Isaiah Lesson 14

Cornerstone Church

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And we're going to say good afternoon to everybody that's watching this on the video.

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We're glad to have you join with us. Someday, it's going to be fun to find out how many different family rooms we actually get to share fellowship with.

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And to everybody here in the sanctuary, we also thank you this morning. Pastor's going to be taking us into Isaiah 8, and if I read his main idea, the eyes of God's people were turned horizontal and failed to look up.

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And the exhortation here is, we are best served when our eyes are on the throne.

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And we are going to get in trouble when we keep our eyes horizontal, because we're either looking at the wrong thing or we're putting it in our perspective.

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So Isaiah 8, we're excited for that. Let's open with a word of prayer. Father, as you do bring us together, we say thank you.

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As we have your word to teach us, we also say thank you, and for your Holy Spirit that will open the eyes of our hearts, we look with anticipation, anoint our brother

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Jeff this morning as he brings his word, and for each one of us, that we would grow in it, we say thank you.

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In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Just to follow up on one thing you said, Colossians chapter 3, set your mind on the things above, not on the things before.

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Thank you, brother. Well said. Very well said. Well, today is going to be a juicy one. It's going to be fun, because we are going to talk a little bit about conspiracy theories.

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And isn't that a fun and interesting topic? We all love to talk about conspiracy theories. So we will get into that to some measure, but obviously we're going through the scriptures, and the reason we'll bring up conspiracy theories is because the scripture does in Isaiah chapter 8.

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Let me open with one. There is a conspiracy theory that began in the 1800s, early 1800s.

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And this theory is that after the apostles died, their original message was lost.

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They used to be priests, and they had temples all throughout the

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Roman Empire. And they had eternal marriages, and they baptized for the dead.

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However, after the death of the last apostle John, all of this was lost from the earth until the year 1823, when an angel appeared to a guy named

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Joseph, and he said, where to go to find some golden plates that were hidden and dug inside of a hill?

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And thus, according to Smith, he found these plates and then translated them into the

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Book of Mormon and began doing polygamy and all the things that they did and continue to do to this day.

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Now, that would be something that I see a lot of smiles and laughs, right? But if you were to go to the state of Utah, you would find perhaps millions of people who believe that conspiracy.

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And it's really all based on the conspiracy theory that people perverted the truth and that the church was lost, that God couldn't help it, even though the

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Bible says that I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

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Their theory is that the gates of hell did prevail for thousands of years until finally the restorer

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Joseph Smith came. So sadly, there are people that believe conspiracies of this nature.

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So we're going to get into this idea of conspiracies and something even more important than conspiracies, which is truth.

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How do you know what's true? That's a very, very important question. We're going to see it's actually very important for our day and age, too.

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So the first reader, I would like you, first of all, raise your hand if you don't want me to call on you to read out loud.

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This is your chance to get out free card. This is peer pressure. You know that. Okay. So nobody minds me calling on them.

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All right. So I'm going to work the room from right to left here. Sandy, you'll be my first reader.

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Isaiah chapter 8, verses 1 and 2 is where we begin. Now, I got to object here.

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She did not get to read it in the Hebrew. She read it in the translation. You're right. So this is

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Isaiah's son's name. It's Maher Shalal Hashbaz, which means, as our names often have meanings, the name is swift to the spoil, quick to the plunder, as that translation has it.

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What are you using there? Is that NIV? No. The American State. Oh, the NAS. Interesting.

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In any case, here you have Isaiah being told to take a tablet and write on it this name.

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Well, very interesting. It means quick to the plunder and swift to the spoil.

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And we'll learn why it means that in a few minutes here. But notice that he has to get witnesses to see him do this.

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Who are the witnesses? Uriah and Zechariah.

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People that are reputable, people that can attest. Attest to what? That Isaiah wrote

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Maher Shalal Hashbaz on a tablet in their presence and gave a prophecy.

