Episode 94: A Country Buffet

Rural Church Podcast 2.0

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Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

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I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

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You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

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The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

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Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

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Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Two words, Eddie. What are the two words?

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The first word is Mariah. Perry. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. So, it's like in the 30s this morning.

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It's in October. I almost said late October, but technically it's not. It's mid -October.

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I guess, though, it's the 16th, so we're past the midway point. That's right. But it was cold this morning.

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It was in the 30s. So, what does the dad of the home naturally do when he wakes up? He cranks up,

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Mariah Carey, all I want for Christmas is you. And we had somewhat of a dance party in the

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Nelson home. What do you think? Well, I don't know. Me and my wife, we were coming home last night from, you know, pastors, you know what they do when they go on a date, right?

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Go shopping or something? Well, you go to the hospital or, you know, you go in to visit people.

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So, we were going to visit, it was actually my uncle, but we went to visit him in the hospital in Little Rock.

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And so, we were on our way home last night and we played Christmas music all the way home.

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So, it was pretty nice, pretty good. That's what I'm talking about. Welcome to the

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Rural Church Podcast. Depending on their election results, I think,

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I don't know if this one might come out right after the election. So, maybe they've already taken us off air. Nobody will know.

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Nobody's going to know. It's going to take weeks before they'll figure it out. That's right. I am your co -host,

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Alan Nelson. I'm one of the pastors, Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Chile, Frosty, Perryville, Arkansas.

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With me is Eddie Ragsdale, Pastor of First Baptist Church, Marshall. Today, I think the plan is,

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I guarantee you we're going to get on one of these topics and just stay on it. So, what I'm about to say is probably superfluous, but we kind of thought we'd have a bit of a potpourri episode.

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Just kind of several things to address, but I guarantee you we'll get on one of these topics and we'll stay on it.

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First, though, how are you feeling after that election? I have no idea because we don't know.

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But to get to your point of the potpourri of topics, we're going to, it'll probably be like I was at the buffet last night.

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We went to a buffet last night. And I'm going to use this as an analogy for maybe how this episode will go because, you know, the buffet, you can get anything.

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You know, it was one of those kind of buffets. It was a golden corral we went to.

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So, that's kind of like, you know, they've got everything up there. But once you figure out something that's actually good because a lot of the stuff was not good, you just keep going back and get more of that.

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So, maybe that's how this will, we'll hit on some of these topics. And when we find one that tastes like medium rare steak, we'll stick with it.

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Oh, so let me ask you this. Obviously, we have no idea the election results at this point.

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We have no clue. What advice would you give to the Christian who's waking up today?

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And let's say Kamala's president. Give me the advice you give if Kamala's elected president or the advice you give if Trump is elected president.

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So, let's start with Kamala first. I'm going to say that we need to, well, it's actually not going to be that much different.

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Because essentially, either way, we need to pray for the leadership that we have in our country.

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Right now, you should, no matter your view of Joe Biden, you should be praying for him.

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We should be praying for him. We should be praying, well, we should probably be praying for whoever is actually leading the country too.

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But we should be praying for our leaders. And we need to be preaching the gospel.

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We need to be sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, no matter who wins the election.

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And I've said this in the past, but I know personally that I, at times, have been more diligent to pray for leadership of our country when it was leadership that I was opposed to.

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And so I would say, regardless of whether Kamala wins or whether Donald Trump wins, we need to be praying for our leaders.

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We need to be sharing the gospel. We need to be continuing to invest our lives in our local churches.

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That's not going to change because of who wins the nomination. Yeah. I think what

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I'd say is, if it's Kamala, I would say, okay, guys, maybe you've resisted this for a while, but it's clear that this nation is under the judgment of God.

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The Democratic Party, I made this statement the other day, I think we could just walk through, like the

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Democratic Party essentially enshrines the breaking of every one of the commandments in its platform.

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Now, we could walk through Donald Trump's breaking of the Ten Commandments, obviously, but I'm talking about the party, the

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Democratic Party openly enshrines the breaking of all of God's commandments in its platform.

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And so I would agree with you about prayer and I would say, don't lose hope. Christ is

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King still. Christ is King. Christ is on His throne. But our country is in a terrible, terrible position and you should have been desperate 10 years ago, 20 years ago, but you weren't, and maybe today you'll be desperate and you'll cry out to God, you'll call prayer meetings.

