Sermons and Anger

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Looking at our world from a theological
perspective. This is the Theology Central podcast

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making Theology Central. Good afternoon everyone. It is Tuesday, July the sixteenth,

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twenty twenty four. It is currently
five thirty eight pm Central Time,

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and I am coming to you live
from the Theology Central studio located right here

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in Abilene, Texas. Now,
this question is primarily for myself, but

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I'm going to ask the question of
you as well. How angry can one

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become as they listen to a sermon
and not cross the line into sin?

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How angry can you get when you're
listening to a sermon? How angry,

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how upset? How frustrated can you
get before you cross over into sin?

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Is there ever any excuse for becoming
so angry, so frustrated that you want

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to throw something, that you want
to hit, something that you want to

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just you just want to get up
and walk out. Where is that line?

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Because the Bible says in Ephesians,
chapter four, verse twenty six,

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it reads like this, be angry
and do not sin. Be angry and

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do not sin. Do not let
the sun go down on your wrath.

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Okay, well, don't let the
sun go down on your wrath. Okay,

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that's pretty you can tell hey,
you know what, before I go

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to bed, I gotta deal with
this anger. I gotta deal with this

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wrath. I've got to fix it. Okay, that we can kind of

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process. How do we do that? Can we accomplish that? But we

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can at least understand, Hey,
don't go to bed angry? Okay?

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Got it? All right? Be
angry? All right? Well that's okay.

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When can I be angry? How
do we understand that phrase be angry

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in Ephesians for twenty six. We
may need to do a little work on

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the Greek here and just see how
this is structured and what we what this

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actually meant? But be angry?
So this seems to indicate there is a

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time to be angry. But look
at the next part and do not sin?

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So how angry can you become before
it becomes sin? It is it

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becomes sin when you, in your
anger say something that is sinful, when

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you do something that is sinful.
Is that when your anger crosses over into

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now, well, do not sin? But can you be so angry that,

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even if you're not saying something or
you're not doing something, you feel

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and you think something Now The reason
I'm struggling with this at five forty one

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pm on a Tuesday is if you
listen to my last live broadcast about America

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a Christian nation, I lost I
lost it. I'm just gonna I'm just

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gonna be honest with you. I
got so angry, I got so upset,

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and maybe I got more upset,
not so much at the sermon at

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what was being implied, because I
kept saying, over and over, I

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don't know what. I don't think
this is what that person met. I'm

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going to give them the benefit of
the death, but the implication from this

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is utterly horrifying and frightening. I
have been getting very frustrated over the last

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few days and listening to sermons dealing
with the assassination attempt against President Trump or

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the former president, the presidential candidate. And the only reason I correct that

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is because you still have people running
around saying the election was stolen and President

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Trump is actually the president. Okay, you get into some strange stuff there,

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so you have to kind of be
more careful with your language. But

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I've become very frustrated and listening to
all of it, because either we are

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listening to things what claims are being
made. They're are just abs absolutely fraudulent,

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like like misinformation, disinformation, lies, false accusation, bearing false witness,

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like some serious sinful things that I
would think that would be like,

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that's sinful, But it appears that
it appears that pastors can say pretty much

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anything in the pulpit and for the
most part, it's not considered a sin

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or even a problem. It's just
really weird our sense of when something is

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scandalous and when something is not lying, misinformation, misrepresentation, accusation, bearing

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false witness. It seems to be
perfectly okay in the pulpit. That's what

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blows my mind, and that makes
me angry. It bothers me when you're

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making statements that within five seconds of
fact checking you're like, well, that's

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not necessarily accurate. Well where did
you get that from? What is that

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based off? Well, what about
that? Well, no, that's not

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necessarily true. No that's not necessarily
true. No, that's not necessarily true.

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Making just a claims about you know, all the forefathers of the American

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forefathers, the early American leaders,
that are just it's that's not in many

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cases just completely not accurate or a
complete misrepresentation. That drives me crazy.

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But how angry can I get?
How angry can you get at preaching?

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Like when I see now, there
was a time in my when I was

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younger, I approached this question differently. I was like, what is the

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problem with everyone else? They listened
to these sermons and they just shrugged their

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shoulders and they don't care. They
don't care if it's false, doctory They

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don't care if it's incorrect. And
what is that's? Because no nobody is

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saved. If they were really saved, they would love God and they would

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hate sin and they would get it. So then then it was kind of

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like I was kind of going more
with the lordship idea. They're demonstrating they

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don't really love God, but I
probably are not safe. That's kind of

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the way I approach approached it and
kind of basically looked at what's the problem

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with everyone else? But you know, after all of these years of living

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with myself as a Christian, knowing
my own fraility, my own sin,

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of course, you know I have
major issues with the whole lordship concept.

