EP 49 | CASUAL CHRISTIANITY CAUSES CASUALTIES

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He knew that if he could desensitize the conscience of the church, that would in turn lead to a dechristianization of the conscience of the community.

00:12

He removed God, the true God, the living God. He removed God from the conscience of the people, and that ultimately led to a vacuum that is always going to be filled.

00:23

It is our present -day separation of church and state. He basically convinced German Christians you leave the national responsibilities to the government and to politics, and you guys, you know, just stay in your churches and tend to your people.

01:02

Welcome to Tearin' Down High Places, bringing back Matt Mayer, Pastor Matt Mayer from Ocean City at Truth Over Trend.

01:12

Hey Matt, tell us about what's Truth Over Trend. That's your website, right? It is. So guys, great to see you again.

01:19

Thank you for the opportunity to share my heart, and I hope that, you know, people from last episode got to hear where the passion comes from, right?

01:29

Passion, I believe, is often birthed out of pain. I think that explains my ministry, and Truth Over Trend ultimately became the name, and I'll just kind of take you backwards before we go forward.

01:41

It was originally a website that was founded upon me going to prison, and if you're new to this podcast, you're going, did their guest just say he was in prison?

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Go back and listen to the previous one. That'll give you context. But the website was founded in light of the forgiveness scene from the sentencing day.

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They put that video on a website, boom, and then I began to write a blog from prison that I would send home by snail mail.

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I didn't have access to the internet, contrary to what a lot of people thought. My mother then would post those thoughts daily, and people began to follow this journey, and then the victim's family, in my story, they began to post the blog to that same website.

02:26

So you had two perspectives united by tragedy, and that website went viral, guys, right?

02:33

Like people from all over the world, I was getting letters from all over the world. The literal mail call during the day was like,

02:40

Mayor, Mayor, Mayor, and I'm like, oh my goodness. So I became, you know, an unbelievable writer while in prison because I'm writing people back left and right, and I felt like I was

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Dr. Phil fielding all types of questions and all types of people's stories. Anyway, long story short,

02:56

I never liked the name of the website. It was themapmayorstory .com. I personally didn't want my name on it.

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I just didn't want it to be about me per se. I lived my entire young life making things about me.

03:10

Look at me. So as quickly as I could, with my family and the team that was helping like organize ministry for me,

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I had to think through what did we want to call it, and it made sense.

03:24

I was in the public square preaching truth, and I was surprised at how the next generation, the

03:33

Millennials, Gen Z, Gen A, were following the trends of the world because when

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I went to prison, iPhone 1 had just come out, right?

03:47

When I got out, iPhone 5 or 6, and like Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, all of that was new, and people's hashtags, like it was a whole new world, and I remember following all the threads and all the trends, and I'm going, oh my goodness, people are being so deceived, and the prince of the power of the air is using social media to do it.

04:08

So it was easy to choose truth over trend as the name of the platform. So that's my long answer to your very simple question.

04:19

That's great. That's why we wanted him on here, right, Tim, Jeff? I mean, we heard that someone in Ocean City was preaching a whole bunch of truth and hitting the high places that we like to tear down on this show.

04:32

We heard you like to take down a few high places, man. That's the battle, right? The Bible says that though we walk in the flesh, which means we live in the flesh, we do not war in the flesh, but the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, and here's the name of your show, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, high places, and any high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and we live in a world where everything exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and we are called to bring our thoughts into captivity to Christ.

05:08

And then the one part of that charge that not a lot of ministers quote, because they don't understand it or they just stop short, is that we not only cast down arguments, but we are called to call out disobedience when our obedience is fulfilled, when we are faithful to the call.

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We then, and this is what you guys probably get labeled being haters or bigots or racists or sexists just for preaching the unadulterated truth of God's Word, and yes, that comes with the territory.

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Jesus forewarned us. Hey, if they hated me, here you have God in the flesh, holiness, materialized,

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God of grace, Lord of love, the master of mercy, and yet sinful man hung him on a cross.

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Jesus said, if they hated me, they are going to hate you because you are going to be proxies in my stead.

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You are going to be ambassadors sent forth with my message, and that should not deter us, gentlemen.

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We needed to continue to preach the gospel of truth in a world of lies. That's why we have breath in our lungs.

06:19

So, what's the big challenge been for you in the past few years as Satan's more active as it seems like?

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What have you been trying to communicate to your flock? What I found is that sadly, many don't have a biblical worldview, and that can ultimately be traced back to biblical illiteracy.

