Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is the program designed
to bring you information,
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news, analysis and perspectives
on religious liberty.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
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I'm editor of Liberty Magazine,
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and I want to take you back
to a time in American history
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that I can just barely remember
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was when I arrived as a teenager
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in the US from Australia.
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But it's a time that informs
a lot of what's going on today.
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You know, many
cities in the United States
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have been the
scenes of social unrest,
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civil unrest,
even some violence,
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certainly of police actions
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and smoke grenades,
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flashbang grenades
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and perspex shields
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and the whole
game of riot control.
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Young man was
manhandled by the police,
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and they knelt on his neck
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for an inordinate
amount of time, and he died.
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That was one of
the main catalysts
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of this reaction.
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But I, as someone that lives
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here, an observer,
with another context
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coming from another country,
I think it's a little greater.
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From the get go, the
US which was a society,
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particularly in the
south, based on slaveholding,
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encouraged a sort of
them versus us mentality,
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a class divide
that makes what exists,
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and it still exists in
England, the difference between
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the aristocracy
and the landed class,
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and the educated class
and the poor working class,
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it makes that look nothing,
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when you put in the divide
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between the slave
population and the free,
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and they're
elements of superiority.
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And even though the Civil War
is way in the rearview mirror,
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many of the
attitudes and dynamics
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that inform that
era have never passed.
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I know, for most people
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in the Western
world looking at the US,
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they think policing in the US
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is still sort of like a
plantation control mechanism,
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where you have
the armed vigilantes
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with police badges.
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I'm drawing a broad thing
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because there are many
wonderful police obviously.
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But as a force,
it's an armed group
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that resort to violence
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inordinately
quick versus in England.
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I know it's still,
it's somewhat of a cliche,
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but in England, you know,
the bobby used to be unarmed,
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would go around the
neighborhood whistling
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and blow his whistle, literally,
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if something
happened and chase on foot,
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rare even to this day,
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say in England for a
policeman to be shot,
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not so rare in the US,
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because
violence is the preferred
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form of control.
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And so in the
middle of the pandemic,
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when people are frustrated
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which in my view is
sort of the rough equivalent
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of a hot summer day,
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and the times of racial
rioting in the inner cities,
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you could almost
tell it by the weather,
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people's
frustration would bubble up.
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We've
accomplished the same thing
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by bottling
people up in their homes
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and neighborhoods
with little or no work
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and not much to do and
restrictions on travel.
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And then
something like this happens.
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I think we should look
back on the civil rights era,
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which was a pivotal
time in American history
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and turned out
quite well really,
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it could have been
sort of a civil war,
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but it turned into a
civil rights movement.
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Many laws were changed.
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Men's hearts may not
have been changed greatly.
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But we've advanced
a long way even though
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it appears in the current thing
that we're going back to it.
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Martin Luther King
was a galvanizing figure,
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you know, his like will
not come along very often,
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if ever again.
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And recently I went back
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and looked at
some of his sermons.
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And the reason I did so is
because in Liberty magazine,
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we did a feature on John Lewis,
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who died just about
the time this came out.
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Very close.
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He died a few days
after this went to press.
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But on the cover, we
have a picture of John Lewis
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with Presidents Obama and Bush,
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and many family members
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and other
administration officials,
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joining John Lewis for a walk,
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again, across the
Lewis, is it Pettus Bridge,
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where they, in
the civil rights era,
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a group of them
holding, you know, arms linked,
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marched into the face
of baton wielding whip.
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You know, again,
the plantation model
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that the police had
whips, horse whips, dogs,
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and everything else that
they could bring to bear.
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I don't think on that
occasion they use water cannon,
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but that was water hoses that
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that was often
part of the picture.
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And they marched into that,
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that group
determined to stop them
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crossing the bridge.
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And as John Lewis
said, "We expected to die."
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And he was beaten quite severely
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and concussed and
lay on the ground,
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while looking at his blood.
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And in later years, looked back
on that as a sublime moment,
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where in defense
of a high principle,
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not just for a
minority black population,
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but for everybody defending
the principles of freedom,
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that characterize
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or should
characterize a free society
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that honors everything
from general civil rights
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through to religious
liberty, was a great reminder.
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But I will not
forget just a few days ago,
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I had a phone call
from a church member.
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Just the minute I picked it
up, they were screaming at me,
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"How could you have
that evil man on the cover?"
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You talk about President
Obama, he did this, he did that.
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Well, I don't particularly
think they were right anyway.
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But even if they were right,
I said he and President Bush
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are supporting figures they are,
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this is not about them.
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This is about John Lewis
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and his heroic
stand for civil liberties.
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I have no apologies
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for featuring
this sort of bravery.
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We need more heroes like him.
