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Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI210508A
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00:27 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:29 This is the program bringing you insights, 00:33 news, analysis, 00:35 and all around information on religious liberty 00:37 around the world, starting in the United States. 00:40 My name is Lincoln Steed, 00:42 I edited Liberty Magazine until recently, 00:45 for a total of 22 years, 00:47 and I've done this program for nearly as long. 00:51 There's many things that I could share with you. 00:53 But sitting here preparing for this program, 00:56 I started casting back a few years 00:58 over part of that period. 01:00 And I remember very clearly, 01:03 as 2012 came to an end, 01:06 many people in the media world and those that were watching 01:12 the times and seasons that Jesus spoke about, 01:15 not just religious people, 01:16 those that were concerned about where the world was going 01:19 were troubled because the Mayan calendar, 01:22 which a lot of non-Christians got really enamored of, 01:25 the Mayan calendar came to an end 01:28 at the end of 2012, as I remember. 01:31 Came to an end. 01:32 The Mayans never said directly 01:34 that that was the end of the world, 01:35 but it was odd for a group 01:38 that had a civilization over many thousands of years, 01:42 their calendar 01:43 and all of this permutations came to a, 01:45 just a permanent stop in that year. 01:49 And maybe I noticed the Mayan calendar more than 01:53 most would because my wife was from Guatemala. 01:56 She's not Mayan, 01:57 but that's the land of the Mayans. 02:00 And I visited there many times and been overwhelmed by the, 02:04 some of the pyramids and the structures 02:06 from that vanished civilization. 02:09 And as far as the Hispanic rule, 02:11 even of Guatemala that was the center 02:13 of the Spanish Empire of Latin America, 02:17 once upon a time, 02:19 until it moved further north into Mexico 02:22 and stole much of Guatemalan land and left, 02:25 just that little rump state left. 02:27 But the Mayan calendar, a big moment of disillusionment 02:32 for many of those ascension rock, new ages, 02:36 who thought that something fantastic 02:38 was about to happen. 02:40 Of course, nothing happened. 02:41 The Mayans didn't know any more than, 02:45 than the average person knows now 02:47 about when the world will end 02:49 and certainly far less than a Bible reading student 02:52 of prophecy would know. 02:54 You and I, if we read Revelation 02:57 must know of a certainty that the, 03:00 as Jesus said that the fields are ripe, 03:02 even unto the harvest, 03:04 and as Paul said, the earth groans together 03:07 until the day of its redemption draws nigh. 03:10 We're at the end where everything 03:13 is coming to the end of a cycle, 03:15 and the signs are thick, 03:17 mostly because of spiritual declension. 03:21 The signs are thick that Christ is about to reveal Himself. 03:24 But the day and the hour, as Jesus said, no man knoweth. 03:29 This used to trouble me a bit editing Liberty Magazine 03:32 and trying to communicate the imperative 03:36 of the soon return of Christ, 03:38 how could we signal that visually, 03:40 and then, as usual, in the editorial 03:42 and other articles explain that? 03:45 At the World Headquarters 03:46 of the Seventh-day Adventist Church 03:48 for many years, 03:49 there's been a very well done, 03:54 but sometimes misinterpreted 03:58 combination of painting in a sort of a diorama, 04:02 and statues illustrating the end of the world, 04:06 but the beginning of the world to come 04:08 with the return of Jesus Christ. 04:10 In the foyer, they're not quite life sized statues, 04:15 which I think is the first mistake 04:16 standing in a group looking up into the sky, 04:19 which happens to be halfway up the wall of the opposite wall, 04:23 and there on that wall 04:25 is a little sort of either bas-relief 04:28 or icon, if you like, 04:31 of Jesus with some rays shining out from Him 04:34 with a few angels around and coming in heaven distant, 04:37 and here, they're all looking up to it, it's good. 04:39 I know a few people criticize that as the type of statuary 04:43 that you might find in cathedrals 04:46 and other such places. 04:48 But I thought in Liberty, what can we do? 04:49 Because to paint an idea 04:53 of Heavenly Host coming, 04:56 at worse looks sort of quaint 04:59 and at best looks sort of new agey UFOE. 05:04 And we don't want to suggest that we're imagining things 05:08 that are like the limited imaginations 05:10 of those that are into, 05:12 you know, the little gray men and the lizard people 05:15 and all that sort of fantastical stuff. 