Getting Past the Past

SERMON: 2012-03-04--ac1285--getting-past-the-past-part-1 SOURCE DURATION: 00:49:39.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The sermon begins with an anecdote in segment [0] and concludes with liturgical/spoken material in segment [376], immediately before the sustained acoustic music interval. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:45:53.440-00:49:38.620 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, last week, you will recall, we had with us Steve Coy, Queen's University campus pastor for Classes Quinty. And if you were here, you will recall that he talked about the television reality show "Undercover Boss," particularly the episode featuring Baja Fresh president David Kim. I've only seen about, personally, half a dozen of the "Undercover Boss" shows, but I happen to have seen that one. And I remember back then, when I saw it, thinking to myself, this man, David Kim, truly is a Christian, and is obviously trying to put his Christianity to work in business. Well, this morning, I want to talk to you, by way of introduction, just briefly about another television reality show. This one is called "Redemption, Inc." How many of you have seen that one? Not very many. It ran on CBC for eight weeks on Monday nights, and it is the brainchild of Kevin O'Leary. How many of you recognize Kevin O'Leary? A lot more people watch "The Dragon's Den," or "Shark Tank," or his other television show, what is it, "Laying O'Leary," or "O'Leary Laying Something or Another." Anyway, the premise behind "Redemption, Inc." is to give ex-convicts a second chance. Kevin O'Leary makes the observation that we have to change public perception of ex-convicts, he says. Most Canadians don't realize that when you come out of prison, you're a complete pariah. You can't get a car loan or money from a bank to start a business, and so most end up back in prison within 24 months. It is just so wrong. And the show featured 10 people, all of whom had done time in prison, and they had to pitch a business proposition to O'Leary and the team of people that was with him. And then the winner would receive $100,000 to invest in his or her business. O'Leary makes a very interesting observation about the relationship between business and ex-cons, and he says, "Convicts and businessmen aren't so far apart." I thought that was kind of interesting. In terms of the skills they bring to their trade, he says, "Some of these people have tremendous talents. Look at a successful crack cocaine dealer. He has to manage distribution, marketing, production, and inventory controls. It is a bad business, but it has all the same challenges that face the guy running a big corporation." And I find it rather fascinating that they have just announced the winner of Redemption Incorporated, and it is a woman by the name of Aliyah Petrini, and she operates out of Prince George, British Columbia, a company called Reliah Gales, no removal and lawn care. And Aliyah Petrini served hard time for being a crack cocaine dealer and for having beat up those who owed money, and who weren't paying it out. And it's really quite a fascinating story because she would be a mom to her child by day, couldn't live off the money that she was making on welfare. She said, "I got $750 a month on welfare. Rent alone was $600." So after the kid went to bed at night, she'd go out and deal crack cocaine, made a lot of money. And then when people wouldn't pay up, she beat the tar out of them. And this went really well for a season until she got arrested. And she turned out to be then the winner of this particular competition, because having done her hard time, realized that that was simply no way to go. And I tell you that story not to embellish the life of crime, but rather to illustrate a very important truth that comes to expression in this passage that we have read together. And that is the fact that we all need a second chance. We all need another crack at the bat. As I said earlier, if the Lord were to hold against us the mistakes that we've made, or even the crimes that we have committed, or the things that we have done wrong, we'd all be in great difficulty. And Kevin O'Leary was drawn to this particular concept because he said, "That could have been me. And if there hadn't been particular people in my life who stood up for me and helped me on that journey, I don't know where I would be today." He certainly wouldn't be where he is financially or in many other ways. And what makes this story particularly relevant to us this morning, of course, is that that's precisely the situation where the Apostle Paul finds himself here in the concluding verses, or in this portion of Acts chapter 9. You know the back story. He has, after Stephen's martyrdom, taken it upon himself to become a persecutor of the church. We read in Acts 8 verse 3, "Saul began to destroy the church, going from house to house. He dragged off men and women and put them in prison." And then later on in his testimony before Agrippa in Acts chapter 26, he tells us that when the Synhedrin took votes as to put people to death, he always voted in favor of the death penalty. This man was vicious, and he breathed threats and murder against the church. So much so that he scattered the whole church in Jerusalem, and then when there weren't enough people that he could put in jail left in Jerusalem, he started going to surrounding communities in order to arrest Christians there. And as you know, it was on his way to Damascus to do precisely that. That Jesus met him, called