Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Orlan Johnson
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000257A
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00:22 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:24 This is a program bringing you up analysis, 00:27 news, up-to-date information 00:29 and facts and figures you should know 00:31 about religious liberty in the United States 00:33 and indeed around the world. 00:35 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty Magazine. 00:38 And I've a very special guest on the program, 00:41 Orlan Johnson. 00:43 You are the director of 00:45 Public Affairs and Religious Liberty 00:46 for the North American Division of 00:48 Seventh-day Adventist. 00:49 Now that really means that I need to pay good attention 00:52 to what you say because I report to you. 00:55 Most of the time. 00:56 Yeah, well, that's another program. 01:01 But I am very happy to have you on the program 01:03 and I hope this is the first of many. 01:07 When I was thinking about what to talk about, 01:08 you know, all sorts of topics come to mind. 01:11 But I want to talk about something that you and I 01:13 experienced together with about 22 other people 01:16 for two weeks recently in Italy, 01:19 France and Swaziland. 01:21 It was the Great Controversy Religious Liberty Bus Tour. 01:24 Yes. Yes. It was a great tour, I thought. 01:26 I was really just amaze of all the different places 01:30 that we went and had a chance to see 01:32 where a lot of the-- 01:33 what I would call the original work of the reformation, 01:36 the original work of religious liberty took place 01:38 and just getting a chance to see it first hand. 01:40 It's sort of going back to our roots. 01:42 It actually was, 01:43 it really was and the idea of being able to see 01:45 where it all started. 01:47 A lot of times you have a general idea how things were, 01:49 you read about things and books 01:51 but actually be there 01:52 and be able to put your hands on it 01:53 is a whole different thing. 01:54 Well, talk about reading from books, 01:57 you and I were both taking directions from Dr John Graz, 02:00 a world religious liberty leader 02:02 and couple of times I joke that the tour was also, 02:06 Dr. Graz, this is your life. 02:08 We were recounting some of the places 02:10 that he'd revisiting the places he worked at. 02:13 But those happened to be key places 02:16 for religious liberty and-- 02:18 Absolutely, and one of the things 02:20 that I really appreciate, 02:21 it was the ministry of Dr. Graz. 02:23 Wherever we went, 02:24 everyone treated us very nicely 02:25 and it's just great to know that when you go out 02:28 and do God's work that people will come back 02:30 and remember you in a great way. 02:32 Didn't Ellen White used the term, 02:34 "There are people looking wistfully to heaven." 02:36 That's true. 02:37 And we met fellow believers 02:39 but we have to believe even in those places like the-- 02:42 where the Waldensians were in Torre Pellice, 02:46 they fallen on difficult times, 02:48 they're not quite the same standard bearers 02:51 that they once were. 02:52 But I got the same feeling that there's a wistfullness 02:55 for the good old days and for the good old truth 02:58 and faith that people used to have. 02:59 I think that's the case because I think clearly 03:02 everyone still searching for something. 03:04 And when you can be able to demonstrate 03:06 that we serve a God who's powerful 03:07 and He's gonna protect you under all circumstances. 03:11 I was blown away walking up those hills 03:13 where the Waldensians were as well 03:14 and the caves the things of that nature 03:17 and it just made you wonder 03:19 what would I've been like under those circumstances. 03:21 I know. I know. 03:22 Well, I'll try to revisit that a bit later in the program 03:25 but one of the things I want to bring out 03:27 is you spoke about reading about these things 03:30 in church history 03:31 and I don't know if you like me, 03:34 I used to read Foxe's Book of Martyrs. 03:37 Yeah. Oh, yeah. 03:38 I know that was in Ellen White's library 03:40 and the libraries of many number of the founders 03:43 of the Seventh-day Adventist Church 03:45 in the mid 1800s 03:46 but it goes back much further to the reformation period 03:49 and that was put together in England 03:51 I think around 1600s 03:55 they started to assemble that book. 03:56 But the book that got my attention again 04:00 during the tour was assigned to my by Dr. Graz. 04:03 He said, everyday, as we were traveling, 04:05 he wanted to start off with a reading 04:07 from the Great Controversy. 04:08 Yeah. 04:10 I am sure a lot of our viewers are aware of that book, 04:13 a Seventh-day Adventist should be. 04:15 But I think many non Adventists perhaps seen it 04:18 with the book salesmen coming door to door 04:20 or that's been mail out over the years. 04:22 But I can tell if they haven't seen it, 04:24 it's really an interesting collection of insights 04:30 from the Bible story and creation and so on, 04:33 going through the new world, and God's people redeemed. 04:36 But in between Ellen White and her researchers 04:39 who helped to put the book together 04:40 drew from histories by Milder Benia and Wiley, 04:46 these were well accepted histories of the reformation 04:48 under that period. 04:50 And to read that again, 04:51 as I had to do as we shared it on the bus was inspiring to me. 04:55 Oh, absolutely. 