Challenges for the Global Church

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:38

Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It is a Tuesday, and if I was a, if I had the skills to make memes,

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I have one in mind, back in the corner of a very busy and raucous room is an elderly man in a, in beat up clothing.

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And he's somehow identified as in political cartoons and things like that is 2020.

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And he has a smirk on his face because he's staying there waiting for the first person in the room to say, you know,

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I sort of missed 2020. And that's gonna happen fairly quickly.

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I think most of us really missed 2019, actually. But it is 2021.

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And every day you get up, and you're almost afraid to look at the news to read whatever sources you're zeroing, zeroing in on to try to understand what's going on.

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You're probably not even using the same sources now that you were using last year. It things have changed that quickly.

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Some of those sources aren't there anymore, or won't be very soon. And so how do we understand these things?

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I, last, last program, we sought to lay down some foundations deal with some serious issues as to a

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Christian dealing with these things. Some people would say what we need to move on to other things. And there are things that we're going to be talking about over the course of the week.

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There's some, some old -style stuff. We've, we've got to deal with Francis's ecumenism and his, all that kind of stuff.

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We sort of talked about a little bit last time, but didn't really get into it, didn't play it and listen to all of it. And there's some stuff on Mormonism we need to be talking about.

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The Mormons haven't gone away, though they are changing very rapidly.

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Especially on a cultural level. It's very strange to see the cultural shift in the state of Utah.

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Really, really is. It's fascinating. It says a lot about the theology of Mormonism, that it's responding the way that it is.

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But anyway, so yes, there are things to, to be dealt with. And yet the speed and urgency of current developments just doesn't seem to want to slow down.

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And given that next week is, well, of course you hear all sorts of things.

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There's all sorts of things being bounced around now that make a lot of us sort of sit back and go, you know,

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I'm not sure I believe half of what I'm hearing these days. And there, there seems to be a real problem with the reporting that's going on and things like that.

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But certainly over the next couple of weeks, there are going to be major developments.

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There's going to be a flood of executive orders overturning all sorts of protections for Christian conscience.

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And Christians are going to be rushing to the courts, clogging them with immediately necessary lawsuits and requests for injunctions and everything else as the small weak dam that was holding back so much of this stuff is going to break very, very quickly with the installment of a new regime.

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I do not call administration. Administration assumes that there is a continuing body of law.

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And that is not a part of the worldview of the handlers of the man who was once Joseph Biden at all.

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They are very clear on the radical nature of what the things are going to be doing. So it is a regime and it's regime change that will be taking place.

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And so there's so much going on that when you see elders in Canada being brought up on criminal charges for having church services, and you see that most everyone is we're all running around right now, crushing gab.

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Did you hear that? That was it? What was the number? I one which

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I'm not even going to mention, but one secure encrypted messaging service that I think

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I told you. Yeah, I told you about that actually has a desktop thing. The first one I was talking about doesn't the second one does.

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They've had what was it 20 million? Yeah, 20 million people have joined that system in 72 hours.

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Globally, 20 million, most in the United States, it was already very popular outside the US. This guy is a

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Russian that what's his face went after Putin went after him.

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He didn't get poisoned, but he got kicked out. And he built this thing because he wouldn't share the encryption codes with the

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Soviets. Well, Soviets, Russians, whatever. Anyhow, so all this stuff's going on.

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And so there will be new developments next week and the week after that.

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And as they present theological worldview challenges, they need to be discussed and addressed.

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But last week's dividing line, Sunday night's sermon, which

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I will try when I type up the blog entry for this program, I will try to link the

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YouTube version of my sermon from Sunday night. It was decided I think on Friday.

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I shared with my fellow elders. I don't think I can pull off doing the next in the series on baptism right now.

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Because I know where everyone's mind is going to be in the in the congregation, and it would just be, it'd be difficult.

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And so I preached on presenting the kingship of Jesus when surrounded by inveterate rebels, which is,

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I think, a good Puritan style description of where we are today and what is taking place within really global society.

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I mean, this is global. It's not just the United States, though.

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We are feeling it most strongly because we have not been under the boot of oppressive regimes.

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But we are seeing that coming right now very clearly, very obviously. And if you don't see it coming, well, it's gonna smack you upside the head, you don't even know it.

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So my sermon, I'm going to try to link to that. And I'm also going to link to yesterday's blog and May blog article from Doug Wilson.

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And maybe if the guys at Canon contact me for the next, the

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January sweater vest dialogue, it would be sort of hard not to be discussing the subject that Doug's written, not written out, spoken when he records his blog article, reads it and records it.

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It's normally about eight to 10 minutes at most. This one was 32 minutes. And I sort of expected that after the events of last week.

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But I will link to that also in the blog article so that you have that if you have not read it or listened to it.

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I would very much encourage you to do so. It's called the gods of civil unrest and Jesus mobs.

