Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a program
designed to inform you
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and indeed energize you
on religious liberty concerns
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in the US and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty Magazine,
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a religious liberty journal
that's been around since 1905.
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It's the longest
published journal
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of its type
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and the largest
circulated in existence.
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I want to talk to you personally
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on the program today.
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No guest, but a strong message
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and tell you about something
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that was a great
influence on my life.
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As I said at the
beginning of the program,
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religious liberty,
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for those of us
living in the US is an easy,
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relatively easy topic,
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because the Constitution
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and indeed the
early history of the US,
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much of it centered around civil
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and religious freedom.
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And the Constitution
still retains high aspirations
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in that regard.
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But, you know,
when you go worldwide,
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and from a
Christian perspective,
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you know, things
can get rough and rocky.
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I come from
Australia originally.
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So that gives me I think
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a little bit of a
broader perspective.
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Certainly, I'm always
looking across the oceans
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and thinking what it
is in another country.
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But years ago
when I was younger,
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and trying to sort out
where I fit it in all of this
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and as a newly
energized Christian,
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even though
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I'm a fourth generation
Seventh-day Adventist,
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I've had a life crisis
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and I was going to
say rededicated my life
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but that's
wrong, dedicated my life
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truly for the first time
to spreading the good news.
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It's used to exercise
me, how do we witness?
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What can we do to pass
on and pass on the message?
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And I came across a book
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written quite some years earlier
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by a missionary from the US,
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although he had strong
Anglo English connections,
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a missionary
from the US to India,
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and anyone that's been to
India and those from India
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know very well next to China.
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This is the most populous nation
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on the earth.
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It's
overwhelming to go visit there
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and to see the
teeming masses of humanity
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especially in
cities like Calcutta,
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and so on with the,
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you know, the density
is large to see beggars,
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to see people living
in such close proximity,
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the hustle and
bustle and the mita do
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is particularly informed
by religion, the relative,
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seemingly relative
lack of value of human life.
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It's overwhelming.
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That's all I can say.
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So I found the book
written by Stanley Jones,
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a missionary to India.
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And as I read the
book, it moved me.
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And as I read his story,
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it moved me
because he went there
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with high ideals
to change that country
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and move it toward Christianity.
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I think he's on his ministry
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he spent
something like nine years
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with not a single convert.
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I don't know who
could stick that out.
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But he did
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at the cost of his peace of mind
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and just normal functioning,
had a total breakdown,
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physical and mental
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and left literally with his tail
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between his legs back to the US
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to recover which he did
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and he thought and
thought, "What am I doing wrong?
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Why cannot I communicate,
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you know, my
compulsion to share Jesus
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and what He has to offer?
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Why can I communicate it
to this country of Hindus?
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You know, many, many, many gods,
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and quite a number of Muslims,
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supposedly the One God
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but it's not
described the same way
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as the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
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although there's a
claim to be that same God
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through Ishmael
instead of Isaac,
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and then other
religions, Jains and so on,
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and the Sikhs, made no progress.
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So he went back to India
and used to have lectures
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where he tried an
intellectual approach,
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a logical approach to
spreading Christianity
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and he was at one meeting,
as he recounts in his book,
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where he was working
with these educated Brahmins,
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giving them a
logic of Christianity
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and what Christ had to offer
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and one of the
Brahmins said to him, he says,
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"I don't like the
God of your Western Jesus
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and the God of
your Christianity.
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He's not a God for us Indians.
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I don't like
what He has to offer."
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And Stanley Jones
thought for a minute,
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he says, and, you
know, quickly regrouped.
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And then he began to
describe a Jesus Christ
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walking on the roads of India,
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the dusty roads, the back roads,
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not just in the big cities,
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but what is like
in the back blocks,
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because that's a real country.
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I can tell you,
the US is not New York,
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it's not Los Angeles.
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You go out into flyover country
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where in reality where
we are broadcasting from,
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that's more particularly
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what the United
States is same in India.
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And he described Jesus
walking on those dusty roads
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with the teeming masses,
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the beggars by
the road and so on,
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Him looking like a
sadhu or Hindu holy man,
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helping people healing people,
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reaching out to
his fellow humanity.
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And after he finished,
the Brahmin thought of it,
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and he says, Yes, he says,
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"I think I could learn to love
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and serve the
Christ of the Indian road."
