0:00
Well before we get into this video today, I want to just remind everybody about my
0:05
intersectional bona fides.
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DNA tests confirm what you should just know if you know the history about Puerto Rico is that my
0:15
blood, my ethnicity, my ancestry is a mix of African, Native American,
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That is what history says it should be and my blood mix is exactly where it should
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20 % African, 20 % Native American, which leaves 60 % European.
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If you know the history about Puerto Rico as well, then you would also just have to assume that based on the DNA and
0:41
based on the historical witness that we have, that the chances of me having a slave
0:47
ancestor are just about 100%.
0:50
Actually, most people, the chances of having a slave ancestor are about 100%, but I'm talking about the
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kind of slavery that people care about today.
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You know, the African slave trade, that kind of thing.
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For some reason, people don't seem to care about slavery if it happened thousands of years ago, but the slavery that happened that
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people care about today, the African slave trade, people brought over in the Middle Passage, what you learned about in school, that kind
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I have ancestors that endured that kind of thing.
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Just a quick reminder before we get into the topic.
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Now, I have talked on my YouTube channel and also my podcast about slavery a
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In fact, this is what I get, I think, probably the most vicious heat for talking about
1:34
I get a lot of heat for a lot of different topics, but I would say that the most vicious things that people say about me
1:41
have to do with this particular topic.
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I remember one time there was a woman who, after hearing what I had to say about slavery in the Bible,
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said that I was a supporter of the sex trafficking that goes on today.
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In fact, she sent me a picture when she was insulting me in this way.
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She sent me a picture of a woman who had been branded by a sex trafficker and said, this is what you're supporting.
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And obviously, I am not supporting that.
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But anyway, people aren't ready for this.
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People aren't ready for this.
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But the reality is that the Bible does not say,
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That's a quotation from Russell Moore.
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He said that the Bible teaches that you shall not enslave.
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That is simply not the case.
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I remember, you know, I have an advantage, I think, in some of my commentary, because I kind of grew up
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in evangelicalism as an adult.
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And so I kind of remember what I was taught.
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I remember, you know, who taught it to me.
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And I remember the experiences I had when I was kind of being deprogrammed from some of this typical
2:47
evangelical type of dogma.
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I remember there was a sermon series.
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And actually, one of the books that was instrumental in my conversion was a book by Tim Keller,
2:59
the Presbyterian minister.
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And it was his book, The Prodigal God.
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I remember I'd never heard the gospel presented in a very clear way before.
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And the way he wrote, it was just amazing to me.
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I remember reading that book.
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And just in just being so moved by the gospel of God and God's
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activities in salvation and saving people for himself.
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I remember being so moved by it.
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And so I credit that book in many ways to sort of awakening me to the realities of the gospel.
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So what I used to do is I used to watch and read and listen to a lot of Tim Keller materials.
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And there was one sermon series that he did in New York, where basically what he did was it was kind of like an apologetic series.
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He basically went, and he said, here's 10 questions that many people in New York,
3:48
many cosmopolitan types have about the Christian faith, and here's my answers to them.
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And I remember, it was fantastic, because a lot of the questions that he went over were questions that I had.
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I was one of those New York cosmopolitan types, so to speak.
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So I remember loving that series and just gaining so much value from it.
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Of course, there was an exception.
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By the time I had listened to this, I had read the Bible pretty much cover to cover.
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And so he did one about slavery, because a lot of atheists and a lot of unbelievers and
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secular types have a problem with how the Bible teaches about slavery and how Christians of the
4:26
past have dealt with slavery.
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And what I find so interesting about this particular sermon is that I didn't find too much to
4:35
disagree with outright, but I knew that he was actually spinning things a little bit
4:41
for the Bible, because I had read the Bible, and I had read what it said about slavery.
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And though Tim Keller didn't say that the Bible says you shall not enslave the way Russell Moore did, that's just a flat
4:52
-out untruth about the Bible.
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Tim Keller's much more careful than Russell Moore, much probably more intelligent as well.
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He didn't outright say that, but the whole thrust of his sermon was that.
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And I knew that that wasn't correct.
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I knew that that was not correct based on what the Bible said.
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I had been taught the apologetics regarding slavery that everyone gets taught.
5:13
Oh yeah, that slavery back in the day, that was a different kind of slavery.
5:16
It was much nicer than the slavery of Africa.
