Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI200456A
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00:27 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:29 This is your program for discussions 00:32 of religious liberty and its importance 00:35 in this day and age. 00:37 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty magazine. 00:40 And today I'll be talking to you by myself. 00:43 Sometimes, in fact, 00:45 usually I have a guest on this program. 00:47 But I want to take time in several programs 00:52 to share with you some of the important aspects 00:55 of religious liberty 00:56 and in a number of cases go back away. 01:00 In my own case, 01:02 I can go back further than I ever thought I'd go. 01:06 And when I think back to growing up in Australia 01:09 a few years ago, 01:10 a few decades ago because I came 01:12 to the United States as a teenager, 01:14 I was 16 years old. 01:16 But I grew up in Australia. 01:18 And when I first began school 01:21 in the City of Sydney in Australia, 01:25 it was a public school. 01:27 And I'm not that old 01:30 but when I look back on that public school, 01:32 it had a lot in common with Charles Dickens 01:35 and the horrific situation that existed in England 01:39 when he wrote 01:41 the back at the time of the French Revolution. 01:44 Because I used to walk maybe two miles from my home 01:50 as a five year old till eight years old, 01:53 I'd walk about two miles down the main street, 01:56 then under a railway underpass then down another street, 02:01 then over a railway, 02:03 overpass at a train station and then around a few corners 02:06 and finally I would arrive at this public school 02:09 that looked like either a Charles Dickens' building 02:12 or something more contemporary scene, 02:16 I guess is, is the Harry Potter 02:19 sort of Gothic scene. 02:22 And it was divided between boys and girls 02:24 and we all sat there in very careful, 02:27 quiet rows and we would look up at the master sitting higher up 02:30 and if they deign to ask a question out 02:33 into the general audience of trembling young boys, 02:37 and you didn't know the answer, you were gone. 02:40 I don't know where they went. 02:41 Down, I think to the beginning, 02:44 prep schools but they certainly were no longer there. 02:46 So the stakes were high for us. 02:48 And I used to love though, 02:50 not the school but the walk to school, 02:53 pedaling in the muddy, soggy, 02:58 leech infested waters under the railway underpass, 03:01 that was exciting for me at that time. 03:03 And I can remember one day clearly coming home 03:06 and minus my shoes, 03:08 which were brand new that day and my mother 03:11 couldn't quite grasp how I could lose my shoes 03:14 on the way to school. 03:15 She, I never told her about some of these adventures 03:18 that included money on the railway tracks, 03:20 you'd get, you know, 03:22 your penny as big as a small pancake almost. 03:27 It was fun. 03:29 But what I remember particularly 03:31 was on that walk home coming by an empty lot, 03:37 house was not there, 03:39 overgrown with grass and a few piles of sand 03:41 and we would play marbles there, 03:43 we'd smooth out a spot, 03:45 scribe a circle 03:46 and put the marbles in the middle 03:48 and then you'd shoot at them and the ones 03:51 that you bumped out you got to keep. 03:53 And of course, having a ball bearing meant 03:55 that you have a certain advantage. 03:59 But I remember this one summer day, 04:01 coming past that empty lot, 04:03 thinking of all the good times 04:04 there playing in the sun and just wasting time, 04:09 time didn't seem to matter as much back then 04:11 which reminds me of a WB Yeats' poem 04:15 but that's for another day. 04:17 And when I got to this block this day was different. 04:21 Instead of empty, 04:22 instead of a potential marble playground, 04:24 there was a canvas tent pitch there. 04:29 Further there were pictures out front. 04:30 And this was in the early days of television. 04:34 People had TV, we didn't, 04:36 but it wasn't so generally part of the culture. 04:39 And here were big posters. 