An idol is anything we desire more than God, love more than God, or fear more than God. That, all too often, is what we would see if we looked in a mirror. Times such as these are God-given opportunities to shed ourselves of the excess baggage of our sinful narcissism so that we can fix our gaze on Christ who is more beautiful than all our comprehension.

And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled. Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily. (Acts 19:11-20)
Who is this God?
The story gives us leads. It takes place in the city, Ephesus, near the shores of the Aegean Sea. It is a rich, cosmopolitan, multicultural place with a large Jewish minority. Most people, however, are pagans and proud of it. People compete over their devotion. Locals bragged, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” That was only a hint of the city’s devotion. There were a host of deities that competed for popular devotion. There was a pecking order with Diana (Artemis in Greek) at the top, celebrated in a temple that dwarfed the Parthenon, with ranks of lesser gods, spirits, demons under her.
All of the sacrifice and incense can be misleading. We get the impression that these people considered the gods and the world they represented the most important things in their lives. That has everything backward. People did not worship deities or spirits, they bribed them to get happy lives in return. If the god was too strong to push around, you bribed her to get her on your side. Lesser spirits could, however, be bullied if you had the right leverage. That was what Luke was telling us. He described a community of people who wanted life to work for them.
They got experts to help them do that. We call them exorcists. If we take a closer look at this, we can see what the people thought of their gods. The gods had to be feared but they could be managed. Gods were capricious. You never knew if they were for or against you. Offerings helped get them on your side. When speaking of the gods or spirits, the point was to make them work for your good. The Greco-Roman world was all about human flourishing. Religion, in all of its forms, existed to order society. The unseen world was always treated as a reality, whether it’s observance was genuine or just a polite fiction, the point was the peace of the polis.
Acts 19 describes Paul performing miracles, to include healing, in the name of the Lord Jesus. Some exorcists, piggybacking on Jesus and Paul’s reputation and success command an evil spirit in their name to obey the exorcists’ command. It does not go well as we see. Rather than obeying the exorcists, he gives them a mauling and strips the clothing from their backs, before they run for their lives.
The performance of Paul and his connection to Jesus, now risen from the grave as we see earlier in Luke and Acts, describes the enthusiasm related to the many miracles performed in Ephesus, things that were seen in public. Thus far, all we know is that this Jesus and his servant Paul perform miracles. In other words, they are seen to do things not things normally accomplished by most of us. Paul heals people in Jesus’ name for instance. There is more, however.
If that is all we are told, we could characterize both men as healers, something the exorcists, the Sons of Sceva, claimed for themselves. But Luke gives us more to work with. Not only does Paul succeed in Jesus’ name, but the Sons of Sceva don’t. The reasons for that are easy to see. Sceva is not a name found on any of the high priests’ roles. If he is physically related to a high priest, he is misleading about his credentials.
You can fool a lot of people but you can’t fool an evil spirit who knows the Son of God the hard way, in the heavens. Rev. 12:7-11. describes the scene. The hosts of heaven fought Satan and his minions and threw the latter down to earth where they attempt to convict humans of crimes already paid for by Jesus. The evil spirit took a beating at the hands of Jesus and his army and never forgot that lesson.  When the exorcists tried to bully him in the name of Jesus and Paul, the spirit knew a fake when he heard one.
This time the evil spirit gave the beating. He reminds me of two brothers I know. Both were amazingly gifted athletes and martial artists, wrestlers, judo masters, etc. Their dad was one too. When I asked him what the difference was between them, he noted greater power in one and greater speed and cunning in the other. Either could beat us. That is the point. Evil can always beat us if we enter the ring alone.
