Why we renamed the podcast "Tearing Down High Places". | Ep. 1
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What is a high place and why would you call your Podcast that? Well, we renamed our podcast recently. We want to tell you why and that's exactly what you'll get in this episode. We're going to explain the significance of tearing down high places in the old testament and in the new. We're going to explain why this theme should be the focus of all missionary minded Christians. Pastor Jeff, Pastor Tim and Average Joe will all discuss the high places
- 00:00
- So, I think many people think, well, this is going to be a combative podcast. Yeah.
- 00:05
- Yeah, it is, combative against the doctrines of demons. Yes. It's going to be confrontational, against the lies of the enemy that are killing people, left and right.
- 00:15
- Right. But we're doing this in love. This is why you have that tagline at the beginning, in love. And welcome to Tearing Down High Places, Confronting Christian Compromise in Love.
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- In love. That's an important part. So important. Yeah. Because we don't want to be those guys.
- 00:56
- Yeah. Right. We're told to build up the body of Christ in Ephesians. Knowledge puffs up.
- 01:01
- Love builds up. And there you go. Nice. Fresh out of school, man. Got the MDiv going, yeah.
- 01:08
- So, that's good stuff, because I'm too old and I forget all these things. Pastor's probably going to get on me about Daniel 11, memorizing it today.
- 01:16
- And that's okay, because I got that. Well, here's your chance. Do you have it? Daniel 11, 32b. Daniel 11, 32b.
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- Do something. Do something. Just go out and do something. It's like the message. Yeah, there you go.
- 01:29
- Thank you for that one. Those that know their God, go into action. Stand firm.
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- Stand firm. And take action. And take action. There you go. I love that verse. That is our verse.
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- Everybody listening online is learning this verse with you, so this is good. And that's why we got the Bibles out here, because we're going to use some
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- Scripture today. And this is our first show. Even if you saw Episode 3 or you saw Episode 2, this is
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- Episode 1. Because we had some issues that were timely that needed to be addressed, but we're going to go back and we're going to talk about why we changed the name of the podcast.
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- Because there's a dozen or so episodes on CornerstoneSJ .org that you can watch. But now, we're going to get into why we're calling this
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- Tearing Down High Places. So, Pastor Jeff, why is that the new name of the podcast?
- 02:19
- Well, it really comes from a central concern in the Old Testament. Do people still read the Old Testament anymore?
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- Well, I heard some—well, that would be a high place. The ones that don't read the Old Testament anymore.
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- And do they preach the Old Testament? Well, the Old Testament is two -thirds of our Bible, right? And the
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- Book of Kings, 1 and 2 Kings, are a huge portion of that, or a significant portion of that.
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- And it's one of the biggest themes of 1 and 2 Kings. So, when do you want me to go into the research we did on that?
- 02:48
- Yeah, let's dive into that. I mean, do we start with Deuteronomy 12, or do you set up the
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- Old Testament that points to all the compromise? Yes. And it's—I mean, tearing down a high place is addressing compromise, right?
- 03:05
- Right. In love. You sent me this last night from Deuteronomy 12, so this is Deuteronomy 12, 1 to 7.
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- Okay. When the Israelites are about to go into the Promised Land, they're told,
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- Destroy all the places. Yeah. In verse 2.
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- All. Yes. And it says, On the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree.
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- Deuteronomy 12, 3. You shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their asherim with fire.
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- You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place.
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- So what are our altars and what are our pillars in our modern culture that we would equate to a high place?
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- I think verse 4, we might want to read that one, too. Do it. You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way.
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- So there's a pure kind of worship, which is to be fully devoted. And that includes tearing down the high—what are the high places?
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- They're strongholds of the mind. They're idols. First John will end,
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- Brothers, keep yourselves from idols. That's how John ends that epistle. Because in our culture, there is an influence exerted on Christians.
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- And very often, Christians will hold on to these cultural influences, these idols, these strongholds of mind.
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- And Paul will say in 2 Corinthians 10, 4, Destroy strongholds. You've got to tear them down.
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- So just like in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, it may not be going on a hill and tearing down a wooden idol made to Baal.
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- But in our culture, it's the Christian tearing down strongholds of mind.
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- Deceitful ideologies that creep into churches and take root. And there's so many of them. There's so many to tease out.
- 05:05
- And I think maybe we should do that later in the show. But keep telling us more about that.