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And as normal, it has all sorts of fun stuff in it, like prolegamma, not to the preamble to the introduction. Given how it is, that does make sense.

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But and I would I would like to remind folks of just another thing, just just keep this in mind.

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Let me see here. Where'd it go? I must have bypassed it.

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I have there it is. I have a micro blog that has an

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RSS feed attached to it called theology matters on our website.

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And I would like to recommend that you set up an

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RSS feeder feed reading system. There are lots of freebies available. It's old technology.

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It's pre all the stuff we're using now, but we're getting kicked off of.

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Basically, it is real simple syndication, I believe is what

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RSS means. And back when people were just writing lots and lots of blogs, that technology would allow you to bring all that information into one place.

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And so you can look at it and say, I want to read this, this, this and this. I think we're gonna be using

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RSS more in the future. Because we got lazy and fat and cheap.

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And now we're gonna have to get unlazy and unfet and pay. Ours isn't paid, but you get the idea.

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And that's how we're going to be able to communicate in the future. Because obviously, big tech is very much into being big brother.

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The idea of free speech debate, exchange of ideas, not, not high on their list right now.

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But one of the things in the middle of Doug's article that I'm very thankful for, and I want to thank him publicly for this, wasn't something he said.

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He said a lot of really good things. But he quoted Theodore Dalrymple.

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And the quotation, when you put together last week's

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Dividing Line, the sermon, his blog article, you put all together, together with a little article that I did on theology matters about pleasing

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God. You put all this together, and this may be some of the most important things you can understand about how we are to go forward in the situation we're in.

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What am I, what am I referring to? The article that I wrote for theology matters was basically saying that our society is seeking to shame us.

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And you will only be shamed if you are seeking to please the ones who are trying to shame you, and they're saying you're failing.

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And so if our focus is upon pleasing God and Him alone, then we cannot be shamed by anyone but God, and we cannot be shamed by failing anyone's standards but God's standards.

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Now, obviously, Christians should be concerned primarily about God's standards. But we live in this world, and this world is going to be pressing its standards upon us.

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And so this issue of shame, when you, when you think of that term, remember back in 2008, in 2008, or was it

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Prop 8? Was it Prop 8 in 2008? I think I was around in California.

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Remember Proposition 8? Stop the hate and all that kind of stuff. I remember very clearly this little grandmother being surrounded by these leftist liberals, and they knocked the sign out of her hands and stuff like that, and they're shouting, shame, shame, shame, shame.

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We talked about what the source of shame is at that time, and how the only ones in that video that needed to be ashamed were the liberals, leftists, shouldn't use term liberal, it has nothing to do with us anymore, the leftists who were yelling and screaming at the little old lady.

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But I think it is so important that each one of us make an absolutely clear, understood, personal commitment to be fully aware of all the circumstances that could be used to force us to offer that pinch of acceptance, to feel shame, and hence to be able to look in the faces of the inveterate enemies of God as they give vent to their hatred, as the restraint upon them is lifted.

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And with, with calm and confidence, know that they, while they are fellow image bearers, are but creatures, they are but grass that, that fades, and all, every single one of us is going to stand before the judgment bar of God.

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Not before their judgment bar, but before the judgment bar of God. And therefore, with calm confidence, we can continue to speak the truth as much as that is mocked, and as much as it is demanded that we speak lies.

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This will give us peace, even in the midst of having our rights trampled upon, our possessions taken away, being treated in the most gross, grossly unjust ways possible.

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What I've been seeing a lot of in the comments that people are making is the wild -eyed hypocrisy of the left right now.

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For example, it seems very clear to me, very obvious to me, that much more was going on last

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Wednesday, I believe it was Wednesday, yeah, last Wednesday, than meets the eye.

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The video that was very quickly out there in different venues, which may disappear in the future, is very confusing.

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You have people breaking through windows, you have people walking through open doors, walking right past security guards.

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In, and by the way, we need to correct the record here. In the only incident of death, even the

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Pope, even the Pope talked about five deaths. And that started becoming a story for a while.

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There weren't five deaths. That's not true. There were three medical incidents that led to death.

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And when you have a million people in one place without nearly enough porta -potties, heart attacks take place, strokes take place, all sorts of stuff takes place.

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And three of them were just simply elderly people and things like that. The security guard, his own family, we all heard the story that a security guard was bashed in the head with a fire extinguisher and then died of his wounds.

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His own family has come out and said, that's not what happened. Stop politicizing this. That's not what happened. Okay. But we all know that one woman was shot to death.

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And we've, I don't know if you've seen it. I've seen the footage and I'm still left wondering why

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I haven't heard anyone else going, when she falls back, right behind her are cops in full armor with semi -auto or automatic rifles aiming the other direction.

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Didn't the guard inside see them? What's going on here? I don't know.