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He died, John Lewis
died of illness in old age.
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But Martin Luther King,
his mentor and hero, of course,
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died a long, long time ago
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under an
assassin's bullet in 1968,
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the big year that
I've often remarked on us,
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everything happened
in the US that year.
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And Martin Luther King
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gave a sermon at
the National Cathedral,
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just about two weeks
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before he was shot in Memphis.
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And it was entitled,
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"Remaining Awake
Through a Great Revolution."
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And I think it's
hardly inappropriate
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to see in our present history,
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the fact that we
are in Western society,
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but more particularly
in the United States,
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we're in a revolutionary period,
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doesn't mean the government
is going to be overthrown.
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That's not the full
meaning of revolution.
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But all of the norms that
we have life as we knew it,
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understandings
that we may have had,
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they're all in play again.
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This is not a settled time.
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And Martin Luther
King told the story,
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which is quite quaint in itself.
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So I remember even
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as a kid
growing up in Australia,
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I thought it was a great story.
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Rip Van Winkle goes
up into the mountains
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and lies down and goes to sleep.
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And as he goes to sleep,
King George is king of England,
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King of the colonies,
and the anglophile wealth,
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even separated by the
Atlantic was his world.
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He was comfortable with it,
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and he slept for
a number of years.
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And when he woke up,
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it was President
George Washington.
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There'd been a revolution
and he knew nothing of it.
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And Martin Luther raises
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that question that we
can think about today.
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Is it possible that we
are in a revolutionary time,
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but we're sleeping through it?
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That's what's amazing.
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He says of Rip Van Winkle,
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"Yes, he slept
through a revolution.
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And one of the
great liabilities of life
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is that too many
people find themselves
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living amid a great
period of social change.
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And yet they fail to
develop the new attitudes,
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the new mental responses
that the new situation demands,
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they end up sleeping
through a revolution.
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There can be no gainsaying"
says Martin Luther King,
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"that a great revolution
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is taking place
in the world today.
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We live in a period when
changes are taking place,
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and there is still the voice
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crying through the
vestige of times saying
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'Behold, I make all things new,
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former things are passed away.'"
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And what he was
trying to introduce is that
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the Christian dynamic
is itself revolutionary.
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And we often have to decide,
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are we going to be caught
up in the cycle of disruption
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that civil revolutions
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and societal
revolutions might evolve?
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And yet, we could do that
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at the risk of
losing our moorings
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on spiritual values,
greater values, greater values.
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The challenges of
history must be answered.
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We do have to
answer the challenge.
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There's no question.
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Further on in that sermon,
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Martin Luther
King got to something
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that I've heard
preachers say from time to time,
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but it was most apropos
during this presentation.
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He said this, "One day,
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we will have to stand
before the God of history.
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And we will talk in
terms of things we've done.
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I don't know I'm further
along than I ever thought.
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And a few times I
thought, what will I tell God?
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Or what could I tell myself that
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I've done in life that can be
rather a frustrating exercise,
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because, in retrospect,
many of what many of the things
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that we do don't
seem so important,
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but of course
magnified by service to God,
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they might be
pivotal to great things.
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But he says, you
know what have we done?
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And he says, "Yes,
we'll be able to say,
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we built gargantuan
bridges to span the seas."
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I don't know what
bridge he was talking about.
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But I noticed the other
day that the Chinese government
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offered to build a tunnel
from China to Taiwan for free.
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And Taiwan turned it down.
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To me, it was a
wonderful statement of ability.
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Can they do that?
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That's 100 miles,
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I think it's a
huge stretch span.
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But he says we
build gigantic buildings
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to kiss the skies.
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He was probably thinking
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of something like
the Twin Towers down now.
00:12:01.55\00:12:04.42
He says, "Yes, we
made our submarines
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to penetrate ocean depths.
00:12:06.76\00:12:09.96
We brought into
being many other things
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with our scientific
and technological power."
00:12:12.13\00:12:15.03
It seems that I can
hear the God of history
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saying that was not enough.
00:12:17.33\00:12:21.00
"But I was
hungry, and he fed me not.
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I was naked and
you clothed me not.
00:12:23.81\00:12:26.68
I was devoid of a decent
sanitary house to live in,
00:12:26.71\00:12:29.51
and you provided
no shelter for me.
00:12:29.54\00:12:32.21
And consequently,
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ye cannot enter the
kingdom of greatness.
00:12:33.62\00:12:36.79
If you do it under the
least of these my brethren,
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you do it unto Me."
00:12:39.09\00:12:40.62
That's the question
facing America today.
00:12:40.66\00:12:44.86
Big moral question.
