Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is the
program that's designed
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to bring you
interesting and up-to-date
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and thought-provoking
news on religious liberty,
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mostly from the United States
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but from around the world.
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,My name is Lincoln
Steed host of this program
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and for 22 years
editor of Liberty magazine.
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And I want to share
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some rather
introspective thoughts,
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on this program
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because I'm in an
introspective moment
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because after all these years,
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I think it's time to
put a pause to this program.
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If for no other reason
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that I've put a pause to
editing Liberty magazine,
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and whether I go out to
pastor it remains to be seen,
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but maybe I've said
enough on this program
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and others can carry it on.
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I'd like to share an editorial,
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the last editorial that I
wrote for Liberty magazine.
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It was actually in
the July/August 21 issue,
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the last issue
that I fully assembled,
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and I called it A Small Gap.
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And I would want
to talk beyond it,
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but it summarizes sort of
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where I find
myself at the moment.
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This is what I wrote.
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A little more than 22 years
ago I sat down in a new office,
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at a new desk,
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and pondered what to do next.
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On the desktop
were just a few items
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that tied me to
this new reality.
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There was a cake-top decoration
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in the style of
the Statue of Liberty,
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left over from the farewell
with the editorial staff
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at the Review and
Herald Publishing Association.
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In a card that came with it,
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an editor friend had
noted my possible risk
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in defending religious
liberty in a volatile world:
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the thought had
perplexed me at the time,
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and, in fact, didn't make
much sense till years later,
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walking alone through
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the
religious-riot-ravaged streets
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of Ambon City, Indonesia,
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it hit me that
there was mortal danger.
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In an incongruously
small box on that desk
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was also a
little pile of articles,
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some of them were
yellowed and marked
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as accepted decades earlier:
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it was my slush file,
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otherwise known as the
makings of that first issue
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as editor of Liberty magazine.
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And so it began:
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an editorial journey I
had never really anticipated.
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My predecessor,
Clifford Goldstein,
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younger than me,
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was about seven years in the job
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before leaving precipitously
to take up editorship
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of the Bible study lessons
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for the Seventh-day
Adventist world church.
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Ironically, I had been
called back from Australia
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about 15 years
earlier to coordinate
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editorial and production
on those same lessons!
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But Liberty magazine
was not on my mind then,
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even if issues of
religious freedom were.
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As a young man I had been
privileged to travel at a time
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when it was still a
bit of an adventure.
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I still remember the escape
out of Kabul, Afghanistan.
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We had been stoned on
the highways out of the city
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by Muslim youth angry
at Christian Westerners,
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and as our plane
struggled up a narrow valley
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between towering peaks
and crippling turbulence,
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I anxiously monitored
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the huge pile of
luggage strapped to the floor
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where the first 20 rows of seats
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usually were in a Boeing 727.
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We made it!
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And in Pakistan I encountered
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the pilot washing his
hands in the garden of the hotel
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and I quizzed him about
the risks on that flight:
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he spoke cryptically
about the wings falling off
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if he'd made a wrong move!
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In Iran things
seemed peaceful enough.
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I still remember walking
down a Parisian-style boulevard
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and peering through
the wrought-iron gates
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of the US embassy,
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later to be the scene of
a drawn-out hostage drama.
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But what I remember most clearly
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from the visit to Iran
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was driving hours
out of Tehran to meet
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with Seventh-day
Adventist Christians
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at a camp meeting convocation.
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Political freedom is relative,
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and they were using
what freedoms they had.
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But it was in Communist Bulgaria
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that the importance
of religious freedom
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most took root in my psyche.
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At the time Bulgaria
was one of the Reddest
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of the Communist states
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and usual host for
Warsaw Pact military war games.
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Christians were not so much
persecuted there in the active,
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violent ways many
in the West imagined,
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but were
marginalized and restricted.
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Communist Party membership
and advancement in any line
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of employment was
denied people of faith.
