Transcript

Endowed by God · Urantia Radio

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Welcome to another wonderful, wonderful edition of the Urantia
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Radio Podcast. That's where I get to spend a
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little while with you, talking about my most favorite subject
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in the whole wide world, the Urantia book Revelation.
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You know, I take walks now, and I would recommend it for anybody
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who's looking for a way to kind of ease their way back into more
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physical activity. And I forgot, I used to walk a
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lot when I was a kid. And now that I'm walking every
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day, I start my day with a nice walk.
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I don't take my Airpods or my earbuds.
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I don't listen to the radio. That's my time with my, my inner
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attempt to have conversations and just feel the presence of
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God in my in my mind and in my being.
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And often times I come up with a lot of great ideas on what I
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want to talk about on the next episode of the podcast.
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And I actually have two subjects.
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The 1st is going to be what this podcast is about, and then the
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next one is going to be about something that you're hearing
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about in the news, especially if you listen to news about the
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astronomy or the James Webb telescope or space discoveries,
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something called a Dyson sphere. And I'll get into that a little
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bit. I think you'll be very
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fascinating. It's going to be the next
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podcast. But for this one, because it's
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the week where Americans and people around the world
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celebrate the independence of the United States, I thought we
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would take a look at liberty, liberty, human behavior.
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When is liberty good and when is liberty bad?
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And the turns out that the Urantia book revelators have a
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lot to teach about the subject. That's what we're going to get
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into. Thank you again for stopping by.
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This is the Urantia Radio podcast.
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Take a quick break. You know, a lot of us are
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thinking about liberty. A lot of us are celebrating
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liberty, particularly American citizens in the United States.
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We celebrate our our liberty because it is a representation
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of the deal that God has made with man by endowing him with
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free will and creative free will, free moral discernment.
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It is because men and women are able to have moral discernment.
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We can make the decisions, the right and wrong decisions.
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And it turns out that liberty is a very valuable thing in, in the
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cosmos. Our, our revelators go to great
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lengths to to talk about what good is good liberty and what is
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bad liberty. And I've been reading the
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Arrancha book now for, I don't know, 40 years.
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And it's interesting because you read, if you've been a long time
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reader, I'll share this experience with you and I think
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you'll be able to relate. And if you are a new reader,
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then you can look forward to many, many years of reading the
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same passages. And over time, your
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interpretation of those passages will change depending on your
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environment. So for example, when I was
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younger and I read these words about liberty, I had a whole
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different perspective of life. I was 2122 years old and liberty
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meant something completely different than what it means
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today. Today liberty is self restraint,
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really, true liberty is control of self, as the revelators will
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explain to us, and false liberty is typically destructive and
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suicidal. Now it is 2024, and as I look
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around today, I see a lot more false liberty than I see true
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liberty. And the distinction is that
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what's missing is moral discernment.
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And I write about this in my book, which I'm almost done
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with, which is called Godless, how secularism will Destroy
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civilization. And it talks about the, the, the
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chance that God endows human beings with spirit potential by
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giving him free will is the only way.
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And they've been debating this, I think if you go back and
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listen to my interview with Byron Belezos a few months ago
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where he talks about the debate that has been going on among the
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church and among theologians. What is free will?
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Are we truly given free will or does God have predestiny plan
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for everybody? How can an all knowing, all
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powerful God not know what is in store for each one of his
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children? In fact, it is quoted many times
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in Scripture and elsewhere that there is no surprise to God.
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God knows everything. He can anticipate anything.
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And all that may be true, except for the fact that there are some
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caveats to that. And that's part of what we're
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going to get into here. Because in the arena of mortal
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life, the most important part of our life experience is the
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ability to choose between good and evil and to pursue good not
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only because it's the right thing to do, because it's the
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godly thing to do. Godly does all.
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God does all things the right way.
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And the best way is a quote that comes to mind.
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The best way is always the right way.
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And so as we celebrate the liberty, the declaration of
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liberty of this period and of our country, what are we really
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celebrating? Are we celebrating the liberty
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to do whatever we want? And that there's no holds barred
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and there's real no restriction on our moral behavior.
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Or are we celebrating the liberty from an oppressive
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government that would would have us through compliance, live a
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specific kind of life where they would control all, all aspects
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of it? That, I think is the liberty
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that we are celebrating. We're, we're celebrating the
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liberty that comes from being endowed by our creator, the
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liberty to have moral discernment.
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And you know, it's interesting because it's been said.
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And if you haven't heard it before, take this to heart.
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But our founding fathers recognize that only a moral
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people could live with freedom. And immoral people cannot really
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live with freedom because they would be destructive, because
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they have no moral boundaries. And that's what I think I see
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more often now. Now, there was a woman,
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sometimes you'll read them something or hear something on
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Instagram or something. And this was a woman who seemed
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pretty level headed. And she said she went to a a
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Pride parade. We just ended Pride month in the
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United States and she went to a Pride parade in San Francisco.
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And she said that she had been to many of them, but this
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particular one seemed to cross the lines of decency.
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And she said there was a lot of illicit behavior that she'd
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never seen before. And there was such enthusiasm
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and embracement of it. So, you know, you can have a
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creative imagination and try to think about what she's
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describing, but it's it's pretty horrific.
