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What is a church?
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It is not a building.
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It is the gathered people of God.
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When the shutdown took place, it impacted our ministry immensely.
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And we couldn't do it through a screen.
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We couldn't connect.
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When that can't happen, you're being asked to not be the church.
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I couldn't worship.
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The police came when we were having services because one of our neighbors called and complained about it.
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I didn't think we were violating anything this morning.
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When the church can't be the church, society suffers.
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Welcome to Worldview Matters.
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Discussing controversial issues.
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Discerning current events.
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Defending biblical Christianity.
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No topic.
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Off limits.
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And now, here's your host, David Fiorazzo.
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Hello, welcome friends, family in Christ.
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Thanks for tuning in to another episode.
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Very important topic, as you just heard.
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We're going to review a little history from what happens during an emergency in America where the government and church is involved.
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We may even talk again about the biggest lie, second biggest lie in America, the separation of church and state.
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Big lie.
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And we're going to talk about Wisconsin Family Council, what they're doing.
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We're going to answer the question that matters more than you think.
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When state emergencies were declared, where could we gather?
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So we're going to go back and revisit that.
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But first, before I bring in our guest today, I wrote a book in 2021 called Canceling Christianity.
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And I just want to read a little bit because we're going to revisit this topic today and talk about what happened.
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I wrote a chapter called, Did the Church Pass the COVID Test?
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Now, we know Romans 13 says we obey governing authorities.
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Does that mean unlimited submission to government?
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No.
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So I want to read something from Revelation 3 that we forget about, one of the churches in Asia Minor.
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Revelation 3, verse 1, I know your works.
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Jesus said, you have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.
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Wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God.
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Remember then what you have received and heard.
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Keep it and repent.
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And then he says, I will come against you if you will not wake up and repent.
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He's talking to the church.
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Now, most people know about the lukewarm church in Laodicea, Revelation 3.
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We're talking about a different church here, and we're talking about what happened in 2020, 2021, 2022.
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And let me read a little bit from this chapter.
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How did we respond—
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as Bible-believing Christians and churches in America.
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There's a remnant that said, no, we're going to stay open.
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Why?
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Because it says in Hebrews 10, 23 to 25, let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together.
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And I wrote...
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How did we respond?
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If we are being honest, we did not pass that test.
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Some pastors stayed the course.
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Overall, I think we caved.
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We all but surrendered our religious freedom under the guise of obeying those in authority.
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But does Scripture teach unlimited submission?
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If the Christian church in America is vital to the overall health of the nation, and if we have the answer to sin, man's greatest problem, why didn't we act like it?
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The virus also revealed what many of us already knew.
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The unbelieving world sees the church as non-essential.
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They told us by their words and by their actions and by their policies, and I want to bring in today's guest and talk more about this because there's a very important amendment you need to know about.
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I've got the president of Wisconsin Family Council, Daniel Degner, back with us.
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He's in studio.
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He's running all across the state.
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Busy, busy, busy every day.
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Brother, good to see you.
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Thanks for coming in.
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Yeah, thanks for having me.
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You've been here before, but I'm thankful you took the time now because we've got major midterms coming up, and you're doing some great work.
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So let's start by that opening clip we played of the pastors.
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That was in Fond du Lac, a church in Wisconsin.
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For those of you that are across the country, there's churches in every state that did not bow the knee.
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to government saying, shut down, you're not important.
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When Planned Parenthood was open, you know, Home Depot was open, you could go and buy pot in states where it's legal, like Colorado.
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But churches, no, you've got to shut down.
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Tell us about that video, those pastors, and what you guys are doing, and we'll talk more about this.
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Yeah, and we have a website called freedomtoworship.org.
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That's freedomtoworship.org, where you can see our information.
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And we're doing an ad series.
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We are reaching and targeting 980,000 voters, talking about what the amendment is, what a yes vote means, what a no vote means.
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And with this, too, promoting this documentary, which you can find at that website, as well as our other website, our main one, wifamilycouncil.org.
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That again is WI family council.org.
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And what we saw, especially with these pastors, there's the one in Fond du Lac, one in West Bend.
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We shared their stories.
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I'll talk about the story out of West Bend.
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This pastor is a Lutheran pastor in his church.
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They said, well, under the edicts of governor Evers, we are allowed to have 10 people within our church service.
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Yeah.
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Well, so what happened during during covid is the Evers administration put out a frequently asked question survey document for police.
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And so in this, it said you could have up to 10 people for weddings and funerals, but it did not mention religious services.
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So neighbor calls in the police and says, hey, I see cars in the parking lot.
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And the police came in on Palm Sunday.
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And they said, nope, we are shutting this down.
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You cannot have 10 people in a sanctuary that fits 300 people.
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I've appreciated the pastor's heart with this.
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He doesn't blame the neighbor that called.
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He doesn't blame the police, but he blames the orders in the first place.
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It was those orders that caused this to happen.
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And as Christians, we believe in religious liberty.
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We believe uniquely that it's churches that ought to decide how we do worship.
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and not a bureaucrat in Madison.
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And so we are encouraging people around the state of Wisconsin to vote yes on this amendment.
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And maybe you're saying, hey, I live in another state that's not Wisconsin.
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Check your ballot.
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There's important amendments throughout the country that do impact faith issues and impact biblical worldview.
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And we would encourage you to see what's on your ballot as well as finding out how you can honor God with your vote in a way that affirms a biblical worldview.
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Thanks, Daniel.
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You're making this very easy for people.
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All they have to do is go to freedom2worship.org.
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We showed the website right on the homepage in plain language.
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A yes vote would add the proposed protection to the Wisconsin Constitution.
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A no vote would leave the Wisconsin Constitution unchanged.
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So let's just say...
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Uh, more people vote.
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No, I pray to God that's not going to happen, but let's just say that happens.
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So if the constitution, Wisconsin is unchanged, the state constitution, what happens during the next quote unquote emergency?
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Yeah.
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Well, if people don't know, and this does fail, there'll be no constitutional protection.
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And so here's one thing people will say sometimes, and again, good hearted people, people that agree with the same values that you and I agree with David.
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And they'll say, well, I don't believe government has the right to do this in the first place.
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So we don't need it.
