Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI210504A
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00:27 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:29 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty magazine. 00:32 And this is a program designed to bring you 00:36 really the up-to-date insights. 00:38 All that I can bring to bear 00:40 on the topic of religious liberty 00:42 and current world developments. 00:45 My guest on the program also has the name Steed, 00:47 my son Christopher, 00:49 it's not your first time, but thank you, son. 00:53 And I want to go back to our shared experience, 00:56 not too many years ago. 00:57 Remember, I took you and the rest of the family 01:00 to a tour of Israel. 01:03 Remember that? 01:04 You remember one of the scenes that really stuck in my mind, 01:07 we took a bus up to Golan Heights, 01:10 and at the top of the Golan Heights 01:12 you could look down more down 01:13 than along to the sea of Galilee 01:16 and the events 01:17 that happened in Jesus' ministry. 01:22 By the way, you know, I like the Messiah, right? 01:26 Yeah. Musical Messiah. 01:28 You only have... 01:29 At least 20, 30 versions. 01:32 Yeah, at least. 01:33 And one of them has a painting by... 01:38 Ah, I can't remember. 01:41 A famous painter. 01:42 Very famous surrealist of that same scene 01:47 where Jesus is on the cross. 01:49 And you're looking down past His body hanging on the cross, 01:53 almost straight down to the fishermen 01:55 on the sea of Galilee. 01:56 Is this the vinyl one? 01:58 Yes. 01:59 And that's almost the vision we got from the Golan Heights, 02:02 but what do you remember the other direction? 02:06 Looking out over the Golan Heights? 02:07 Desert. Yes. 02:09 But remember that was the direction to Syria. 02:12 Oh, yeah. 02:13 And we saw where the ISIS at the time, 02:15 it destroyed a few mosques in that, 02:18 and we couldn't see it that day, 02:20 but they said it was only a few tens of miles. 02:24 And on a very clear day, 02:25 you could see the other suburbs of Damascus. 02:28 And you can see fighting. 02:30 Yes. 02:31 Well, we saw the destruction of the mosques. 02:34 So, you know, very small world and it made it very real to me. 02:40 And remember in the Bible, 02:42 what was the key moment in Saul 02:45 who then became the Apostle Paul's life? 02:47 What was the key moment, 02:49 he spoke about the rest of his life? 02:51 When he was on the road to Damascus? 02:54 Yeah, the Damascus road. Yeah. 02:56 So doesn't that give you... 02:57 I was trying to figure out where you're trying 02:59 to get with that thing. 03:00 Doesn't that give you a new meaning of that, 03:01 you know, to go from Israel, 03:03 you know, that wasn't the modern state, 03:05 but certainly the sea of Galilee was what, 03:07 only a little, a day's walk from Jerusalem. 03:11 That was where Israel was. 03:13 And he's on the Damascus road, that's just not far away, 03:15 just over the hills, 03:17 on the plain heading toward Damascus. 03:20 And what happened on the road? 03:24 Man, I can't remember the story now. 03:26 He's fighting his forces. 03:28 He was writing of course, and then blinding white light, 03:32 and then he had fish scales put over his eyes. 03:36 That he heard a voice. He heard a voice. 03:38 I don't remember what the voice said. 03:39 It's been a while since this I heard the story. 03:41 The voice of the Lord and it says Saul, 03:42 Saul why are you persecuting Me? 03:46 And later in life, 03:47 when he was before a king and the Bible says, 03:51 and Adventists have told themselves from the beginning, 03:54 we had gone to stand, 03:56 maybe even now, 03:57 but at some point 03:59 we'll likely have to stand before kings and princes 04:01 and give a reason for our faith. 04:04 You have to have it sort of implanted. 04:07 So you have a reason, 04:08 you can't say, well, I sort of felt like it. 04:10 No, you know, I'm doing this. 04:12 And what did he say before Agrippa, I think it was, 04:15 he says I was not disobedient 04:17 to that heavenly vision. 04:21 And on religious liberty, I've come to the conclusion, 04:25 you know, it's not going to happen automatically. 04:28 If you really have a heavenly vision, 04:31 you won't even know when you're being restricted 04:35 and where I'm taking this, 04:36 you wondering where this is going, 04:38 aren't you so? 04:39 A little bit. 04:40 Remember in another program 04:42 we talked about the COVID emergency 04:43 and the restrictions. 04:45 I do. 04:46 I really think way too many Christians 04:49 haven't sort of thought it through. 04:51 That here is a lost opportunity, 04:56 they just thought about the danger. 04:58 Yeah. 05:00 And dangers are real. 05:03 You've heard me speak about pilgrim's progress a few times. 05:06 I heard through it with you a few times. 05:09 Did you ever read Corbis Fergus? 05:10 I know when you were with. Yeah, I have the book. 05:12 Yes. 05:13 When you were with the core program, 05:16 I gave you a copy thinking you might be studying it. 05:19 Did you ever study it? Yeah, I read it. 05:20 I still have it in my room. 05:23 Didn't it strike you as, 05:25 in fact I always get shivers thinking about the book is 05:28 when I was about eight years old 05:32 or bit younger than eight, 05:33 walking to school, 05:35 I was stopped one day with a tent 05:36 erected in an empty block. 