5:20
You know, Christians misinterpreted the Bible to say that it condones or even allows for
5:27
They were abusing the text.
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That's what you get taught.
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And I kind of knew that that wasn't actually correct.
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And I think, look, if we're all honest with ourselves, there are parts of the Bible that do not fit with our theology.
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Whatever your theology is, there are parts of the Bible that do not seem to fit with your theology.
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And so what you do when you encounter it is you're like, what is this?
5:49
And what you do is you read commentaries from your perspective and you're like, good enough.
5:58
And it really doesn't make sense.
5:59
And it's like, people are kind of like, you know, that's an uncomfortable feeling.
6:03
People are trying to get rid of that uncomfortable feeling all the time.
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And so they read things that they agree with.
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And even though it's not quite 100%, you know, making sense, you kind of just say, good enough.
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There's an explanation for this.
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Anyway, so that's what I have to say about slavery.
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Now, you may be thinking, Adam, what's the deal with this?
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What's the point of all this?
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The title of this video is about Doug Wilson.
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You know, honestly, Doug Wilson is another lightning rod.
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I did a video last week about Pulpit and Pen and Jordan Hall and the people that work for him or with him
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And he is a tremendous lightning rod.
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That was a very popular video for me.
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You know, I'm a small channel.
6:47
So got a lot of views, a lot of interaction in the comment section.
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You know, for me, people, you know, either love him or hate him.
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He's a he's a controversial figure.
6:58
There's just no question about it.
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If you had to pick two controversial figures, though, in evangelical circles, I think Jordan Hall would be one
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and Doug Wilson would be the other.
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Everyone has an opinion about Doug Wilson.
7:11
People ask me how I feel about Doug Wilson, his theology, and how do I feel about some of
7:17
the things that he says and writes about people ask me about this.
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I don't know why they ask me, but they do.
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Full disclosure, you know, I'm I do a podcast on the Fight Laugh Feast network.
7:26
That's, you know, Doug Wilson and his boys, you know, that that's that's their business.
7:32
More full disclosure, I attended a CREC church for about, I don't know, six to eight months, something like that.
7:39
It was a pastor who does hold to the federal vision and things like that.
7:43
And I have to say, I, you know, really learned a lot about what federal vision is
7:49
and what it teaches from this guy.
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And, you know, there's flavors of federal vision.
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So there's more extreme and less extreme.
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This this pastor, the one I sat under for a while was on the more extreme side.
8:00
There's no question about it.
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And I came out of that understanding that I was not federal vision.
8:06
I did not hold to the federal vision.
8:08
However, I appreciated some of what they were trying to do.
8:11
I appreciated some of what they were trying to do.
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And I don't want to speak for Doug Wilson, but it strikes me as this is part of why
8:19
he was involved in some of that.
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And it's a very clear kind of principle that everyone agrees with, but very few practice.
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And, and it's, it's basically this, that I don't want to read the Bible and
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ever be in the situation that I just described, where you read something that does not comport with your beliefs.
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And so you go off to your, your, your, your camps, you know, materials, and you read their explanations for it.
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And even if it doesn't make perfect sense, you just accept it because you know, that's, that's, that's what you do.
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I think that was the thrust behind some of, you know, what federal vision was trying to do.
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And I think that that's true with, with Doug Wilson as well.
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I don't know, look, I've never spoken to Doug Wilson before, but as a, as a bystander, that's kind of how it strikes me.
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I'll give you a perfect example of this.
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I'll give you a perfect example of this when it comes to baptism, right?
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I think, again, I don't speak for him.
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I've never spoken to him in my entire life.
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I think when it comes to Doug Wilson's belief about baptism, he wants to believe baptism in
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such a way that he can say with Peter, without qualifying and without nuancing something to death, he
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can say, baptism now saves you.
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He wants to read that and not turn it into something that means baptism doesn't really save you.
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So he wants to understand that in a way that fits with everything else he knows from the scripture, you know, faith without works,
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you know, faith apart from works, all of that stuff he has to incorporate
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But at the same time, he just wants to say it, baptism now saves you the same way Peter says it.
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And he doesn't want to have to backtrack and qualify and make excuses for and all that kind of stuff.
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Now you see, I, I, I'm not federal vision.
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And one of the reasons why is because I think that sometimes when you say it, just the way Peter says it
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without explaining, it can be more confusing and maybe less helpful.
