Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Tom Hughes & Craig Clark: God’s Eternal Plan, Prophecy, And Purpose

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Tom Hughes & Craig Clark: God’s Eternal Plan, Prophecy, And Purpose · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

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Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
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defending biblical Christianity.
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No topic off limits.
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And now, here's your host, David Firazzo.
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Welcome friends, family and Christ.
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Thank you so much for tuning in.
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Another very important book we're going to be talking about today and the topic that's
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so important, not only the Bible, but Israel, of course.
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The book is called Israel's Place in God's Eternal Plan.
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And it's written by Tom Hughes, Pastor Tom Hughes, and Craig Clarke, who works with Tom,
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and that's at hopeforourtimes.com, hopeforourtimes.com, I want to bring them both in right now and introduce
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these gentlemen.
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Thank you guys so much for your time today.
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You bet.
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Thanks for having us on, David.
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Great to be back.
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Well, Tom, good to see you again, and Craig, this is your first time on, but you helped
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Tom with this book, and I would love for you just to share a little bit about how you started
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working together and maybe a little bit about your background at the church, whatever
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you'd like to share to get our audience a little bit more familiar with you.
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Well, thank you very much for having us.
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It's a blessing to do ministry with you and beyond your program.
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And I've been working with Pastor Tom since, I think, 2011.
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So I've served underneath him, and in different aspects, and now I'm just really excited to
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be at hopeforourtimes and to see how the Lord is using hopeforourtimes to reach people
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with the hope that has found only in Jesus Christ, and I'm able to serve in a few different
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ways here, and I'm able to help with the website, help with the production, and I've helped
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with this book, and it was Pastor Tom's vision to use this book to teach the church about
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what is, what the Bible really says about Israel, and as you know, as Pastor Tom won those
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Israel's under attack right now, not just by the world, but also in the church itself.
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Now, that's one of the biggest problems is the biblical illiteracy and the declining
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biblical worldview.
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It's just, it's sad, I guess Pastor Tom may be not surprising, maybe could you address
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that briefly, that's part of the problem, and part of the need that why we have books
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like this come out that the body of Christ needs to understand the Word of God and what
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it teaches regarding Israel.
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Go ahead.
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Yeah.
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In fact, the body of Christ just needs to know what the Bible teaches period, and I've spoken
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in conferences for years, and a senior pastor for a couple of decades, and formerly I was
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on staff at Great Laurie's Church as a pastor, and so I've been a ministry for a long time,
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but if we go back David, say, 30 years, I know you remember the days when men would graduate
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from seminaries, and they were told, hey, send out some kind of survey into the neighborhood
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that you want to go, or the city where you want to go plan a church, and find out what
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the people want.
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Chance, they go there, and they would start planting churches based upon what the people
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want.
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And it's such a reminder, 2 Timothy chapter 4, where the people will no longer put up
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a sound doctrine, and Paul there, he's writing about church people.
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They will no longer put up a sound doctrine.
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In other words, they won't put up with the truth of the Bible, not endure sound doctrine.
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Instead, they'll raise up for themselves teachers that make them feel good.
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It's their ears, they won't bring in the truth, but they will bring in fables and stories
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to make you feel good.
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So this is where we are, and the problem in the church is that we have gotten away from
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not just the Old Testament, but so much of the New Testament also, and everything has been
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brought into, let's do a series on relationships, let's do a series on how to have your finances
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together at home, and they'll bring in a Bible verse here or Bible verse there, and
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that's about it.
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That is not Bible teaching, and I'll tell you something else I've seen, David.
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In prophecy conferences, even the lack of Bible knowledge is challenging.
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One of your other guests you've had on frequently, Pastor Brandon Holdhouse, were very good friends,
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and we have both commented on this.
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It is getting embarrassing sometimes in realizing people, you go to a Bible prophecy conference
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where people should have Bible prophecy figure out nation of Israel, and they don't.
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So the goal is to help just teach people what the Bible actually says, and this book that
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we have out right now is part of our new series, is Bible prophecy made easy.
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So we have a second one coming out in a few more months, and it's to help people be
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educating, go, that's what the Bible says, I'm sure you've seen it, David.
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Most Christians that support Israel have one verse they can quote, Genesis chapter 12,
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verse 3, bless those who bless the Elkerson, who curses you, and they can't get beyond
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that.
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I won't necessarily fault them, but I will fault the teachers, that they're not being taught
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these things.
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And I mean, the Bible has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of scriptures regarding Israel
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in the past, in the present, and even in the future, and so it's getting it into the
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place.