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Like you said, maybe that would push more churches to get serious. I've seen in this election cycle, churches getting fired up about these things.

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And then, of course, Christian arguing about voting and all those things, which I think we've shared that before.

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We've talked about that kind of stuff. But the point I'd make is, yeah, we should have been fired up a long time ago and remembering that the weapons of our warfare.

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So I'm not saying don't do anything in politics or don't do anything in your city or whatever, but I'm saying the priority is out of whack.

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We're focusing on all this stuff that we can do and we're not seeking the mercy of God. And so, you know, if Kamala's president, we're under God's judgment, cry out to him.

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If Donald Trump is president, I would say that I want to take that as a token of mercy from the

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Lord because I do think that some of his policies are certainly, not think,

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I know his policies are far and away better, most of his policies, far and away better.

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But I would also say you better not let, you better take that as a sign of, okay,

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I'm going to get serious. I'm not going to get slothful here. I'm not just going to sit back because if Donald Trump is elected president, the victory is not won.

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It's like, we're still the America as a culture, as a system, the

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America that you and I, and I know I feel old because this is what some people would say when we were younger, but the

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America that you and I know, it may be, or that we once knew, it may be gone forever.

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I'm thinking about the times, you know, us growing up and just that kind of, I was talking to someone the other day about Mexico and going to Mexico and he was asking, well, what do you think about the danger there?

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And, you know, we're just walking through all that. And then I, but I finished a phone call by saying, but look, man, I'm probably more nervous if to take a group to Chicago or any

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American city, you know, so if Donald Trump is elected president, I would say, look, we've got a long way to go.

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Praise God for his mercy, but you better let this spur you on to desperation.

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Like you said, similar to both, the same desperation, you know, you should have and you should not take lightly.

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The Lord owes America no mercy. And so you should not take lightly if Donald Trump was elected president.

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And we do see that as just a small measure of mercy from God, don't presume upon that mercy.

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So I don't know if that's how, I don't know if you have any thoughts. Yeah, yeah, and we don't wanna, you know, I know right now you're preaching in Nahum, you know, even if Donald Trump wins, that is not, that does not mean that we have had a national repentance like Nineveh had in the days of Jonah.

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We haven't had that. And there's no reason to think even that means, oh, that we're in good shape, that we're not still in danger of being overthrown.

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And so, yeah, I think I would wanna encourage people, don't presume as you said upon that, that we've got nothing to worry about now.

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It's just gonna be good times, low taxes. Well, we need to turn to the

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Lord. That's what we need. And while I'm gonna be voting for Trump, no way

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I could vote for the democratic ticket, you know? And so I don't have any other option

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I'm voting. But the reality is, even if Donald Trump wins, that does not mean that we've repented.

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And it does not mean that we've turned to righteousness. And if anything, we ought to be crying out all the more that God has shown us kindness, kindness that ought to lead us to repentance.

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That's good, brother. Yeah, I think we're on the same page there. You know, I'm with you.

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I'm voting for Trump. I feel like that's my only viable option. If he is elected,

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I think that we need to hold our, especially GOP, we need to press harder on abortion stuff, you know, but they've competed.

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Anyway, so that's one thing we talked about. So if this episode, I think this episode does come out the day after the election.

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So if it does, you're waking up, you're listening to this. I do wanna just offer you hope, you know, whether it's

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Kamala and you're feeling frustrated or it's Donald Trump and you're feeling good, either way,

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God just encourage you, maybe even pause this right now and just pray. Ask God for his blessings of repentance on this nation.

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Be involved in the church and it's possible, either way, it's possible a greater time of persecutions coming up on our land.

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I am encouraged, I'm encouraged by some of the things I see in people my age and younger and, you know, pushing back against the norm and the narrative or whatever.

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Also, it discourages me too, because I'm afraid we're losing sight of the kingdom, the kingdom of Christ and that's what he's building.

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Anyway, so that's one thing there. What's the next thing you're talking about? Maybe talk about parenting a little bit.

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Yeah, so where I'm at preaching right now, actually, though, this, you know, we're recording this a few weeks ahead, but we're gonna be looking at Samson.

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We've been going through judges in our church. And so we're gonna be looking at Manoah and his wife.