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And you don't know either. The one thing I do know is something important was going on.

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Something that has now been completely transformed by what?

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A thousand people, maybe 2000 people the most. What was going on in seeking to bring about further investigation of the irregularities and the simply impossible numbers in the election all gone now.

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By that night, even the people that had announced that they were going to vote to do the investigation turned around because the whole idea was now those are the people.

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This was an organized attempt to overthrow the government. I'm sorry, but horns man, horns man, who is now on a hunger strike because they won't give him organic food is clearly insane.

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Okay. It's clearly not a well man. And even if he proclaimed himself president, that that's not, that's not really serious.

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What happened in 1983, when a leftist tried to blow up Republican senators in, in the same place, that was an attempt at insurrection.

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And she, that woman that planned that bomb that went off, she was pardoned by Bill Clinton just in passing.

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It's fascinating story. Might want to look it up. She's now involved in leftist causes here in the

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United States out, out free. And she tried to blow up the Capitol building and kill senators, but no one ever talks about that.

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Horns man is a nut. And I certainly have seen enough.

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Did you know, there've been more than four riots in Portland since the new year's they don't even report on anymore.

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Nobody reports on anymore. I mean, I, the only reason I knew is because they, they went, they started doing more and more going into the suburbs and going into the neighborhoods and stuff like that.

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And they were, they were trying to take out a police place in a neighborhood rather than, you know, in downtown and stuff like that.

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But since June of last year, we've all seen it organized, using communication, earwigs, uh, dressed so as to resist rubber bullets or tear gas, things like that.

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People being directed to certain places. They're using social media. They're using cell phones. They're using radios, earwigs, fully organized.

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None of which, absolutely none of which, look, the doofus walking around with the podium for the speaker.

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Okay. This was not a serious attempt to do anything. There was no plan, just a bunch of clowns, bunch of bozos.

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And yet since June, we've seen organized, purposeful, directed, funded.

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And did I read, was it four or $12 billion has flown into the coffers of BLM since that started since that started.

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So we look at this stuff and now we see impeachment, which is obviously nothing but the most childish level expression of we're going to get you.

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It's rage. It's anger. It's vitriol. It's hatred.

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We're going to get you. We're going to get you. We're going to blame you for everything. And then the purpose of that is therefore that anyone who would then go, but none of this changes the fact that there was a lot of irregularities.

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No, no, no, no. That's all been disproven. Now. I was listening to Fox news in my car on Sunday.

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And whoever was on, I don't know who it was, but whoever's on was talking to a representative who brought that issue up.

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And the Fox news correspondent would say, that's all been disproven. There's no reason to be talking and just shut them, shut them down.

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So that's all you can't even talk about it without becoming hornsman.

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That's the whole mental idea is anybody who would raise this is now an insurrectionist.

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Wow. That was effective. Wasn't it? I mean, there's not a, there's not a scintilla of logic if you, if you could actually get people to, if you could force people to think logically, the whole thing would collapse, but no one's thinking logically right now.

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And in fact, thinking logically is now becoming dangerous. And so we have this massive level of hypocrisy and I've been saying,

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Hey, the secular worldview has, has no basis for even considering hypocrisy to be something that's bad.

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It's not, it's not advice. It's a virtue. Hypocrisy is a good thing. If it promotes the narrative, it's a good thing.

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It's, it's a virtue, not a vice. And most Christians don't, most

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Christians know in on an intuitional level why that isn't the case, but we need to know on a much broader level, why it is that we believe that double standards and hypocrisy is demeaning to mankind and denigrating the glory of God.

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Well, I was going to talk on the program today about the concept of double standards and I'm going to,

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I will confess, you know, everybody has their weaknesses and I shouldn't say this because this gives future debate opponents a weapon against me, but I'll just have to trust the spirit of God in this situation.

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But I struggle mightily to control my emotions when

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I am faced with a person who clearly is unwilling or incapable of being logical and rational in their thought.

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Self -contradictory people, people who make stupid contradictory statements within two minutes,

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I just don't respect them. I, I just, I respect people who are disciplined in their thought and I don't respect people who are not.

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And so, as I see, and social media is filled with it right now, even the alternative social media sites are filled with, with past statements of people like Nancy Pelosi and others saying that violent demonstration and everything else, that's the voice of the people and all, you know,

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Twitter saying you should never limit free speech during elections and stuff like that.

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And then they turn around and do the very thing that they've condemned. And a lot of us just go, you just get angry.

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It's like, how can you do something like that? They're doing it purposefully.

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They know they're being hypocrites. There's a reason for it. And Doug Wilson's quotation of Theodore Dalrymple, it came,

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I looked it up by the way, it came from Front Page Magazine, August 31st, 2005, in an article,

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Our Culture, What's Left of It by Jamie Glazov, an interview with Theodore Dalrymple. Here's the paragraph.