05:17 So in the end I assigned to an artist, 05:23 a large painting, was probably about five, six foot 05:26 long by four foot high of the Second Coming 05:30 as seen in the faces of those that experienced it. 05:33 And we made it a cover 05:35 and a back cover of Liberty Magazine. 05:37 And you can see if the camera, yes, it's well enough there. 05:43 See, there's a woman with her child 05:45 and the child's got that bemuse look at something 05:49 it can see up ahead in the sky. 05:51 The mother looks hopeful. 05:53 He is a widow. 05:55 Her husband obviously had been killed in the war, 05:58 and she's looking hopefully up there 06:00 and we'll meet in the clouds with her beloved one, perhaps. 06:04 He is an older person, an old man, 06:07 the end of human life anyway, 06:09 seeing a wonderful hope coming 06:11 and along married couple, a minority couple. 06:14 Again, this is a hope beyond this existence. 06:18 They're standing in the field of wheat. 06:21 Figuratively, like the fields 06:23 that Jesus said ripen to harvest. 06:25 Behind them is a dark sky. 06:28 And ahead that brightening 06:30 appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ 06:32 that's flooding their faces with light. 06:35 I thought of this a day ago, driving into the 3ABN studios 06:40 across flyover country, beautiful farmland. 06:46 My son and I driving to the studios 06:49 had gone through a long period 06:51 where there was no phone signal, 06:53 not any very obvious signs of towns or anything 06:56 other than the scattered farmhouse now and then. 06:58 And then we noticed ahead of us, 07:00 the sky was darkening and filling in 07:03 and we figured we were going to get rain 07:04 and we got it so bad that even ahead of us 07:08 sporty brand new Mustang stopped dead in his tracks, 07:11 couldn't see anything. 07:14 The sky fell around us 07:15 and then just when I thought we'd have to stop too, 07:19 I saw a little break in the cloud ahead. 07:22 That is we then moved ahead at nearly the speed limit, 07:25 which is another story, broke open, 07:29 and soon there was sunlight everywhere 07:31 and the dark clouds were far behind us. 07:33 I believe that's how Jesus return will be. 07:36 At a time of darkest night, stormiest moment, 07:39 there'll be that possibility of eternal bliss and of glory. 07:44 And that will enlarge, enlarge rapidly. 07:47 And it'll bring a glorious alternative 07:49 to what we're living through. 07:51 I wrote an editorial at that time 07:54 talking about the Mayans 07:55 and I want to share that in the time we have left. 07:58 This is what I wrote. 08:00 Remember, this is eight years ago. 08:03 And I must say it was a privilege 08:06 I felt and a good excuse 08:08 to put on the back cover a quote 08:12 from my own editorial, 08:13 not that I want to always quote myself, 08:14 but usually we have a quote from Jefferson or Adams 08:17 or some justice, Supreme Court Justice, 08:21 something to do with religious freedom, 08:24 but some court case or something, 08:25 but here I quoted from the editorial 08:27 and this is what I quoted before I even read it to you, 08:30 "Since there may be stormy days more blustery 08:34 than any mega storm yet seen." 08:37 And as I remember, the Sandy, 08:42 the big storm on the East Coast have just recently come 08:44 and its destruction was massive. 08:46 I said there may be stormy days more blustery 08:49 than any mega storm we had seen. 08:50 But we must keep our eyes on the horizon. 08:53 The Second Coming of Jesus Christ 08:55 is the only perfect solution to all that ails 09:00 the world and our nation. 09:02 And after January 6, I'm reminded 09:05 that we need to rediscover this sort of thinking. 09:09 This is what I wrote, "Another year, 09:11 but hardly business as usual, 09:12 the world ended on December 21 last year, 09:16 or so, they were telling us right up to the day, 09:19 those pesky Mayans, who knew 09:22 that they had it so wrong about the apocalypse. 09:26 Of course, a certain family radio speaker 09:28 had backdated the event to a few months earlier, 09:32 but is equally silent now about what happened 09:34 or didn't happen." 09:36 There was a full page newspaper ad proclaiming 09:38 the Second Coming of Christ on a certain day. 09:41 Someone once said that making predictions is very difficult, 09:44 especially about the future. 