Welcome to the podcast that provides a biblical perspective on the hot topics from world events to relationships, to business, and more. It's the Big Picture Show with Timothy Fleming Jr. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Big Picture Podcast Show. This is the podcast that covers the topics that matter the most, providing you with a biblical perspective so that you can see the big picture.
I am your host, Timothy Fleming Jr., and yes, today is March the 25th, 2017, and I'm so glad to be back and so glad that you're tuning in today to hear what's on my heart today. A couple of things, of course, to talk about as far as the podcast is concerned. A lot of things going on. But before I jump into any world topics, any big headliners, and yes, there are a couple of things that I do want to address, I want to share something that's been on my heart with the listening audience today.
I want to just take a couple of minutes and talk to you about the importance of learning how to deal with rejection because this is one of those things that a lot of people wrestle with in their daily lives. Rejection can just hammer your growth. It can stop you, stifle you. It can prevent a lot of people from actually moving forward in their lives and cause a lot of people to get stuck in the past because they can't successfully process and deal with rejection when it comes.
And believe it or not, there are a lot of people who should be a lot further along in their lives, but they are stuck. God wants to bless them, but he's stuck because he can't bless you and lead you forward if your heart is harboring unforgiveness and bitterness, all of these things which are a result of your inability to deal with and process rejection in your life. Rejection comes, and it's gonna continue to come, but you have to learn how to deal with it. So I want to share a couple of words with you today.
If this isn't something that you're wrestling with, then don't tune me out because I can promise you that at some point in time in your life, it is gonna become a reality, but all of us have to deal with rejection. Rejection is when other people basically turn us down or they shun us. They may scorn us and disassociate themselves with us for whatever reason. And there can be many reasons for a person being rejected, but one thing that is undeniable is that the way rejection makes us feel, it makes us feel as if we are less important or we are not valuable in the eyes of certain people.
It makes us feel as if there is something wrong with us, as if we need to change something about ourselves. If I could just change who I am or change certain things about me, then maybe this person or that person will receive me. All of us are created by God to be social beings. We were created by God to interact and to socialize so no one can truly be happy while living on an island all alone.
We all need interaction, human interaction. There was a movie that came out years ago. You may remember Castaway starring Tom Hanks, and that movie just showed the desperation in the human soul to interact and connect with some other living, breathing entity, even if it's a non-human, how we can project on to inanimate objects human traits just so that we could establish connection with someone or something that reminds us, though, that it has some semblance of human interaction. In the movie, Tom Hanks, he was on an island all by himself, and the only thing that he had that he could communicate with was a soccer ball.
And he took the soccer ball and he took some grass and put it on the top of the ball and drew a face on the ball and gave the ball a name, and every day he would talk to that soccer ball. And the other movie that came out was starring Will Smith, I Am Legend. You know, also a movie where Will Smith did an incredible job in that movie, but here he is going, the whole city of New York is abandoned. There's nothing but zombies left who come out during the night.
And during the day, Smith's character, you know, he's traveling from store to store, going to music stores, and he's talking to mannequins, you know, and having conversations. And there was that classic scene when he went into the music store and talked to the female mannequin, and he genuinely expressed feelings of shyness and intimidation, afraid to step to the female mannequin. I mean, in his mind, this mannequin was not an object, it was a human being because we crave that. And when people reject you and push you off into a corner, they deprive you of an essential need that every human being has.
I don't care how spiritual you are, deep you are, how, you know, self-dependent you are. Look, all of us need someone. You can't be happy in life when you're living by yourself and you're all to yourself. Even introverted people look for at least one or two good people, friends or whatever, that they can communicate with because everyone needs someone.
But rejection, it deprives you of that critical, that need of that human interaction, and it makes you feel as if you need to change a lot of things about yourself. But I want to share this with you because a lot of people, when they experience rejection, they don't know how to deal with it. Number one, how do I deal with rejection? Number one, you have to understand where you are and where you're going in life.
Who you are, where you are, and where you're going in life. That, I mean, that is hands down the most important thing. Other than that, you will drown in the sea of emotional turmoil as a result of people always turning you down and rejecting you if you don't know who you are, where you are, and where you're going. You have to know who you are, where you are, and where you're going in life.
And these directives are not provided by you, by the way. They're provided by your creator, God himself. So I always tell people, it's so critically important that you really establish a relationship with the one individual that will never reject you as long as you come to him with a heart of sincerity and you repent. And that's God himself, and that's what Moses, I'm sorry, David wrote about in the 51st Psalm that, you know, God, he will never turn down a broken and contrite spirit.
David even wrote that when my mother and father reject me, God is always there for me. So God will never reject you as long as you come to him and you ask for his fellowship and you ask for his presence in your life and you're sincere about it, that Lord, I really do want you and I want to live for you. Then he'll come in. So these directives must be provided by him.
He has to give you an identity and give you a direction in life, give you a purpose in life. And you have to look to him for these things. That means you have to spend some time now, instead of trying to please and trying to suck up to certain individuals, you're gonna have to spend the time now during the soul searching. And that soul searching means you have to pursue the presence of God in your life.
