Published: August 24, 2023 | Speaker: Chuck Hartman | Series: Pauline Studies 4 - The Church in the World - Part 6 | Scripture: 1 Corinthians 1:20-25; 15:25-28
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0:04
maintain which meant feeding clothing and even into old age keeping taking care of care of which they did so even after the slave was no longer
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able to work they still lived on the plantation not so in the industrial North or the industrial Europe where you could be
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replaced and were often replaced when you tried to Collective eyes the government brought out the Cavalry and ran you down I mean you know so there was a time at which
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the the oppression meter would have been off the scale in the sweatshops of New York City
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and not so much on the plantations of the South now again both of them are evils I'm not saying one's better than the other I'm simply saying that from the perspective of a
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southern slave owner feeling that their livelihood was under full-scale attack full-scale attack it was somewhat hard to swallow
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when they did travel up north and saw the condition of the working class in the Mills and in the cities of the North so the idea that capitalism has somehow
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came down as a third tablet with Moses off the mount that's not right that's not true okay in fact it's not it's not entirely
1:34
supported by scripture okay nor is any economic system but um and I do tend to agree with Churchill who said
1:45
that he prefers the unequal distribution of wealth under capitalism rather than the even distribution of poverty under communism he had a point there and
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one thing about capitalism is it works it but it doesn't work the same for everybody and so when these inequities are are seen you know we are
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kind of faced with Micah 6 8. we sing it but do we meditate on it do we think how do we do that do we love Justice
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okay do we do kindness or has said do we do Mercy do Mercy hey and how does that what does that look like look like if we do see
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a seeming uh prejudice among law enforcement against people of color whether it be blacks or Hispanics or
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Asian as different times different places these things do happen okay is it wrong for people to react against that and say you know
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this is brutality okay um again I I can't say much about the woke agenda I don't know much about it but what I do know about it I can't see
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much to to commend but there's always something in our society that is being focused on as the inequity du jour where's the church in all this
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yes there's a Biblical truth I mean there's no I think we agree there's no other truth than the truth of scripture and and it's kind of in a sense I mean what what Satan was saying to Jesus was also true
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also true there was truth in it he was quoting scripture not the way he was presenting it that wasn't true so there's truth in it but the best lies always have truth in them
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in them but the truth that's really what I'm pointing at the truth in them is what we should be all about how how do we do Micah 6 8
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in the light of undeniable social undeniable social injustice and inequity is it the church's responsibility to bring about social justice and equity
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I don't I don't think so but is it the church's right to Simply ignore social injustice and inequity and oppression I I don't think so
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right I mean I I guess we could put up another one that seems to be abiding a little bit longer and that is the the climate the climate issue
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where are we on that where are we on the climate where are we on the earth and I don't mean physically but Man was created to be Steward of this Earth
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this Earth are we to Simply strip mine and and take everything out of the Earth and not put anything back and say okay we'll move on
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move on to you know cotton has completely depleted the soil let's move west find more soil to plant you know that's there's there's something in this that
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if we listen carefully we do hear The Echoes of the prophets who railed against the people for what not really their idolatry that that was
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always an issue but it was mostly their treatment of the poor and particularly the Widow and the orphan and the Alien you just hear that refrain all the way
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through if there's if there's anybody any group of people who it seems biblically had the ear of God it was the Widow the orphan and the
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Alien and yet these Israelites suppressed them now we don't even give thought because um you know we don't we don't really have many widows now have you know
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hopefully they have social security from their husbands work and they might have a life insurance policy or an annuity and they'll live forever um we don't really have what do we do about
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aliens we try to keep them out you know oh yeah we have a settled opinion about opinion about these things and I I guess our challenge is to hold those opinions up to
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scripture and see if they'll stand see if we can as we talk about some of these things which what I'm trying to do is lay a foundation as to that so we can build on build on and and really I'll tell you where we're
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headed where Paul says the church is the pillar and foundation of the truth in the world that's what it's about now what that means is not so clear and
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how it plays out is what we're going to talk about but truth is where it's at the truth as Paul says as it is in Jesus Christ which he's not saying that's one truth out of many he's saying that's the
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only truth only truth the truth that is revealed in Jesus Christ is the only truth but we live in a society where truth isn't really um very highly valued
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if even considered it all so when we look at the world we see we see people speaking truth
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to power to power but if we look behind the curtain and ask well what is the truth that they're speaking they're speaking well in some cases it's just reverse
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discrimination well that's not true in some cases it's perversion and degeneration well that's not true either in some cases it's just socialism
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take all the money from the rich and give it to all the poor well that's not going to work Robin Hood tried it already okay when you look at what they're saying and you should you should hear