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For too long, traditional Christianity has depended upon the pastor doing all of the studying and knowing all of the

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Bible. Yeah, that's our call, but Ephesians 4 says, my responsibility?

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I'm not supposed to be available for every single person, for every single meeting, for every single counseling session, for every single wedding, for every single funeral.

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That's not my call. My call is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, which is why at Landmark I'm constantly saying from the pulpit, you need to know the

07:12

Word of God so well, you, so that you can discern the lies of hell. And that's what Hebrews 5 tells us, right?

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The writer of Hebrews, I believe it's Paul. It's a whole separate conversation. He rebukes those

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Christians, and he says to them, you're still on milk. You're supposed to be on meat.

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You keep returning to, he calls them, the basic rudiment foundational fundamental things of faith.

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I translate that as ABC 1, 2, 3, Jesus loves me, this

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I know, for the Bible. He's like, get on with it. Move on from that.

07:47

Build upon that. And this is what you do to exercise your senses. But Matt, I hope you're just talking about, you know, just sticking into the gospel message.

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You're not actually talking about the culture and how to discern what, you know, apply the gospel and the rest of the

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Bible, including the Old Testament to the culture. You know, you wouldn't do anything like that, would you? I know, because the only books of the

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Bible that we're supposed to study is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, right? Out of the 66 books, we're only supposed to look at four of them, right?

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Which means 62 other books are of no effect. And it's like, no, preaching the full counsel of God's Word, just preach the gospel, pastor.

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Don't address the politics of the day. It's like, no, by preaching the gospel, I am required and mandated to address the issues of our day, because people are perishing for lack of knowledge,

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Hosea says. And that knowledge needs to live in our conscience. That's what the word conscience means.

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Conscience with knowledge. The question is, what knowledge is going to live in our conscience?

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And my responsibility and y 'all's responsibility is to orient our people's conscience around the full gamut of Scripture, which is the fullness of the gospel.

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I know more about Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, because I read about him in Isaiah and Ezekiel, and I see the prophecies in Daniel, and I see the thread of the

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Christophanies in Genesis, and like, my mind wants to explode because the Bible is alive, and we are called, and here's the challenge, back to your question, from 2020 and on, there's been so much division, but I've seen it with such clarity that it's more separation than division.

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Right? The Lord is refining His bride. The Lord is separating the wheat from the chafe.

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He's separating the sheep from the goats, and He is putting us in a position today where the true

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Church, the invisible Church, the remnant Church, is going to have a posture like the

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Church of old in the book of Acts, where saying, I believe Jesus is Lord, He's the only way,

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He's the only truth, He's the only life, is going to come at a great cost. America has not yet experienced that.

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There is persecution, but not at the level that we are likely going to see in the years ahead.

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So, I need to prepare my people, as much as depends on me, to be able to know truth from lies, and then stand on that truth, even at the consequences that it might cost them.

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That's great. Tell us then about what is the devil's playbook? That's a perfect lead -in. What is, what's coming?

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What's the devil's playbook, and how do we fight back against that? Yeah, so I remember, I was doing a sermon out of Daniel, obviously,

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Daniel 1, Daniel 3, Daniel 6. Those are the chapters that most people know about, right?

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Because those are the narrative chapters, unlike the prophecy chapters. But anyway,

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I remember doing a sermon out of that, and I began to connect dots. And it was in light of Daniel and his three

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Hebrew friends by name, right? We all, we know them as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, but their names are

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Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael. And I highlight that because their names have meanings, and you discover those meanings in Daniel 1.

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And they're taken as captives, as exiles, as prisoners to Babylon.

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And in that first chapter, you read that when they came into the king's court, and they were entrusted to the master or chief of the eunuchs, that they were in a three -year program that would teach them the language and literature of the

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Chaldeans. Now, you can read right past that and get into chapter 2. And I'm going, wait a second, look at the lie of the enemy attempting to brainwash, whether by propaganda or by indoctrination, here trying to erase the spiritual memory of these

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Jews. And we know Daniel and his three friends, they stand apart from probably others who went with the king's menu and compromised their spiritual heritage and became more

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Babylonian than believer. And I remember going, wow, what is that? That's the enemy's attempt to contradict the truth.

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And that one thought sent me on this journey. I write with either rhymes or alliteration.

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It's just the way my mind is wired. So from contradict the truth, Daniel 3, I remember seeing, oh my goodness, the music of the the media.