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But I can see the argument against that.
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We're saying, I just want to read the Bible the way it's written.
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That's what I want to do.
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You see, so, so, so, so, so Doug Wilson, his big sin, his, the big problem with Doug
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Wilson is that he is committed to just being able to teach the Bible as it's
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And he, that's all he wants to do.
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He, the Bible says it, he wants to believe it.
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And he doesn't want to make excuses for it.
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And so we can, we can, we can apply this to other areas as well.
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And I think, again, this, if you're not a federal vision proponent, you know, you can, you, you would see this as, this is how you get into
10:57
But if you are a federal vision proponent, you kind of understand that this is, this is part of why you are probably, because,
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you know, again, I don't want to have any problem passages.
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That's something that I've heard Doug Wilson say.
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I don't want to have any passages that give me, you know, those, that, that, that uncomfortable feeling
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of, of, of not really, you know, understanding how this fits.
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That that's, that's, I think an admirable thing.
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That's an admirable thing.
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I think that's something that we can all learn from Doug Wilson a little bit.
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Even if it doesn't make you want to teach, baptism now saves you the way Peter says in the, in the scripture.
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Anyway, why am I mentioning all this?
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This is, this is why people don't like Doug Wilson, because he's willing to just kind of go ahead and say, look,
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And, and, and, and speak on, on, on the issue of slavery in an authoritative way.
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Look, you can read the Bible cover to cover, and you cannot find anything that says you
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You can't find anything that says that having a slave is in of itself,
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forget about major sin, a sin at all, a sin at all.
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Now there are aspects of the slave trade that we can say, non -starter right there, man -stealing, that is
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You kidnap someone, whether to sell them, whether to keep them, whether to do whatever with them, that is a death
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And if you ask Doug Wilson about that, he would say, yes, man -stealing is a death penalty crime, because again, he doesn't want to
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have any problem passages.
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So if it says man -stealing is a death penalty crime, that's what Doug Wilson's going to believe.
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That's what Doug Wilson's going to teach.
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But it does not say that even holding a slave is a sin.
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You see today, what we're being expected to hold to is that holding a slave.
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Well, that in it of itself is grounds to question your salvation.
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And not only a sin, that's a sin of the most egregious kind.
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This is from his article.
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Doug Wilson wrote an article last week called the Slaves of Jonathan Edwards.
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He says, the difficulty with this approach taken by Meyer, this is the kind of approach I'm describing about
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He says, while he is careful and judicious, urging us not to overreact, as well as cautioning us not to underreact, he
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simply assumes great sin on the part of Edwards.
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He assumes this from the mere fact of slave -owning.
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He wants us to avoid great sin and how we respond to it all, but he is in effect urging us to follow Aristotle's
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But what we ought to do is ask ourselves if we have any evidence, biblical evidence, that Edwards
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was guilty of any personal hypocrisy or compromise in this circumstance.
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This is a very important line.
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The issue is not whether we think slavery as an institution was a good thing.
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It is not whether the slave trade was wicked and cruel.
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The issue is not whether there were numerous masters who mistreated their slave.
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The issue is whether or not Edwards following the teaching of the New Testament for men in his position.
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We have no evidence that he did not, and a reasonable bit of evidence that he did submit to the authority of Scripture in this.
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See, the point here is that we got to stop being embarrassed by this Bible, right?
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Because this is the big problem with Doug Wilson.
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He is not embarrassed by this Bible.
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He's not embarrassed by the book.
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No matter what it says, it doesn't embarrass him.
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And I remember from that Tim Keller sermon that I heard, it was apologetic in
14:38
Like almost like you could tell that there was some like, I know it says this, but I'm sorry.
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And you don't get that with Doug Wilson.
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He's happy to teach and to affirm everything that the Bible says.
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Whether it's about men and women, whether it's about slave and free, whether it's about the institution of slavery, whether it's about
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whatever it's about, it doesn't matter.
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He's willing to accept it.
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You see, when God commands the Israelites to slaughter the pagan nations, man, woman, and
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child, Doug Wilson's not sorry to teach that.
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So many, so many evangelicals are very sorry to teach that.
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In fact, they look for excuses.
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They look for reasons why it doesn't mean what it actually says.
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Oh yeah, no, he said when man, woman, and child, but what he meant was just militarily conquer them.
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Don't really kill all the men and women and children.
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That's not really what it meant.