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Well, unfortunately, what we saw in 2020 is we saw liberals did not care.
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They said, well, we're going to shut your church down anyway.
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There's a few groups that have opposed this.
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Some of you may have heard of a group called Freedom from Religion.
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Freedom from Religion opposes this.
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Legal Women Voters also opposes this.
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And they say this is the reason they gave was because if this passes, they're
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This will mean that government cannot prohibit the gathering of churches.
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Well, they agree with us that this is clearly a religious liberty issue, that we need to protect those churches' rights and those opportunities for them to decide where to gather and where to not or whether or not to.
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This is so important, friends.
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We've got a lot of things going on in Wisconsin, but I know you're watching from different places in the country.
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The midterms are huge.
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You've got to make sure that you get to the polls and try to encourage other people who profess to be Christians.
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I hope they truly are, but encourage them to go vote wherever you're at because I want to ask you about something I wasn't planning on asking, but I'm seeing a lot of polls.
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Mm-hmm.
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They're saying Democrats are going to overwhelmingly win.
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There's going to be a blue wave.
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And I'm not buying it.
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That may affect someone's decision to go to the polls and vote, and that's not the right answer.
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Could you share a little bit about that?
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Because I don't believe polls are ever accurate for the most part.
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Some are, but the majority of them, they're liberal.
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They're progressive.
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The Democrats probably...
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pad the polls.
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What are your thoughts on that?
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What they're, what we're looking at right now.
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Yeah.
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So Dave, that's a great question about polling.
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What I will say is in Wisconsin, we're, we're really unique.
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So nationally polling is looking like it's going to be a bluish wave this year.
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It does not look great nationally.
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If you look at polls, but Wisconsin is very interesting.
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It looks like it's going to be a very tight election.
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It looks like it's going to come down to 20,000, 30,000 votes.
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I talked to one, uh,
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Republican insider this week, he told me he thinks this election is going to come down to 5000 votes here in Wisconsin.
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But this is where I think it's important for us as Christians to look at what's on the ballot and be able to share with others.
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We did polling on our constitutional amendment, and we found for people that identify as very conservative, people who identify as evangelical, people who go to church weekly, when they became aware of this amendment, they're 50 percent or more likely to
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to go and cast a ballot.
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And so if you're in Wisconsin, if you fit those categories, share this amendment, share the website, freedom to worship.org with people, you know, and encourage them to vote.
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Because if this election does come down to 5,000 votes, it's going to make a huge difference.
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And not only here in Wisconsin, but across the nation, there is many important close elections that will determine the majority in the U.S. Senate.
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as well as the majority in the U.S. House.
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And it comes down to oftentimes are Christians voting or not?
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In 2022, we looked at our own internal numbers.
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We saw the attorney general race was decided by 33,000 votes.
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Why does that matter in 2022?
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Well, during that time in Wisconsin, we had a total ban on abortion, except for the life of the mother, signed off by two doctors.
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Well, after that election, the Democrat attorney general was elected and he said, you know what?
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Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, I'm not going to enforce this abortion ban.
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You can go off and perform abortions.
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Imagine if 33,000 Christians would have came out and voted that skip that election.
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How much different our state would be?
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What was even more concerning for us is we have membership lists of Christians.
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Now, this doesn't include every Christian in the state, but the people that are more of our insiders that are following state-level politics, we found that 7,902 of our own members did not vote in that election.
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We need to do everything we can with partners like you, partners that are listening, everyone to make sure we're inspiring and engaging Christians and asking them to honor God with their vote because policies really do matter and policies impact people.
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Amen.
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Friends, this is so important.
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We don't understand what, because we don't live in other countries, most countries around the world, they do not have freedom to worship and freedom to go vote and elect Christians, conservatives, people who will, you know, put forth godly legislation or good legislation.
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Before we talk about something you guys just unleashed this week, the docuseries
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who said, 32 million church-going Christians are unlikely to vote in this election.
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The last contest was decided by thousands of votes, not millions.
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This election is ours if...
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Christians will do their duty and vote to restrain evil.
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Now, a lot of people say that same thing.
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Seth Dillon just happened to put this out on social media.
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This quote was put out, actually by Terrence Williams, but Seth Dillon said this.
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So understand, look at that, 32 million?
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So the percentages, I've talked about this too.
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When you talk about Muslims, for example, I think it's over 80%, possibly over 90% of Muslims will vote.
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We're wondering why radicals and those who would promote Islam and Sharia law are getting elected.
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That conflicts with our Constitution in America, but they're getting elected.
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We wonder why.
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That voting bloc is active.
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So are the socialists or the Democrat socialists.
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They're good at rallying the base.
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So now let's move on, Daniel.
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Talk about your docuseries.
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Is it a three-part docuseries?
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And it's called Deemed Non-Essential When Wisconsin Locked the Church Doors.
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It's just...
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It's just still disappointing when I acknowledge what happened five years ago.
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Go ahead.
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Yeah, well, and one thing I just want to mention to my colleague or my predecessor, Julian Applin would often say this is sometimes liberals, she worries, care more about their worldview than we as Christians care about ours.
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Yeah.
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And one of the things I especially if you live in Wisconsin, it is so important to vote.
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And here's why I believe this.
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Right now, the lieutenant governor can't for the Republican Party.
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David Varnum, solid Christian, used to work for Dr. James Dobson, focused in the family, used to serve on our board.
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His whole life has been dedicated to Christian values in the public square.
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Do you know what secular conservative media outlets are saying and groups are saying is they came out and they said, you know what?
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David Varnum worked for Dr. James Dobson and Dr. James Dobson didn't support gay marriage in the 90s.
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And so, you know, if we lose this election, well, it's because we have Christians on the ballot.
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This is how essential and important it is for Christians to vote because we're not just voting for this election, but we're voting for the movement for generations to come.
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Because if they can go back and say, oh, well, you know, we had Christians on the ballot and Christians didn't vote.
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Well, let's have non-Christians.
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Let's have people that aren't going to affirm a biblical worldview on life, marriage, family.
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And if.
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We can flip the script, however, if Christians do come out and vote, and if that changes the election, we'll say, no, we need to have Christians on the ballot to motivate our base.
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Back to your question about the deemed not essential.
