Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Bert Beach
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000204A
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00:23 Welcome to The Liberty Insider. This is a program bringing you
00:26 news, views, discussion and opinions on religious liberty 00:29 events around the world starting in the United States. 00:33 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty magazine 00:36 and my guest on this program is Dr. Bert Beach, a religious 00:41 liberty icon for the Seventh- day Adventist Church, recently 00:46 retired or at least admitting retirement but still plenty of 00:49 opinions and knowledge about religious liberty. I want to ask 00:52 you a question that I know relates to what you did for many 00:56 years. Out of our General Conference world headquarters 00:59 the religious liberty department for many years has prepared a 01:03 report every year on pretty much religious liberty concerns 01:06 in many countries; it's aimed to sort of cover the world, 01:10 countries of interest. Do you remember doing that or working 01:15 with that? Well really we started a little 01:17 bit of that, but it's really done by John Graz during his 01:20 administration who really pushed that and he had one or two good 01:27 associates who were able to get the work done and the first 01:31 annual report was rather simplistic a few years ago and 01:35 then the next report was a little better and every year 01:40 it's gotten to be better. It's really now a pretty good solid 01:44 researched report seen from a Seventh-day Adventist view point 01:49 regarding the Seventh-day Adventist church and I think 01:52 it's worthwhile. Because every year the State 01:54 Department puts out a similar report from U.S. national 01:57 interest and just looking generically at religious liberty 02:01 and civil liberties. And now I think it's a valuable 02:07 document. And it can very specifically 02:10 highlight, while we might on this program sort of talk 02:13 broadly. You know you can look at a certain country like a 02:17 couple years ago in India I remember the General Conference 02:20 actually personally investigated Seventh-day Adventist churches 02:25 in northwestern India, I think, that had been attacked by mobs 02:30 and burned and a pastor killed and so on. Well clearly we could 02:34 site that sort of a thing to bring it to the attention not 02:37 just to the world but the Indian government themselves. 02:39 It has a very practical purpose. Let's talk about one item of 02:44 present concern in the Seventh- day Adventist Church. You and I 02:48 were discussing it earlier that just a few days ago our world 02:52 General Conference president put out an urgent call to all 02:56 members to pray for the quick release of a Seventh-day 03:00 Adventist pastor and administrator in Togo who's been 03:03 in prison, not directly for his faith, but likely as a byproduct 03:08 of the faith that he has. He's imprisoned on charges of murder. 03:12 Remember this case with Pastor Montero? 03:15 He's from Cape Verde, an island, a little republic, off the coast 03:22 of Togo, very close to the equator, not far from Togo 03:27 and he's a departmental director in the Union there, the Saielle 03:32 Union which groups the French speaking territories like Togo, 03:37 Lome or whatever the name is now. They change every so often 03:42 and so on and Ivory Coast and so on, these countries together 03:46 and he's a departmental director in there and he was arrested 03:51 recently and another minister accused of being involved in 03:56 blood trafficking and murdering young girls to get the blood for 04:01 some kind of a procedure, nothing to do with Christianity, 04:08 but some religious act or something like that and of 04:12 course no evidence has been found for that. Somebody 04:16 reported it who was in prison himself who has admitted to 04:21 being involved and who had had contacts with our minister who 04:26 had contacted him to try to help him and so on. And then somehow 04:30 he gave the name and so on. So the accusation is there. 04:33 They have no system of bail in that country so our pastor has 04:37 now been in prison for six months or more and it could be 04:42 another six months before they have the trial. Of course, you 04:46 wonder to what extent the system is organized properly, 04:50 that there's no bribery system or anything like that and so 04:54 nothing has happened even though the police have admitted 04:58 that they have no evidence against him at all. 05:00 Societally or socially it's a rather hazardous environment for 05:06 any Christian because I think there are six million people in 05:10 Togo, about six or seven thousand Seventh-day Adventists. 05:14 But Christians are a distinct minority, I mean a very small 05:18 minority and Animism is still the prevailing viewpoint. 05:23 It's an underdeveloped country. It doesn't mean they have no 05:25 sense of justice. They've inherited the French justice 05:29 system. But clearly culturally and their history would sort of, 05:36 in my view, lead them to probably go a little slow on 05:40 administering justice to someone from outside and an alien 05:44 religious viewpoint. And this is where I think a lot of prejudice 05:47 kicks in even though the accusation is not because of his 05:51 faith. I know I've been interested in 05:53 Togo because I conducted myself about 25 years or was it 30 05:58 years ago, a first evangelistic campaign in Togo in French and 06:03 so I was involved there. I met the president of the country and 06:07 had a nice meeting with him. It was very interesting because 06:11 usually these presidents in Africa and other countries, they 06:14 have so many people making demands on them asking for this 06:18 and asking for that. So we met with the president and after a 06:22 hello and a few greetings he said, now what can I do for 06:25 you? And I told him well we're not here to ask for anything. 06:29 We're just here to come to meet you and tell you how much we 06:32 appreciate the liberty we enjoy. Our church had just started 06:35 work about three or four years before in the country. It was a 06:39 new church and had very few members, just starting, and we 06:42 just want to tell you how much we appreciate being able to be 06:46 here and he just relaxed and we met there another half hour of 06:49 just talking with him. It's his son who is now the president. 