The point we cannot afford to miss is that fakes are fakes. They are as fulfilling as a bowl of plastic fruit. They may be full of themselves but they are empty of life. There is no life-giving power in them. Their bag of tricks has a bottom. Their authority is counterfeit. When they see Jesus face to face at the final judgment, he will do exactly what the evil spirit did. Who are you? I have never known you? This is my heavenly home, and you do not belong here.
If we face evil in Christ we are not alone. We are greater than any army. Satan cannot grapple with us without taking a beating at the hands of Christ who fills us.
Luke in Acts goes on to say, that the drubbing of the frauds, following closely on the heels of the miracles and genuine healings combined to induce fear and faith. People who meet Christ for real are forever changed. His Spirit breathes into them. Christ himself fills them. How does anyone live with business as usual when that happens? We see two great realities, facts greater than any other. We see ourselves as we really are and we see Christ in all of his majesty as he really is.
We often attempt to relativize “fear” as reverence or awe, but I think this is a wasted effort on our part. “Fear” as it is described is visceral more than it is intellectual. It is the appropriate response of any created being made in God’s own image when he or she runs straight into God. It is more than shocking. When I was a kid, I got into fights all of the time. I simply counted my opponents and sized up the situation. Then I jumped into battle. When we turn the corner and run into God with our eyes open, we experience fear at the most basic of levels. We know instantly that it is no contest. Our fakery is exposed and we get stripped of all of our sins and our virtues.
That leads to a second thing. We, like the Ephesians, must repent of ourselves, repent of our sinful dispositions, repent of anything that gets in the way of our running with Christ. I started reading a little gem written by R.C Sproul, Saved for What? He wisely reminded people who identify with Christ, not only what they get saved to, a very popular sermon topic, but also what they are saved from. He reminded readers of an Old Testament passage not often quoted by churches that like to promote healthy self-acceptance, a flourishing life in the here and now. It was pretty jarring. Here it is:
The great day of the LORD is near,near and hastening fast;the sound of the day of the LORD is bitter;the mighty man cries aloud there.A day of wrath is that day,a day of distress and anguish,a day of ruin and devastation,a day of darkness and gloom, ‘a day of clouds and thick darkness,a day of trumpet blast and battle cryagainst the fortified citiesand against the lofty battlements.I will bring distress on mankind,so that they shall walk like the blind,because they have sinned against the LORD;their blood shall be poured out like dust,and their flesh like dung.Neither their silver nor their goldshall be able to deliver themon the day of the wrath of the LORD.In the fire of his jealousy, ‘all the earth shall be consumed;for a full and sudden endhe will make of all the inhabitants of the earth. (Zeph. 1:14-18)
We are saved, it is true, from the grip of Satan, but more importantly, we are saved from the wrath of a righteous God. The life in Christ is not a kind of spiritual amnesia. When we live in union with Christ, we become increasingly sensitive to the sin that led to the cross. We recognize our own sin, begin to loath it. It burdens us. We are desperate to divest ourselves of it. This is the life of repentance. It is not pessimism. It is not self-flagellation. Repentance is a gift. It reminds us that God really saved us from our sin and continually works in us to unearth the sins we keep buried. These, of course, torment us, but the grace of a righteous God who loves us by not tolerating our sin produces transformed life that bathes us in joy.   When we lose sight of this, the grace of a holy God who continuously shows us our sin to cleanse us of it, salvation becomes nothing more than human flourishing. Some people look at donuts and others see the holes. I am the latter. I notice that, year by year, repentance disappears from our pulpits.