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In other words, it needed to be verifiable that Isaiah actually said what he said before the thing comes to pass.

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Okay. This is very important. Biblical epistemology is very different from worldly epistemology.

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Epistemology is the study of how we know things. So somebody can make a claim, such as Joseph Smith, or anybody can make a claim.

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The question is, how do you know that that's true? Many people believe many things. How do you know that what you believe is actually true?

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The Bible gives us two sources of infallible revelation. One is specific and one is general, meaning one is specifically ideas and things that are propositional and that is called scripture.

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So scripture and general revelation. In Psalm 19, the author of the psalm,

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I think it's David, begins with general revelation. He points out that when the sun runs its course in the sky, when people look up at the heavens, the heavens declare the glory of God.

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General revelation is enough to reveal that there is a God with eternal power and divine nature.

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Part of general revelation as well is rationality, the ability to reason.

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And then we have special revelation, which is the Bible, propositions. And from general revelation, rational thought, but specifically from biblical revelation, we can know things absolutely.

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If it weren't for God giving us some revelation that comes from him, we would have no absolute way of knowing anything.

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Hence, you have people who reject the Bible ultimately often become postmodern.

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Postmodern people do not believe that anything can be known with certainty. Because unless you could know all facts, how can you know that the fact that you're holding is actually true?

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There could be some other evidence that you don't know that would ultimately refute that. So the postmodern person says, well, you just can't be certain about anything.

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Postmodernism says there's no such thing as absolute truth. There's no such thing as certainty. But biblical revelation gives us certainty.

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So, biblically, how do we know that our proposition that there has been, as we began with this afternoon, that there has been an apostasy where the true message of Christianity was lost only to be restored by Joseph Smith and golden plates and the angel

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Moroni? How would we test to know if that's true? There is a test.

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There's a test to falsify. Deuteronomy 13, one to three.

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Laurie, would you mind looking for that? And then Kimberly, I'll have you look up Deuteronomy 18, verses 20 to 22.

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And Bob, would you please read Deuteronomy 19, 15.

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Here are just three examples of biblical epistemology.

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Okay, this is going to become important as we get into the conspiracy theories to come. I want to lay a foundation of biblical epistemology, that we as Christians are responsible to think differently than the world thinks, okay?

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So Laurie, would you please read for me Deuteronomy 13, one to three. If a prophet comes along, and he even does something that looks to you like a miracle.

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Maybe it's like the false prophets of Egypt who were able to turn water into blood, the way

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Moses did. But they say something that contradicts the revelation of God as already given.

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You are to reject that prophet because of the test of consistency.

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God is always consistent with his own word. And if they say go worship some false

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God, even if they do a miracle, you are to reject them, you're being tested.

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So the first test of a prophet is consistency. Are they contradicting anything that's already revealed?

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Joseph Smith, for example, is a false prophet because he tells you to worship other gods.

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A father who has a father, who has a grandfather, and so on and so forth, is not the

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God as revealed in the Bible, the one true God. Okay, next test of a prophet,

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Deuteronomy 18, 20 to 22. Kimberly. Ah, oh, it's starting to snow.

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Yes. Oh, that's beautiful, finally. Yeah. Just hope the birds didn't eat.

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Oh, you've never seen, have you ever seen snow before? Well, I went to Tahoe. Oh, okay.

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On vacation. But snow didn't work. Yeah, you never just saw like snow coming down? Dreaming of a white

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Christmas. So Deuteronomy 18, 20 and following is a second test of the prophet, presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak or speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.

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Now how do you know that the Lord has not spoken? When he speaks, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that's a word the

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Lord has not spoken. In other words, a prophet must be correct in what he tells about the future.

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Joseph Smith prophesied when he was on the run from his first New York venture, they went down to Missouri and he prophesied that the new

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Jerusalem, the temple of the new Jerusalem will be built on this particular grass field.