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Now I won't get into you know, we've talked about that a million times,

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but now I look at it more
like, Okay, I can't worry

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whether other people get angry or should
get angry or shouldn't get angry. I

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guess the issue is how angry can
I become before that anger. It's not

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righteous, it's not right, it's
not spiritual. It's fleshly and ungodly.

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And I will admit that in the
last broadcast it probably was fleshy and ungodly.

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I'm just going to be the first
to acknowledge it. I mean,

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there's no reason to pretend. Remember
I've been trying to explain to you that

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this podcast is just the podcast of
a sinner trying to just living out the

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Christian life in real time behind a
microphone. This is just my discipleship.

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Well, my discipleship has to deal
with my failures as well. I think

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there. I just I just got
so upset. I just got so many

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Maybe it was the accumulation of everything. I get tired of listening to a

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sermon in like fact check, Oh
that's not true. Fact check that's not

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true. Fact check that's not true. Fact Like I shouldn't have to be

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fact checking sermons. Okay, like
the one place you should be able to

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go to say now they're not everything's
always going to be accurate. Obviously,

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there's always going to be in perfection, there's always going to be sin.

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But for the most part that we
strive our best, even though when perfectly

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we're always going to fall short.
That for the most part, we try

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to be very careful with what we
say behind the pulpit, and we do

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not throw out false accusations. We
do not participate in slander and gossip and

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conspiratorial thinking and bearing false witness that
we just had, and that we get

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our facts as accurate as we can
be. We try to look for primary

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sources. We don't rely on secondary
sources or third hand or we look at

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We try to just do these basic
like things that would meet just basic academic

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standards in any any decent university.
But sometimes what you hear from the pulpit,

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it's just there's just no it's just
a free for all. It's like

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the wild wild West. You don't
know where, you don't know what's going

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to happen, but you know what, it's on me to handle it in

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a better way. So I don't
know how you felt about it. I

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felt I'm bothered by the whole thing. I'm still bothered by the things I've

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heard. I'm just gonna be honest. So I'm bothered, and so there's

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a part of me I don't know
how I'm going to proceed because we still

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need to watch and monitor how things
are being I guess it would be different

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if we were what I was reviewing
in the last message was more directly related

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to the assassination on President Trump,
the assassination attempt against President Trump, that

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it would have been much more.
It would have been understand I said president

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Trump again, because it's just kind
of like an honorary title. Right,

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I'm not saying he lost the election. Everybody understands that, so the former

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the assassination attempt against the former president
of the United States Donald Trump. There.

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If I'm trying to be as articulate
as I can be, all right,

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which I'm not usually that articulate,
but you get the idea. If

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it was more about that, then
I felt like I would have been staying

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true to the overall goal. But
it really was adjacent to it, right.

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It still dealt with the politicizing and
patriotism of the American Church and this

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Christian nationalism and just so many issues. It dealt with things that are related.

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And the reason I was reviewing it
is it's part one and Part two

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was preached the day after the day
after the assassination attempt. So I'm like,

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okay, I can't go to part
I was trying to be fair.

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I don't want to go to part
two and not be fair by ripping it

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out of context to part one.
Part one may lay down some very important

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foundational truths, but Part one is
basically an almost a reading, not just

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reading, basically a sharing of the
the book, a book by Robert Jeffers.

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We think we have found the book. I don't know if we can

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one hundred percent confirm it, but
I think it's the book. Uh.

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And and if it is the book, well you know, I don't I

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don't even know. Yeah, yeah, well, I guess what we can

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do is take that name of that
book and then start doing some Google searching

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to see if it's been reviewed,
if there's been any academic critique of the

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book, and if anyone's demonstrated some
shortcomings or failures or misquotes or anything in

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it, because then that would because
if we can find where no this people

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have documented these things. This book
has absolute error in it, and then

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we go to that sermon and he
simply repeated that error. Then that error

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was now. But again, how
angry can I get at that? I

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don't know. I don't know how
angry I could get at that, because

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again, there's not the one thing
about living out your Christian life is we

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have the scripture be angry, but
say not, and let not the sun

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go down on your wrath. We
have that, But guess what the Bible

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doesn't do. It doesn't start going
bepppppppppep. You're getting close to any You're

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getting close to sin. You're getting
close beepppppep. That's it. You've crossed

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the line. I do feel that
there's a place for anger, but then

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you don't want it to be wrong. You want to handle yourself in a

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much more godly way. And I
don't always handle myself in a godly way.