Grace changes meaning from human flourishing that uses God as a means to human happiness as an end to lives devoted to God the source and end of our happiness. So much preaching reduces Christ to being the means to another end, our happiness. What if we already have what we want? What if we are content? When COVID struck, we rediscovered misery, but we felt no connection between our unhappiness and any deficiency in our relationships to God. Lest there be any misunderstanding, I am not suggesting a straight-line connection between any particular, personal sins and a global pandemic. I am saying, however, that few if any of us saw the onset of the disease as an opportunity to reflect on the state of our relationship to Christ. How could we? We were already obsessing about our own health, the danger posed by others, the impingement of our freedom, etc.
Did we consider the larger issues? We live in the grip of a therapeutic age and evangelical churches too often resemble health spas rather than surgeries for sin-sick patients. We are self-satisfied. We are proud. We are content that we are loved without giving much thought to our sinful self-centeredness. COVID did not bring out our sacrificial love. A lot of churches became battlegrounds. Many shrank. Now that we seem past the worst of it, we rush to put it behind us. We are just fine. We work so very hard to be cheerful. The order of the day is ““be upbeat”. We double down on what we were before we closed down and hibernated.
Were we really that ok? Did we stop needing a savior? Sproul compares our complacency over our sins to someone who doesn’t need a fireman because his house isn’t on fire. We no longer fear God, neither himself or his judgment. We fear dying and the pain on the way down, but that is as far as it goes. We resent the reminder that we even need mercy. Sproul illustrates our problem by comparing false and true Old Testament prophets. False prophets stuck with a message of happiness and joy. True prophets were a pain in the neck. They had the unwelcome habit of proclaiming the day of the Lord as judgment. Why? Because they did not know grace and the one who brings it? No. They knew it better than most of us. The difference between them and us is that they kept God, in his fullness, in view. We don’t.
We want grace, all the time. We don’t want repentance and the holiness it produces. Impenitence gets papered over as we rush to acceptance. But God, the God of all holy love is not in it. Bread and circuses are closer to our hearts. We need to rediscover the fear of God that cones with the life of God. Every now and then, we conservative Calvinists mention fear, but it often dies Flew’s “death of a thousand qualifications”. We describe the fear of God as “reverence” or “respect”. Not even close! Isaiah knew what the fear of the Lord looked and felt like.
And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isa 6:5)
Sproul comments on this: “It seems that every person who encounters the living God in Scripture suddenly loses his self-composure and experiences a severe identity crisis.” How can anyone ever go back to business as usual when they experience the presence of God? The only way we manage it is by discounting the seriousness of our sin. We push it out of view, a relic of the past.
When we put our faith in Jesus, God cloaks us with the garments of Jesus, and the garments of Christ’s righteousness are never, ever the target of God’s wrath. But we never put the cart before the horse. When we do, we underestimate our sin and we take God so lightly. If we stand for anything, we stand for cheap dollar store grace.
But it seems to have made no impact on them whatsoever. It’s exactly, Jesus said, what Isaiah foretold: “You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; you will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; for the heart of this people has become dull” (Matt. 13:14–15; see also Isa. 6:9–10). (Thad Barnum)
We fear COVID or Russia more than God.
We worship nothing more than our health and dread death.
An idol is anything we desire more than God, love more than God, or fear more than God. That, all too often, is what we would see if we looked in a mirror. Times such as these are God-given opportunities to shed ourselves of the excess baggage of our sinful narcissism so that we can fix our gaze on Christ who is more beautiful than all our comprehension.
Bill Nikides is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and serves as a church planting strategist with Reformed Evangelistic Fellowship.
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Written by David S. Schrock |
Friday, November 26, 2021
For Christians, knowing what God did in the cross of Christ is vital for understanding our faith. Moreover, if we intend to share the gospel, make disciples, or defend the faith, we need to understand these truths as well, starting with the necessity and the nature of the cross. Therefore, learning why and what the cross achieved is foundational for the faith.