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And that's the danger, I think right now and why I wanted to
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bring this up as we contemplate the importance of liberty, free
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will, moral discernment, the right way, the best way, living
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the godly way, and having true liberty, which is control of
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self. So let's get into 61 or paper
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61. And this is an excerpt from the
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part on a talks about Lucifer and Lucifer's folly and how he
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embraced the wrong kind of liberty when he sought to
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disenfranchise himself from God and from Christ.
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And here's some of the paragraphs.
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Liberty is suicidal when divorced from material justice,
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intellectual fairness, social forbearance, moral duty, and
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spiritual values. Liberty is nonexistent apart
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from cosmic reality and all personality.
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Reality is proportional to its divine or divinity
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relationships. And what does that mean?
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Well, in one way it expresses that because we're all socially
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obligated to serve one another, my liberty must coincide with
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your liberty. We must be fair with each other.
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We must have intellectual fairness, social forbearance,
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and moral duty. And it's in these circumstances
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when we treat each other with the same regard for, for
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example, the Golden Rule. That's where true liberty is not
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divorced from material justice, but is connected to material
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justice, intellectual fairness and social forbearance, moral
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duty, divine obligations and spiritual values.
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And true liberty is expressive of these things when it's
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connected to our divine relationships, our cosmic
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obligations to be good people, to be good going on.
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It says unbridled self will and unregulated self-expression
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equal unmitigated selfishness, the Acme of ungodliness.
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Liberty without the associated and ever increasing conquest of
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the self is a figment of egoistic mortal imagination.
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Self motivated liberty is a conceptual illusion, a cruel
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deception. License masquerading in the
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garments of liberty is the forerunner of abject bondage.
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They're pretty harsh about that. True liberty is the associate of
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genuine self respect. False liberty is the consort of
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self admiration. True liberty is the fruit of
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self-control, False liberty, the assumption of self assertion.
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self-control leads to altruistic service.
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Self admiration tends toward the exploitation of others for the
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selfish aggrandizement of such mistaken individual as is
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willing to sacrifice righteous attainment for the sake of
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possessing unjust power over his fellow beings.
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Even wisdom is divine and safe only when it is cosmic in scope
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and spiritual in motivation. Lucifer's folly was the attempt
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to do the non doable to short circuit time in an experiential
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universe. Lucifer's crime was the
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attempted creative disenfranchisement of every
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personality in his domain. And he of course, was a system
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sovereign, so he governed what was then 600 or so planets just
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like ours, many of whom fell into rebellion.
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Many of Lucifer's followers, including the angels and
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certainly Satan and later Calagastia, had convinced all of
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these people that the liberty they saw, it was self assertion,
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not the liberty that was coming from the authority of Michael.
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He saw that as not freedom, he asserted.
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Lucifer asserted that true freedom was doing what you want
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to do, not what others are telling you to do.
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Does it sound familiar? So it writes that Lucifer's
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crime was the attempted creative disenfranchisement of every
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personality, the unrecognized abridgment of the creature's
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personal participation, free will participation in the long
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evolutionary struggle to attain the status of light and life
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both individually and collectively.
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In doing so, this one time sovereign of your system set the
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temporal purpose of his own will directly athwart the eternal
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purposes of God's will as it is revealed in the bestowal of free
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will upon all personal creatures going back to we are endowed by
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our Creator. The Lucifer rebellion thus
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threatened the maximum possible infringement of the free will
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choice of the Ascenders and the servers of the system of his
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domain, Satania. A threat for evermore to deprive
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every one of these beings in the thrilling experience of
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contributing something personal and unique to the slowly
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erecting monument of experiential wisdom which will
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someday exist as the perfected system of Satania.
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This includes all of the world's coming to that future, a state
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of light and life where we truly, you know, have our own
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self-control. Think about the Melchizedeks.
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They're one of the few orders of sonship that they are completely
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self regulatory. They do not answer to anyone
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else save Michael. And why is that?
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Because they're responsible with their liberty.
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They're not haphazard. And I would submit that we,
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because of the urantial revelation, have a way of
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introducing to people the idea, the notion that this isn't just
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one world in, in a sea of stars. We are part of a greater
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reality. We are part of a living system,
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and we are all endowed by the same creator to have and possess
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free will. Discernment.
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That's the secret to progress developing our sense of moral
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discernment. You know, they say that only a
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moral person could be morally indignated by seeing an immoral
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act. But when we get to that point
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where we're not even bothered by immoral behavior, that's when
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the danger comes. Sin must be redefined as
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deliberate disloyalty to deity. There are degrees of loyalty,
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the partial loyalty of indecision, the divided loyalty
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of confliction, the dying loyalty of indifference, and the
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death of loyalty exhibited in the devotion to godless ideals.
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So that becomes the question and the challenge for modern man.
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Can he control himself? Can he control his urges, his
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materialistic tendencies? Can he truly rise to the
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occasion and live up to the expectations that God gives us
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by giving us free will and moral discernment?
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And I guess that would be our lesson for today on the subject
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of liberty and the different kinds of liberty.
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And I hope that you got something from it and it gives
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you something to think about as we all sort of collectively
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celebrate our independence this week.
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Hope you'll join me again soon. I've got a great topic.
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We're going to talk about something quite intriguing in
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the next episode of the Urantia Radio Podcast.
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Don't forget, you can always reach out to me,
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urantiabookradio@gmail.com. And yet, there's also a comment
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section on the website urantiaradio.net.
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Until the next time, thank you again for stopping by
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the the.