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- Okay, so yeah, research on kings. So 1 Kings 3, verse 3.
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- Solomon loved the Lord. Think about this. How many faithful pastors that love the
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- Lord are still holding on to high places? They love the
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- Lord. Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David, his father.
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- Now watch this. Only he sacrificed and made offerings at the high places.
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- You know, it's interesting. I heard a pastor say that it's not necessarily in the Bible. Correct me if I'm wrong.
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- But one of the compromises or one of the reasons for his compromise was he started trading all throughout the
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- Mediterranean. Yeah. And that's where all his wives came from because he had 700 wives. Yeah.
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- And then 300 concubine on top of that. Some people will say, well, the Bible allows for polygamy, but it says that not for kings.
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- Kings weren't allowed to engage in polygamy. And it wasn't that way from the beginning either. Back to Genesis 2, 21 to 25.
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- So Solomon had compromise with the surrounding nations. But notice this. In 1
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- Kings 3, this is prior to his request for wisdom. He's going up on the high places and offering, which is influenced from the pagan cultures, right?
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- When was his request for wisdom? Same chapter. 1 Kings 3. So after this, he prays and God gives him wisdom and grants that request.
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- And then the very next thing it says after he wakes up, this is 1 Kings 3, 15.
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- And Solomon awoke and behold, it was a dream. Then. So earlier it said only he offered on high places.
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- Now it says, then he came to Jerusalem and stood before the
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- Ark of the Covenant of the Lord and offered up burnt offerings and peace offerings and made a feast for all his servants.
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- So now he goes to Jerusalem and offers before the Ark of the Covenant. 1
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- Kings 3, 15. That's significant because in Leviticus 17, they were told you cannot offer a sacrifice just willy nilly, just out in the field or some other place.
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- Right. But you must go to the to the tabernacle. Yeah. Well, that's what Deuteronomy 12 says as well.
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- Yes. The exact thing. Yeah. Where it doesn't say exactly where. They don't know yet. They're still in the desert.
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- They haven't crossed the Jordan. But it says where God wants it. Right. Right. And then God will establish that place to be
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- Jerusalem and specifically the temple. Yeah. So Jeroboam comes along.
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- This is after the split of the kingdom. Solomon, he has a son,
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- Rehoboam. And in the south, Rehoboam is somewhat faithful. In the north, Jeroboam is rebellious. And one of the things that notes about Jeroboam, it says in 1
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- Kings 12, 31 to 33, he devised in his own heart. So he would appoint anybody to be a priest.
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- It didn't have to be a Levite. Could be from any tribe. And he would make them a priest. And then he would offer sacrifice anywhere.
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- And especially in particular places, on certain mountains, certain high places.
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- So Jeroboam does not regard Leviticus 17, 3 to 7 at all. He made two calves of gold.
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- Who's this, Jeroboam? Jeroboam. Yep. Yeah. Verse 28. So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold.
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- Yeah. That was easy for me to get the up or down arrow. I get confused in 1 and 2 Kings.
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- Is this one a good one or a bad one? All the northern kingdoms are thumbs down. But here's the point.
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- In the south, you have a list of good kings. So you have people like Joash, Hezekiah, Josiah.
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- Some are a bit bad, but Amaziah, Azariah, Jotham. They're criticized.
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- As you read 1 Kings and 2 Kings, they did not tear down the high places. So it's a running theme again and again.
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- When Jeroboam was offering on the high places, God sent a prophetic word and says,
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- By name, Josiah will come and desecrate these high places. So by the end of 2
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- Kings, you have Josiah show up, and he was named earlier. Now he desecrates the high places.
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- He tears them down and burns the priest's bones on those temples, the false priests.
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- So he's doing some destructive, combative work in the name of Yahweh.
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- And nothing is new under the sun. It's just we keep repeating our own mistakes.
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- Do you want to tie this into America's history? We had some really courageous men of faith.
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- We had two massive revivals in our history, but we never tore down some high places.
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- Is that what happened to us? How did we get here? I think how we got here is some of the things that we're going to unpack on this episode.
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- Not today. This is episode 1. We're talking about what we're going to unpack down the road. Well, that leads us in.
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- What are some of the high places we need to address on this episode? Tim, what are your high places that you're going to be excited about addressing?
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- One I want to address is relativism, which is basically there is no absolute truth.
