The Holy Spirit, Censorship, and More

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Hello everyone and welcome to this October 3rd edition of the STRANG Report.

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Thank you for tuning in.

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Of course it will be available a long time on the internet.

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That's a good thing about digital.

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In the not so recent past we had radio programs or then talk shows and it's on there and it's off.

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In fact it was hard in the 50s and 60s as I recall growing up that even record something.

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Well here we are it's online forever.

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I'm Stephen Strang and I've never had an introduction like that to the STRANG Report

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but it's the podcast where we deal with life in the Holy Spirit and that's what I'm going

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to talk about today.

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Some difficult things that are happening in the church that I think that you need to be informed about.

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So stay tuned.

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Encourage other people to watch this.

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Tell them to tune in live.

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In fact I'd like to find out where people are watching live.

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In fact it was a week ago yesterday I think or let's see no it wasn't it would have been

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the Thursday before.

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I was on vacation my wife and I visited Greece and the Greek Isles and we were on a ship somewhere

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in the Aegean Sea and it was 11 o'clock at night and I was doing something on my cell

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phone on the balcony outside our little state room and it popped up that the STRANG Report

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was coming up.

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Well it was four o'clock back home and I had prerecorded some podcasts.

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So there I am in the dark in the Aegean Sea watching myself had a prerecorded program

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that was going out live around the world and I mentioned that in my last STRANG Report

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it was kind of cool and I want you to tell me where you're from and then as we have time

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at the end of the podcast maybe we can do some questions and answers.

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Be sure to hit the like, subscribe if you haven't.

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If you subscribe then you are notified when a live podcast is coming up which is every

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Tuesday and Thursday at 4 p.m. Eastern time and we want your comments.

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I want to see your comments what you like not like and then of course you can share it.

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You know there's a certain amount of cancel culture that goes on.

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We have actually been censored by Big Tech on some issues where they didn't agree and

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it had to do with things like healing where I some of it I don't even really understand

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these community standards so we need to go around them by going straight to you and as

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you share links and as we send it out by email and different things we're not as vulnerable

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to Big Tech and to censorship.

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You know there are people who don't want the message of the gospel going out.

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They actually consider that people who believe in the Bible are the only ones holding them

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back from whatever they consider fun whether it's gambling or drug use or pornography or

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the gay lifestyle or whatever.

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You know these things are against the word of God if people believe the word of God and

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believe that standards should be reflected in society based on our deeply held values

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then that holds people back and these have been eroding the last couple of generations.

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I mean going all the way back to prohibition and the depression era you know that was the

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big issue in the Christian community in the teens leading up to the passage of prohibition.

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That was the issue that would have been as big as the gay lifestyle and abortion rolled

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into one which are kind of the two big issues that seem to be a demarcation between those

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who stand for strict Bible values.

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In fact today I'm going to talk about how there's a certain amount of censorship even

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within the Christian community.

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There are those who believe that the work of the Holy Spirit ended with the life of the

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last apostle.

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Now there's not a scripture and you have to really use your imagination to take a phrase

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here and there to even think that but there are those they call themselves sensationists.

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In other words there was a dispensation when the gospel was presented the Holy Spirit was

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out poured and the church was formed and during that period there were miracles, there were

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tongues, there was prophecy, there were all the things we read about in the New Testament

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and that when the last apostle died that ended.

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In fact this gives me an opportunity to mention the trip we were on.

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My wife and I had never been to Greece or to Turkey and we had wanted to you know that's

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where the apostle Paul was.

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We actually arranged for a trip.

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It would have been in the spring of 2020.

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Well what happened in 2020?

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COVID and of course that trip never happened so we're finally kind of getting around to

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it.

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It was a cruise.

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We went to five different Greek Isles one a day but we also went to what the Bible calls

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Thessalonica.

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I found out the Greeks call it Thessaloniki.

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It is the second biggest city in Greece.

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It's a huge metropolitan area but that is where Paul wrote first and second Thessalonians.