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Yes, this is a three part series where in their short series, you can watch the whole thing within an hour.
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And it just talks about the stories of this Lutheran church in West Bend, Pilgrim Lutheran Church, as well as Trinity Baptist Church in Fond du Lac.
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And so episode one goes with Trinity Baptist Church and talks about how they were shut down during 2020.
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Not only their church, but also the Christian school they had and how that negatively impacted the students and the families.
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And they even shared stories of how there was funerals that...
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The plan was, well, we'll have it once we can have it later because they were locked down during the COVID to not have those funerals.
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But those funerals never came.
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And I appreciate the pastor shared one thing where he said, you know, this is something we've seen now continually, even to 2026, where funerals are not happening, where they previously would have happened and people aren't able to grieve together.
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We also were able to see in the second episode where we go through the West Bend story and that West Bend pastor, I thought had a very interesting claim and statement that he had.
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And he was reflecting on the 25th anniversary of nine 11 and remembering nine 11.
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And he said, you know, during nine 11, during the emergency of nine 11, people went to church to gather and to pray.
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But during the emergency of 2020, people were forbid from gathering and praying.
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And what a huge dichotomy we see.
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We believe fundamentally that during emergencies, that's where people need Jesus more than ever before.
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During emergencies, people need to be able to come together to gather, to pray, to worship, and have unity in the cross.
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Exactly.
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Excellent point.
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Excellent point.
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So I want to talk about a pastor that you showed the docuseries to deem non-essential.
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But before we do that, there's another video you guys have on your website.
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This is at Wisconsin Family Council, wifamilycouncil.org.
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And Jeff, if you would play the question that matters more than you think, and we'll come back and talk about it.
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When state emergencies were declared in Wisconsin, places of worship were ordered closed and gatherings were restricted.
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While commercial retail and liquor stores stayed open, grieving families were kept apart at gravesides.
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This November, voters will decide on a referendum to amend the Wisconsin state constitution regarding religious assembly during emergencies.
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This November, voters will decide on a referendum to amend the Wisconsin state constitution regarding
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Here's what your vote means.
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A yes vote amends our state constitution to prohibit state and local officials from closing places of worship or forbidding gatherings during emergencies.
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A no vote maintains the current state constitution, leaving existing government emergency authorities unchanged.
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After choosing your candidates for office, look for the second referendum question on your ballot.
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Equip yourself with the facts and read the full amendment text at freedomtoworship.org before you cast your vote.
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Okay, that's what we were talking about, friends.
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And again, we gave the website early on in the podcast.
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I want to make sure you have it.
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FreedomToWorship.org.
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We don't want to revisit what happened five years ago.
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And there were just so many sad cases and stories, whether that be weddings, funerals, the death of a loved one, nursing homes, but in churches that shut down.
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When Planned Parenthood boldly said, I remember whoever was the CEO at the time said, no, we're not closing.
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And so nobody enforced laws.
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They stayed open.
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I wish churches would have had that backbone.
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I mean, 75% of the churches that did shut down, I pray that those pastors would have had the backbone.
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So let's go back to this docuseries now, Daniel.
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You said a pastor that you showed it to plans on showing the videos to his congregations.
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Why?
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Yeah, well, he thinks it's so important for his congregation not only to see, yes, we need to vote yes on this amendment, but to go back and understand what happened and what we truly went through.
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And especially as we look at this election, not just for the amendment, but we look at all these other races.
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This is critical.
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Wisconsin Family Action, our sister organization, will be launching an issue advocacy campaign next week to talk about the concerns we saw under Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley.
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David Crowley, when asked about these extension of these shutdowns, he said he absolutely agreed with Governor Evers doing this.
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And you know what's crazy to think of, and before you mentioned that five years ago, and some people say, well, COVID was six years ago, but no, it even was five years ago.
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So David Crowley, Milwaukee County in September of 2021 had an emergency order regarding covid in which he required all county employees to get covid vaccinated and to show their status.
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And this is even to the point where Democrat state representatives like Sylvia Valise Ortez said this was government overreach.
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And again, if people are wondering, well, does my vote matter?
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Does it have an impact?
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I'm telling you, if this amendment fails and if Christians don't come out and vote and we do see a David Crowley becoming the governor, his track record shows that he will have extensive orders during so-called states of emergency.
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Again, September 2021, most people weren't thinking about COVID.
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Most people were back to their normal lives for well over 12, 14, 16 months by that point.
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And he still had a state of emergency in Milwaukee County.
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I remember that lasted—it was just so sad, friends.
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But let's learn from history so we don't repeat it.
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Let's learn what happened when—and it was just a mental health issue.
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It became a mental health issue because so many people were isolated at home, not fellowshipping together, not going to church and encouraging one another, hearing the pastor in person and having worship together, which what we are called to do in Scripture—
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Let's remember that because, as you said, by the way, Daniel was mentioning a couple candidates that are running in Wisconsin.
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You're watching or listening from a different state in the country.
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You have candidates, too, that I want you to learn more about because you need to be able to tell other people, yeah, look at their track record.
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We know exactly how they would respond to, for example, the next emergency.
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And one more thing, they not only think the church is non-essential—
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the left, but it's more and more that they believe that we shouldn't even come out from behind church doors in the public square.
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That has been revealed.
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It's not only a belief that we should be silent about the gospel, about the biblical worldview, but now we better not be trying to do what God has called us to do.
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Right?
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Yeah, well, and I'll just give a couple stories.
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One of these stories is mentioned in the docuseries, but again, what did we see?
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We saw where pastors said, well, I go to the grocery store where I go to Walmart and I see people from my congregation, but they can't meet at church.
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Or, and this would never happen because they're a Baptist church, but, or you could go to the liquor store
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And you could see people, but you can't connect that church or like you mentioned other states that you had a pot and marijuana.
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These other issues here in Wisconsin.
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Here's an actual issue that we worked through.
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And it's not highly in the docuseries, but this is like September, October 2020.
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There's been enough time, all these different things.
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And what we saw at that point was there is a there was a Catholic priest who was ministering at a prison.
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He said, hey, I'm vaccinated.
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I'll double mask.
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I'll be six feet apart and I'll meet outside.