You have to begin to seek after him and spend more time praying and less time playing and trying to play into what everybody else wants you to be. More time pursuing after God because you need to hear his voice and you need to receive from him. You're gonna have to go to your Bible study. You're gonna have to get in the Word.
You're gonna have to get around the people of God and get around the fire of God so that people can speak into your life as God gives them a rhema for your situation. You have to get in that kind of setting because that is what, the Word of God or rhema Word of God is essential to you as breath, oxygen is to your lungs. You can't live without it for long. You're gonna find yourself suffocating and eventually perishing mentally and emotionally if you don't get that direction from God in your life.
So rejection, that's the only way to really deal with it is to know, all right, this is what God wants. And when you have that understanding of, oh, I know where I'm going, now you can better accept and embrace the reality that some people may not be with you because they don't supposed to be with you. Some people may not be with you because they are not capable of going where you are going. You can better embrace that principle now that, well, everybody's just not cut out to go where I'm supposed to go.
If it's all about you, then yes, you become personally involved and personally upset when people don't do what you want them to do. But when it's about your mission in life, forget, you know, anybody's personal feelings and all of that stuff. It ain't even about my personal feelings. Look, if you ain't down for what God is trying to do in the season and in this hour in my life, then I'm sorry, you are not more important than the mission.
Notice that God even values his word above his name, David wrote in the book of Psalms. And what that means is that God is goal-oriented. He's always driven by a mission. He's always focused on a goal.
He's always focused on what needs to be done. It's not about your personal feelings. It's about what has to take place. And so when you learn how to put your purpose ahead of your personality and your personal feelings, then you can further assess the personality or the qualities of those that are in your inner circle.
And you can determine, well, this person here, maybe I shouldn't get too close to them because they don't complement my purpose. You know, there was a passage where Jesus was telling his disciples. He told Talked about how he was in the Baptist church, and I'm Baptist, just to be honest, so I understand the Baptist doctrine, the denomination over the beliefs, and all of that. I know, I used to go to the Baptist conventions and everything.
So a lot of people in the Baptist church are very bound to tradition, and yeah, I'll be the first to admit that. A lot of them don't want to accept the anointing of women preachers. That's when you had the big split between the Baptists and full gospel Baptists, because there are people that wanted to branch out and. You'll find some good and bad in pretty much every church you go to.
No perfect people anywhere, but there are certain hindrances and strongholds that I know personally reside within the Baptist denomination, but Andrew Womack was talking about how being in a Baptist church, he got filled with the Holy Ghost, and then afterwards, all of his colleagues started speaking out against him, that we're Baptists, we don't do that. We don't speak in tongues. We don't believe in laying on hands. We don't believe in prophesying.
We don't have all of that stuff in our churches. Cut it out. And he said, everyone just started to turn on him. And he said one night, God spoke to him and this is what freed him.
He said he had a dream, and this was a divine dream, and that dream God showed him he was in a race. He saw himself in a race, like a track and field Olympic park, you know, the track, and he was running, and he was way ahead of the competition, way ahead of the competition, winning the race. But in the stands, there were many people in the stands, audience members, who were mocking him, jeering him, insulting him, shouting out rude things to him because they couldn't stand the fact that he was so far along in the race and they were criticizing him. And he said in the vision, he stopped running just to go into the stands and began to confront the crowd.
And he said while he was in the stands answering people's questions and trying to prove himself and trying to validate himself in the eyes of people and trying to deal with their criticism, the enemy started surpassing him. And in the vision, God spoke to him that you are winning the race. You will win the race as long as you don't stop to try to entertain the crowd and deal with their criticisms. And I thought that was profound.
I mean, that was incredible that you are where, some of you, some of you are where God wants you to be, but you're giving the enemy an advantage in your life because you're trying to answer your critics. You're trying to deal with all your critics and trying to prove something to them so that they will stop talking about you and start accepting who you are and what God is doing in your life. But while you're dealing with critics, guess what you're doing? You're losing time in the race.
And now the enemy is running. He's on the enemy is on the fourth lap and you're on the third lap. You were ahead of the enemy, but then you got distracted and went into the audience to try to deal with the voices of the critics. And now the enemy has surpassed you.
Put your eyes on the prize or put your eyes on the mission, on the purpose, and quit trying to deal with the folk that reject you and don't like you and don't want to receive you. Stay on course because that's all that really matters. Now, look, I'm going to cut to a quick commercial break. And after that commercial break, we're going to come back and I'm going to get into a couple of things that I want to talk about as far as some big events that are coming up or that are taking place in our world today.
Be back in a second. Hey, if you like what you're hearing on this podcast, there's more where that came from. Stay in touch by visiting my website at www.timothyflemingjr.com. There you will find blogs, videos, books offered by me, and more, so much more.
Also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and subscribe to my YouTube channel. Hey, let's stay in touch. Do you have a book you are trying to publish? Do you have a book inside of you that you feel you really need to write, but aren't sure where or how to begin?
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Again, I'm your host, Timothy Fleming Jr. And in this podcast, we shed light on the topics that matter the most so that you can get a big picture, so that you can see things through the lens of the Bible and see the big picture. It's been a minute since I've done my last podcast and talked about some world events, but I'm back now and I'm ready to jump into a couple of things. So let's look at a couple of things that are taking place today in the world.
