Cancel Culture and James Coates

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The Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We're gonna talk a little bit today about cancel culture and we're gonna lead up to the situation that's going on right now in Canada with James Coates at Grace Life Church in Edmonton, which is in the province of Alberta.

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Some of you recognize that name. He was in jail for, I wanna say close to a month for defying the order to stay home.

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I think what they have, the rules are, I think you have to be, it's 15 % capacity and probably masks and social distancing and I don't know whether you can sing or not.

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It's heavily restricted. And he just said, no, we're gonna go to church. And so he had turned himself in, was in jail, was released finally.

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But it seems like the Canadian government doesn't want him to win, or at least the province of Alberta. They don't want him to win.

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Sending the Royal Police out there to put perimeters, actually I think it's a double perimeter, one around the church, one around the property, and preventing anyone from coming in.

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There were 200 police there. I mean, it reminds you a little bit of the Capitol situation where I think there's still, if I'm not mistaken, fences around the

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Capitol and a military presence. But we're gonna talk about that. Some news roundup stuff though first.

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And actually before that, a few announcements. I wanna say this off the top. I can't remind you about it enough this week because it's coming up this

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Friday, or I should say Saturday, the Saturday, the 17th. Juan Riesco's coming in to Lynchburg, Virginia to speak at Liberty University.

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Link is in the info section. If you wanna come out and see Juan Riesco, or if you know someone, you might even just know a student at Liberty University, send this to them.

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If you know someone that's not a student but lives in Lynchburg, send the link to them so they can sign up.

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We're gonna have a screening of the movie, Paint the Wall Black, and then Juan is gonna share a bit about his testimony, answer questions, we'll have a panel discussion, and it should be good.

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So go to the info section, and there's an event link. Click the event link, and then you can sign up to come out.

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There is a seating capacity, I believe, of 78 people, something like that.

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So you're gonna wanna make sure that you're able to get in. So I wanted to let you know that.

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The gospel, like I said, will be presented, if not by Juan directly in the documentary,

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I'm sure it will be presented more than once. And it's just such a great story. I mean, Juan came out of a lifestyle of homosexuality, became saved, knows

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Christ, stood firm against the social justice mob that destroyed his business, and it's a very inspirational story.

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And so come on out for that. That's announcement number one. Announcement number two, there's actually,

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I have a good problem. There's so many announcements, I've decided to not do all of them in this episode because there's just too many.

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But the Truth Exchange, which is an organization, that apologetics organization, just had a virtual conference of which

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I was a part, and they released a panel discussion today of which I was also a part, and you can go check that out.

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Link is in the info section if you wanna see the Truth Exchange conference. And the third announcement, and I'll keep it to these three, and there's no action on your part with this.

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I just wanted to give everyone an update that I am, it's going slower than I was hoping, but it's going well.

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So I'm trying to write a second book, and I'm in the middle of a chapter right now on the social justice gospel.

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And actually, even as I'm studying and I'm trying to get examples and integrate the errors of the social justice movement with biblical theology, mostly comparing it to the

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Galatian heresy, to Pharisaism, it's been quite enlightening, and I think it's gonna be a really helpful book.

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Like, I know there's other people coming out with books now on this topic, but you're gonna wanna get this one. It's gonna have some unique stuff in it that is not included in any of the other books

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I've seen on this topic. So I just wanted to give you an update on that. I am still working on that and working hard on it.

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So there you go, those are the announcements. Let's get into some of the news, at least, the news roundup, just some crazy stuff here.

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Fox News reported, this is actually old now, March 29th is when they reported this, but an Oxford music professor suggests scrapping sheet music from curriculum, says it's complicit in white supremacy.

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Yeah, and this is Oxford. I mean, it's not someone at some community college.

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This is someone who is supposed to be at the top of their field, thinks that we should just scrap sheet music.

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So actually, I saw, I probably could have included it. Fossil fuels are racist. I don't know if you knew that. Fossil fuels are now racist.

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Pretty much everything is racist if the left doesn't like it. They'll come up with a way. Q Ideas, which is a

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Christian think tank, decided to drop Andy, and I think his name is pronounced

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No, Andy No, from a conference recently. And this is interesting to me, because what's the reason they dropped him?

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Well, this is what No says. He told Fox News that he was looking forward to speaking at the conference about the threat to liberal democracy and free expression from far left extremists.

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And then he said he's not a Christian, but he admires Christianity, theological pillars of grace and forgiveness.

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It is something that is prohibited in Antifa's worldview. Unfortunately, the organizers of the conference, the Christian conference, ultimately decided that their attendees should not hear my message.

