Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI210506A
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00:27 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:28 This is a program designed to bring you up to speed 00:32 and catch your attention on religious liberty events 00:35 in the US and around the world today 00:38 and perhaps yesterday, looking forward to tomorrow. 00:40 As Christians aware that we're in the prophetic stream 00:45 and the Lord Jesus Christ is soon to appear. 00:47 I want to share something very significant with you today 00:51 on this program or tonight, 00:53 depending what time you're watching it, 00:56 that you may not have heard of at the very least 01:00 since you were in school, but I can guarantee you 01:03 will be shared by lawyers in court shortly as President, 01:09 ex-President Trump argues before the judges 01:14 as to why he should or shouldn't be 01:17 in his mind banned from online forums 01:23 like Facebook and Twitter and so on. 01:25 Many people are now talking about your right of expression, 01:28 who can restrict it, or what is the right of the government 01:30 or businesses to muzzle you? 01:33 And we think this is a new issue. 01:35 It's not new at all. 01:37 Anybody that's been listening to this program 01:40 or viewing this program for a number of years 01:42 must have heard me periodically speak about 01:45 the experience in England nearly a hundred years 01:49 before the American war of independence. 01:51 England had a civil war. 01:54 A civil war that erupted by civil disputes 01:57 between parliament and a repressively minded king, 02:02 but very quickly morphed into the king 02:05 and his Catholic allies and their efforts 02:07 to at the very least turn the religious life of England 02:11 into a high church like Rome. 02:14 And they were opposed by the Puritan minority 02:18 who gained the ascendancy 02:19 during the civil war who wanted to bring it toward 02:22 a more godly state and to bring Protestantism 02:25 firmly and irrevocably and finally into England. 02:29 In that mix is something that I want to share today. 02:33 A great author, actually, two of them came out of that era. 02:37 One that most Christians know about, John Bunyan. 02:39 He was a soldier, just a foot soldier in the civil war. 02:43 Foul mouth guy but afterwards got religion and wrote powerful 02:48 works including Pilgrim's Progress. 02:50 But the other, the second greatest man of English letters 02:54 by most estimations was John Milton. 03:01 A literary genius of his time who got mixed up in politics, 03:05 became the personal secretary of the dictator 03:09 who emerged from the civil war, Oliver Cromwell, 03:11 the general who became de facto king. 03:16 And he also wrote political pamphlets for him. 03:19 So right in the middle of that civil war 03:23 John Milton wrote, and I think delivered a speech, 03:28 but it's printed a speech to parliament 03:30 on the freedom of speech 03:32 and the freedom of distributing books without censorship, 03:36 because they were about to censor seditious books 03:40 and today, even today it's counted that his defense 03:44 called Areopagitica 03:46 is the greatest defensive speech ever written. 03:49 The term sounds sort of odd, Areopagitica. 03:52 What's he talk about? 03:54 It's from the Greek word for the forum of discussion, 03:57 the Aeropagus that Paul basically 04:03 indulged in when he tried to share Christ with those people, 04:08 but in Areopagitica, Milton, I think rose to great heights. 04:12 And most of his argument bears on religion. 04:15 It's not just a political argument, 04:18 but before I share that, let me share two things 04:21 from Milton that you're probably not aware of. 04:23 It was during that period and immediately 04:27 after the civil war, when Oliver Cromwell, 04:29 the puritan general, ruled England 04:32 with a powerful hand 04:34 that the persecution of the Waldenses took place 04:37 that Seventh-day Adventist at least know very well 04:39 from reading a pivotal book by Ellen White called 04:43 Pilgrim's, not Pilgrim's Progress, Great Controversy. 04:47 And that happened during that period 04:50 and in the middle of the persecution, 04:52 Oliver Cromwell sent a note to the Duke of Savoy, 04:55 who was the one persecuting them at the behest of the pope. 04:59 And he said, "If you do not deceased 05:00 from persecuting these people, 05:03 he said, I personally will lead a Protestant army, 05:06 an English Protestant army to relieve them." 05:10 And that eased things quite considerably. 05:13 Milton wrote this sonnet about the persecution, 05:16 the massacre in the Piedmont, the Waldenses. 05:20 He said this, "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, 05:24 whose bones lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold, 05:28 even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, 05:32 when all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones, 05:37 forget not: 05:39 in thy book record their groans who were thy sheep, 05:42 and in their ancient fold slain by the bloody Piedmontese, 05:47 that rolled mother with infant down the rocks. 05:51 Their moans the vales redoubled to the hills, 05:54 and they to heaven. 05:55 Their martyred blood and ashes sow o'er 05:58 all the Italian fields, 06:00 where still doth sway the triple Tyrant," 06:03 he's talking about the pope, 06:05 "that from these may grow a hundredfold, 06:08 who, having learnt thy way, 06:11 early may fly the Babylonian woe." 06:15 Interesting. 06:17 John Milton in his older age, 06:19 after the civil war wrote the greatest work in my view, 06:23 in the English language, Paradise Lost, 06:26 retelling the Bible story of the rebellion in heaven, 06:30 the creation of man, and then his fall 06:33 under a deception of Satan 06:35 and then the expulsion from Eden. 06:37 He wrote that when he was totally blind. 06:42 And again, I want to share another poem of Milton 06:45 that I think says a lot about our responsibility 06:49 before the Lord and before our fellows, 06:51 no matter our situation. 06:54 Remember, totally blind, he wrote this book length poem, 06:57 dictating it to his daughter who wrote it down. 06:59 He says, "When I consider how my light is spent, 07:03 ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, 07:07 and that one Talent which is death to hide 07:11 lodged with me useless, 07:13 though my Soul more bent to serve therewith my Maker, 07:17 and present My true account, lest he returning chide, 07:22 'Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?' 