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Every time the music would play, everyone must bow down to that golden statue. And I remember going, oh my goodness, that's what's happening today.

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Everyone's bowing down to all of these idols and all these high places that are being lifted up. And the media propagates those lies.

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And I wrote down next to contradict the truth, control the news. And that thread led to, what's the result of controlling the news?

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Conflict of groups. When lies are sowed, conflict and division is the consequence.

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And then ultimately back to Daniel 1, trying to get the minds of the next generation convert to youth.

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That was the first time I wrote it down. October 7th of last year, the atrocious events or terroristic invasion from Hamas into Israel is what brought all this back to light.

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The anti -semitism that reared its ugly head, not only globally, but in America, is what caused me to put pen to parchment and begin to write this short booklet entitled,

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Discerning the Devil's Playbook. And the subtitle is, The Four Plays, as just mentioned, from Nazi Germany, currently at play in America.

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So I found the play in the Word of God, and then I began to look at Nazi Germany, and I was eerily surprised that Hitler ran those same four plays.

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And then I looked at America and I said, oh my goodness, those same four plays are at play. So I read, I wrote in short form guys, just so people could get through it.

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It's no more than 60 some pages and did a sermon on it. I did a two -parter at my church.

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I did a one sermon at Pastor Gary Hamrick's church in Leesburg, Virginia.

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And I became very passionate about the content because I think that's what's needed. People need to be equipped and be able to see what is happening.

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What's happening? Well, casual Christianity produces casualties. That's what's happening.

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What truth did Hitler start with? What did he attack first? He started with contradicting the truth.

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What people don't know about his rise on the political landscape is that in January of 1933, mind you, he ran for president in July of 1932.

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He lost to Paul von Hindenburg. He lost the election. Six months later, in January, in a backroom deal, he was appointed chancellor.

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So the people of Germany did not vote him in, even though there was momentum with his political party. Wow, everybody says he got elected.

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I hear that all the time. He not only did not get elected, he was appointed chancellor in 1933.

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One of his first larger meetings was with the church in Germany in April of 1933.

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He recognized the importance of meeting with pastors. Why? If he could co -opt a church and the pulpits and get them on board with his agenda, he then could utilize the massive church reach in Germany.

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And we know, as the pulpit goes, so goes the community. And here's the line that I use.

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He knew that if he could desensitize the conscience of the church, that would in turn lead to a dechristianization of the conscience of the community.

16:00

He removed God, the true God, the living God. He removed God from the conscience of the people, and that ultimately led to a vacuum that is always going to be filled.

16:11

It is our present -day separation of church and state. He basically convinced German Christians, you leave the national responsibilities to the government and to politics, and you guys, you know, just stay in your churches and tend to your people.

16:26

And it's like, no, and that's what separation... I still have people today with all the information available online.

16:33

One quick Google search, true meaning of separation of church and state, and you can read the actual letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the

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Dansbury Baptist, and you can read it for yourself and then contextually recognize he was telling them that the state is not going to mandate a state religion.

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Why did that matter? Because that's what they all just fled from. The generation before them had fled

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Great Britain because the monstrosity of the state church was oppressive and tyrannical.

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So their concern was, are we going to repeat history? And Thomas Jefferson says, no, I can assure you there's a wall between the two.

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That did not inhibit or stop the church from influencing the state, and I tell people all the time, there be no state of America without the church, without the original colonies and their constitutions, which were

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Judeo -Christian. Our entire governmental framework is inspired by Judeo -Christian ethic.

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With that in mind, if you're the enemy, what would be the first way that you would take an entire nation captive?

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Remove God from the public square, get the Ten Commandments out of the courtroom, get prayer out of the schoolroom, get reading a

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Bible out of the classroom, get God out of the way, and that will be the first play.

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Contradict the truth. You see that in the Bible in Genesis 3. What was the lie that the serpent said to Eve?

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Has God indeed said? He didn't ask that with a curiosity for the answer.

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He said that with an animosity towards the author. Has God indeed said?

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And the fact that Christians don't know what God has said indeed is the reason we have fallen prey to the lie of has

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God indeed said. Play number one needs play number two. Contradict the truth needs control the news.

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I tether play number two in Genesis 11. I see that as the first propaganda campaign, the first tower, if you will, of babble, tower of confusion, tower of misinformation.

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People uniting around division, coming together to make a name for themselves, and at the at the tip of that spear is always a

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Nimrod, always a rebel against God, trying to make a name for themselves. And the tower of babble represents, and there's a lot of theology there, but I see it as this aspect of controlling people with a message, one dictatorial voice of defiance against God.