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And man, I was really thankful for this. Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small.

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In my study of communist societies, this is Dalrymple speaking, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince nor to inform, but to humiliate.

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And therefore, the less it corresponded to reality, the better. When people are forced to remain silent, when they're being told the most obvious lies, or even worse, when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lost once and for all their sense of probity.

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To assent to obvious lies is to cooperate with evil. And in some small way to become evil oneself.

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One standing to resist anything is thus eroded and even destroyed.

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A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.

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If you, I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect as and is intended to.

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Wow. That is so, so vitally important to hear.

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Because I've, I mentioned to you Rod Dreher's book, Live Not According to Lies, that was taken by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, right as he is about to be exiled from the

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Soviet Union. And he says to the people, live not according to lies.

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The Soviet organ of propaganda was called Pravda, truth. And everybody in the

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Soviet Union knew that if it was in Pravda, it wasn't truth. But you had to repeat what was in Pravda.

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You had to acquiesce to what was in Pravda. And that's what he's talking about.

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It is meant to degrade you. It is meant to humiliate you.

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It is meant to break down anyone who would be so brave or so foolish as to continue to believe that there is truth outside of what the state says is truth.

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It is that assertion that there is a law above the state, that there is a truth beyond the defining categories of the state that made this nation great in the past and we no longer believe it.

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At least the incoming regime doesn't. And we are seeing in the irrational behavior and the irrational diatribe of the cultural conversation right now, live according to lies.

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Live according to lies. And we've been conditioned for it all year long. We've been conditioned for it all year long.

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Put that mask on. Yeah, all the studies say it doesn't do you any good, but put that mask on.

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Yeah, your fingers are all over it. Put that mask on. And when cases skyrocket, put more masks on.

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Live according to lies. Ignore the truth. Do as we say or you won't get anywhere.

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We'll punish you. Live according to lies. We've been told all year long.

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Hide in your house. This is how you do it. Hasn't worked out, has it?

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No, of course not. Live according to lies. You break it down this area, you break it down that area, you just keep breaking it down until you humiliate anyone who would dare to speak the truth.

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Double standards. If you're my age, you grew up in a time where when somebody was caught lying and engaging in hypocrisy and double standards, this was to damage their reputation.

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That's not the case any longer. That's where I struggle. I struggle to deal with the younger generation that sees no problem in thinking with their emotions rather than disciplining their emotions by thought.

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But they're the ones voting and we're the ones dying, hence the change over time.

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Let me repeat something here. The purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade.

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It was not to convince. I hear the left speaking and I just go, you think that's an argument?

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I sit back and go, boy, I'd love to get a chance to cross -examine this guy. Man, it'd be great to debate.

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This is why they don't debate. Because they don't want to persuade. They don't want to convince.

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They don't want to inform. That's not what it's about. It's to humiliate.

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It's to break things down. Isn't that what critical theory is? Isn't that what intersectionality does? Break down, break down, break down, break down.

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Humiliate, break down the person who thinks there is objective truth to which the state must be accountable.

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A law above the state. Rights that come from a creator rather than from the state.

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Break them down. Humiliate them. Shame on you. And you do that by forcing them to lie.

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And therefore, the less it corresponded to reality, the better.

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When people are forced remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies.

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And what's the best way to silence them? Aren't we being silenced right now? Isn't that what's going on?

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Banks now deciding who they're going to do business with based upon you have to be a leftist.

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You have to do as Big Brother says. You have to believe whatever narrative you're told, no matter how absurd it is.

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No, burning down Minneapolis was free speech. 90, 100 nights of organized high -tech equipment attacks in Portland, just free speech.

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But Horned Man is insurrection. The, the, the, the organic

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Horned Man. Yes, he is the, he, we almost fell to organic

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Horned Man. What? Don't worry about that other stuff. Those are lies.

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We know they're lies. The, the, the, the double standard is so blatant, but it's purposeful.

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And then you silence anyone who will go, excuse me, but that's a lie.

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When people are forced to remain silent, when they're being told the most obvious lies or even worse, when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves.

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So you want to, you want to get ahead in your job. You want to get ahead in, in your field.

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You got to lie. When that card comes across your desk and you are asked to sign the card, congratulating an upline boss on his marriage to another man, what are you going to do?

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That's what we're talking about. You see, you're being forced to lie. You're being forced to lie and call something that isn't a marriage, a marriage.

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That's what it's about. So, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once.

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I think it should be lose. They lose once and for all their sense of probity, their sense of pure truth, of uprightness to a scent, to obvious lies is to cooperate with evil.

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And in some small way to become evil oneself. One standing to resist anything is thus eroded and even destroyed.

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There it is. There that, thank you, Doug, for publishing that citation because it is right where we are.

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That's where we are. That's where we are. And so what have

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I been talking about for a long, long time? Pinch of incense. Caesar's Lord.

