have all the souped -up cameras and the studio and all the things that convince you that someone's worth listening to.

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They might just have a Sunday morning pulpit to listen to, and they're pouring into their local people.

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And I trust that guy more than I do the person with all the gizmos. And you should too. You should trust that person more than me.

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You should trust your local church. I'm a supplement. If what I say helps you, praise God. If not, if it's taking away from your local church, then stop listening to me.

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That's the worst thing I could say for self -promotion, isn't it, right? All the other guys that are wanting to build a platform are saying, you must listen to me.

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You must move to where I am. You should do all these. No, I'm saying the opposite. I'm saying where you are, learn to love the people around you and find the virtuous authority that you can submit to.

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That's what you need to do. And if you can't find it, maybe that's you. Maybe the calling is right there and you're evading it.

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I'm not saying you are. I don't know your situation, but we need more men to rise up in pastoral roles and in political roles and in other social roles.

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So think about that. Think about the grand scheme. Think about the fact that there's providence at work, that it's not just a situation where you've been kicked to the curb so many times and I just want to stick it to the guys who kicked me to the curb.

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That's not a Christian attitude. Christian attitude is God gave me these trials because he wanted to teach me something.

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Guess what that was? He wanted me to make me mature like Christ. That's what he's doing. That's what James says.

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And if you want to be complete, the word, the root is actually telos there. It's like, if you want to live up to your full potential, then you need to navigate trials according to the perspective that God put them in your life for a reason.

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And I don't care how Calvinist or reformed you say you are, if you're not handling your trials that way,

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I don't want to hear about it. I mean, that's like, that's number one thing in your life, practically speaking, for God to be involved with.

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So hopefully that encourages some people. Maybe it chides a few people out there, but no blackmailing guys, just enough of that.

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Enough of a slandering the local church, enough of painting the picture more grim than it is.

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Yeah, there's a lot of grim things out there. But my point is God put you here for a reason in 2025 and gave you the platform he did, whatever that is.

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And he wants you to use it. It might just be with your family, but he wants you to use it. That's how we get ahead. That's the only way we get ahead is by doing what

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God calls us to do. That means taking responsibility in your family, taking responsibility in your community that may be running for school board.

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I mean, I don't know. It's probably not starting a podcast. I'm gonna be honest with you. Even though I have a podcast and maybe it will though, maybe it is starting a podcast, but for most of you, it won't be.

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There's a lot of podcasters out there. What's needed more than anything is guys on the local level to actually do some real tangible work.

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And this is something I'm taking to heart myself. This is why I'm getting involved a lot more in two churches in part, because I'm seeing the need for this and that's how we, we have to have a localist approach to all of this.

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It doesn't mean that if God gives us a platform that's bigger, we don't take it, but we have to think about the tangible people in our lives first, because I don't know what the years ahead are gonna be.

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I think we're gonna have a lot of turmoil. And if you know your people, if you have your place, if you have a high trust society environment, it's gonna be better for you and the people you love.

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You need to start working towards it, which means building virtue in your own life. If you don't have walls, gates and proper perspective in your own life, there's no way you can give those things to your society.

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So man up, if you're a man or if you're a woman, help your man man up and assist, but also in what, you know,

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Proverbs 31 wife, whatever influence you have, use it. Hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. If you're a mother, go out and get some stuff done.

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That's the goal here, guys. Hope that was helpful. Hope that was encouraging. I'm gonna get to some comments and address whatever questions, and then we'll go from there.

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Oh boy, a lot of comics. Let's see. W .T.

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Henry, one verse never solves anything. Need two witnesses to every theological issue. I pointed to an entire book as well.

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This must be something I'm not, I am not privy to. He says,

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James was the first book after the Gospels in the early Greek manuscripts. That's right. And Paul's letters were the last except for revelation.

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Yep. We have, Romans 8 says, John, in some cases this is true. Sometimes there aren't any churches worth attending near you.

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Yeah, I've lived in that, Romans 8. I've lived in that. I know. I remember my wife crying because every, she felt like, are we just never gonna find a church?

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Every Sunday we're at a different church. And I thought, well, my standards really aren't that high. We ended up going to a church that didn't meet every single thing

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I was looking for, but you know what? They were good people. They were trying to follow the Lord. It wasn't woke, and at that time, this particular time at least, we couldn't find a woke church.

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There's other times you're gonna have to move. There's other times, like I said, you're gonna have to be the guy to start something. I think in most cases, in some cases, where you think that's the truth, it's usually not.

