Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a program
designed to inform you
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on religious liberty
developments, events, history,
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and the dynamic
that will explain so much
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of not only Bible
history but our current events.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
Editor of Liberty magazine.
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And I want to
discuss civil war with you.
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Not in the US
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where some rather paranoid types
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have been predicting.
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We've already had one in the US
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and I think one's
enough for any nation,
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but I want to talk to you
about the civil war in England.
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England had a civil war,
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a little bit before
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the American
War of Independence,
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just about 100
years earlier over issues
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that started out as political,
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but very quickly devolved
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into religious issues.
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Armies were formed up
between the British Parliament,
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Parliamentarian
army, and the king,
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King Charles I
and his courtiers,
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and his supporters,
and his aristocrats,
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including a lot of
foreign mercenaries
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from Germany and elsewhere,
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and even including some
Roman Catholic allies at a time
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when England was unsure
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or debating its
Protestant heritage
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and the Puritans in particular
were anxious to protect it.
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It rose over a dispute of money
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between the king
and the parliament
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that he'd
dismissed for quite a while,
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I think 11 years or so.
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He was forced to call in
again to raise some funds,
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ironically to go
to war with Scotland
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over issues of
appointments of bishops
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in the Church of Scotland.
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When he called parliament,
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the Puritan faction
which was increasing,
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even though the
Church of England
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was the state church,
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the Puritans were
the Bible believing
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freelance godly living types.
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Remember, they came to
the US in early settlements,
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but their real
development was in England,
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and the Puritans influence meant
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that they challenged the king
over his prerogatives to rule
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and his apparent
willingness to allow drift
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back to Roman Catholicism.
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The argument between
parliament and the king
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was so intense
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that he attempted
to arrest the leaders,
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they escaped out the back door,
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he dismissed parliament
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and the rest of them
followed across the street
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and made plans
to form up an army.
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And for a number of years
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between 1642 and 1651,
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England had full scale
civil war set piece battles
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between the
parliamentarians and the king.
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When I was growing up,
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there was a painting
that impressed me greatly,
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and I don't know where I saw it.
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I would think it was at
some school environment,
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maybe in a school
assembly room or somewhere,
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but a very large painting,
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you know, at least three
foot by six foot or there about,
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and a scene that
just resonated with me.
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And I discovered later
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that it was a scene
painted to represent
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during that time in
the English Civil War,
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it was entitled,
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"When did you
last see your father?"
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As the scene was formulated,
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it was looking
side on to a scene
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and in the
middle of the painting
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was a little boy
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in a blue sort of a
little Lord Fauntleroy outfit,
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a little boy maybe
of eight years of age,
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six or eight,
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standing on a little riser
like you'd use in a kitchen
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to get up to a high cabinet.
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He was standing on that
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in front of a large wooden desk.
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Behind him was a young girl,
probably his sister weeping,
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and an older woman,
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probably his
mother was holding her.
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Behind them was
another young girl,
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perhaps another
sister, or a cousin,
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again being held by,
not being held again,
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but being held by a
soldier with a metal helmet,
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a Parliamentarian soldier.
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Behind him in the
far side of the painting
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lounging on the chair,
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looking at him was a
man with leather boots,
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clearly a cavalier,
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someone from the
military or a cavalry guy rather
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that not too happy
with what was happening.
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Behind the desk
were a couple of judges
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and a Puritan minister
with a white brand leather cap.
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And again, they
have military outfits on.
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And the fellow leaning forward
is questioning this young man.
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"When did you
last see your father?"
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Clearly he was a
son of the aristocracy.
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These were troops from
the Parliamentarian army
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led by Oliver Cromwell,
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who later after the
victory in the civil war
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became Lord Protector,
not King but Lord Protector.
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Powerful scene
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and because it
was on the wrong side
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of the civil war, but it told me
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how much
families were torn apart.
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How, what would I do
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if someone came to
took my father away
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or my father left and
then they came and said,
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"When did you see your father?
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Where is he?"
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It reminded me a little bit.
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Not too many years ago
talking to an elderly man
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who's since died.
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He was the son of
an Adventist minister
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in Russia.
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After World War II,
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he'd been a
soldier in the German army
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and then go on to Russia.