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Worship was allowed
only in proscribed venues
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and for limited times.
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The older faithful were seen
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as irredeemably out
of step with socialism,
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but the young
were to be kept away
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from this
contagion at all costs.
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I was with my
family and my father
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was not allowed to preach
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in that Adventist
Church in Sofia, the capital,
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but his work with the government
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on anti-drug education meant
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that he was a
guest of the authorities
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and so they allowed
him to bring greetings
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to the somber congregations...
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congregants.
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All I noted clutching,
contraband, handwritten
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or typewriter carbon
copied Bible study lessons.
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Those greetings, went
on for more than an hour,
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with extended Bible
texts and allusions.
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It was rather
sermon-like I thought.
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After it was over,
we met in the side room
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with the translator
and his sad eyed daughter.
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She was not much
younger than me at that time
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so she had my attention.
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She's a good daughter,
her father, rather said,
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"She comes to church every week,
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rather than school as
the government requires
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but pray for us,"
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he asked with tears in his eyes,
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"They are going to
take her away from us
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because she would rather come
to church than go to school."
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In that instant, I
understood what was at stake
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with conscience
and religious liberty.
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Later on that same trip,
almost a lifetime back now,
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we crossed much
of India by train.
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I will never forget
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looking at on the
fields one morning,
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as the train chugged
across the countryside
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and seeing humans
almost shoulder to shoulder,
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in morning ablutions,
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dotting the plain from
trackside to far horizon.
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It was disorienting
to my sense of humanity.
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Jesus Christ was said to
have looked on the crowds
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and had pity on them.
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Far easier to
depersonalized one's concern
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and transmigrate
religious liberty
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to legislative action,
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court cases,
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and efforts to protect
religious congregations
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and organizations.
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I know we have to
fight our own sensibilities
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in standing up for
the conscience rights
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of all humanity.
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How easy it is in
matters of religious liberty
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to slip into thinking
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that does not
apply to Untermensch.
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That's the German
word for the under men.
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Untermensch,
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only to we who understand
all of its complexities,
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as though we ever could.
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Back in my Australian homeland
and with my foreign born wife,
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Rosa Delia,
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whom I had met
while living and studying
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in the United States.
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Those visions and
insights seemed dreamlike.
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After all, in a
nearly empty lucky country,
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a two-hour drive into
the country might reveal
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only dusty-road-edge
-to-distant-ridge congregants
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of kangaroos and wombats:
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nothing but
existential emptiness
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and easy forgetfulness.
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Then in the early
hours of the morning:
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a call to return
to the United States
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for editing responsibilities.
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"Don't go," cautioned my wife,
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echoing the view of
many that the United States
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is the eye of a
hurricane best avoided.
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I was conflicted, to be sure.
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But this is so unexpected,
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and the signs of
God's leading so clear.
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No time here to enlarge
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on that amazing
part of the story,
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that I must go, I said.
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"It may be
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that I am just
a small connection
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in a big plan:
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a single contact I make
may complete the chain."
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And so we returned.
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And a few years later
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I sat at the
Liberty editorial desk!
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For most of my formative years
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Roland Hegstad was the
editor of Liberty magazine,
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34 years in total for him.
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So for me he will
always be Mr. Liberty.
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But, of course,
Liberty magazine,
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and indeed I can divert and say
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this program
belongs to none of us,
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editor or reader or viewer.
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Religious liberty
is as big as humanity
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and everyman's
stirrings of conscience.
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It is surely the idA(C)e fixe
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at the center of a
gospel proclamation.
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For years I have tried to
remind Christian audiences
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that fallen
humanity has been released
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from millennia
of captivity to sin
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by the actions of a Redeemer.
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We are free, we have freedom,
no one can take that from us.
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As Revelation 3:8 says,
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"I have set
before you an open door,
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and no one can shut it."
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That's how the Bible puts it.
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And during the
time with Liberty,
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I have seen the
religious world warp
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and narrow religious
liberty, religious freedom
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into an
entitlement to restrict others.