04:42 In fact two of them as I remember very large 04:44 bannering what was on in this, in this tent, 04:47 and there was a guy up front pitching it. 04:50 And he was calling to the young kids 04:51 who are walking home from school, 04:53 come in, young people, come in, 04:54 there's a program just for you. 04:56 And one of the pictures I remember 04:58 was a knight in full armor, ready to do battle. 05:03 And another one was of a dragon. 05:06 You know, a mythical medieval beast, 05:09 you know, Saint George and the dragon and, 05:11 and dragons and dungeons which people like now, 05:15 it was really guaranteed 05:16 to catch the interest of young kids. 05:18 And he said, "Come in, we'll tell you the story" 05:21 Every day after school, 05:23 you can come and find out 05:24 a little bit more about this story 05:26 of a man on a journey 05:29 from a city to the celestial city. 05:33 And, of course, what they were telling 05:34 and I didn't know at that time 05:36 that I soon got to know and love it, 05:39 they were telling the story of John Bunyan's 05:42 pilgrim's progress, where Christian, 05:46 he is from evangelist, 05:48 the call of God on his heart 05:51 and the call to leave the city of destruction 05:55 where he was living with his wife and children, 05:59 leave the city of destruction and go through an arduous way, 06:04 pursuing the dream and the certainty 06:06 in his case of the celestial city. 06:08 It's a fantastic story told in an allegory, 06:13 but as John Bunyan in his own writing says, 06:17 in the similitude of a dream. 06:20 And I've got to tell you 06:21 that even these many, many years later, 06:24 I can tell that that's really shaped my view 06:29 of what the Christian life is 06:30 and the environments that we live in 06:33 and travel through as Christians, 06:36 not neutral, not always easy. 06:39 Sometimes a battle on the march but taking those figures 06:45 that Paul used, you know, 06:46 where we take on the whole armor of God, 06:48 if we're armed, not as a medieval knight, 06:51 you know, John Bunyan, used that image, 06:54 but if we're armed spiritually, 06:57 we can withstand, of course, Apulian, 07:00 the personification of the evil force, 07:02 we can withstand and reject giant despair. 07:08 And we can be victorious in the end. 07:11 You know, John Bunyan's an interesting figure 07:13 and not coincidental to really 07:18 how we see religious liberty today. 07:21 John Bunyan was a soldier in the English Civil War. 07:25 And I want to take time on another program 07:27 to talk at greater length about the English Civil War, 07:30 barely 100 years 07:32 before the American Revolution of independence. 07:38 But John Bunyan was a soldier in that war. 07:40 He was irreligious found master fellow by his own testimony, 07:47 and a little bit after the Civil War during, 07:50 I think the reign of the victorious general 07:53 Oliver Cromwell who ruled instead of king, 07:57 he ruled as Lord Protector of England 08:00 for a very short time until he died of an illness. 08:03 But during that period, John Bunyan got religion, 08:07 something clicked in his life. 08:09 Whereas before he was so profane 08:12 that people complained about his language. 08:15 He became the model 08:18 of a vibrant active irrepressible Christian. 08:22 And in a time 08:23 when there was an established church 08:27 and unless you had a license from the state 08:30 to preach, you were not free to do so. 08:34 And in that time, John Bunyan felt compelled to share 08:37 whatever the caste even though 08:38 he didn't belong to any form or religion. 08:40 The best you can say he was a proto-Baptist, 08:44 an independent Bible believing preacher. 08:50 And he preached pretty vigorously 08:53 until he ran afoul with the law 08:54 because he didn't have a license 08:56 and he spent 14 years in Bedford jail. 09:00 Fourteen years. 09:03 There's a classic story of his wife 09:05 chasing the magistrates around 09:09 begging them to release her husband 09:12 who'd been many years in jail by the time of this anecdote. 09:15 And she says, "Please let my husband free. 09:18 You know, I'm his wife, I have no support." 09:23 He was actually making things in prison 09:26 as prisoners still do, 09:27 wasn't license plates in his age 09:29 but he was doing something and sending 09:31 a little stipend to her but they were, 09:32 they were suffering and she says, 09:34 "We have children. He has children. 