Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a program designed
to bring you up to speed
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and catch your attention
on religious liberty events
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in the US and
around the world today
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and perhaps yesterday,
looking forward to tomorrow.
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As Christians aware that
we're in the prophetic stream
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and the Lord Jesus
Christ is soon to appear.
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I want to share something
very significant with you today
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on this program or tonight,
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depending what
time you're watching it,
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that you may not have
heard of at the very least
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since you were in
school, but I can guarantee you
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will be shared by lawyers
in court shortly as President,
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ex-President Trump
argues before the judges
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as to why he
should or shouldn't be
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in his mind
banned from online forums
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like Facebook and
Twitter and so on.
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Many people are now talking
about your right of expression,
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who can restrict it, or what
is the right of the government
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or businesses to muzzle you?
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And we think
this is a new issue.
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It's not new at all.
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Anybody that's been
listening to this program
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or viewing this
program for a number of years
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must have heard me
periodically speak about
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the experience in
England nearly a hundred years
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before the American
war of independence.
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England had a civil war.
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A civil war that
erupted by civil disputes
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between parliament and a
repressively minded king,
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but very quickly
morphed into the king
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and his Catholic
allies and their efforts
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to at the very least turn
the religious life of England
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into a high church like Rome.
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And they were opposed
by the Puritan minority
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who gained the ascendancy
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during the civil war who
wanted to bring it toward
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a more godly state
and to bring Protestantism
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firmly and irrevocably
and finally into England.
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In that mix is something
that I want to share today.
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A great author, actually, two
of them came out of that era.
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One that most Christians
know about, John Bunyan.
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He was a soldier, just a
foot soldier in the civil war.
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Foul mouth guy but afterwards
got religion and wrote powerful
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works including
Pilgrim's Progress.
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But the other, the second
greatest man of English letters
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by most
estimations was John Milton.
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A literary genius of his time
who got mixed up in politics,
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became the personal
secretary of the dictator
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who emerged from the
civil war, Oliver Cromwell,
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the general who
became de facto king.
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And he also wrote
political pamphlets for him.
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So right in the
middle of that civil war
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John Milton wrote, and I
think delivered a speech,
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but it's printed a
speech to parliament
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on the freedom of speech
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and the freedom of distributing
books without censorship,
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because they were about
to censor seditious books
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and today, even today
it's counted that his defense
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called Areopagitica
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is the greatest
defensive speech ever written.
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The term sounds sort
of odd, Areopagitica.
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What's he talk about?
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It's from the Greek word
for the forum of discussion,
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the Aeropagus
that Paul basically
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indulged in when he tried to
share Christ with those people,
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but in Areopagitica, Milton,
I think rose to great heights.
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And most of his
argument bears on religion.
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It's not just a
political argument,
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but before I share
that, let me share two things
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from Milton that
you're probably not aware of.
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It was during that
period and immediately
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after the civil war,
when Oliver Cromwell,
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the puritan
general, ruled England
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with a powerful hand
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that the persecution of
the Waldenses took place
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that Seventh-day Adventist
at least know very well
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from reading a pivotal
book by Ellen White called
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Pilgrim's, not Pilgrim's
Progress, Great Controversy.
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And that happened
during that period
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and in the middle
of the persecution,
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Oliver Cromwell sent a
note to the Duke of Savoy,
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who was the one persecuting
them at the behest of the pope.
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And he said, "If
you do not deceased
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from persecuting these people,
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he said, I personally
will lead a Protestant army,
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an English Protestant
army to relieve them."
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And that eased
things quite considerably.
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Milton wrote this
sonnet about the persecution,
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the massacre in the
Piedmont, the Waldenses.
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He said this, "Avenge, O
Lord, thy slaughtered saints,
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whose bones lie scattered
on the Alpine mountains cold,
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even them who kept
thy truth so pure of old,
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when all our fathers
worshiped stocks and stones,
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forget not:
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in thy book record their
groans who were thy sheep,
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and in their ancient fold
slain by the bloody Piedmontese,
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that rolled mother
with infant down the rocks.
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Their moans the vales
redoubled to the hills,
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and they to heaven.
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Their martyred
blood and ashes sow o'er
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all the Italian fields,
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where still doth
sway the triple Tyrant,"
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he's talking about the pope,
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"that from these
may grow a hundredfold,
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who, having learnt thy way,
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early may fly
the Babylonian woe."