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And that's basically what the media does today. And when people are lied to and they believe a lie, and you see that in Nazi Germany, Nazi Germany had a minister of propaganda,

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Joseph Goebbels. He said if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

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And we have watched people believe lies from 2020 and on. Every lie they're told by the, and I call it the

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Marxist mainstream media, every lie they're told by, I don't care if it's Fox News or MSNBC, we are about the good news and the

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B -I -B -L -A. You need to have a biblical worldview so that when these lies come at you, you're able to,

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I go to the book, and I go, wait, wait, no, no, this is what the word says. While I can listen to those news outlets,

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I need to always come back to what God's word says. Controlling the news leads to play number three.

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Let me just add this. Hitler controlled every aspect of German society, pulpits, politics, media, medicine, education, and entertainment.

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And he used the megaphone of the media, propaganda, to eventually deceive the masses.

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There were churches and Christians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller who eventually saw the agenda at work, and they spoke out.

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Niemöller was taken into a concentration camp. Bonhoeffer eventually lost his life for speaking out against that evil.

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Play number three is conflict to groups. You can trace the division in Nazi Germany. It's so crazy.

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One of the ways Hitler convinced the masses that Jews were expendable was that they were disease carriers.

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That is what created the ghettos. He was able to convince people that they had diseases and needed to be isolated.

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So he got an entire community isolated, ultimately dehumanized. And when you dehumanize people, when they get in their mind that those people are dangerous, man is capable of such atrocities, hence genocide.

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What does that have to do with America? From 2020 on, we were told that if we get too close to grandma, we're gonna kill her.

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And people were isolating and social distancing, and churches were shut down. Oh, but the bars opened down the street, and the big box shop is open.

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And by the way, come into the restaurant wearing your mask, but the moment you sit down, three feet down here, and you can take it off.

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Because apparently coronavirus only operates up here. And not down here.

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And like, anybody with a sane mind is gonna go, wait a second. I'm not saying it's not real. I'm not saying people aren't getting sick.

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I'm not saying people aren't dying. But there's something else happening. And every believer who has a biblical worldview goes to the scriptures, 1st

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Corinthians 2. The natural mind cannot comprehend spiritual things. The spiritual mind discerns all things, and can be judged by nothing.

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In other words, it was during that season, guys. I'm like, dude, I gotta preach like my life depends upon it.

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And frankly, the Lord used that preaching in that season to bring separation to his church.

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I think people that were swept away by the lies, and were controlled by the news, they went one way.

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And as many say, you're divisive. You're preaching, you know, politics. I didn't see it as that. I saw it as preaching

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God's Word, and letting the chips fall where they may. That's conflict to groups.

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We see that in America today. Blacks versus whites, rich versus poor, right versus left. We saw that in Nazi Germany with the

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Jews. Hitler, incited by the devil himself, was able to bring such division to that land.

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And here's why that matters. Because when you are able to sow division, you are then able to come in with the solution.

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Play number four, not disconnected from the previous three, is convert the youth. In the process of trying to deceive, you always want to make sure that the next generation, because at the end of the day, the future of our country is dependent upon the next generation.

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That's just the way it is for church. That's the way it is for a family. Every generation brings its own dynamic. And I saw it in Daniel chapter 1 again, teaching the youth the language and literature of the

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Chaldeans. And then I obviously don't need to beat this one up, but our education system in America is a cesspool.

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It's an indoctrination camp. It is the devil's playground. It's where he deceives our children at the earliest age.

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They are sexually indoctrinated. I mean, gosh, that is why there's battles at the school board level.

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And moms are being called domestic terrorists simply for stepping out and going, hey,

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I don't want my five -year -old son reading a book that has pornographic material in it.

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Like, don't get political, though, Pastor. And it's like, what are you? Anyway, Hitler was able to captivate 82%.

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82 % of the German youth, boys and girls, 82 % of the German youth ages 10 to 18 were enrolled in one of his programs.

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And that explains why that next generation blindly accepted what was happening.

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Here's the saying, and this is, I'll stop here. People are sheeple who uncritically accept the lies of Babel when not shepherded by the

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Bible. Now you're back to Babel, Genesis 11. Conflict of groups rolls over to convert the youth.

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And those are the four plays in short. And obviously, we can spend, you guys probably spend all of your podcast episodes talking about those plays in one way or the other if you're just dissecting our culture today.