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Usually, I'm not saying there aren't any cases, but usually it's a needle in a haystack kind of thing. You just have to keep looking until you find something, and you have to reevaluate your standards.

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Sometimes it might mean, if you're a reform guy, and man, this is gonna get me in trouble, but you might be going to the

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Calvary Chapel for a little while. Maybe you wanna move out of that area, but maybe you're gonna go to Calvary Chapel. Maybe you're gonna go to a church that doesn't match every single thing that you have, but you need to be around believers, and you need to be around someone who meets the qualifications in scripture for a pastor.

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So find solutions, right? Don't just blackmail. That's my point. There are solutions. God's put you in this for a reason, and he wants you to use your gifts.

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Let's see. Yeah, Romans 8,

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I guess, wants to really emphasize that there are situations where every single church around you is bad.

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There may be. There may be. I've been in some areas that, again, I'm probably one of the more likely to buy into that idea, especially during 2020.

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I was like, I want a church that's open. I want a church that's not woke, and I kinda want a church that's like, has my basic theology, like sort of like a

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Baptistic reform church. Is that too much to ask? And it kinda was. It kinda was.

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Anyway. All right. Okay, Romans 8.

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I don't know. Romans 8 thinks I'm countersignaling here. So yes, I am countersignaling Black Pillars who are painting a picture that's not accurate, a universal picture, like this is the church, or as some of my comments have said, things like, it's gay to submit to pastors.

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That's nuts, guys. That's what I'm saying. And yeah, I will countersignal that. And yes, every movement's gonna have gates.

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So yes, if it's gatekeeping, it's countersignaling, yeah, you're gonna have that kind of stuff. The question is, is it prudent?

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Is, what are the principles being used to countersignal and to gatekeep and all those things?

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I mean, you're gonna have to have that. There's no way not to have that or else you don't have a movement, you don't have anything. All right, let's see here.

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Recalling again, on says, some of the very reformed Presbyterian type of church denominations, that exclusive psalmody type, also resisted the

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COVID lockdown and kept their churches open despite the threat. They could be, I wasn't aware of that. I saw more like charismatic guys, honestly, resisting that more.

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And the guys who got 2020 right, both the COVID and the woke stuff, they're the ones that I say even now, cling to them.

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The guys who have kind of come around since then, be a little cautious. But I think that there are the 7 ,000 who have not bowed the knee to bail.

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They are out there. And I was really encouraged. I remember thinking, all my heroes have compromised.

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All the institutions that I love have compromised. Is there anyone? And one of the things that helped me a bit was, and opened my eyes was traveling, getting invitations from local churches all across the country.

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And going in and seeing very faithful men of God and faithful churches that just wanted encouragement.

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And I've done my best on the American Churchmen podcast at my conferences to try to promote some of those guys.

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But they're not the kind of guys that are going to get promotion generally of themselves. They tend to be humble.

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They tend to be known in their community, I think, which is a healthy thing. But yeah, I mean, I'm in a church that's good now as far as like got those things right.

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And I wanna see that church continue. And that's the thing, if you really are in an area where it's that bad, then maybe you should be looking at moving.

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But obviously evaluate it according to what the Holy Spirit is teaching you and God's showing you at the time.

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Pray about it. You don't do any of these things without deep prayer. And you consider the trial, even that kind of a trial, even a marriage trial.

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You can't find a wife, can't find a husband, or you're in a marriage that's dismal. You consider that according to the way

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James said. That's the perspective. That's my point. That's the perspective you have. God's bringing this into my life because he wants me to be mature and he's gonna use it.

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And he is using it. And I need to submit to that. That's the white pill. That is the way you can even endure bad trials as hard as they are at times.

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I hope that encourages you. So all kinds of examples of this in scripture. Obviously the most extreme ones being

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Jesus, Job, you know, David, really bad trials. None of us want those, but even those

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God uses to, even the word here for, which verse is it?

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Okay, it's testing of your faith, verse three, testing. That word is for smelting metal. He uses that stuff to shave off the excess that you don't need.

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And that's one of the ways we know God is good. So praise God. All right. Well, that's the podcast.

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I hope that was helpful for some of you and use the, by the way, one last thing I just remembered.

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Use the Church Finder app or I guess website that TruthScript has.

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Use, I've found sermon audio helpful when looking for churches. There's all kinds of lists out there.

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You can use founders, you can use master seminary. You could, depending on what tradition you're in, but the TruthScript one was supposed to filter out as much as possible the woke stuff.

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So maybe start there. I think there's less churches on it, but start there. God bless.