The first thing, of course, everyone has been talking about and everyone knows about now is the terrorist attack that just took place in London. A man who was born and raised in London, I might add, became radicalized by Islamic groups and decided he was going to carry out jihad in essence in London. And he decided to get into a car and just run over several people on a bridge. And then he jumped out of the car and stabbed a London police officer to death before he was finally caught and killed by London authorities.
And it just goes to show, it speaks to the reality of the world that we live in today. You can't put a finger on terrorism and say, oh well, it only resides in this place or that place. At any point, in any time, in any place, a person can fall prey to the ideals and beliefs that have overcome many individuals who are carrying out such violence and evil in the land. See, an ideology is something that is not specific to a certain location.
An ideology is not something you can shoot with bullets. An ideology is a belief system and beliefs can be spread and shared, especially today in today's climate where if you want to get your beliefs out, all you have to do is just take the Twitter or take the Facebook. You can do a Facebook Live message and post your video online. And they even have certain platforms now where you can actually post a message and it not be traced.
In other words, no one knows the real origin or no one knows how to go back and find out where or who posted it or what have you. I mean, there are all kind of services out now. So it's so easy to get a message out and an ideology, like I said, is one of those. It's an invisible thing.
It's something that can be transmitted, passed from one person to the other through words. And it has so many platforms now where that could be done. So this individual was radicalized. Although he grew up in London, he was radicalized by Islamic terrorists and ended up carrying out his own brand of jihad right there in London.
And my heart goes out again to the families and the victims of the ones that were killed. But it just shows the need to be vigilant. And you can't be vigilant if you are also overcome by political correctness, which is designed for the specific purpose of deliberately blinding you to the reality of life. You can't be mentally vigilant if you're trying to be politically correct.
I'm sorry, but the truth hurts and it will hurt feelings because the truth uncovers things. It exposes things. And I like that Bible verse where Paul said, Study the Word of God so that you may show yourself approved, a workman needing not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. In other words, the truth.
And Paul also said the Bible or the Word of God is like a two-edged sword cutting down, even down to the soul and the spirit, discerning the very thoughts and intentions in a man's heart. So truth always exposes. It always uncovers. Political correctness is for the purpose of covering up and smoothing things out so that no one will be offended.
But I'm sorry, you just got to call an ace an ace and a spade a spade. And there's an evil ideology out there, an evil ideology that makes people believe that the only way to make it into heaven for sure is to go out and carry out merciless acts of violence against innocent people. There is an ideology out there, and it is a large part of the Islamic doctrine. I've read the Quran and I taught on the Quran and in what are known as the Post-Medina verses.
You have to go and study the Quran and get the history of the writing of the Quran and how everything came about. The Post-Medina verses Muhammad went very strongly into this area before and the pre-Medina verses he would even tell his adherents that if you need more information, turn to the book. He talked about the people of the book, meaning Christians. And he actually spoke positively of Christians and Jews in the pre-Medina verses.
Then all of a sudden in the Post-Medina verses, Muhammad is calling for the deaths of all infidels. And he's calling those that believe in the book and that believe that God has a son and things of this nature, infidels. And he's calling for the death and enslavement of people. So a lot of people don't even know the Quran itself.
Even those that claim to practice Islam aren't even familiar with what's written in the Quran. But you need to take the time out to become familiar with what is written. You know, oftentimes when people talk about subject matters like this that Hitler was a Christian. Number one, Hitler was not a Christian.
He was an occultist. Actually, Hitler was a Theosophist. Theosophy, which was developed by Helena P. Blavatsky, who was one of Hitler's role models.
He fell in love with her book, The Secret Doctrine, while locked up in Landsberg prison after that book was introduced to him by a colleague there. And Hitler took completely to the writings of Helena Blavatsky who taught that the Jews didn't have a soul, that the earth was hollow inside and that there were civilizations living on the inside of the earth. And Helena Blavatsky taught that Lucifer was God and that Lucifer was the true and living and benevolent God while God Jehovah was actually the villain in the divine narrative. I mean, she was a Luciferian and Hitler was a Luciferian.
He was an occultist. He was nowhere near a Christian. But, and I explained that, you know, it was Hitler who sent his men into the churches there to remove portraits of Christ and replace them with pictures of himself and to remove their Bibles out of their pews and replace them with Nazi Bibles, which was an abomination. It just transformed the word of God completely to promote the Fuhrer and the Nazi party.
So that's what you want to talk about a Christian organization. Well, what about the Catholic church? What about the Catholic church? Historically, the Pope passed a papal bull that for 800 years, it was illegal for a Christian to own a copy of a Bible by the decree of the Pope.
So why in the world would a Christian organization outlaw the reading of the Bible? It was so that the Popes and the bishops and the priests could brainwash the adherents of Catholicism into respecting and accepting the authority of the Pope, even above that of the word of God. Because if you don't know the Bible, you can't argue with the priests when they tell you to do something and claim that it is scriptural or it's a part of the will of God. So you forget that there were Protestants, millions of Protestants that were decapitated, buried alive, burned alive, strangled to death and tortured to death by Catholic authorities because they chose to worship the true and living God rather than worship the vicar of Christ, i.e.
the Pope, who thought of himself as being, in essence, Christ incarnate on the earth. So, no, no, we can go there all day long, but the bottom of the line is this. You can't find anywhere in the Bible where God commissions and God promotes violence and evil and terrorism, but you can find it all throughout the Quran. You can find it in other religious belief systems as well.