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what they're saying you realize that's not truth not truth it may be a real problem but they're not they're not speaking
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truth and then the second half of the question is who's in power okay um we are
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generally Western conservative Evangelical and liberal Christians professing Christians I don't know if they are or not either side
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we are convinced that power resides within the halls of Congress or the State Assembly or the Supreme Court
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is that really true okay that's what we're going to talk about tonight now
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um justification for pretty much all activism and I don't know who said this or where it came from I know it's attributed to somebody but I can't
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remember who it is but you've all heard it the only thing necessary for evil to Triumph you've heard this is for good men to do nothing
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well this is pretty much carte blanche for evil because there are no good men but the idea is that apathy or
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inactivity is is where evil thrives and there are historical examples especially used as Nazi Germany okay but the good men
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were supposedly the Allies who won World War One War One and did they do good by Germany afterward no they did great evil which
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if they had not done is very likely that Adolf Hitler would have never come to power so you when you look into it you realize oh there's more to it than that
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there's a back story that that contributes to what actually happened that if you if you change that backstory you can easily see where the the plot
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would have changed and the last chapter would have been different okay so it's not always very easy from a distance to say oh yeah obviously the German people should have stood up
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against Adolf Hitler well much of what he said early on in much of what he did was exactly what they wanted to hear and needed in their economy and in their own
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self-respect after the war of course he was a very evil man so don't don't again don't get me wrong I'm just saying history is more complicated than that than that and this idea between evil men and good
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men is not very very clear it might surprise you that many Western leaders including Winston Churchill thought that
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thought that Benito Mussolini was the cat's meow they thought he was exactly what Italy needed and that he was a fantastic premier because he made the trains run on time
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he drained the swamps of the Tiber and and pretty much delivered Rome I didn't do it personally obviously but he did you know Rome's malarial Summers finally
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ended okay after thousands of years so he was praised by the greatest leaders in the west now what did he turn out to be well be well yeah we know but that's not what he
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started out being so history is is um you got to get back into it and realize you know what if things were complicated and hard to see then that we can now see
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more clearly from a distance maybe things aren't so clear now or at least it's not as clear as we think they are and that in generations to come they'll look back and say how could they not see
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it how could they not see this person's the way this person was or was going to become well because we were right in the midst of the weeds and we didn't see it
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but Paul says we have the mind of Christ and again kind of using the theme of the sons of issachar who understood the times and knew what it was that Israel should do
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should do that concept I think is still valid for the people of God in every age that we have the wherewithal the word of God the spirit of God
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to know our times and to know what the church should do but what normally happens is we tend to follow we're tempted to jump in we don't want
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to be behind and so you see a lot of pulpits over the past couple of years going woke this is why so many churches shut their doors during covid
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because they didn't want to be out of step with the government okay um and I again it was very shocking and sad to see that so
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this is all going to be this lesson next lesson talking about the concept of power and of Truth and we can't avoid it if the church is the pillar and Foundation of Truth in
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the world the world that's a mission statement by Paul when we talk about the church in the world that's one of those verses that is a mission statement
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that you could put up on the wall you know your conference room this is our mission statement mission statement and so
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knowing what truth is is is critical to our mission
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is the mind of Christ but when the church emulates those are human issues and and the Mantra of some events
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of the human responses or thought process is that man is inherently good yes yeah that the the
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what the foundation of all of this is that they're they're actually good um we know that's not true
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yeah you know we know that all men all mankind are fallen in Adam we know that um we know that if we talk about power we know that the gospel is the power of God it's a Salvation
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and so we know that the gospel is is has got to be integral to whatever the truth the church is doing in the world and any deviation from that Paul actually calls down an anathema let them
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be accursed be accursed and generally speaking that is what happens practically when churches get involved in these
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seemingly good movements it is going to be at the expense of the Gospel and that's not the right path but sadly the the other side is apathy
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or not just apathy actually um vehement denial of the issues that we we don't like
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we don't want to get involved in for example in Black lives matter so we deny that there is anything Prejudice about law enforcement in our country
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there's always been Prejudice in law enforcement in every country I mean you ask an Irishman if they are treated well by the English police
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no ask a Cecilia and if he gets a fair shake from the Italians no what you talking about okay so but we deny it because we want to we want to
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think that that we're all being fair being fair but it's right there I mean we'll talk about climate change I want to talk about each one of these well I hope to get into each one of these we'll call