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And there in Judges, when it tells us about the

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Lord coming to Manoah and his wife, it tells us that, you know, he first, the

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Lord comes to Manoah's wife and tells her about the miraculous birth that's gonna take place.

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And then Manoah actually prays to the Lord. And he says, oh Lord, please let the man of God whom you sent come again to us.

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And this is the thing I want us to hear and teach us what we are to do with the child who will be born.

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And I think as parents, man, we need to have the prayer of Manoah.

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Lord, teach us what we are to do with the child or the children who will be born.

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The Lord gives us children, and we ought to be asking the Lord, what would you have, teach us what we are to do with them.

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How are we to raise them up? How are we raise them up not to be children, but to actually be adults, to be godly men and women who are gonna glorify the

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Lord? And the other thing that Manoah says, and this is interesting. He says in verse 12, and Manoah said, now when your words come true, what is to be the child's manner of life and what is his mission?

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And I really think we ought to think about those two things. What do we want our children to grow up to be?

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What do we want the manner of life? And what should their life look like in glorifying the

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Lord? And what do we want our children to think that their mission is in the world?

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You know, we talk all the time about, we wanna see people sold out to the local church, whether we need to be raising our children to be people who are living, you know, in light of the local church.

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And we ought to be raising the children in our churches to see the mission when it comes to the local church.

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And we ought to be raising our children to see what manner of life are they gonna live?

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How are they gonna live their life around this purpose of the glory of God in all things?

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You know, so I was just thinking about that. Like I said, I've not even preached the sermons yet or taught through this passage much, but I was working through it yesterday a little bit as I was teaching at another place and just really got captivated by those two ideas.

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Teach us, oh Lord, what we are to do with the child who will be born. What is to be the child's manner of life and what is his mission?

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That's good, brother. I would say that I wanna try to address two ditches if I will.

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The first ditch is probably the most important ditch to address and that is we have become a people in American evangelicalism that have just tried to use the church to disciple our children.

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And so family -driven faith, Votie Bacchum, you can read that.

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There's other things. We are, so our church, we're not family -integrated in the sense of like we do some age -segregated classes and things like that.

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And I actually, I think it's good and I have no problem with that. I actually think it's beneficial. I think it's historically good sometimes, but we are committed to, what

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I mean historically is it's been practiced in the past. We are committed to family integration in our main gathering.

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And I think that's important to have everyone together. But the point I'm just trying to make is in evangelicalism, we've done all these youth groups, children's group, children's camp, youth camp, all these things.

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And that's been the way that we disciple our children. And some even well -meaning

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Christian parents would probably think like, maybe I should be doing more, but I don't get it. This is what I do. The church disciples my children.

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And we have to remember that the primary disciple -maker of your children is you. You're responsible, dads, moms, to raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the

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Lord. We say, yeah, but what do I do? We've talked about family worship before, but just to have a simplified here, and I'm not trying to make it sound so silly and dumb, but it's very easy.

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Before your kids go to bed, start this. Before your kids go to bed, or when you wake up in the morning, open up the

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Bible and read a chapter, half a chapter, and then the next day, continue on there.

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And there's other things you can do from there, but start there. Do that and pray. Start there at the very baseline.

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Don't prep. You know, I was talking the other day, somebody was encouraging this father to prepare for family worship.

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Well, actually, I disagree with that. I just think that there's so much on your plate as a husband and a father.

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I'm not saying you can never do that. That'd be great. Listen to this podcast or read whatever, but I'm just saying nine times out of 10, you just open up the

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Bible and you're reading it. And you say, yeah, but what if we come up on something that I don't know the answer to?

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It's gonna happen, okay? Then get the answer. Go to your pastor, okay? Whatever the case may be.

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But the point I'm trying to make is we have to intentionally disciple our children.

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That's one ditch. I think that's the most important. The other ditch is, I'm kind of noticing today, in sort of this resurgence of maybe

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I should say patriarchy or maybe neo -patriarchy, I don't know. I mean, I would consider myself patriarchy, camp, depending on who's defining that.

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But the point I wanna make is there can be an overemphasis on the home.

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So there can be guys that are like, I don't want my wife and kids to go to church if I'm sick. They're all gonna stay home with me because I don't want them listening to something without me.

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It's like that overemphasizes the home. You know what

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I'm saying? And also you kind of look at your home as like a little church. Now, in one sense,

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I'm okay with that. That's good. Dr. Sam Walden wrote a little book, A Man as Priest in His Home. It's excellent.