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If you go there to this day, it remains a grass field because they got driven out of Missouri up to Illinois and then finally they fled to Utah.

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His prophecies, specific prophecies of what would come to pass and the years that he gave it, the timeframe for it to happen, failed to come to pass.

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Same thing with Muhammad, same thing with many false prophets. They make predictions that don't come to pass.

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You are not to just believe something because someone says it, but test what is said.

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So he fails that test. 1915, Bob, we're still in Deuteronomy.

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Ah, a matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. So in the case of Joseph Smith, he claimed to have these golden plates and he showed them to his three friends,

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Oliver Cowdery and Whitmer, a couple other, another guy, and they all signed their names that they saw the plates.

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Of course, a few years later they left the Mormon church and they said, well, when I signed that, I meant that I saw it with spiritual eyes.

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Spiritual eyes. I saw it in my mind's eye. So the point is biblical reliability, to rely on somebody's statement requires testing.

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One of the examples that we have in the Bible of establishing a matter is two or three witnesses.

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That actually carries over into the New Testament. As the next couple of references, Paul was aware of some problems in Corinth and people were accused of sexual immorality and a number of things.

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Paul says, when I get there, every accusation will be established by two or three witnesses.

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And in 1 Timothy 5 .19, you are not to entertain a charge against an elder unless there are two or three witnesses.

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So if you have one disgruntled person who has some accusation to come against an elder, and it's just the one person, 1

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Timothy 5 .19 uses the Old Testament Deuteronomy 1915 standard that there needs to be two or three witnesses to establish a matter.

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All this to say, and there are other tests, for example, Matthew 7, you're to test a prophet by their fruits.

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So if you have a so -called prophet who doesn't have the fruit of the spirit, but is controlled by rage and outbursts of anger and sexual immorality and things of this nature, you would recognize it's a false prophet.

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In fact, you could even look at the qualifications of an elder. An elder must be the husband of but one wife.

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So if Joseph Smith had, I think it's 33 wives, he can't be an elder, let alone a prophet.

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He's an idiot. Says Sandy. So tactfully. The point is here, and this is why

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I wanted to spend some time at this opening section. Our, even our Western jurisprudence is built on biblical understandings of epistemology.

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We have to come to know things through due process. Now, we live in a culture that is exactly opposite of that.

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This culture has rejected biblical epistemology in favor of postmodern epistemology.

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Postmodern epistemology is built on two things. Feelings and standpoint. Feelings. If I feel something is true, because there's no absolute truth anyway, then it is true for me.

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And no one can question anybody else's private truth. They feel it, that makes it true. Secondly, standpoint.

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A person, a person's lived experience gives them the standpoint which allows them to speak.

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In other words, the color of your skin allows you to speak to racial issues.

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The gender with which you were born allows you to speak to gender issues. How much money you have allows you to speak or not speak to issues of wealth and poverty.

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If you're an immigrant, then you can speak to questions of immigration. You see the issue? Only standpoint qualifies people to speak.

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This kind of postmodern epistemology is not knowledge at all. It's not knowledge.

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It's feelings. It's emoting. And that's what we see happening in our country today.

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We see the abandonment of biblical epistemology, ways of knowing, in favor of postmodern epistemology, and it's the ruin of a society.

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This society was built on the Bible. And without this foundation, things won't stand.

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So let's continue on in the book of Isaiah. Notice, this is the reason why I brought it up here. Isaiah calls for what?

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Two witnesses. I guess he's concerned about Deuteronomy 19 .15. He's going to make a prophecy.

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He wants it to be testable. You need to understand, I said this before it happened.

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I named my son Maher Shalal HaShabash. Here he is. Look at him. Here's Maher.

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You see him? This little tot. And what I named him was, was swift to the spoil, quick to the plunder.

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So that when what happens according to his name, you see him standing there. You can verify with your eyes that I called this shot.

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It was a prophecy. That's the point that's happening here. This is a biblical way of thinking, a biblical way of knowing.