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And that was the
beginning of a powerful ministry
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of Stanley Jones,
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because he really integrated
what Christ had to offer
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with where humanity was.
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And it became an
internationalist,
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a humanitarian ministry
not just as can easily happen,
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you know, an outreach
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of Western
Christian civilization
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which has emerged in many ways
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as it is in the US with
culture and not just theology,
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he was very successful.
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What then caught my attention
was I read one of his books
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where he had conversations
with different Indian figures.
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And he came in
contact with Mahatma Gandhi.
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And I'm thinking a
lot of Gandhi lately
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because the US is in a tough,
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of time of turmoil
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in the midst of
the social distancing
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of COVID-19.
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We've rather
paradoxically got people
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who are crowding
together in the cities
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and demonstrating and
fighting with the police
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over very real concerns,
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of course, sparked in particular
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by police violence,
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that's always characterized
the US law enforcement
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which still as, you know,
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the western gunslinger approach,
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as well as the
plantation law and order
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and the Fugitive
Slave Act sort of mentality.
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It's a heady mix,
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that while we've
improved in many ways,
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there's the shadow of
those ways still with us.
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And I've thought of that,
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where people are demonstrating
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for a great
humanitarian concern,
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I call it the
civil rights movement v2.
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It's like an update,
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and I hope good
things come of it,
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other than some
destruction of property
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which is always regrettable,
but that's the fringe,
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and that easily discredited side
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of what I think is
an optimistic engagement
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with the problem
that needs to be solved.
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And I thought of Mahatma Gandhi,
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you know, he spearheaded a
populist movement in India,
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which was ruled by England,
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which at that time
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had a quarter of
the world's population
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under their Imperial Ensign
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collapsed with World War II,
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but at that
time, they were strong
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and coming up to the
point of independence.
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Gandhi was a moderating
force because he embraced,
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what you could say
was a Christian value,
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but he was not a Christian.
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He embraced total non-violence,
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and he wanted an
independent India.
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He ironically wanted
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a totality of Hindus
and Muslims and so on.
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And it was his
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personal
disillusionment and failure
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that led to the
separation of India
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and Pakistan
along religious lines.
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But Gandhi was very successful
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in opposing the top empire
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of the time in
a non-violent way.
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What else could he have
done if you think about it?
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If they've chosen to
use the overwhelming force
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of the British Empire,
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they could have
squashed his movement,
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but he refused to act violently
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and inspire the great movement
that led to independence.
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And ironically,
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very few people seem
to have remembered it.
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Gandhi was the lawyer
from South Africa an Indian,
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ethnic Indian,
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but he was a
lawyer from South Africa,
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where he grown
up under apartheid.
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So he knew the
great racial abuses
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of a white
dominated society there
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but again, that's
where he developed
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his non-violent system.
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And Stanley Jones
in one of his books
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tells a very
engaging contact with Gandhi
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who he met with
many times and he spent,
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said one night
he sat with Gandhi
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into the wee
hours of the morning,
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discussing the meaning of life
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and how we can arrive at
a knowledge of the divine
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and Gandhi
elsewhere it said that,
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you know, he
admired Christianity
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but he didn't like,
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he admired
Christ of Christianity
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but he didn't
like Christians much
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which is a damning statement,
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but he well knew the
principles of Christianity.
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And Stanley Jones said
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that he and
Gandhi discussed this
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into the night.
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And Gandhi in the end told him
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because they discussed
how do you find the divine?
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How do you reach out
and palpably contact God,
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which is the quest
of all people of faith,
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particularly Christians?
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I mean, Christians
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particularly
empathize with that.
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And he said, Gandhi
eventually said yes,
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he says it's possible
to connect with the divine.
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But he says it may take ages
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and no miracles
are to be expected.
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And Stanley Jones said
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he went back to his room
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where he was staying by
himself early in the morning
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in the dark of the night,
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and he said, he
got down by his bed
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on his knees and he
prayed fervently to God
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and he said,
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I need you God
now, I can't wait.
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I need it now.
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And I need a miracle in my life.
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I need a miracle.
00:11:14.74\00:11:17.11
And I've been convicted by that,
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you know, with this program
00:11:20.74\00:11:22.24
and with the
magazine that I edit,
00:11:22.28\00:11:24.28
dealing with religious liberty,
00:11:24.31\00:11:25.68
it easily at times
devolves into court cases,
00:11:25.71\00:11:31.85
legislative
initiatives, in other words,
00:11:31.89\00:11:34.52
a political hurly burly,
00:11:34.56\00:11:36.36
and it's not that
that's irrelevant.
