3ABN On the Road

Religious Liberty

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Lincoln Steed

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Series Code: OTR

Program Code: OTR000974


01:01 Hello friends and welcome to Thompsonville,
01:03 Illinois, also the 3ABN worship center where
01:06 the Lord has a meal prepared for you,
01:09 a spiritual meal and we like to welcome you
01:11 as the Lord is going to give you a sharper vision
01:14 of what's happening in our world today,
01:15 not only in the United States but movements
01:18 taking place around all world as it pertains to
01:21 Religious Liberty. Our guest speaker for today
01:24 is Lincoln Steed one who has spend many,
01:26 many years not only in Washington,
01:28 in the halls of Congress understanding the movements
01:31 of politics and religion but one who knows
01:34 the Lord and is a Christian and today God
01:37 has given him a message entitled back to Egypt.
01:43 Religious Freedom, there's really nothing more
01:46 basic to a Christian and in fact there is nothing
01:50 more basic to anybody who has a faith in Religious
01:53 Freedom but I was disturbed only a few days ago
01:57 to hear a report from the Pew forum for religion
02:01 based in Washington DC, an internationally
02:03 recognized study organization and the Pew
02:06 forum says that 70 percent of the world's population
02:11 live under severe civil and religious restrictions.
02:16 So religious freedom is not something as Americans
02:20 often tell themselves and others in privileged
02:23 may be Western Countries that you know we
02:25 have it, one day we may loose it many people
02:28 in the world do not have it now.
02:33 It's my privilege to edit Liberty Magazine.
02:36 A Magazine produced by the Seventh-day
02:38 Adventist Church but distributed widely starting
02:42 from the President of the United States,
02:43 the Prime Minister of Canada in particular,
02:46 these countries of North America are targeted,
02:49 politicians, lawyers, Judges, mayors and so on.
02:52 We want these thought leaders to read about our
02:56 principles of religious freedom and the reason
02:59 that I am on the 3ABN right now,
03:00 apart from our regular Liberty Insider program
03:03 is I want to bring before not just my fellow
03:06 Seventh-day Adventists but all people around the
03:09 world who would watch a program like this.
03:11 Who value their religious freedom, they may not be,
03:17 you may not be religious but you have to know
03:20 that when there's restrictions on such a basic
03:23 human activity, no human activity is safe.
03:28 And as a Christian, as a Seventh-day Adventist
03:29 I know how important it is to exercise our God
03:32 given religious freedom. I do want to encourage
03:36 those here in our audience and of course those
03:39 who are listening and watching on television,
03:41 if you can support what we do with religious
03:44 liberty now is the time to do it. There is no budget,
03:49 there is no allocation that we get, that enables us
03:52 to do what our, what we do, it's only as people
03:55 are moved at this time of the year to facilitate
03:58 the distribution of the nearly 200,000 copies of
04:02 Liberty Magazine, every issue that this does
04:06 indeed happen. I have been traveling a lot the last
04:09 few weeks and my family is starting to wonder
04:12 if I'm ever coming home and in fact I will be flying
04:16 home late tonight and it'll be about the third day
04:19 and the third evening in the year that I'll be home.
04:22 I've been to Australia back where I came from,
04:25 I've been to Guatemala where my wife's family
04:27 come from and my wife grew up,
04:30 I've been all over the United States already,
04:33 backwards and forwards on the planes,
04:34 speaking about Religious Liberty and every time,
04:38 I've spoken this year. I've started off with an
04:42 example that has moved me as nothing has moved
04:45 me in the last few years because just as the year
04:48 ended the closing days of 2009,
04:52 I remember sitting in a Church in the Washington
04:56 DC area. The Metropolitan Church and with several
04:59 hundred other people listening to the life
05:03 of a great religious liberty worker portrayed
05:06 in testimony and some of it was by video,
05:09 some of it was written and there in front of us
05:12 in a coffin, an open coffin which doesn't suite
05:15 my Australian sensibilities but it's very common
05:18 in the United States. I saw a great colleague of
05:21 mine Dr. Adrian Westney, a religious liberty