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This is the big problem with Doug Wilson.
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He believes what is considered heresy, heretical in our secular world.
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Believing that Bible without apology, without making excuses, without softening the edges,
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without making it palatable for unregenerate man,
15:57
You see, the secular culture will put up with you as long as you don't go whole hog with that
16:03
A perfect example of this is the scorn that I see put on people who believe in six -day creation.
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This is another perfect example.
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The scorn that is put on people like that.
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Those people are the dumbest, most idiotic, moronic of the morons.
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People that believe in six -day creation.
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The reality is, it's not just in the secular world that that's the case.
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It's in the intelligentsia evangelical world as well.
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Six -day creationists are buffoons.
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I mean, how many times have we heard a smart hoity -toity apologist talk about how embarrassed they are about
16:40
Look, whether or not you're a six -day creationist or not, you can understand how they arrive at these
16:46
conclusions by just reading the text and believing what it says.
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Now, I understand where you guys that are not six -day creationists read and you believe what it says.
16:58
I'm not saying you're all compromisers, but
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the reality is that you can believe in a
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non -six -day creation and not heap the scorn that is so often heaped on all
17:13
those fundamentalist, idiotic, backwoods, six -day creation believers like me get.
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I mean, that's just the reality.
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So just believing that Bible and believing it without apology, without softening, without all
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that stuff, that is the ultimate heresy in our culture today.
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That's the ultimate sin, and that's the big problem people have with Doug Wilson.
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There are other problems.
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I know you guys probably are going to fill the comment section with other problems with Doug Wilson.
17:44
But you see, the reality is that there are lots of people that you don't agree with theologically that you do not heap
17:50
scorn on the way that people get heaped scorn, people like Doug Wilson get scorn heaped on them.
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You see, there's something special about Doug that people seem to just, I cannot make a
18:02
comment about Doug without either getting unfriended by someone, being told off by someone, how could I support him, this and that.
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And that's not the kind of response I get when I quote somebody else that somebody doesn't disagree with.
18:13
You see, someone disagrees with.
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So you see, there's something special about Doug, and I think that it's this, there's a little bit of swagger in the
18:21
sense that this is the Bible, this is what it says, and I'm not going to apologize or soften it or backstep
18:27
it or anything like that.
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And so, you know, that's kind of what I wanted this video to be about today.
18:37
On that topic, I have something else for you.
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It's called Sacred Conviction.
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Sacred Conviction, the South Stand for Biblical Authority.
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It's written by Joseph J., which is not a real person.
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Well, the person who wrote it is a real person, but this is not his name.
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And the reason why it's not his name is because this book is heresy as well.
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And I'm not talking the Christian kind.
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I'm talking secular heresy.
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This is forbidden knowledge.
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This book is of the forbidden type.
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And so I don't blame the person for not revealing who they are, because this is the kind of thing
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that you cannot put up with in our culture today.
19:25
It makes the argument that one of the—I mean, look, the Civil War was a complicated war.
19:30
There's no question about it.
19:33
This takes a look at it from a theological perspective, and it makes the argument that the South
19:39
was standing for biblical authority, right?
19:42
They wanted to, just like I described, believe what the Bible says, not try to soften it, not
19:48
try to backtrack it, and it's just that simple.
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And the North was trying to apply all kinds of different laws and ideas and things
19:57
They would make arguments like this.
19:58
Well, it's not about what the Bible actually says.
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It's about the overarching principle, the thrust of the debate.
20:05
It's about the eschatological trajectory of things.
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And that's why slavery in and of itself is evil, even though the Bible doesn't say it is.
20:15
It's evil because of the trajectory of the text.
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See, these are the arguments that people make today for all kinds of nonsense, LGBT and all this social justice stuff.
20:24
It's the same kind of idea.
20:26
And this is why you don't see social justice warriors often discussing text, the scripture, the Bible itself.
20:32
No, they've got all these other authorities that they're bringing into this debate and saying, well, the theological
20:38
trajectory, the overarching teaching, and that kind of thing.
20:42
And this is an interesting book.
20:43
This is an interesting book.
20:44
Now, I've only just read it.
20:46
I haven't had a chance to look at all the notes and the footnotes and things like that.
20:50
But basically, this is the thing that I'm talking about here, right?
20:55
If we can agree that the Bible does not outright ban slavery for Christians, I
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hope we can agree to that because it doesn't.