In 1955 John Murray released his classic work on the cross and salvation, Redemption Accomplished and Applied. This week, the men in our church are discussing this book. And in preparation, I re-read the opening chapters on the necessity and the nature of the cross.
For those who have asked questions about why the cross was needful and what the cross accomplished, Murray is a great start—even if you might need to keep Dictionary.com close at hand. In his book, he gives a solid defense of the faith and he offers cogent from a Reformed perspective. Over the years, I have often assigned this book for class and returned to it myself.
In what follows I offer sixteen quotations from the book organized around seven truths related to the necessity and nature of the cross. Indeed, if you want to know what the cross achieved, Murray’s book is a great introduction. And hopefully what follows will give you a helpful introduction to Murray.
(N.B. The page numbers that follow are based on the 1955 Eerdmans copy, the one without Carl Trueman’s forward. Additionally, if you are interested you can find the e-book on Hoopla.)
Seven Truths about the Cross

The Necessity of the Cross

John Murray begins his book with a chapter on the necessity of the cross, where he identifies two kinds of necessity—hypothetical necessity and consequent absolute necessity (11). Murray recognizes the former as something held by those like Augustine and Aquinas, while arguing for the latter. Regarding, “consequent absolute necessity,” he writes,
[1] The word “consequent” in this designation points to the fact that God’s will or decree to save any is of free and sovereign grace. To save lost men was not of absolute necessity but of the sovereign good pleasure of God. The terms “absolute necessity,” however, indicate that God, having elected some to everlasting life out of his mere good pleasure, was under the necessity of accomplishing this purpose through the sacrifice of his own Son, a necessity arising from the perfections of his own nature. In a word, while it was not inherently necessary for God to save, yet, since salvation had been purposed, it was necessary to secure this salvation through a satisfaction that could be rendered only through substitutionary sacrifice and blood-bought redemption. (11)
This point is important because it matches the justice of God with his mercy. God would not be unrighteous to put sinners to death, for the wages of sin is death, but he would be unrighteous to save sinners without the cross of Christ. Hence, the cross is necessary. Yet, instead of simply drawing a logical deduction about the cross, he turns to prove his point from Scripture, and he concludes in this way,
[2] For these reasons we are constrained to conclude that the kind of necessity which the Scriptural considerations support is that which may be described as absolute or indispensable. The proponents of hypothetical necessity do not reckon sufficiently with the exigencies involved in salvation from sin unto eternal life; they do not take proper account of the Godward aspects of Christ’s accomplishment. If we keep in view the gravity of sin and the exigencies arising from the holiness of God which must be met in salvation from it, then the doctrine of indispensable necessity makes Calvary intelligible to us and enhances the incomprehensible marvel of both Calvary itself and the sovereign purpose of love which Calvary fulfilled. The more we emphasize the inflexible demands of justice and holiness the more marvelous become the love of God and its provisions. (18)

Passive and Active Obedience

When discussing the nature of the cross, Murray makes obedience the theological umbrella under which every aspect of the cross (e.g., sacrifice, propitiation, reconciliation, redemption, etc.) is considered (19ff). Fine-tuning his point, he appeals to the historic distinction between active and passive obedience. Clarifying these terms, he writes,
[3] The distinction between the active and passive obedience is not a distinction of periods. It is our Lord’s whole work of obedience in every phase and period that is described as active and passive, and we must avoid the mistake of thinking that the active obedience applies to the obedience of his life and the passive to the obedience of his final sufferings and death.  The real use and purpose of the formula [passive and active obedience] is to emphasize the two distinct aspects of our Lord’s vicarious obedience. The truth expressed rests upon the recognition that the law of God has both penal sanctions and positive demands. (21)

The Personal Obedience of Christ

Next, Murray stresses the personal nature of Christ’s obedience. In other words, it is not simply Christ’s act of dying that saves sinners, it is also his inner disposition and obedience.
[4] When we speak of obedience we are thinking not merely of formal acts of accomplishment but also of the disposition, will, determination, and volition which lie back of and are registered in these formal acts. And when we speak of the death of our Lord upon the cross as the supreme act of his obedience we are thinking not merely of the overt act of dying upon the tree but also of the disposition, will, and determinate volition which lay back of the overt act. (22)

The Cross as Sacrifice

After tackling the overarching theme of Christ’s obedience, Murray moves on to cover four biblical metaphors for the cross. The first is sacrifice. Starting with the sacrificial system in Israel, he writes,
[5] The Old Testament sacrifices were basically expiatory. This means that they had reference to sin and guilt. Sin involves a certain liability, a liability arising from the holiness of God, on the one hand, and the gravity of sin as the contradiction of that holiness, on the other. The sacrifice was the divinely instituted provision whereby the sin might be covered and the liability to divine wrath and curse removed. The Old Testament worshiper when he brought his oblation to the altar substituted an animal victim in his place. (25)
Acknowledging the great distance between an animal and a man, Murray explains how these “shadows and patterns” prepared the way for Christ. And in Christ, we have the fulfillment of the sacrificial system.
[6] Jesus, therefore, offered himself a sacrifice and that most particularly under the form or pattern supplied by the sin-offering of the Levitical economy. In thus offering himself he expiated guilt and purged away sin so that we may draw near to God in full assurance of faith and enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. (26–27)
While I would take issue with Murray’s reduction of Christ’s sacrifice to that of the sin offering, he is correct to say that Christ died to purge away sin. Moreover, he is right to affirm our need to look to the Levitical patterns of sacrifice to understand the cross. As he notes, “We must interpret the sacrifice of Christ in terms of the Levitical patterns because they were themselves patterned after Christ’s offering” (27). Without them, we cannot make sense of the meaning of Christ’s cross. But with them, we are given a multi-faceted object lesson explaining the logic of sacrifice, as well as confidence that what God began typologically has been completed Christologically. That is to say,
[7] If the Levitical sacrifices were expiatory, how much more must the archetypal offering have been expiatory, and expiatory, be it remembered, not on the plane of the temporary, provisional, preparatory, and partial but on the plane of the eternal, the permanently real, the final, and the complete. (27)
In asking what did the cross achieve? Or what is the essence of the cross? We must begin with sacrifice. And not just the word, but the whole system of sacrifice outlined in the Law of Moses. At the heart of this logic is God’s provision for wiping away sin. This  is called expiation, and it promises that the blood of a perfect sacrifice can wipe clean our guilt by covering our sin.