So that's one of the fundamental things, fundamental, oh, and by the way, the Quran husbands beat your wives. Well, just read Malachi, the second chapter, because in Malachi chapter two, God declares that he hates divorce and those that cover the spouse with the garment of violence. And he actually, in that entire chapter, complained against the priests because he said, I was a witness at how you mistreated the wife of your youth. And because you mistreated your wife, you cover my altar with your tears, but you are noticing that I'm ignoring every prayer that you pray.
So, and we can also read 1 Peter chapter three, husbands, honor your wives or your prayers will go unheard by God. And same thing with wives, to honor and obey your husbands, for this is good in the sight of God, pleasing in the eyes of God. So God created a system where everyone would respect each other, not a system where people would rule over each other with a sword. And that says something about the nature and character of God, by the way, in the scripture, is that God is not a tyrant.
He's not a dictator. Let me share something with you. The difference between a dictator and a benevolent, kind and wise leader is that when a kind and wise leader gives you an instruction to do something, they'll always give you an explanation as to why you should do it and reveal to you how their instruction is actually in alignment with your good. In other words, if you do this, it will be well with you in the end.
This is for your good. That's what a benevolent and wise and kind leader does. They'll tell you this is what you need to do, but they'll also provide for you an explanation. Do this, why?
Because, because, all right, for example, God in scripture gives instructions to the Israelites. Don't eat the unclean animals, unclean things. And he explains to us in scripture that these things are unclean. What does the word unclean mean?
It means profane or defiled, dirty, filthy. So he tells you, all right, the swine is unclean. Certain reptiles and things, don't eat these because they're unclean. Don't eat shellfish.
Why? Because he called it unclean. And he said, don't eat these things. So that's the explanation right there.
He uses the word unclean, meaning it's defiled, it's polluted, it's corrupt. It's dirty. It's not meant for your body. It will take us many years later to discover that pigs, number one, don't have sweat glands.
They can't sweat. So therefore, all of the toxins that they take into their bodies remain in their bodies. And I don't care how much you soak that pork in vinegar to try to get all the worms out, you will never get rid of all of those parasites and all of those worms because they are deeply entrenched inside of that pork. So you can't get rid of those parasites and worms.
It's an unclean, filthy animal that will eat anything. And Jews in Jesus' day and time, they would oftentimes use these pigs also as toilet stools, to put it that way, because the pigs would eat the waste. You know, you take care of your business and then you dump that waste into a pit and you just let the pigs go and eat it up. They eat anything.
Well, we'd also learned that shellfish, for example, oysters and, you know, oysters are water filters. That means all of the filthy water, all of the dirt and filth and the grime and the waste and species and stuff, it filters through the oyster and gets launched inside of the oyster. So when you're eating that shellfish, you're eating all of this filth and dirt and all of these things. The shrimp, for example, is a bottom feeder.
All it does is eat doodoo and waste the droppings that other fish let out. So, you know, basically don't eat shellfish because all you're doing is eating water filters and trash cans, underwater water filters and underwater trash cans. So God tells us, don't eat this. Why?
Because it's not meant for your body. It's dirty, unclean. You know, but a dictator, on the other hand, and I use that analogy there because some people, when they talk about God's Levitical prohibition against eating unclean animals, they try to spin it as if it's a religious mandate. Well, why did God say don't eat it?
Because he wants to control you through religion and religion is about brainwashing. No, God wanted to tell you that this ain't meant for your body because today there's an epidemic of shellfish poisoning as a result of the fact that by nature, shellfish carry a lot of toxins and poison in their system that is not meant for our bodies. So every time you eat shellfish, you're really taking a risk, a great risk, a health risk. I know you love it, but hey, God already told you what it is in the scripture.
So God will always give you an explanation. In scripture, God never forced anyone. He gave the Israelites the opportunity, do you want my laws in your life? Moses, Exodus chapter 20 stood there.
He had the 12 pillars representing the 12 tribes and he had the altar representing the presence of God and God gave them his terms of the agreement of the covenant. Here are my commandments. If you agree, then I will bless you and I will also curse you if you break my commandments. But first, before we even enter into this covenant, you have to agree to these terms.
So God never even imposed his terms on the Israelites after he delivered them from Israel. Joshua made that famous statement that you have a freedom in essence to do whatever you want to do. Choose you this day who you're going to serve. But as for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord.
Why? Because God's system was never one where a person imposed their will on anyone else. That was never God's system. That is not God's system.
First Peter, the fifth chapter, elders, do not lord over the flock, but be an example. Translated, don't try to dominate over God's people and try to threaten them and frighten them with, you know, if you don't do what I say, you're going to be cursed. That ain't biblical. That ain't biblical.
You don't have a right to lord over someone just because you're a pastor. No, as a pastor, you're supposed to lead by example and give them the freedom to choose whether or not they're going to respect the anointing on your life and follow your leadership. They have to be willing to choose. You cannot use your office as a pastor or shepherd, a bishop or whatever as a means to dominate over other people.
