Season 2 Ep 1 The Here I Stand Theology Podcast - Religion & Politics and how the Gospel relates to both

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Season 2 Ep 1 The Here I Stand Theology Podcast - Religion & Politics and how the Gospel relates to both. We have Chris and Josh Rosebrough on from Pirate Christian Media. It was a great conversation. It was what Thanksgiving dinner should sound like!!!

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00:23
Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.
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Will you recant or will you not? Since your majesty and your lordships desire a simple reply,
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I will answer. Unless I am convinced by scripture and by plain reason, and not by popes and councils who have so often contradicted themselves, my conscience is captive to the word of God.
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To go against conscience is neither right nor safe. I cannot and I will not recant.
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Here I stand. I can do no other.
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God help me. Alright, alright.
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Welcome to the Here I Stand Theology Podcast. We are a podcast devoted to a pointed and spirited debate of biblical doctrine.
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Welcome to 2022. We have two special guests on today. We have the pirates of the pirate
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Christian media, Chris Roseborough and Josh, or if he's in trouble,
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Joshua Roseborough. Don't know his middle name, but we all know his middle name.
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Joshua Michael Roseborough when he's in trouble. Joshua Michael Roseborough is in the house.
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JM, that's a good theology name there. We want to let our audience know today that the
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Here I Stand Theology Podcast is accountable to the congregation to which we serve at Rev.
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Armada Baptist Church. So we are under the authority of our elders at the church as well.
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And anything that is said and done should be a representation of Rev. Armada Baptist Church. If you have an issue or a concern or a problem, if you want to rebuke us, call us.
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If it's biblical, we'll repent. If not, ease on down the road.
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Let's stick to the word. All right, guys, so let's play you in with a special clip, and then we'll get right to things here today.
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John Newton once said the following. It is impossible that either men or angels can fully sound the depth of this one sentence that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.
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So if we apply reason properly, we come to this conclusion.
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If the church is weak, it's not the fault of politicians.
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The church is weak. Ministers are weak.
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Once said the following. It is impossible that either men or angels can fully sound the depth of this one sentence that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.
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Now, here's something, minister. Listen to me again. We have this present tense idea.
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Keep on commanding and teaching. And notice that if you put these two together, we're talking about teaching with authority.
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And you cannot teach with authority based on your position or office. You teach with authority only to the degree that you correctly interpret and communicate
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God's word. And boom.
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Let's begin by holding this up and reminding everybody, roll tide. Funny thing about the whole roll tide thing.
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The very first submarine I actually went out on was the USS Alabama. Cool. So was there some kind of thing where when you boarded, you had to say roll tide?
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There was some roll tide iconography that was about the boat.
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It was very much of like, yeah, roll tide. You know, that kind of thing. It's not like the movie
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Crimson Tide where they're standing on a pier and drenched rain and stuff like that. And going, yeah, roll tide.
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It's like somebody like, get these guys inside. You're soaking wet. That was a good movie, by the way.
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So Chris and Josh are in a very, very cold place right now.
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Guys, tell us what's going on there on your part of the U .S. So we got about two feet of snow on the ground.
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And yesterday we woke up and the low overnight was 30 below zero Fahrenheit. So it's warmed up to, well, three degrees today.
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It's right now it's three. We're breaking out the suntan lotion. Yeah, that's right. I'm going to have shorts on and a tank top here in a minute.
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So Josh earlier said that there was about a 100 degree difference between the inside and the outside of your houses.
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That's right. If you set the house interior for 70 degrees and it was about negative 33 to negative 36, that's a 133 to 36 degree difference between the outside of your home and the interior, which is just a terrifying thought, especially when your heat goes out like it did for me.
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Oh, my. How long was it out for? It was practically the entire day. We had to we had to call a guy in and get it.
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Like one of the electrical relays had burned out. So but I was able to once I cycled power to the darn boiler, we able to get some heat back in the house.
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But it was starting to get dangerously low. Well, I'm glad to hear you've got power again and or heat again.
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Oh, yeah. So we'll get right to it here. Would you like to just kind of we'll we'll just reminisce about the joy in the victories and the defeats of the past year?
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Before we get to the religion and the politics, let's let's just be let's just talk personal for a moment.
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What are some victories and some defeats that you all feel and some struggles you all feel like you had this past year?
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Starting with Chris. So so, man, this is kind of an interesting thing.
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I would say that a big victory was the ability to just be in the grind in serving my neighbor as as a pirate and a pastor.
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And and so although I started off last year with COVID, you know, that that was loads of fun.
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I don't recommend that. If you can avoid it, do it. But the one thing
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I could say about 2021 is that it was just gloriously predictable as far as my workload is concerned and the people that we were serving.
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And the Lord continues to bring people to the congregations that I serve so that they can hear the gospel, so they can be confronted with their sins and have the assurance that Christ has bled and died for them and then be grounded in the basics of the
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Christian faith. So 2021 for me was just wonderfully normal, predictable and and just a good grind.
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Awesome. So can I ask you a quick question? Because I've noticed this over time because, you know,
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I catch every one of your episodes. But when you use the term in plural congregation, so do you serve more than the one?
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Yes. Yeah, that's right. So I serve two physical congregations in Minnesota, Kongsvinger Lutheran Church in Oslo and in Radium, Minnesota.
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I serve a small congregation as well that's in the Missouri Synod, Emmanuel Lutheran Church. And then we have people that we serve around the world online in kind of a virtual congregation that is lovingly referred to as Aletheia Lutheran.
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And so my weekends are spent pretty much the whole weekend,
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Saturdays and Sundays, preaching and teaching, just depending on which of the congregations that we're serving.
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And the folks that we serve online, many of them are geographically disconnected from being able to attend a solid church.
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Like, you know, so we have people who live out in the bush in Australia, some folks who live in different parts of the world where their choices are like liberalism,
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Roman Catholicism or crazy charismatic. They don't really have much as far as options are concerned.
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And so we serve them via the Internet because we're able to do that nowadays.
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But, you know, but if they're able to find a physical congregation, that's a better solution than the
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Internet. But we serve all of those people, you know, week in and week out. Well, that makes me even more thankful for your ministry, sir.
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I appreciate it. That's a blessing. You don't hear a lot about, you know, a multi -congregational pastor, at least where I'm from in the
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Baptist, Reformed Baptist world. You know, you don't hear about that much. I had a brother -in -law years ago served two congregations.
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I mean, he would go on Sunday from one to the other like that. And so within confessional
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Lutheranism, there's a shortage of pastors. And especially in places like rural
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North Dakota, rural Minnesota, many of the pastors that I have as friends, they don't have the luxury of only serving in one congregation.