07:27 I fondly ask. 07:29 But patience, to prevent that murmur, soon replies, 07:33 'God doth not need either man's work or his own gifts, 07:38 who best bear his mild yoke, 07:42 they serve him best. 07:45 His state is Kingly. 07:47 Thousands at his bidding speed 07:50 and post o'er Land and Ocean without rest: 07:53 They also serve 07:55 who only stand and wait.'" 07:59 And that's true. 08:01 We can't change the world by ourselves, 08:02 but we need to be waiting at God's bidding, 08:05 but let me share in the little time left 08:08 in the first half of this program. 08:10 And then in the second, I'll conclude the extracts. 08:13 It's quite a long piece. 08:15 Some of the chestnuts from this great work 08:18 of another era, written in 1644. 08:22 But again, I will go on record as a prophet. 08:26 This will be quoted either by the defense 08:30 or the judges in these upcoming cases on free speech 08:33 in this country, in the United States. 08:37 This is what he said up front. 08:39 He says, "I deny not, 08:41 but that it is of greatest concernment 08:44 in the Church and the Commonwealth," 08:46 in other words, to religion and to the state, 08:48 church and state, "to have a vigilant eye 08:52 on how books demean themselves as well as men." 08:56 In other words, it's not immaterial. 08:58 I'm not going to say it doesn't matter. 09:01 But then he, and this is the heart 09:03 of his argument early on. 09:04 He says this, "For Books are not absolutely dead things, 09:10 but do contain a potency of life in them 09:13 to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are, 09:19 nay they do preserve as in a viol 09:23 the purest efficacy and extraction 09:26 of that living intellect that bred them. 09:30 I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, 09:33 as those fabulous Dragons teeth." 09:36 He's talking about a legend. 09:39 "Those fabulous Dragons teeth and being sown up 09:42 and down may chance to spring up armed men. 09:47 And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, 09:50 as good almost kill a man as kill a good book: 09:55 who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, 09:59 God's image, but he who destroys a good book, 10:03 kills reason itself, 10:05 kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. 10:09 Many a man lives a burden to the earth, 10:11 but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, 10:15 embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. 10:21 'Tis true, no age can restore a life, 10:24 whereof perhaps there is no great loss, 10:26 and revolutions of ages do not oft to recover 10:30 the loss of a rejected truth, 10:32 for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. 10:36 We should be wary therefore what persecution 10:41 we raise against the living labors of public men, 10:45 how we spill that seasoned life of man, 10:48 preserved and stored up in books, 10:54 since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, 10:58 sometimes a martyrdom, 11:00 and if it extend to the whole impression, 11:03 a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends 11:07 not in the slaying of an elemental life, 11:10 but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, 11:14 the breath of reason itself, 11:18 slays an immortality rather than a life. 11:22 But lest I should be condemned of introducing license, 11:25 while I oppose licensing, 11:27 I refuse not the pains to be so much historical, 11:31 as will serve to show what hath been done 11:33 by ancient and famous Commonwealths, 11:36 against this disorder, till the very time 11:38 that this project of licensing crept out of the Inquisition, 11:44 was caught up by our Prelates, 11:45 and hath caught some of our Presbyteries. 11:48 In other words, he's referring back to the Inquisition, 11:51 to the Reformation, and in this document he does that a lot. 11:56 He sees, and I think we should see, 11:58 especially as Seventh-day Adventist. 12:00 The Inquisition was the shaking off of many things. 12:04 The old superstitions, the old restrictions, 12:07 the persecutions, 12:09 the darkness of the dark ages, it was shaken off. 12:14 And part of that was not just religion, 12:18 flowing from it was the pure idea 12:21 that he shared in Paradise Lost that God created us 12:25 as free moral agents and who restricts another human being 12:29 is not playing the part of God, even if they're saying 12:33 they're for the public good 12:34 or the public morality or whatever. 12:37 When someone else stands in the way of God 12:39 and makes that decision, they likely are restricting 12:44 the freedom of the soul of another individual. 12:49 Let me go on for another quote. 12:51 There's several that are powerful 12:55 in this work called Areopagitica, 12:58 and we're close to the break, but I'll share one, 12:59 one more long paragraph. 13:01 He says, "As therefore the state of man now is, 13:05 what wisdom can there be to choose, 13:09 what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil?" 13:15 In other words, who can decide? 13:17 "He that can apprehend and consider vice 13:20 with all her habits, her baits rather and seeming pleasures, 13:24 and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, 13:26 and yet prefer that which is truly better, 13:29 he is the true warfaring Christian. 13:34 I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, 13:38 unexercised and unbreathed, 13:41 that never sallies out and sees her adversary 13:45 but slinks out of the race, 13:46 where that immortal garland is to be run for, 13:49 not without dust and heat." 13:52 And again, what's he doing? 13:54 He's arguing against the cloistered goodness 13:56 of the medieval age. 13:58 The idea that the priests set aside are somehow godly. 14:03 And if any age knows, we know 14:06 now it's in the daily newspapers, 14:08 what debauchery, what nastiness, 14:10 what immorality dwells between the behind rather this 14:15 so-called priestly party. 14:18 And one more or a couple more sentences, then we'll break. 14:21 He says, "Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, 14:25 we bring impurity much rather, 14:28 that which purifies us is trial, 14:31 and trial by what is contrary." 14:33 He's talking about ideas. 14:36 "That virtue therefore which is but a youngling 14:38 in the contemplation of evil, and knows not the utmost 14:42 that vice promises to her followers, 14:44 and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, 14:48 not a pure, 14:50 her whiteness is but an excremental whiteness." 14:54 Stay with us and after the break, 14:55 I'll share a little bit more and then comment 14:57 on what this really means to us today. |
Revised 2021-11-16