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talk about climate change well climate changes climate changes that's that's proven in history the climate is the 13th century was the
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14th century one of those 14th yeah 14th century was cold there were crop failures and famines also the Black Death okay it was a bad
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century all right back in the 70s we were we were expecting a new Ice Age some of you maybe remember that the news reports were is going to be a new Ice Age okay that didn't last long um Ronald Reagan was elected he turned
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up the heat everything was fine but is but we don't even want to say that that there's climate change and and when we when we deny that the climate might be changing what we're basically
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doing is we're we're denying that it is caused by human beings well that may be true it may not be caused by human
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what happens if we clean up the Earth and make it better is that all for nothing yeah is that a bad thing yeah you know that's that's what I'm getting at is that a bad thing I mean back in 2014 we went back to Pittsburgh after not having been there
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for 30 years and it was amazing there was green grass when we were there elastic people were green the grass was Brown
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the sky was blue and you could breathe the air the air right now it took the entire death of the United States steel industry to do that okay but it still took cleaning up
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now when we were there the river used to catch on fire people would drive over the bridge throw a cigarette butt out the window and the river would catch on fire we had River fires that was kind of neat
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okay we don't have they don't have that anymore uh Pittsburgh's actually a sister city to Greenville they exchange Chamber of Commerce people because their downtown is pretty nice too okay
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um but you know there were pollution deniers back in the 70s like how can you deny this my lungs are dying
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I could smell Pittsburgh 45 miles away when I drove back to college from mid the center part of Pennsylvania where it was all farm country you were exchanging
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manure for nitrous oxide okay that's all been cleaned up is that a bad thing it's a bad thing to be able to drink the water and breathe the air you know that's not a bad thing
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environmentalism is not a bad thing but the way it's handled by progressivism progressives progressivism progressives yeah it we just want to say no it's it's
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not that climate's not changing maybe it is maybe it isn't it does change yeah yeah yeah yeah over periods of time there are Global
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movements in temperature and that's known within human recorded history that these things have happened so we're not really entering into the
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debate because we're either diving in without any critical thought or we're reacting against with violence even and so we're not
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we're not engaging at all the church the church is not engaging and yet we're the pillar and Foundation of Truth
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now if if we are the pillar and foundation of the truth that means we're holding something up and that if we're removed it's going to fall down that's what the pillars do they hold up the roof Samson you know
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the story the story so that that's involvement we talked about the different cultural paradigms whether the church should take itself away from culture into a Cloister or
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monasticism or whether it should dive in and change culture well as I said then really all five of those paradigms are
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the church is completely different than the culture the culture any culture in which it is found it is a new creation it is a new humanity and therefore it can never be
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assimilated or assimilated itself with the culture around it Paul's very clear on that what Fellowship has Christ with Belial okay but on the other hand
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world Paul makes that clear in First Corinthians 5. Corinthians 5. he says don't associate with any so-called believer so-called believer who is living in a number of different sins that he mentions he says don't even eat with such a one he says but I'm not
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talking about unbelievers because then you would have to go out of the world and that's not an option so truth
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so truth is the is the the point of connection between the church and the world the world is groping blindly in darkness
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asking as pilate did what is truth and it really that is that is almost the Beating Heart of human philosophy for the past 5 000 years what is truth
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when he asked that he was not just playing light with Jesus he was actually reflecting a very comic common stoic philosophy that truth cannot be known
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okay and he was Roman and probably followed the stoic philosophy as many Romans did but it wasn't just a uh what's truth no that was a serious it
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has been a serious question all the way up to the present sadly it's not a very serious question among the rank and file of humanity but again if Paul says the church is the
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pillar and foundation of the truth then it needs to be a serious meditation contemplation for believers and we can't just react either by diving
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in uncritically because this is what this is where all the Sheep are going I need to join them is where all the Lemmings are going we all know how that
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ends um or saying nah nothing to do with that it's all a lie now as Abe pointed out there's there's actually in many of these things there's biblical truth is there any biblical
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basis to treat one skin color differently from another well now there's not even any scientific basis to do that anymore okay that's part of knowing that all
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mankind were formed from one blood as Paul says in Acts 17 there there can be no evidence of
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prejudice within the church because that would be a falsehood okay and maybe the pillar is still standing but it's dangerously cracked all right so that's where we're headed
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the two responses of people of people to any change radicals embrace it or even promote it reactionaries refuse it
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refuse it and they hold fast to the status quo not realizing that the status quo was at one time radical okay but everything radical so at some
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point becomes common when it becomes common it becomes tradition when it becomes tradition we'll defend it to the death rather than let another radical idea