The Cross as Propitiation

If the cross expiates our sin, it also propitiates the wrath of God. While these words have been confused and often juxtaposed to one another, they are actually two independent-but-related ideas that both have a place in Christ’s cross. Christ’s death deals with sin (expiation) and by means of expiation, the wrath of God is propitiated. Taking these ideas together, Murray is right to define propitiation in personal terms.
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From a BA perspective, if the NP asked about how to go forward, I would advise it to publish a purpose and mission statement compatible with PCA officer vows, accept all such within the PCA who desire to participate in order to grow in their understanding of PCA polity and practices, and do away with confidentiality as its functional methodology.  All of this would be workable, however, only after a public apology and due repentance for the way the group has conducted itself essentially as a denomination within the denomination over the past several years.
 
In my day job I function in the role of a business analyst much of the time.  Business analysis (BA) involves helping the business enable change by defining needs and recommending solutions that deliver value to its stakeholders.  We employ many tools and techniques to make that happen, and we will frequently discover misalignment when examining stated goals and objectives and comparing them to actual practices.
I’d like to put on my BA hat to consider the so-called “Presbyleaks” (the release of the National Partnership documents) which occurred last year.  Of particular interest is the characterization of the National Partnership (NP) by TE Kessler as quoted in the article by Travis Scott last November, The Big Leak, Part 1: [1] 
This group exists as a way to resource one another. We want you to feel prepared for the Assembly and engaged in its work on the Presbytery level. This group does not tell you how to vote. Even if I/we make recommendations please remember that we are grateful for diversity. We are looking for unity, not uniformity. Being a part of the National Partnership means that you are committing to participation in the business of our denomination. We will be about the logistics of denominational health; we aren’t a visioning committee.  The NP also creates a place to have a conversation in confidence; nothing here is reproduced and blogged or whatever. Our discussion boards are places to stretch and reason together. Please feel free to use them.
“I have said it before and I’ll say it again: the intent of confidentiality was always to protect those of you who felt you could not be as forthcoming in larger groups. I’ve always wanted the NP to be a place where you can seek advice with confidence that your questions weren’t being used to fuel blog posts. The lack of confidentiality makes no difference in what I share with you. Emails will say pretty much what they would have said.”
In the above we find the purpose, responsibility, and methodology of membership within the NP according to TE Kessler:

Purpose: To resource one another, to prepare its members for effectiveness within their presbyteries and at GA.  Being part of the NP necessitates participation in the business of the denomination, but the NP doesn’t exist to function as a voting bloc.
Responsibility: Participation in the “business” of the denomination, for its “health”.
Methodology: Confidentiality in order to maintain a safe space that facilitates frankness and free expression would otherwise be precluded in open groups, where men may “stretch and reason together”.