him to himself, and commissioned him to preach the gospel. And so all of a sudden, the same Saul who had been persecutor of the church, now began to preach to the Jesus who once he had persecuted. And the very people that he used to work for as the persecutor of the church, now turned against him, and the Bible tells us that he had to leave Damascus. He had to be lowered off the wall at night in a basket because they were looking to kill him. And so eventually, he made his way to Jerusalem. But if he thought that he could just integrate into the Jerusalem church that he had previously tried to destroy, he was sadly mistaken because we read in verse 26, "When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple." As you can imagine, Saul suffered from a huge credibility gap. It was all fine and well for the people in Jerusalem to hear that he had come to Christ and that he had been way off in Damascus preaching the gospel. It was quite another to allow him into their group, considering the pain and the hurt that they had experienced. Because see, we sanctify these stories, we sanitize them, don't we? But put yourself in the position of those folks in Jerusalem. How many of them would not have lost a loved one to the death penalty because of Saul of Tarsus? How many of those didn't have their property confiscated, experienced social economic heartache because this man was responsible for their pain? And now he just thinks he can come hopping back in there and everything would be forgotten and forgiven, come on. People then were as real as they are today, and their struggle towards forgiveness and their struggle towards reconciliation and their struggle to restoring trust in relationship was as huge for them as it is for you and me. And so, in the story that we have read together, what happens? Barnabas runs interference, helps him to get assimilated into Christian community. Paul gets accepted by the very people whom he had sought to destroy. An amazing demonstration of grace in my book. I don't know how you feel about that, but I think that's remarkable. And that then forms the basis for his ministry, which eventually will reach all over the Mediterranean area. And in the time that we have left to us this morning, I want to draw with you three important lessons, lessons that I think we all need to learn if we are going to get past the past, both individually and collectively. First lesson I want to draw from this is that we all tend to define people by their past. We all tend to define people by their past. I know that you were a hell raiser as a kid, so therefore don't expect me to trust you or allow you to be an authority over me in my adult life, because I remember your past. I know how promiscuous you were in high school or in college, how many lives you wrecked, and so now I always see you through the lens of what I remember of your behavior back then. I heard stories about how you treated your previous employer, and I will never ever really quite trust you again, because I judge you by your past. And you can go on and on that way. I know that you had an alcohol or a drug addiction 10, 20 years ago, and I don't really believe that people really change, and so now I will always see you through the eyes. Do you understand what I'm saying? Or are you maybe so sanctified that you don't judge people that way? I think we know better, don't we? Outwardly, we may pretend everything is okay, but inwardly, we're just like the Jerusalem saints here. Remember, these were saints that had a great deal of grace upon them, but they said, "We don't know if we can trust this dude. How do we know that he has really changed?" It's a major, major struggle, because in that piece that I read earlier from O'Leary, that's precisely what is faced by ex-convicts when they try to re-enter society. Imagine, you know, you're putting in a job application, and you're doing great, and you're feeling in everything, and then you come to the place where you have to testify to whether you have served time or not. If you don't mention it and they find out later, you're a liar, and you will lose your job opportunity. If you put it out there up front, they take one look at you, and they say, "Well, don't really know if I want to be associated with the likes of you." And as he said earlier, you know, within a short period of time, 24 months, the rate of recidivism, the return to crime, is incredibly high. You can't get a loan. You can't make a start. Somebody, as we'll see in a few moments, has to believe in you to get you past that point. We all judge people one way or another based on their past. The question is, how do we get beyond that and truly get beyond it from the heart? Well, I think the answer is that we need a biblical view of reality. That is to say, we need an anthropology, an understanding of the human race that covers the full gamut from good to bad. And what I mean by that is that the first element of a biblical view of reality is that we need to understand that true character change is hard to come by. See, there are people who are so optimistic about the human condition. They believe everything everybody tells them, only to get disappointed later on because the heart of man apart from Christ is wicked and is evil. And it's for good reason that many people are suspicious of other people's pasts because true character change is incredibly difficult to come by. And anybody who says it isn't so has never tried changing or tried trusting somebody at a deep heart level when they claim to have changed. Jeremiah