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Interesting.
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John Milton in his older age,
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after the civil war wrote
the greatest work in my view,
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in the English
language, Paradise Lost,
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retelling the Bible story
of the rebellion in heaven,
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the creation of
man, and then his fall
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under a deception of Satan
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and then the
expulsion from Eden.
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He wrote that when
he was totally blind.
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And again, I want to
share another poem of Milton
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that I think says a lot
about our responsibility
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before the Lord
and before our fellows,
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no matter our situation.
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Remember, totally blind, he
wrote this book length poem,
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dictating it to his
daughter who wrote it down.
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He says, "When I
consider how my light is spent,
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ere half my days, in
this dark world and wide,
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and that one Talent
which is death to hide
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lodged with me useless,
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though my Soul more bent
to serve therewith my Maker,
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and present My true account,
lest he returning chide,
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'Doth God exact
day-labor, light denied?'
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I fondly ask.
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But patience, to prevent
that murmur, soon replies,
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'God doth not need either
man's work or his own gifts,
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who best bear his mild yoke,
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they serve him best.
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His state is Kingly.
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Thousands at his bidding speed
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and post o'er Land
and Ocean without rest:
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They also serve
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who only stand and wait.'"
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And that's true.
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We can't change
the world by ourselves,
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but we need to be
waiting at God's bidding,
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but let me share in
the little time left
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in the first
half of this program.
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And then in the second,
I'll conclude the extracts.
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It's quite a long piece.
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Some of the
chestnuts from this great work
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of another era, written in 1644.
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But again, I will go
on record as a prophet.
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This will be quoted
either by the defense
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or the judges in these
upcoming cases on free speech
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in this country,
in the United States.
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This is what he said up front.
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He says, "I deny not,
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but that it is of
greatest concernment
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in the Church and
the Commonwealth,"
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in other words, to
religion and to the state,
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church and state,
"to have a vigilant eye
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on how books demean
themselves as well as men."
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In other words,
it's not immaterial.
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I'm not going to
say it doesn't matter.
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But then he, and
this is the heart
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of his argument early on.
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He says this, "For Books
are not absolutely dead things,
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but do contain a
potency of life in them
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to be as active as that
soul was whose progeny they are,
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nay they do
preserve as in a viol
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the purest
efficacy and extraction
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of that living
intellect that bred them.
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I know they are as lively,
and as vigorously productive,
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as those
fabulous Dragons teeth."
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He's talking about a legend.
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"Those fabulous
Dragons teeth and being sown up
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and down may chance
to spring up armed men.
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And yet, on the other
hand, unless wariness be used,
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as good almost kill a
man as kill a good book:
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who kills a man kills
a reasonable creature,
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God's image, but he
who destroys a good book,
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kills reason itself,
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kills the image of
God, as it were, in the eye.
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Many a man lives a
burden to the earth,
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but a good book is the precious
life-blood of a master spirit,
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embalmed and treasured up on
purpose to a life beyond life.
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'Tis true, no age
can restore a life,
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whereof perhaps
there is no great loss,
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and revolutions of
ages do not oft to recover
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the loss of a rejected truth,
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for the want of which
whole nations fare the worse.
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We should be wary
therefore what persecution
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we raise against the
living labors of public men,
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how we spill that
seasoned life of man,
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preserved and
stored up in books,
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since we see a kind of
homicide may be thus committed,
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sometimes a martyrdom,
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and if it extend to
the whole impression,
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a kind of massacre,
whereof the execution ends
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not in the slaying
of an elemental life,
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but strikes at that
ethereal and fifth essence,
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the breath of reason itself,
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slays an
immortality rather than a life.
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But lest I should be condemned
of introducing license,
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while I oppose licensing,
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I refuse not the pains
to be so much historical,
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as will serve to
show what hath been done
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by ancient and
famous Commonwealths,
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against this
disorder, till the very time
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that this project of licensing
crept out of the Inquisition,
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was caught up by our Prelates,
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and hath caught
some of our Presbyteries.
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In other words, he's referring
back to the Inquisition,
00:11:48.74\00:11:51.84
to the Reformation, and in this
document he does that a lot.
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He sees, and I
think we should see,
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especially as
Seventh-day Adventist.