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Caesar tells you to lie. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.

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You have a choice to make. And Caesar is going to say, you say what I tell you to say. You repeat what

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I tell you, but it's a lie. Repeat it anyways. There you go. Are you going to allow yourself to be broken down?

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But it, it'll cost. Yeah. But can what they're trying to build last?

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Oh, the, like I said, the tech worries me, but these types of people turn each other.

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I really think if there's a silver lining someplace, absolute power crops, absolutely.

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And every time someone in history has gotten what it, that time in history was absolute power.

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The result has never been good. It's always ended up collapsing on itself.

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We need to be here pointing the direction to Christ when it all comes tumbling down, but there may be a huge cost to pay for that.

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Maybe a huge cost to pay for that. No choice about it. So in light of that, in light of the fact that what you're going to be facing is the constant pressure to live according to lies, people living a double standard, pure hypocrisy, enjoying it, promulgating it, making you suffer as a result of it.

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If you have as your foundation, I seek to glorify

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God, to be pleasing to God. I, I have to recognize

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I live in his sight. Then when those situations arise where it's the mob versus you, you've got to see that mob as the little tiny group of creatures who are like the grass that flourishes in the morning.

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It's gone by the evening versus the enthroned one who is observing all things, who is eternal and has eternal life in his hand.

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That has to be the contrast. Little teeny people screaming shame on you.

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When the one on the throne says, well done, my good and faithful servant, that's, that has to be what you're seeing and what you're hearing and how you live in this society.

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As we enter into an unprecedented period of revolution, and this is a revolution.

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This is a revolution. It is an internal revolution and it is a revolution. Unlike most revolutions in the past, the

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Soviet revolution, the Russian revolution leading to the

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Soviet empire, Chinese revolution. Yes, they were worldview revolutions.

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This is the first time you've had a fundamental worldview revolution combined with global technology.

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The revolutions up this point in time that were worldview revolutions took place with much more limited technological capacity.

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This is new. This is new. And I've been saying for a long time, that's the big, that's the big issue.

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That's the big challenge for all of us is this is new. I just happened to look up and notice that there's normally a calendar on the wall in here, and someone hasn't been getting 2021 calendars.

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And I'm wondering if that's prophetic. Yeah. Why bother? It's not going to be here by the end of it anyways.

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So Hey, you know, and we're not talking eschatologically there either. Yeah. But 2020 wasn't that long ago where it says for me, it was, well, okay,

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I get you. I hear you. I hear you. Now, likewise, if you listen to my sermon from Sunday, let's talk to the church here for a while.

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Obviously, when I'm preaching, first and foremost,

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I need to meet the needs of the local body before whom I'm speaking.

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But we live stream these, we post these immediately. I did not realize, but we are now live streaming on YouTube is the same time we're live streaming on Facebook.

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And so we know that we have an audience outside of the walls of the church where the sermon is being delivered.

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And there was an intentional aspect on my part to seek to encourage the global church, because interestingly enough, as we have been changing social media platforms, finding more secure ways of communicating as I would join all these people that I know from around the world are already there.

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They all come popping up and people would see me join and Hey, how you doing? And so interesting enough,

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I've had a few more conversations than I probably would have during this particular time period with people overseas.

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But until last year, I was a global traveler. I would make multiple trips in one year to South Africa.

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Would love to go again, just don't know if I'm ever gonna be able to. And I've been invited to.

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But again, it's just a matter of whether it's even a possibility. And in those conversations with brothers around the world,

44:13

I am deeply troubled at what I'm hearing.

44:20

Local churches around this world have been destroyed by government interference with their worship and their meeting.

44:34

And they have been destroyed because when that pressure came, it demonstrated and illustrated cracks and fissures in those local assemblies.

44:50

I can't believe how many churches that if tomorrow all pressure was removed and you could meet freely, how many of those churches would never open again?

45:08

It is devastating. Churches in which I've ministered around the world, other churches are now taking firm, solid stands.

45:20

Who at first said, sure, you know, 15 days to flatten the curve.

45:28

We're now at day 300. Seriously, we are. And then they started realizing there's something wrong here.

45:39

We're, it's getting longer and longer and more draconian and getting worse and worse.

45:46

And so there are churches, thankfully, around the globe, but they are a small minority who are taking a firm stand, taking the risk, living dangerously.

46:02

I'd like to submit to you that following Christ has always been dangerous. It's never been the safe way.

46:08

And the fact that it became the safe way in the West is what the real problem is. There are so many in churches, in lands where we have had such freedoms that have come to the conclusion that safety is the most important thing.

46:37

And so I have been in communication with brothers.

46:43

I think of two brothers this week, they are separated from each other by a 12 hour airplane flight and two different hemispheres of the planet.

46:55

And yet they haven't sung a hymn in a congregation and praise to God since March.