05:38 And there was a guy calling kids 05:41 to come in and see this program. 05:42 It was before TV was really common 05:45 and they had slides, 05:48 pictures of knights and dragons and all the rest. 05:50 It was a story of pilgrim making his way to heaven. 05:53 I have my, the one I have has the pictures in it 05:56 and I see some of the pictures 05:57 and I was like, hey, I remember that story. 05:59 Yeah. 06:00 And, you know, it's a real battle. 06:04 You're fighting against something. 06:06 And in many ways, 06:07 I think we've figured we've gone through literally 06:10 what was figured if in Pilgrim, 06:13 because they were lions at one point, 06:15 intimidating him from the way. 06:17 Another time doubting castle and giant despair, 06:20 he'd personified the things that we have to deal with. 06:23 Like you doubt that 06:24 the Christianity is worth fighting for, 06:27 but if you have this awareness that Christian had it. 06:29 Because he says, once I cannot do this, 06:31 I'm on the king's way. 06:33 And without his business, 06:34 I'm going to the celestial city. 06:36 So when you have that awareness, 06:38 you understand that someone standing in your way 06:42 is not just going to make you divert, 06:44 but they're stopping you 06:45 from doing what you're under compulsion to do. 06:49 And it's restriction on your civil liberty, 06:51 your religious liberty, 06:53 your obligation to serve and to witness for God. 06:56 And I think this is a good time for Christians 06:59 to remind themselves. 07:00 And in the last program that we did together, 07:03 you know, you discussed how exciting it was 07:05 going door-to-door, selling books 07:07 and practicing witnessing door-to-door. 07:10 If you'd never gone there 07:11 you'd have missed that wonderful opportunity. 07:13 Yeah, totally. 07:14 And yet an awful lot of our fellow Christians, 07:17 even some Seventh-day Adventists, 07:19 you know, they were told it's dangerous to go out there 07:23 as the old medieval maps used to say 07:25 at the edge of the ocean, 07:27 they say here be the monsters and dragons. 07:31 I won't get in there. It's true. 07:32 Right, isn't it? It's true. 07:34 So we need to sort of go do and dare. 07:38 Yeah. 07:39 Have you seen me reading this book? 07:42 I've seen you reading it while you're driving. 07:43 Yeah, sometimes. 07:45 I shouldn't say that. 07:46 We don't want the traffic authorities 07:48 to be watching this program. 07:49 No, I've seen you read that. 07:50 But I find it hard to put a book down 07:53 and maybe I've glanced at it while we'd been driving. 07:57 No, whenever we, actually, while we were driving up here 08:00 while I was driving at one point, 08:01 I remember you reading through that. 08:03 I remember we, I remember when you bought that book. 08:07 I've got to tell a story, tell it. 08:09 We were at a... 08:11 You need to listen to that carefully. 08:12 No, I remembered, 08:13 no I was there when you bought it. 08:15 No. Yeah. 08:16 What happened? I'll tell you the story. 08:18 It was, you've come with me on a few trips. 08:21 And the last trip that we went together on 08:25 just before COVID really hit. 08:27 Are you talking about the one we went to... 08:28 To Washington state. 08:30 Oh, yeah. 08:31 But the trip before that 08:33 was where things started to go south in the U.S on COVID. 08:37 And I was in San Francisco by myself. 08:40 And while I was there, 08:42 uh, the cases started multiplying. 08:45 They started putting restrictions on 08:47 and it was obvious that 08:48 that things were just getting bad by the moment. 08:50 And so I walked from my hotel under the freeway. 08:55 I was near the freeway, near the San Francisco airport. 08:58 And I walked under the freeway, 09:00 looking for a place to buy some food, 09:02 just to sort of get away from it. 09:03 I didn't even like being in the foyer 09:05 around a lot of people. 09:06 And the area was in, 09:08 I don't think it was high to Asbury, 09:09 but it was sort of like that. 09:11 It was old style with stalls out front and so on 09:16 and a lot of people around and that bothered me. 09:18 And I remember looking in the window of a subway 09:23 and back then, 09:25 well, I shouldn't have named it, 09:26 but there were all the fixings. 09:29 And back then they hadn't yet thought 09:31 to put plastic shields. 09:32 I'm thinking there's a lot of stuff drifting down 09:34 and this I can't buy something like that. 09:37 So where can I go that there's nobody? 09:39 So a few doors down there was a used bookstore 09:43 and I looked in the window and nobody went inside. 09:46 There was one other person in the whole store. 09:48 So it was pretty safe environment. 09:50 So I started looking 09:51 and I love looking at books anyhow, 09:52 and I see this, the coming plague. 09:56 And at that time it was sort of, 09:58 I think there was overreaction, 10:00 but for all we know 10:02 within days 10:04 they were going to send carts through the streets. 10:06 Like you study this in history, what used to happen? 