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No doubt. Did you see recently that King Phil Murphy of New Jersey has issued some kind of proclamation to protect libraries from extremists like you, you and me?

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Hey Pastor, they changed the criminal code so as to not include a librarian or a teacher who would expose a minor to sexually charged content to not have criminal charges being pressed.

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So he almost made a way to spare adults who should know better from being criminally prosecuted if they expose our children to perversion.

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They didn't pass that. They tried to. They tried to pass that, but then Jeff got up in the pulpit and had everyone from church call in and it went away.

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Attaboy, Jeff. It wasn't just us, but all those South Jersey pastors. We all did it that Sunday. But then recently we went to the library and we turned down high places.

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We checked out some of these perverted books that they have available to 14 year olds. We brought them to the town council and to the library and showed them the most horrific sexually explicit material and they literally defended bringing that to their children.

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And this one representative from our area, Mount Laurel, her last name was

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Cohen. Cohen said, are you telling me how I should raise my kid?

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Are you trying to dictate to me? And the answer is in one sense, yeah, you can't use our public library to fill it with pornography and put it into the hands of kids.

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We are trying to put in laws that restrict the access to pornography from children.

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But we are in a culture war, dude. So when I hear you talk about those four points, man, like even before Hitler, Nazi Germany, Germany was turning away from the

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Bible. Before Adolf Hitler, there was Adolf von Harnack and he was part of that higher criticism school.

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It was Schleiermacher and all of the liberals who came in with higher criticism, which originated in Germany.

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And they were the most popular speakers on the circuit. They went to the churches. Adolf von Harnack was preaching against the reliability of scripture, against the reality of miracles, against the virgin birth, against the resurrection of Jesus, substitutionary atonement.

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He was against the scripture and the churches were so willing to capitulate to Hitler because they didn't believe the

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Bible anymore. So that you put your finger right on the starting point. It started with a departure from belief in the

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Bible. So we've got to get out there and raise another generation of kids to believe the

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Bible and to tell them that this is God's Word. This is true and you can trust every single word, every jot and tittle.

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And I think we were talking about this today in the Genesis study. If we will raise our children and build strong families around the truth of God's Word, we're going to win this culture war.

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It might take a generation or two generations, but we don't let the public schools take our children's minds.

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We don't let the universities take their minds. We raise up a godly remnant generation.

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And before long, we will overcome the lies of the enemy. We don't have to be the next Nazi Germany.

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So anyway, all that to say, I'm becoming more and more optimistic. Although I'm still pre -mill and I know that ultimately we're going to see the tribulation, right?

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But that doesn't happen until the rapture of the church. Until then, we can restrain the evil that's happening in America and we can even see victory.

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We can see this land. We can see revival in America. Are you hopeful? Are you optimistic? Or do you think it's all downhill from here?

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No, no. Well, obviously, we have a very clear trajectory that is laid out for us in Scripture.

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And I'm with you. I'm pre -mill. I am a believer in the rapture. I believe

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I can make a biblical case from the old and the new, and I long for that. At the same time,

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Jesus gives us very explicit commands to be salt, which we know is a preservative. That's why he said that.

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That was the main agent of influence. Salt preserved. Okay. I'm the salt of the earth.

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I'm the preservative of righteousness. The Holy Spirit is the great restrainer. The Holy Spirit is where?

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In me. So where I am, he is. Therefore, I'm going to delay the decay of the day until he pulls me out of the way.

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And that's how that works. I love how you think in these like limerick, lyrical things.

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It helps people hold on to these. Listen to this. So, all right. I'm in prison, and I lived on a dormitory setting with 37 other men beside myself.

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So each person had their own three by eight space. There was no dividing walls. But here's the point. Did I know my delivery date, the day

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I would be released? Yeah, I did. That day was coming. Was prison my ultimate home?

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No. Now let's take all that because Christians go like this. I'm waiting on my delivery.

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This earth is not my home. And we use those spiritual mantras to sideline ourselves.

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So imagine if I in prison just stayed in my three by eight area, right? This place is not my home. I'm just passing through here.

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Or as God charged me, I began to open his word publicly, started a

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Bible study, right? In broad daylight. And two guys came, and four guys came, and eight guys came, and 16 guys came, and 30 some guys would come every single day to study the scriptures.

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And I began to watch when light is proclaimed, darkness flees. And when we know we are the salt of the earth, we begin to delay an environment that was otherwise unrighteous, and chaotic, and violent.