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And during that time
I have seen a narrowing
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of even the
secular concept of liberty,
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concept of freedom.
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After the towers
went down in 2001,
00:11:08.36\00:11:12.20
an article in Le
Monde magazine in France
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commented on the
realism of the moment.
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But more than
real, it said: symbolic!
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As I remember,
the author wrote that
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"We have reached the point
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where the very idea of freedom,
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itself
relatively recent and new,
00:11:30.32\00:11:33.39
is in the process of being
replaced by its polar opposite,
00:11:33.42\00:11:38.16
that of a terror of security."
00:11:38.19\00:11:42.63
And so, enhanced interrogations,
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unitary visions
of executive power,
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impromptu prayer
sessions by insurgents
00:11:48.47\00:11:51.61
in the US House chamber,
00:11:51.64\00:11:53.44
a choice of
isolation over worship
00:11:53.48\00:11:56.24
during a pandemic.
00:11:56.28\00:11:57.78
What next?
00:11:57.81\00:11:59.15
God only knows.
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Well, try reading
the Book of Revelation.
00:12:00.88\00:12:03.89
So where is my
place within all of this?
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This in the editorial
is to be my last issue
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as editor before retiring.
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I dare not apply to myself
00:12:13.60\00:12:15.26
General MacArthur's
self-pitying epilogue,
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when he was fired by the way.
00:12:17.97\00:12:20.17
This is off
text by the president
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for wanting to
drop 50 atomic bombs
00:12:24.71\00:12:27.58
on China.
00:12:27.61\00:12:28.94
Thank God, the
president fired them.
00:12:28.98\00:12:31.18
But this is what MacArthur said
in his own epilogue, he says,
00:12:31.21\00:12:35.18
"Old soldiers never die."
00:12:35.22\00:12:37.12
In fact he said this
before Congress as I remember.
00:12:37.15\00:12:39.79
"Old soldiers never die,
they just fade away," he said.
00:12:39.82\00:12:43.69
Well, of course we
fade away, like the grass,
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according to the Bible,
but our actions can endure.
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Instead, for my last thought,
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I'd like to invoke
a Russian folk song
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of wartime loss.
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It's worth
remembering that Russia lost...
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The figure
varies, but at least 20
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and as many as 60 million people
00:13:04.48\00:13:06.15
in World War II, massive loss.
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It was actually the
cause of what we used to laugh
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at when I was a kid
that make fun of Russia
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with all the women's
sweeping the streets.
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Nothing to do with communism,
there were just not enough men.
00:13:16.52\00:13:20.93
I always find a deep sadness
and melancholy in Russian song
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and literature.
00:13:24.30\00:13:25.67
As a young man of
the Vietnam War era,
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I was deeply affected by reading
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Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace.
00:13:31.24\00:13:34.64
The song I want to
refer to is called Cranes.
00:13:34.68\00:13:39.08
I loved it best sung by the late
00:13:39.11\00:13:40.92
Russian baritone
Dmitri Hvorostovsky.
00:13:40.95\00:13:43.99
And I would
recommend it to people
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but the lines that
I'd like to lead to,
00:13:46.89\00:13:50.66
maybe I should
explain it on this program,
00:13:50.69\00:13:52.79
which I did in my editorial.
00:13:52.83\00:13:55.36
The writer of the song
was drawing a parallel,
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between the absent fellows
00:13:57.90\00:14:00.94
who had fought in that great war
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and died and that was,
00:14:02.37\00:14:03.71
you know, just a
loss all across the land,
00:14:03.74\00:14:05.31
but they defended their freedom.
00:14:05.34\00:14:08.04
And they were drawing a parallel
00:14:08.08\00:14:09.41
between that real situation
and in the evening mist,
00:14:09.44\00:14:13.52
a flotilla, for one of
the better word, of cranes.