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radical idea take its place okay that's that's kind of the philosophy of Hegel in the 19th century his philosophy
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of history that you have a thesis that an antithesis and after a while a synthesis which becomes the new thesis and that's the cycle of human thought
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and it can be shown in politics in religion in economics okay and and I think what Abigail is saying that sometimes we confuse truth and tradition
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which is why we must be at all times this this is why again I say there's so many so often this is why we're not confessional not that there's anything wrong with
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confessions only that we cannot go back to any one era of the church and pretend that they got it right we must in every generation go back to
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the word the word and going back to the word we can read the confessions and say well yeah they got that no they didn't get that right yeah we can we can critique the confessions but to be confessional means
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you think there's a time in the last two thousand years that a group of Believers the church the church got it right
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now we all have it right and we all get it wrong in our own generation Yuri
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right if you're if you're in the yeah if you're in the group you can you can critique the confession but otherwise you can't you can't um you know I have no problem with confessions I've got Bunches of them in my library and I've used them I
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reference them you know some but to me a confession is not much different than a commentary or a theology and that way in in other words it's no it's no worse or no better
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than those Works which were not inspired and yet they might have a great deal to teach us okay that's all fine but we still have to hold everything up to
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scripture so that we can recognize truth rather than tradition even within our own traditions in fact I should say especially within our own traditions
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because if we do get Bound by tradition we are truly bound we tie ourselves up and the truth is no longer with us
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yeah yeah and by your Traditions you destroy men's Souls
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just interpreting as you will that there is no rule of faith
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right there's no food your Authority is the church right tradition and it's not the church and it's not the church in the biblical sense of the
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people of God it's the church in the institutional sense of the College of of Bishops and Cardinals and the pope at that their head um everybody has that's power that's
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where we're hitting that's that's power everybody has some measure of power power is integral to human societies
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that's not necessarily A Bad Thing it seems bad Lord Acton said that power corrupts an absolute power corrupts absolutely but we have to remember that the Supreme
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example of power is an omnipotent God
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so power in and of itself cannot be evil or God would be Omni evil right power just like any other virtue
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when exercised by Fallen man is corrupted is corrupted but it's not always corrupted power can be executed benevolently and
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wisely not that we see it very often but it can happen okay hopefully we see it for example in the power that a father has over his children not every father is abuse abusive
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he still has power the word for power in in what we talked about last week I said it's exousia or exusias which is Authority
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power is essentially the authority to determine the course of events involving another person another person so if we're going to speak truth to
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who are we speaking it to and I think this is one of those places where as I said earlier the church is often behind the curve we are fairly convinced in our
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generation for the last 40 or 50 years
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Western evangelicalism and particularly in the United States
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politicized and it has become politicized in in a way that we can't even see anymore because we don't pay any attention to our forebears
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to Believers in other cultures but what we see in our pulpits and in our writings our Christian writings and
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books is so intensely political and politically oriented politically oriented that it would be absolutely foreign to one of the English Puritans even though they were standing against a
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much greater oppression from the government than we are now part of that is because we do live in the freest Society in human history
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and we do have rights of assembly and of speech that have been defended and so we're able to and we're able to participate in the political process
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again in a manner that very few in human history have ever been able to do and even today those who have any any semblance of a free elective system owed
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that to the example of the United States but even in our founding those who were allowed to vote were a very small proportion of the overall
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Society and the development in the evolution of those freedoms and Liberties are is quite interesting to study and we are actually reaping the
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Whirlwind of democracy of democracy we have maintained to the death the right of every individual against any other authority
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and now we are seeing where that has led us with what's going on in the woke agenda and and the gender fluidity and all of that because if we're free you can't
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tell me I'm wrong but the political process was uniquely um what's the word christianized
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in the united in the colonies first of all and then in the United States the many of the of the leading fomenters of Revolution against Great Britain in
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the 18th century were preachers were preachers several of whom signed the Declaration of Independence and later some even signed the Constitution they were
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political leaders within their communities well that stood to reason because the church was church was the town hall it's where the town meetings were it was
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where the the uh the older men were elected and it is where everyone came together each Sunday and often more frequently to hear a sermon
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so political politicization was a is a uniquely American characteristic even today Europeans do not quite understand