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Now, he had posted on Twitter, this is on April 6th, that he was notified that he had been uninvited by Q Ideas, a large

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TED Talk -style Christian conference. An activist contacted the conference's founder to urge my removal, he says.

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That activist works with a Portland Antifa extremist, Robert Evans. I wrote about Evans' endorsement of terrorism in my book.

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So they're canceling him, they're dis -inviting him. And this isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened, but it's getting into Christian organizations.

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This is an organization, just to give you an idea, this organization has had people like John MacArthur speak at their conferences, from what

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I understand. I mean, it's a very broad spectrum of Christianity that it represents.

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And of course, at the conference coming up, they still have David Platt, they still have Matt Chandler, I would consider them to be woke, definitely woke, evangelical voices, they're not a problem.

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But this individual, Andy Gnov, is a problem. And there's no statement saying that it's because of the fact that he's not a

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Christian, or anything like that. Michael O 'Fallon from Sovereign Nations had a really good take on this.

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And because I forgot to include it in my slideshow, I'm just gonna read it to you here. He basically said, and he's someone you should keep in mind who has planned a lot of conferences.

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He said, there are two reasons you would disinvite a previously invited speaker. One, you didn't do your research, you made a bad call, you shouldn't be hosting a conference if that's who you are.

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Number two, you use the opportunity for virtue signaling. And then he points out a few things. He points out

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Andy Gnov is an Asian person, man, who is also a homosexual, apparently,

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I did not know this. And they're keeping people like Matt Chandler, he says Tyler Burns, I pointed out

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David Platt at the conference, but they're booting this Asian guy who's a homosexual.

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And he says, if we use Matt Chandler's methodology of diversity, inclusion, and equity, then is

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Andy Gnov only an Asian seven and a homosexual six? Now, for those who don't understand that, Matt Chandler's become now famous for using this intersectional framework for hiring in the church.

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And he'll say, I want your, if you have a black six and a white seven, I'll take your black six.

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Because even though they're not maybe as qualified, he wants someone who's a minority, that kind of thing. So he's saying, why would you boot someone who's a minority and also someone who's a homosexual?

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Is it because his political persuasion, is that the problem? And I think we probably know that that is what's going on here.

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So he says, here's the question Michael asks. Number one, was Andy's being Asian the problem? Number two, was Andy's sexual preference the problem?

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Number three, was Andy's political views and being opposed to the tyrannical woke the problem? And I think it's a fair question to ask, but this is, again, a

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Christian group that has decided to do this. And I just, you know, there may be legitimate reasons to disinvite someone or not invite someone to a conference, but if it truly is political, and it's because he opposes

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Antifa, and they don't want, they think that's wrong or something, like that's kind of nuts, guys, that Q Ideas would do this.

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And if you're involved with Q Ideas in any way, or you go to their conferences, I would contact them about this. And get to the bottom of it, because if that's the motive, then

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Q Ideas is in a bad place. Let's get to the main topic at hand today.

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Alberta Health Services go full military on Grace Life Church. There's a picture there if you're watching of the pastor,

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James Coates, outside the fencing to the church. The first, they put,

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I think, two borders now around the church of fences. That's the closer one, after they had just put the first initial fence up.

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This is private property. I mean, this is their church building, and this is what the police are doing.

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I mean, it's kind of nuts. There's also a tradition, and especially in English, British common law, of leaving the church alone, viewing the church as having its own jurisdiction, and not interfering with the church.

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If a church is viewed as a holy place, and this is a violation of all of that, and people, even those who are not

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Christians, are genuinely angry about this. Some people, and I did watch the other day a political commentator up there who's just fuming about this, complaining that even local politicians, some who have given lip service to saying how bad the situation is, are not going to the church.

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They're not actually doing anything tangible. They're just saying, giving platitudes and stuff.

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I don't know if that's still true, but the Canadian police put a barricade, it says in this article, place high security fences to keep worshipers out.

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And they are high security fences, and it is, what are they afraid that they're gonna do? This is,

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I think part of it, and in this interview that you see the snapshot from here,

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Professor, Pastor Coates, says that he thinks it's to save face in some ways, that COVID -19 is such a big problem, and then they defy this order they meet.

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They're not having the problems that they should have if COVID -19 is this horrible, horrible plague.

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And it's embarrassing. It looks like their rules really aren't that important, and why would you need to keep them?

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And I think that's part of probably, he's right. He's probably right about that. That's probably what's part of motivating this. If people are just allowed to go out there and live and worship and work, and they're not gonna obey our guidelines, and the negative things, those apocalyptic things we said are going to happen aren't happening, then how do we convince them to listen to us any longer?