00:14:13.55\00:14:17.52
There's tall gangly
birds, when they fly out,
00:14:17.55\00:14:20.06
they stretch out straight
and the wings slowly beating,
00:14:20.09\00:14:23.46
flying goes like
through the mist in formation.
00:14:23.49\00:14:27.76
And the lines of that song
I say that admit me now are:
00:14:27.80\00:14:32.60
flying in the fog
at the end of the day.
00:14:32.63\00:14:36.44
And in those ranks
there is a small gap,
00:14:36.47\00:14:39.81
maybe that is the place for me.
00:14:39.84\00:14:45.05
Again, the figure that
I picked up from my wife
00:14:45.08\00:14:48.72
and I believe in it truly.
00:14:48.75\00:14:50.49
None of us can
know if we're a Moses,
00:14:50.52\00:14:53.62
Daniel or a small bit player.
00:14:53.66\00:14:56.99
I had not even
mentioned by name in the Bible,
00:14:57.03\00:14:59.46
but I'm quite
certain as there's a God.
00:14:59.49\00:15:03.20
Of course, the Bible says,
00:15:03.23\00:15:04.83
"He that comes to God must
first believe that He is..."
00:15:04.87\00:15:09.07
But I'll presume that we believe
00:15:09.10\00:15:10.67
that God exists
if there's a God.
00:15:10.71\00:15:13.14
If He has any
interest in human affairs,
00:15:13.17\00:15:15.24
which He stated He
does, we'll all play a part.
00:15:15.28\00:15:19.18
And we can't know in
this life, and these times,
00:15:19.21\00:15:24.29
and in this way, we
can't know what part we play.
00:15:24.32\00:15:26.86
But we have to believe
that we're part of a whole,
00:15:26.89\00:15:30.09
that we're part
of a great movement
00:15:30.13\00:15:31.59
that we're part
of a great charter
00:15:31.63\00:15:34.10
and for Seventh-day Adventist,
this is three angels' messages.
00:15:34.13\00:15:38.73
Those viewers that have
seen an Adventist Church
00:15:38.77\00:15:41.00
might have
noticed that in the past,
00:15:41.04\00:15:44.44
at least three little
figures, three angels,
00:15:44.47\00:15:47.11
but those are just
figures for you and I
00:15:47.14\00:15:50.65
and anyone that
wants to join with us
00:15:50.68\00:15:52.28
proclaiming the
message for this time.
00:15:52.31\00:15:55.38
But if one or two
people keep silent,
00:15:55.42\00:15:57.89
the voice is softer for that
00:15:57.92\00:16:00.32
and it's louder and louder
the more people get involved.
00:16:00.36\00:16:03.29
And I feel privileged to have
been a part of Liberty magazine
00:16:03.32\00:16:06.73
and this program
for quite a few years.
00:16:06.76\00:16:09.86
Not 34 as my predecessor,
00:16:09.90\00:16:12.13
you can't live up to
the past in every case.
00:16:12.17\00:16:14.70
And even if I were 35 years,
00:16:14.74\00:16:16.60
there might be
someone if time goes on
00:16:16.64\00:16:18.61
who would be 30, 40 years.
00:16:18.64\00:16:20.78
We don't measure it that way,
00:16:20.81\00:16:22.71
but certainly, longer
than I probably was due.
00:16:22.74\00:16:27.45
I've been able to
speak for religious liberty,
00:16:27.48\00:16:29.78
and I know that the
need is greater than ever
00:16:29.82\00:16:32.52
before for somebody.
00:16:32.55\00:16:33.96
The next link in the chain,
00:16:33.99\00:16:35.32
the next crane
flying in the mist
00:16:35.36\00:16:38.03
because we are at
the end of the day
00:16:38.06\00:16:39.79
to make their voice heard,
00:16:39.83\00:16:42.26
to play their small part.
00:16:42.30\00:16:44.30
Let's take a short
break and I'll be back
00:16:44.33\00:16:46.07
to finish this program.
00:16:46.10\00:16:47.44