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Verses 3 and 4. Carol. Maher Shalal HaShabash.

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Okay. Now, remember the context from last week. If you're new, don't worry. I'll try to fill you in real quick. Rezin and Pekah, the king of Syria and the king of Israel to the north of Judah.

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They have formed a coalition, a conspiracy, to come down south and conquer

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Judah. However, the prophecy is to say, before this little boy, my son,

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Maher, who wasn't even conceived when he wrote it on the tablet, before my little boy grows up enough to say mommy and dad,

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Abba, father, before he can say Abba, us Syria, that's not Syria, but us

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Syria from the Euphrates River is going to wipe out that coalition. Before he can say mommy.

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So within a couple years to be conceived, born, and able to say mommy and daddy. That's how soon this is coming.

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So he prophesied, and he called it, and it's verifiable. See, prophecies have to be tested.

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Even in the New Testament, 1 Thessalonians 5 .20 says that do not despise prophecies, but test.

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Put it to the test. And then in 1 Corinthians 14 .29, a similar thing. A prophet or two are able to speak, but test what is being said.

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What kind of test? Consistency. Is this consistent with everything that's already written? If somebody makes a prediction, don't just say, well, then it's surely going to happen.

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Let's see if it happens. Let's see if this person is a prophet. There's many people who make prophecies.

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When they don't come to pass, guess what I do? I no longer even pay them any mind. There was a prophet.

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I forget his name. It was Mark something. He was a fireman. He prophesied a great red wave that the entire

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Senate and the House would turn red in 2018. And then in 2018, it didn't happen.

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More House seats turned blue. So I just quit listening to that guy. I was never into him in the first place, but it's the test of the prophet.

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If it doesn't come to pass, then he hasn't spoken that from God. Now, New Testament, Old Testament prophecies, there's differences there, something we could talk about at another time.

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But the point here that I'm making is we need biblical epistemology. We don't just believe something because someone said it.

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We don't say it's true because I just feel down in my belly. I get this feeling that it's right, and I get the tingles when he says it.

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The tingles are not biblical epistemology. Biblical epistemology is what we're looking at here.

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Now, look at verses 5 through 8. Carol's already read, so Barb, would you mind reading

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Isaiah 8, 5 to 8? Okay, so much in this passage.

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Because Judah is delighting that their enemies are going to get wiped out, and they're not delighting in God, they themselves are going to be judged.

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Meaning, they're putting their trust now in Assyria. The southern king had written to the king of Assyria, said, help us out, we're under attack, come and rescue.

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He leaned on the king of Assyria, just like he would lean on the king of Egypt. But that's a reed that you can't put your weight on.

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It'll break and fall. Because they're relying on the earthly, they're looking horizontally rather than looking vertically.

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God says, because his people has refused the waters of Shiloah that flow gently, the stream that comes into Jerusalem, mighty and many, the king of Assyria in all his glory.

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This flow from the, so picture the Euphrates River, this giant river, right? Much bigger than anything in Israel.

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Even the Jordan today is a very small river. But the Euphrates is a giant river. The Assyrians are like that river.

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They're not only going to flood the north, Syria and Israel, they're going to come right up to your neck.

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That's exactly what happened in the days of Hezekiah. So, then interestingly, he calls his people though,

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O Emmanuel. We learned that title last week in the prophecy of the virgin birth.

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He shall be called Emmanuel. But see God, there is a near fulfillment still that's happening. Israel, his chosen people, the southern kingdom here, are

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God with us. He hasn't forsaken them. They're still his people, but under discipline, this is going to happen to them.

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Verses 9 and 10, and then we get into the conspiracies after that, the fun stuff. Kristen, would you read 9 and 10?

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So, it's a bit of a poem. In the Hebrew here, you see how your passage is set apart? This is still that you are

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Emmanuel. The southern kingdom is still safe in God's protection.