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That didn't all go away because of humanity. But I tell you the truth, with the word of God opened, and men listening, and men giving their life to Christ, that environment changed so much so that the rumor in the prison was that there was a soccer player upstairs, that's where I was, brainwashing people.

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Literally. And then there were guards coming up and going, listen, man, you know every inmate in this prison wants to get moved on to your guy's housing unit.

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And here's why. They heard that there was a Christian community there, and that we were making that environment peaceable.

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So people wanted to be there so they could do their time in peace. And I'm like, you better believe once that Bible study stopped, and I got released, and other guys went on their way, and it didn't get continued, you better believe darkness filled that vacuum.

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That's what it means to be a Christian today. We should not use all these excuses of, I'm just waiting on the

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Lord. It's like, yeah, but what are you doing while you're waiting? What are you doing with what you've been trusted with? Like, so yeah,

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I can't relate. Maybe because my story kind of lends itself to seeing how I was complacent, and I took everything for granted, and now

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I realize how quickly life can be taken from you, and how fragile everything is, and now I'm like passionate about understanding time is short.

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So I'm hopeful there's a political shift, which matters. God has instituted governments,

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Romans 13, and rightly applying Romans 13, proper exegesis on Romans 13.

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What is the government of America? It's a constitutional republic, so we submit to that. The Constitution, understanding our rights and our responsibilities as citizens of America while being citizens of heaven, which means if there's a political shift, those responsibilities in a new government is to restrict evil and sustain good, and the definition of evil and good must come from God.

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And the moment a government, the past regime, the Biden regime, has redefined evil and good,

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Isaiah 520 helps us understand, wait, submit to government. No, Isaiah says, woe to those who call good evil and evil good.

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So if a government is actually restricting good and honoring evil,

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I don't submit to that. That's not something I submit to, and that doesn't mean that I'm violating Romans 13.

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In fact, I'm submitting to a higher God, which is exactly why Paul was in prison, which is exactly why disciples were killed.

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It's because their faith and their belief in a higher law, the law of God, conflicted with the laws of man.

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That is why their preaching of the gospel led to their destinies.

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So I can't relate to the cowardice pastors today, pastors that say, just preach the gospel with these blinders on, completely allowing the cultural war to steal souls.

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– So you don't think Paul went to jail for not paying his PPL loan back in time? –

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Exactly. – Was that a PPL loan? What's that loan everybody had? – It was a PPL. – Yeah, yeah. Paul probably didn't pay his loan on time.

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– It's funny. It's the two authors of those accounts, Peter and Paul, who write about how we should submit to government, right?

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I'm not saying we are not to be people of rebellion. But both

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Peter and Paul collided with the government of their day. So the authors that are telling us to submit to the government both violated what they wrote.

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– There's a covenant relationship. – That's right. – Or they actually have to do their part. –

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That's right. They lived out exactly how God called them to live it out while at the same time.

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– You and Jeff and Tim are all preaching the same message to blood -red congregants who hear what you're saying, and they have friends out there that are going to what

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Jeff defines as a where the pastor's kind of got one foot on this side, one foot on that side.

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How are you or how do you encourage people in your flock that you're equipping, how do you get them to go out and talk to their friends that this stuff does matter?

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And yeah, we've got to get into doctrine, and we've got to properly exegete

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Romans 13 and things like that. What are you doing? How do you do it? – I just kind of continually tell them they need to know the

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Word of God, because most people that have those types of thoughts about whether it's another church or what their pastor's preaching or the culture, they're usually getting their talking points from other places besides the

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Word of God. So if you know the Word of God, then hey, bring up the issue. What's happening in Syria? I could show you in the

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Bible what's happening with Syria. Let's go to Isaiah 17. Let's look at what the Bible says prophetically about the fall of a city called

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Damascus. Did you know that Damascus is the longest -standing city in the history of the world, and yet we're watching perhaps a collapse to a government?

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Did you know that? When you know the Word, all of this noise becomes clear, and I want to make my people so aware of how real the

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Word of God is so that when they get into these conversations, if they're equipped with that knowledge, they're more emboldened to share the truth, even if it causes them to offend a friend or a family member about them going to a

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Christless church, in my opinion. A Christless pulpit is going to produce Christless Christians, and Christless Christians produce a

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Christless community, and a Christless community contributes to a Christless country, and it shouldn't happen on our watch.

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That's right. So let's do the opposite. Let's bring so many people to Christ, that disciples are made, culture is transformed, and we even elect politicians that support

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Christian ethics, right? So you're out there, what, in Van Drew country, red territory, along the beach there, and you're dominating, you guys are, but you need to dominate more so that you push that territory so red it's brighter than Texas or what's a truly red state.