47:07

They have not had the Lord's supper since, since even before then.

47:16

And I'm like, well, but aren't the elders like at least trying to gather some families in someone's home, open the word, have the supper, then go to somebody else's house on a different night, in a different place, at a different time, do something for the people, the sheep in the flock that have the need to hear the word of God and to meet with others and be encouraged.

47:50

And especially, I really wonder, taking out sacramentalism, how many people gave a testimony of faith in Jesus Christ as a new believer by baptism in 2020 in comparison to 2019?

48:14

We had just, we had more baptisms than we've had before in 2020. That's because we didn't close down.

48:21

But for the vast majority of churches, they haven't seen a baptism in 12 months now.

48:30

Those ordinances are not just for whenever we feel like doing them. And one thing that's clear to me is this has revealed a horrifically weak doctrine of the

48:47

Lord's supper amongst many evangelicals. Let's just be honest. I mean, for a lot of Baptist churches, the

49:00

Lord's supper is something you do once a quarter on a Sunday night with only your core people there, because it's sort of a super spiritual thing anyways.

49:13

And so if you don't get to do it for a year, well, you know, it's just a symbol anyways, right? I'm a

49:20

Reformed Baptist. If you haven't read what the London Baptist Confession says about the Lord's supper, you might try doing that.

49:26

Far deeper than you might think. We have an incredible, incredibly, um, just a second.

49:43

There's a reason why I, okay.

49:49

All right. Just needing to check on a few things. There's stuff going on. Um, we have an incredibly weak, shallow view of the

50:02

Lord's supper and evangelicalism. We don't see it as being something that Christ in his wisdom established for the benefit of his people.

50:13

And if we do, how can you let your sheep go since March without the supper?

50:20

I don't understand it. I mean, back in March, when we were facing the possibilities of total lockdown type stuff, we had a conversation.

50:33

Okay. How do we go underground? How do we, how do we immediately start ministering to our people, even if we have to start becoming traveling elders in house churches?

50:46

How do we do this? Because the thought never crossed our mind that you just go, well, you know, state says no more supper.

50:55

So no more supper. And I'm just like, what? What? What?

51:02

What are you thinking? I'm sorry. I know there's some of you very offended right now, but I am asking you, what are you thinking?

51:13

Do you not realize that you have sheep in your congregation? I know you have sheep in your congregation that are scared to death.

51:21

They are panicked. That's what the world has produced.

51:27

Panicked people will believe lies and they'll do anything. I get it.

51:34

But what about the sheep that are convicted that they need to meet and worship

51:41

God. They need the instruction of the word. They need the encouragement of the fellowship. They need the songs, hymns, and spiritual songs.

51:48

They need the scriptures. They need the Lord's supper. They need to see people being baptized. What about them?

51:56

What's our highest allegiance to? That might be dangerous. We might be accused of things.

52:02

What if Jesus accuses you of leaving the sheep out in the rain? What's more important?

52:11

I'm just, I'm just left. I don't even know what to say when

52:17

I'm speaking to brothers who have just, they've just been left.

52:24

They've just been abandoned because the government said so. Government said so.

52:30

May I encourage the global church, pastors, if you have not, you need to be arranging with your people to be having worship.

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If it's not in a building, quote unquote, then you need to do it in houses.

52:56

But they may bust in. Well, they may. But make them realize they're interrupting the worship of God.

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Make them take the bread out of your hand, the cup out of your hand in the process so they know exactly what it is they're doing.

53:11

And I know they'll do it. I've seen the jackbooted thugs in Canada. I've seen the jackbooted thugs in England.

53:18

I know. We could be facing the exact same thing after the 21st of January.

53:26

I know. And like I said on Twitter this morning, following Christ has never been the safe option.

53:37

But I also said to the global church, if you're going to ask your pastors to stand up and be counted and to do the right thing, then the churches need to make sure that you have plans in place to take care of the pastor's wife and family.

53:55

Do you have those plans? You need to be working on them. You need to be working on them.

54:01

Who's going to take over? Who's going to provide? Those are important questions.

54:10

They're important questions. But we don't have options here. We just don't have options here.

54:20

And it's just so sad that in many instances, it's just simply, well, we just want to be safe.

54:27

Where you are isn't safe. Hiding in your house isn't safe.

54:36

And we have commands to fulfill. And so to pastors, start working it out with your people.

54:46

Meet on different days of the week. It doesn't have to be on the Lord's day. That's the best day, but it doesn't have to be.

54:52

Meet on different days of the week, different times. Arrive in staggered, you know, everybody doesn't show up at the exact same time.

54:59

There are wise ways of doing these things, but do it. Minister the word.

55:07

Have prayer. You can sing quietly or somebody's got really good windows.

55:14

You can sing loudly, really good windows and walls, you know, then have at it and then have the supper, break the bread, drink the wine.