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- I think this is the truth. Jeff thinks this is the truth. Average Joe somewhere out there thinks this is the truth, and somehow they're all true according to our culture, which in the law of contradiction cannot be right.
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- Where in the culture have you seen that play out? Because I think the average Joe would say,
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- I don't hear people running around saying there is no truth. Because they don't really think about philosophy, do they?
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- I think actually where it takes place the most is maybe in a philosophy course at school or a comparative religion class.
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- That's where I was exposed to it. I had a professor there that basically he taught all the major religions, and when he taught
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- Hinduism, he would pretend to be a Hindu. When he taught Buddhism, he would pretend to be a Buddha. When he taught
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- Islam, he would pretend to be a Muslim, so on and so forth. But when he got to Christianity, he did not pretend to be a
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- Christian. At the end of the course, he basically said, we're waiting for him to reveal what he actually thinks is right.
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- He says, I think they're all true. When I need Hinduism, I'll grab it. When I need this, I'll grab it. This is not at Cairn.
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- No, this was not at Cairn. This was at the RCBC. His name was
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- Emmanuel Trillion, and he was very influential, very knowledgeable, very articulate, but he was wrong.
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- That's a high place that needs to be teared down. Your Cairn fans are happy now. I love Cairn. Go to Cairn.
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- Great school. Great Christian school. Ecumenicalism, we mentioned that in episode 3.
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- How about you, Joe? I have a couple pet peeves. I do. I'd say, episode 3, you also had a pet peeve.
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- He had a dog, and he named his dog Peeve in order to have a pet peeve. That's a great name.
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- I've never let a dog in my house, but the next cat we get, Peeve. That'll be the name. I think my biggest one is because I used to do a podcast called
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- Saving Fatherhood. My biggest one is Covenant and Marriage, the destruction of the covenant in the culture.
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- I feel like after we did episode 3, we looked at some of the comments. I looked at other podcasts.
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- I looked at a dozen other podcasts to see if anyone mentioned John Stott. We were the only ones to mention that, or mention
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- Covenant. Really, the problem was a covenant issue.
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- We don't hold covenant in the esteem that it should. So that one, and then secularism.
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- Again, we're throwing out these big words. We're going to have to define, or I might have to put a label at the bottom because our culture is just not familiar with these terms.
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- But where I see the biggest problem with secularism, so secularism being the idea that you can be not for or against Christ.
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- So Jesus says in the Synoptics, He says, you're either for me or against me.
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- There is no thing in the middle. I think all the people, and where that plays out is we're in public schools.
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- We think this is a secular school, but I think Voti Bacchum says, hey, don't be surprised when you send your kids to Roman schools, they come home as little
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- Romans. Right? How about you, Pastor Jeff? What areas of the culture do you think need to be teared down the most?
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- There's a whole list of them that I'm excited to talk about. And we do talk, I've talked about it in the pulpit, from socialism to collectivism, abortion.
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- So many different racial kind of issues that I think need to be addressed. The one that's sticking in my mind right now, though, is just something that bothered me a lot, was when the evangelicals responded to the fall of Roe versus Wade.
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- So we had the fall of Roe, this high place, the fall of this deceitful, demonic doctrine that there's a right in the
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- Constitution through privacy or some nonsense, for a woman to murder her baby in the womb.
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- And even up until the point of giving birth. Many of the politicians now, actually,
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- I think a majority of Democrat politicians, believe that a botched abortion, a baby that's born alive, should be left to die by this supposed right.
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- So it's such a high place, it's such a demonic stronghold of mine. When RVW fell, evangelicals didn't celebrate.
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- I'll give you an example. The AND campaign. AND campaign by Justin Gibney, and supposedly evangelicals, right?
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- This think tank. What's the AND campaign? Well, AND is kind of like Republican and Democrat.
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- It's all the same, and we're going to be neither. It's like middle way, third way. Political ecumenicalism? A bit, yeah.
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- Like Keller's third way. Tim Keller's third way. But here's the point. They came out and said, okay, we disagree with abortion, so that's good.
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- But here are our non -negotiables. The mother must never be punished if she does commit an abortion.
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- The hypocrisy in that. If we're going to say, if any state says that abortion is illegal, even, let's just say after the heartbeat, or just at birth, or whatever.