09:35 Let him go." 09:38 And the magistrate is reported to have said to her, 09:42 "Madam, we will let him go 09:44 just as soon as he agrees to stop preaching." 09:50 And the reply was quick, 09:52 "Oh, that he will never do," she said, 09:54 that he will never do. 09:57 There's another classic story of that era. 10:01 Probably the well, 10:02 most well educated churchmen of the time was John Owen. 10:07 He was an Oxford don and had been 10:10 the chap was the chaplain to Oliver Cromwell. 10:14 And amazingly when the people invited the king sun back 10:19 after the Civil War in that revolution. 10:23 The king son, of course, 10:25 was the deadly enemy 10:26 of those Cromwellian revolutionaries. 10:29 But amazingly, he became the chaplain to the king too. 10:32 And at that late point, one day, 10:36 he was preparing to go downtown to hear John Bunyan preach 10:40 which tells you that John Bunyan 10:42 was very popular and well known in his time. 10:45 And the king said to him, "Why are you an educated man 10:50 going down to hear that uneducated Tinker." 10:55 You know, just a man 10:57 that sold pots and pans basically, 10:59 "Why would you hear such a person," said the King. 11:02 And John Owen reportedly answered the king, he says, 11:05 "Your Majesty," he said, 11:07 "I would give all of my learning, 11:09 all of my attainments, 11:10 if I could preach 11:12 and move people like that tinker." 11:14 So there was clearly something powerful 11:17 in the message that John Bunyan was presenting. 11:21 Clearly something powerful. 11:24 I want to share with you, 11:26 not so much stories from Pilgrim's Progress 11:30 and I can't do anything better I think 11:32 than recommend that everybody 11:35 that's listening to me and watching this program, 11:38 make a resolution to go and read Pilgrim's Progress. 11:43 It's powerful stuff. 11:44 It's not as allegorical as you might think. 11:47 You know, when you talk about giant despair 11:49 and doubting castle, we've all been there. 11:51 That's part of the Christian experience. 11:54 You have second thoughts, life gets you down, right? 11:57 And at the very end where he has Christian 12:04 with Faithful, I think it was, Hopeful, sorry, 12:08 Faithful was his early companion 12:10 who was martyred at Vanity Fair. 12:13 In other words, 12:15 the cares of this life 12:17 and the persecutions of this life 12:19 can be hard on Christians 12:21 and Faithful was martyred, 12:23 but Hopeful was his companion for the rest of the journey. 12:27 And when they came to the, 12:30 to the River Jordan which causes figurative 12:33 for passing from this life to the next, 12:36 which is also is part of the description 12:38 of Pilgrim's Progress from this life into the next. 12:42 When they came to that Jordan River, it goes, 12:47 figurative of passing from life to death 12:50 and then to eternal life. 12:53 And in the process of dying pilgrim despairs, 12:57 he can't feel the bottom, 12:59 he's lost his assurance 13:00 or at least can't feel his assurance 13:03 that the celestial city 13:04 is there that the shining ones are waiting for him. 13:07 And hopeful as it says but I can, 13:11 I can feel the bottom. 13:13 I can see them waiting for us there. 13:15 And pilgrim says or Christian says, 13:17 he says that it's for you they're waiting. 13:20 He says that you've been hopeful all along. 13:24 It's an amazing commentary on a Christian dynamic. 13:31 We've all been there. 13:32 But I want to take a little bit of time 13:35 and I think I'm gonna have to do it 13:36 after the break or after a break. 13:38 But I'd like to take a little time to share with you 13:41 from another book that John Bunyan wrote, 13:45 he was not a one note author. 13:48 Pilgrim's Progress is his main claim to fame, 13:51 but he wrote a fantastic book called The Holy War. 13:56 And he wrote a biography called 13:58 Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, 14:01 it's his biography 14:03 or his narrative of how he got to be 14:07 where he ended up as the author of this incredible tale 14:12 and as a preacher who would, 14:14 by his visceral communication of spiritual values 14:18 gather people by the thousands from the poorest 14:22 to the most educated as John Owen would show. 14:26 Stay with me, 14:27 after a short break I'll be back. |
Revised 2020-04-16