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Be broken, you peoples, and be shattered. Give ear, all you far countries. Strap on your armor and be shattered.

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Strap on your armor and be shattered. Take counsel together, but it will come to nothing.

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Speak a word, but it will not stand. For God is with us. What cued the author here,

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Isaiah, to say this is the last word in verse 8. O Emmanuel, God will discipline his people, but it's

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God who holds them. So, Emmanuel, you see the parallel there at the end of verse 10.

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For God is with us. In other words, Emmanuel. He's still going to care for his people.

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He's the issue. God is the issue that he is with his people. Now, here is the issue of conspiracy.

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Deborah, would you mind reading 11 through 13? He is the one you are to fear.

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He is the one you are to dread. Wow. Okay. Now, this is why

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I wanted to talk about conspiracies today. What is a conspiracy theory?

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It is basically a victim narrative that there's some oppressor, usually who's uber -competent is the word

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I use, extremely good at what they do, able to cover all their tracks, able to do amazing things, but they're victimizing some other person.

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It's usually behind the scenes, and it's an oppression. Are there conspiracies?

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Absolutely. As long as there are sinners in the world, there will be many conspiracies.

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But what is the problem in this passage? The problem here is that the people of the

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South are looking horizontally, trying to figure out the conspiracies and concerned about those things and not fearing

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God. You see, conspiracies are often fear -based. Conspiracy theories are often fear -based, worried, concerned, and looking at man to figure them out.

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Okay? A couple other things about them. They're popular because of people's feelings and standpoint being the way of knowing.

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In other words, in a postmodern culture, expect a lot of conspiracy theories.

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Here's why. Because in a postmodern culture, you don't need biblical epistemology.

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You don't need to prove things biblically. Biblically, if there is a charge to be made, it needs to be proven with due process.

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So has somebody been accused of something? Well, that doesn't mean they're guilty.

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The evidence needs to be brought. Biblical epistemology involves witnesses who testify.

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And then, after they testify, Proverbs 18, 17, one man seems right when you first hear him until another comes and questions him.

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In other words, there has to be cross -examination of witnesses to see if that testimony holds up.

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Is it consistent? Does it line up with other facts? There are all kinds of processes, which is where you get

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Western jurisprudence. In a court of law, a process of judging a very small matter.

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I once sat on a jury. A guy was accused of selling drugs. And the cop came, and he gave testimony that he had been surveilling him.

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And we sat there for an entire week and considered the evidence. Well, he had a wad of $400 in his pocket, and it was all small bills.

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That was one piece of evidence. And this cop and another cop said they saw it with their own eyes, and they watched it multiple times.

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So you have a couple of witnesses. They said where the stash was, under the wheel of the car. All of this evidence was presented.

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And to judge this case required weeks of looking at everything. That's biblical jurisprudence.

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Whether you find him guilty or innocent in the end, this is called due process. Conspiracy theories do not require this.

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Okay? And Christians should not get caught up in conspiracy theories because our attention should be focused on what

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God is doing in the world, not what's happening around us. Now, do we need to be aware of what's happening politically and in different areas?

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Yes, we do. There's a place for that. But it cannot be our fear. It cannot be our dread.

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We cannot be the kind of people that get caught up in conspiracy theories and get ruined by them. So I want to bring up a few examples of them.

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I have them listed in your notes. First, we already talked about Joseph Smith's claim of a restoration. We all know that's a conspiracy theory that doesn't stand up to the biblical tests of a prophet or any evidence.

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Right now, there has been, in the last four years, two major conspiracy theories regarding President Trump.

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The first was that he colluded with Russia. However, the evidence of that was never proven.

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Yet, there are probably 100 million people in this country who still to this day believe that President Trump colluded with Russia.

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He was literally, in this year, 2020, impeached. And I'm not getting political here.

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I'm talking about the way we know. He was impeached for a quid pro quo with Ukraine based on a whistleblower, one guy who was anonymous at the time.