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- If you say that the mother cannot be punished, you're taking away the sword from the hand of government.
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- Romans 13. That's the whole point of it. You have to punish, and we could talk about what the punishment would be, but to make that a principle, it's a completely unbiblical, arbitrary, progressive principle that they're taking.
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- And just so people don't think we're completely out of step, there are pastors working for laws of equal protection.
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- I think Jeff Durbin and Apologia are looking to make sure that the baby in the womb falls under already established law for equal protection.
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- Because it's a life. A human life. In 1973, we couldn't determine it was a life, but the opposition doesn't argue that anymore because they know scientifically.
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- Well, scientifically, you couldn't do it by ultrasound or whatever, but I think everybody knows. Okay, here's how my friend
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- Cody Leibold says it. Okay. He says, a baby born out of the womb is a human being.
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- Yep. Two minutes before, in the womb, is a human being, and everybody knows it. Yep. Everybody knows that.
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- Every human being knows that this human being, in the womb or outside, minutes before, is a human being.
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- It's part of general revelation. It's just built into the conscience of man. Romans 1.
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- It falls within that realm. And everybody who denies that is denying the obvious and what's just built into human knowledge.
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- It's axiomatic. You just don't need to defend that point. I'm thinking about what the critics are going to say at this moment.
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- Those who haven't studied this issue in this way. Those who may be pro -abortion. And actually, the arguments out there that even the pro -abortion organizations that many faithful Christians are sending money to, they don't like this.
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- Right. They have sabotaged equal protection laws. You have a baby left and right.
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- And so, how, Pastor, how would you explain forgiveness for the woman who murders her child?
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- Well, sure. There's gospel for those who repent. It's like the parable in Luke 15. Many tax collectors and sinners were coming to Jesus.
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- And you have in that story, it builds up to the point of the older brother who's unwilling to celebrate the person coming to Jesus.
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- And he himself is unsaved. The older brother in Luke 15 is lost, just like the son who went far away.
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- And he's lost because he doesn't want there to be forgiveness. He doesn't want there to be grace for the sinner.
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- But the whole point of the parable is Jesus welcomes sinners and offers forgiveness for any sin.
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- Even this horrible sin of basically telling your father, I wish you were dead. Taking the inheritance and going and squandering it all.
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- When he comes back, the father runs to him with open arms. That's how he meets sinners like us.
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- All of us. But for the grace of God, go I. So the point though is you must come to Jesus in repentance.
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- In faith. And you'll find him to be a loving Savior. This is the gospel good news.
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- Why do faithful Christians have such a hard time with equal protection for the baby?
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- And punishing the mother. It's a stronghold of mine. So let's go back to the Ann campaign. They are discipled by Marxism, not the
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- Bible. So their solution is you cannot punish the mother. That's step one. Then you're to give paternal leave and maternal leave to the parents paid for by the government.
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- The government also has to provide economic security. Also has to provide all this list, this laundry list of services, money.
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- So how does that happen though? Think about this. Where does the government get the money to pay for the babies and the raising of children and education, all these things?
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- Well, they... They're not taking any more out of here. No, they either they print it or they use that sort of government,
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- Romans 13, turned against the citizen and say, you have to provide this money. So in order to get the money to redistribute, they have to tax at the edge of the sword.
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- Because if you don't pay your taxes, you're going to jail. You're going to lose your house. They will forcibly take from people in order to pay.
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- So this is... It's just socialism. It's Marxism. So to answer your question, there are strongholds of mind in our culture.
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- And many progressive, quote unquote, progressive Christians are just accepting those things.
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- So the AND campaign, it's believing cultural Marxism rather than the
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- Bible. And that's what we got to tear down. Tim, I feel like I'm... During the show, and this is our first episode, we're going to kind of talk about what we're doing.
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- I feel like I'm going to be leaning on you for understanding where our next generation is coming and how they're thinking about these things.
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- Are you up for that task? Yeah. You get to speak for the millennials. I'll do my best.
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- Yeah. Because, you know, we were talking about statistics in episode two. And some of those statistics that we're quoting were the 18 to 25 -year -olds.
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- Without getting into that issue, we're trying to stick to where we're going in the future. So I want to ask, how is your generation different from others that you've...
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- I guess that's not the right question. Where do you think your generation is on these issues?
