Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI200480A
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00:28 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:30 This is the program 00:31 designed to bring you up to speed 00:33 and give you information 00:34 and understanding on religious liberty events 00:38 in the US and around the world. 00:40 My name is Lincoln Steed, Editor of Liberty Magazine, 00:44 a religious liberty journal 00:45 published for well over 100 years now 00:47 by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, 00:49 and distributed to many people in the community, 00:52 in particular, 00:54 politicians and leaders in government, 00:57 mayors and so on, 00:59 all around the US and indeed around the world. 01:03 I want to share some things with you today 01:05 that I think are very pertinent 01:06 to where we are in these tumultuous times, 01:12 very tumultuous worldwide, 01:13 but in particular, in the United States. 01:16 In the whole impeachment and election scenario, 01:20 many people are wondering just where this will go. 01:24 I discovered a book quite a few years ago, 01:27 when I was working back in my homeland of Australia, 01:30 at the publishing house in a little town 01:33 called Warburton, 01:35 this publishing house that's again been run 01:37 for over 100 years 01:40 by the Seventh-day Adventist Church 01:41 and I used to sit there 01:42 editing different magazines and books on occasion, 01:47 on the second level, 01:49 and now and then I would go 01:50 into the library 01:52 and leave through some of the books 01:53 that they had 01:55 and I noticed on many of the books 01:57 that as I opened the pages, 02:00 a fine dust, a brown dust would fall out. 02:03 And then on some of the others, I saw that it was like silt, 02:06 layered up between the pages and I asked questions, 02:10 and I discovered that the nearby stream 02:13 had flooded in the mid 30s. 02:15 And the water would come up into the second story level, 02:19 a literal deluge, 02:20 almost an apocalypse for what they were doing. 02:23 And this one book that I discovered 02:25 was called The Christ We Forget. 02:28 And I've got it at home now. 02:31 And I've read and reread and just recently read it 02:34 and I noticed early on that it was written 02:39 by an English journalist and politician, 02:42 and of course the Christian, 02:44 written by this man at the end of World War I. 02:49 And today, even historians 02:52 and of course, Europeans talk of World War I 02:55 as the Great War. 02:57 Not the war to end all wars 02:59 that was thought so at the time, 03:00 but wars and rumors of wars till the end of time, 03:03 according to Jesus Christ. 03:06 But it was cataclysmic to society, to civilization. 03:11 And in the preface to his book, 03:12 I want to share with you just a few paragraphs, 03:16 he said this, before the war, 03:19 "It seemed almost unnecessary to find time for the Bible. 03:24 Many of us were making money. 03:26 Others were busily earning it." 03:28 Little irony there. 03:29 "Our children were getting on nicely at school. 03:32 Certainly there were grave evils, 03:35 like drink, and bitter social inequalities, 03:38 and rancorous political quarrels, 03:42 and reckless extravagances, 03:44 which gave us uneasy twinges of conscience. 03:49 But we drifted, in tens, hundreds of thousands, 03:52 from public worship. 03:54 We ceased to pray. 03:57 We quietly laid aside the Bible. 04:01 Then suddenly we were brought face to face 04:05 with facts which we had forgotten. 04:07 One of those facts was death, another was pain, 04:12 another was suspense, another was national duty, 04:17 another was suspense. 04:20 We learnt that life is not a game, 04:23 but a grim, 04:24 heroic combat between good and evil. 04:28 For this crisis," he says, 04:30 commenting on his observation, 04:32 "For this crisis, 04:33 we found that we were unprepared. 04:36 Men and women fled for refuge, in some cases, to spiritualism, 04:41 crystal-gazing, and fortune-telling. 04:44 Pleasure and romance 04:46 played their part as comforters. 04:50 Lives that had been frivolous were consecrated to war work. 04:56 And there was the growing splendor 04:58 of national unity and personal sacrifice. 05:00 Hopes of a better dawn have encouraged us. 05:04 We are sure that faith will return." 05:10 But then he says, "But faith in what?" 05:16 And at the end of his introduction, 05:19 he says, "We need a revival, a new birth of life, 05:24 a resurrection." 05:27 And he concludes by saying, 05:28 "We must all long for the time, when once more, 05:33 this same Jesus who died shall be known again among men, 05:40 not as a crucifix merely, or as a shadow, 05:44 but in all of His fullness of love, 05:46 of power, of wisdom, of suffering, and a victory. 05:51 Far, far happier would be both homes and hearts. 05:54 There would be more laughter amongst us as of children, 05:57 better pictures and nobler literature, 06:01 more wholesome pleasures, 06:02 and the grand outburst of missionary enterprise." 06:07 You know, that's an interesting little snapshot 06:11 of what it was like in England at the end of the Great War, 06:16 moral meltdown, 06:18 and the substitution unless I'm misreading him, 06:22 a substitution of a sense of nationalism, 06:26 and civil optimism for deep spirituality. 