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our religiosity our religiosity and how our elections often boil down to religion as far back as the election of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas
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Jefferson politics was immersed in religion
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yes but I I I'm not including them because that's not Christianity but yes that that is actually the ancient paganism where religion is integral to the operation of the state as it was in the
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Roman Republic or Roman Empire um it's it's it's more intense in some places than others and always has been but in in Christianity we have something we have something different because Paul
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says we have a new creation we have a new man a new humanity and yet in our country over the past generation we have embraced the political process
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as as our own and I and on both sides liberal and conservative okay liberal professing Christianity is
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very politically active and so is obviously conservative Christianity the question is is that where power now
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resides and this is where the the sons of issachar come in again because
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if you read broadly in history you will see that power structures have changed with time they have not remained constant in any
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social or a political setting any human context power structures have changed what started out in the in the the very ancient world as city-states were soon
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brought by the Sumerian Emperors under uh conglomerate or an aggregate of city-states through the use of military force that's the beginning of Empires
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those Empires are of course are going to culminate in the ancient world as in Daniel's Visions with the Roman Empire where physical might
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was the the dominant characteristic of power but the Roman Empire did not survive so we have what we might call the Age of
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but it didn't survive Rome was the Apex now there have been other Empires but none have been as dominant in their time and as brutal as Rome the United States is more powerful
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but we are not really interested in taking over large swaths of territory we seem to think we have enough we haven't even tried after Canada again
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I mean we tried two or three times and failed and so we're giving that up but we're not really interested in world domination in the sense of actually
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marching our Legions and taking territory and establishing provincial governments that's what Rome did and when when we see the vision in Daniel with this horrible Beast coming out of
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the ocean that is unjust indescribable we see the Age of Empire culminating in in a power of of human might
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that the world had never seen before and that was Rome but because God sets the times and the boundaries of all peoples Rome didn't last
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in fact a stone cut without hands would crush that entire statue into dust and the wind would blow it away in other words the Age of Empire would be blown away
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we don't have any world empires of that type anymore and haven't for 2000 years okay now there was the Mongol Empire there have been other Empires don't get me wrong the British Empire but they were not like the Roman Empire
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uh there was there were differences and so you see an evolution now again we're focusing more on Europe our own Heritage and also
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and also where Protestant Christianity traveled before it came to our Shores this is not to rule out Eastern Orthodoxy and the
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Christians who live under under the Muslim domain in the Middle East but just talking broadly about our own culture because this is our life this is
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the the providential milieu of our church is 21st century America so we see that the the Romans
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lose Rome Falls Rome Falls and Europe takes generational steps backwards until someone fills the vacuum power
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um in the nature abhors a vacuum but so does so does power and so who would fill that vacuum well as it turns out
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a concept that was very very early probably the fifth century does anybody remember galatius remember galatius and when he Pope galasius I think it was
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5th Century huh we went to school together okay now you're not that old um I think 5th Century maybe sixth
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late fifth okay good um he came up with the doctrine of the two swords two swords from scripture Romans 8 I'm sorry Romans 13 where Paul says that the civil magistrate has the Sword of Justice
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Ephesians 6. we have the sword of the spirit so the church has the sword of the spirit and the emperor has the Sword of Justice the sword of of civil obedience now of
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course galasius believed that the spiritual sword was more important than the Civil sword but the popes he and those afterwards realized that the Civil sword was actually a lot sharper
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okay um and and so there was a conflict between the the state and the church but there was a goal here that goal was the Holy Roman Empire
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again what we're talking about is power structures here structures here we're going to bring back the glory that was Rome but it's going to be United with the with Christianity okay and we're going to bring these together in
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the Holy Roman Empire and that thought is going to hang on uh through the Reformation where it will get absolutely
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bludgeoned and it will it will limp on into the present up until the early 1800s when finally Napoleon will put it to death
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and the Holy Roman Empire would finally die but Charlemagne and ad800 to um something like 1806 when Napoleon crowned himself emperor the Holy Roman
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Empire was this idea of bringing together church and state in Europe now that that encompasses our uh Nativity as the United States this era
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of colonialism of colonialism was was Evangelistic as well as exploitive but that that also died off and what began to kill it was the next
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Evolution because these things are not end on end the next evolution is the nation-state you know we tend to look at Nations and we think they've been around forever
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well Germany only became a nation in 1871 which is only about 10 years after Italy
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so the modern states that we think have been around forever have been around some of them less than we have the United Kingdom is only 1704.