That is biblical. That is biblical. So if you look at God's model and his method in scripture, you don't see a dictator, but a dictator is someone that would just tell you, do what I say or else they provide no explanation. They're not focused on your wellbeing.
They're focused on their ego. Do what I say or else. And that's it. Dictators like to throw out that But not to the point, where we allow our allegiance to them to overtake our allegiance to God, and our obedience to them to conflict with God's word.
If they tell you to do something and it's not biblical, you not only have a right, you have an obligation and responsibility to say no, because that is not biblical. And not only do you have an obligation, but you have a right also, to choose whether or not you're gonna comply with a certain instruction. You have that right. Well if they tell you that if you don't obey me then I'm gonna put a curse on your life and your left pinky toe going to fall off, well they are not in the Word of God.
That's not biblical either. That's not even spiritual, because even the prophet Balaam discovered you can't curse what God has blessed. So, certain things, you have to understand the rules and the dynamics of how this thing works, and the extreme submission doctrine is something that is not biblical. You are supposed to obey authorities, even civil authorities, according to Romans chapter 13.
But if that civil authority tells you to do something that conflicts with God's natural laws and the Word of God, then you are to disobey that civil authority. You know, I was looking the other night at a documentary, it came on HBO, and it was a documentary about the Syrian crisis, the civil war in Syria. I forgot the name of it, but it's been aired on HBO. And I was just looking at the horrific crimes of the Assad regime, and the evil that he has been carrying out against the innocent citizens of Syria.
No wonder so many people are trying to get out of there. I mean, you got millions that are trapped there, and they are desperately trying to get out right now, because Assad is just another Hitler. But I was looking at the documentary, this guy used chemicals, chemical warfare against his own people. This guy's regime will go and arrest little children 10 and 11 years old and beat them to death, torture them to death.
I mean, you would see some of them with holes in their faces, or their bodies burned and charred, you know, raping men and women in front of their loved ones, beating them to death, dismembering and cutting people up. All because these people wanted to exercise a fundamental right, which is the right of free speech, the right to be able to speak. If you don't like what the government is doing, you should have the right to voice your opinion without fear of being arrested and tortured to death for it. But I was looking at that, and I was looking at the torture that the Assad regime was inflicting on the people there in Syria.
And the thought that went across my mind was, I wonder what the torturers, what the soldiers in Assad's army really think and feel while carrying out these acts. And I know that they are under orders by their commanders, but I wonder, do any of them have a crisis of conscience? Hold up, you want me to torture my own people. I can't do that.
I can't sit here and rape a woman or bash a little baby's head in against the wall. I can't do that. You know, and it was encouraging to see a lot of the military personnel in that regime come out on camera and say, I denounce this army and I denounce every order and say that I'm not a part of this. But still, for the ones that remain and continue to be a part of it, you just wonder.
I mean, what are they thinking? What are they thinking? Because if I'm a Marine, if I am in the United States military, I'm either Army or I'm in the Marine or the Air Force, and I'm given an instruction by my superior, and I'm being told that I am to shoot to kill any American citizen on the street after dark, after 6 PM. Or I'm being given the instruction to arrest and detain any American citizen who says something negative about the president online, or even in person somewhere.
And to arrest them and to take them to a secret facility where special interrogation tactics will be used, i.e. torture will be used against them. You know what? That's just gonna have to be one of those orders.
You know what? That's gonna have to be one of those orders I'm just gonna have to defy. I'm just gonna have to stand against it, defy it and say, I'm sorry, when I'm given the instruction to move out, march, go ahead and proceed, I'm sorry, I can't do that. Because there are certain things that people will ask you to do that conflicts with God's natural laws.
You know, I explain this when people get up and say, look, you're supposed to obey your parents so you won't live long. And I said, all right, so let's put this in proper context here. What about a man, and I literally do know an individual who was like this, a man who tells his 12 year old little daughter and his wife, by the way, that I want y'all to get out on the streets and work these streets because y'all working for me and this is how we're paying bills. He beat his wife and sexually molested his daughter and then turned around and prostituted them.
Now you're telling that 12 year old little girl that she is supposed to obey her father in the Lord so that her days may be long. No, if she keep obeying her dad, her days won't be long because she's gonna run into the wrong somebody who'll end up taking her out. So you cannot tell that that boy who is working hard and whose mother tells him to go and shoplift or go and sell drugs just to support her habit. You can't tell him that he's supposed to obey his parents in the Lord, obey his mama.
No, these commandments of God work within a certain context. Within a certain context. And that context being that if someone instructs you to do something, but it's within the legal realm of what, the context is when God instructs you to do something, but it's within the legal realm of what God considers to be a right and in alignment with his natural laws. Okay, it works now.
But when you take it outside of the right context, it can't apply. You can't obey a parent that instructs you to go out and commit sin. If that be the case, then there's no indictment against the children who grew up in the Jim Crow era and who obeyed their parents who were teaching them to be racist. You know, fathers that taught their sons to use the N word.