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I have a close friend in the ministry. He serves three local congregations.
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And so, you know, he travels between the three churches, you know, on every given
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Sunday. And that's just it's kind of like an all hands on deck kind of thing. So, you know, the luxury of serving one small congregation, that's a luxury none of us have anymore.
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Well, how about you, Josh? Me? I mean, this last year I got
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COVID around the same time as my father did. So we got to suffer through that madness.
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Would not recommend zero out of 10. It's stinketh. By now, it surely stinketh.
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Exactly. So some of the things I got to do this year.
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Not only did I get to attend my brother -in -law's wedding, but one of my one of my best friends that I have got married and I was able to go out into California during the middle of the year and go back.
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It's the first time I've been back to California in like 12 years. And that was the state I grew up in. So it was a little bit of a blast of the past.
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But I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. I got to go to a bachelor party. It was it was it was nice to get out of the house, even amidst 2021 with all the lockdown madness.
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I still found time to visit friends and family, which was which was very much a blessing.
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And so I'm very grateful for that. I've you know, I've also been this was the first full year that we've done video production work for the church.
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I have a camera set up. I record every every Sunday audio. I've been doing audio for six years now, practically.
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And so it's only been within this last year that we've done just, you know, as video as well for the entire year, because we try to fire that up in 2020.
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That was when the lockdown hit and then everyone went. So we've been we've been chugging along.
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We have a YouTube channel for Kongsvinger Lutheran that has like fourteen hundred subscribers right now. We don't really make a big deal out of it because, you know,
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I don't really feel like getting the the wrong people on the trail and being like, we got to shut it down.
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So it's something there for people to find and enjoy. Just what your dad would need.
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Heckler's coming in the congregation and then you'll have to bounce them out. Yeah. Thankfully, you know, you have to really know where you're going to find
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Kongsvinger. No one is just accidentally passing through. So kind of geographically, we're a little protected there, but it's really easy to have
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Internet trolls. And let's just say there's some people out there who have some really weird ideas about what
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I believe. So, you know, I'm not a Jesuit or something. I did just the weirdest stuff.
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So we get the usual, the usual riffraff. One of our biggest attractors, at least on our
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YouTube channel right now, is a guy that basically is saying, there's nobody in the church. You can hear the tumbleweed going through the building.
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What? I would explain to him that, you know, it's like, you know,
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Lutherans, they always sit in the back pews. I mean, you know, if a
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Lutheran sits in the front pew, we suspect that they've been influenced by a false prophet and they're going charismatic, you know?
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Oh, you mentioned the trolls and all that. I actually,
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I'll just come out and say it. I troll a local cesspool of heretical sewage in our, in our town, right outside our town.
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It's called The Well. It's a godly vocation, trolling those who would. I've heard of The Well. I've heard of them.
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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They call themselves a revival hub. I'm actually getting ready to do a video on the, on the sermon from the guy that preached two weeks ago.
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I did one several months back because I have to, I can't like their page on Facebook or anything because they'll end up blocking me.
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Right. But I mean, it's, it is with, without a doubt, unequivocal that not only did they not preach the gospel because they're all about casting out demons and prophecy and all this other stuff, unbiblical prophecy.
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Yeah. They do not even know what the gospel is. And it's, I mean, it's both angering and heartbreaking at the same time.
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Yeah. A friend, a really close friend of mine who you guys would know, he recently had a conversation with a woman claiming that she's a prophetess.
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And in her conversation with him, she, she acknowledged that she doesn't really know the
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Bible very well. And when he challenged her regarding the gospel and says, are you familiar with John 3 16?
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She'd never even heard the verse before. And he said, you know, God so loved the world that he, and she couldn't.
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She says, yeah, I don't really know the Bible that well, but she claims that she gets direct revelation from God, you know?
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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is where biblical terminology well defined is so important in the church age today.
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Oh man. All right. So, so again, to our listeners, they should know you, but if you, if they don't go over to fighting for the faith on YouTube, soon as you're done with this video, like subscribe, take blood pressure meds before watching any of our content.
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And if you have time, make a tinfoil pyramid hat, it'll help keep the bizarre stuff we cover and fuzzy and fuzzy bunny slippers.
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Absolutely. Those are mandatory. Those are important. I noticed though, that you all had those. I don't know if you're still, that store's still up, but I remember a while back looking and you all got those on your side.
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Yeah, we did have them for a long time. It's been a long time since I've really kind of focused on them. Although every now and then
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I let people know what I'm researching. And if I take a photo of my screen, you know, and who
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I'm researching, I'll put the fuzzy bunny slippers on so that, and they're in the shot, you know?
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Oh, all right. So let's get to it.
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Let's discuss starting. We'll start in. Actually, Josh, what was the title that you said we should have put on this episode?
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What your Thanksgiving dinner should have been or what your Thanksgiving dinner conversation should have been or something like that.
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It's right. So we are going to be discussing today religion and politics.
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The faux pas seemingly to everyone who seems like they know what they're talking about.
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But we're going to discuss some of the larger, more prevalent events, particularly in. We're just going to make it simple.
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We're just going to go to the first. We're going to look at some of the events in the first quarter of 2020.
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I'm sorry. This is 2022, 2021. So we're going to look at just a few events there.
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And these got where we want these guys to give us their input. We're here to listen to them today in any way.
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So, well, again, we're only going to touch on the first three months. And actually, the latter portion, we may talk a little bit about as well.
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The Kyle Rittenhouse trial and the Jesse Smollett trial. I still think of the
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Blazing Saddles meme. The guy holding the gun on himself. There we go.
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We have already broken the woke code. Well, the fact that we're all three straight men who are white means that we've already broken the code along from the very beginning, from the moment you hit record.
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So who cares? We're mansplaining all of this stuff, too.
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So, you know, you know that the feminists can't handle what we're doing here. No, exactly. So for the feminists that may have.
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I'm just kidding. So I think each of these things will demonstrate with.
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I like to try to use big words from time to time with perspicuity. And I still wonder to this day why perspicuity means clarity when perspicuity itself does not seem to be clear.
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But we'll understand with perspicuity that the world in which we live today is, as the kids would say, cray cray.
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All right. I should probably have my main card revoked just for saying that right there. No, no, no.
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It's about par with anything I hear out of the pulpit on any given Sunday. I tried that myself, too.
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And I always get the weird, awkward looks from, you know, the young. He lives for it.
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You know, you know, you just sit there. How can I make them cringe today and give them the gospel?
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We are kindred spirits, brothers. That's right. Let's begin with January 6, 2021.
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Pro -Trump rioters stormed the U .S. Capitol on the day Congress was voting to approve President Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election.