Upon closer examination, we find several inherent contradictions in each of these, as well as conflicts with the proscribed practices and polity of the PCA (another task of BA: document analysis, the BCO in this case).
Let’s consider first the stated purpose.  The emails reveal much organization and coordination for votes on overtures at GA, nominations for committees, and activities within Presbyteries[2].  Travis Scott even concedes the political nature of the activities of the NP in his article.  So the stated purpose and the actual activity of the NP are misaligned, which raises the question of the accuracy of the stated purpose.
Training videos, seminars, and articles in public forums open to all interested parties would function as much better tools to equip individuals to serve effectively in the denomination rather than secret societies of email groups on a rather broad scale.  The chosen method of selective “resourcing” betrays a suspicion and lack of trust, which precludes making such endeavors open for all: only the right people are to be resourced.
Second, consider the stated responsibility of each member in the NP: participation in the business of the denomination, for its health.  The truth is that every officer in the PCA must vow to perform all the duties of his office, which includes participation in its courts.  Qualifications for church office include familiarity and acceptance of PCA polity (BCO 21-4 & 21-5 for teaching elders (TEs), 24-6 for ruling elders (REs)).  So any officer who engages in a secret society or group for the supposed purpose of doing the “business” of the church fails to understand the very nature of Presbyterian polity, and tacitly breaks his vows for ordination.  The ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the PCA is explicitly stated to be a joint rather than a several power (BCO 1-5), and secret groups by their very nature constitute a breach of the PCA form of government.
Third, consider the stated methodology: confidentiality.  The need for confidentiality usually arises when there are sensitive topics to be considered.  We commonly see this in business settings where corporate concerns are meant to be kept from the competition, or where personal HR matters are discussed.  In the case of the NP, however, the premise for confidentiality is for the sake of personal growth and development, where its members may “stretch and reason together” without having to worry about being taken out of context and without having to deal with slander by outsiders (whether inside the church or not).  But in light of the purported purpose and responsibility of NP members, how is it possible that REs and TEs in particular are afraid to own the truth of their convictions?
It seems incredulous that men who, in the case of TEs, have completed college and seminary, been examined by presbytery prior to being ordained and installed as church officers, men who regularly teach and preach the truth, giving correction to those who err (a requirement for the office), how is it that they of all people need a safe space to share what they really believe and think in order to “stretch and reason together”?
In my day job as a business analyst one of the ground rules we often employ in group meetings is called “stand your ground.”  This ground rule sets the expectation that participants in the meeting will own their ideas and share them in the meeting to improve productivity, as opposed to leaving the meeting and telling everyone afterwards that it was a total waste of time.  The courts of the church are supposed to be the space of deliberation and discussion, where men own their ideas and the church as a whole votes on them.  Men serving as TEs and REs must not be shrinking violets who are afraid to stand for the truth as they understand it for fear of opposition.  Nor should they be too proud to be open to instruction, even publicly. Our Lord has a word or two to say about those who are ashamed of Him and His words in this present age (Luke 9:26).
What’s more, confidentiality and large numbers tend to be mutually exclusive, and practically a fool’s errand.  The more individuals who are in on a secret, the more likely it is to be leaked.  As cited above, TE Kessler has stated that any lack of confidentiality would make no difference in what was shared in the emails.  If that is the case, why the need for an exclusive email group in the first place, apart from fear of being challenged or ridiculed?  The truth will stand up to scrutiny, whereas error and subterfuge will not.
So from a BA perspective, if the NP asked about how to go forward, I would advise it to publish a purpose and mission statement compatible with PCA officer vows, accept all such within the PCA who desire to participate in order to grow in their understanding of PCA polity and practices, and do away with confidentiality as its functional methodology.  All of this would be workable, however, only after a public apology and due repentance for the way the group has conducted itself essentially as a denomination within the denomination over the past several years.
Nathan Bowers is a member of First Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Ft. Oglethorpe, Ga.
[1] Travis Scott, The Big Leak, Pt. 1, https://www.semperref.org/articles/the-big-leak-pt-1?fbclid=IwAR2ymcY18V8sn1A64M8u6e0RN6G5ix9PAAWajpWPr2YADqqrQbFZMqh0vvI accessed Jan. 22, 2022.
[2] Al Taglieri, National Partnership Called to Repentance, https://theaquilareport.com/national-partnership-called-to-repentance/, accessed Jan. 22, 2022.