09:47 "We had an election at year's end," 09:49 not the one you and I most remember, 09:51 but another important one, 09:53 "and I had thought this editorial 09:55 could comment on the surge of optimism 09:57 that we'd be riding by now. 09:59 I can hardly remember as flat a reelection moment. 10:04 Certainly the reelected President 10:05 has made no overweening comments about 10:08 wanting to use political capital. 10:10 Maybe that's bad 10:11 or at least a number of web prognosticators 10:14 have characterized the strategy 10:17 as stand back and let it happen. 10:20 But is that fair? 10:21 Not even a president controls reality. 10:24 Bruce Springsteen in Tonight in Jungleland, 10:27 veers toward the Simon and Garfunkel imagery, 10:32 where they wrote, 10:33 "The words of the prophets 10:35 are written on the subway walls, 10:37 when he sings outside the streets on fire, 10:41 in a real death waltz, 10:44 between what's flesh and what's fantasy, 10:48 and the poet stand here, don't write nothing at all. 10:51 They just stand back and let it all be." 10:55 Ignoring that Beatles allusion, 10:57 I have to say the imagery is apt. 11:00 "Outside our own shaky neighborhood, 11:03 the streets of the world are increasingly 11:06 on fire, literally. 11:09 And let's not kid ourselves there is the smell of smoke, 11:13 and more than the odd crackle 11:16 on our own increasingly unquiet streets." 11:20 I recently watched a relatively even handed documentary 11:23 about the abortion woes in the United States. 11:25 It was titled, Lake of Fire. 11:29 And I wonder, 11:30 what is our culture about to be thrown into? 11:34 "So often in the past, 11:35 we have called upon the guardians 11:38 of the American experiment for their advice 11:41 on what they meant by such things as democracy, 11:44 freedom and religious liberty. 11:47 It's become de rigueur for religionists 11:50 enamored of the Christian nation model 11:53 to quote the more godly statements, 11:55 even as they ignore the contrary ones 11:59 and even worse, 12:00 things that showed deist views, Masonic confabulations, 12:05 and worse still, outright support 12:07 of the French terror. 12:09 I was impressed by a late 2012 12:12 PBS special on religious freedom 12:15 that handled all this in a way 12:16 that was uplifting and respectful 12:18 of the international wonder that these men wrought. 12:21 Yet they feared pure majoritarian democracy 12:24 and expected the people 12:27 to easily and at some point revert to the excesses 12:31 that led to the revolution in the first place. 12:34 It is amazing to read the late life correspondence 12:37 between Adams and Jefferson, 12:41 and come across Jefferson's opinion 12:42 that Christianity would not survive 12:44 in the United States. 12:46 Obviously, he was wrong on that count. 12:50 But how is a mere mortal to know? 12:52 Unless one is reading the Bible and its prophecies, of course. 12:57 Could these men have seen us 12:59 hitting so deliberately off the fiscal cliff? 13:03 Maybe Hamilton, I guess. 13:06 Could these men have seen economic crash 13:09 and meltdown in our future? 13:11 Well, they had seen 13:12 the South Seas Bubble burst in Europe. 13:15 But I doubt they ever had intimations of a debt 13:19 that is expressed in trillions 13:21 or multiples of the gross national product. 13:25 You've got to go to Revelation to pick up on a global scenario 13:29 in which all the merchants lament 13:32 because, "In a single hour, 13:35 all this wealth has been laid waste." 13:37 That's from 18:17. 13:40 Sometime up ahead that will happen, 13:44 though, even though 2008 gave us a little taste 13:48 of how it happens. 13:50 After the crash of 2008, 13:52 we wait to see what will happen next time. 13:55 After the Arab Spring, we wait to see 13:57 what a seemingly unstoppable cycle of revolution 14:02 will bring to the Middle East and Middle Earth. 14:05 And the bright star over the Sea of Japan 14:08 this near Christmas brought little hope for that region. 14:13 Help, what next? 14:16 Lewis Carroll of the Alice in Wonderland fantasy, 14:19 but actually an accomplished mathematician, 14:23 wrote that, "If you don't know where you are going, 14:26 any road will take you there." 14:29 Too many of the roads up ahead signal trouble. 14:33 We need to know where we're going. 14:37 We need to know where we're going, 14:38 not necessarily 14:40 whether the world will end one day. 14:44 I often tell seminar attendees 14:47 that I can stake my life on one prediction, 14:49 the world as we know it is about to pass away. 14:55 Let's take a break there and we'll be back 14:56 after a break to continue. |
Revised 2021-11-29