Daughters that, mothers that taught their daughters to use the N word. Fathers that trained their sons to go and lynch and rape and murder blacks and other ethnic groups. What are you gonna say about that? You know, on the flip side of this whole argument is the scripture in Exodus where God says, look, have no other God beside me for I'm a jealous God visiting the iniquities of the fathers even down to the third and fourth generations of them that hate me.
And what he means in that scripture is that there are certain parents, there are certain cultures that actually train their children to operate in hate. That train their children to operate in godlessness. And so as the children follow after the examples of these ungodly parents, those children set themselves up to experience the same wrath that God has set aside for the parents. And that's what Ezekiel chapter 18 is speaking of.
That if the father sins and the son does right, the father will perish and the son will be blessed by God. But if the father does right and the son sins, then the father will be blessed and the son will perish. No man is responsible for another man's sins. But if you're not wise, you'll listen to people who tell you to do the wrong thing and actually follow the example and experience the same consequences that they experience.
That's not wisdom and that's not the will of God. So we have to get a correct understanding of the way submission works. The context, the biblical context with regards to submission. You know, I remember a couple of years ago when Obama, well, a couple of years, but it's just been one year.
But a couple of years ago during the Obama administration, when he was in office, Chris Rock, actor Chris Rock, comedian got up and he made a statement. He said that, look, when the president is kind of like dad and when dad tells you to do something, you have to do it. And I was like, look, man, you need to just stick with telling jokes and get out of this arena because, you know, don't don't talk and continue to show people how ignorant you are. And I hate to say it that way, but that was a very ignorant statement.
If the president is trying to impose something on the land that is ungodly, then the people have a right to raise their voice and object. People have a right to and people should. You should raise your voice and object to same sex marriage because it's called an abomination in Scripture. You should raise your voice and object to the government taking taxpayer dollars to finance and fund abortion and to send money to Planned Parenthood.
You should object to that. You have a right to and not just a right, but an obligation to do that, to object to it, to protest against it. Yeah, these are things that are ungodly and you need to stand up and stand against them. And the president is not dad.
He is an employee of the nation. The people put him in office and the people can take him out. An employee is not your dad. An employee works for you.
You don't work for that employee. So when people got the wrong idea and even if a person is your employer, they do not have the right to instruct you to do something that violates your conscience and violates your faith. I know that brings us to this sticky situation where we are today, where Today, liberalism pretty much just stands for rejection of biblical absolutes. So liberalism is rejecting God, rejecting his word.
You even have liberal theologians who claim to be teachers and preachers of the word of God, but they reject the notion that the Bible is literal truth, that the whole Bible is inspired by God. They want to pick and choose what portions of the Bible they think are inspired by God, if any. And they like to relegate everything down to allegory and metaphor as if nothing in the Bible should be interpreted literally. That is a liberal theologian.
So there are plenty of people that teach the Bible and even preach, and they really don't even have a relationship with God nor believe in the authority of the word of God. And here's a funny thing, some of them don't even believe in God, literally. Atheist priests and atheist bishops and atheist ministers. So, you know, that's a whole nother story and I can go into that on another podcast.
But there are a lot of people who, they hold this liberal view. So liberalism is about just trying to create an atmosphere where everyone gets what they want. There are no rules. There are no absolutes.
You want to remove the Bible so that there are no absolutes that tell people how they must live in a society. So that's what liberalism is all about. And that's the goal of a lot of the liberal politicians and the liberal crowd and these individuals who in their crazy, wacky world, there's no such thing as gender barriers. A boy can be a girl one day and then a boy the next day and go into the girl's locker room and then into the boy's locker room at the switch of a dime.
You know, in their crazy wacky world, there's no such thing as traditional marriage with one man and one woman. No, it could be a woman and a woman. It could be a woman and a woman and a man. It could be polyamory where you got a whole community of individuals, five guys and three women or or 10 women and eight men, and they're all married together.
I mean, who needs marriage anyway? That's that's the crazy wacky world of liberalism. Liberalism, it tries to reject every biblical absolutes, but it has nothing to replace them with. And that's the sad part.
That's the sad part. It has no solution, no answers, no, no, no real solutions. But all it does is complain about what God says. That's that's a liberal.
That's a liberal for you. So, you know, these individuals, they want to reject everything that comes out of the word of God, but they don't have any real solutions. So liberalism can't do it. Liberalism can't fill in that gap.
Liberalism can't keep the nation safe. Liberalism can't keep the nation sane. So like I said, these attacks are really just coming against Christians for the purpose of silencing the church and oppressing the Christian voice in this nation today. And this this whole argument here that a Christian shouldn't have the right to object to something on the basis of the biblical belief.
Well, that's just another tactic being used to kind of route this nation in the direction of criminalizing the Bible and Christian speech. You know, as if only Christians are are are discriminatory against other groups. But here's the thing. There has to be, like I said, a biblical where there has to be a foundation upon which all of our laws and belief systems are built upon.
And that foundation can't be liberalism. That foundation, it has to be the scripture. And I'm going to explain this to you and then then I'll move on. But let's look at, for example, when someone uses the argument that, well, you see, if we continue to tread down the path and let Christians discriminate against same sex couples and say, I'm not going to service a same sex marriage, then, you know, that's reminiscent of when the government wouldn't let blacks marry whites.