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Texas isn't that red anymore. But we're down here in Burlington County, right? We're in CD3, right, where Andy Kim has been our representative.

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If we were able to just close that gap, right, from where they are in controlling the culture to where we could be,

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I'm not even thinking 50%. I think in our last election, it was 202 ,000 to 170 ,000 at CD3.

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If we could close that gap and you could push your gap, could we have New Jersey as a red state in the next election?

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Is that possible? And what would it take? Like, how far off are we? We were only five points off in the last election, percentage -wise, so we need about 300 ,000 people to flip still to turn the whole state.

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Is that doable? Can New Jersey be reached, first of all, for Christ, and then the implication is

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Christian ethics in the public square? I think it starts with pastors and pulpits.

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And I think as long as they're preaching the true word of God, people are hungry for truth these days.

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So they're leaving these fluffy cotton candy churches in droves. They're looking for somebody to tell them what in the world is going on.

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If you come to Landmark Church, I'm going to tell you what in the word is going on. And again,

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I get the emails, pastor, it sounds like you're preaching the seven -mountain mandate. And I'm like, I know what that is. And I am not under any false illusion that we're going to be able to make earth heaven, but I am called to bring heaven to earth.

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So wrestle with that. What does it look like to bring heaven to earth while at the same time, not trying to make earth heaven because Jesus is going to come do that one day?

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May his kingdom come. When the son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?

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That's what he said. When he comes, I would like to be one of the ones that are fighting for the kingdom.

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We're not under the illusion that we're going to bring heaven to earth. We know that it's Christ coming back that will establish the millennial reign.

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And then we'll have peace and the knowledge of the Lord will fill the world like waters cover the sea.

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That's going to happen under him. But until he comes, we've got to occupy. We've got to be fighting for the sake of his name and to make known the gospel of Jesus Christ, as well as preserve the culture through that knowledge.

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I'm with you, right? Micah 6, 8, let's put it into a New Testament context.

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Do justice, do justly. That's individual.

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Each Christian needs to worry about their own integrity and do what is right in God's sight. We often get caught up in the identity politics, which often categorizes people groups.

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I just put a post out on Facebook, and I probably won't be able to quote it verbatim, but I said, it's possible to love the illegal immigrant while at the same time demand legal immigration.

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Those two are not mutually exclusive. I can love one person and at the same time want law and order to be part of the societal infrastructure.

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But we have a hard time removing the individual application. No, we remove the individual application, and we get caught up in all this stuff out here.

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You're called to do the next righteous thing. Don't worry about, what about the immigrant? Oh, hold up.

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What immigrant are you talking about? Do you have somebody that you're currently ministering to? No? Oh, it's just this way to talk your way out of the truth.

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No, you do what's right. You go bring integrity into the public square. If all the

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Christians in New Jersey and other locations took God at his word, well, we did. We just saw a national mandate, in my opinion, in our election.

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I'm willing to go toe -to -toe with anyone, not in defending Donald Trump. That man will have to stand before God one day, and my prayer is that he would come to real salvation and repentance, not just the talking points.

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But I will defend what has happened with that election and the previous one, 2016, and what

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God is doing prophetically in the world and in America, and I'm ready to share that.

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I did multiple sermons leading up to the election and then have kind of jumped back into my systematic teaching of the book in 2

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Timothy, but that doesn't mean if there's something that's happening in the world, I want to be the first person to address it so that my people that God has entrusted to me have a biblical worldview and know how to navigate it, because that's real, right?

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What we're watching in our world, it's happening so quick, can't keep up with it all, but people need to know how to navigate it.

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Yeah, and I would just close my thoughts by saying, you know, the four of us here on this podcast, we're not the only ones.

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The church where we're part of Cornerstone and where you're part of Landmark, there's a lot of good Christian people that think a lot like we do, and there's a whole group of 20 to 30 pastors that meet in a secret, undisclosed location who think just like we do.

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And if we get everybody talking like this and sharing the truth of God's Word, yeah, the answer is yes, we can take

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New Jersey and turn it red, but more importantly, we can bring more and more people under the blood of the

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Lamb. That's it. I think we got a Blood Red Church nominee, maybe a frontrunner, but man,

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I just, I appreciated all you're doing, man. I just, you have so much faith and it's so encouraging to me, and you know,

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I like, actually, Jeff, remember when you sent out one of Matt's sermons and he was talking about what was going on in Israel?

