Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI200462A
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00:29 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:31 This is a program designed to inform you 00:33 on religious liberty developments, events, history, 00:38 and the dynamic that will explain so much 00:41 of not only Bible history but our current events. 00:44 My name is Lincoln Steed, Editor of Liberty magazine. 00:48 And I want to discuss civil war with you. 00:53 Not in the US 00:54 where some rather paranoid types 00:57 have been predicting. 00:59 We've already had one in the US 01:01 and I think one's enough for any nation, 01:04 but I want to talk to you about the civil war in England. 01:06 England had a civil war, 01:08 a little bit before 01:10 the American War of Independence, 01:12 just about 100 years earlier over issues 01:18 that started out as political, 01:19 but very quickly devolved 01:21 into religious issues. 01:26 Armies were formed up between the British Parliament, 01:29 Parliamentarian army, and the king, 01:32 King Charles I and his courtiers, 01:35 and his supporters, and his aristocrats, 01:37 including a lot of foreign mercenaries 01:40 from Germany and elsewhere, 01:42 and even including some Roman Catholic allies at a time 01:45 when England was unsure 01:49 or debating its Protestant heritage 01:51 and the Puritans in particular were anxious to protect it. 01:56 It rose over a dispute of money 01:58 between the king and the parliament 02:00 that he'd dismissed for quite a while, 02:02 I think 11 years or so. 02:04 He was forced to call in again to raise some funds, 02:08 ironically to go to war with Scotland 02:10 over issues of appointments of bishops 02:15 in the Church of Scotland. 02:17 When he called parliament, 02:19 the Puritan faction which was increasing, 02:23 even though the Church of England 02:24 was the state church, 02:25 the Puritans were the Bible believing 02:27 freelance godly living types. 02:31 Remember, they came to the US in early settlements, 02:35 but their real development was in England, 02:37 and the Puritans influence meant 02:39 that they challenged the king over his prerogatives to rule 02:43 and his apparent willingness to allow drift 02:47 back to Roman Catholicism. 02:49 The argument between parliament and the king 02:51 was so intense 02:53 that he attempted to arrest the leaders, 02:55 they escaped out the back door, 02:57 he dismissed parliament 02:59 and the rest of them followed across the street 03:01 and made plans to form up an army. 03:03 And for a number of years 03:06 between 1642 and 1651, 03:10 England had full scale civil war set piece battles 03:15 between the parliamentarians and the king. 03:19 When I was growing up, 03:20 there was a painting that impressed me greatly, 03:24 and I don't know where I saw it. 03:25 I would think it was at some school environment, 03:28 maybe in a school assembly room or somewhere, 03:31 but a very large painting, 03:33 you know, at least three foot by six foot or there about, 03:38 and a scene that just resonated with me. 03:41 And I discovered later 03:43 that it was a scene painted to represent 03:46 during that time in the English Civil War, 03:48 it was entitled, 03:49 "When did you last see your father?" 03:53 As the scene was formulated, 03:56 it was looking side on to a scene 03:59 and in the middle of the painting 04:00 was a little boy 04:01 in a blue sort of a little Lord Fauntleroy outfit, 04:06 a little boy maybe of eight years of age, 04:09 six or eight, 04:10 standing on a little riser like you'd use in a kitchen 04:13 to get up to a high cabinet. 04:15 He was standing on that 04:16 in front of a large wooden desk. 04:18 Behind him was a young girl, probably his sister weeping, 04:24 and an older woman, 04:27 probably his mother was holding her. 04:31 Behind them was another young girl, 04:33 perhaps another sister, or a cousin, 04:37 again being held by, not being held again, 04:40 but being held by a soldier with a metal helmet, 04:43 a Parliamentarian soldier. 04:45 Behind him in the far side of the painting 04:47 lounging on the chair, 04:49 looking at him was a man with leather boots, 04:52 clearly a cavalier, 04:56 someone from the military or a cavalry guy rather 05:00 that not too happy with what was happening. 