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And the analogy is excellent. And thinking of our home as a little church in one sense of the analogy is excellent.

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And you're the pastor of the home in one sense. That's excellent. The problem is if you press that too far and you actually look at your home as a church, but your home is not actually a church, right?

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Your home is the home. And you need to have... So on one hand, I'm saying, don't pawn your kids off on the church, raise them up in the nurture and admonition of the

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Lord. But the other hand I'm saying, but don't do that without the church. You're still gathering with the church.

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You're seeing your life is revolving around gathering with the church and the fellowship of the saints and the means of grace provided in church.

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It's all, it's not... So there's two ditches to avoid. Does it make sense? I'll let you talk. Yeah, yeah.

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Well, and I would even say, since you mentioned that your home is not a church, look, maybe it is.

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Maybe your home is church, but if it is, then it needs to have elders and you need to have other believers meeting there.

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Now that's possible. It's not impossible that you have a church meeting in your home.

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A church meeting in your home. Yeah, that's possible, but it's not... But if, and this is the danger that I've seen, but if what you're doing is it's just you and your wife, maybe your children, because you can't find a church pure enough, there's no church good enough because every church you go to...

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Look, I know that there are a lot of problems in churches, but if you're living in an area where there are a lot of churches and you can't find any churches where they're opening the

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Bible and they're teaching the Bible, I'm not saying you agree with everything, but I'm saying there are true churches where you can meet together.

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And yeah, maybe you've got to allow for some grace on some things that Christians can disagree about.

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But I've seen this problem pop up here lately where people, they've got such...

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I wouldn't even say it's high standards. I would say it's such personal standards for what they want in a church that they can't find any church.

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And so they end up thinking they're doing the holy thing because they won't go to any of these churches that aren't good enough, but they're not in any church at all.

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They say they have a high view of the church and really they have a high view of their opinion. A high view of... That's right.

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That's exactly right. When you think about the church at Corinth, just to address this real quick, you think about the church at Corinth and Paul doesn't tell the people to leave the church.

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And that church had wacky stuff. That church was messing around with the gifts and error in that.

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Error in church discipline. I mean, it was just a mess. There were factions. Factions.

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Yeah. If Paul doesn't tell them to leave, Paul tells them, Paul addresses the issues.

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And so I would just address... Somebody's teaching that there's no resurrection of the dead. Yeah, what's going on, dude?

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And some people are being baptized on behalf of the dead, right? They're doing whacked out things.

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So I would just encourage, okay, number one, you're in a church situation or you're in a town situation and no church is meeting your standards.

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Well, first I would say, is there a true church? Like, is the gospel being proclaimed? Right, obviously you can't go to like a

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Roman Catholic church, right? They got... Or Jehovah's Witness or whatever. You can't do that.

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But is a church, is the gospel proclaimed? So start there. And if the gospel is being proclaimed, go and then work for reformation.

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Now, if there's a... If you really can't, like it's just, no, you don't understand my situation.

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It's terrible. Okay, then move. Well, you say, well, but I can't move. Well, then something's got to give.

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And I mean, another thing is, hey, reach out to us. I don't know that we could necessarily, I don't have anything on my mind, but reach out to us and maybe there's a contact we know somewhere within an hour of your, you may have to drive a little ways.

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But the point is, you cannot just separate yourself from the church.

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It's not good for you. It's not good for your soul. And in the topic at hand, it's not good for your children.

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Right, that's right. You're not gonna teach your children their manner of life or what their mission ought to be.

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If all you're teaching them is, our opinions are so perfect that they can never be questioned, even by the scripture.

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That's right. Yeah, you need, okay, so how do you, we've talked about this thing in the episode that came out today, but you're commanded to obey your leaders, submit to them.

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You can't do that. I mean, you can't do that. Now, I know some guys that really like to use

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Ephesians five on their wife, submit, submit, submit. Okay, but Hebrews 13 is true of you, submit.

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So, but how are you gonna do that if you're not under godly elders?

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So. That's right. Yeah, that was good. Okay, what's next? Yeah, I'm trying to remember now.

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What was the next thing that we had said? We kind of made a little list before we got started.

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Here's one, and I don't know, maybe we should talk about this more, or maybe a whole episode, but we've done a lot of eschatology lately.