put it this way in chapter 13 verse 23. He says, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil." The Bible is always very realistic about the human condition. But it never stops there, does it? Because even while character change is extremely difficult to come by, the gospel, listen to me well, specializes precisely in that. Because the good news of the gospel, as Paul goes on to say in 2 Corinthians 5 17, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come." And Paul's own life is an amazing demonstration of how one day he was going in this direction. He met up with Jesus and his life got turned around 180 degrees. And he was changed from a persecutor of Christ to a preacher of Christ. It doesn't get any better than that. And one of the things that we seek so strongly to embrace in this church, and I trust in other churches too, is the reality that nobody needs to be defined by their past. Because no matter how crookedly we have been put together, and you've often heard me say this, no matter how badly our life experiences have been, no matter what has gone into making us who we are, Jesus is bigger than all of that. In him we have died, in him we have been raised to the dead from the dead, and if we will but humble ourselves before him, his grace and his power can change to the uttermost everybody that calls in his name. I think it's time for a good amen. Jesus is bigger, and there isn't anyone who comes to him out of a broken and a humble and a contrite heart, whom he will turn away. So yes, we judge people by their past, but we don't hold people in bondage to their past because if anybody's in Christ, he's a new creation. And even though it may take a while to put off all the old behaviors, the Holy Spirit at work in that person's heart will change us all until we stand before the throne of God without any wrinkle blemish or any such spot. So that's the message we need to preach, that's the message we need to proclaim, that is the hope that we hold out to people. You don't have to be the victim of your past. There is an opportunity for a new beginning because of Jesus. Paul's life illustrated that. Second lesson that I draw from this story is that we all need an advocate. That is to say somebody to come alongside us, somebody to believe in us, and somebody to take us by the hand, lift us out of the pit, and encourage us to move forward into things of God. And that is of course what Barnabas does here. We read in verse 27 of this chapter, "But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus." A couple of things in that verse and in the subsequent verse that give us the elements of Barnabas's advocacy. Let me just walk you through that. The first thing that Barnabas does in Barnabas, remember where we've met him before? Where did we meet him before? Come, come. We met him before back in Acts chapter 4 as the first dude who sold his land and gave the money and put it at the apostle's feet. Started that whole cycle with Ananias and Sapphira. His real name, by the way, was Joseph. He's from the island of Cyprus, but they called him Barnabas, and Barnabas means son of encouragement. And you can see how this is his gifting. Later on, as we'll see, it gets him into trouble with Paul because of their fight over Mark, but that's a subject for another day. But in this particular passage, the first thing that Barnabas does is he takes Saul in. Notice how the text puts it. Barnabas took him, and to take him is to believe in him. It is willing to risk his own reputation with him when everybody else thought he was poison. And if truth be known, no matter where it is that we come from, we all need somebody to believe in us and to take us on on the journey of life. If you listen to Kevin O'Leary's story, then you will discover that one of the reasons he was drawn to Redemption Inc. recognizing, you know, the reaction that you might get from the public when you're dealing with ex-cons, he said, "That could have been me if it wasn't for some significant interventions in my life." And he goes on to tell the story of how when he was five or six, he immediately ran into trouble at school because he had dyslexia. And he says, "I easily could have dropped out of school very quickly, except," he says, "my mother took me to a very experimental program at Montreal Hospital," I believe it was, "with two particular experts, a Dr. Rabinovich and a Dr. Margie Golick." And Margie Golick, in particular, took him under his way, her wing, and pointed out to him that that bad as the dyslexia was for him and the liability that it created, there was also an upside to it, and she encouraged him to keep on going and helped him to overcome that difficulty. He said, "Apart from that, my life would have been a wreck." And then further on, when he got to grade 11, his parents had divorced. His mother is of Lebanese descent, and with a name like O'Leary, you can imagine his father was Irish. That marriage didn't last very long, and his mother remarried, and Kevin went through two years of significant rebellion, so much so that his mother locked the door on him and said, "You're not welcome in this house anymore." And the person then, interestingly enough, who took him under his wing was his stepfather, and his stepfather sat him down and he said, "Kevin, listen." At that time, Kevin wanted to be a photographer. He says, "If you don't smarten up and deal with your attitude, you will never be able to fulfill your destiny or your dream." And somehow, in that conversation, he got through to that LAD, and