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We also had the opportunity to go to Ephesus which is in Turkey, Ephesus was one of the

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seven churches.

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Paul of course was there two times, one time a fairly short trip, another time for a couple

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of years.

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He spoke in the big arena.

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I forget what they call it.

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It seats 25,000 people.

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Archaeologists have unearthed it just in the last 50 or 75 years.

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There's an awful lot of archaeology that is making people be able to see what Ephesus

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was like.

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It was a great city.

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It was where the temple of Artemis was.

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This is where he was interrupting the silver smith who was selling souvenirs to people who

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came to the temple of Artemis.

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That's what got him into trouble in Ephesus.

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We found it very interesting.

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In fact, to joy my wife and I, going to Ephesus was the highlight of the entire trip.

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I'm not here really to talk about my trip although there's nothing wrong on this live

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podcast to bring you up to date because we also went to Athens of course where Paul was

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at the Parthenon, the Acropolis.

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Then we went to Corinth which is maybe an hour's drive away, not that far.

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And saw where the Jewish community was.

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There's a church named St. Paul's where he undoubtedly ministered right there where the

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Jewish community was.

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As you know, 1st and 2nd Corinthians are great books of the Bible.

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They're some of my favorites.

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Paul talked, in fact, they had a plaque there where they had put part of 1st Corinthians,

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chapter 13, one of the most famous passages in the Bible, the love chapter.

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And it says, whether there be tongues they shall cease.

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And those who believe in that cite that scripture.

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But you know it also says, if there shall be knowledge it will pass away.

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And these same people go on knowledge, you know, it's kind of a religious knowledge.

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They talk about defending the Bible and believing the Bible and they're probably very sincere

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people.

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I'll give them that.

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But they're sincerely wrong.

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And this is not new.

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It's a doctrine that's been around a long time.

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I think it's very, very dangerous doctrine.

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Some of the people are very, very adamant about it.

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Other people, this is just how they see life.

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Some of them are very, very nasty.

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And they have made a movie.

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And I'm going to be doing several podcasts on the movie.

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In fact, if anyone who's watching has seen it, it's only been out a couple of days.

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And I'm going to really do a deep dive.

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I've watched the trailer.

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I've talked to some people about it.

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And basically they just say, all this stuff's a bunch of nonsense.

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And they show little clips of Pentecostals doing Pentecostal style worship, which they

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think is just undignified or little clips taken out of context.

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I personally believe it's like spitting in the wind.

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You know, the Holy Spirit is moving around the world.

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There are those who say that there are somewhere between 400 million and 600 million people

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alive today who've received this precious gift called the baptism in the Holy Spirit.

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And I've seen this my whole life.

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When people receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the power, they get enthusiastic.

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They believe God.

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They believe God for miracles, for healing.

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They get all excited.

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Now, are there abuses and excesses, of course, but you can say that about every single movement

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in human life.

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I don't care who it is.

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Every segment of the church has it.

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And of course, outside the church, it exists.

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And none of us can judge an entire community by a few extremists.

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I don't care if you're talking about Jewish extremists or Muslims or even secular extremists.

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It's just not fair to blackball an entire movement based on those few examples.

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That's the point I'm making.

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This isn't to say that we shouldn't call it out.

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In fact, in my own gentle way today, I'm calling these people out because there's nothing in

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Scripture that says all these things are going to happen and on the day the last apostle

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dies, they're going to end.

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Now we believe that the last apostle who died was John, John the beloved.

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Not John, to be confused with John the Baptist.

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He wrote the book of John, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, and also the book of Revelation.

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He wrote them from Ephesus.

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This is something I didn't really know because I think of him as being on the Isle of Patmos,

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which is one of the Greek Isles.

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Our crews did not take us to Patmos.

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We would have very much liked to see Patmos, but I don't think it's really as commercialized

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for cruise ships and things.

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For some reason, they don't take people there.

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You can take a tour there.