04:56 Yeah, specially when you take a look at some of the writings 04:59 you had on the French revolution 05:02 and a lot of writings 05:03 regarding the Huguenot and Waldensian, 05:06 you get a chance to see that she was someone 05:08 who connected with history as well 05:10 and was able to put in a perspective. 05:11 And so we as Christians moving forward, 05:14 that's a real foundation that we could start with. 05:16 And I think she did an excellent job with that. 05:19 Absolutely. You made it real to me like-- 05:20 Absolutely. 05:21 We were in Torre Pellice, you go back to that. 05:24 You know, I heard about Torre Pellice 05:25 and I guess I knew that it was vaguely 05:28 where it was in the Northern part 05:30 of Italy there and heading up into the Swiss Alps, 05:33 but it's the Italian Alps at that point. 05:35 But we drove up a little valley. 05:37 Yeah. I wish we've driven further. 05:38 Remember the-- maybe a preceded. 05:40 You joined us a couple of days into the tour. 05:42 But there been quite a debate 05:44 whether the bus was even capable of going up 05:47 a little narrow road to the top of the mountain. 05:50 And in the end we cut it little short 05:52 but we still were able to park it in a roadside stop 05:57 and go on foot up into the mountains 05:59 and see one of the caves 06:01 where they regularly met in secret. 06:04 Well, it was quite interesting especially 06:06 when we started to make our way up 06:07 and I was thinking to myself on the bus 06:10 that if these aren't the dangerous roads 06:12 I am not sure what the more dangerous roads would be. 06:14 Well, I know some of those roads 06:18 but I don't know them from bus's perspective 06:20 but on a private trip many years earlier 06:24 my wife and I decided to save money going through 06:27 one of the tunnels. 06:28 So I went over the mountains 06:31 and they're almost beyond description, 06:34 little narrow road that looks like the road itself 06:37 could fall away from the mountain 06:39 and you straight down like you're flying 06:41 in little village sort of cluster at the bottom. 06:44 Probably would have been good to go on that in the bus 06:47 but it certainly underscore, didn't it? 06:49 For me and I am sure for you that these people 06:51 had to really retreat from the world for safety. 06:53 Oh, yeah. 06:54 And what really was-- 06:56 what hit me strong as probably was the fact that 06:59 as far away as they were from 07:01 what I would call the main part of civilization 07:03 that they were still had individuals chasing them, 07:06 looking to even do away with them, that far away. 07:10 And it just a reminder that you never know 07:12 when your enemy is gonna stop 07:14 and that's why it's so important 07:15 you be connected to the Lord. 07:17 Absolutely. And what was their crime? 07:19 I haven't forgotten but maybe you can recount it. 07:22 Well, you know the crime itself was the matter of fact 07:24 that they were unwilling to claim Catholicism 07:28 and unwilling to be a part of the mainstream at that time 07:30 and the fact that they wanted to serve their God 07:33 the way they desired 07:34 and to have Bibles in their home-- 07:36 That was a central thing that they reform 07:39 and there were several, 07:40 the Albigenses were another that we studied, 07:42 just a different time frame, 07:44 although they tend to do overlap 07:46 at the end of their period of influence. 07:48 But that they all had in common was 07:50 they wanted to study God's word, 07:51 and in studying it 07:52 they saw some contradictions between 07:55 what the religio-political power 07:56 at the time was forcing on them. 07:58 And they insisted on their sovereign right 08:01 as creatures of God, that we want to read this, 08:04 we want to worship the way God says. 08:06 And very often that mark then not just as Heretics 08:10 and this is the path that's hard to explain it came 08:13 through clearly to me as we travel to those areas 08:15 and I read Great Controversy again. 08:17 It meant that they were politically isolate. 08:21 It wasn't just the Catholic Church 08:23 which was the dominant religious power 08:25 but the civil powers that were acting on cues 08:27 from the receive religion would then see this group 08:30 as dangerous to their political cohesion. 08:37 It was impossible at that point really to separate 08:39 the politics from religion. 08:40 It seemed to be barged in such a way 08:43 that they were both taking cues from each other 08:46 and one other thing that was startling to me, 08:48 when you think about religious liberty is 08:50 sometimes you think well, 08:51 someone oppresses you because they sat down 08:53 and had this great conversation of your views verses my views. 08:56 And in reality it was just generally 08:58 the vim of few individuals based on their own politics 09:02 and as a result we found ourselves in a position 09:04 where they were chasing individuals 09:06 and persecuting for it. 09:07 Well, in the case of Waldenses they were being hunted down 09:11 and exterminated. 09:12 The cave we went to was interesting, 09:15 they get into-- 09:16 I probably still have the clay on one of these of my trousers, 09:20 well, my wife probably washed them now. 09:22 But we had to literally crawl through a little wormhole. 09:26 And then it opened up, 09:27 it wasn't a cave in a classic sense, 09:30 it was a huge cleft in the rock that opened up 09:33 at the bottom and then the rocks met at the top 09:35 and you can see a couple of chinks of light at the top. 09:37 But that could have probably swallowed, 09:40 what a 100, 150 people if necessarily. 