00:11:36.39\00:11:38.46
But if you forget
00:11:38.49\00:11:39.83
what Jones was
talking to Gandhi about
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and the conclusion he came to,
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if you forget that
00:11:43.43\00:11:44.80
you're into what I think
in a religious liberty sense
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is the pure legalism
00:11:47.60\00:11:49.57
that Jesus decried in
the Pharisees of His day.
00:11:49.60\00:11:53.27
Religious liberty is not at root
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whether you win this
case whether you have this
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or that legal protection.
00:11:59.95\00:12:02.02
It's not even about
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following political developments
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because as we've
learned in recent months,
00:12:05.09\00:12:07.62
I think how quickly
they can flip or flop.
00:12:07.66\00:12:11.03
I mean, it's not a
Darwinian progression
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from tadpole to
toad by any means,
00:12:15.73\00:12:20.24
or, you know, from
single cell to whatever.
00:12:20.27\00:12:22.90
We don't believe in that.
00:12:22.94\00:12:24.27
But I mean, that's
not how history works.
00:12:24.31\00:12:26.94
There are violent
and radical changes
00:12:26.98\00:12:30.18
and the power of
ideas is quite understated,
00:12:30.21\00:12:33.75
I think in the modern world.
00:12:33.78\00:12:35.62
And we need that miracle
00:12:35.65\00:12:37.42
and without that
indwelling miracle
00:12:37.45\00:12:39.82
of the Holy
Spirit of the empowerment
00:12:39.85\00:12:42.42
that made a
difference in Jones' ministry,
00:12:42.46\00:12:44.39
where he converted many people
00:12:44.43\00:12:45.79
once he got the vision
00:12:45.83\00:12:47.23
of what Christ
was and is and can do.
00:12:47.26\00:12:50.57
Without that,
00:12:50.60\00:12:51.93
religious liberty
is sort of sophistry.
00:12:51.97\00:12:55.34
But with it, of
course, we will monitor
00:12:55.37\00:12:57.91
all those things
00:12:57.94\00:12:59.27
and, of course, as
well as that we will see
00:12:59.31\00:13:01.94
the foresight, if you like
00:13:01.98\00:13:05.05
and the guiding power of
God working through prophecy.
00:13:05.08\00:13:08.12
And whether prophecy
is a type of determinism,
00:13:08.15\00:13:11.42
I think not, some
people see it that way,
00:13:11.45\00:13:13.56
or that God who knows the future
00:13:13.59\00:13:15.59
is just revealing
some of what's to come
00:13:15.62\00:13:19.49
to encourage His
people to know that,
00:13:19.53\00:13:22.86
yes, the way ahead is
known, it's mapped out
00:13:22.90\00:13:26.53
but in spite of
what will happen,
00:13:26.57\00:13:28.34
God will overcome
00:13:28.37\00:13:30.51
and religious freedom
which is the liberation
00:13:30.54\00:13:33.41
from the power of sin
00:13:33.44\00:13:34.81
will be the dominant and
end point to all of this.
00:13:34.84\00:13:39.38
I think that's
the encouraging point.
00:13:39.41\00:13:41.75
It's a point of
the power of God,
00:13:41.78\00:13:43.65
the guidance of God,
00:13:43.69\00:13:45.29
and a dynamic
that goes way beyond
00:13:45.32\00:13:48.09
just simple non-violence,
00:13:48.12\00:13:49.62
simple demonstrating
against an injustice,
00:13:49.66\00:13:53.06
which some people
are more burdened to do
00:13:53.09\00:13:55.53
than others.
00:13:55.56\00:13:56.90
But there has to
be a grand end point.
00:13:56.93\00:14:00.00
Not just being an
activist for activist sake
00:14:00.04\00:14:02.64
or a theoretician
for theoretic sake.
00:14:02.67\00:14:06.74
Stay with me.
00:14:06.78\00:14:08.11
I'll be back shortly
00:14:08.14\00:14:09.64
and to continue this discussion.
00:14:09.68\00:14:12.85
On Liberty Insider,
Stanley Jones and India,
00:14:12.88\00:14:17.95
but maybe going a little further
00:14:17.99\00:14:19.59
to particularize
it to our need today.
00:14:19.62\00:14:21.82