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Josh, you don't seem like you're busting at the seams. Give us some commentary on that. Okay. Just for some context or whatever,
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I've seen posts today that there are liberal groups that are holding vigils.
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You know, on January 6 this year to commemorate the one year of the horrible, like the worst thing since 9 -11.
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Like that's the rhetoric that people are using. Okay. So just for just for my own for my own sanity here,
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I'll say this. January 6 was not a good day. It's objectively not a good day.
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Like they should not have entered the Capitol building with with the intent of harming or intimidating the politicians.
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All right. That's that's a bad thing. And I will state this, that what
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BLM and Antifa did for a solid year, we're talking a solid year of writing, burning down businesses, low -income housing, assaulting people in the streets.
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There's stories coming out of Oregon where an Antifa member shot a
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Trump supporter in cold blood with a pistol. And then there was on, I think it was either
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Vice or BuzzFeed or wherever, and had a puff piece written about him about how good of a person they were.
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You know, and then this, of course, is, you know, the FBI came down on him. They had to shoot him. He's dead. This, that, and the other.
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And then and then, of course, even back then, it's when Kyle Rittenhouse had to defend himself with an
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AR -15 because a fan of struggle snuggling with children decided to touch him without his without his consent and died because of it.
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And then he was chased down by a wife beater and a self -proclaimed communist, both of which were shot.
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Only another person died. But the one person had their bicep blown off. And then there was the whole trial, you know, in 2021 and all that junk.
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But the deal is, is that everything leading up to January 6 was just escalation of force, escalation of force, escalation of force.
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And it was primarily from the left. I would say it was like a 90 -10 split. And maybe
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I'm being generous to the 10 percent part. But the deal is, is that you have all of these all of these Americans who are fed up with the abuses of the lockdowns of BLM and Antifa destroying their cities and towns with relative impunity.
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You have a person running for the presidency who them and their
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VP have actively contributed to getting Antifa members and BLM activists who have been violent out of prison.
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And then you have January 6. You have one day, one singular day where the conservatives say, that's it.
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I've had it. I'm going to go do something crazy. And then it's the end of the world. Oh, oh, no. Look what they've done. They've they've stormed the
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Capitol building. It's the end of the world. Our democracy is gone. Here's the thing is that the
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Democrats and their and the brown shirts going around and smashing up cities and stores and people, they were going they were going after you.
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They were going after you. And but the thing that made them scared is that the conservatives went after their source of power, went directly to the source of where all their power stems from.
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And that's what scared them. That's why they're peeing their pants. That's why they're still writing articles to this day about how what a terrible, horrible thing it was.
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Even though you have I literally have photographs and videos of Democrats in other states storming their own respective state
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Capitol buildings and occupying it for days on end. That doesn't matter. You we threatened their source of power.
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And that's why they hate it so much. Yeah. I agree.
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I agree. All right. That was great input there. Let's move on. One day,
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January 7th, Facebook banned President Donald Trump indefinitely from the social media platform.
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Chris, what would you like to say about that? Oh, man. I do find it fascinating that that technology and the private sector corporations are actively working to undermine the very rights that we have as citizens of the
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United States. You have the right to freedom of speech. Yes. But Facebook and Twitter said, no, no, no, no.
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You don't have freedom of speech. You have the freedom to say what we approve of. And so you're going to note then that that that certain speech is now considered forbidden and is actively policed by our big technological social media corporations, which means we're already living in a soft form of totalitarianism.
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And it's not the government that's enforcing it. It's corporations in the private sector. And this is a very terrifying thing because at this point, the things that we've relied on for public discourse, conversation, for freedom of religion, the ability to preach the gospel, to call sin, sin.
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You can do that. I can do that at Kongsvinger. But certain sins, if I call them sins on Facebook or Twitter, they'll all be banned for life in those things.
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And so this should get everybody to wake up to the fact that totalitarianism is not out there somewhere.
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It's already here. And it's the private sector that is going to continue to lead the way towards it.
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And if we don't turn things around, then the government is going to fall and we're going to lose all of these rights that we've been endowed with and given by the founders of the
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United States. If I can piggyback off that for just one second. So you talk about you said that the corporations are the ones censoring people.
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That is correct. And you say it's not government. But the terminology that people on alt tech are using is that these government, these big tech companies are government adjacent because they are working and colluding with the politicians in order to be able to police speech that they don't like.
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Mind you, it's only swinging one way. And the thing is that the left will say, oh, my goodness, all the lobbyists are terrible people.
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But they're constantly lobbying to have freedom of speech squelched on online and all that kind of junk, too.
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So the thing is, is that it's OK when they do it. But if if any if anything goes back the other direction, it's like, oh, so the clock's back to 1883.
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You're a big meanie. How dare you? You hurt my feet.
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Stop it. But the the the the definition of fascism that the left likes to throw around is where it's corporations and the state merging together to control the populace.
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What do you think they're doing? What do you think? And, you know, it's like, man,
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I've never heard of a point in history where the good were the bad guys were the ones that were advocating for freedom of speech, for people to be arming themselves against those who would hurt them.
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Those that's not the rhetoric of the bad guys. I've never heard of that. All right, let's move forward.
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There's more. The U .S. on February 2nd, the U .S. Senate confirmed
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Pete Buttigieg, Buttigieg, I guess that's how it says,
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Buttigieg, Pete Buttigieg as the transportation secretary, making him the U .S.'s first openly gay cabinet secretary.
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OK, it's it's almost it's almost as though it leaves you speechless for just a moment.
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It makes you gasp and wonder. And it's just like the who is it?
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The director of health. That's a dude that thinks he's a woman. Yeah, I find that somebody you want.
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That's somebody you want working on your your child when they're sick. Right. I find this mentioned far more egregious because it's someone who's like, oh, yes,
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I'm an expert in these things and in health. I'm sorry, but mental health is one of the things you're obviously not an expert in.
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And that's objective. You know, you're not allowed to say that. Yeah. So so where I would go with this is let's talk about the the rise of lawlessness.
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What what you're describing and these little mile markers from the first quarter of twenty twenty one are clear indicators of the rise of lawlessness.
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The abandonment of the of the morality that God has put into the hearts of every human being and then is actually chronicled and written out for us in Scripture in the
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Ten Commandments. And and here's where it kind of gets interesting is, is that I lay much of the blame for where we are going in the increase of lawlessness on the church.
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And let me explain why. And you're going to have a little bit in history here to kind of make the case.