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prior to that it was the kingdom of England and Wales the kingdom of Scotland and the kingdom of Ireland they were different they were brought together not happily
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still not happily but the point being is that these power structures are not themselves Eternal okay there never was a France
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a France until the late Middle Ages and at one point in the 12th century the king of England governed from the border of Scotland
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down to the Mediterranean in France he had a territory that was about six or seven times more than the king of France who had this little territory in the in the middle okay so this idea of France
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or Spain remember Spain was under the Moors until 1453 or 1492. it wasn't Spain then
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all these things have changed they became nation states under Kings about the same time as this was trying to get on its feet
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and they fought each other constantly and the winner was the nation-state nationalism the idea that I'm French or I'm English
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I'm English you know that was that was not that was not in the minds of many people from the fall of the Roman Empire until the Reformation
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the Reformation okay they were Christians they were Europeans they uh or they would say they were from whatever they're Yorkshire men you know they're just from whatever territory their their hanoverians they
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were from Hanover in Germany okay or their um portavins from Puerto in France but they weren't French well that's see that's another Power
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structure the nation state
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then the United States comes along and what was called the the American experiment is is still a valid description of what our founders
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did 250 years ago and some would say the experiment is still ongoing but it always is okay this is this is why it always is
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but this was a republic this was something new this was something where the people
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themselves would actually participate in the governing of themselves and nobody thought it would work in fact there was a lot of Doubt among
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our own Founding Fathers as to whether it would work and there was good cause for Dao within 80 years for score and 10. um or pre-score 10 yeah three score in
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10. we had a civil war Okay so all republics in history they're not that many of them there was the Athenian Republic and then there was the Roman
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Republic there was a Swiss Republic there might have been a few smaller ones every single Republican history led to a dictatorship none of them survived
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so things didn't look good for the Republic here Republic here the question is has it survived do we have representative government in our country today
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do we we look to the presidential election in 2024 and we think that by electing the right man or woman
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we'll set things to right no we won't we're told by candidates for office that
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if if we elect them we vote for them they'll uh what was the phrase Donald Trump used they'll drain the swamp everyone who's going into Washington is going to clean it up
47:28
they always come out dirtier than something happens the swamp is never drained we were in Washington and the pond was drained that was kind of a bummer you
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know the mall has this beautiful reflecting Pond and when we were there it was drained like great thanks that's not the swamp swamps over there
47:51
anyhow why do we put so much hope in politics well there was a time it seemed especially in the 1830s
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around the time of Andrew Jackson when we got this whiff of power of power to the people and our vote actually brought a man who
48:15
was personally popular among the masses it scared the bejevies out of the power Brokers this this guy coming in on his horse you know he he scared the
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political operatives to no end um inauguration day they trashed the White House I mean they had a big hoo-ha they broke Windows they broke China this
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was the people's house so we got this whiff of actual power and it went to our heads and we've thought ever since that our vote counts
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vote counts does your vote count who's in power today bureaucracy yeah um
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yeah um some people think that the hidden government the bureaucracy who controls the levers of power in the world today
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City Corp multinational corporations
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okay we think of power in terms of either military or political or political but there is another type of power it's
49:50
called economic called economic and it's always woven into these other ones because if you don't have the money you know you know the Golden Rule he who has
50:01
the gold makes the rules right there's money involved in all of these power structures power structures sometimes that money is accumulated by
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military force military force as with the Roman Empire sometimes that money is accumulated within another Power structure
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and become so dominant that it usurps that power structure without the people even recognizing it
50:35
Okay so Okay so The Meta State
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the idea of meta means it's a state beyond the state you do realize that
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The Fortune 500 companies the 500 most capitalized countries in the world are far wealthier far wealthier than about 90 percent
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of the countries of the world the richest people have more net worth
51:35
than again 90 to 95 percent of the countries in the world today
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what do you need today to run for political office political office any one of us can do it right theoretically we're Americans right if you're the right age right we can run for office
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we're citizens we're citizens right we just run for office no you can't you need money and lots and lots of it
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how do people have a 30 or 40 year career when their their salary in that career is a hundred forty thousand dollars a
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year and they retire multi-multi-millionaires how does that it does good investing yeah well it's easy to
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invest when you know what the laws are going to be there is a power we were talking about powers and principalities last week
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there is an unseen power structure behind all of this
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we are naive if we think it manifests itself in one stable unerring way throughout time and don't recognize
53:07
the evidence of power shifts okay Power has shifted in our country in many different and subtle ways
53:17
there was a time for example that most celebrities and athletes would not speak to issues of politics in fact I remember one of them I can't remember if it was Kirk Douglas it was
53:28
one of the Golden Age actors was asked a question about some political controversy and he said what would I know about that I'm an
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actor Now by virtue of being a celebrity you are now the fount of wisdom on all topics okay and we have access to that we we
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said okay we'll listen to all these celebrities tell us what should be but that's not really where the power is the power isn't on Oprah
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the power is is in the boardrooms of multinational corporations in 1907 we had one of many uh severe economic downturns stock market uh the
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Knickerbocker Bank crashed sound like it should have um JP Morgan JP Morgan called up a bunch of his banking Buddies
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and Infused cash into the stock market and arrested and arrested the the fall now that eventually led to the Federal Reserve Act in 1913.