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And I'm sure you remember this, David.
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Remember, J. Verna McGee, he used to say you got to get the cookies off the shelf where
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the kiddos can get them.
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And that's where it is.
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If you make it too high, theologically, the majority of people can't get it, but you
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bring the Bible to the place where God intended it to be, and people go, I get it, and then
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they can enjoy it, and they start to, they'll start to connect.
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So Pastor Craig, could you speak to this, I used to live in Southern California, I was
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out there for 17 years, and I'll never forget when I learned some of the history of the
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crystal cathedral.
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I think it was Robert Schuler who went door to door, like what you were saying, and asked
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people what they wanted, or what kind of church would you go to?
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And I'm thinking, oh my goodness, what a recipe for disaster.
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Not what the Bible teaches, what they need to know, but it's what would they want.
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Of course, they want the world, right?
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And that's the mega church movement ballooned in the 70s going into the 80s and the 90s,
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the emergent church, I know we're getting a slightly off topic, but it's very important
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to understand what the problem is within the church in America.
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Craig, could you speak to that?
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I think one of the biggest problems that we have in the church in America is people want
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to be comfortable, but you don't want to, like Pastor Tom says, from scripture says,
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to endure sound doctrine, enduring takes effort, correct?
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It doesn't just happen, and you're just not comfortable.
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So we want to be comfortable in our lives and the word of God is not necessarily comfortable
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because it calls us out onto the carpet of ways that we need to improve, of things that
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we are doing incorrectly.
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And so if you can go to a big building, you can check your box for Sunday morning.
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I went to church.
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I did good stuff.
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I heard something that made me feel happy inside.
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I felt joyful.
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Okay, so you've checked the box, but have you grown?
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Are you more like Christ, which is what a Christian is called to be, is to be Christ-like?
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And we know that Christ's life was not easy.
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We know that Jesus went through different things that were very difficult, and why should
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we expect anything different, especially at church if we're called to grow, if we're
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called to endure sound doctrine.
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That means it's going to be a little uncomfortable, and we have to be okay with that.
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We have to be able to endure that with Jesus and know that the end goal is to be more like
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Him.
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Yeah, deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me, and things like Jesus said.
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Not very popular, but you know what, that's the Christian life.
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It is sacrifice.
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It is discipline, it, but you know, what do we get?
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We get an amazing hope.
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We get salvation.
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We get assurance that the rest of the world can't even fathom in most other religions,
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if not every other religion.
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They don't have that assurance.
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Pastor Tom, would you care to speak to that aspect?
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Yeah, when we look at that, not enduring, just a few verses before that, in the same book,
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Second Timothy, Paul writes and he gives the characteristics of the people, mainly the
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characteristics of what's happening in the church.
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People will be lovers of themselves rather than lovers of God.
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Then as you go through there, Paul says, evil men and imposter will get worse and worse.
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Ultimately, the connection is with those who are actually leading God's church, and
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then he says, however, those all who desire to live God be in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.
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But he concludes after that and says, however, you, you who are believers, continue in that
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which you know, which is the truth of the world, because this is only going to get more and
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more like that.
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David, we have the responsibility and you do an outstanding job with your program.
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We have the responsibility, God's given us the ability to be able to communicate the truth
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to the world.
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Some people will receive it.
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As we know now, we can see comments on social media.
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A lot of people won't, but we aren't called to have people like us on social media.
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Thank you.
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We are called to deliver the truth.
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I just spoke with another guest recently about that very issue and he was getting pressure
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from others and we tend to be censored or shadow banned about certain things we talk about.
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But I said, you know, brother, what does it come down to?
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And I think it's obedience and standing on the truth of God's word.
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What do the disciples say when they were told not to speak in the name of Jesus?
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We must obey God rather than man.
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And I know it might not be popular even within the church, some of these issues, but we've
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got to keep speaking to it.
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As before we continue, is hope for our times.com the best place to get this book.
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Yes.
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So if they go there, what they will get right now, and this book is just through a donation
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only, right?
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So it's not in our store.
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And what they'll get is an ebook and it'll be audio.
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It'll also be they can upload it onto a tablet, for example, or they can just do the PDF.
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And that's if they make a donation, they will get that.
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We have, David, we don't have many in print.
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We just have a few print in print to show people.
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We hope in the future to be able to print out enough of them and to be able to send the
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printed copy out to, but right now they will get the ebook as a donation.
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Okay.