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I've talked to people who've done this.

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He was exiled on the Isle of Patmos, but he lived for a number of years in Ephesus.

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It was a major city in Asia Minor, which is now Turkey, and it became very, very dangerous,

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of course, to live in Jerusalem.

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There's all kinds of, there's a church for St. John there, but also for Mary because

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some of this is tradition, some of it's historical fact that Mary moved to Ephesus and actually

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died in Ephesus.

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We actually went to the place they call Mary's house.

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It was, again, archaeology.

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They excavated.

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They found it.

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There's a spring there.

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It's Roman Catholic, even though that part of the world is mostly Greek Orthodox.

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Of course, Turkey is a Muslim nation.

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There's a little tiny bit of religious freedom, but not much.

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They do allow the tourists to come.

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Even the Pope went there a couple of years ago.

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They were telling us about it.

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Mary spent the rest of her life there, and they say that John wrote several of his books.

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Well, we believe he was probably the last apostle to die.

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That must mean that the work of the Holy Spirit ceased.

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Well, it didn't cease.

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What it did was, over a period of years, the church became corrupt.

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It actually absorbed some of the pagan rituals.

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That's my opinion.

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There are scholars who could say it better than I did, but even at Mary's house, they

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had what they called holy water.

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There's nothing really about holy water in the New Testament, but holy water, there was

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an aspect of paganism with holy water as well.

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It was not explained to us real well.

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In my opinion, that's how they adapted.

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There's parts of the world where they venerate the Virgin Mary, but the Spaniards, when they

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came to the New World as Catholics, and to their credit, evangelized the native people,

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they would hook on to some well-known female goddess and turn it into worship of the Virgin

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Mary.

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I'm not trying to make a big point of it.

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I'm just trying to explain my point of view.

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If you have an opinion or if you want to comment, I encourage you to do that.

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In fact, a couple of times, I've asked people where they're from, and somebody was calling

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in or watching from Sri Lanka and some other far-flung places.

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That was a lot of fun to find out.

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Also, if you have any questions or if you happen to be one of the very first people to

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see this movie, I would be interested in your comments.

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Where are you watching from?

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Share your comments.

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I'm interested in finding out.

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I will be doing a deep dive, as I said, maybe even showing some clips from this documentary

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is called Sensationist.

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That's it, just Sensationist.

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They make fun of Pentecostals and Charismatics.

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They claim to believe the Bible, but they don't.

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They don't believe the Bible.

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Let me make a comment, because in a way, they are going to help me promote my book, because

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my book is really an answer to this.

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This book is a primer.

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I could have called it Spirit-led Living 101, because it talks about the work of the Holy

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Spirit in the world today, about the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

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I go into all the different gifts.

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I tell stories from men and women of God.

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Some of them still alive.

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Some of them I knew.

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Some of them I didn't know.

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A lot of them are pretty spectacular examples.

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It's very carefully documented with footnotes.

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Then I talk about deliverance.

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There's a lot of demonic activity.

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In fact, I believe that there's demonic activity that would blind people's eyes to the work

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of the Holy Spirit.

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The Bible does talk about calling good things bad and bad things good, or evil and righteousness.

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Righteous things evil and evil is okay.

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We're seeing that in our culture, where things that the Bible calls in, people are celebrating,

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and things where the Bible says is good.

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They're even calling hate.

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You know, within the Christian church, I'm talking about mainly within the Protestant

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church, the Catholics and the Greek Orthodox are kind of left out of this.

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There's a segment of Protestantism that early in the 20th century, when the Holy Spirit

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was out ported Azusa Street, they came against it.

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They came against it very, very strongly.

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I'm called Pam from Little River Academy in Texas.

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Hello.

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Thanks for sending us your comment.

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Anyway, getting back to what I was saying, and here's Andrea Bolden, gag Liano.

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Don't I know you Andrea from Indiana Atlantic?

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It's nice to hear from you again.