05:03 Behind the desk were a couple of judges 05:06 and a Puritan minister with a white brand leather cap. 05:10 And again, they have military outfits on. 05:13 And the fellow leaning forward is questioning this young man. 05:16 "When did you last see your father?" 05:18 Clearly he was a son of the aristocracy. 05:21 These were troops from the Parliamentarian army 05:25 led by Oliver Cromwell, 05:27 who later after the victory in the civil war 05:31 became Lord Protector, not King but Lord Protector. 05:35 Powerful scene 05:37 and because it was on the wrong side 05:39 of the civil war, but it told me 05:40 how much families were torn apart. 05:43 How, what would I do 05:45 if someone came to took my father away 05:48 or my father left and then they came and said, 05:50 "When did you see your father? 05:51 Where is he?" 05:53 It reminded me a little bit. 05:55 Not too many years ago talking to an elderly man 05:57 who's since died. 05:59 He was the son of an Adventist minister 06:02 in Russia. 06:06 After World War II, 06:07 he'd been a soldier in the German army 06:09 and then go on to Russia. 06:10 And he said to me once, he says, 06:12 "I remember the night they took our fathers away." 06:16 He said, actually, this was in Germany, 06:19 sorry, in Germany. 06:20 He said the "Gestapo came and knocked on the door." 06:24 And he says, "They were very polite." 06:25 They said to my father, 06:27 "We need to need to talk to you down at Gestapo headquarters." 06:30 And he said, his father went to get his coat and they said, 06:33 "Oh, no, no, you don't need your coat. 06:34 You'll be back shortly." 06:36 He said, "We never saw him again." 06:38 And he said, "That was the night 06:39 they took their fathers." 06:42 Civil wars are a bad thing, 06:44 especially a civil war 06:46 with the religious component added. 06:50 I love to talk about that period of history 06:52 because it has so many ramifications 06:54 for the United States. 06:57 As I alluded to earlier, 06:59 Puritans play a big part in US folklore, 07:05 if you could call it that, 07:07 because this was not a Puritan country, 07:09 it was not a Puritan settlement. 07:11 Plymouth Rock was just one shipload of Puritans, 07:15 who had left well before the civil war, 07:17 and didn't like the established church, 07:20 they didn't like its high church pretensions, 07:23 even though it was still Protestant, 07:25 they fled to Holland, lived there for a while 07:28 and then decided to settle in the new world. 07:31 There were a few like them, 07:33 but they were not a massive group 07:35 or a large group early on. 07:38 But a little later, 07:39 at the time of the English Civil War, 07:41 by then the Puritans 07:42 were a powerful non-establishment faction. 07:45 They were troubled 07:47 by the nominalism in the country 07:49 and the drift toward Roman Catholicism, 07:52 and they decided to do something about it. 07:55 And I, again I see the parallels to the US 07:59 where there is sort of a Puritan streak still 08:02 and there's a willingness to seek political power 08:05 to fix its social and religious ills. 08:10 When the war was drawn up, 08:13 and the armies were formed, 08:16 the Puritan faction were not the major faction, 08:19 but by the end of the war, they were the dominant group, 08:22 their general, who was a hardcore Puritan, 08:25 Oliver Cromwell. 08:27 So God's leading in what they were doing, 08:30 in fact, 08:31 as he took that victorious army after winning against the king, 08:34 he took them to Ireland, 08:36 and he put the Northern Ireland to the sword, 08:39 'cause Irish Catholics were a problem. 08:41 And in his letters, he says, 08:42 "We killed them most prodigiously, 08:44 and the Lord blessed us." 08:46 He laid the groundwork for today's troubles, 08:48 as they're called in Northern Ireland, 08:50 and just as a little advanced tip, 08:52 we'll talk about this in the future, 08:53 the Brexit Agreement, 08:55 while it might be good for England overall 08:57 and, you know, it's arguable to and fro 08:59 what's going on. 09:01 One thing is certain, 09:02 it will uncork the troubles in Northern Ireland again, 09:04 because the Republic of Ireland, 09:06 which is contiguous with Northern Ireland 09:10 is free and part of the European Union 09:13 and with England splitting, 09:15 there's now a problem with the land border 09:16 between Ireland and Northern Ireland. 09:19 And this great resistance from the European Union 09:22 to allowing a wall or a fixed border with entry, 09:28 but they have to do something like that 09:29 and when they do it, the troubles are on again. 