05:25 leader from the Columbia Union of the
05:28 Seventh-day Adventist on the East Coast for 10 years.
05:31 Since I'd been at in Liberty Magazine I've been,
05:34 become used to appearing with,
05:36 with Adrian on his weekly religious liberty
05:39 radio broadcast. I become used to hearing
05:44 his voice on the phone saying where can you go,
05:46 are you free on such a day to talk about religious
05:50 liberty and other times he would call up and
05:51 he says you heard such and such. Either a law that
05:55 might restrict religious liberty in this country,
05:58 in the United States or something that was
06:00 happening elsewhere, he was a man that lived
06:03 and breathed the principles of religious liberty.
06:07 He was also a man that showed I believed
06:09 in his life that God honored such a commitment
06:11 because when I began editing Liberty Magazine
06:15 just a little over 10 years ago within a few weeks,
06:18 we were startled to discover that Dr. Westney
06:22 had terminal cancer and was given just a few weeks
06:25 to live and I remember we all prayed.
06:27 We all prayed that the Lord would spare him
06:29 to work more vigorously and for a little while
06:31 longer for religious liberty and God's prays
06:34 was surely answered because just toward
06:36 the end of last year I think it was late October,
06:39 as he and I recorded some messages I remember
06:43 asking him how his health was and I said you know,
06:45 the God has spared you for nearly 10 years,
06:48 it's a great miracle. And we agreed on that and
06:52 then in the next few weeks unknown to me
06:54 he kept very quiet about it, his health suddenly
06:56 tumbled and there about four or five days before
07:01 Christmas, we were gathered to celebrate
07:03 his life and to commit his life record for the
07:07 Lord's keeping. As I looked there and saw
07:10 him in that open coffin and heard all the testimonials
07:13 I thought how different is it from some other
07:18 belief systems. You know, I had to think as a
07:20 Seventh-day Adventist where we have such
07:22 remembrance and proclamation of Revelation
07:25 chapter 14, I had to think there in verse 13,
07:29 close to the messages of those Three Angles that
07:32 says Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord
07:34 from now on, that they may rest from their labors,
07:37 and their works follow them.
07:41 You know I thought of older belief systems.
07:43 You know what about ancient Egypt that figures
07:45 so prominently in Old Testament history.
07:48 In Egypt you would be taken to the after life
07:55 by a whole system of embodiment and of worship
07:58 and of making little motifs and boats and preparing
08:05 for the voyage, it was almost as if their entire
08:07 life was to prepare them for the projection
08:10 into an after life that they hoped for but they
08:12 knew nothing about. And we're inclined as Christians
08:18 and people of faith scenario to think that Egypt
08:20 was not a religious culture. It was most religious,
08:24 too religious. They believed in as many as 200 deities
08:32 but they really didn't believe in the God that
08:34 created Heaven and earth. Some time ago when
08:38 I was casting about in my study of literature,
08:41 I came across a poem by D.H.
08:43 Lawrence and when I was growing up in Australia
08:45 I just remember D.H. Lawrence as the author
08:47 of a book called Lady Chatterley's Lover that was
08:50 banned there, and I have never read it.
08:52 And I don't really care to read that sort of thing
08:54 but when I came across a poem written by
08:57 D.H. Lawrence in his last year of life as he was
09:00 dying from cancer, I read it with interest and I saw
09:04 there that this man like many people in the world
09:07 around us without a real comprehension of God
09:09 he was reaching out to these,
09:12 theses false philosophies that Egypt exemplified
09:14 and he spoke there metaphorically about
09:17 preparing the soul for its journey to another life.
09:21 And he said was some truth that the only thing
09:24 that could be taken on that journey to the great
09:26 beyond through this little bark that he like unto
09:29 the Egyptian birds was the character.
09:33 The character that has been prepared in his life
09:35 and as I read his poem, I know that he had no
09:37 comprehension of God and even though he figured
09:39 out the value of character it was really into
09:42 absolute desperation about this voyage to nothing
09:45 that's his equal and he pointed out.