his life changed for the better. See, we all need somebody to speak into our situation. I don't know how many of you remember the name, Wesley Stafford. I've talked about him before. He is the president and the CEO of Compassion International. Compassion International is one of the largest child advocacy organizations in the world. A number of you will have taken on children through their program when they've been here and made their presentation in the middle of concerts. Well, Kevin, if we can have that picture back up, or rather Wes, has just this January issued his most recent book called "Just a Minute." And the thesis of that book is that children's lives are changed because of significant people who, at the right moment of their lives, are able to speak into their life and to call them forth. And he tells this story how, at the age of 14, it was a casual comment made by his own father, changed his life forever. Let me just read it to you in his own words from an interview that he gave recently in connection with the publication of this book. He says, "For me, that moment, that one minute that changed his life, was when my father first believed in me. He changed my life in one moment, one sentence, at the age of 14. My family had just arrived from Africa, the only home I had ever known to the United States. While in Africa, I lost nearly half of my village friends to measles, malaria, smallpox, hunger, or snakebite." In fact, in another story, he tells the story of how he went to his father and he said to his father, "When is it my turn?" And his father turned to him and said, "What do you mean when it's your turn?" Well, he said, "When is it my turn to die? Because all my friends are dying." And his father said, "You're not going to die. Roll up your sleeve. Notice the scratches on your arm. That is vaccination we gave you in America before we went to Africa so that you would not die from these diseases. I had cried myself to sleep hundreds of nights after we buried my childhood buddies. Now stepping off to Gangplank, I was a lost soul in this new and foreign place. I had been torn from a gentle African village to step a month later into the biggest most intimidating metropolis known to humanity. I was shell-shocked. A man was driving us to a church service one of those first days. My father was in the passenger seat and I sat alone in the back. The driver glanced my way and said the familiar word, 'So, Wesley, what do you want to be when you grow up?' After a long awkward pause, my father came to my rescue. He said, "I've been watching Wesley for a long time. He has seen a lot of pain and a lot of suffering. He has a big heart. He loves helping people who are hurting." I remember thinking, "Really? Is that who I am? Is that what matters most to me?" That was the end of the conversation but then not the end of the thought. In fact, it was the beginning for me. Now in this minute, the tapestry of my life got turned over. The knots and tangles from the backside of the needlework fell into a pattern that suddenly made sense. I was launched and he says, "That was the day. That was the day when I became an advocate for Compassion International." One moment, one word can change a person's life. Barnabas took Saul in. He was prepared to risk everything in being associated with him. Not only that but he goes on then in the text to introduce him to the church leadership because notice how the passage goes on, "Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles." There's a saying you often hear quoted in the business world, "It's not so much what you know but who you know." Well, that's certainly the case here because there is no way that Saul, with his track record, is going to be welcomed into the Christian community, that which is left of it in Jerusalem apart from the approval and the blessing of leadership. And so again, Barnabas uses his own position to facilitate that relationship and he is again taking a risk because he could easily now be written off as a poor judge of character and if anything should go wrong in the future, guess who will get hung out to dry? It'll be Barnabas. You know, if there's one thing that I've learned from all the stuff that we've gone through in recent years and there have been many things and maybe someday, Lord willing, I'll have the opportunity to share those with you, but you know if there's one thing that I've learned is that when there is even a whiff of scandal, you know immediately who your friends are and who not. Did you know that? Because immediately people have to decide, "Do I want to be associated with even a whiff of scandal? Will I get my fingers dirty, take that risk, or will I step back and say I don't want to be polluted by the uncleanliness of the world or the uncleanliness of those who profess to be God's people?" That's not only incredibly painful, but it's so at odds with the heart of Jesus because what did Jesus do? He left the glories of heaven and He got involved with the likes of you and me and He got so dirty, He got so dirty that He ended up being nailed to the cross like a common criminal. Barnabas not only takes Saul in, Barnabas takes him and he introduces him to the church leadership knowing that he is taking a risk in that whole process and then in taking him to the church leadership in this New Jersey, in this Jerusalem church, He now vouches for Saul. For notice how the text goes on, "He told him how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus." Notice two things there. He testifies to his authentic