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- I should just ask a more broadly question. Oh, man. I think that most of the people that I went to school with,
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- I graduated in 2012. I would say most of my graduating class from Senate Minson is liberal.
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- At least the people that I know, far left -wing, and they think about things emotionally and irrationally.
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- And I think when I do evangelize to people that I knew, grew up with, I think that they are not thinking logically at all and they get upset that I don't accept their truth.
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- So I think relativism, what I was talking about, I think that's really what swept them. God blinds the mind of unbelievers and I think that is a stronghold that is in the mind.
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- Well, correct there. It's Satan. 2 Corinthians 4, 4. There are some people... Oh, did I say God? I meant the God of this world.
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- The God of this world. Yeah. The God of this age. Yeah. There are actually some Christians that think that that is referring to God because it doesn't say
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- Satan. It says the God of this age. Yeah. And they're thinking in God's sovereign plan. But I think that's clearly Satan, demonic, blind.
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- Yes. 2 Corinthians 4, 4. The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
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- So I think the gospel is going to be the answer to every generation. Yeah. Yeah. Now, you mentioned liberalism and I think that's a term that people think about strictly in a political sense.
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- Is liberalism... Were you talking political liberalism or theological liberalism?
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- What's the difference? Well, I think in my mind I was thinking more political liberalism.
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- But that usually equates with not believing in God, not believing in Jesus. At least the people that I've met that I grew up with.
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- But Pastor Jeff, I think, is more... Yeah, I was just going to point to him. He's the history guy. Yeah. Where did theological liberalism come from?
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- What is it? And when did it start? Well, that's a big question. I think liberalism as a category...
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- There were aspects of liberalism early on in the Enlightenment that were helpful.
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- So, where the church was so dominant over culture that they would burn a heretic, right?
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- In Germany at times. When Martin Luther was writing in the
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- Wartburg Castle, they had an Anabaptist locked up in a wall. Just kept there because there was no liberty, no freedom to disagree.
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- Right? So, what happened in the American Revolution was a liberty movement. And in a sense, there's an aspect of liberalism that is attached to liberty.
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- So, we're going to give people freedom to disagree. And that's good, right? Okay. That's called classical liberalism.
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- Classical liberalism. Yeah. And there's elements of that that are good. Now, it can't become your governing principle, which is what's happened in America.
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- That it now... Liberty in that sense has trumped all truth. Well, hasn't the definition of liberty changed from...
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- My understanding of historical liberty is all the things that God has given you freedom to do versus today, it's, don't you dare tell me what to do.
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- Yes. It's gone that far for sure. And I think that change happened early in the 60s and has just gone completely overboard by now.
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- But theological liberalism, that's coming back to where theologians, Germany is where it kind of started with the higher critics.
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- And then it does come to America by the early 1900s. It's becoming even dominant before World War I with the social gospel.
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- And that kind of corrects things World War I does. People stop favoring the social gospel so much.
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- But it will reinvent itself and then come back. As the, it really happens through the seminaries.
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- As liberal professors who don't take literally the teaching of God's word. You can bring whatever interpretation you like.
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- You have liberty to interpret this one way or another way. And that takes over as the dominant mood in Christianity.
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- So we don't have that much time left. So before we sum it up, I want to ask you about your,
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- I feel like we jumped into all these topics that we're going to cover and we didn't talk enough about the kings and tearing down high places.
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- Or is there anything else about tearing down high places that would really, that you want to point people to?
- 25:54
- Yeah, this is important I think. We are to build one another up in our holy faith.
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- We are here to build up the body of Christ. If you want to do that, if you genuinely want to build people up, that also involves apologetics.
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- Tearing down strongholds. So strongholds of mind, ideas of these high places, which you see in the
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- Old Testament in physically tearing down idols. Now we have in the New Testament of all of these verses having nothing to do with those who create divisions and cause obstacles.
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- In Romans 16, 17. So you mean that apologetics isn't just something to build up the faith of the believer, it's also something to help build up someone who's struggling?
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- Yeah. So I think many people think, well, this is going to be a combative podcast.
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- Yeah. Yeah, it is. Combative against the doctrines of demons. Yes. It's going to be confrontational against the lies of the enemy that are killing people left and right.
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- Right. But we're doing this in love. This is why you have that tagline at the beginning, in love. In love. Because what it ultimately does when you disillusion someone of their fantasies and the things that are destroying their lives, you're loving them.