10:08 Bring out your dead. 10:10 Bring out your dead during the plague. 10:11 That was so many people dying 10:14 and nobody wanted to go in and touch the dead. 10:17 They obviously didn't have places to put them, really. 10:18 And I was reading recently again just can't. 10:20 And the same time as his armies were sweeping 10:23 from Asia across Europe, they hit on 10:26 because they were dying with the plague. 10:28 They hit on a new a weapon with the catapults. 10:31 They would catapult 10:33 the bodies of the dead soldiers into a city. 10:35 And you told me about this. 10:36 And by the time that had percolated a bit, 10:39 people were dying. 10:41 The gates pretty much would fall open 10:42 and they'd go in 10:44 and they would be scared out of their minds or dead. 10:47 And they'd conquer the city. 10:49 So a plague wasn't an extraordinary possibility 10:52 at that time. 10:54 Now we're starting to get comfortable 10:55 and probably that's when 10:56 the infections will come back on us, 10:58 but human beings have endured a lot of things. 11:01 And as I read this book, 11:03 which was written in '94. 11:07 Just four years before I was born. 11:09 I was about to say that, that's ancient history for you, 11:12 written in '94 11:14 the year I remember pretty well. 11:16 Back when, when Ebola was troubling the world a bit, 11:22 but not yet, has it really escaped from Africa 11:25 where it destroys whole villages. 11:27 And so this girl told the experience 11:30 in particular of the scientists trying to uncover the origins 11:33 and control of Ebola. 11:35 It spoke to about the effects of global warming 11:38 with people, 11:40 Most people don't think about this 11:41 as the weather patterns change 11:43 and say the warmer climate moves north, 11:46 further north or further south 11:49 with it come the things like mosquitoes 11:51 and other bugs that carry diseases. 11:54 So diseases inexorably spread, 11:57 West Nile virus in Washington, DC, 11:59 where we live in that area. 12:00 That's just because of global warming. 12:03 Not to mention plagues, not plagues, 12:05 the planes with people traveling, 12:08 carrying stuff around. 12:09 So as the title said, 12:11 it gave clear evidence of the coming plague. 12:16 And what other evidence can you think of, 12:18 another book that we've spoken a few times on this program? 12:20 Great Controversy. 12:22 Yes, but the Bible speaks sort of graphically 12:26 about a few end time plagues. 12:28 That's a clear characteristic just before the end 12:32 "end of the old world 12:33 and the beginning of the new world, 12:35 Christ's eternal kingdom." 12:37 So the lesson I'm trying to make, 12:40 if you are waiting, viewers, 12:43 if you're waiting 12:46 for when this is all over 12:47 before you sally forth to witness, 12:50 you might wait till doom's day literally. 12:55 And we've got to be careful, 12:57 but we also have to be true to that heavenly vision. 13:00 We've got, don't you think, son, 13:02 we're under some obligation. 13:04 Yeah. Some obligation. 13:06 There's a... 13:08 You've heard me speak a few times. 13:09 And there's a sermon that dates from the 1700s 13:14 given by Jonathan Edwards 13:17 and I've read history books 13:19 and they remember him for the worst sermon. 13:20 He gave a sermon called 13:22 Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. 13:24 We don't want to be like that, 13:26 but actually that mischaracterize him, 13:28 because the one sermon of his that I read 13:30 the title was 13:32 The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. 13:38 You know, you go through like any one of your rights 13:41 of necessity or not a necessity of, 13:45 it's just the way life is, 13:47 you go through one interest after another, right? 13:50 And when you with the latest interest, 13:52 you don't remember much about the old affections, do you? 13:56 A new affection tends to clean the slate largely, 14:00 and that's how the human brain works. 14:02 And so if we've discovered 14:04 the excitement of knowing the Lord 14:06 and the possibilities of his eternal kingdom, 14:09 how could we keep quiet about it? 14:11 I wouldn't. No. 14:13 I'm not. 14:14 So this is the lesson 14:15 I'm trying to communicate in this program. 14:17 Religious liberty is not a legal construct. 14:22 It's really describing the dynamic 14:25 of how we do what we cannot help but doing. 14:30 Speaking about our religious faith, 14:32 it's something so integral to be exciting. 14:34 Yeah. 14:35 And, of course, facilitating that, 14:38 and sometimes in places, direct persecution, 14:42 and you do it at the cost of your life. 14:45 In our world at the moment in the U.S 14:47 and the Western world, 14:49 generally it's easy, 14:50 but if you have problems, 14:51 you can usually appeal to the law 14:53 and it'll clear your way. 14:54 That's what Paul was trying to do 14:56 speaking to the Roman rulers. 14:59 He had certain rights as a citizen, 15:00 and he felt that he could use that 15:02 to extend his witness, 15:04 but not always so. 15:07 Let's take a short break. 15:09 We'll be back with my guest, Christopher Steed. 15:12 Again, good last name. 15:15 Stay with us. We'll be back. |
Revised 2021-09-13