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Anyway, letting me get back to my thought.

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There was actually a prominent leader named R.A.

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Tory, very well respected, wrote a lot of books.

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He actually called the baptism of the Holy Spirit in speaking in tongues the last vomit

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of hell.

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I couldn't, when I learned that, and it's not widely known, but it's also not a secret

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that that happened.

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I mean, he did it very publicly.

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I thought, if anything is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, that must be it.

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I would think that people would be careful just to be sure that they did not blaspheme

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the Holy Spirit, because the Bible clearly says that that is the one thing that will

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not be forgiven.

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I don't want to judge, but I just think people should be careful.

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They should just be careful.

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In the same way, you should be careful with things that could be heresy.

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We need to walk in wisdom.

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We need to walk carefully.

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We need to walk humbly.

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I want what I say to be humble.

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I happen to know a couple of the people that are in the movie, or at least I know of them.

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I won't say that they're bad people.

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I just believe that they're deceived.

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I believe that the devil wants to deceive people to think that what is the Holy Spirit

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is maybe something that they should stay away from.

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And listen, in the Christian books selling industry, which I've been in most of my adult

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life, there were an awful lot of people in the CBA who are very wary of the Holy Spirit

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and of Pentecostals.

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In fact, there was a certain amount of cancel culture back then.

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There were a lot of these good-hearted Protestant shopkeepers that wouldn't even carry a book

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by someone like Kenneth Hagan or Oral Roberts or Kenneth Copeland.

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They just wouldn't.

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We had those of us who published those kind of materials or those ministries had to just

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go around the gatekeepers of the day.

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This was long before the Internet and what we're familiar with now.

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So in a way, I've been dealing with, I don't remember those people in the CBA as necessarily

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being nasty, the movie.

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You can judge for yourself when you watch it.

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It sounded pretty nasty to me.

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And I'll say more about this.

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I've already lined up a couple of interviews.

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I did talk to one leader that is targeted in this video.

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And he told me by text just a few minutes before we went on the air that the Lord specifically

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told him decades ago not to defend himself against attackers.

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I had asked him to come on my podcast and to answer it.

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Dr. Michael Brown, I've asked Dr. Brown, he's delighted.

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He debates these people in other settings at conferences and so forth.

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And apparently a bunch of them got together and put together this documentary partly because

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Greg Locke's out in Jesus' name was so successful.

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I mean, time will tell and maybe we'll do a little investigating to find out if that's

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true.

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I may bring some of these people on my podcast and debate with them.

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We'll see how that goes.

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But I'd be interested to know what you think if you have any questions.

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I appreciate the few people who did comments already and we'll be following up on it.

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I want to, Andrea says we need more connection to the Holy Spirit.

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That's absolutely right, Andrea.

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And I hope you've read my book since you know me personally.

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But that is a point of the book.

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We need to connect.

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It's not a theological treatise.

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I'm not a theologian.

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I'm not a pastor.

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I've never been.

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I'm a Christian journalist and writer who wanted to encourage people to experience the

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power of the Holy Spirit in a day when people almost seem confused and depressed and like

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we're losing it every turn.

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No, we're not.

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The devil is coming on like gangbusters.

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And I think, and this is true.

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I mean, when drag queens are reading stories and libraries to impressionable little children,

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there's something sick about that.

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And we all are aware of that aspect of the upside down world.

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But in a way, it's even more sinister when people in the church are trying to deceive

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believers into believing that the work of the Holy Spirit is somehow wrong or evil.

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I believe that all things work together for good.

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I believe that even good will come out of this.

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I believe that people's eyes will be open to how shallow it is and how it's not biblical

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at all.

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To me, it's kind of the same old, same old.

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This has been going around for a long time.

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My grandfather, who is a Pentecostal, a pioneer, we call him pioneer Pentecostal preachers

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in Kansas in the 1930s, was actually publicly challenged in the newspaper by one of the denominations

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that believes in sensationism to drink poison because there's a scripture that says they

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shall drink poison, they shall handle snakes, and nothing will happen to them.