09:43 Yeah. And the idea was-- 09:44 I remember I was thinking to myself, 09:46 am I really going to try to go through this little hole 09:48 to get in there and just thinking 09:50 how dangerous it was. 09:52 And I think you remember when we went in they tell you, 09:54 you had to start to the left and slide to the right. 09:56 Yeah, that was wormhole, twisted. 09:58 And you know for fear of maybe cutting your head 10:01 or some thing along those lines. 10:02 But it's just a reminder that people are willing 10:04 to really go to unbelievable lengths 10:06 in order to serve the God they love. 10:08 Now with-- 10:10 I think the cave we might other was gone to 10:12 was higher up in the hills where must have been 10:15 lot big because I think it was somewhere 10:16 around a thousand of them shelter 10:20 during one attack and they were discovered, 10:23 like most defeats as always inside of that says, 10:27 well, I know where they are, I lead you up to them. 10:28 They were discovered 10:29 and the solders rather going in, 10:31 built a fire at the entrance and suffocated everyone. 10:36 And you could see how somebody actually got up to 10:38 where those entrances were. 10:40 There was only way in and one way out. 10:42 And so it would have been 10:43 very, very important that you be-- 10:46 Well, and that's what I wanted to bring out. 10:49 The cave is a good thing but when you discover 10:51 it was the worst thing because there is no escape, 10:54 you're like-- 10:56 Jesus used the term for His homelessness 10:58 but like you know, fox, he doesn't have a hole. 11:01 That's right. 11:03 But you get in that hole and you're-- 11:05 and the hounds run you down, you're really caught. 11:07 So I really admire those people in wretch respect 11:11 when I recounted or retraced the steps up 11:14 to the little cave and the little village 11:18 for one of the term. 11:19 But there's probably not much changed since those days. 11:22 I would think not and the acquaintance of 11:24 what I found to be quite interesting 11:26 and the ability to try to just imagine in your mind 11:29 what it would have been like 11:30 and we were actually walking on path 11:32 that had been carved out, 11:34 back in those days they were probably really 11:36 just jumping on stones and grass 11:39 and it was probably extremely dangerous. 11:41 But you know, they decided 11:42 that's what they were going to do 11:43 and they made their way there. 11:46 I want to say something that is risky of offending 11:48 some of my friends in Australia 11:49 but I worked at a publishing house 11:51 in a little country town called Wolverton 11:54 in the southern part of the Australia. 11:55 And I must tell you, 11:56 as we walk in those little tracks there in Torre Pellice, 12:00 that was other than the mountains 12:02 not being quite as told. 12:03 I could have been in-- 12:04 as well been in Wolverton, Australia 12:07 where at different 2,500 or so 12:11 Adventists had clustered together to work on printing, 12:15 producing the foods, caring for people. 12:17 And it reminded me, that's not so different. 12:20 A dedicated community of self-proclaims 12:23 and more than self-proclaim people 12:25 that have dedicated their lives to being reformers, 12:28 self-proclaims reformers here in the mountain fastness 12:31 doing good things and yet when something goes wrong 12:35 as I discovered at Wolverton, 12:37 the figure can be pointed very easily toward 12:40 the Adventist community or the Waldenses, 12:42 they doing this. 12:43 And what I picked up on some of these histories, 12:46 yes, they were at different times involved 12:49 in armed resistance and you can probably point 12:51 to one of their solders did something less than ideal 12:55 but as a totality, 12:57 it's clear that there were people compelled 12:59 by a sense of importance of faith to them 13:02 and the desire to spread that. 13:04 Well, I think one of the issues 13:05 whenever you have politics are involve 13:07 you always have to have a foil somewhere 13:09 and it's a way of sometimes deflecting a way 13:12 what maybe going on politically. 13:13 So if you can find an enemy to point to at all time-- 13:16 Sound like Nero, 13:17 hey we need to get back to run where we started. 13:20 That's right. 13:22 But we got few minutes left but-- 13:27 maybe you can jump anywhere, 13:28 what was the single thing 13:29 that really impressed you on this tour? 13:33 You were there for almost the two way. 13:35 I think one of the things that I really enjoyed 13:37 was the idea of getting the chance 13:39 to go to see church in the woods. 13:42 I thought you'd say that. 13:43 We had a great opportunity on Sabbath to worship 13:46 with some of our friends. 13:47 This was the second Sabbath. 13:48 The second Sabbath in France 13:50 and to be outside in the midst of the, 13:54 what I would call just nature and thinking about, 13:57 you know, the Lord and how many people had 14:00 probably worshiped Him. 14:01 It was great to just see the strength of the people 14:05 and the joy that they were felling 14:07 and the idea of sitting there, 14:09 and feeling the breeze come by and actually 14:12 having a roaster that's almost created in the trees. 14:15 I thought all of that was very, very powerful and-- 14:18 It was. It was. 14:20 And I want to come back to that. 14:21 We need to take a break now. 14:22 So if you want to hear more about 14:24 a Great Controversy Religious Liberty Tour, 14:27 24 people on the bus roaming through Europe, 14:29 sounds like an adventure. 14:31 Stay with us, we'll be back in a few moments. |
Revised 2014-12-17