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Can I give sacraments to those that are in the prison?
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And what did the state of Wisconsin say?
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They said, nope, you can't because we're worried about COVID and that would cause COVID to spread.
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Meanwhile.
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They were allowing hairdressers and barbers to come in to cut the inmates hair.
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This is the sort of issues we see because, again, it had nothing to do with COVID, but it was, oh, well, we don't want the religious institutions to come in.
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We don't want the religious aspects.
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But oh, yes, of course, you need that haircut or you need that whatever those other things are where other groups come in.
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And again, I'm not Catholic and I hold an evangelical perspective, but if they can attack
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Catholics freedom to worship and they can go after their religious liberties.
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They for sure will go after ours.
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And to the left, I don't think it's necessarily a Catholic versus evangelical process.
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I think it's very clearly a anti-religious mode versus anyone who would call themselves in a Judeo-Christian religious worldview.
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No communion for you.
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That's pretty amazing, though.
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But I want to emphasize something you said earlier about Crowley.
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And this is one of our representatives, not representatives, but he's running, that he believed it was okay to force people to get vaccinated.
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A lot of people on the left believe that they hold that same view.
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They don't care about your privacy.
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They don't care about your physical autonomy.
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You can't say yes or no what happens to your body medically or whatever.
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They say, no, you need to be vaccinated and show me your papers.
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Where have we heard that before?
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Well, and so it's interesting, too.
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We have some of those different things.
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And I'll just share an example.
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This was a big news story that came out of Wisconsin just yesterday.
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So a reporter sitting down, David Crowley, just in a conversation like this.
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And she says, David Crowley, your opponent says you support abortion through birth.
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So he's coming out supporting a constitutional amendment that will offer abortion through birth.
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And keep in mind, a month ago, David Crowley came out and said, we should not have doctors performing abortions.
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There's a current law in Wisconsin says only doctors can perform abortions.
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He said we should get rid of that.
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That should be allowed for anyone to perform an abortion who wants to should be doctorally.
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So this conversation says, oh, no, I disagree with what's been said about me.
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The reporter, I appreciate she came back and said, OK, well.
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Well, what's the cutoff limit?
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And his response ironically was, well, that should be between a doctor and a patient to decide.
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But oh, but when it's your own bodily autonomy on vaccines, well, no, you should be forced to or wait a second.
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You shouldn't even have a doctor in the abortion room.
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But now we're saying, oh, well, we're just going to pivot here.
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And it goes back to the point that, David, you and I know and your viewers know we're not we're not stupid.
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We understand that.
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No, in their worldview, they believe we should absolutely no regulations on abortion.
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We should have no protections.
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for women as well as children, if it were up to them, they would have abortion on demand without any restrictions or regulations because to them, in some ways, it is part of their worship.
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Yeah.
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And he's not exaggerating, Daniel, what you said is true because, I mean, you look at Minnesota, look at...
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Virginia.
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Look at some of the states and some of the governors that have passed these horrific laws.
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Was it Minnesota and Tim Walz who just passed something?
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It was the, if a baby survives an abortion, you can't give it any care.
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You can still terminate the life.
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So this is outside the womb now we're talking.
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So they're expanding this.
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This is just their worldview.
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They believe we should be able to limit the population, whether that's in the womb, just outside the womb, whether that's the elderly, whether that's the handicapped, disabled, this is their view.
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And I don't want to bring in too much of the environmental extremism here, but there's too many human beings on the planet.
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That's part of their worldview.
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Some on the left, actually, maybe more than what we think.
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because they believe in eliminating human life because we're the cause of all the problems.
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It's really crazy.
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Whereas, biblically, God ordains life, every human life has value and should be given protection.
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So your thoughts on that is just really some sad—just what we're seeing some states doing, and especially Virginia, which used to be more of a conservative state.
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Not anymore.
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Well, what you just mentioned, Minnesota, they did that with a one seat majority say like Wisconsin.
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They're expecting it to.
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It could either be a Republican government, a Democrat government or a mix.
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And it will look like it's going to come down to one seat in the state Senate, regardless of who wins.
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So, again, this is really essential stuff when we talk about those issues.
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I'll just mention a story out of Minnesota quickly as an example of how far left.
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We see in Minnesota how things are going.
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So we had a bill in Wisconsin.
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Minnesota had one as well that would protect kids from pornography.
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It basically says if you're a pornography provider, you need to have age verification to make sure that the people utilizing are 18.
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Same as if you buy alcohol or anything else.
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You need to make sure you're of majority age.
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So a transgender identified state representative in Minnesota says, well, wait a second.
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We can't have this law because what are LGBT kids supposed to do?
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They need to be able to learn by watching pornography.
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But this is the sort of worldview issues that we see when you have these liberal leaders taking over.
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Not surprised because, again, part of their worldview is to recruit young children and access them at the youngest possible ages.
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So they need to reach them, whether that be in the schools or libraries or social media videos.
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They need to watch these videos.
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No, they don't.
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That corrupts them.
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But that's going to help them draw people closer.
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Yeah.
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It's really amazing to me that this, where we're at today, Daniel, we just have a minute left.
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I want to make sure friends, you know, the website freedom to worship.org.
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If you're in Wisconsin, this is a huge amendment that you need to vote on.
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And also W I family council.org closing thoughts in like 30 seconds, Daniel.
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Yeah.
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Well, and one thing I forgot to mention too.
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So this constitutional amendment to protect religious Liberty, as you were mentioning with the group think on the left,
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The Democrats primary, the two Democrat representatives who voted for this because they said you have to oppose religious liberty.
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I'm grateful for those two Democrats who voted with us.
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But unfortunately, you have to be all or nothing with them.
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Again, when it comes to this election, we're happy to help Christians, whether you're here in Wisconsin or you can go to other states.
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We have 39 counterparts around the country.
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You can go to familypolicyalliance.org to find out about those groups in your state.
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But we want to help encourage Christians to honor God with their vote.
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Daniel Degner, Wisconsin Family Council, thank you for all the work you do.
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And we just really emphasized, friends, how close some states and some elections are going to be in the next couple weeks.
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We're going to be reminding you and trying to encourage you to vote the biblical worldview.
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God bless you.
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And as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.
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See you next time.
