Welcome back to
"The Liberty Insider."
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Before the break
with guest Dr. Bert Beach,
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the ambassador
for Religious Liberty,
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we were tracing your career
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and how you really
got into Religious Liberty
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at the world headquarters level.
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And I'd made an allusion
to a very contentious period
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within the Adventist church
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when some leaders
trying to reconcile
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our beliefs with Protestantism
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or evangelicals made
compromising statements.
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And I mentioned
that that was unfortunate
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but that what you did
setting up interchurch dialog
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is not at all
the same, isn't it?
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This is basically
diplomatic context way,
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you're explaining yourself
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so that you can
work cooperatively
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in certain countries
for Religious Liberty
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to make friends and influence
people basically, right?
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And also, Lincoln, it's
very important to make sure
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that others have a
correct understanding
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of what we stand
for and what we believe
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because in my
contacts with others,
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I've had very
strange statements.
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You know, I had a
leading Baptist theologian
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come to me once and say,
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"Well, now your name
is Seventh-day Adventist.
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So that means you expect
the second coming of Christ
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on the seventh day?"
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And I said, "Well, no,
not at all and so forth."
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Or another one says, "Your
name is Seventh-day Adventist,
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so the Sabbath
and the Second Advent
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that's the
center of your belief?"
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And I said, "Well,
your name is Baptist,
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so baptism is the
center of your belief?"
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"Oh, no, it's
salvation in Christ."
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"Well, it's with us
also salvation in Christ."
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So you have to
explain these things.
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I mean, Apostle Peter
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I think makes very
clear in his first letter.
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He says, "When people ask
you for a reason for your faith,
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be always ready to do it."
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Now some people
are ready to do it
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by kind of pontificating
when they talk to people
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or telling them you're wrong
and I'm right and so forth.
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I think Peter says,
"Do it with humility."
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He says, "Do it with
respect and do it with honesty,"
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he says, "with a good
conscious, so honesty."
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So when we have a
conversation with people
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and we've had conversations
with other churches
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dealing with
theology, explaining to them
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what we believe
regarding Christ,
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the salvation, the
Bible, our approach to life
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and Religious
Liberty and these issues,
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we try to make it
clear where we stand
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and then we listen to them also
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because conversations
means not only talking,
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it also means
listening. Absolutely.
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And some people have
a hard time listening.
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And so we've
presented our viewpoint.
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We try to do it humbly.
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We try to do it with
respect and to do it honestly.
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I've always believed
that this is a wonderfully--
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well, it's a wonderful dynamic,
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not to be confused with
the compromising tendency
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that I think of on at least
that one occasion I referred to.
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But I know over the years,
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you know, different
people have sniped at you
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and the
department for doing this
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but they don't understand it.
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So I'm really glad
you explained that.
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And we are still doing that and
I hope we do more of it. Yeah.
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Well, of course, you know,
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the priority of our
church is, of course, the Bible.
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And the Bible teaches us
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that the plan of salvation
is the important thing,
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salvation of people.
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So evangelism is the
first priority of our church
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and I agree with that. Yeah.
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But in order to
get an atmosphere,
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in order to better
evangelize perhaps,
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we need also to explain to
people what our beliefs are
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and meet with
theologians, people that-
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and have an understanding
of other people's beliefs
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because I must
confess that sometimes,
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we present the
beliefs of other churches
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not always quite accurately.
Incorrectly. That's true.
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We present them in a kind
of a, well, unfavorable way,
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let's put it that way.
And not quite completely--
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And probably
inaccurate. Appropriately.
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I think knowledge
about other faiths--
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And so for example,
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if people talk about
Seventh-day Adventists
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and they only quote what our
people said in the 19th century,
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you know, we
get upset about that
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because we say, our theology
has better explanations today.
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It has evolved.
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We have a better
understanding of the truth,
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of the fundamental beliefs,
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the 28 fundamental
beliefs of our church.
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So we want them to
quote what we're saying today
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from our magazines, from
our books and everything.
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Well, sometimes when we
talk about other churches,
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I don't need to
mention any church by name,
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we quote maybe only documents
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that were voted
maybe 200 or 300 years ago.
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And we don't say what
they are saying today.
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So you're building an
image that may not reflect
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reality completely,
maybe partly true, yes.
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Yeah, we need to.
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Well, we need to
have a full knowledge,
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not just a passing opinion.
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And I know
Seventh-day Adventists
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have suffered from a
success in a certain area.
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You know a health message,
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I think we got that
across in previous generations,
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and the message
many people have,
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"Well, Seventh-day Adventists,
oh, they don't eat meat
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and they're vegetarians
and they don't eat--"
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This was incorrect.
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But I heard someone say,
"Well, they eat peanut butter."
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You know, that's not
a very good definition.
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So I think you've done a
great service over the years,
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dialoging with many different
churches. And also it's helped--
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And making
friends along the way.
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And in my book here,
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I mentioned dozens
and dozens of top people
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in the world in
religion and so on
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that are friends of the
Seventh-day Adventist Church.
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That doesn't
mean that they agree
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with us on everything.
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But one thing I noticed
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in interchurch
relations with other people,
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the most important
thing is not necessarily
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that they agree
with you on everything
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but that they trust you.
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If they trust you, you are
in a much stronger position
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to be able to present your
views and to present arguments
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and explain why
you do certain things,
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why you don't do other things,
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why you don't become members of
maybe ecumenical organizations
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and bodies and they understand.
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But if you don't present
it to them in a correct way,
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they have a wrong understanding.
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So today, our church as
a result of the contacts
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I think what we made
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is considered by
other denominations
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to be a
Christian world communion.
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That's not the same as saying
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you are a sect
acting kind of cruelly
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and not always completely
honestly in some corner.