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But the idea then is, is that with the publishing of The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin's book back in the eighteen hundreds, there was this absolute terrifying walking off the battlefield of the field of ideas by many pastors and seminaries started making the switch to basically saying from going from saying the
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Bible is the inerrant, inspired, infallible word of God and are the authority for all doctrine in the church to now saying, well, we have to stay what's true.
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And so it's Genesis one is no longer real history. We can't trust it.
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And so science has undermined all of this. And that really opens the door outright barn doors in this way of this flood of liberalism, of people trying to rescue
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Christianity from from being irrelevant because of so -called scientific discoveries.
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But the problem is, is that evolutionary theory and all of the science behind it is garbage. It's it's absolute, you know, it it's a cesspool of slimy ideas that cannot actually be validated from real science.
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And now we live in the day where we can actually look at the genetic code and geneticists are saying, listen, that that that origin of species things, it ain't jiving with what we're seeing all the way down in the
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DNA. But but it's already too late. So what's happened is, is that in the last hundred and fifty years, you've had entire denominations taken over by people who are rescuing
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Christianity from itself and deny that what the scriptures say are true.
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And as a result of that, they've reworked Christianity into some kind of a social justice do good kind of message.
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But Christ and Him crucified for our sins, bodily raised from the grave, Jesus actually affirming the
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Genesis account of our creation and that we were created male and female. That's all out the window.
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And so what's happened is, is that people are not they're not being confronted with their sins.
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They're not hearing about Christ and Him crucified for their sins. And here's the thing. Every single child born on planet
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Earth, they are already conceived and born in sin. They don't come out as a blank slate or a
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Switzerland morally. They come out under the dominion of darkness. And if we're not out there reaching them with the gospel, then what is here is just the increasing percentage of people who are complete heathens and pagans who've never even heard the truth.
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And a lot of them, unfortunately, attend churches. And so it's it's a it's a scary situation.
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So, you know, these little high watermarks that you're seeing in the increase of lawlessness, it's only going to get worse as long as the
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Christian church continues to put up with these liberal false teachers and the crazy charismatic false prophets and apostles, because they're not people to Jesus.
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They're pointing people into the abyss. Amen. Amen, Chris. Actually, J.
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Gresham Machen, 1923, wrote Christianity and the Rise of Liberalism. I'll quote this.
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The rise of this modern naturalistic liberalism has not come by chance, but has been occasioned by important changes which have recently taken place in the conditions of life.
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The past 100 years. And this was written in 1923. He said the past 100 years have witnessed the beginning of a new era in human history, which may conceivably be regretted, amen, but certainly cannot be ignored by the most obstinate conservatism.
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The change is not something that lies beneath the surface and might be visible only to the discerning eye.
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On the contrary, it forces itself upon the attention of the plain man at 100 points.
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Yeah, it is. It is manifestly evident. Mm hmm. I agree.
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I agree. So March 2nd, the estate of Dr.
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Seuss announced that six of the author's books will no longer be published due to racist and offensive imagery.
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All right. So there's a couple of there's a couple of things about that particular story that some people have gotten wrong.
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For starters, those particular books hadn't actually been in print in years.
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They hadn't like, you know, the Dr. Seuss, like, you know, a state or whatever. They haven't. It's been a very long time since they published those books, talked about them, anything like that.
35:00
And they just, I don't know, came up for woke virtue single points and say, we're not going to do this anymore because they're offensive.
35:05
And everyone like, you know, then everyone on the right lost their mind. Everyone on the left cheered and it became a, you know, just ball of misery.
35:15
But also but ultimately what this boils down to is it's very much like 1984 with revising history.
35:25
If we, you know, if we can't learn from our own past, then we're doomed to repeat it. And so what they're doing is they're just speeding up the process, like, oh, we're not going to let you learn from the past.
35:34
We're just going to delete it, the stuff that we don't like and just ensure that it's going to all happen again. The other aspect of this is is a complete lack of appreciation for the boldness that Dr.
35:47
Seuss had in his lifetime. I mean, you know, Horton, here's a who a person is a person, no matter how small.
35:54
And then Yertle the turtle was his his swipe at Adolf Hitler. And to say that he was some kind of, you know, racist, that, you know, kind of inferring that, you know, you know, he secretly was a member of the
36:07
Ku Klux Klan. That's just belogna. It's it's bovine scatology. And and it does not do him justice at all.
36:16
And he was the farthest thing from a real racist. And some of his artwork reflected basically the
36:24
United States of the time that he was publishing. And and it was a reflection of the culture of the of the moment.
36:32
But that doesn't mean that he somehow was an advocate for, you know, making people of color less human or something like that.
36:40
Far from it. He was an outspoken advocate for human rights, regardless of your race or color or ethnicity.
36:48
And by and his artwork and his storytelling, by comparison to what was considered fine by that particular time and day, was far more tame and far less offensive than a majority of the stuff that's coming out around the time.
37:01
So it's, you know, it's mostly, if anything else, it's a smear campaign to destroy someone's, destroy
37:10
Dr. Seuss's reputation more than anything else. Yeah, there's so much. There's so many things that he that he did right that were so good and objectively moral with Horton.
37:21
Here's you being basically a allegory for abortion in some ways. You know, that one,
37:26
I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's like, you know, it's the tiny little speck that that has life and he wants to defend it and protect it.
37:35
You know, people have used that as a way with which to fight against the rhetoric of abortion. And the leftists just cannot stand it.
37:42
They get so mad. So we can't we can't destroy his books.
37:48
We can't destroy all of his books. Well, this destroys reputation. So no one will ever want to read from him ever again. Yeah. And like Chris, you had mentioned it about that book being a reflection of the nature or the culture around him.
38:01
And I think that's one of the again, going back to the the liberal ever moving goalposts, the subjective viewpoint that the liberal world tends to have rather than the objective standpoint.
38:17
We see that in the in the with the in the result of the the books that are coming out now, the book, even the children's books that are written.
38:25
There are so many children's books that are progressing or that are professing and pushing the idea of gender neutral.
38:35
Right. The idea of homosexuality being acceptable, the two mommies or the two daddies.
38:42
And they completely ignore not not not just the theology, but they completely ignore the science.
38:51
Biology. Yeah. I don't know how anybody who can make an appeal to science and say that somehow gender is a social construct.
39:01
I mean, back back when back when I was born and back when my kids were born.
39:07
First thing the doctor announced as soon as you could see what the child was, it's a boy or it's a girl.
39:13
So we sat there and went, how do you know that? Are you sure? You know, it's even it's even a little worse than that, because you say that, you know what a what gender a person is.
39:25
But because of a psychologist who performed horror of horrifying experiments with children back,
39:34
I think in like the 60s or 70s, the idea that gender as a word actually is not interlinked with biology anymore.