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What is a church?
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It is not a building.
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It is the gathered people of God.
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When the shutdown took place, it impacted our ministry immensely.
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And we couldn't do it through a screen.
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We couldn't connect.
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When that can't happen, you're being asked to not be the church.
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I couldn't worship.
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The police came when we were having services because one of our neighbors called and complained about it.
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I didn't think we were violating anything this morning.
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When the church can't be the church, society suffers.
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Welcome to Worldview Matters.
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Discussing controversial issues.
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Discerning current events.
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Defending biblical Christianity.
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No topic.
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Off limits.
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And now, here's your host, David Fiorazzo.
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Hello, welcome friends, family in Christ.
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Thanks for tuning in to another episode.
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Very important topic, as you just heard.
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We're going to review a little history from what happens during an emergency in America where the government and church is involved.
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We may even talk again about the biggest lie, second biggest lie in America, the separation of church and state.
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Big lie.
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And we're going to talk about Wisconsin Family Council, what they're doing.
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We're going to answer the question that matters more than you think.
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When state emergencies were declared, where could we gather?
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So we're going to go back and revisit that.
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But first, before I bring in our guest today, I wrote a book in 2021 called Canceling Christianity.
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And I just want to read a little bit because we're going to revisit this topic today and talk about what happened.
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I wrote a chapter called, Did the Church Pass the COVID Test?
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Now, we know Romans 13 says we obey governing authorities.
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Does that mean unlimited submission to government?
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No.
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So I want to read something from Revelation 3 that we forget about, one of the churches in Asia Minor.
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Revelation 3, verse 1, I know your works.
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Jesus said, you have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.
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Wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God.
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Remember then what you have received and heard.
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Keep it and repent.
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And then he says, I will come against you if you will not wake up and repent.
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He's talking to the church.
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Now, most people know about the lukewarm church in Laodicea, Revelation 3.
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We're talking about a different church here, and we're talking about what happened in 2020, 2021, 2022.
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And let me read a little bit from this chapter.
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How did we respond—
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as Bible-believing Christians and churches in America.
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There's a remnant that said, no, we're going to stay open.
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Why?
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Because it says in Hebrews 10, 23 to 25, let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together.
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And I wrote...
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How did we respond?
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If we are being honest, we did not pass that test.
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Some pastors stayed the course.
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Overall, I think we caved.
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We all but surrendered our religious freedom under the guise of obeying those in authority.
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But does Scripture teach unlimited submission?
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If the Christian church in America is vital to the overall health of the nation, and if we have the answer to sin, man's greatest problem, why didn't we act like it?
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The virus also revealed what many of us already knew.
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The unbelieving world sees the church as non-essential.
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They told us by their words and by their actions and by their policies, and I want to bring in today's guest and talk more about this because there's a very important amendment you need to know about.
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I've got the president of Wisconsin Family Council, Daniel Degner, back with us.
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He's in studio.
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He's running all across the state.
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Busy, busy, busy every day.
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Brother, good to see you.
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Thanks for coming in.
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Yeah, thanks for having me.
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You've been here before, but I'm thankful you took the time now because we've got major midterms coming up, and you're doing some great work.
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So let's start by that opening clip we played of the pastors.
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That was in Fond du Lac, a church in Wisconsin.
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For those of you that are across the country, there's churches in every state that did not bow the knee.
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to government saying, shut down, you're not important.
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When Planned Parenthood was open, you know, Home Depot was open, you could go and buy pot in states where it's legal, like Colorado.
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But churches, no, you've got to shut down.
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Tell us about that video, those pastors, and what you guys are doing, and we'll talk more about this.
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Yeah, and we have a website called freedomtoworship.org.
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That's freedomtoworship.org, where you can see our information.
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And we're doing an ad series.
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We are reaching and targeting 980,000 voters, talking about what the amendment is, what a yes vote means, what a no vote means.
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And with this, too, promoting this documentary, which you can find at that website, as well as our other website, our main one, wifamilycouncil.org.
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That again is WI family council.org.
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And what we saw, especially with these pastors, there's the one in Fond du Lac, one in West Bend.
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We shared their stories.
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I'll talk about the story out of West Bend.
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This pastor is a Lutheran pastor in his church.
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They said, well, under the edicts of governor Evers, we are allowed to have 10 people within our church service.
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Yeah.
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Well, so what happened during during covid is the Evers administration put out a frequently asked question survey document for police.
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And so in this, it said you could have up to 10 people for weddings and funerals, but it did not mention religious services.
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So neighbor calls in the police and says, hey, I see cars in the parking lot.
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And the police came in on Palm Sunday.
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And they said, nope, we are shutting this down.
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You cannot have 10 people in a sanctuary that fits 300 people.
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I've appreciated the pastor's heart with this.
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He doesn't blame the neighbor that called.
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He doesn't blame the police, but he blames the orders in the first place.
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It was those orders that caused this to happen.
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And as Christians, we believe in religious liberty.
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We believe uniquely that it's churches that ought to decide how we do worship.
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and not a bureaucrat in Madison.
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And so we are encouraging people around the state of Wisconsin to vote yes on this amendment.
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And maybe you're saying, hey, I live in another state that's not Wisconsin.
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Check your ballot.
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There's important amendments throughout the country that do impact faith issues and impact biblical worldview.
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And we would encourage you to see what's on your ballot as well as finding out how you can honor God with your vote in a way that affirms a biblical worldview.
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Thanks, Daniel.
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You're making this very easy for people.
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All they have to do is go to freedom2worship.org.
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We showed the website right on the homepage in plain language.
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A yes vote would add the proposed protection to the Wisconsin Constitution.
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A no vote would leave the Wisconsin Constitution unchanged.
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So let's just say...
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Uh, more people vote.
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No, I pray to God that's not going to happen, but let's just say that happens.
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So if the constitution, Wisconsin is unchanged, the state constitution, what happens during the next quote unquote emergency?
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Yeah.
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Well, if people don't know, and this does fail, there'll be no constitutional protection.
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And so here's one thing people will say sometimes, and again, good hearted people, people that agree with the same values that you and I agree with David.
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And they'll say, well, I don't believe government has the right to do this in the first place.
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So we don't need it.