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- You are building them up. So there's sometimes when you have a brother who's down and you come along and you help them up, lovingly pick them up, that's building up.
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- Another thing though is when you have a pastor who's on his high horse and he's going on and on about unbiblical visions of social justice or whatever, and you tear down that demonic ideology, you are actually building up the body of Christ.
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- Because if those things prevail, we'll be just like Europe, you know? Europe lost the battle.
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- So do we want to do that or do we want to stand and do we want to fight for what matters? I love that. I love that.
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- And I think, so just for the audience, Pastor Jeff's written a trilogy on tearing down high places.
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- I mean, that's not what you called it. Right, but it's essentially what it is. Yeah, three books. Right? Woke Free Church was the first book.
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- Blood Red Church, the second book, which is amazing because it defines great churches which are really hard to find.
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- Red churches are easy, faithful to the Bible, faithful to the word of God, in everything, not just in salvation, but in living your life now.
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- And then the blue churches are super easy. What's the blue church got in front of it? The blue church got in front of it?
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- Yeah. Usually those are what, the LGBTQ. Big rainbows. You can't miss them.
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- It's like a surgeon, a general's warning. Stay away. You know? So that's easy.
- 28:34
- But then, and then you've got this last book, Wartorn Church, which kind of sums it all up.
- 28:40
- And I think we're probably going to get into that. And I would encourage everyone, I mean, specifically at Cornerstone Church, our church, to make sure you read those books because I just think they're phenomenal.
- 28:54
- And it's a great way to love other people, right? It is. To stay on that focus of love. I mean, we're not doing this because we hate people, right?
- 29:00
- No. We love people. It's precisely the point that we love them, enough to say hard things. Like a slap from a friend is better than a kiss from an enemy.
- 29:10
- And I think because you can't address everything in this world. We've actually talked about, we want this to build up the body of Christ, specifically in South Jersey, too.
- 29:22
- Right? So we want to see, we're not going to define a great pastor here. We'll probably have another episode about that or you can read
- 29:28
- Blood Red Church. But, well, we just kind of did define that. What am I talking about? So we want to love them into red because they think they're red.
- 29:37
- Well, Tim and I just went to a meeting on Monday. There had to be 20 or 30 pastors there, mostly Calvary Chapel guys.
- 29:43
- But a bunch of different denominations. Victory Bible Church and us from Cornerstone. There are a lot of like -minded pastors.
- 29:50
- I would like to see this conservative resurgence of evangelical
- 29:55
- Christianity and religion in South Jersey take over and become the dominant.
- 30:01
- I would, too. That's where revival starts. I got to tell you. When we all get back to the Bible. I mean, it's as simple as that.
- 30:06
- If you don't have the mind of a missionary and you are a Christian living in South Jersey, you need to leave.
- 30:13
- Yeah. There's no reason to go to Jersey otherwise. I don't know any Christians here. Well, this might be too strong of a statement.
- 30:20
- But I've heard this over and over again that they're thinking of moving to Florida. Oh, yeah. I'm going to move to Florida.
- 30:26
- Why? Because they see how hostile the turf is. I'm not thinking of moving to Florida even though I'm from there.
- 30:31
- But I love being here because I have that. I was a missionary to the inner city. But the strongholds of mind in South Jersey are just as difficult as the strongholds of mind in inner city
- 30:42
- Philadelphia. So you've got to be a missionary to be here. I'm going to Idaho or Texas. Oh, yeah?
- 30:47
- Those are my two. So are you going to leave us anytime soon? No, no. Only if civil war breaks out. I'm out of here.
- 30:52
- Civil war breaks out. Tim, where are you going? And that's a serious prayer. I mean, people were mocking us for laughing too much.
- 31:00
- Yeah. And maybe you want to address that. You've got to be more dour. Yeah. Serious.
- 31:06
- Sad and serious. For me, wherever the Lord leads. We know what happens in the end.
- 31:11
- Yes. We know the king won. That's right. We know Christ is king and the king will conquer. We're just here trying to be faithful, right?
- 31:18
- Yeah. I think it's better for a Christian to be around more unbelievers so that they can preach the gospel. Yeah. Great point.
- 31:24
- I know my faith is stronger when I'm out evangelizing. Yeah, right. Not too much.
- 31:30
- I need a break once in a while. So I think we're definitely wrapping up here.