00:12:44.89\00:12:47.03
At the end of
the sermon, he said,
00:12:47.06\00:12:49.76
"There comes a time when
one must take the position
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that is neither
safe nor politic,
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nor popular, but he must do it,
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because conscience
tells him it's right.
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That's lacking today.
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The conviction
to do what's right,
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no matter, you
know, what might happen,
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whether the
heavens falls, it says.
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I believe today, he said that
00:13:11.49\00:13:12.95
there is a need for all
people of goodwill to come
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with a massive act of conscience
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and say in the words of
the old Negro spiritual,
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we ain't going to
study war no more.
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And that is the
challenge facing modern man.
00:13:24.20\00:13:27.64
In another program,
I mentioned attending
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a service of a
large non-denominational,
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I think it's
non-denominational church
00:13:34.18\00:13:35.88
in Los Angeles that's meeting
00:13:35.91\00:13:39.41
against COVID restrictions,
00:13:39.45\00:13:41.18
and you can defend
or attack them on that.
00:13:41.22\00:13:43.95
But on the matter of
conviction, undeniable.
00:13:43.99\00:13:47.52
They're doing what
they think is right.
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And I heard or read
00:13:49.52\00:13:52.36
at the same time
about its pastor.
00:13:52.39\00:13:55.33
He went to a Bible college
00:13:55.36\00:13:56.97
where they were
training ministers
00:13:57.00\00:13:58.73
and he said this to
them, he says, "Just remember,"
00:13:58.77\00:14:01.57
he said, "You are not
studying to change the world.
00:14:01.60\00:14:05.37
You are studying
to change lives."
00:14:05.41\00:14:08.31
And I think Martin Luther King,
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of course named
after Martin Luther,
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the great reformer.
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I think Martin Luther King
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was threading that same dynamic.
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You can't say
that you're unconcerned
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with good
housing and good policing
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and all those things,
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but the real aim
is to change lives,
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to change attitudes
toward other human beings.
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You know, if you think
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you're going to change
the world here and now,
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you're headed down a
sort of a rabbit's warren
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of impossibilities.
00:14:39.51\00:14:41.61
In the early Adventist Church,
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which was not so far
ago, there were many disputes.
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And one of the biggest
disputes was at the time
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when in the US political
scene they were discussing
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whether or not to
be on a gold standard
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or a silver standard.
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You know, we're on
the no standard now.
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It's made-up money.
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But it used to be gold based,
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I can still remember
when on the dollar bill,
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it would say you
could redeem that
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for a dollars' worth of gold.
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Doesn't say that
now. It's monopoly money.
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And if you think it's
money, it works as money.
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But there was a huge debate.
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And I, one of the great speeches
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in American history
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was William Jennings Bryan
and his cross of gold speech.
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Well, the church membership
were not immune to this
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and big disputes broke out
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in the men among the membership,
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whether we should
be on the gold standard
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or the silver standard.
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And preachers were
preaching sermons arguing
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for one or the other,
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there were
disputes in church meetings.
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And Ellen White, the
co-founder of the church
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and visionary recognized
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as being inspired of
God at various times.
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She had a lot to say on this.
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And she said several
times, she said very plainly,
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any minister, or any teacher,
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and they were the
two main positions
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in the church at that time.
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She says, "Any
minister or teacher is involved
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in party politics
must resign or be fired."
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And I do believe
that to be involved
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in partisan political matters
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is not forbidden to a Christian.
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But to mix that with
Christian responsibility
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and interchange is very wrong,
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because it shows
that you don't understand
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what that pastor
told to ministers.
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It shows that you're
trying to change the world,
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and not
accepting Jesus challenge
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to change lives.
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Remember, Jesus called
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the disciples to
be fishers of men,
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to follow Him, to
bring in souls to,
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to point them to the kingdom,
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to suit them
for an eternal life.
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And in so
changing and suiting people
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for that eternal reality,
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of course, they
should be better citizens.
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But if you're determined
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to change the
world here and now,
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you enter into the line
of the Lenins and the Stalins
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and the, you know,
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the communist
insurgents and other,
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Al Qaeda for that matter.
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Any number of people
that have taken up the sword,
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as Peter briefly did,
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taking up the
sword thinking that
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by slicing off
the ear of, you know,
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false government
official or a false government,
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you somehow advance
the kingdom of God, not so.
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And, you know, I do
admire Martin Luther King.
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His non-violence,
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because violence was
in the air at the time,
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but he turned down
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some of the
black revolutionaries
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who were determined
to fight fire with fire
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and they would have
been consumed by it.
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And his largely
non-violent approach shamed
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a community of the
time into granting freedoms
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that they probably already
knew needed to be granted.
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Let's just take a
break for a moment.
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I'll be back to continue
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this interesting
line of comparison
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and description of a
great time in American history.
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