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Well, unfortunately, what we saw in 2020 is we saw liberals did not care.
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They said, well, we're going to shut your church down anyway.
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There's a few groups that have opposed this.
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Some of you may have heard of a group called Freedom from Religion.
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Freedom from Religion opposes this.
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Legal Women Voters also opposes this.
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And they say this is the reason they gave was because if this passes, they're
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This will mean that government cannot prohibit the gathering of churches.
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Well, they agree with us that this is clearly a religious liberty issue, that we need to protect those churches' rights and those opportunities for them to decide where to gather and where to not or whether or not to.
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This is so important, friends.
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We've got a lot of things going on in Wisconsin, but I know you're watching from different places in the country.
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The midterms are huge.
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You've got to make sure that you get to the polls and try to encourage other people who profess to be Christians.
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I hope they truly are, but encourage them to go vote wherever you're at because I want to ask you about something I wasn't planning on asking, but I'm seeing a lot of polls.
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Mm-hmm.
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They're saying Democrats are going to overwhelmingly win.
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There's going to be a blue wave.
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And I'm not buying it.
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That may affect someone's decision to go to the polls and vote, and that's not the right answer.
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Could you share a little bit about that?
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Because I don't believe polls are ever accurate for the most part.
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Some are, but the majority of them, they're liberal.
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They're progressive.
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The Democrats probably...
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pad the polls.
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What are your thoughts on that?
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What they're, what we're looking at right now.
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Yeah.
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So Dave, that's a great question about polling.
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What I will say is in Wisconsin, we're, we're really unique.
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So nationally polling is looking like it's going to be a bluish wave this year.
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It does not look great nationally.
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If you look at polls, but Wisconsin is very interesting.
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It looks like it's going to be a very tight election.
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It looks like it's going to come down to 20,000, 30,000 votes.
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I talked to one, uh,
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Republican insider this week, he told me he thinks this election is going to come down to 5000 votes here in Wisconsin.
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But this is where I think it's important for us as Christians to look at what's on the ballot and be able to share with others.
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We did polling on our constitutional amendment, and we found for people that identify as very conservative, people who identify as evangelical, people who go to church weekly, when they became aware of this amendment, they're 50 percent or more likely to
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to go and cast a ballot.
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And so if you're in Wisconsin, if you fit those categories, share this amendment, share the website, freedom to worship.org with people, you know, and encourage them to vote.
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Because if this election does come down to 5,000 votes, it's going to make a huge difference.
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And not only here in Wisconsin, but across the nation, there is many important close elections that will determine the majority in the U.S. Senate.
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as well as the majority in the U.S. House.
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And it comes down to oftentimes are Christians voting or not?
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In 2022, we looked at our own internal numbers.
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We saw the attorney general race was decided by 33,000 votes.
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Why does that matter in 2022?
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Well, during that time in Wisconsin, we had a total ban on abortion, except for the life of the mother, signed off by two doctors.
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Well, after that election, the Democrat attorney general was elected and he said, you know what?
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Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, I'm not going to enforce this abortion ban.
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You can go off and perform abortions.
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Imagine if 33,000 Christians would have came out and voted that skip that election.
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How much different our state would be?
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What was even more concerning for us is we have membership lists of Christians.
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Now, this doesn't include every Christian in the state, but the people that are more of our insiders that are following state-level politics, we found that 7,902 of our own members did not vote in that election.
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We need to do everything we can with partners like you, partners that are listening, everyone to make sure we're inspiring and engaging Christians and asking them to honor God with their vote because policies really do matter and policies impact people.
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Amen.
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Friends, this is so important.
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We don't understand what, because we don't live in other countries, most countries around the world, they do not have freedom to worship and freedom to go vote and elect Christians, conservatives, people who will, you know, put forth godly legislation or good legislation.
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Before we talk about something you guys just unleashed this week, the docuseries
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who said, 32 million church-going Christians are unlikely to vote in this election.
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The last contest was decided by thousands of votes, not millions.
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This election is ours if...
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Christians will do their duty and vote to restrain evil.
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Now, a lot of people say that same thing.
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Seth Dillon just happened to put this out on social media.
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This quote was put out, actually by Terrence Williams, but Seth Dillon said this.
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So understand, look at that, 32 million?
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So the percentages, I've talked about this too.
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When you talk about Muslims, for example, I think it's over 80%, possibly over 90% of Muslims will vote.
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We're wondering why radicals and those who would promote Islam and Sharia law are getting elected.
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That conflicts with our Constitution in America, but they're getting elected.
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We wonder why.
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That voting bloc is active.
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So are the socialists or the Democrat socialists.
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They're good at rallying the base.
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So now let's move on, Daniel.
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Talk about your docuseries.
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Is it a three-part docuseries?
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And it's called Deemed Non-Essential When Wisconsin Locked the Church Doors.
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It's just...
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It's just still disappointing when I acknowledge what happened five years ago.
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Go ahead.
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Yeah, well, and one thing I just want to mention to my colleague or my predecessor, Julian Applin would often say this is sometimes liberals, she worries, care more about their worldview than we as Christians care about ours.
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Yeah.
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And one of the things I especially if you live in Wisconsin, it is so important to vote.
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And here's why I believe this.
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Right now, the lieutenant governor can't for the Republican Party.
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David Varnum, solid Christian, used to work for Dr. James Dobson, focused in the family, used to serve on our board.
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His whole life has been dedicated to Christian values in the public square.
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Do you know what secular conservative media outlets are saying and groups are saying is they came out and they said, you know what?
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David Varnum worked for Dr. James Dobson and Dr. James Dobson didn't support gay marriage in the 90s.
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And so, you know, if we lose this election, well, it's because we have Christians on the ballot.
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This is how essential and important it is for Christians to vote because we're not just voting for this election, but we're voting for the movement for generations to come.
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Because if they can go back and say, oh, well, you know, we had Christians on the ballot and Christians didn't vote.
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Well, let's have non-Christians.
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Let's have people that aren't going to affirm a biblical worldview on life, marriage, family.
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And if.
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We can flip the script, however, if Christians do come out and vote, and if that changes the election, we'll say, no, we need to have Christians on the ballot to motivate our base.
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Back to your question about the deemed not essential.