55:27

Remember the price paid for your redemption, but do it.

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There is a reason why it's a command. Do this in remembrance of me.

55:40

We do so until he comes. He has not come. So we have a command.

55:46

Let's fulfill it. Let's do it. The sheep need it. Now, I know that there are some churches that are standing up, that are pressing forward, and some are in nations with more freedom than other nations.

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And so it's going to look differently depending on where you are. And I know, I mention this to my fellow elders all the time.

56:27

We hear through numerous sources how many people are looking to apologia and how we're handling these things.

56:38

And that, believe me, that ain't something we're running around trying to get. That's a weight beyond our capacity.

56:48

But we have much more freedom here right now, right now, right now, than people

56:57

I could mention. I'm not going to mention people. I could give you stories. I'm talking this week,

57:03

I've been in conversation with people in two primarily European countries, one completely non -European country.

57:13

And it's different for each one of them as to the severity of lockdowns and the threats and the punishments that would be meted out and everything else.

57:27

I get it. There is no one size fits all, okay? But there is a one size fits all set of commandments that need to be fulfilled to the best ability that we have, even if it's dangerous.

57:48

Our people need community. They need common confession.

57:54

They need to be instructed out of the word. And yes, electronic mechanisms are wonderful for the communication of words, but you and I both know, you and I both know that you cannot have the

58:15

Lord's Supper over Zoom. That's not what God intended. That's not what

58:22

God intended. I think I told this story, at least

58:27

I have a recollection of it, but a few weeks ago, about a month and a half or so ago, during the

58:36

Supper, we have the Supper every Lord's Day. Right now, I think that's really great.

58:42

I think that's really super right now. The more we can get, the better. There's a point in time where Elliot, our music leader, normal music leader, sometimes

58:55

Mike Hendrickson's doing it, and I've sort of figured out how Elliot does this.

59:01

He's watching the length of the line of people coming forward to receive the Supper. And at a certain point, then he starts into a song that will then finish up pretty much toward the end of the

59:21

Supper itself. And he arranged it, and I'm going to tell him, and Elliot, if you're watching or if you hear this, we really need to do this more often.

59:33

But he arranged to have a soloist up with him, and she began singing

59:40

It Is Well With My Soul. And some of the songs some people will sing along with, this one, it was immediate.

59:54

Absolutely immediate. Everybody, the people in the line, all the people that were going back to their seats, already at their seats, whatever it might be, there was this immediate joining together and singing

01:00:09

It Is Well With My Soul. I'm getting emotional thinking about it.

01:00:16

It was not something you can do on Zoom. You have to see others.

01:00:27

You are with others. You yourself have just gone forward. You have just received the bread and the wine.

01:00:34

We have families who will take the bread and the wine, and they'll go over to the side, and they'll pray together before their partake of it.

01:00:43

And so you've seen that, and you've seen the children, and you're seeing people still going forward.

01:00:51

And there's all of this. You can't do that on Zoom. It's not possible.

01:00:59

And it was just fantastic. It was just such a blessing. Just incredible.

01:01:08

And that takes the gathered body. That takes the gathered body. I know one thing.

01:01:14

Everybody at our church, hopefully everybody at your church, has a significantly greater understanding of the importance of the gathered body of the church than we did in February of 2020.

01:01:32

So if you're going to look for something good that came out of 2020 and now 2021, there's something right there.

01:01:42

We better value that time together. I'm afraid that in a lot of American evangelicalism, wow, it's four o 'clock.

01:01:52

In a lot of American evangelicalism, church was what you needed to get over with before the

01:01:59

NFL football game. And if we haven't learned now that that NFL football game meant nothing and it never did, and that church service meant everything, what else is going to teach it to us?

01:02:15

What else is going to teach it to us? So if you're in a church that is stuck in safe mode, remember the old...

01:02:28

Rich is going, Rich is thinking the same thing

01:02:33

I am. We're old enough to remember back at the old Windows machines. I guess, is there still a safe mode in Windows machines?

01:02:45

Oh, that was a long time ago. Long time ago. You'd have safe mode where if Windows 95 wouldn't load, you'd go into safe mode.

01:02:55

I guess it wouldn't load the network drivers or a few more bare bones, and then you could start loading stuff.

01:03:04

It seems a lot of churches have gone into safe mode where you can't do anything. You don't have the blue screen of death, but you can't do anything.

01:03:16

There's no worship going on. Gone to safe mode. And if you're stuck in that situation, then you might be looking for a church that isn't stuck in that situation, and there won't be many of them.

01:03:31

And you may encourage fellow believers, talk to the elders.

01:03:36

Would any of the elders be willing to take the risk to prepare a sermon, to meet in your backyard under the trees and do church?

01:03:55

That's got to find out. You got to beg them, please. Please, we're dying out here.