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I'll read from 1 Timothy four, verse, I'll start in verse 13. But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.

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For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and even so through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

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For this, we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive who are left until the coming of the

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Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God.

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And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive who are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the

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Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

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Oh, by the way, verse 17, those who are left, it kind of sounds like you wanna be the one left behind. And then chapter five, now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you.

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For you yourselves are fully aware the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying there's peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them.

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As labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief.

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For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. So then let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.

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Anyway, we go on, but let me just say this. I'm gonna just give you my proposition since we're just kind of rapid fire here.

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The day of the Lord and the rapture of the church are the same time, according to that passage.

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I can't hear you. You've muted me. Sorry, I had myself muted. Yes, you're right.

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Yes, that is true. They are at the same time. I don't understand. Now, I just grew up, just assuming this, like whatever passage you dealt with, you had to be able to force this in there.

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There is a secret pre -trib rapture. There's gonna be a thing, you know, the old joke was,

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I want a bumper stick on my car. In case of rapture, mother -in -law will take the wheel or whatever, you know, like, it was like, okay.

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Cause the idea was like, you know, that's a terrible joke. But the point is that people were saying like, we're going to be driving the car and just, you know, sucked out or whatever.

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And this idea was like, okay, there's going to be this secret pre -tribulation rapture.

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And then, you know, this span of time, typically seven years, and then

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Jesus is gonna come back. But I'm just telling you, that's just, there is not any biblical, there's not a biblical text for that.

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Right. You have to just, you have to have that already in your mind, and then you have to take it to the text and you have to make the text fit what you already think.

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And it's just not, that's not how we do the Bible. So the rapture and the day of the

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Lord, so people want to separate, and here, this was funny. People want to separate that text I read, first Thessalonians four and five.

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They want to separate it just because it has a five in their Bible, like it ends at the four, and then it has a five, but what's the problem with that?

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The problem with that is Paul didn't write it that way. He didn't write Thessalonians with a chapter and verse distinctions.

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It was just a letter, and this was all a part of what he was thinking about. It's all one section, really, it's not two sections.

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Yeah, and so that's exactly right. You can't separate it. And even the idea, it says

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God will bring with him, first chapter four, verse 14, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.

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And the idea here too is where rapture comes from.

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So I believe in a rapture. I think it's clear, it says it here. And it says that in verse 16, no, 17, sorry.

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We who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the

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Lord in the air. So always be with the Lord. That's not talking about secretly rapturing the church and taking them up to heaven.

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Actually, it's talking about as the Lord descends, remember, he's descending. As the Lord descends, the word there is the idea of a party in the city going out to meet a dignitary or a king or someone who's coming toward the city.

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The party goes out, that's the word, the idea of the word. The party goes out to meet them. And then where do they go?

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They come into the city. And so that's what's being articulated there.

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So this idea of, and I think this is important practically too,

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I think that the scriptures are replete with encouraging and commanding

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Christians to stay faithful in times of persecution and tribulation. But if you just have this mentality of, well,

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I'm just gonna get raptured. Like if you think, for example, let's go back to where we started in the beginning. If you think, well, Kamala's president, it don't matter, before it gets real bad,

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I'll be raptured out of here. I'm saying, no, that's not true. It could get really bad and you're gonna be here under the judgment of God as a nation, not you as an individual

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Christian. There's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. But when a nation comes under national judgment and you're part of that nation, there are things that you may have to endure and you may have to go through.

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So don't think to yourself, well, I'm just gonna be raptured out of here. Not true. You better start now.

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And these things that we talked about with your children, it just kind of goes with the last one. You better start now cultivating a readiness to face these things.

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Does that make sense or anything you wanna add? No, it's good. And this just goes to show you why we've gotta be reading the whole

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Bible. And understanding what the different texts are teaching. Because I think,

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I really think the idea that people have in their mind of maybe the secret rapture concept.

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Yes, some of that is because people have just taught it and they've just heard people say it.

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So they think that's true. But I also think there are a lot of believers who they are reading their

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Bible and they conflate different passages to be talking about the same thing without understanding kind of what they're getting at.

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And what I mean by that is, I think a lot of people will read this passage and they're conflating it with the idea of the

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Lord saying that he's gonna come and that he's going to come suddenly and he even says here in verse one, he's gonna come at like a thief in the night.