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Yes, this is a three part series where in their short series, you can watch the whole thing within an hour.
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And it just talks about the stories of this Lutheran church in West Bend, Pilgrim Lutheran Church, as well as Trinity Baptist Church in Fond du Lac.
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And so episode one goes with Trinity Baptist Church and talks about how they were shut down during 2020.
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Not only their church, but also the Christian school they had and how that negatively impacted the students and the families.
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And they even shared stories of how there was funerals that...
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The plan was, well, we'll have it once we can have it later because they were locked down during the COVID to not have those funerals.
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But those funerals never came.
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And I appreciate the pastor shared one thing where he said, you know, this is something we've seen now continually, even to 2026, where funerals are not happening, where they previously would have happened and people aren't able to grieve together.
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We also were able to see in the second episode where we go through the West Bend story and that West Bend pastor, I thought had a very interesting claim and statement that he had.
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And he was reflecting on the 25th anniversary of nine 11 and remembering nine 11.
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And he said, you know, during nine 11, during the emergency of nine 11, people went to church to gather and to pray.
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But during the emergency of 2020, people were forbid from gathering and praying.
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And what a huge dichotomy we see.
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We believe fundamentally that during emergencies, that's where people need Jesus more than ever before.
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During emergencies, people need to be able to come together to gather, to pray, to worship, and have unity in the cross.
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Exactly.
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Excellent point.
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Excellent point.
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So I want to talk about a pastor that you showed the docuseries to deem non-essential.
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But before we do that, there's another video you guys have on your website.
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This is at Wisconsin Family Council, wifamilycouncil.org.
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And Jeff, if you would play the question that matters more than you think, and we'll come back and talk about it.
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When state emergencies were declared in Wisconsin, places of worship were ordered closed and gatherings were restricted.
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While commercial retail and liquor stores stayed open, grieving families were kept apart at gravesides.
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This November, voters will decide on a referendum to amend the Wisconsin state constitution regarding religious assembly during emergencies.
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This November, voters will decide on a referendum to amend the Wisconsin state constitution regarding
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Here's what your vote means.
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A yes vote amends our state constitution to prohibit state and local officials from closing places of worship or forbidding gatherings during emergencies.
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A no vote maintains the current state constitution, leaving existing government emergency authorities unchanged.
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After choosing your candidates for office, look for the second referendum question on your ballot.
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Equip yourself with the facts and read the full amendment text at freedomtoworship.org before you cast your vote.
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Okay, that's what we were talking about, friends.
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And again, we gave the website early on in the podcast.
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I want to make sure you have it.
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FreedomToWorship.org.
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We don't want to revisit what happened five years ago.
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And there were just so many sad cases and stories, whether that be weddings, funerals, the death of a loved one, nursing homes, but in churches that shut down.
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When Planned Parenthood boldly said, I remember whoever was the CEO at the time said, no, we're not closing.
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And so nobody enforced laws.
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They stayed open.
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I wish churches would have had that backbone.
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I mean, 75% of the churches that did shut down, I pray that those pastors would have had the backbone.
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So let's go back to this docuseries now, Daniel.
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You said a pastor that you showed it to plans on showing the videos to his congregations.
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Why?
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Yeah, well, he thinks it's so important for his congregation not only to see, yes, we need to vote yes on this amendment, but to go back and understand what happened and what we truly went through.
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And especially as we look at this election, not just for the amendment, but we look at all these other races.
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This is critical.
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Wisconsin Family Action, our sister organization, will be launching an issue advocacy campaign next week to talk about the concerns we saw under Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley.
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David Crowley, when asked about these extension of these shutdowns, he said he absolutely agreed with Governor Evers doing this.
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And you know what's crazy to think of, and before you mentioned that five years ago, and some people say, well, COVID was six years ago, but no, it even was five years ago.
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So David Crowley, Milwaukee County in September of 2021 had an emergency order regarding covid in which he required all county employees to get covid vaccinated and to show their status.
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And this is even to the point where Democrat state representatives like Sylvia Valise Ortez said this was government overreach.
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And again, if people are wondering, well, does my vote matter?
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Does it have an impact?
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I'm telling you, if this amendment fails and if Christians don't come out and vote and we do see a David Crowley becoming the governor, his track record shows that he will have extensive orders during so-called states of emergency.
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Again, September 2021, most people weren't thinking about COVID.
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Most people were back to their normal lives for well over 12, 14, 16 months by that point.
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And he still had a state of emergency in Milwaukee County.
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I remember that lasted—it was just so sad, friends.
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But let's learn from history so we don't repeat it.
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Let's learn what happened when—and it was just a mental health issue.
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It became a mental health issue because so many people were isolated at home, not fellowshipping together, not going to church and encouraging one another, hearing the pastor in person and having worship together, which what we are called to do in Scripture—
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Let's remember that because, as you said, by the way, Daniel was mentioning a couple candidates that are running in Wisconsin.
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You're watching or listening from a different state in the country.
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You have candidates, too, that I want you to learn more about because you need to be able to tell other people, yeah, look at their track record.
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We know exactly how they would respond to, for example, the next emergency.
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And one more thing, they not only think the church is non-essential—
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the left, but it's more and more that they believe that we shouldn't even come out from behind church doors in the public square.
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That has been revealed.
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It's not only a belief that we should be silent about the gospel, about the biblical worldview, but now we better not be trying to do what God has called us to do.
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Right?
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Yeah, well, and I'll just give a couple stories.
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One of these stories is mentioned in the docuseries, but again, what did we see?
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We saw where pastors said, well, I go to the grocery store where I go to Walmart and I see people from my congregation, but they can't meet at church.
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Or, and this would never happen because they're a Baptist church, but, or you could go to the liquor store
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And you could see people, but you can't connect that church or like you mentioned other states that you had a pot and marijuana.
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These other issues here in Wisconsin.
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Here's an actual issue that we worked through.
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And it's not highly in the docuseries, but this is like September, October 2020.
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There's been enough time, all these different things.
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And what we saw at that point was there is a there was a Catholic priest who was ministering at a prison.
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He said, hey, I'm vaccinated.
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I'll double mask.
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I'll be six feet apart and I'll meet outside.