conversion experience. I have learned over the years you cannot truly trust that anybody's heart has really been changed to the core level of their being unless they have had a true and authentic encounter with Jesus because the human heart is incredibly deceitful and that conversion experience with Christ has to bear fruit in a demonstrated lifestyle that shows that Jesus has really been there. How many of you remember Bob Dylan? Remember his conversion experience with Christ for two years from his Jewish background? He professed faith in Christ, produced I think two albums of Christian music and then pretty soon fell away again from the faith and ever since people have been trying to figure out why did he become a Christian or profess Christ and why did he fall away and one of the narratives that I've heard and I don't know if that's true or not is that he felt taken advantage of by Christians who were using his high-profile conversion to try to score points with the pagan in the secular world. I don't know if that's true. All I know is that in this story you have Barnabas bearing witness to the authentic nature of Saul's conversion and the fact that he is worthy to be accepted into the community because he has really changed because he has met up with Jesus and then what happens is that this whole process of taking him in introducing him to the apostles testifying to his authentic Christian conversion that's what prepares room now for Saul's ministry among the saints in Jerusalem many of whom he had badly injured and hurt in the past and so it creates ministry opportunity. The text goes on to say in verse 28 and 29 so Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem speaking boldly in the name of the Lord and he talked and debated with the Grecian Jews but they tried to kill him so Saul was accepted into the community he was able to start moving freely and his ministry was accepted among the very Christians whom he had previously persecuted and so it was so Barnabas's advocacy that gave opportunity for the church to see for themselves who Saul really was that didn't make the pain go away but it surely helped them to understand that they were in the presence of a very real miracle of God and as I said none of this would have happened apart from Barnabas's advocacy and so let me ask you this morning as you look back over your life who has there been who took you in who advocated for you and who affirmed you in places where you need affirmation that has made you who you are today I did just a little bit of quick reflecting on that this past week as I was thinking about the service today and my mind goes back to Gene Howitt who was my elementary school teacher from grade five to grade well it's a little complicated because I skipped grade eight and that was her doing and I'll talk about that in a moment Gene Howitt was not my favorite teacher she wasn't warm cuddly Mrs. McQuarrie in the other see this was in in Victoria grade school two class two classrooms and and two mixed sets of classes as you can imagine Mrs. McQuarrie was soft and cuddly but it only had her for about a year and then I got Mrs. Howard and Mrs. Howard was tough and stern and mean and I don't think too many people liked her she's long dead so I can talk about her but you know in the PEI school system every so often the inspector would come out and there would be sort of a general tests I think that all the students had to do to see if all these little country schools were living up to to the requirements of the government and I don't quite know how it all went but I must have done really well because all of a sudden in the middle of this Gene Howard comes along and she ruffles my hair those were the days when I had hair to ruffle and you know how awkward that is in grade six and so you're trying to you know get away from that because with everybody but you know that spoke to me somewhere at a deep level because it it meant that she saw me and that what I was doing was okay and later on because my birthday is in November as many of you know and at the time that I entered into grade one the cutoff date for school was at the end of October and so I had gone through all the years of school one of the oldest in the class and she recognized that and because it was all in one classroom anyway she actually prepped me for provincial grade eight examinations and the result of that was I passed those not only but in that way was able to skip grade eight and then got into more my own age bracket and you look back on those kind of things how life would have changed but for those events I know if you have those in your life I'm sure you do I wouldn't have gone to college when I did I wouldn't have met my wife when I did my four kids it wouldn't be my four kids today you know apart from all of that and I owe that all to Gene Howitt who I didn't even like not an amazing thing so you look back on your life what do you see where where God raised up somebody who saw you spoke prophetically into your life and set you on a course that has made a huge difference another person in terms of my professional ministry was John Ventile and other people with the board of home missions the board of home missions has been the only agency in our denomination over the years who has really appreciated and honored us for our emphasis on wanting to reach the lost and and affirmed not only me but the ministry of this church in ways that you and I can't even begin to tell in fact they gave us some of the original seed money that has brought us to where