39:44
It's actually gender is the outward expression of a person. And it's not has nothing to do with the actual sex of a person.
39:51
And those are some of the semantics, semantic arguments that the left has made to literally dance around the issue and to make certain that everyone's confused.
39:59
Yeah. And basically, I see this then as just a telltale sign of just how deep our rebellion against God is, that in listening to the devil coming under the dominion of darkness, being born dead and trespasses and sins and Satan being our daddy, that Satan can't stand the truth.
40:24
And so and we're not talking about just some truth. We're talking about any truth. Two plus two equals four.
40:30
That's got to go. That's racist. And the idea that God created us male and female, that's got to go, too.
40:36
And so at this point, you know, this just speaks to the absolute insanity of rebellion against God, because that rebellion makes it so that you deny reality itself.
40:50
And I refuse to acknowledge that I was created male. So I'm going to say
40:56
I'm a you know, no, you're not. You know, it's good luck explaining that to God on the day.
41:05
And one of the one of the really, really nasty things about the whole meeting God on the last day is that all of these people that have mutilated themselves to be what they believe that they should be, they're going to be resurrected in the bodies that God made for them, not the ones they made.
41:21
Yeah, that's absolutely true. And the and the other bit is, is that all these pastors and pastrix is there's no such thing, by the way, who sat there and said, oh,
41:31
God affirms you in this stuff. They're going to have a lot of explaining to do. Oh, not only
41:37
Jesus, but also the people they deceive with these lies. Not only do they affirm that, but they do entire re -baptism ceremonies to baptize them in their new name and new identity, which is just wretch worthy.
41:49
Yeah. It's blasphemous. It's absolutely blasphemous. I agree.
41:55
One hundred and ten percent there, which leads us into the next section here. The religion part of the show, right?
42:03
The it's a really dangerous part. Now that we've alienated everybody. That's right.
42:12
The the the expected part is to understand and to realize and to know the reasonable part is to know that the world is doomed.
42:22
The sad reality is because so few of the religious or the church world is so intermingled and so mixed up with these ideologies and so letting it come into the church that the church is becoming.
42:41
We'll use the word again. This will be the third time between us all here that we've used it assessable. It has become assessable.
42:47
The only in like that quote, Paul Washer stated that the church is not weak because of politics.
42:57
The church is weak because the men of God. I will go on record to say in this publicly because the majority of the and I'm just going to pigeonhole the men here because that's that's who's supposed to be in the pulpit.
43:12
The men of God aren't born again. I believe that they believed a lie in that they're leading people into into that lie that they believe and never having experienced the new birth itself being born again being made a new creature.
43:28
Yeah. I mean, I said some folks like that, you know, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not cast out
43:34
Jesus? I never knew you never, you know, and you know, and and so don't sit here and tell me how
43:42
Christian you are. While you're out there, basically affirming all of the morals of the world and absolutely waging war against any man who would preach the truth of what's right and wrong from Scripture.
43:54
You're not doing God's work. When you do that, you're doing the devil's. Yeah, there doesn't seem to be any level of scarcity when it comes to bravery against those preaching the truth, you know, like those who are preaching falsely.
44:07
Everyone's like, oh, oh, I can't touch that. I'm sorry. I might, I might cause offense. But if somebody's out there preaching the preaching the truth, they're like, kill him, murder him, feather him and dump him into a dumpster into the gas station.
44:23
They watch the whole thing blow up in a giant conflagration. Kill him. I'm pretty sure that the the the great theologian
44:32
Nacho Libre summed it up pretty good. I'm a little concerned right now about your salvation and stuff.
44:51
That that that that would have to be the one of the most accurate theologically true statements toward the church world today.
45:01
I'm kind of worried about or I'm kind of worried about your salvation. I'm telling you right now, there are text messages flying and people going, cancel, cancel, cancel.
45:13
Who do I write an angry letter to now? No. Well, I'll tell you what, if if if you'll help me be platformed,
45:23
I'll help you be platformed and YouTube kicks us off. We'll help each other. We'll promote the gospel together.
45:29
All right. So the the ad lit and plagiarism scandal, we're just going to zoom through these because we want to get to the scripture text.
45:35
It's the most important part. I know we've been a while on here, but the ad lit and plagiarism scandal.
45:41
Good or bad, Chris? Horrifying. Absolutely horrifying.
45:46
I'm not even a Baptist. And it's like I'm looking at you guys going, do you guys not have any standards anymore?
45:53
You know, I mean, what is going on here? I mean, we had in the American Association of Lutheran Churches, we had the presiding pastor of our denomination caught in plagiarism and he got canned.
46:08
He got sacked and he should have been. All right. So this was several years back before Dr.
46:14
Lines. Listen, plagiarism isn't a small thing. It's a huge thing. And it shows it shows that a pastor isn't doing his job.
46:22
Job of pastors to preach the word, which means he's going to have to study, which means he's going to have to actually work through a biblical text and have it work through him first.
46:33
God, the Holy Spirit convicting him of his own sin so that he can actually preach the text.
46:39
When you plagiarizing, you're running down the rails of somebody else's track.
46:44
And I'm sorry, but there are college students who are no longer college students for plagiarism.
46:51
Why on earth do we have less of a standard in the church? This is ridiculous. There is only one type of plagiarism.
47:00
There is only one type of plagiarism that's allowed at all whatsoever. And my dad is he's constantly guilty of it.
47:07
Like every week, he only plagiarizes the scriptures. Hey, man, go back and look at my sermons.
47:15
Like 60, 70 percent of my sermon is me reading out biblical text. That's what that's what biblical preaching is.
47:22
We don't have our own message to proclaim. We've got the word of God. There is nothing better. That's right.
47:27
You got all these pastors and all these churches. They're not doing expository, exegetical preaching anymore. I had
47:34
I've had a parishioner tell me that they describe what they hear in those other churches. They call it suppository preaching.
47:40
So there's only one joke. There's only one joke. Well, that's the truth.
47:54
So, yeah, I agree 100 percent. They were there with what you said. So the next thing we're just going to touch on,
48:01
I had some video prepared, but we're not going to go into the video. But we will just touch on it verbally. The continual movement toward wokeness within many churches.
48:08
And I wanted to take a moment to thank God for high profile preachers like Phil Johnson, who calls out people from me, from his own circles, from his own circles that are guilty of this garbage.
48:22
So we were going to play a short clip from the 2019 Shepherds Conference. Folks can if you just Google 2019
48:30
Shepherds Conference or YouTube it. It's about an hour long Q &A.
48:35
Phil Johnson shoots straight. I mean, straight at his fellow brothers in Christ there on the stage.