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And he said to me once, he says,
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"I remember the night
they took our fathers away."
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He said, actually,
this was in Germany,
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sorry, in Germany.
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He said the "Gestapo
came and knocked on the door."
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And he says,
"They were very polite."
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They said to my father,
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"We need to need to talk to you
down at Gestapo headquarters."
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And he said, his father went
to get his coat and they said,
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"Oh, no, no, you
don't need your coat.
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You'll be back shortly."
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He said, "We
never saw him again."
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And he said, "That was the night
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they took their fathers."
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Civil wars are a bad thing,
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especially a civil war
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with the
religious component added.
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I love to talk about
that period of history
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because it has so
many ramifications
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for the United States.
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As I alluded to earlier,
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Puritans play a big
part in US folklore,
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if you could call it that,
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because this was
not a Puritan country,
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it was not a Puritan settlement.
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Plymouth Rock was just
one shipload of Puritans,
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who had left well
before the civil war,
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and didn't like
the established church,
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they didn't like its
high church pretensions,
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even though it
was still Protestant,
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they fled to Holland,
lived there for a while
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and then decided to
settle in the new world.
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There were a few like them,
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but they were
not a massive group
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or a large group early on.
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But a little later,
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at the time of
the English Civil War,
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by then the Puritans
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were a powerful
non-establishment faction.
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They were troubled
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by the nominalism in the country
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and the drift
toward Roman Catholicism,
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and they decided to
do something about it.
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And I, again I see
the parallels to the US
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where there is sort
of a Puritan streak still
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and there's a willingness
to seek political power
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to fix its social
and religious ills.
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When the war was drawn up,
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and the armies were formed,
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the Puritan faction
were not the major faction,
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but by the end of the war,
they were the dominant group,
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their general, who
was a hardcore Puritan,
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Oliver Cromwell.
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So God's leading in
what they were doing,
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in fact,
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as he took that victorious army
after winning against the king,
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he took them to Ireland,
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and he put the
Northern Ireland to the sword,
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'cause Irish
Catholics were a problem.
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And in his letters, he says,
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"We killed them
most prodigiously,
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and the Lord blessed us."
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He laid the
groundwork for today's troubles,
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as they're called
in Northern Ireland,
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and just as a
little advanced tip,
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we'll talk about
this in the future,
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the Brexit Agreement,
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while it might be
good for England overall
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and, you know,
it's arguable to and fro
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what's going on.
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One thing is certain,
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it will uncork the troubles
in Northern Ireland again,
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because the Republic of Ireland,
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which is contiguous
with Northern Ireland
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is free and part
of the European Union
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and with England splitting,
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there's now a
problem with the land border
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between Ireland
and Northern Ireland.
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And this great resistance
from the European Union
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to allowing a wall or a
fixed border with entry,
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but they have to
do something like that
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and when they do it,
the troubles are on again.
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So religion again is
playing a central role.
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The
revolutionaries in the civil war
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captured the king in the end,
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they put him on trial
for a number of things.
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A little bit
like the impeachment
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the other day,
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part of the charge was
that he had defied parliament.
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Didn't seem to
bother the king too much,
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but they really
got him on something
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when he tried to bring
in a foreign Catholic army
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to relieve him.
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For Protestant
England that was too much,
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here is a king working
against his country, a traitor.
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So they put him on
trial and executed him,
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cut off his head, 100 years
before the French Revolution,
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that shook Europe
because his only defense was,
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"I have a divine right.
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God put me here.
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And how dare you question me?"
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Well, those days are long gone.
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But King Charles,
that was his only defense.
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And after he died,
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Oliver Cromwell
offered the crown
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just like George Washington was,
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and in both
cases they refused it.
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But he was crowned
at a coronation ceremony
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and determined to
be Lord Protector.
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And he ruled only
for about five years
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between 1653 and 1658.
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But he died of natural causes,
and then things fell apart.
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What I want to bring up
though is these tumultuous times
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laid the groundwork
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for what we're
still living through
00:11:00.96\00:11:03.39
in the United States.
00:11:03.43\00:11:04.93
First of all, it changed
the attitude toward the king,
00:11:04.96\00:11:08.70
toward autocratic rule.