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And on that evidence, he was impeached by our

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Congress or whatever it was, the House. That's insane! Without biblical due process, without proof of these things.

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Media claimed, this is actually many years ago, before this recent one, the shooting of Michael Brown.

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One man named Dorian Johnson stood up and said, he yelled, don't shoot.

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He put his hands up and yelled, don't shoot. Without any due process, the country spun out of control.

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Why? Because this country has abandoned biblical epistemology.

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Now, when it went to a court of law, witnesses, dozens of witnesses, testified that in fact he didn't put his hands up and say, don't shoot.

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He was rushing the police officer. He had been in the car and the gun was fired in the car. He was charging when he got shot.

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I wasn't a jury member in the Michael Brown case. So I cannot speak definitively to everything that happened.

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But a jury determined that that officer was not guilty. This last year,

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George Floyd, Derek Chauvin put a knee on his neck, ridiculously for eight minutes, mercilessly.

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I can't watch that video without thinking there's something wrong with that officer who did that.

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However, it would require biblical evidence, reason to believe that he did it because he's a racist to make the leap to that conclusion.

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Yet the minute that that happened, people began to riot on the grounds that the police, not just this one person who himself can't be shown to be racist because even to this day, there's no evidence that that was a racist cop.

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There's just no evidence. There's no biblical. And so the myth of systemic racism in the police was advanced throughout the country.

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Now, is it possible that there's racist police? I'm sure there are. There's gotta be a lot of racist police.

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I bet there's a lot of racist doctors and a lot of racist teachers and a lot of racist pastors.

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There's racist individuals, but the charge of systemic police racism isn't backed up by actual evidence, right?

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So if you look at the number of black people who were shot by a police officer unarmed in 2019, it was nine.

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There were 20 white people shot by, unarmed by police officers in 2019.

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There were 89 police officers shot in the line of duty and killed. So there's statistics and you look and you say, is there evidence that this is a systemic racism issue?

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Maybe it is. If so, you need to prove it with evidence. Instead, what people of course do is they assume a case and then they begin to shame anybody that doesn't believe it.

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Okay, now, there are other things that people claim regarding this virus.

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Is there evidence that this is a pandemic that's wiping out the country?

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No, the evidence is not there. In fact, there is evidence that there is some increase in this year's excess death total.

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There's some evidence of that. But there's also a mitigating factor in the other direction that there's been so many less heart attack deaths emphysema deaths, deaths from all different manners of blood clots and all kinds of things that the difference,

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I think it's 1 .7 million deaths per year annually. And this year might rise a little higher to 1 .8

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or something like that. So it's about the same. But the definition of a pandemic was something like 3 % mortality rate.

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This virus has a 0 .1 % mortality rate. It's not even a pandemic statistically by evidence. Now, there's other agendas that people seek to accomplish by that.

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OK? And it's possible that there is a globalist agenda, people who are elite in the government who are doing the

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Great Reset. For example, the evidence says that the World Economic Forum said that by the year 2030, you will own nothing and be happy, which is clearly a communist agenda.

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So these kind of things are possible. Now, how much should we say and talk about those things?

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This is where I want us to be careful. Another example is this current election. Was there voter fraud?

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100 % sure that there was, no doubt, because there's evidence that they found people who were dead, thousands of people who were dead that voted.

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That's a biblical evidence. Clearly, there was voter fraud. Is it enough to overturn the election?

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Probably, maybe. We have to be very careful to allow things to play out before we say too much.

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Here's my big example on this front. I watched, and many of you have seen the video, of people leaving the counting room.

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And after they did, about five people were left in Georgia. And they pulled four bins out from under the table.

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And then they continued counting for a couple of hours once other people had been escorted out.

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And they found these bins under the table. That looks to me like voter fraud.

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I think it probably is, but here's what I want to caution you. As Christians, we have to do better than postmodern epistemology.