48:44
It gets heated at points. It does get a little challenging. MacArthur will jump in to kind of calm things down for a moment.
48:53
But he makes some very pointed and important statements and questions.
49:04
Now, by the way, I'm not Southern Baptist. I know Ed Litney is, right?
49:09
So I'm not Southern Baptist. I'm Reformed Baptist. But those Reformed guys like Ligon Duncan and Mark Deaver, they are tiptoeing.
49:23
They are tiptoeing through the issue of wokeness. And they're going back to worldly, secular arguments to defend themselves rather than going to the
49:32
Scripture itself. So, again, that's one of the— And here's the issue. At its core, wokeness is a breaking of the commandment, you will not bear false witness against your neighbor.
49:42
And the problem is that this false narrative that goes with wokeness, that somehow the
49:48
United States was founded on racism for the purpose of perpetuating racism, and that this is systemic, and that all this kind of nonsense, it's a breaking of that commandment.
49:59
And what it ends up doing is that it makes us look at people and say just by their skin color, their age, or their sex, that they are racist and they don't even know it.
50:12
But the problem is that the Scriptures have an actual high threshold for establishing a charge against a person.
50:18
And that is that you have to establish a charge with witnesses. And this is just lazy nonsense.
50:26
In fact, it's this kind of false narrative that led to the Holocaust because there were—
50:32
The Nazis were masters at blaming those rascally Jews.
50:37
This is the way they talk about them. They are the ones manipulating the financial system. They're the bankers who are putting us in misery.
50:45
They're the reasons why all this is going on. And the average Jew is sitting there going, nobody's going to believe this stuff.
50:50
This is just nuts. This is crazy. And then they were trained off to the gas chambers.
50:57
The issue is that wokeness somehow makes it so that you don't even have to establish a charge.
51:03
You can just look at a person and look at their demographic and know that they are actually a racist.
51:09
And that's—I'm sorry, but that's a slander to the highest degree. Also, wokeness is a convergence of other sins as well.
51:18
So not only is it about slander, but it's also about stealing, theft, because the idea of wokeness is built upon social
51:27
Marxism or Marxist ideology, socialism, where it creates different people groups based upon their economic circumstances, such as the bourgeoisie versus the proletariat, the bourgeoisie being the people the haves, the proletariat being the have -nots, the rich and the poor.
51:44
Like, hey, you don't have things because that person has things, so you should take things from that person because they owe it to you.
51:51
And so the thing is that in the West, capitalism, people are like, hey, I can just build wealth myself.
51:58
I can make something and I can earn things. And so the socialists are like, no, no. What do
52:03
I do? What do I do to make it so that I can create division again and cause the whole system to collapse so we can build a
52:09
Marxist utopia? Race. You can say, look at all these poor black people.
52:16
They don't have money. Look at all these rich white people. They have money, which means that there's a divide that's racial and racism is a thing.
52:24
Slavery was a thing. There's still some effects of that that is felt in today's society. But the thing is, is that the law doesn't usually uphold slavery.
52:31
We got rid of a lot of that with the Civil War, with dumping the
52:36
Jim Crow laws and stuff like that. And with the Civil Rights Act, which no
52:43
Democrat voted for, by the way. And there was no flipping of the parties. It wasn't like Democrats magically were Republicans now and the
52:48
Republicans were Democrats. So the thing is, you know, so Republicans are like, yes, we will fight for freedoms.
52:55
And then the Democrats are like, no, not freedoms. No, we can't have you have freedoms. What are we going to do now?
53:02
Lockdowns. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and probably the more the broader scope,
53:11
I would say it's just an outright denial. That's the root of the sin in general.
53:17
It's the outright denial of the authority and the sufficiency of the scripture itself.
53:24
I'm going to bring up this. Let's bring up some scripture here for just a moment. Actually, if I can figure out how to do this.
53:32
There we go. So Romans 1 18. Right. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
53:46
For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and his divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that had been made.
54:03
So it's been clear. So they are without excuse for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.
54:11
But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise.
54:16
They became fools and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man.
54:22
Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their heart to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.
54:39
And the scripture goes on. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions, for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature.
54:49
And the men likewise gave up their natural relations with women and were consumed with passion one for another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error.
55:01
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
55:08
They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.
55:14
They're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God.
55:21
They're insolent, haughty, boastful inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
55:29
Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, but they give approval to those who practice them.
55:40
And, of course, the Apostle Paul leaves it here under inspiration of the scripture. Therefore, you have no excuse.
55:46
That is a sad reality. There is no excuse for them on the day of judgment to be able to stand.
55:54
Well, God, I did not know. God, I was not taught this. The scripture says that.
56:01
Does not nature itself teach us these things, right? So we have that. And you'll note then that liberal progressives, apparently theology and Christianity is progressing.
56:12
The world that we live in is the result of their so -called progress, right? And when you read
56:18
Romans 1, the progress that we're making is not forward. It's backwards into the pit.
56:24
It's not progress towards godliness. It is progress in the futility and the debased mind and the things that ought not to be done.
56:35
This is a result of the abandonment of the worship of the one true God. And God says, you don't want to worship me?
56:43
Fine. You go right ahead and have it your way. But I'm going to make things worse for you. And the later states can be worse than when you first abandoned me.
56:55
And all of that litany there, all the way to same -sex attraction, all the way down to being gossips and slanderers and murderers.
57:03
Yeah, welcome to 21st century planet Earth right now. This is a progressive utopia.
57:11
But when you read the scriptures, you sit there and go, we are in a lot of trouble because God has sent this upon us as judgment for us rejecting him.
57:19
Yes, yep. And there's going to be a line drawn in the sand. And this is going to be one of those times like Canada on, what is it, on the 16th?
57:30
The law goes into effect, or has it already gone into effect in Canada where it's going to make it literally illegal for a pastor or preacher or anyone to speak against conversion therapy or anything of that nature for homosexuals.
57:46
Speak in favor of it or to try to enact it. They're making conversion therapy for people who are willing and desiring such treatment to be barred from that.
58:00
Yep, yep. And so that leads us to the most important section of the podcast today.
58:09
And that is where we're going to, as we just began to look at some scripture, but to encourage our listeners, to encourage those
58:18
Christians who are watching to don't lose heart. Don't grow weary.
58:24
The apostle Paul wrote to the Galatians, don't grow weary in well -doing for in due season you will faint not.
58:30
The good news is this, that as the scripture says in Proverbs, right, a living dog is better than a dead lion, something to that effect there, right?
58:40
To him that is joined to all the living, there is hope. And our task as Christian men, as Christian women, as Christian boys and girls, we don't want to exclude them.