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This is an authority struggle, and it's important that I think we recognize that going forward because this is not just in this story, but this applies to so many things going on, and that will be going on.

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This is about authority. This isn't about health, just like the social justice stuff.

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It's not about racism. It's not about homophobia. It's not about sexism. It's about control. Ultimately, at the end of the day, it is about authoritarianism and control, and they cannot let this happen without a show of force to show their control, and there's 200 officers that were there apparently last week.

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I mean, that's insane. That's a lot of people. That's an army. It reminds you of what happened and what is happening with the

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Capitol in DC when it wasn't that they were legitimately trying to keep, you might've thought that the first week or two, but after that especially, and I knew early on, they were not legitimately trying to keep people out because they were afraid of some right -wing extremists coming and sieging the

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Capitol again. I've talked about that a lot, so I'm not gonna go over everything that I've said before.

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I was outside the Capitol that day. I saw what happened, and let's just say that with the crowd they knew was coming, it was absolutely shocking that they had the barriers down to let vehicles in, to park in government parking spaces.

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They were understaffed big time. No riot control police were even deployed until like 3 .30.

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I mean, it was nuts, and if you just had the basic things in place that most people with common sense would have, none of that would have happened.

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And this situation, though, mirrors what happened after the Capitol confusion on January 6th when they put up all these fences and they put up, you know, they called the

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National Guard from all these states and military -style guarding the Capitol from what?

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From nothing, from there was nothing there. Everyone went home. They had jobs, a lot of those people. So this is just like that.

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There's no threat, but the show of force, it makes you think there's a threat. You can put cameras on that, and it's deceptive.

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You think, well, there must be a threat if you're gonna have that many people there. These Christians must be really violent or conservatives must be really violent or something.

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And that, it plays to a media narrative. That's, I think, why they do this. It is a show of control, a show of threat, trying to put fear in people's minds.

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That is illegitimate. It shouldn't be there. There's things to be afraid of. This isn't it. So, dangerous to go to church.

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This isn't, and this isn't about necessarily, you know, the church. This is about, this is broader than that.

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This is just like the early Christians. It wasn't like they were persecuted just because they were preaching the gospel. They were persecuted because they wouldn't bow their knee to Caesar.

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That's exactly what's happening here. You have a pastor who's unwilling to bow the knee to the modern priests in the medical government industrial complex.

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And so, this is interesting, I thought, and I just wanna talk just briefly about the way that this is being responded to, because I think it's great.

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I'm gonna start here. This was posted today on April 12th, as I'm recording this, this morning,

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I believe, by James Coates' wife, Erin Coates. She says, I've often thought about the kindness of the

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Lord through this situation. Although Grace Live Church would not have planned things like this, it amazes, it's amazing to see

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His kindness toward our government, health services, and Royal Canadian Mounted Police in having the Universal Church praying for their salvation.

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There are 200 police officers, and hundreds, maybe even thousands, working behind the scenes at our facility yesterday, and each one of those officers has an eternal soul, and will stand before Christ and give an account for their governance of people made in the image of God.

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And she goes on, and brethren, keep praying, she says. It was the kindness of the Lord that led us to repentance.

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She quotes 1 Timothy 2, one through six. And this is the reaction. Now, you had some protesters yesterday who did tear down the fencing.

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I'll show you here. Here's the screenshot from Erin Coates' social media. You had some people tearing down the fencing yesterday, but there's other videos, and you should see those other videos, of Christians saying, leave the fence alone.

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The vast majority. Again, reminds you of the Capitol thing on the 6th. There were a few people who went out there and tore down the fences.

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Just the initial barrier. I don't think they went any farther, but the crowd was not behind them. And the crowd was mainly just singing.

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It's shrewd, I think, the way that they're doing this, but especially since the media is keeping attention on this, trying to be as peaceful as they possibly can be, they are being violated.

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Whether this is the strategy they're thinking out in, I'm sure they are thinking about strategy, but whether that's why they're doing this, or whether it's because they have some kind of a theological reason to do it without tearing down fences and stuff.

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Because let's think about it. They'd be in their rights to do that. It wouldn't be necessarily morally wrong for them to say, this is our building.

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Excuse me. But they're not doing that, at least at this point. And it probably helps them to see, this is totally illegitimate.

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These people are not threats. They're still meeting. There's still many of them, even more of them than there would be normally, meeting outside.

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So whatever hope you had of stopping this spread of this virus, supposedly, which is supposedly what they're doing this in the name of, doesn't make any sense now that you have a bigger crowd outside there and they're still meeting.

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So it just pokes a hole in the whole narrative. And I think they're doing a very good job of this.