01:04:01

It's a famine. It's a famine. Feed us.

01:04:07

You're our shepherds. Feed us. And I'm talking major cities.

01:04:13

Cities with millions of people. And you might find a handful, a handful, that are still seeking to do what we've been commanded to do.

01:04:26

So anyway, yeah, I've still got all sorts of things on the list here.

01:04:33

We haven't forgotten about apologetics or anything else, but we're living in a revolution.

01:04:42

We are living in a developing revolution, a global socialist revolution.

01:04:51

And when I said stuff like that, I've seen people, oh man, he just completely lost it last year.

01:05:00

He just got all political and all the rest of the stuff. Oh, that reminds me.

01:05:06

That reminds me. Just two years ago today,

01:05:17

January 12th, 2019. That was a good year, wasn't it? January 12th, 2019,

01:05:28

Thabiti Anyabwili posted this on Twitter.

01:05:36

If I were the head of state for an American ally, I would be working to convince other

01:05:43

American allies to work together to hack the next election, to choose for the

01:05:50

US a normal president so we could return things to normal. The world can't afford more of this.

01:06:02

To which I responded, in a very short number of years, when the

01:06:08

US constitution lays and tatters and socialism imprisons this land, comments like this will stand out in stark contrast.

01:06:15

Simply shameful. Two years ago today. Two years ago today.

01:06:23

And yep, ever since then, people have been saying, conspiratorial, put a tinfoil hat on, blah, blah, blah.

01:06:33

And where are we now? We literally have people talking about the week before the inauguration, impeaching the president, forcing everybody out who even questioned the results of the election as insurrectionists.

01:06:57

You're all guilty. You're all with with horned man. This is the socialist playbook, kids.

01:07:09

I know they didn't teach this to you in school if you went to public school. I went to public school, but I went to public school a long time ago, and they made the mistake very early on of teaching me to read and to love reading.

01:07:26

And so the books are still out there. We'll see when, well, Abigail Schreier, Irreversible Damage on Transgenderism.

01:07:38

And remember, Joe Biden, the key human rights issue of our day, transgender rights.

01:07:49

That's the man that Big Eva told us you could vote for.

01:07:58

Big Eva is going to get what Big Eva bought. And Big Eva will be consumed by the whole thing in the process.

01:08:06

I can assure you of that. But there you go. In a very short number of years, when

01:08:12

U .S. Constitution lays and tatters and socialism imprisons this land, comments like this will stand out in stark contrast.

01:08:17

I wonder if the Beattie isn't a little bit embarrassed by that.

01:08:23

But probably not. Probably not. I wish he would be. Should be. Should have been then.

01:08:29

But not. Okay. Oh, by the way, let's see.

01:08:35

Let's just look real quick. What am I down to now? I'm down to 61 ,400 followers on Twitter.

01:08:43

I was at 65 when the purge began. So I've only lost about 3 ,600 followers during all of this.

01:08:54

There's a purge going on in Twitter. I saw a graphic that showed

01:09:01

Pelosi, Schumer, all those people with numbers rising radically.

01:09:08

If that was true, and I have no way of verifying it, then that tells you a little something about what's going on.

01:09:15

Allegedly, it's just a bot purge, but it just seems to be only certain kinds of bots. Weird how that works.

01:09:24

But anyway, there is so much more that we need to get to, that we will get to, but we've gone a little bit past our time today.

01:09:34

I, again, to the global church, pastors, you've been called to lay down your life for that flock.

01:09:47

You, if your people have not partaken of the supper since March, what are you doing?

01:09:54

What are you doing? People, if your pastor stands up, you guys had better be figuring out how you're going to take care of his family if he pays the price for that.

01:10:07

That'll make his job a whole lot easier. Trust me. If you know that your wife and your kids are going to be taken care of, you'll be a little bit more bold, and properly so.

01:10:20

But church, got to stand up. We've got to be salt and light, because the hashtag

01:10:31

Christ or chaos is a true hashtag. We have the answer.

01:10:39

The chaos is coming. And if we don't step into the middle of that with the answer to that chaos, the only other answer to the chaos that is coming is pure, total, 1000 % totalitarianism, based upon a worldview that views mankind as a completely expendable item.

01:11:01

And we know what that results in. Look at the number of graves in China, Russia, Eastern Europe, Cambodia, Cuba, North Korea.

01:11:13

That's what it results in. Ukraine, don't forget the

01:11:18

Holodomor, the purposeful starvation of millions.

01:11:27

Oh, no one would ever do that. Has there ever been a time when people are more dependent upon external sources for their food than today?

01:11:41

Oh, don't make me think about that. Time for prayer and a time to tell the world

01:11:51

Christ or chaos, Christ or chaos. All right. Don't know how long even this video will be up, but as long as we can keep speaking, we're going to keep speaking.