Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI200495A
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00:26 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:29 This is your program 00:30 that's designed to familiarize you 00:32 with religious liberty in all of its forms 00:35 in the US and around the world. 00:37 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty Magazine. 00:41 And my guest on the program is Clifford Goldstein. 00:45 Among your other attainments, 00:47 you're a regular writer for Liberty Magazine, 00:48 which comes easier 00:50 because you were editor for some years, 00:52 20, nearly 22 years ago. 00:53 Hard to believe. Yeah. Yeah. 00:55 And you edit the Sabbath School Bible study lessons 00:57 for the Seventh-day Adventist Church. 01:00 As a long time Liberty man 01:05 and Seventh-day Adventist 01:06 of how many years since you joined the Adventist? 01:09 1980. 01:10 Eighty. What's that? 01:12 Forty years. 01:13 Forty years, well, that's a lifetime. 01:15 So and I know even recently, 01:17 you've written about it for Liberty Magazine. 01:19 I want to talk a little bit about 01:22 Seventh-day Adventists in particular, 01:24 but I think it goes back a little further, 01:26 and identification with the US 01:29 playing a key role in end time events? 01:32 Well, again, you'd have to get the scripture to look at it, 01:35 but in detail, but you know, it's very interesting... 01:39 Revelation 13 primarily. Thirteen. 01:41 And what's fascinating to me was, 01:44 my understanding is the first Adventist 01:48 I think it was Andrews, 01:51 who in 1853 01:56 identified the second beast of Revelation 13 02:02 as the United States, now... 02:04 Wrongly. 02:05 Think, well, to say whoa, why would you say wrongly. 02:08 Oh, the second beast, I'm sorry. 02:10 The second beast, yes. I flipped to Daniel. 02:12 Yeah, the second beast. 02:13 Now let's think about that. 02:17 If that was amazing, 02:18 because this beast in Revelation for it 02:22 to fulfill its role 02:24 would have to have been a worldwide, massive power 02:30 and in 18th, 02:31 we were still switched seven years from the civil war, 02:36 the civil war almost destroyed this country. 02:39 Yeah. 02:40 And then you go through America, 02:42 America was nowhere near any kind of behemoth. 02:47 You know, at the beginning of World War I, 02:50 I think Poland had a larger army 02:53 than the United States. 02:55 So it wasn't until that, you know. 02:57 Yes, it's true. But think about a few things. 02:59 First of all, Americans are inclined 03:01 as any other large country 03:03 to be America centric in their thinking, 03:06 so he rose big in their mind. 03:07 Yeah. 03:09 But then as well as that America, 03:10 the whole American experiment 03:12 rose out of incredible revolutionary 03:14 and philosophical movements in the civilized world, 03:18 by its own claim, New World Order. 03:22 This was an experiment 03:25 that had aspirations of Greek and recent Roman 03:28 with one of our past colleagues, 03:30 James Standish. 03:31 I remember, he and I walking downtown Washington once. 03:34 "I love this city," he says. 03:35 I said, "Well, it'll just show you 03:37 what a Greco Roman fixation will do for the country," 03:41 that it's not just, it was nice architecture. 03:44 This was a conscious attempt 03:46 to recapture the imperial six years. 03:50 Oh, yeah, I was always was amazed 03:52 by the Greek and Roman architecture. 03:54 So the claims of this country 03:56 already might be lamb like but it spoke like a dragon. 04:00 But, of course, 04:01 a lot of the early Adventist pioneers. 04:02 And religion was always entwined in. 04:05 They thought it was going to that 04:07 because of slavery. 04:08 But again, all that aside, 04:11 I mean, at what year was Custer fight 04:15 the get his clock cleaned at Little Bighorn. 04:18 It was late 1870s or something. 04:21 We were still fighting the Indians and losing. 04:24 And this was going to be the power. 04:27 And many of our viewers may not know 04:30 the history of the Adventist Church, 04:31 but Ellen White, 04:33 a co-founder of the church and a visionary. 04:38 That had dreams and visions 04:40 that clearly seem to have 04:42 divine inspiration behind them. 04:44 But Ellen White and her husband 04:46 traveled a lot across this country. 04:49 It's easy to forget that the railway 04:51 had barely been put in at that time. 04:53 It was frontier mentality. 04:56 But just like now with the COVID 04:59 and the social changes, 05:00 there was a lot of social disturbance, 05:02 because things were making... 05:03 We had the civil war. 05:05 Things were moving very quick. 05:06 People were already moving in from the cities, 05:09 industrialization was taking over. 05:11 It was a very fluid, dynamic, disruptive time. 05:15 And people had fears about the future. 