You know, those same discriminatory laws. Well, let's look at this. Let's look at this. All right.
The Bible, if the Bible is the foundation, then let's look at what the Bible says should be acceptable and unacceptable. Find me one verse in scripture where in a marriage between an African-American and a white Caucasian-American is illegal or unscriptural or sinful. Find that one verse. You won't find it in scripture because there's no such thing in scripture.
There's no such thing in scripture as as a white man and a black woman not being able to get into a relationship. In fact, you won't even find any verses in the Bible that justify race racism and racial views that were promoted. When I hear people get up and even they, and I told on this several times, someone came to me before and they asked me, well, Reverend, is it true that the Bible says God placed a curse on ham so that he would be subordinate to Japheth, the father of the white race? And I simply looked at the guy and I'm true story.
I looked at him and I could have gave him a clear answer. But instead I said, look, I want you to pick up your Bible and read it for yourself. I asked him, do you have a Bible? He said, yeah.
I said, now I want you to turn to that passage in Genesis and read what it says. He opened up the Bible and he read it. And I said, I want you to read it out loud because there's something about when you hear yourself say something, it kind of reinforces the idea in your spirit. So read it out loud so you can hear yourself saying the words.
And when he opened up the Bible, he read and said, and Noah said, cursed be Canaan. I said, stop right there that the Bible say God said curse be ham. He said no. But then he came back with a rebuttal.
But I heard a preacher. I said, forget what that preacher said. This does the Bible say. And God said, he said, no.
I said, read again what the Bible itself says. The Bible say and read it. All right. It says and Noah said, curse be Canaan again.
Does it does it say and God said, curse be him? No. Then how come the preacher said it? Because the preacher was counting on you being ignorant and not having a Bible so that you could validate that what he was saying was scriptural or unscriptural.
And that's how it happens. People sit back and they claim or where the Bible say that. Oh, really? Show me in the Bible where it says that they can't show you, show you.
You know why? They never read the Bible. They don't read the Bible. You know, this ain't got nothing to do with race because Obama stood up and did the same thing.
I talked about that in the earlier podcast where he got up and criticized the Bible in his speech in 2007, asking what portions of scripture should affect policy. Should we take the part that says slavery is OK, but eating shellfish is an abomination or the part that says stone your child if they stray from the faith. And I was like, are you serious? The Bible never said eating shellfish is an abomination and it never endorsed slavery.
In scripture, you had indentured servitude because if you read Exodus, it tells you that if any man kidnaps another or if any man purchases someone that had been kidnapped, they ought to be killed. So according to scripture, every slave master, slave trader, slave owner was to be stoned to death. Read your Bible, actually read it and quit talking about stuff that you don't know. You know, so I told the guy, I said, look, you read it and tell me what it says.
And when he read it and I said, look, this ain't Noah said curse be Canaan. And might I add a half drunk Noah just coming off of a hangover on top of that because he was drunk the night before, which is why him went into his tent and covered him up. And then he got angry and came out of his drunken stupor and decided to curse Canaan. So read the text.
Actually read the text. You will not find anywhere in scripture where there is any reference to racial superiority because all three of Noah's descendants, Ham, Shem and Japheth came from his loins. And they were all brothers. In fact, here's a here's a bit of irony here.
If, if, if Noah or God in that text had it, even though it's not even in the text, it's not even the word. But if God had a place to curse on ham that he would forever serve Japheth, the final father of the Caucasian races, you know, his descendants moved north and occupied and you know, you got Magog and all of these individuals who his descendants and those are, you know, they gave birth to Russian provinces and, you know, went up in Europe. If, for example, that God had a place to curse on ham, the who's descendants went into Africa and so on and so forth, then explain how ham's son Cush could give birth. And Cush basically means to be sun kissed a man whose skin complexion was dark.
He was black. Explain how in the world Cush could give birth to a boy named Nimrod and Nimrod would become the first global dictator ruling over the descendants of Japheth and Shem. Explain that, Sherlock. It's because in scripture there was no such curse placed on ham or Japheth or any of these individuals.
That was, that's not even biblical. So actually read your Bible, read your Bible and you will find that there was no racial reference to racial superiority or racial division. You will find a passage where Moses's brother and sister spoke out against him because he married an Ethiopian woman, but Moses was raised in Egypt, born and raised in Egypt. So there was no issue to in other words, to discriminate against in essence is just really to determine that this is unacceptable and I will not participate or partake in it.
You need to oppose human trafficking. You need to oppose drug dealing, dope dealing, and all of this stuff, you know, this stuff that's destroying our streets. You need to oppose violent gangs coming into the neighborhood trying to, you know, carry out acts of violence on you. You need to oppose pedophilia, you know, people who want, you know, you got these pedophile rings that are not just on the local level, I mean, even federally that have been going on for years.
You can read the Franklin diaries to find out more about what's going on, even in government. You need to oppose. You need to stand up against certain things. You know, in Europe, in Germany specifically, they have a law that discriminates, believe it or not.
It is a law on the books that makes it illegal for any German citizen to perform the Nazi salute, number one. And then there's another law that makes it illegal for any German citizen to even look at certain Nazi propaganda films and that even makes it illegal for German citizens to display swastikas. Well, that's discrimination. No, der Sherlock is necessary discrimination.