21:04
If we can agree with that and then say, okay, let's take a step back and say, okay, the Southern slavery
21:11
had all kinds of issues with it.
21:13
But one of the things that was not an issue was the existence of slaves themselves.
21:17
Slavery is not condemned in the Bible.
21:22
Some of the aspects that led to slavery, like the kidnapping and some of the mistreatment of slaves, that
21:29
But you see, the Bible talks about those separately from the actual slavery itself.
21:35
And so if we want to be Christian, we have to actually be Christians and say, okay, well,
21:40
let's ban kidnapping for one.
21:43
Let's ban the abuse and mistreatment of slaves for two.
21:49
You see, the problem is that, look, I'm a Yankee.
21:51
I learned this the way Yankees learned this, right?
21:54
I learned this the way Yankees learned this.
21:55
In school, basically, what I learned was people from the South were essentially barbarians
22:02
And every slave master was beating their slaves to death and things like that.
22:08
But it simply wasn't true.
22:09
And so we want to be Christians about this, not, you know, social justice warriors, dare I say,
22:15
where we make stuff up and hold people to that standard.
22:18
See, that's never going to work.
22:19
We have to stick with the Bible standard.
22:21
That's what I appreciate so much about Doug Willis.
22:23
That's what I appreciate so much about Joseph Jay's book.
22:27
And really, that's pretty much all I have for you today.
22:30
Anyway, I hope this was helpful.
22:47
another thing about this article that I appreciate so much is it kind of put into words
22:52
something that I've been feeling for a while, because you might ask, Adam, why do you talk about slavery?
22:56
Like, this is, it's just not, strategically, it's a stupid idea.
23:00
I mean, people are going to hear that you're saying the Bible does not blankedly condemn
23:06
slavery, and they're going to turn their brains off because it's just, so even if it's true, like, why bring attention to
23:12
Why bring attention to it?
23:14
And the reality is that this is an important thing, because if we're willing to sort of ignore
23:20
Scripture in this area that the culture finds abjectly heretical, contrary to anything that
23:26
civilized people would believe, if we're going to ignore Scripture in that area, then we've already
23:34
We're arguing over the whole store here.
23:37
Everything is on sale, and we have to make sure that we, you know, we don't give an inch.
23:41
We don't give a foothold.
23:42
We don't give anything, because if you deny Scripture when it talks about slavery, then you've already
23:48
lost the debate where it talks about sexuality.
23:51
You've already lost the debate where it talks about gender identity.
23:54
You've already lost the debate where it talks about literally anything, and this
24:01
This is the big problem, and I think this is why a lot of people are, like, openly and kind of aggressively six
24:09
It's the same idea where they say, if you ignore Scripture here—and again, I know all the arguments.
24:14
I get it, but this is why people are so in your face about this, because if you ignore Scripture here, you've given up the
24:20
argument everywhere, and that is something I have a lot of sympathy for.
24:25
Here's the last part of Doug Wilson's article.
24:28
Ignoring Scripture is the prelude to denying Scripture, and denying Scripture is the prelude to attacking Scripture.
24:35
So, if you have admitted a principle into your thought process, you will find it difficult to turn that false principle
24:41
off when the devil finally springs the trap.
24:45
Listen to this, because this is happening currently.
24:48
If you thought that all that Robert E. Lee business was going to stop there and not proceed merrily on to
24:54
Washington and Jefferson, then the word for you resembles naïve and rhymes with
25:01
And if you think it'll stop with Washington and not proceed onward to Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, and from them
25:07
down to Philemon and through him to his friend Apostle Paul, then as the saying goes, you
25:13
have another thing coming.
25:15
See, here's the thing, guys.
25:17
We already have credible Christians questioning the salvation of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield
25:23
because of the fact of owning slavery, which the Scripture does not say
25:32
So, we have people that are credible Christians that we would consider brothers, right?
25:36
That we would consider brothers.
25:41
We have people that are saying, you know, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, their salvation is in question based on
25:47
something that man created as a standard of righteousness, not God.
25:52
Based on something man created as a standard of righteousness, not God.
25:55
How far are we from the point where we're essentially banning George Whitefield teachings and Jonathan Edwards books
26:01
from our seminaries, especially the woke ones?
26:03
How far are we from that?
26:04
I don't think we're very far at all.