05:19 You know, they saw the apocalypse coming, 05:21 it was not just Adventist, 05:22 but it was the agitation of the times. 05:25 And I think you're right, 05:26 they quite naturally saw in Revelation 05:32 a pretty clear description of this country 05:34 already in embryo. 05:38 Well, against for them to have done that. 05:41 And only in the past 75, 05:44 I guess, we ended World War II. 05:47 And we ended World War II top of the heap, 05:50 the only one with nuclear weapons, 05:52 and even to this day, 05:54 our economic might, our military might, 06:00 you know, the power of this country, 06:02 the wealth of this country, the influence of this country. 06:07 And, you know, I'm not naive enough 06:10 our country right or wrong, 06:11 America has always been good. 06:13 It's a wonderful country, but it's not a perfect. 06:16 There is no perfect. 06:17 I'm really glad we won the Cold War 06:20 and not the Russkies, 06:21 you know, what I'm saying, and I mean, we, 06:24 you know, I just got done 06:25 listening to our Russian brethren 06:27 about Japan, 06:28 about the final year of the war. 06:31 And you know, after everything Japan did they were brutal, 06:34 brutal what they did in China and so on, and we win. 06:39 And we did everything we could to install democracy in there. 06:45 The Russian thing is another question. 06:48 We didn't so much win as they lost it. 06:51 Well, their system collapsed. With who? 06:53 With the Soviet? With Cold War. 06:54 Well, well, yeah, it spat them. 06:56 What I think you can say 06:59 the world is immeasurably better 07:02 than if the Germans had won World War II. 07:03 Wow. Yeah. 07:04 That is where civilization was saved quite literally. 07:06 Yeah. 07:08 And it was the Americans, of course, 07:09 you know, was really the Russians. 07:11 It was the Russians, but we tipped the scales. 07:13 Yeah. 07:15 And we should give full credit to Russia 07:17 would sacrifice tens of millions. 07:19 Twenty million people that Russia has lost. 07:20 Yeah, incredible. 07:22 But the US did bankroll 07:23 their military efforts at that point. 07:25 Yeah. 07:27 Oh, no, they couldn't have done it. 07:28 I think they needed that. 07:29 Financially, they couldn't have done it 07:31 without us. 07:32 But they spent the manpower, we lost very few people... 07:33 Compared to Russians... 07:35 And most of the final events, and I love history. 07:38 But most of the final events of World War II by the allies 07:40 were just kept playing catch up. 07:42 So they could be there for the grand moment 07:44 if they win. 07:45 Oh, yeah. 07:46 It was the Russians were just steamrolling 07:48 over Germany at that point. 07:49 At that point, yeah. 07:50 But yes, that set the US top of the heap 07:52 and put it in a position to fulfill 07:55 the prophetic outline I think. 07:56 But you know, as we talked earlier, 07:58 it was still very hard to see 08:02 this country as anything 08:05 what it has always been the bastion. 08:07 And it's very, you know, you think about it, 08:10 we can be patriotic Americans, 08:12 but not you, you're a foreigner. 08:15 But we're glad we let you in, 08:17 we decided to let you in, you know. 08:18 Just be on your good behavior or I'm gonna throw you out. 08:21 But all that is shot. 08:22 Well, I've been longer in the US 08:24 than you've been an Adventist. 08:25 Yeah, okay. I came in the mid 60s. 08:27 Yeah, it's a long time. 08:30 Well, go back to your own country then 08:31 if it's so great. 08:32 But anyway, I'm just razzing you. 08:34 But the point is, the point is, I never... 08:40 It would be very hard to see America as anything 08:45 other than what it had been knowing 08:47 the bad things this country does. 08:49 You know, what, who is it that said 08:50 countries don't have permanent fringes, 08:53 permanent interests. 08:54 And I've read enough about the Vietnam War 08:57 and the stuff that you know, and so on, but all that aside, 09:02 but it's only now in the past couple of years, 09:07 that I'm beginning to see 09:10 the very foundation 09:12 of American democracy coming unglued. 09:16 And you know, and, you know, this experiment, 09:19 nothing guarantees that this experiment 09:21 is going to last forever. 09:23 It's kind of amazing that we've lasted 09:25 as long as we have, 09:27 but the forces of polarization are so strong. 09:33 And, you know, I used to joke, 09:36 I used to be able to joke in politics. 09:38 I used to sometimes in my local church, 09:41 I'd be preaching and sometimes from the pulpit, 09:43 I'd razz some of the people 09:45 in their little asides political stuff. 09:48 You can't do that now. You wouldn't do that now. 09:50 And there's, we've lost something with that. 09:53 Because it used to be okay, we disagree politically. 09:56 We didn't like it, 09:58 but it never changed relationships, 10:01 it never changed friendships. 