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And they're making that in their mind and they're saying that means that it's gonna happen instantaneously.

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And that's why they're thinking of it as secret. But they're not realizing that the whole text is teaching a bigger concept than that.

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And so I just think sometimes we get to putting together different passages. Maybe we put together something from the

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Gospels, when Jesus is talking about his coming, or maybe even sometimes when

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Jesus was talking about something other than his coming and people automatically assume that's what it is.

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So just the importance of making sure that we're reading these passages, we're reading them in context and we're understanding what they're teaching.

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I've heard the strangest things, like somebody one time said, well, you see the church is mentioned in Revelation one through three, but then in Revelation four,

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Paul is, or sorry, Paul, who wrote Revelation? John is called up into heaven.

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And that's, you see, that's actually the rapture because the church is not mentioned again until I think like Revelation 22, as far as like specifically, you know?

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And you're just like, bro, that's not how we read the Bible. No, it's just not.

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And the thing is, the way that it's about dispensations and we've talked about this before, like what

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I'm so grateful for dispensations, the way that they read the Bible and the way that they will always want to talk about literal, literal, literal.

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And I'm like, amen, except you're literally, you're not taking like first Thessalonians four and five, like you're not taking that literally.

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And so like areas that you should take the Bible literally, you're not, and then areas where the

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Bible itself, like in prophecy and Revelation, it is giving figurative, you know, dragons and stuff.

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The woman in the wilderness, all those things, like this is obvious figurative language.

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So take the Bible literally where it's speaking literally, understand it's metaphorical analogies when it's giving that, like all of us, by the way, take the

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Bible as infallible and literal in the sense that like what this is meaning to say, that's what it means, all of us do that.

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So anyway, all that's important, but I just think it's a problem. It's certainly a problem to have this preconceived idea of a pre -trib rapture, and then you're gonna impose it on the text.

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Right, right. Yeah, the idea that we're gonna, and I think I've heard,

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I think I first heard this from, and I wouldn't even agree with Tim on his eschatology, but Dr.

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James White talked about it as escapism. We don't wanna be escapists.

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We wanna have a theology that, well, it's not that we wanna have a theology, but the

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Bible teaches us a theology of endurance. And even though James White was applying that to post -millennialism,

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I would say, regardless of your millennial view, we ought to have a view from the scriptures are teaching us to endure.

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They're teaching us to proclaim, that we're actually attacking the enemy's kingdom and that Christ is taking for himself people, and he's rescuing people for his kingdom, and that we ought to be thinking in those terms and not about, well, man, we can get out of here.

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We just wanna get out of here. So I think that's important. So here's one, and then any of these things could be a whole episode, but here's the last thing.

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I think this will take it, I mean, because I think we've been on maybe probably around 37 minutes or something. So here's one more thing to squeeze in.

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And that is, I think that the scriptures do teach of a capital A Antichrist, the

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Antichrist, the man of lawlessness. And we could talk about that on another episode and what all that may look like and et cetera.

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But here's what I think the church misses. And that is that the spirit of the

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Antichrist is operative already and has been operative already.

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I'll just give you one text. This is 1 John, 1 John 2, 18.

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But it says, children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many

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Antichrist have come. Therefore, we know that it is the last hour. And so maybe this goes back to what we talked about at the beginning too.

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What I want Christians to see and understand is that in government, for example, bad policies, maybe sometimes bad policies are just absolute ineptitude, but a lot of times, more often than not, bad policies and wicked policies aren't because people are dumb.

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It's because the spirit of the Antichrist is at work. You know, what do you think about COVID lockdowns?

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And you're gonna take that it's a coincidence that casinos were open, but churches were closed?

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You know, come on, bro. Or you take the idea of 1 ,000 years ago, people were sacrificing their children to false gods.

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And now it's just more sophisticated. We're still sacrificing our children, but it's just to the false god of self.

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Like, why do societies in these ways, why does it not change? It's because the spirit of the Antichrist and the goal of the spirit of the

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Antichrist and many Antichrists, and this manifests itself. So I'm gonna let you address this and respond, but I'm just saying,

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I'm saying it manifests itself in systems, it manifests itself in leaders, it manifests itself in false teachers.

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All these things I'm saying are part of, some of these things seemingly disconnected are actually part of a grand scheme to destroy the church.