06:31 The same thing is in the process of happening, 06:33 certainly in the United States. 06:36 I think it's not just a religionist, 06:39 anyone with an understanding of history will see that, 06:43 that the old faiths not just Christianity, 06:47 but primarily Christianity, 06:49 but all the religious faiths are struggling 06:51 to assert themselves against the new secularity. 06:55 Science as it's often ban it even in discussion. 07:01 You know, we are a scientific people, 07:03 supposedly, we follow knowledge. 07:06 Like Tennyson said, like, like a star. 07:09 But in reality, 07:11 the modern man is not overly logical, 07:14 no more than ancient man. 07:16 And a lot of sciences ignored, as we've seen at the moment, 07:20 even by our leaders, 07:22 who should have a little more respect 07:24 for the most obvious rationality 07:27 of science. 07:29 In reality, we are drifting toward 07:32 a sort of a secular dream time, 07:38 when we forget the true faith of our fathers. 07:42 Many in the United States have seen this, 07:44 the so-called Christian Right are troubled mightily 07:47 by the decline of religion. 07:49 I listened recently on public radio 07:53 to the chief ethicist from the Southern Baptist, 07:59 discussing how it's affected his church 08:02 and he says, you know, 08:03 our church attendance is radically down. 08:05 And amazingly, even during the COVID disaster, 08:09 he says, many people have forsaken the church, 08:13 and he doesn't understand why because you would think, 08:16 in a time of stress, 08:17 people would reach for religion. 08:19 But, of course, they're not encouraged that way 08:21 with social distancing. 08:23 And the idea that to meet in churches 08:24 literally dangerous to your health. 08:27 But what we have seen and we'll see more of 08:31 is that those who are custodians 08:34 of historical religion in the United States, 08:37 and those who have 08:39 a political vision at the same time 08:41 are determined to somehow do what the author of that book, 08:46 The Christ We Forget was saying, 08:48 somehow, they want to reinsert religion into society. 08:53 Now, how do you do that? 08:55 The goal during the Vietnam War, 08:58 I remember very well, 08:59 since I was subject to the draft, 09:01 I watched it closely and they were always saying, 09:03 a battle for hearts and minds. 09:05 They mostly persuaded with napalm 09:08 and scorched earth policies. 09:10 But still it was indeed a battle for hearts and minds. 09:14 And the so-called religious right, 09:17 the moral majority, 09:20 those people that are anxious to advance faith in the country 09:25 have that same problem. 09:27 They see America slipping away as it were, 09:30 and how do you save it? 09:34 And I'm afraid that they will do 09:38 what has happened over and over again 09:39 in the past. 09:41 They will seek a legislative agenda 09:44 to require people to discover religion. 09:49 And when I talk about religious liberty, 09:51 I've told people over and over again, 09:53 there's a simple litmus test that you can apply 09:56 as to whether religious liberty is functioning. 09:59 If there is coercion involved, it is not religious freedom, 10:05 even if people are going through the motions 10:08 of religion and religious practice. 10:10 And so this is the great conundrum, 10:12 the great contradiction 10:14 that is facing the United States 10:16 at the moment. 10:17 You can read any number of articles 10:19 that point out that clearly the United States 10:22 and indeed the western world is in need of a moral renewal. 10:26 It's suffering a crisis of confidence. 10:29 You know, it's not the economy dropping 10:31 because of COVID. 10:32 It's not trade imbalances. 10:34 All of those things are rather symptomatic. 10:37 Even as this program began, with the technicians, 10:41 we were talking about, 10:43 you know, what's happening now 10:44 and, you know, where will this go and so on. 10:49 And what is obvious. 10:52 We were talking about too how civilizations come and go. 10:55 What is obvious to most any observer 10:58 is that the great American empire 11:01 for want of a better word, 11:02 this liberal guideposts 11:07 for much of the modern world is really floundering. 11:12 It can't openly say 11:13 that it wants to conquer the world, 11:15 it can't openly say that it wants to bring 11:18 a lifestyle to the rest of the world 11:19 because China and other wannabes now 11:22 are holding out the consumerist carrot 11:28 as much as the US. 11:30 We can't easily say 11:31 that we're trying to Christianize 11:33 the rest of the world, 11:35 that would be constitutionally inappropriate 11:38 and inaccurate about our society. 11:40 Something is missing. 11:44 Something is missing. 11:45 But we are clearly on a declining arc 11:50 as far as a coherent society. 11:53 And some of the evidences of that 11:56 are even social scientists in other parts of the world, 12:00 most famously, in Russia. 12:02 They're positing that the US is about to break apart. 12:06 I don't think so both personally 12:08 or as a matter of prophecy. 12:10 But it is a moment of truth and crisis. 12:13 Something must be done. 12:16 Stay with us. 12:18 And I'll come back shortly to continue this discussion 12:21 about where we are today 12:23 and maybe parallels to great crisis of the past 12:27 and what crisis lies ahead of us. |
Revised 2020-11-15