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And let's pray for them. Let's just pray for them. Because they definitely, I think, need it.

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And it's just amazing that Erin Coates can say what she did about those police officers.

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Because these are people that, I mean, I've heard some of the names that they've been called.

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And they're being called Nazis a lot. They're being called thugs and these kinds of words because of how willing they are to sell their principles and to do something completely unnecessary and tyrannical.

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And she still humanizes them and still realizes, you know what, they also need the

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Lord. And I think that's a great testimony there. So that's just a little update on what's going on in Canada, which, hey, could and has in some cases come to our country, maybe not quite to that extent.

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But Canada's more going full Great Reset, more so than the United States is at this point.

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Another piece of news for social justice in evangelicalism, people curious about that topic.

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David Nasser resigned from Liberty University. He was the Vice President of Spiritual Development.

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I've talked about him before. He also was kind of on the woke train. Off the top of my head, he was the one,

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I think it was the RAs he had gathered together and had the black RAs stand up to receive an apology on behalf of him and I guess the school.

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But he's basically shown that he believes in some form of standpoint theory.

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He's had the, you know, after the George Floyd situation and the protest that ensued, he had two students who were black to explain their experience, because I guess that's just, you need that to understand everything else that's going on and you just can't possibly grasp what's happening unless you have that lived experience.

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And so he's done that. He's, I know, invited woke speakers to campus.

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He supported a BLM -style, I don't know if you wanna call it a protest or a rally on LU's campus.

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But with him leaving, this does open the door for someone hopefully who's more conservative in their theological and political views to come on campus.

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Nassar, and when I say theologically conservative, you know, Nassar, he was a guy, if you went to LU, you kind of knew he wasn't known for his exegetical preaching,

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I'll put it that way. And his style was more of a TED Talk with a few Bible verses sprinkled in.

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And so if they can get someone to come and do convocation, who's gonna bring it back to more of a time to focus on the scripture and spiritual disciplines and these kinds of things, it may be a good thing.

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I don't know who would be replacing him, but this is what's happening, at least right now, on the campus of Liberty University.

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Let's see, other items. I was gonna, I think I'll probably, am I gonna end with this? Yeah, I'll end with this.

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Justin Bieber, you didn't expect me to say that name, did you? Justin Bieber has written a cancel culture song, anti -cancel culture song.

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That's right, Justin Bieber, of all people, has written an anti -cancel culture song.

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I'm gonna read it to you. It says, verse one, I am afraid to say the wrong thing, criticize from every angle, and I'm afraid to lay it on the line, and selfishly,

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I wanna hold back. Hmm, that does sound awfully familiar, and I think a lot of people do relate to it.

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Chorus, do we got the room to make mistakes? Are we judged for everything we said?

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I wanna grow up, but I'm afraid. And will it always be the same? Does what I gotta say even matter?

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Is life about climbing up the ladder? And can we even see lives that are shattered? Because I'm really trying to silence the chatter.

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What have we done with society when everybody's getting canceled?

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And can't there be room for maturity? Because writing them off is not the answer. Verse two, we can't write people off.

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God never writes us off, even in our darkest days, even when we least deserve it. Even when we're doing that stupid thing we wish we weren't doing,

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God never writes us off, ever. He's with us in our pain, he's with us in our struggle, he's with us in our bad decisions, he's with us all the time, he never writes us off.

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And then the outro, you formed the whole of me, inward and out, I'm awesomely and wonderfully created, your creations are spectacular, you skillfully designed me, you saw the essence of me before I was formed, before I existed, all of my days were written in your book.

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Justin Bieber, don't tell me God cannot use the weak things of the world, because I was not expecting that from Justin Bieber.

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And to be the one with a little bit of a voice of reason there, trying to stand against the mob.

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And of course, if you are a Christian, those words are true. Specifically referring to the verse two, that God does not write us off.

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If you are in him, even in our darkest days, even when we least deserve it, there's some encouragement in that.

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So I don't know about all of Justin Bieber's theology, I don't know where he stands on everything, but it was refreshing to see that someone, who's a celebrity, sees what's going on, sees it as a problem, is willing to say something, which unfortunately,

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I can't say that for most of the big evangelical pastors. Isn't that sad? But Justin Bieber, well done.

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So we're gonna end on that note. Please, if you know anyone at Liberty University or in Lynchburg, go to the info section, sign up to come out on Saturday, see

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Paint the Wall Black, and then hear from myself, I'll be there. And specifically, Juan Riesco, the star of that, if you wanna call him the star,

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I guess, the star of that particular documentary. God bless, and I hope you have a good day. Bye now.