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but one man one man was wealthy enough to do that this really kind of began in the 1870s with John Rockefeller who became the wealthiest man in the
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world then there was Andrew Carnegie in Cornelius Vanderbilt the robber barons that's what they were called by those who didn't get the money those who got the money were called captains of industry they were the same group of men
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they built their palatial Mansions all over the place and they were able to control laws if you read a Ron cherno's book on the house of Morgan
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it's an excellent biography of the of the Morgan Family Morgan Stanley the the banking family both here and in in England and their alliance with the
55:25
Rothschilds in France and Germany and you realize these people were actually making treaties for the governments of their Homeland
55:36
they were dictating treaty terms to presidents and prime ministers they had no political office they were not elected they were just very very wealthy 100 years after JP Morgan
55:49
floated the American economy Warren Buffett tried the same thing in 2007 during the Great Recession the problem was it was too late
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the value the paper value of worth of these Banks and these companies is now far more than one man or even a group of
56:10
men can float what JP Morgan could do in 1907 Warren Buffett couldn't do in 2007. that's because these multinational corporations have gotten bigger
56:22
than the men who founded them and so those those men are often cast aside there are no Rockefellers running the Rockefeller they run the the um
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charitable Foundation the Rockefeller family is entirely over but they have not they have nothing to do with with standard oil with any of those companies anymore okay they've been same way with
56:45
the Morgans they're not in there anymore they are still alive they still have a lot of money but they're not the powers are now are now they're not the stockholders
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I don't even know who they are the the boards um and I don't want to sound like this is you know the Illuminati okay I'm not a conspiracy theorist
57:06
except that I do believe that there is a God of this age and that he has a plan a plan that will fail and has already failed
57:22
conspiracy theories are distractions we we already know that there is an enemy that no one can see but we know he exists okay we know that there are powers and principalities and rulers and Thrones
57:32
and dominions there are stoichia the elements we know they're out there but we also know that Christ defeated them okay and so this is where conspiracy
57:45
theory is so damaging to the church it's a distraction a distraction it's exactly what the opposing Army wants you to do and that is get distracted
57:57
instead of realizing where the battle is really being fought and has already been fought on the cross so you know when I'm saying this I'm not
58:07
saying oh these big bad companies don't buy anything from them anymore go ahead and starve to death if you're not going to buy anything from these because they run everything
58:18
where's the Family Farm anymore Archer Daniel Midlands is farming okay they own most of the land and all of the
58:28
equipment okay so you know these huge powerful too big to fail now doesn't that tell you who's in charge that these companies can abuse their
58:40
Liberties and they can Rob and steal and they can destroy the economy and yet the government will step in and bail them out why because they're too
58:51
big to fail who's in charge the government the government or these guys these guys
59:01
now I'm not I don't know who they are that doesn't mean they're not in power and I don't need to know who they are to recognize that if I'm back here in some
59:13
traditional notion of the United States or if I'm diving into the Democratic process and getting out the vote and voting for the right person
59:30
I'm 40 or 50 years behind I I'm electing people who will go to Congress only to realize how little power they have if you doubt this ask our former Representative Bob Inglis
59:42
who went to Congress or asked Jim demin who went to the Senate thank you thank you and then after two terms said this is ridiculous
59:54
you see you either go in there and you become assimilated to it and you come out and Military millionaire