58:51
We want to let you know that it is of the utmost importance that you continue to preach the gospel.
59:00
What is the gospel? The gospel is set forth plainly in the text of scripture.
59:06
It's not complicated. It's not difficult. You don't have to be a theologian. The scripture teaches us in 1
59:12
Corinthians 15, 1 through 4, the gospel is simply this, that Christ died for our sins.
59:18
We must, every one of us, recognize the fact, as Chris and Josh stated earlier on in the podcast, that we are sinners.
59:27
There are none good. We're born in sin. We're shaped in iniquity.
59:34
We are separated from God by our sins. There is no way to bridge that divide in and of ourselves, but God sent his only begotten son to this world.
59:49
And those who believe in him might have everlasting life. It seems like one of those guys out on the street.
59:59
I know what it may sound like, but friends, there is no hope outside of Jesus Christ. There is no salvation, for the scripture tells us there is salvation in no other, for there is no other name given among men, whereby we must be saved.
01:00:16
The hope of eternal life is in Jesus Christ. You can't earn it.
01:00:21
You can't work your way to be good enough to Jesus Christ. All you can do is believe the gospel of Jesus Christ.
01:00:29
Trust in what Jesus Christ has done, that he died on the cross, having lived a perfect sinless life, perfectly fulfilling the law of God, hanging on the cross between heaven and the earth, taking upon himself the wrath of God, that nobody could take except for that he be the
01:00:47
God man. He died, was buried. On the third day, he arose from the dead.
01:00:54
He ascended. He sits at the right hand of the throne of God, where he ever lives.
01:01:00
There is no dying again for him. He has done it. He's finished with that. He's conquered death, and he makes intercession for his saints.
01:01:10
So believe the gospel today. Do not lose heart. Do not lose hope.
01:01:17
Very quickly, guys, we had three passages set aside.
01:01:22
I may have gotten a little close to the mic. Sorry if I spit on you all. That's just me, but I can't help but be enthusiastic and be excited about the gospel of Jesus Christ.
01:01:41
It's the best news that this world has ever heard, and it's the only news that is going to save men and women.
01:01:50
So no matter how bad things get, go ahead. And here's the other bit of this, is that in Christ, everybody who's in Christ, even though you die, yet shall you live.
01:02:00
Christ has promised all whom he's forgiven, that whom he has regenerated through the powerful working of the
01:02:06
Holy Spirit, that he has promised them a new heavens and a new earth. And when you read the scriptures,
01:02:12
I used this in my sermon yesterday, every attempt that the devil engaged in to try to destroy
01:02:20
Christ, either before by killing his relatives or trying to kill him directly after the birth of Christ, and now waging war against the saints.
01:02:30
Read the tail end of Revelation chapter 12. The devil is like Wile E.
01:02:36
Coyote. He is the most inept enemy ever. He loses every single battle spectacularly and still keeps coming at us.
01:02:46
You have nothing to fear of the devil. So if somebody's threatening you and the devil's raging at you, just sit there and go, meep, meep, and get back to Christ and the gospel.
01:02:56
You don't have anything to worry about. Christ has got your back. That's right. And it should be a privilege.
01:03:03
It should be a privilege for us to suffer for Christ. And another thing that's for the hope of men that are preaching the gospel, we should count it a privilege to suffer for Christ.
01:03:16
I mean, for crying out loud, men went to the stake and were burned for the gospel of Jesus Christ.
01:03:23
Right. In fact, Peter in 1 Peter 4, he even says rejoice.
01:03:28
He says when the fiery trial comes, not if, when it does, when it shows up, rejoice that you get to participate in the sufferings of Christ.
01:03:37
How can we do that? Because here's the thing. Jesus told us that would happen. The apostles told us that would happen.
01:03:43
The prophets told us that would happen. The saints of old all experienced it too. And here's the thing. When that fiery trial comes for you, you sit there and go, woohoo, the word of God is true, man.
01:03:53
God don't lie. Amen. You are blessed. Amen.
01:04:01
You believe in Jesus, I kill you. You go, go for it, dude. I'm blessed. Oh, no.
01:04:07
Don't send me to Jesus. No. Yeah. The old country preachers
01:04:13
I grew up with, I started to say I growed up with, you can tell where I'm at, where I'm from when
01:04:18
I talk bad English. One old preacher says this, hallelujah anyhow.
01:04:25
If I live, hallelujah anyhow. If I die, hallelujah anyhow. Because I'm going to be with the
01:04:31
Lord. Yeah. Look in the early part of Acts. The first time that Peter and John were actually beaten for preaching
01:04:39
Christ, they left the prison rejoicing that they had been found worthy to suffer shame for the name of Christ.
01:04:47
They're sitting there going, woohoo, we got beaten. I need medical attention.
01:04:56
They were rejoicing. And this tells you that with each of the persecutions that they experienced, that was a sign to them that the words that Christ had told them were true, that he can see the beginning from the end.
01:05:11
And so we don't have anything to worry about the devil, which is one of the reasons why in the end of Revelation, in the list of people who end up in the lake of fire, at the top of the list are the cowardly, okay?
01:05:23
If you're afraid of a seven -headed red dragon, come on. It's just God.
01:05:29
You've got nothing to fear from that guy because Christ already defeated him. It's almost as if the scripture says in another place, right?
01:05:39
All that live godly in Christ Jesus might suffer persecution. No, we'll suffer persecution.
01:05:47
Exactly. And when you do, you sit there and go, oh, Jesus got it right. Wow, God's word came through, man.
01:05:55
He was right again. Well, guys, do you want to go through the
01:06:02
Daniel, Matthew, and Thessalonian text? We've pretty much been preaching the gospel the last few minutes here.
01:06:09
Yeah, yeah. I love your show notes because you talked about the three passages of Scripture.
01:06:16
Daniel 3, which is so relevant because that's Nebuchadnezzar and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
01:06:23
But what I would note here is that those fellows, they refused to bend the knee.
01:06:30
They refused to bend the knee to that idol. And here's the reason being, they absolutely trusted in God and they were threatened with the fiery furnace.
01:06:43
But I would like to point this out. These men didn't act presumptuously. They didn't decree and declare.
01:06:49
Well, we decree and declare that your fiery furnace ain't going to touch us. Instead, what did they do? They said, even if we die,
01:06:55
God is able to save us. But even if we die, we're not going to bow to your idol. And who shows up?
01:07:01
Jesus himself. I love the confession that Nebuchadnezzar gives at the end of this text because he says, did we not throw three into the fiery furnace?
01:07:11
How is it that there's four and one of them looks like the son of the gods? Jesus shows up.
