Congratulations Justin Brierley!

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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I wanted to put together a quick video and say congratulations to Justin Brierley.

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I think today actually, no 27th, so a couple days from now will be the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the unbelievable radio broadcast.

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Now that's unbelievable for a number of reasons, primarily I would say what makes it unbelievable is that it comes out of London and, you know, you think of the topics that Justin has managed to sneak onto the airwaves, the number of meaningful discussions with Muslims, of course

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Justin's favorite program, the debate on homosexuality with Bob Gagnon and the lady from the

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Church of England, I'm sure that's probably ranked up there at the top of his favorites, but obviously has addressed a tremendously wide variety of topics and doing that in England is not easy to do.

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There just isn't a whole lot of real freedom anymore to tackle the tough subjects, at least in a way where you actually are trying to say something meaningful, it's, well, it's what you expect in England these days.

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Now I've directed a lot of folks to the unbelievable broadcast and I'm hoping that,

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I've certainly heard people write in when Justin reads emails,

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I know I've heard him read emails from people who said, I heard about you on the dividing line with James White and so on and so forth.

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And so I'm hoping we have helped to get the overseas audience a little bit larger than it would be otherwise.

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Now Justin knows that a number of times, in fact, I imagine he probably sits there a few times.

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In fact, I imagine a few times it has crossed his mind, you know, this program is going to give

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James White hives. And that does happen fairly regularly.

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There are programs that I'm just like, how about getting somebody in there that will actually take a swing at the ball, you know?

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But you know, it's England after all. And what

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I really appreciate about Justin is, you know, I can tell where Justin's coming from, theologically, a number of things.

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And I don't think he's attending a Reformed Baptist church anyway. So the question is, you know, if Justin himself ever decides to get into the debating realm, there would be a couple places where, you know, he and I could actually probably have some interesting debates.

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But he doesn't let that get in the way of being extremely fair and doing his best to let both sides be heard.

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Once you know him, you can sort of see where the, you know, the perspectives are coming from.

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But in general, he's very frequently complimented, improperly so, by his listeners for really putting out a serious effort to make sure both sides can be heard and make sure that the issues are being clearly explained and addressed and things like that.

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And I think that's an excellent thing. It's not easy to do. It's a much harder job.

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And you'll notice that, you know, most of the time, Justin knows what is being discussed fairly well and is able to ask intelligent questions.

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I've been on a lot of radio programs and that wasn't the case. You know,

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I'll write a book and people interviewing me obviously didn't even spend time to read the promo material that was sent out for the book itself.

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So it's nice when you've got that kind of a moderator. So Unbelievable is a valuable program.

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For some of us, sometimes you'll want to take some Advil while listening to it. That's ibuprofen, whatever it's called over in England.

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But I've learned a lot and I've spent many hours listening and of course,

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I've lost track of how many times I've been on Unbelievable as a guest, both here from Phoenix and far more often in studio, actually, there at the

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Premiere Studios in London. And there's even a little eatery across the street.

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I won't tell you where it is, but there's a little eatery across the street where I had the most tasteless spaghetti bolognese

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I've ever had in my life. I mean, I was looking around for even a grain of salt, something to give some taste to that spaghetti.

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Oh my goodness. And I'm sure that Justin is chuckling about now. But anyway, I've forgotten how many times

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I've been on, but you know, who else would be able to arrange having me on with emergent church leaders?

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And my goodness, I think it's still one of the more listened to podcasts, but a couple of years ago, you have three days to prepare to do a debate on justification with NT Wright program and things like that.

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So I'm very appreciative of those opportunities and I'm really hoping to have some more again in the future.

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I know I make Justin a little nervous. We Yanks tend to be a little more forceful at times.

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And like I said, I know Justin's not a Calvinist, but be that as it may,

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I really appreciate the program, hope to be on it again in the future. And 10 years seems like yesterday, doesn't it?

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Or it seems like a decade ago or a hundred years, depending on which aspect you're thinking about, I imagine.

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But 10 years of great programming. And if you don't at least watch the topics on Unbelievable and listen in once in a while,

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I would highly recommend that you do because there aren't too many programs like it really anywhere in the world.

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It's very different from the dividing line, but the range of topics can be very, very wide.

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You can really listen to some very interesting exchanges. And so congratulations, kudos to Justin Brierley on 10 years.

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And I wonder what subjects we're going to be discussing and how much freedom we'll have to discuss them 10 years from now.

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Well, Justin's a young man, so we don't have to worry about him being too aged to do it, but you do wonder what the society is going to look like 10 years from now.

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But I hope to be recording a congratulations video for your 20th anniversary as well,