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Now for many years,
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you were Secretary General
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of the Christian World
Communion, weren't you? Yes.
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What is that organization,
can you explain that--
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Well, it's a
meeting really rather than--
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Sort of a round table,
isn't it? It's a round table.
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It meets every year
and it's representative
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of about 20 world bodies
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that are considered to
be world Christian bodies.
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Now it's interesting to note
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that most churches in the
world are not world churches
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and people
sometimes don't realize it.
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Obviously, the Roman Catholic
Church is a world church.
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Salvation Army
is a world church.
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Seventh-day Adventist
Church is a world church.
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But the Baptists
basically are national churches
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or even local
congregations very often.
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Pentecostals tend to
be also more localized.
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And the Methodists
are local churches.
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The Anglicans have
the Anglican Communion.
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But the Archbishop of Canterbury
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is only
administratively in power,
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you might say, in
the area of Canterbury.
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So you're talking
administrative control. Yeah.
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I mean, all of these
churches you mentioned
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have members
scattered around the world.
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Members scattered around--but
their structure is not global--
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They may have very
similar doctrines-- Yeah.
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But they don't
have any organization
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except these bodies called like
the World Methodist Council,
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the Lutheran World Federation,
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and so on that
brings them together.
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And, yes, these bodies are
the ones that meet every year.
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And I was secretary of that.
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They had me
secretary of that for 32 years.
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And I know that, that was--
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And I thought it
was a contribution
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we can make to show that
we're willing to cooperate
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and meet with other people and
discuss things with other people
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always keeping very strongly
to our own beliefs. Very good.
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In all the years
that you were leading out
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dialogs with
these other churches
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and of course in the department
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where there were crises that
came along from time to time,
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what one incident, for
example, sticks with you?
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Was there, you know,
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a moment when everything
sort of focused on the need
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to communicate and to intervene?
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What crisis
situation do you remember
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for example in all those years?
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Well, obviously,
communism, Eastern Europe.
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There is problems
in Eastern Europe.
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We have very
often discussed that.
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In fact, I would bring
other people into the meeting.
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I would suggest in preparing
the agenda for the next meeting
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that we have a
discussion of Religious Liberty
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on the agenda to discuss.
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And sometime I
would talk to Dr. Rossi
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who was living in
Switzerland at the time.
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And some of the meetings,
about half the meetings,
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usually, took place for
several years in Switzerland.
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And so we had him come in.
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And he was our
Religious Liberty man
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for the Euro-African
Division at that time
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and an expert for
the UN and all that.
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He would come and present
the situation in Eastern Europe
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that was going on
in communist company,
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in Soviet Union and so forth.
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So do you think the discussion
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and the pressures
brought to bay by our church
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and others on
Religious Liberty issues
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had anything directly to
do with the reformulating
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of the communist
hold on Eastern Europe?
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Directly, I would say it
would be hard to show exactly.
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I mean, sometime
it's claimed that,
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you know, the pope had
such an influence in Poland
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and so forth that
caused the communism to fall.
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I don't think that's
exactly the way it was.
00:10:11.48\00:10:13.69
It was not that simple.
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But, of course, people
everywhere have a yearning
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for freedom in general
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and religious freedom
in particular, don't they?
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Absolutely, I think
it's a basic human right.
00:10:21.38\00:10:24.78
And people need
liberty to express themselves.
00:10:24.81\00:10:29.08
If a person is
restricted, be it in the home,
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be it in school, be it anywhere,
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it will not be very successful.
00:10:35.16\00:10:37.14
People have to be
able to do their thing,
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of course, within
reasonable conditions.
00:10:40.66\00:10:44.27
It's been my pleasure to
discuss with Dr. Bert Beach
00:10:44.30\00:10:48.06
a little of his life story as
recently published in his book.
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It does have the wrong title.
00:10:52.78\00:10:54.65
When I first heard about
the book being published,
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I said it should be
titled "Give him a medal."
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The reality is that Dr. Beach
00:11:00.43\00:11:02.22
has done so many leading
edge things over the years
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and one of the things
that got the most blowback
00:11:05.49\00:11:07.54
from those
unaware of the dynamic
00:11:07.57\00:11:09.98
of what we do in
Religious Liberty
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was he visited a pope in Rome
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and gave him a little
keepsake of the visit.
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There are always
exchanges of gifts.
00:11:19.51\00:11:22.54
What is important as I
look at Dr. Beach's life
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and exemplified
in that one contact,
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he always witnessed powerfully
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to what we believe
as Seventh-day Adventist
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to what Religious
Liberty inherently is
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not from just
history but from the Bible.
00:11:35.42\00:11:38.43
And if you do and
look through that book,
00:11:38.46\00:11:41.72
you'll see that over the
years in contact after contact,
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in situation after
situation, Dr. Beach projected
00:11:46.21\00:11:50.55
an Adventist view
of Religious Liberty
00:11:50.58\00:11:52.54
that we can be thankful for.
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Of course, there are great
heroes of faith in our churches,
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in other churches
and in other times.
00:11:58.44\00:12:00.96
But in the
Religious Liberty area,
00:12:00.99\00:12:02.84
when I look at what Dr. Beach
00:12:02.87\00:12:04.64
and some of his
contemporaries did,
00:12:04.67\00:12:07.17
it was a golden era
of representing to prince
00:12:07.20\00:12:11.99
and prelate what the principles
of Religious Liberty are
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and should be
and will forever be
00:12:17.15\00:12:19.53
because they are
biblically based.
00:12:19.56\00:12:21.27
That's an important
point to get across.
00:12:21.30\00:12:23.94
There is a logic for it.
00:12:23.97\00:12:25.34
But at the end of the day we
believe in Religious Liberty,
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because we have
been liberated from sin
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by the Lord Jesus Christ.
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For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
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