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He challenged my grandfather to do this.

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Now of course, my grandfather did not do it.

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But I mean, he was making fun of the Pentecostal preacher and trying to twist scripture to

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come against him.

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Now, who was I talking to recently?

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Was it Benny Hinn? and we were talking about that this doctrine of sensationism is nowhere

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in the Bible, which I've already said.

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It was a doctrine that is only a couple of hundred years ago where people tried to explain

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why we didn't see the gifts in operation.

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But the church went into a period that was so bad, they called it the dark ages.

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There were popes where it was like a political type of situation.

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It's well known in history that there were popes in that era who had illegitimate children,

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who were actually powerful on the basis that they were the illegitimate children of popes.

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I mean, think about it, it's ludicrous.

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The church had gotten so bad that they were selling indulgences to get people into heaven

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and that's what sparked Martin Luther, who was a faithful Catholic monk who did pilgrimages

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and everything else trying to find God.

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He finally felt that that was too far and he challenged it with his 13 theses that he

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nailed to the 95 theses.

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I knew that but it came out wrong.

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Thank you, John, for correcting me.

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On the door in Whitburg, Germany, that's what sparked the Protestant Reformation, which

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changed history every bit as much as the printing press or Columbus, which would have been kind

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of in the same era.

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I mean, it absolutely changed the course of history and it was the result of the fact

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that the church had fallen so far from following God.

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Now I believe that the Catholic Church today is very different than the church back in

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that era.

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I really do.

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But it was people trying to explain why that didn't happen.

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Actually, there are Pentecostal academics who tell that there are examples of Pentecostalism

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through history.

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I've done a little bit of research on this.

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My own ancestors were Huguenots.

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That's what they call the Protestants in France and they were very devout people and they

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would pray and sometimes they would fall on the floor and almost go into trances when

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there was great prayer.

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Well, guess what?

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That sounds like what happens in some Pentecostal churches today.

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There are other examples of where there was speaking in tongues, et cetera, et cetera.

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So I don't believe that it ever totally died out.

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It always has a remnant, but it did kind of go underground and there came revivals.

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Those are all works of the Holy Spirit no matter what we call them in the early 20th

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century.

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The whole holiness movement of the day was praying for a baptism in the Holy Spirit.

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Even our Aetori who I quoted wrote a pamphlet.

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I saw one with my own eyes.

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It was called the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.

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It was around 1900.

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Six years later in 1906, the Azusa Street revival happened and the Pentecostals said

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that that was the baptism of the Holy Spirit and there were others who said, no, it's not

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the baptism of the Holy Spirit and that's where a schism came.

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The Pentecostal movement was headed by a black man, William Seymour, and a lot of it came

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out of the black experience.

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I've talked about this before and as we move ahead, I may talk about it more because I

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think it's important to understand what's happening.

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In the black experience, they would clap their hands and raise their hands and shout

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hallelujah and a lot of the Pentecostal forms of worship came from that rather than coming

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from the Protestant churches of Europe, which were very staid, which came out of the Roman

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Catholic experience.

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Some of the things in this movie attack like they show clips of preachers running around

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the platform or people kind of shouting and raising their hands as if this was odd.

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Listen, go to any black church or predominantly African American church and you're going to

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see that kind of thing.

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I really believe that attacking that is a latent form of racism.

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The Pentecostal church is one of the parts of society that became integrated and one

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of the things where white culture was influenced by black culture.

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Now, I'm just making a comment.

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I could go into it in a lot more depth and in fact, I may invite sometime one of my black

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academic friends to come on my podcast and we can discuss this very thing.

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But when people make fun of Pentecostal worship, they're making fun of the black religious

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experience.

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In my opinion, I don't have a lot of more time to talk about it.

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I thank you for watching this long.

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Thank you for watching today to the Strang Report, the podcast that's about spirit led

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living.

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