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That's the goal of Antichrist is to destroy the church either

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A, by killing her, and you see this evidence, Old Testament, New Testament history, try to kill the people of God.

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Or secondly, if it is not achievable to kill the people of God, then it is to lead the people of God into the

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Antichrist harem, if you will. It is to lead them into his bedroom. It is to take the bride of Christ and have her commit adultery.

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So anything you wanna say with all that? You know, thinking about just the difference between light and darkness,

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I mean, even what you were sharing there, I mean, I was just thinking about, you see these, the best example

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I can think of is like queers for Palestine. When it's like, you do realize those people would kill you.

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Those believing Muslims, they would behead you homosexual people.

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But because they're both on the side of darkness. That's right. They can support one another, right?

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Because they're on the side of darkness. And that's not even, and don't, I don't want our listeners to read into that kind of Christian Zionism.

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That's not my point there. My point is just to say, I do think we see darkness colluding, even when the two parties, maybe those that we would say, well, you don't even agree.

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That's right. You actually should be opposed to each other, but because you're opposed to God, because you're opposed to Christ, they can always find alliances.

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There's someone pulling the strings as it were, but let me say this. Again, I'm not saying, here's a great classic book of Antichrist and His Ruin by John Bunyan.

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And he does a great job of working through these things. I don't want anyone to think that we're saying that people are not responsible.

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Absolutely. No, no, no. They're guilty. They're responsible. It's on them. I'm just saying behind the scenes, as it were, there is the reality of forces of darkness leading people in this way.

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And they're making their own choices, but as it were, there's some guidance there of pushing towards these things that would seek to, like exactly like you said, these weird alliances, like where does that come?

42:30

Why is that a thing? How could that possibly be a thing? It confounds all reason.

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Well, it's because the goal is the same of both the LGBTQ community and the

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Muslim community. They have the same goal. I'm not saying every individual in there would be able to articulate this goal and that even anybody would say,

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I'm influenced by the spirit of the Antichrist. They're not gonna say that, but the communities have the same goal, the destruction of the church.

43:00

Sure. And so that's what we're talking about. And it's the same too. So our confession at our church, the 1689 in chapter 26, paragraph four maybe, it says that the

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Pope is the Antichrist. Now, I don't think that you have to take that as the Pope, like any one particular

43:21

Pope is capital A Antichrist, but I do think it's clear that the papal office is

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Antichrist. And it could be, I mean, it could be at the end of days that a literal

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Pope will be the capital A Antichrist, but the point is that the papal office is

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Antichrist. It's interesting, huh? Why would you say Rome, why is Rome all of a sudden buddying up with the

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LGBTQ community? Why is that? They have the same goal. What is that?

43:54

The destruction of the church. Yeah, and you even see it in Mormonism and you would think that would be impossible with Mormonism, you know,

44:03

Mormonism. So historically it goes back to it.

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So much of it is based on, you know, the male female distinction and heterosexual relationships and polygamy and all of those things.

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And then now you even see, you know, those kinds of alliances even happening with Mormonism.

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And you would think, well, that can't be the case, but it is, it is because darkness loves darkness.

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Well, and just to know it's not, so the encouragement here as we wrap up is like, this is, it's not random.

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It's not coincidental. It's not happenstance. There's a real enemy.

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And the forces of darkness are not just rolling along here and just be like, well, this is neat, this is neat, but there's a strategy and there's a plan.

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And so we need to be all the more vigilant against these things. We need back to where we started.

45:06

We need to pray. This is such, this is such basic Sunday school answers.

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Need to pray, read your Bible, go to church. That's right. But seriously though, seriously, and I would add to that, you need to be committed to the gospel, knowing it.

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Someone shake you up out of your sleep at 2 a .m., you better be able to articulate it. You need to know it that well.

45:31

You need to be able to communicate it to those around you. It's our only hope and it is, it is the weapon that we have that advances the kingdom of Christ.

45:43

That's right. Yeah. Well, brother, this has been quite the, quite the eclectic episode.

45:51

It really has been the old country buffet of the rural church podcast. Oh, that's a good way to say it.

45:57

Yeah, I'll take some more mashed potatoes, right? Thank you guys for joining us this week.

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And if the presidential situation allows, we'll see you next week.

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Sign us off, Eddie. We'll see you guys next week. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

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God's doing. This is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poimos, the masterpiece of God.