06:52 I wish I could have gone down there and talked to him about 06:56 his father. We don't have time to get 06:57 through all of the history... 06:59 But I'm retired now... of the constitutional crisis/ 07:02 coup of the first degree when a prime minister that should have 07:06 inherited, his plane was kept circling. Do you know the story? 07:10 His plane was kept circling, refused to land and they 07:12 installed the son instead. 07:16 Yeah, it's a sad situation because in Togo our church had a 07:20 good reputation. When I was there I had pastors of other 07:24 churches coming to my meetings and we had very good relations; 07:27 even a Catholic priest was there. I gave a lecture one 07:31 evening on the Virgin Mary and how we looked at it and I asked 07:34 him if I had said anything that offended him. He said no. 07:37 I talked about how good a lady she was and you know that God 07:40 had selected her to be the mother of Jesus and so forth 07:44 which was a great acknowledgment of her. 07:48 Well the angel said, Most favored among women are you. 07:52 Exactly and so on. So am surprised to see that in Togo 07:55 they can't solve the problem quickly. It just seems to take 07:58 time and it's very discouraging in a way to see a situation like 08:02 that for our church when there is no evidence of anything being 08:06 committed. So we certainly are praying fervently. 08:10 You know we presume him innocent. There's no evidence 08:16 that we see or know about that there's anything other than 08:19 innocence but we certainly want justice to work quickly because 08:22 it's injustice to be kept languishing in the jail. 08:24 And prisons in that part of the work are not in the class of 08:29 Marriott Hotels. Well they're not Marriott Hotels 08:31 either here but yes in a third world country particularly it 08:36 can be more like it was in medieval or late reformation 08:40 Europe where the family members often have to feed the prisoner 08:44 All the family members are supposed to bring the meals 08:48 It's a very sad situation. I'm very unhappy about this 08:52 situation and I sure hope that the Lord will somehow intervene 08:55 and solve this problem quickly because it's not right the way 08:59 it is now. It puts me to mind of a story 09:02 that just once or twice in the last few years I've mentioned 09:07 on this program. But around 1999 or 2000 in Sri Lanka, a country 09:12 that then was undergoing a severe and protracted civil war, 09:16 in one of our schools a Tamil pastor, of course under 09:23 suspicion because they were the rebels that were challenging 09:27 the central government. A student came along, another 09:30 Tamil student who had some connections to the Tamil tiger 09:34 gorillas and on that alone the government arrested him and 09:38 him of terrorism and this was before 2001, so he was on a 09:42 terrorist charge, a capital charge, he could have been 09:45 executed on it. And he languished I think it was over a 09:49 year in prison with no immediate expectation of release. In fact, 09:53 we were expecting that perhaps he'd be convicted and hanged 09:57 promptly. And it was only after protracted period, as we're 10:01 going through with the Pastor in Togo, that he was suddenly 10:05 released. He was spirited out of the country, sent to Canada 10:09 and he renewed his calling as a minister of religion. But that 10:13 was very sobering to me to meet him, to hear him tell what 10:17 happened when he was in jail in incredible conditions. We don't 10:21 know about Pastor Montero in Togo. He was ruffed up a little 10:24 bit when he was first arrested because of the nature of the 10:28 crime I think. But it's certainly not a pleasant prison. 10:32 But Pastor Alexander told me over those many months almost 10:36 every day or two he was hung up by his ankles, he was beaten for 10:41 prolonged periods with sticks on the soles of his feet to cripple 10:45 him but no marks and then they put a book on his head and would 10:49 beat with cudgels on the book to give him brain damage. And he 10:53 said it affected his memory, his eyesight and so on. You know 10:58 there's almost well Satanic methods employed with a lot of 11:04 detainees around the world. Oh it's terrible. 11:08 But again providentially, well we hope providentially with 11:12 Montero; with Alexander he was providentially released and he 11:16 told me, this is the most amazing thing in it. I don't 11:19 know if you remember. He said that he believed that it was the 11:23 Lord's will that he be in prison because in prison he was able 11:27 to raise up a company of about 60 people meeting every Sabbath 11:30 and he said he didn't want to be released, but then 11:34 providentially when he was released another pastor was 11:37 arrested and he was able to continue caring for that prison 11:40 flock. Many times when a pastor gets 11:44 arrested and goes to prison it's providential. 11:46 Well what is that song that says God moves in mysterious ways 11:50 his wonders to perform. So God works through all situations 11:55 Good can come out of evil. 11:56 Yeah, I don't think God wants anybody imprisoned but he will 12:00 work good in any situation. We certainly are praying for 12:04 Pastor Montero. But these countries of concern are 12:08 are multiplying aren't they? Can you remember any other cases 12:13 where we had difficulties through the years? 12:16 They don't come to mind just recently. Of course we have had 12:20 under communism we had people but that's a long time ago now. 12:24 In eastern Europe they had problems, were imprisoned. 12:30 But one thing I think is very interesting. Our church has 12:34 sometimes been accused by some of its enemies of being an 12:39 American church, CIA maybe infiltrated and so forth. 12:43 I remember our church in Nicaragua some years ago was 12:48 closed down by the government for, I think it was a matter 12:52 of weeks and the schools were taken over, the conference 12:56 office and they were saying well America... It was under the 13:00 Sandinista regime back in those days... that the church was part 13:04 of the CIA system. But God intervened through the 13:10 ambassador in Washington. 13:11 We need to talk a little bit more about that, how we're able 13:15 to have UN and diplomatic contacts to pass on the word of 13:20 some of these problems. We'll be back after a short break to 13:23 continue this discussion of countries of interest. |
Revised 2014-12-17