09:33 So religion again is playing a central role. 09:38 The revolutionaries in the civil war 09:40 captured the king in the end, 09:42 they put him on trial for a number of things. 09:47 A little bit like the impeachment 09:48 the other day, 09:49 part of the charge was that he had defied parliament. 09:54 Didn't seem to bother the king too much, 09:56 but they really got him on something 09:58 when he tried to bring in a foreign Catholic army 10:01 to relieve him. 10:02 For Protestant England that was too much, 10:04 here is a king working against his country, a traitor. 10:07 So they put him on trial and executed him, 10:10 cut off his head, 100 years before the French Revolution, 10:12 that shook Europe because his only defense was, 10:15 "I have a divine right. 10:17 God put me here. 10:18 And how dare you question me?" 10:20 Well, those days are long gone. 10:23 But King Charles, that was his only defense. 10:28 And after he died, 10:30 Oliver Cromwell offered the crown 10:31 just like George Washington was, 10:34 and in both cases they refused it. 10:36 But he was crowned at a coronation ceremony 10:39 and determined to be Lord Protector. 10:42 And he ruled only for about five years 10:46 between 1653 and 1658. 10:50 But he died of natural causes, and then things fell apart. 10:54 What I want to bring up though is these tumultuous times 10:59 laid the groundwork 11:00 for what we're still living through 11:03 in the United States. 11:04 First of all, it changed the attitude toward the king, 11:08 toward autocratic rule. 11:12 It didn't even hit me until only a few months ago 11:16 when I was reading again, Thomas Jefferson's... 11:19 Essentially Thomas Jefferson's composition 11:22 on the Declaration of Independence, 11:25 even though it was reviewed and tweaked by Congress, 11:30 Jefferson wrote it. 11:32 And it hit me that he's quoting directly 11:35 from a work 11:37 written by Oliver Cromwell's private secretary 11:40 for foreign languages 11:42 and his chief publicist, John Milton, 11:45 the second most famous person in English letters 11:49 after Shakespeare, 11:50 'cause John Milton wrote many things, 11:52 many pamphlets during the revolution 11:54 and in particular, 11:55 he wrote a book called 11:57 The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates 12:01 and it was book length explanation 12:04 as to why they had to terminate the king. 12:07 And what right a civil ruler had to rule 12:11 in opposition to the people whose power he said, 12:14 you know, "It was their power that put that person there, 12:16 not God's prerogative." 12:18 It was... 12:20 They were responsible to the people. 12:22 And so there's a direct connection 12:23 to what happened in this new world. 12:28 John Milton is an interesting figure, 12:31 as I say, the arts revolutionary. 12:34 And yet when Oliver Cromwell died, 12:37 and the king's son was invited back by people 12:40 tired of countless summers, I'm being facetious, 12:43 a little bit like the Taliban 12:45 but the Puritans were knocked for being sort of killjoys, 12:49 they didn't like entertainments, 12:50 and plays, and dances. 12:53 So it was a fairly rigorous and circumspect life 12:58 under the Lord Protector, 13:01 although he himself liked concerts 13:02 and so on, he wasn't a fanatic. 13:04 But it was not as the king's son 13:08 was known forever. 13:09 It wasn't... 13:11 He was known as the Merrie Monarch, 13:12 it wasn't wine, women and song, 13:13 it was prayers, and introspection, 13:16 and good and regular order under the Puritans. 13:20 They were open in many regards, 13:21 they allowed the Jews back into England. 13:25 Oliver Cromwell allowed something 13:27 that I know no president in our modern era 13:30 would allow in the United States. 13:31 He allowed the publication of a how to manual 13:35 on how to assassinate the Lord Protector. 13:38 No democracy today would allow such a seditious offering 13:42 but he allowed it, he was relatively open. 13:45 The other thing as a Seventh-day Adventist 13:47 that really impresses me is their prophetic leanings. 13:51 And I'll take a break and then come back 13:54 and fill you in on why there was such 13:56 or what sort of a prophetic awareness did the England, 14:01 English factions during the civil war have. 14:06 Stay with me, I'll be back shortly. |
Revised 2020-05-21