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Can I give sacraments to those that are in the prison?
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And what did the state of Wisconsin say?
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They said, nope, you can't because we're worried about COVID and that would cause COVID to spread.
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Meanwhile.
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They were allowing hairdressers and barbers to come in to cut the inmates hair.
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This is the sort of issues we see because, again, it had nothing to do with COVID, but it was, oh, well, we don't want the religious institutions to come in.
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We don't want the religious aspects.
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But oh, yes, of course, you need that haircut or you need that whatever those other things are where other groups come in.
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And again, I'm not Catholic and I hold an evangelical perspective, but if they can attack
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Catholics freedom to worship and they can go after their religious liberties.
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They for sure will go after ours.
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And to the left, I don't think it's necessarily a Catholic versus evangelical process.
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I think it's very clearly a anti-religious mode versus anyone who would call themselves in a Judeo-Christian religious worldview.
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No communion for you.
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That's pretty amazing, though.
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But I want to emphasize something you said earlier about Crowley.
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And this is one of our representatives, not representatives, but he's running, that he believed it was okay to force people to get vaccinated.
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A lot of people on the left believe that they hold that same view.
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They don't care about your privacy.
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They don't care about your physical autonomy.
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You can't say yes or no what happens to your body medically or whatever.
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They say, no, you need to be vaccinated and show me your papers.
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Where have we heard that before?
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Well, and so it's interesting, too.
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We have some of those different things.
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And I'll just share an example.
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This was a big news story that came out of Wisconsin just yesterday.
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So a reporter sitting down, David Crowley, just in a conversation like this.
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And she says, David Crowley, your opponent says you support abortion through birth.
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So he's coming out supporting a constitutional amendment that will offer abortion through birth.
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And keep in mind, a month ago, David Crowley came out and said, we should not have doctors performing abortions.
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There's a current law in Wisconsin says only doctors can perform abortions.
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He said we should get rid of that.
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That should be allowed for anyone to perform an abortion who wants to should be doctorally.
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So this conversation says, oh, no, I disagree with what's been said about me.
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The reporter, I appreciate she came back and said, OK, well.
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Well, what's the cutoff limit?
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And his response ironically was, well, that should be between a doctor and a patient to decide.
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But oh, but when it's your own bodily autonomy on vaccines, well, no, you should be forced to or wait a second.
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You shouldn't even have a doctor in the abortion room.
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But now we're saying, oh, well, we're just going to pivot here.
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And it goes back to the point that, David, you and I know and your viewers know we're not we're not stupid.
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We understand that.
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No, in their worldview, they believe we should absolutely no regulations on abortion.
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We should have no protections.
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for women as well as children, if it were up to them, they would have abortion on demand without any restrictions or regulations because to them, in some ways, it is part of their worship.
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Yeah.
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And he's not exaggerating, Daniel, what you said is true because, I mean, you look at Minnesota, look at...
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Virginia.
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Look at some of the states and some of the governors that have passed these horrific laws.
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Was it Minnesota and Tim Walz who just passed something?
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It was the, if a baby survives an abortion, you can't give it any care.
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You can still terminate the life.
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So this is outside the womb now we're talking.
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So they're expanding this.
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This is just their worldview.
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They believe we should be able to limit the population, whether that's in the womb, just outside the womb, whether that's the elderly, whether that's the handicapped, disabled, this is their view.
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And I don't want to bring in too much of the environmental extremism here, but there's too many human beings on the planet.
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That's part of their worldview.
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Some on the left, actually, maybe more than what we think.
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because they believe in eliminating human life because we're the cause of all the problems.
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It's really crazy.
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Whereas, biblically, God ordains life, every human life has value and should be given protection.
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So your thoughts on that is just really some sad—just what we're seeing some states doing, and especially Virginia, which used to be more of a conservative state.
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Not anymore.
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Well, what you just mentioned, Minnesota, they did that with a one seat majority say like Wisconsin.
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They're expecting it to.
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It could either be a Republican government, a Democrat government or a mix.
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And it will look like it's going to come down to one seat in the state Senate, regardless of who wins.
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So, again, this is really essential stuff when we talk about those issues.
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I'll just mention a story out of Minnesota quickly as an example of how far left.
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We see in Minnesota how things are going.
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So we had a bill in Wisconsin.
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Minnesota had one as well that would protect kids from pornography.
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It basically says if you're a pornography provider, you need to have age verification to make sure that the people utilizing are 18.
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Same as if you buy alcohol or anything else.
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You need to make sure you're of majority age.
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So a transgender identified state representative in Minnesota says, well, wait a second.
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We can't have this law because what are LGBT kids supposed to do?
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They need to be able to learn by watching pornography.
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But this is the sort of worldview issues that we see when you have these liberal leaders taking over.
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Not surprised because, again, part of their worldview is to recruit young children and access them at the youngest possible ages.
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So they need to reach them, whether that be in the schools or libraries or social media videos.
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They need to watch these videos.
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No, they don't.
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That corrupts them.
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But that's going to help them draw people closer.
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Yeah.
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It's really amazing to me that this, where we're at today, Daniel, we just have a minute left.
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I want to make sure friends, you know, the website freedom to worship.org.
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If you're in Wisconsin, this is a huge amendment that you need to vote on.
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And also W I family council.org closing thoughts in like 30 seconds, Daniel.
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Yeah.
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Well, and one thing I forgot to mention too.
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So this constitutional amendment to protect religious Liberty, as you were mentioning with the group think on the left,
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The Democrats primary, the two Democrat representatives who voted for this because they said you have to oppose religious liberty.
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I'm grateful for those two Democrats who voted with us.
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But unfortunately, you have to be all or nothing with them.
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Again, when it comes to this election, we're happy to help Christians, whether you're here in Wisconsin or you can go to other states.
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We have 39 counterparts around the country.
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You can go to familypolicyalliance.org to find out about those groups in your state.
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But we want to help encourage Christians to honor God with their vote.
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Daniel Degner, Wisconsin Family Council, thank you for all the work you do.
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And we just really emphasized, friends, how close some states and some elections are going to be in the next couple weeks.
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We're going to be reminding you and trying to encourage you to vote the biblical worldview.
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God bless you.
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And as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.
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See you next time.