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Here's what needs to happen. They need to find the woman with braided hair in the video and question her under the big lights what happened and listen to her story and get all five of those people who were in the room.

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And they need to find those particular ballots and those bins and examine all the forensic evidence. This needs to be the process of biblical jurisprudence.

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I can't say with certainty that that was voter fraud. Maybe there is another explanation.

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All I've seen is the overhead camera, and it sure looks suspicious to me. But do better.

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Another example, and this is one that I think has particular danger, and that is

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QAnon. Raise your hand if you're familiar with Q. You guys familiar with Q? OK, many people are familiar with Q. Is there evidence that people who are elite have been involved in molesting children and pedophile rings and things of that nature?

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Absolutely. Epstein had an island. Epstein, I don't think, hung himself.

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Maybe he did, though. I doubt it. But Epstein, the evidence is there that there were things going on.

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There is evidence that many people went to that island. Now, here's where we have to be careful.

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I have heard I could list dozens of names of people. I'll list some that I don't know if they're involved in a pedophile ring.

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Tom Hanks, his wife. LeBron James, his wife.

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Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton. Podesta, the other

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Podesta. And I'm sure many of you could list many other names. We have to be careful, because these things are very prominent on the internet.

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As Christians, we cannot indict people without due process.

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Do you see what I'm saying? If we say that these people did those things, we are in danger of slandering them.

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It may be the case, but look to God to bring things into the light.

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If it doesn't happen, guess what? Every person will stand before the one to whom they have to give an account.

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Everything will be open and laid bare. We live in a world where conspiracy theories are prominent.

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That's because we live in a fallen world where there's a lot of conspiracies. I think there are globalist elites who want to end nationalism.

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I believe George Soros gives money to every Democratic candidate who's ultra -antifa to the left.

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And I know that because that's what the records show, that he actually does that. And he's an atheist and all those things.

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He's actually said it. He says that's what he does. That's exactly what he does. The evidence is there.

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And so I'm not saying that, okay, well, we can't call a spade a spade. There comes a point when there's enough evidence that you see that this is what's happening.

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But what I'm reading in my Bible, and this is why I'm going here today, because this is what the Bible says, it says do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy.

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That's the warning. Why? Because we've been given biblical jurisprudence, witnesses, things of this nature, and do not fear what they fear.

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In other words, even if all of these things are happening, even if this is the end of America, let's say

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Biden gets in because they can't prove election fraud, and then there's never again really a democratic process because Puerto Rico becomes part, and Washington, D .C.

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gets senators, and they pack the court. And don't be afraid, even if we have to keep our eyes on God, because he also surprises us very often, doesn't he?

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Even when it looks like everything has been lost, what would it look like to Judah when they're up to their necks in Assyrians?

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And then they'd be carried off to Babylon. There'd be no nation left almost, but God brought them back.

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God even saves his remnant and can rebuild. So the point is do not fear what they fear.

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I'm gonna close here at the end of 13, and next week we're gonna kind of reinforce what I said today and bring it to a close, 14 through 22 next week.

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So that means I don't have to write notes again this week. I get a week off in prep. I just get to pick up where I left off.

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Let me ask John to close us in prayer, and then we're gonna continue discussing here. Anybody that needs to leave once we turn off the camera, you're free to go.

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And then if anybody has some time to stay, it's gonna be a very interesting conversation, I think. Let's pray. Can I take just a minute and tie this to what you did?

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Do you wanna start with that next week? Because it's already out of time. Next week, begin with that, and then we'll go. Father, we are under your care.

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We are loved by you. There is a prince of the power of the air that has dominion and has abilities to make trouble here on earth, and so there is a spiritual war going on.

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The warnings here in Isaiah, O Emmanuel, God is with us, is true.

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The warnings here that there are those who call conspiracy without following biblical process.

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The truth is we have a sovereign God. Yes. Thank you, Lord. Keep our eyes on the throne.