01:07:18
So in the midst of all this wokeness and suffering that we're experiencing with the rise of Marxism and the falling apart of our republic, even if you lose your life, don't worry.
01:07:30
Christ has already saved you from the fiery furnace of hell. I mean, it just goes to show
01:07:36
Nebuchadnezzar didn't actually have any authority or power unless God himself gave it to him. Because the threat was, worship me or I'm going to throw you into hell.
01:07:45
You know, the fiery furnace, the pit, like the lake of fire, if you will. And they're like, nah,
01:07:51
Jesus has got us. We're good. We're good. You don't have that kind of power and authority. It's like, no,
01:07:56
I'll throw you in there anyway. And they're just sitting there dancing around with Jesus. And Jesus goes, what do you mean you're not burning and dying?
01:08:04
You're supposed to be burning in death here. But this is what I specifically ordered. What happened? And it's just standing for the devil.
01:08:13
The devil doesn't have that authority. Exactly. And here's the other bit. The reason why communists hate Christians is because Jesus is king of kings and Lord of lords, which means he's king over them.
01:08:23
And they want the state to be worshiped, the state to be feared. And for everybody believe that all of their rights come from the state.
01:08:31
Lonely. They all come from Christ. Right. It's it. And when it comes to communism or socialism or authoritarian totalitarian dictatorships and stuff like that, you cannot control a people that do not believe that you are the highest, that you're that you're the highest authority in the universe.
01:08:47
If they believe that it's God, then they're not going to listen to you, that you can't control them. They're already dead.
01:08:52
They know that you can't kill them. It's like. And so that's what they fear the most. So they must squelch it with atheism and death and morbidity.
01:09:02
So. So would you all be in agreement with the statement? This that if if churches, if preachers, pastors would simply proclaim the sovereignty of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ, if if we just focused on that weekend and week out, would that not?
01:09:24
I would say, I don't know. I don't know. Tom, I'll throw a number out there within a year.
01:09:30
If every man of God, that is a man of God that stands in the pulpit and preaches, just preach on the sovereignty of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ.
01:09:39
Imagine the change that would take place within a year. Yeah. Churches would shrink. No doubt.
01:09:45
Oh, yeah. That'd be the first thing. Like the like the amount of people that would no longer be Christian would be increased exponentially.
01:09:51
Exactly. Fortunately, I know over the years that I've been doing fighting for the faith as a podcast and the
01:09:58
YouTube channel, I received many emails from men who've been kicked out of churches as pastors for doing exactly what you were proposing because, you know, the people who go to those types of churches, they're not there to hear about Jesus.
01:10:12
They're not there to be told they're sinners. They're not there to hear about Christ and his saving office. They're basically there because it's a country club.
01:10:19
It's like the Kiwanis or something like this. And they want to be told that they're basically good people and be prompted to be even a little bit better, you know, and maybe keep their
01:10:29
New Year's commitment in New Year's resolution like this. And so I know many a pastor who have lost their pulpit by preaching
01:10:36
Christ, but it's got to be done anyway, the best way I can put it, you know, so if it means your job, don't worry.
01:10:46
Jesus got your back, man. You know, we pray for daily bread. He's not going to leave you penniless and without the ability to feed your family, but preach the gospel and, you know, let the chips fall where they may.
01:10:59
But part of the reason why we're in the mess that we're in is because pastors have listened to the threats of the devil.
01:11:06
And I know several pastors who have said to me privately, I can't do that because if I do that,
01:11:13
I'll lose my job. And my response is that then lose it. Amen.
01:11:19
Amen. Preach Christ or get out of the pulpit. Exactly. Well, guys, this has been wonderful to have you on here.
01:11:30
I appreciate y 'all's honesty, your candidness, your faithfulness more than anything.
01:11:35
I appreciate y 'all's faithfulness to the scripture itself. Y 'all have demonstrated this throughout the years.
01:11:43
And, um, there are not a lot of folks that we can point, uh, our friends and family and, and even lost people toward that.
01:11:52
It's sad to say there's not a lot of folks that I trust that I know in the public world that I would point folks to, but I would definitely point them to you all.
01:12:01
So, um, thank you all for your faithfulness. Thank you. Um, Chris, would you like to close us out by proclaiming the gospel one more time?
01:12:11
Sure. Absolutely. So we just got through Christmas and Christmas is this wonderful, amazing thing because God himself, rather than giving us what we deserve, because we all rebelled against God, we've sinned against God and thought word deed by the things we've done by the things that we haven't done.
01:12:30
And God, in his great love and mercy, rather than sending us to hell, he takes on human flesh and Jesus himself keeps the law of God perfectly in your place in mind.
01:12:40
And what he ends up doing that babe of Bethlehem that we just celebrated his birth, that babe of Bethlehem, he grows, he grows in wisdom and in strength.
01:12:50
And he, then he is baptized by John the Baptist. And God, the father says of Jesus, this is my son in whom
01:12:57
I am well, please. My only, my beloved son, he then takes on the saving office as Jesus, the
01:13:04
Messiah, he lives perfectly. He conquers. The devil is tempted in every way that you and I are tempted.
01:13:10
And yet is without sin. And then as Isaiah says, God lays on him, the iniquity of us all, he is pierced for our transgressions, bruised for your iniquities and mine.
01:13:23
And he suffers, bleeds, dies, experiences the wrath of God in our place.
01:13:28
And then rises victorious from the grave on the third day, that same Jesus told his apostles to go out and tell everybody the good news that in him is the forgiveness of sins.
01:13:40
You and I all know that the big problem that we have in life is that we all have to stand before God someday.
01:13:47
And I know that many of you have anxiety about it and you should, because you are not good. You have not kept
01:13:53
God's law perfectly. And you're always wondering, am I ever going to be able to know whether I can be saved because I'm trying so hard.
01:14:02
If you're trying hard to be saved, you're doing it wrong. Christ did it for you.
01:14:08
Repent, believe the good news. Trust in Christ and you will live.
01:14:14
This is what he has promised us. So hear this good news. Christ has died for your sins.
01:14:19
He has risen from the grave bodily on the third day for your transgressions and for your salvation in him is life and life eternal.
01:14:28
And he is the only person who can give you this salvation. He gives it because of his great love, his mercy and his grace for God.
01:14:36
So love the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever, including you believe in him will not perish, but have eternal life.
01:14:45
This is the gift of Christmas that God gives us each and every day, as long as it's today.
01:14:51
And this is the age of grace because when he returns in glory, well, the age of grace is over.
01:14:57
And so today is the day of salvation, repent and believe in Christ. Amen guys.
01:15:05
Praise the Lord for this episode. Let's play the outro. If y 'all would hang on just a moment.