10:02 You're talking about a decline 10:04 in the American experiment or in the nature of it. 10:07 And the framers understood that. 10:08 Remember, they were opposed to political parties, 10:11 because they saw what happened in England, 10:12 the Whigs and the Tories, was never intended. 10:16 And I think partisan rivalry has been the undoing. 10:19 But I believe the... 10:21 You had the Federalists and the Republicans back then. 10:25 That's when it started. 10:26 And they were bitterly opposed to each other. 10:29 But I do think the ground base 10:34 of why things are going bad 10:36 is that the populace no longer understand or buy, 10:40 many of them buy into the norms of democracy. 10:44 I saw a statistic the other day, 10:45 30% was either 30 or 35. 10:49 But roughly 30% of those surveyed in the US 10:53 said that they would rather have 10:54 an autocratic non elected leader. 10:56 Wow. 10:58 Of course, to mock you know, 10:59 our constitution was very anti democratic, 11:03 they did it. 11:05 Why do you think you could win 11:06 the popular vote... 11:07 It's not majoritarian. 11:09 Yeah, you can win the popular vote 11:12 and lose the election. 11:13 That was by purpose. That was by purpose. 11:16 And I think they were very smart 11:19 in doing that. 11:20 And the people, 11:22 but they wanted the leaders to represent 11:24 the interests of the people. 11:26 But again... 11:27 Bur remember, early on, it was only, I mean, 11:30 America came into being first 11:32 but it was still in formation 11:34 when the French Revolution took off. 11:37 So they saw what the majoritarian, 11:40 the view of the crowd could do. 11:41 Oh, yeah. 11:43 They didn't want that, other than Jefferson. 11:45 Yeah, we avoided. 11:47 It is kind of amazing how we... 11:50 Well, you can, we like to brag, 11:52 we avoided what the French did 11:55 in the French Revolution with our revolution. 11:59 Of course, I've read some books about, 12:00 you read some books about the American Revolution. 12:02 Oh, it's pretty rough and wrong. 12:04 Yeah, we work with you. 12:05 We thought you are a loyalist 12:08 or something what they did to you, 12:10 but okay, so we kept it together. 12:13 But there was no reign of terror here. 12:14 Yeah. 12:15 All right, well, we kept it together 12:17 for 60 some years, 12:18 or 80 some years till you had the civil war. 12:22 And then the civil war a whole lot more people look, 12:25 you know, the French Revolution what they do, 12:26 chop off 30,000 heads. 12:29 What's 30,000 in a war? 12:31 Thirty thousand, we lost 600,000 in the civil war. 12:36 So you chop 30,000 heads, blub, blub, blub, you know. 12:40 Wouldn't Lenin say you got, 12:42 you can't make an omelet 12:43 without breaking an egg, you know. 12:45 But the point is, the point is we... 12:47 Let's get to a prophetic point. 12:49 We ended up, we ended up, 12:52 it still took a civil war, 12:57 you know, you talk about, I mean, I'm one of these, 12:59 I'm not overly enamored with democracy. 13:02 Look, it took a civil war. 13:05 You mean majoritarian. 13:06 Yeah, it took a civil war to get for this country 13:11 to free the slaves 13:13 that we wouldn't do democratically. 13:16 It took a civil war to do it. 13:18 And then it's why do you think the Supreme Court, 13:21 it took the most non democratic branch 13:25 of our government, 13:26 the US Supreme Court to do for African-Americans 13:31 what the American democracy was not doing, 13:34 so you had to go 13:36 to an anti democratic institution, 13:38 the Supreme Court 13:40 to fix what the American democracy 13:42 was not doing on its own now, 13:44 now maybe eventually it would, 13:46 but you're gonna want to wait for the democracy to do it. 13:49 I agree with you. 13:50 But the term you used is a little misleading. 13:54 They never intended pure democracy. 13:56 Of course not. 13:57 They ended a government that's represented the people, 14:02 the power, the authorization for the rulers. 14:05 But even the representative democracy 14:07 didn't do it. 14:08 It took the Supreme Court, 14:10 a group of unelected people 14:12 completely out of the democratic process 14:14 to do 14:15 what America's representative democracy 14:18 was not doing. 14:19 And unfortunately, that's how human government works. 14:21 Yeah. 14:22 But due to differ from that 14:25 and to bring in someone who knows better, 14:28 and to use non democratic means to force it on it. 14:30 That's dictatorship. 14:32 Well, republic, democracies force things, 14:35 our representative democracy forces things 14:38 on us all the time too. 14:40 Yes. 14:41 And that's why we need religious liberty. 14:43 It's part of the checks and balances 14:44 between civil and religious power, right? 14:47 Absolutely. Let's take a break. 14:49 We'll be back shortly to continue this discussion. |
Revised 2021-03-12