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Yep. Man, it just seems like you're just running a great race, and you know, I met you, I don't know if you remember or not,

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I mean, that must have been what, five to seven years ago you were running that young adults thing? A hundred percent. And I remember what you taught back then, so what you're saying, it sticks in people's mind, and I just am so encouraged by your faith and how you're able to share your testimony and encourage us, so it was a real blessing for me.

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That's all I wanted to say. Thank you. Time and truth walk hand in hand. Time and truth walk hand in hand.

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So what you were doing in the prison, you're still doing now, this many years later, and same with us, we're still going to be saying the same thing till our dying day, and it will still be true when we're long gone or until Christ comes back.

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That's right. Same gospel for 2 ,000 years. I tell my people and remind them, hey, God had to send me to prison and deal with some crazy inmates to be able to deal with some of y 'all, so I'm up for the challenge and the charge.

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You can't throw something at me that I haven't seen, and that truly, in all seriousness, became a place where the

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Lord trained me and literally put upon my life a calling, and I am humbled, guys, beyond measure.

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You have no idea. Pastor Tim, I can probably get caught laughing in awkward spots as well because before I walk out, preach, or after I get done,

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I think, this is hilarious. This is serious, but what am I doing here?

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Who would have thought? But by the grace of God, so I appreciate the affirmations, brother, and I appreciate that,

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Pastor Jeff, that the Lord uses our experiences, time, and truth. I like to tell people

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I'm not doing anything different that I didn't do a while away. It was where the Lord just showed me this is the way, walk in it.

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I feel like both Tim Robinson and I spent a lot of time in inner city Philadelphia, and that was the battleground where we were sort of battle toughened for these kind of culture wars that we're in now.

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So I think sometimes the Lord knows where we've got to go and where he's got to send us. That's right. To make us strong.

44:49

Amen. Pastor Matt, I think Tim officially nominated you for a

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Red Church pastor nomination. So I don't think you know what that is.

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So we're having a conference in May where we're playing around. It's going to be a TruthScript conference.

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TruthScript .com will be involved, but it's our Blood Red Church conference for New Jersey.

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And really, the goal, we want to get as many Blood Red Church pastors out there to come out to this event and equip them to go back and equip their saints to spread the gospel and spread the gospel in the public square.

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That's the whole thing. It's that public square that we've been retreating from, and we're not loving our neighbors.

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Well, Matt's competitive. So he sees that trophy. I think he wants it. Yeah, that's why

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I put it up there. That's right, man. Show me the competition. Let's go. I'm honored.

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Listen, I'm following your guys' lead. I hear about the work that you guys are doing, Pastor Jeff. I've always tried to get to that secret meeting that you guys have had.

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I've not been able to find the time in my crazy schedule, but I'm with you. I'm honored to be considered for this, and we'll see what the

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Lord has for us, right? Yeah. TruthScript is run by a guy named John Harris, and he's got a podcast called

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Conversations That Matter. So check that out when you get a chance. But we also have a group of former evangelical free church pastors.

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A lot of us have been shown the left foot of disfellowship rather than the right hand of fellowship.

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We got kicked out because they don't think we fit the ethos of diversity, equity, inclusion, which we don't fit that ethos.

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But we're all meeting that weekend, the first weekend in May, and praying together about what

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God might do. It might be a new denomination. It might be something less formal than that, some kind of association, or maybe we just do things together to help ordain young pastors and set them off into the ministry.

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But we're going to have a lot of pastors here that weekend. So if you're able to come out and join us, it's just preparing and planning and praying about what's next.

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So it's coming in May of 2025. If you guys remember, keep me posted about the details, and I will absolutely do my best.

47:17

Matt, before we go, what websites can we send people to? Obviously, there's truthovertrend .com.

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And then what's the website for Landmark Church? Thelandmark .church.

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And you heard that correctly. It's not .org. It's not .com. It's .church. Thelandmark .church.

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That is where you will find our church and any of the media, messages, all that stuff.

47:44

Fantastic. Well, Cornerstone people need to know if they're ever down the shore and they can't make it to Cornerstone, they need to be in church on a

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Sunday. Just go to The Landmark. That's right. That's right. We welcome you. Looking forward to some of you guys introducing yourselves and saying, hey,

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I was invited on that podcast. I'm like, all right. There you go. All right, guys.

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We know how we end, right? We'll see you brother down. We'll see you high place.