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So you mentioned Genesis 12, 3 and there are so many other scriptures.
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What else?
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I know there's, you had to condense it and decide what to write about, to keep in and
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what to maybe leave out.
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That must have been difficult, but Craig, what are some other scriptures or topics related
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to either Israel, the Old Testament, world history, anti-Semitism?
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What else from your book would you like to highlight real quick?
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Definitely Jerusalem, because that is the bulls eye right now is Jerusalem and especially
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into the temple mount area itself.
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And we see that Jerusalem is a thorn, right, is a sticking place for people.
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And why is that?
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Well, in scripture it says that it's the future seat of the Messiah, right?
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Jesus himself is going to come back and sit in Jerusalem and rule over the world.
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So if Satan, if the enemy of our souls can disrupt that in his plan and his, in his
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mental thinking, if he can, if he can, if he can disrupt that, then Messiah is not going
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to come back.
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We know that's not true, but that's his goal, that's his thinking.
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So we talk about that in the book of the importance of Jerusalem.
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Why is Jerusalem important to Bible prophecy?
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Why is Jerusalem important to Israel itself?
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Pastor Tom also went into the spiritual battle that we all deal with.
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And it's an attack on Israel as a spiritual attack against Bible believing Christians
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as well because it's trying to prove that what we believe is false and that what we believe
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is not true.
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So it would shake our, it would shake some people's faith and some people's relationship.
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And so we address that through scriptures as well.
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And we know that we're in a spiritual battle right now.
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And how do we, how do we counteract that spiritual battle is with scripture?
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And this book is just filled with scriptures from front to back proving why Israel matters
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to God.
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So it is a spiritual battle at its root.
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And that means if we look into world history, I'm sure you guys get into Islam coming against
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Israel or anti-Semitism, I know you probably touched on, but do you speak about Islam and
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what do you address there, Tom?
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Not in this book we talk.
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What I wanted to do was just really it is Bible prophecy made easy.
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So I do deal with, or we do deal with anti-Semitism in it, but it's not pointing out groups.
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I'm hoping that some of you whose Muslim will take the book and read it because it's
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pretty, it's straightforward, but it's really simple.
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And it's loaded with scripture and the scripture within context.
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So for example, chapter one, Israel is called to be a nation that is holy set apart to
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God.
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So you look at that purpose with Israel, you follow that through from its very beginning
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all the way to the end and you realize, oh, wait a minute, there is no Messiah if there
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is no Israel in understanding these different dynamics.
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The Messiah had to be Jewish.
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I mean, there's so many different things.
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And listen, Jesus isn't coming back if Israel isn't still here.
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And you start to understand everything within the context and begins to make sense.
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Another is Ezekiel chapter 36, pretty straightforward.
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God says, my name is on the covenant, therefore I'll bring you back into the land.
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Here's a strange thing that I think most people don't realize, probably most pastors
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don't realize it, is that a prerequisite for the last days is that Israel must be brought
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into the land before they repent.
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And because it's not until they are in the land that they end up turning to the Lord during
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the seven-year tribulation period, because I'm going to draw them back, Ezekiel 36, before
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they turn to me.
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So when people say, well, Israel is evil, how could you support them?
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Well, who is an evil?
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I mean, when you start looking at that, Israel seems to be singled out by the world at large
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and we know it's a spiritual battle.
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As Craig said, the enemy wants to keep Jesus from coming back, because ultimately when
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Jesus goes back, the enemy's retirement plan starts and he doesn't like that.
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He doesn't want his retirement and that's going to last forever and never to start.
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So, and he also, Genesis, or excuse me, Isaiah chapter 14, Lucifer says, I will ascend,
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I will be like the most high.
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This is Satan's attempt to do that, to make God a liar.
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And Israel is the target of making God a liar.
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It won't work.
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But many people believe that these things that are out there against Israel are true.
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So you mentioned Jesus as Jewish and this might be for most of our listeners and viewers
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I'm guessing, unless we have a lot of new viewers, that this is, you know, people,
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you go, yeah, of course, but yet there's propaganda out there and there's, the left is very
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good at deception.
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And the enemy, Satan is the father of lies, right?
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The author of confusion.
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So how do people get confused about the, the Jesus being a Palestinian or when we hear
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the refugee talk around Christmas time, you know, how do people fall for that and be, is
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that just getting away from scriptures, that ignorance of what the Bible teaches or
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about world history, about Palestine, Palestinians, could either one of you speak to that?