00:11:08.73\00:11:12.43
It didn't even hit me
until only a few months ago
00:11:12.47\00:11:16.00
when I was reading
again, Thomas Jefferson's...
00:11:16.04\00:11:19.77
Essentially Thomas
Jefferson's composition
00:11:19.81\00:11:22.91
on the
Declaration of Independence,
00:11:22.94\00:11:25.15
even though it was reviewed
and tweaked by Congress,
00:11:25.18\00:11:30.82
Jefferson wrote it.
00:11:30.85\00:11:32.19
And it hit me that
he's quoting directly
00:11:32.22\00:11:35.92
from a work
00:11:35.96\00:11:37.29
written by Oliver
Cromwell's private secretary
00:11:37.33\00:11:40.83
for foreign languages
00:11:40.86\00:11:42.20
and his chief
publicist, John Milton,
00:11:42.23\00:11:45.80
the second most famous
person in English letters
00:11:45.83\00:11:49.00
after Shakespeare,
00:11:49.04\00:11:50.81
'cause John
Milton wrote many things,
00:11:50.84\00:11:52.64
many pamphlets
during the revolution
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and in particular,
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he wrote a book called
00:11:55.74\00:11:57.28
The Tenure of
Kings and Magistrates
00:11:57.31\00:12:01.15
and it was book
length explanation
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as to why they had
to terminate the king.
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And what right a
civil ruler had to rule
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in opposition to the
people whose power he said,
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you know, "It was their power
that put that person there,
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not God's prerogative."
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It was...
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They were
responsible to the people.
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And so there's a
direct connection
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to what happened
in this new world.
00:12:23.74\00:12:28.64
John Milton is an
interesting figure,
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as I say, the
arts revolutionary.
00:12:31.95\00:12:34.55
And yet when
Oliver Cromwell died,
00:12:34.58\00:12:37.25
and the king's son
was invited back by people
00:12:37.29\00:12:40.32
tired of countless
summers, I'm being facetious,
00:12:40.36\00:12:43.73
a little bit like the Taliban
00:12:43.76\00:12:45.09
but the Puritans were knocked
for being sort of killjoys,
00:12:45.13\00:12:49.10
they didn't like entertainments,
00:12:49.13\00:12:50.50
and plays, and dances.
00:12:50.53\00:12:53.20
So it was a fairly
rigorous and circumspect life
00:12:53.23\00:12:58.17
under the Lord Protector,
00:12:58.21\00:13:01.18
although he
himself liked concerts
00:13:01.21\00:13:02.78
and so on, he wasn't a fanatic.
00:13:02.81\00:13:04.88
But it was not as the king's son
00:13:04.91\00:13:08.48
was known forever.
00:13:08.52\00:13:09.85
It wasn't...
00:13:09.88\00:13:11.22
He was known as
the Merrie Monarch,
00:13:11.25\00:13:12.59
it wasn't wine, women and song,
00:13:12.62\00:13:13.96
it was prayers,
and introspection,
00:13:13.99\00:13:16.56
and good and regular
order under the Puritans.
00:13:16.59\00:13:19.96
They were open in many regards,
00:13:20.00\00:13:21.70
they allowed the
Jews back into England.
00:13:21.73\00:13:25.20
Oliver Cromwell
allowed something
00:13:25.23\00:13:27.27
that I know no
president in our modern era
00:13:27.30\00:13:30.31
would allow in
the United States.
00:13:30.34\00:13:31.67
He allowed the
publication of a how to manual
00:13:31.71\00:13:35.11
on how to
assassinate the Lord Protector.
00:13:35.14\00:13:38.25
No democracy today would
allow such a seditious offering
00:13:38.28\00:13:42.58
but he allowed it,
he was relatively open.
00:13:42.62\00:13:45.55
The other thing as a
Seventh-day Adventist
00:13:45.59\00:13:47.52
that really impresses me
is their prophetic leanings.
00:13:47.56\00:13:51.89
And I'll take a
break and then come back
00:13:51.93\00:13:54.10
and fill you in
on why there was such
00:13:54.13\00:13:56.23
or what sort of a prophetic
awareness did the England,
00:13:56.26\00:14:01.00
English factions
during the civil war have.
00:14:01.04\00:14:06.44
Stay with me,
I'll be back shortly.
00:14:06.47\00:14:08.01