26:06
And then if you do that from something that was unbiblical in the first place, Doug Wilson is saying here, well, why not
26:14
Because Philemon was the perfect opportunity for God to say, you shall not enslave.
26:22
And I've read all of the apologetics about why he didn't, but he really did mean it.
26:26
So, I've read all of the the, the, you know, smooth sounding arguments that say, I know he
26:32
didn't say you shall not enslave, but the book of Philemon still means you shall not enslave.
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I don't know how that makes any sense at all, but I urge you that feeling that you get when you read that kind of stuff and like, that
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That's probably because it doesn't make any sense.
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And then he, as he says here, you know, once you reject Philemon, he had the perfect opportunity to deny, to, to, to,
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to, to ban slavery right there.
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Well, then why should we listen to anything Paul says?
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In fact, Paul is one of the most problematic people in history to the woke crowd.
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I mean, everything he says almost is problematic.
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So why won't we just cancel Paul?
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See, this is the problem, guys.
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This is why I choose to talk about this so much.
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This is why Doug Wilson obviously chooses to talk about this so much because this is the debate.
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And it happens to be being had over something that is unsavory.
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Let's just be honest about that.
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Nobody likes the idea of it.
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In fact, in, in, in scripture where, you know, it would condone it is when there's a sin that's happened.
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There's some kind of a crime that's happened and that's where indentured servanthood comes into play and all that kind of stuff.
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So there's nothing good about it in that regard.
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This is something that happens when, when somebody has sinned.
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So we don't have to like it, but at the end of the day, like, you know, this is the
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You just have to deal with that.
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One more thing that I was thinking of, I, you know, I had a brother reach out to me and, and, and, you know, push back a little bit
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on something I said about slavery and the reality of prison, the prison system, and how I think that the prison system is
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And what we should return to is a principle of restitution in crime.
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So if you get stolen from, then the person who stole from you doesn't go to prison.
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Instead, they pay back what they owe.
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And if they don't have the money to pay back what they owe, they should be your servant and work off the debt.
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That's, that's how it should work.
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That's a biblical, godly way to, to adjudicate, you know, the crime of theft.
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And somebody pushed back on me and said, you know, Adam, like, I, like, I have an example of my own life.
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Like, like, I wouldn't want that.
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He says, I had a relative of mine, like a half brother or something and said, and he said, you know, he stole from me
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a lot of money and he's in prison.
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I'm glad he's in prison because I feel safe and I don't, I don't want him near me.
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I don't want him near my family.
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I don't want him working for me.
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And the reality is like, and that's this pushback.
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And the reality is that I would feel the same way, right?
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Like if somebody stole from me, I don't want to see him.
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In fact, this is how it is in my own life.
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When people, I've had people in my life that have backstabbed me and hurt, tried to hurt me and some
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And I don't want to talk to them.
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I don't want to see them ever again for my whole life.
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But what I want doesn't matter.
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What I want doesn't matter.
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It's what God says should happen.
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And so if I, if someone steals from me or someone, let's just, let's just take my example of someone backstabbing me and
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I don't ever want to see them again.
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I don't want to talk to them again.
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And they come to me and say, Hey, I don't want to talk about this.
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I have a duty to talk to them.
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He wants to bring harmony back into this situation.
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So if somebody who, who totally screwed me over, um, and I never want to see them again for the rest of my whole life, cause that's
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That's how I feel about people who screw me over.
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I don't ever want to see them again.
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If somebody comes to me and says, man, let's, let's talk about this.
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Let's, let's reconcile this.
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Let's let's let's let me tell you how I felt.
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I have a duty to talk to that person before God, God commands it.
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And that's the same thing with this slavery, the servanthood thing, just because you never want to see the person who stole from you
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again, doesn't mean that's what God doesn't demand.
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He might demand that you see, he wants to bring harmony back into this situation.
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He wants to bring restitution back into this situation.
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He wants to make things right.
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It's restitution for crimes.
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And so you might not want to ever see the person who stole from you again, but it doesn't really matter what you want.
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It's about what God commands, because if you want someone locked away in prison, then you're wanting something that is unjust
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That's not what God wants.
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And so every, in every area of your life, we got to consider what does God say is right?
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What does God say is good?
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And let's not apologize for that.
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Let's just agree with God.
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That's what repentance is.
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It's agreeing with what God says, saying the same thing as what God says.
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That's required of Christians.
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Anyway, I hope this is helpful.