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Check, check, check, check, all of the above, it is complete ignorance of facts, whether
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it be secular facts or biblical facts, it's complete ignorance of it, you know, understanding
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how the term Palestine even came about.
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That was 100 years after Jesus, you know, almost all of your viewers have a Bible and
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in the back it says, Palestine at the time of Christ, most Bibles have that.
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Well, the maps are not inspired by God over this, the maps are not, there was no Palestine
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at the time of Christ.
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100 years later at the time of Hadrian and Roman rulers, when that name came about, and
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the very first people ever called Palestinian were actually the Jews living in the land
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of Israel in 135, 18 and that was an attempt to mock the Jews and humiliate them.
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And Hadrian did several other things, which we don't have time to get into right now in
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order to humiliate the Jews and eliminate the thought of the Jews and the Jewish God, including
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Yeshua Jesus forever.
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He wanted those names to be eliminated.
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Hadrian seemed to believe that the Jewish God may be real, so he tried to deal with that,
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very fascinating.
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Anyways, so when you look at it, so Bethlehem is now in what is called Palestinian territory,
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you and I, obviously we call it Judea and Samaria, the world calls it the West Bank, Palestinian
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territory.
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Therefore Jesus born in Bethlehem, he is Palestinian.
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Well, that's about as absurd as you can get, and it was Herod, what happened when you
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come around to the time of Christ when the wise men come from the east to worship him,
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who's born King of the what?
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King of the Jews.
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Herod said, Oh, there's a Jewish king.
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I have to eliminate not the Palestinian refugee, I have to eliminate this thought of this Jewish
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king.
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So what did he do?
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He has his troops go and slaughter all the Palestinian boys, two years old and younger.
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No, all the Jewish boys, two years old and younger in Bethlehem, while Jesus was taken
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by Mary Joseph and fled to Egypt for safety.
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So, but this whole thing, the concept is like, nevertheless, the majority of church people
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actually are believing these things that Jesus was Palestinian and a lot of it, David,
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I'm sure you've heard this before, people are get asked on the streets, I know Craig
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knows because we've talked about it, people are asking on the streets, well, Jesus, and
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they'll say something like, well, Jesus wasn't Jewish, he was Christian, and you're going
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what?
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And you're going, but I mean, people believe this kind of stuff, and you're like, wow,
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so when people are that dumbed down when it comes to history and the Bible, you know,
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if you don't have either of those, man can you manipulate the masses.
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Three, and the Bible are extremely important, hence, we have here in America the attempt
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to rewrite the history, we've seen that over and over again, and then take the Bible,
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and you rewrite the Bible simply by saying the Old Testament does not apply to us.
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When you see Israel in the New Testament, it doesn't mean Israel, it really means the
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church.
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You have just rewritten the Bible is what you have done.
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Boy, I'm so glad you explained all that again.
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I mean, maybe most of our viewers and listeners don't need a refresher on that, but some people
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say, oh, that's right, King Herod did go after, because he was like, Jesus was the King
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of the Jews.
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Anyway, I want to mention your YouTube channel, Hope For Our Times, guys, you can get all
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the videos there at Hope For Our Times, as well as, you know, in the website, HopeForOurTimes.com.
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So Craig, maybe you can speak to this.
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Let's take a little different direction here for a moment, and something I saw you guys
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put up on your Facebook page based on one of the today in prophecy.
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You had to make a correction recently, and I say this because discernment, I think that
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might be the word of the year for the church in 2026.
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I don't know, but one of the key issues that we've really got to be discerning, know the
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Bible, know the truth, but also discern and pray for wisdom and understand what's happening
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in our culture with technology.
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I've got Patrick Woods, 2026 forecast and talks about the advancement of AI.
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You guys had in one of the videos, I think it was a Muslim call to prayer, was it in New
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York City, and then you realized it was AI generated and maybe not authentic.
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But even though that is going on in some places, could Craig, would you speak to that, please?
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Yeah, definitely.
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It's amazing how far AI technology has come just in the recent, well, it's just say six
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months, even a year, and how easy it is for these things to look real and to look genuine.
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For us, we are in media all day long.
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On my side, I'm in the media with the team, media team, we're in it all day long, and we
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see these things all day long, and they're getting so good.
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It is so hard to, as you say, discern what is real and what is not real.
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We have to be so careful with that, and we can see it's just leading towards the path
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of where people will not believe sound doctrine, because they think it's fake, because you're
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going to go from believing everything is true to believing everything is fake, and we rely
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upon the Lord to reveal those things to us, and it's easy for us to get caught in seeing
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a video and thinking it's real when it's not, and that's what we do all day long.