we are today but take it a step further who was there in your life that you can speak into with one word that can change the course of their lives we often say sticks and stones may hurt my bones but words will never hurt me but we all know that's not true because we also all have negative memories of people who cut us to the core our hearts were open they placed us under judgment and we're still trying to escape those proclamations isn't that true but who is there in your life that God gives you an eye for into whose life you can speak words of life and words of encouragement and words of hope because you see that's what Christian community ought to be a place where in Christ we can believe the best for each other a place in Christ where where we will so pour out our lives for each other where we are so confident in God's amazing grace that I don't care who you are where you've come from what you've done if your heart is truly in Christ he will change you and there will be a day when we all stand around the throne of God celebrating forever the reality of a new creation and new community isn't that the truth that's what God's after that's what he calls us to commit ourselves to amen all right thank you just want to make sure you're awake you're always awake have hey you're a good man sir all right we're going to leave it at that there's more that I want to say we'll have to come back to that next time because the final lesson that I want to draw from this passage is that it takes time to rebuild trust trust once broken is hard to restore it's hard to restore because it involves both forgiveness and reconciliation and both forgiveness and reconciliation are a process that have to be worked out over a period of time and so lord willing we'll try to come back to that next week there's a bulletin insert with a drawing there that is taken from my book all of shoots around the table if you have the book you can read the chapter but look at the drawing and if the lord wills will come back to it and we'll look more closely at how that process works because you know we often talk in Christian circles about forgive and forget well not only are we not very good at forgiving we're even worse at forgetting and it takes an amazing amount of grace to have the process completed in a way that is honoring to God so enough said stand with me for prayer please lord we confess we do judge people by their past and we confess that we often hold things over each other just to give us a sense of superiority and to protect ourselves from the pain that could come if we open up our hearts carelessly and somebody runs all over them and the lord with a lot of the stuff that we've gone through in recent months and years many of our hearts have been wounded some of our relationships have been strained there are places where we've closed off our hearts and we've just lived in our own little world not knowing what is safe to say and who is safe to trust and and lord we know that it's your desire to restore all of those places and to help us to grow up in Christ in every way it's hard to imagine it's hard to conceive how big was the challenge for the early church to allow Saul of Tarsus back into their community after all that had been said and all that had been done and the damage that had been done and lord we're so grateful for Barnabas and for the way that he was able to pave the way and for the way that true reconciliation true restoration true ministry was able to take place not because people just sort of pretended everything was okay when it was not okay but because your grace was bigger than all of that and lord how that church went forth from there to proclaim the good news of Jesus to the farthest reaches of the world and so I give my life to you afresh I pray that each of us may do the same thing that lord in places where we have been wounded you will restore in places where relationships have have stretched beyond the breaking point that your grace will facilitate finding each other's hearts and each other's lives afresh so that filled with fresh fresh hope and fresh courage and fresh power we may declare to the ends of the world that if anyone's in Christ he's a new creation the old has passed away behold the new has come lord we love you and we love being part of your people even when it hurts like ghetto sometimes but we look forward to the day when you make all things really really new even so maranatha come come with power come with grace come with love lord [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:45:53.440; remove through 00:49:39.000] jesus come and do your work in us and among us we pray it in jesus name [CUT] amen so lord we confess we've divided your church through pride and God forgive us lord we repent of the names we've called ourselves we now choose one name we proclaim one church responding to the call jesus you pray that your church would be one as you and the father are one lord let us see our true unity in you then heal us with the bonds of your love we proclaim the one church responding to the call the lord we commit in the power of your name to stand as one for the cross now send us more than holy spirit's ray to take your salvation to the one god and mother one true we proclaim one church responding to the call to go into all the world and proclaim salvation and baptize and teach your work to prepare one bride for the sun one lord and god over all one lord and god over all [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:49:39.000; resume after this marked segment]