Why? Because when you look at what the Nazis did, they dragged Germany to hell in a handbasket. They tried to drag the whole world to hell in a handbasket. Hitler was nothing but an antichrist in the flesh.
So of course, you know, and I truly believe that something like that should be also implemented here in this country. And I know some folk may not like this, but I think that even the Confederate flag needs to be outlawed. After all, it is a flag that represents pro-slavery attitudes. It is a flag that was touted by the people that lost the Civil War in this country, which was a war for the soul of America.
That's my personal belief, that even that flag, that should also fall in the category of something that you should be able to discriminate or should discriminate against. I, as a black man, should not have to be forced, if I own a bakery, should be forced to have to create a cake that has a Confederate flag on it. I shouldn't have to be forced to bake a cake where the person requests that I draw a picture of a black sambo with a noose around his neck and put that on the cake. I have a right to say no.
Why then do I not have a right to say no to something that's an abomination? You see, you have to have the right foundation. In scripture, there's nothing in scripture that calls for discrimination against a person's ethnicity. But there is something in scripture that calls for discrimination against certain sexual preferences.
And contrary to what many people teach today, you are not born gay. You are not born a pedophile. You're not born a polygamist. You are not born as a person who is, whose proclivity is towards bestiality.
You're not born that way, but you can become conditioned to be that way. And you can fall in love with anything. You, you can develop a sexual attraction to inanimate objects. There are people right now, there's a woman right now, I believe it's in Minnesota, she had a literal wedding ceremony where she married her favorite roller coaster.
There's a woman in France right now who literally documented, got married to the Eiffel Tower. Tourists, I wouldn't touch that part of the Eiffel Tower if I were you. There's a woman right now who legally in Israel married a dolphin. The poor thing died shortly after they had their wedding ceremony.
There's a, there's a woman in India who married a piece of pottery. There's a man in China who married a cardboard cutout of himself. There's another man in China who married his favorite pillow. Oh my God.
You go and look every last one of these cases up and see if I'm not telling, see if I'm telling you the truth. All of them documented. A man married his favorite pillow, put a cutout of a face on it and married it, had a full wedding ceremony. He is legally married to his favorite pillow.
I would not sit on or sleep on that pillow if I were you. You know, you can fall, there, there, there are people that have sexual attractions to cars. There's a woman who in, in an article had a sexual attraction to her favorite tree in her parents' backyard. You can fall in love with anything.
You can be conditioned to love anything, which speaks to what Dr. Caroline Leaf talks about, neuroplasticity, that your mind can bend and mold and conform pretty much in any way that you want it to so that you can begin to think a certain way, perceive things a certain way, desire a certain thing. You have the right to, it's like your brain is like play-doh. You can mold it and shape it how you want to.
You can call certain synapses or certain neurological connections to really fire and certain branches to be developed within your brain that will lead or embolden or strengthen certain thought processes. You have that much power in your brain, that just through your brain, you can actually heal your body. They, they discovered that through the, the whole, uh, the whole concept of the goodness of the, the, the scientific experiment where you give someone a sugar pill, but you tell them it's a pill for a headache. They take that pill, not knowing it's just nothing but sugar, and they end up reporting, hey, my headache is gone.
The pill didn't heal you, your thoughts did. Your brain is that powerful. You can develop attractions and everything else and continue to cultivate these neurological pathways, continue to cultivate these brain processes and these thought processes. It can do that.
In the same way that you develop a same-sex attraction, you can reverse your brain and actually develop an attraction to the opposite sex. It's that powerful. You were not born that way, but you can become conditioned that way. So there are certain things that biblically, if you're standing on a biblical foundation, yeah, you're supposed to discriminate against because this is what God considers to be evil.
This is what God considers to be uh wicked. And in scripture, God will tell the Israelites repeatedly, do not follow after the pattern of the Canaanites. Do not do the things that they did in Leviticus 18. Do not make your children pass through the fire, which was to toss your child into an oven and bake them alive.
Do not engage in the sexual perversions of the Canaanites, for the land vomited them out because they were so vile. And if you do the same things they did, then you will face the same consequences and judgment, Leviticus 18. So yes, there are some things that you do need to oppose and stand against. Um, you know, but you have to have a biblical foundation and that foundation will let you know what should be considered acceptable and what should be deemed unacceptable in a society.
You know, I wish I could continue to go on, but I'm gonna go ahead and stop right here. I think I've pretty much given you a mouthful already, uh, just within this last hour and a half of, of really addressing uh a lot of issues from rejection to looking at the, the, the, the, uh, era of the extreme submission doctrine, uh, to looking at the need or the purpose of a biblical foundation in society. And these, these things being uh very important for all of us to grab a hold of. Look, if you're enjoying what, what you're hearing in this podcast, again, continue to tell others about it.
Go ahead and share it with somebody else. If you have any questions, uh, you can also uh send your email, your email questions um to, to our podcast show as well, and I'll be glad to answer those questions in any upcoming podcasts as well. Look, until next time, may God continue to bless you, continue to keep you. Again, watch yourself, be careful out there, uh, continue to trust in God and, and know that he got your back.
Until we speak again, peace.