00:11:58.45\00:12:00.32
The Inquisition was the
shaking off of many things.
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The old superstitions,
the old restrictions,
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the persecutions,
00:12:07.56\00:12:09.86
the darkness of the
dark ages, it was shaken off.
00:12:09.89\00:12:14.63
And part of that
was not just religion,
00:12:14.66\00:12:18.30
flowing from it
was the pure idea
00:12:18.33\00:12:21.44
that he shared in Paradise
Lost that God created us
00:12:21.47\00:12:25.41
as free moral agents and who
restricts another human being
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is not playing the part of
God, even if they're saying
00:12:29.84\00:12:33.08
they're for the public good
00:12:33.11\00:12:34.78
or the public
morality or whatever.
00:12:34.82\00:12:37.09
When someone else
stands in the way of God
00:12:37.12\00:12:39.35
and makes that decision,
they likely are restricting
00:12:39.39\00:12:44.59
the freedom of the
soul of another individual.
00:12:44.63\00:12:49.40
Let me go on for another quote.
00:12:49.43\00:12:51.60
There's several
that are powerful
00:12:51.63\00:12:55.64
in this work
called Areopagitica,
00:12:55.67\00:12:57.97
and we're close to the
break, but I'll share one,
00:12:58.01\00:12:59.84
one more long paragraph.
00:12:59.87\00:13:01.24
He says, "As therefore
the state of man now is,
00:13:01.28\00:13:05.11
what wisdom can
there be to choose,
00:13:05.15\00:13:09.38
what continence to forbear
without the knowledge of evil?"
00:13:09.42\00:13:15.26
In other words, who can decide?
00:13:15.29\00:13:17.79
"He that can
apprehend and consider vice
00:13:17.83\00:13:20.50
with all her habits, her baits
rather and seeming pleasures,
00:13:20.53\00:13:24.53
and yet abstain,
and yet distinguish,
00:13:24.57\00:13:26.90
and yet prefer that
which is truly better,
00:13:26.94\00:13:29.80
he is the true
warfaring Christian.
00:13:29.84\00:13:34.34
I cannot praise a
fugitive and cloistered virtue,
00:13:34.38\00:13:38.68
unexercised and unbreathed,
00:13:38.71\00:13:41.55
that never sallies
out and sees her adversary
00:13:41.58\00:13:45.15
but slinks out of the race,
00:13:45.19\00:13:46.82
where that immortal
garland is to be run for,
00:13:46.86\00:13:49.79
not without dust and heat."
00:13:49.82\00:13:52.16
And again, what's he doing?
00:13:52.19\00:13:54.10
He's arguing against
the cloistered goodness
00:13:54.13\00:13:56.93
of the medieval age.
00:13:56.97\00:13:58.57
The idea that the priests
set aside are somehow godly.
00:13:58.60\00:14:03.37
And if any age knows, we know
00:14:03.41\00:14:06.41
now it's in the
daily newspapers,
00:14:06.44\00:14:08.44
what debauchery, what nastiness,
00:14:08.48\00:14:10.85
what immorality dwells
between the behind rather this
00:14:10.88\00:14:15.28
so-called priestly party.
00:14:15.32\00:14:18.29
And one more or a couple more
sentences, then we'll break.
00:14:18.32\00:14:21.56
He says, "Assuredly we bring
not innocence into the world,
00:14:21.59\00:14:25.89
we bring impurity much rather,
00:14:25.93\00:14:28.80
that which purifies us is trial,
00:14:28.83\00:14:31.80
and trial by what is contrary."
00:14:31.83\00:14:33.90
He's talking about ideas.
00:14:33.94\00:14:36.00
"That virtue therefore
which is but a youngling
00:14:36.04\00:14:38.81
in the contemplation of
evil, and knows not the utmost
00:14:38.84\00:14:42.38
that vice
promises to her followers,
00:14:42.41\00:14:44.81
and rejects it, is
but a blank virtue,
00:14:44.85\00:14:48.05
not a pure,
00:14:48.08\00:14:49.98
her whiteness is but
an excremental whiteness."
00:14:50.02\00:14:54.22
Stay with us
and after the break,
00:14:54.26\00:14:55.92
I'll share a little
bit more and then comment
00:14:55.96\00:14:57.69
on what this
really means to us today.
00:14:57.73\00:15:00.43