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We talked also how easy is it going to be for the people at home that aren't in this
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all day long, to be deceived by those videos that are being uploaded constantly everywhere.
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So when Pastor Tom and Mitch and we need to pull this down, it's a good lesson for everybody.
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The viewers for us, it's okay, you get caught, but we need to admit to it and then continue
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to be diligent in that fact of not everything out there is real right now, and it's very
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easy to be deceiving.
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And yeah, this is a warning for all of us, I mean, and I've been telling our viewers here
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for a while, if they see some sort of video of me and even hear my voice saying things
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that are not biblical, that are something that I would probably never say that is the
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opposite of the biblical world view like you guys probably have warned your church, chances
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are that's AI or someone else created that video, people have done that against other
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ministries already, I've seen it, another warning for discernment, Tom, before we get
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back into Israel's place in God's eternal plan, could you please speak to this important
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issue as well?
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Yeah, so it was, unfortunately I chose to have that video in, and then it wasn't until
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later on when I realized, wait a minute, something doesn't feel right, you know, and so we
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were able to figure it out, you know, it takes Craig super early in the morning, I said,
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sorry about that, let's pull this thing down, and then we have to apologize, just want
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to tell people the truth, you know, so the next day on the news, we said, look, this
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would happen.
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I think if we are clear with people, letting them know even when we've been caught, that
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they'll get that.
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I was asked a question, I was speaking at the Eagle Forum just a few days ago, and a person
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came up to me afterwards, and asked this question, that it was the night before I did that newscast,
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and they said, with all of the fake videos out there, what can I do to be sure that I'm
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not fooled?
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I said, I'm going to tell you something, I have the same problem you do.
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I said, it's, I wish it would be just like, oh, you just do this, this, and you know,
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it's fake.
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It's getting harder and harder and harder.
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That was the night before that other one, I recorded another newsbreak, so we have to
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be much more careful, but it also is a reminder of the words of Jesus, where he says, in
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the tribulation, that the deception will be so great that if possible, even the elect
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would be deceived.
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So we are getting to this point where you could start riots for something by something
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that's fake, all different dynamics, and I believe it is coming.
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I have a couple of friends now in the prophecy world that have told me their words, where
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their faith was taken, their mouth, and everything, and exactly the opposite words were put
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into their mouth.
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I'm convinced that will be happening to me also.
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Obviously, I stand for Israel, and I even tell what it means to support Israel, what
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it doesn't mean.
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It doesn't mean everything Israel does, we say, is perfect, however, it's just a matter
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of time.
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And with you, David, too, I'm sure you're going to be faked also, but we got to be careful
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that we don't turn to the left or the right of this book, and that's what the Bible tells
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us.
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There's no other possible way that we will keep from being deceived if we are not in this
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book.
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And so what we see has to line up with this book.
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The problem is a lot of these fake videos will feed into the mind of the person that wants
26:03
their side or their ideology to be advanced, so they will promote it out there, even if
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they know it's fake.
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And so they will do it.
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Yeah.
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Oh, my goodness.
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The need for discernment cannot be overemphasized.
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Pastor Craig, share your final thoughts maybe on maybe a portion of the book Israel's place
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and God's eternal plan that you really want people to get or learn more about.
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I think a big thing right now is a question me and Pastor Tom both get quite often is
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well, what about the political side of Israel and so for us we're not we're not saying
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everything the political side of Israel does is correct, not everything that the political
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side that the United States does is correct and there's no perfect government.
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So for us it's obeying the word of God and supporting God's chosen people Israel and
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the Jews.
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That is what we're that is what we're supporting that is what we're putting all of our effort
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all of our time into is supporting them because that is what the Bible commands us to
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do not the political side of it.
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Amen.
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That's that needs to be emphasized as well because we aren't to blindly support everything
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but again, friends know what the Bible teaches discern and exciting times in 2026 who knows
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what's going to happen, right?
27:19
It went by fast as I knew it would with you guys.
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Thank you so much for all you do and thanks for your time again, friends.
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Hope for our times.com Tom Craig God bless you both and larger territory Lord willing
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we'll do this again in the near future.
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God bless you.
27:35
Thank you David.
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Try to stay warm and Wisconsin.
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Thank you.
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We'll do it.
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Thank you.
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Thanks brothers.
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All right, friends.
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Thank you for watching listening and sharing the podcast God bless you and as always keep
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speaking the truth about things that matter.