- 31:38
- Do you have any final thoughts about the direction of the podcast, where we need to go? This is episode one.
- 31:44
- We want people to come back. Yeah. I just want to be clear that we are trying to build others up.
- 31:51
- I think, you know, if you're a church, what are you supposed to be doing other than building the body up? So this is, we highlighted this, what, three times, that this is, you know, in love.
- 32:01
- In love. In love. Yep. Hezekiah tore down the high places. Finally.
- 32:07
- And then what happened? God. Manasseh comes along and rebuilds the high places. And here's the problem. They're like weeds.
- 32:13
- High places are like weeds. We're going to be tearing down high places until Jesus comes. And what are you going to do with the weed?
- 32:19
- You got to get it at the root. Yeah. So we're going to go deep and figure out what's happening underneath the soil.
- 32:25
- And when you were, yeah, I was thinking about the parable of the seeds, like when you were talking about apologetics. I mean, we want to prepare the soil.
- 32:32
- Yeah. Right? We want to help that, prepare the soil so that when we do plant seeds, I mean, that's part of the process.
- 32:37
- I mean, God's responsible for the growth. Right. But we're responsible to plant seeds and that means tilling the soil a little bit.
- 32:44
- Amen. Yeah. Dirty hard work. Dirty hard work. And we're going to take, we're ready to take a little heat too.
- 32:50
- Yeah. You expect that? Have we gotten any of that? We might get a little heat. Even from people we love and that's okay.
- 32:58
- So, all right. For the sake of the name. For the sake of the name. All right. So let's talk about a couple of administrative issues.
- 33:06
- Give us questions. Yes. Send us questions. Send us video questions if you like. Maybe we'll put up a little video.
- 33:13
- Pop you in there. Hey, Pastor Jeff. Hey, Pastor Tim. I'd like to hear this. Don't ask Average Joe anything and get the wrong answer.
- 33:20
- But we do want to get questions. The email address you can go to. There's a forms page on CornerstoneSJ .org
- 33:28
- but you can send email. We're going to have a new email. We don't have that yet so I'm going to leave that alone.
- 33:34
- I'm going to have to decide on that. But yeah, contact us. And if you want to be a guest too, if you've got something.
- 33:40
- I mean, we're probably not going to have a lot of guests but if you know a pastor out there that wants to partner with us that might be a great guest especially in the
- 33:48
- South Jersey area. What about a pastor that wants to debate? How cool would that be? That would be great. That would be great.
- 33:54
- But they don't. Tim will debate. I don't know what they would I don't think they would know what they're getting themselves into if they're debating
- 34:00
- Pastor Jeff. Oh, man. That'd be awesome. I haven't seen anyone win against him yet. Well, I mean, there's certain things.
- 34:06
- I mean, Romans 13. I mean, I've heard some crazy things about Romans 13 from the preacher. I think the key to winning a debate starts before the debate.
- 34:15
- You only take on topics that you know what the Word of God says. So if you're standing on the Word you know,
- 34:20
- I've debated Muslims, Imams, and Roman Catholics. It's a lot easier to win when you have the truth.
- 34:28
- It's not like anything great in you. You just repeat what the Bible says. I think the key to good debates is always the person debating.
- 34:37
- They have to be well written. And you are with 11 books. If you're well written the other person who honestly wants to address what you really believe has the opportunity to read ahead of time.
- 34:48
- Right? So that they're knowledgeable. They're not coming into the debate and, you know, they say this is the purpose of the debate and it gets switched.
- 34:54
- Because how many times do you see that? And that happens when one side doesn't read the other person.
- 35:01
- Right? So you're well read so anybody out there who's watching this that really has a problem with us, you know, you can read
- 35:07
- Pastor Jeff's books and you won't get hoodwinked. So it's a real thing that we should really consider.
- 35:12
- I think that would be awesome. Alright guys, well is that it? Is that all we got? First episode? Don't we have a new catchphrase or something?
- 35:19
- Oh! Alright, so before we leave here's my new catchphrase. I haven't memorized it yet but it's awesome.
- 35:25
- When you see a brother down, build him up. When you see a high place, tear it down.
- 35:31
- And until next time, TEAR DOWN THOSE HIGH PLACES! Back to your old one.
- 35:37
- I love it. I thought that was part of it. I know, that is. I like it. Alright, bye for now.