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I mean I don't. I am
a sinner. I'm so aware of

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it. Do you struggle with it? If you? This year, we've

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all been listening to more sermons than
we've ever listened to. I mean,

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maybe maybe for some of you this
is just a normal year, but I

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mean with the sermons two point oh
app sermon challenge, trying to get everyone

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to listen, listen to at least
one sermon per day for the entire year.

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Well, that's a lot of sermons
by we're you know, we're in

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July. That is a lot of
sermons we've listened to by now, right,

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and with a ways to go.
I think I think I've had some

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frustrations and some irritations, but this
last couple of days is starting to reach

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a level of and maybe because we're
pursuing one particular kind, So maybe that's

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why. But in some ways I
feel like I have no choice. I

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got a monitor. This is telling
me where where the church is at.

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And maybe it's gonna remember I've been
saying forever the church is so politically hijacked.

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It's you know, the churches are
filled with the idolatry of patriotism,

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nationalism, It's filled with politics.
I've been saying this and saying this.

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Maybe this is the evidence. All
this is evidence of what I've been saying.

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I did I need the evidence?
Well, I know I didn't want

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to hear it. And then just
big and I think maybe what's most discouraging

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is the discussion of God's providence without
actually looking at it from both sides,

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from both sides. Now, someone
did send me a link. I am

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going to try to review it.
I don't know if I will review it

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later tonight. I don't know how
I'm feeling right now. I kind of

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want to just keep pressing on too. I can get I can see that

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we're getting through the forest, and
I can see the end there. I

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kind of want to just keep pressing
on, trying to finish something. But

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someone did send me a link,
and I didn't watch all of it.

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I'll have to do some work on
the audio because it's a mess, but

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it's a very like six minute seven
minute. Someone posted on sermon audio their

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response to the assassination attempt, but
he basically said, was it God's will,

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God's planned his decree that Trump be
shot? Yes? Was it his

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will his decree that he spared Trump's
life? Yes? And I don't he

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may even have went on to say, I don't know if he went on

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to say, well, obviously,
from a logical perspective, then it was

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God's will and plan for Corey to
be shot and killed. The man who

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was killed at the rally his first
name is Corey, So that one was

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much more brutally honest. But so
many others just want to talk about God

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intervening in God intervening. And someone
just sent me someone from I can't remember

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what religion Sikhism, I can't.
I can't remember what religion that they prayed

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at the Republican National Convention. Clearly
not Christian, clearly not Christian. Praying

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to a false God, and basically
I think giving credit to that God for

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sparing Donald Trump's life. So which
God actually intervene and saved Trump? Well,

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Christians are going to say so,
But well then that gets into our

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religious pluralism, which demonstrates that even
in the Republican even at the Republican Convention,

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it's a pluralistic. It's a God, it's not the Christian God.

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Therefore, even the Republican Party is
not acting like a Christian nation if they're

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bringing up people from other religions to
pray. So what I want to say,

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is this my last life, my
last live broadcast. You heard my

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anger. In some ways, I
feel my anger was justified to an extent.

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I felt that I got so angry
that I was angry, But when

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it says sin not that I may
have sinned. I know, I said

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I because I was so mad.
I am not going to let the sun

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go down upon my wrath. I'm
gonna make sure by the time I this

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night is over, it's done.
I feel better and I can move on.

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So be angry. I think I
did that, and I hopefully it

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was righteous anger. Sin Not.
I definitely send. I know. Look,

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by the time when the program was
over, trust me, I send

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because my thoughts were all over the
play. Yeah. My well, everything

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that happened after the broadcast that you
wouldn't even know, I definitely send.

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Now, I'm not going to let
the sun go down on my wrath.

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See, that's gonna not the way
the Christian life works. Okay, well,

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I obeyed this, but I disobeyed
this, But it would be I

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obeyed this externally, but I felt
internally like it's that it's always a mess

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of of it's a it's a mixture
of failure and victory. But I'm gonna

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stop because I think my food is
here, so I'm going to go eat

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and then we'll see what's unstore the
rest of the evening. Thank you for

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listening. You can email me news
I Yahoo dot com. That's news I

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Yahoo dot com. Everyone have a
great evening. God bless