09:48 But of course we're not on voyage to nothingness
09:51 and of course he was right about character
09:54 as the Bible says their works follow them.
09:58 There's a reason that we're here and it's not
10:00 for a dark voyage across that river and you know
10:04 at a dismal progression through the cavalcade
10:07 of the Gods no. We are prepared to proclaim
10:11 in the light as Jesus said something important
10:14 about the freedom that he is given to us and to be
10:17 witnessing in this life and preparing for a great,
10:21 bright, beautiful life to come. I was watching
10:26 television recently not 3 ABN which I often watch
10:31 but I was watching television and there was a
10:33 wonderful sequence where a musical group played
10:37 a song and we had a fantastic song before
10:40 I got up to speak and I appreciated that.
10:42 But the song that I saw was a negro spirituals
10:45 that I have heard many times over the years
10:47 but it was well presented by this group,
10:49 and it's a song that resonates with me,
10:51 it says Go down Moses, way down in Egypt's Land.
10:57 Tell old Pharaoh, Let my people go.
11:02 And you don't have to be very perceptive,
11:06 amazingly the slave owners didn't seem to be
11:08 perceptive enough to grasp it but you don't have
11:09 to be perceptive to realize that there was a double
11:12 meaning in that, but the ultimate meaning
11:15 in that hymn, in that's negro spiritual was that,
11:18 yes we live in a land of bondage and we need
11:21 to tell Moses, or we need to be a Moses to go down
11:26 to Egypt and say let my people go.
11:30 We must have liberty, we must have freedom.
11:34 Even in Egypt even in a religious center.
11:39 I shocked a number of our religious liberty attendees
11:41 at a, at a Regional Conference in the
11:45 Dominican Republic not too many months ago
11:48 and Dominica is right across the Mountain on
11:50 the same Island as Haiti where we're transfixed
11:53 to watch that incredible tragedy unfold.
11:56 But in the Dominican Republic we spoke about
11:58 religious liberty and I got up and I said there
12:00 is way too much religion in this country, in this world,
12:05 way too much religion. But not enough spirituality
12:10 and that's really the case with religious liberty.
12:13 Those who don't understand what religion is about
12:16 but just think that it's an activity of humanity
12:19 and even those that are convinced that it's a
12:21 necessary activity of humanity are often those
12:24 who are most inclined to restrict someone else's
12:27 practice of that thing. Because they become
12:29 convinced that they know how to do it better.
12:33 But those who understand that
12:34 it has spiritual obligation to God and that God
12:38 determines how we respond not another fellow
12:42 human being those people will defend it vigorously.
12:46 Our Bible reading as we began this worship
12:49 period today was from Exodus chapter 3 and
12:54 it's a story everybody knows well,
12:55 I grew up hearing that story, I grow up reading
12:58 about it in Uncle Arthur's Bible stories but
13:04 it never ceases to impress me as a model of how
13:07 we should behave. You know Moses,
13:11 think about Moses, like many of us he had
13:14 been exposed to the greatest education,
13:17 the greatest privileges that the world of his day
13:20 could give to him. We haven't grown up in a palace
13:23 but many of us compared to others in the world
13:25 literally have been spoiled and pampered and given
13:29 advantages that others don't have.
13:32 We think we know a lot about the world,
13:34 not just electronics and scientific advances
13:37 and so on, but we think we understand the
13:39 philosophy of what makes the world tick.
13:42 We've been educated and yet in many different
13:47 ways, God has to bring ourselves he did with Moses
13:51 to an understanding of our way of looking at stuff
13:54 it's not usually right. Moses knew as we do as I,
13:59 I remind myself all the time that God had a purpose
14:02 for his life. We have to believe that or else life
14:05 is just nihilistic and aimless.
14:08 Of course God has a purpose for our life,
14:13 but you know as you look back through
14:14 the history of religious dealings in the middle
14:16 ages for example, you know priest and prelates
14:19 and fanatics of various tribes were convinced
14:23 to that and they persecuted, they harmed other
14:25 people. They restricted the knowledge of faith,
14:28 that's not enough to believe that God has a purpose
14:31 in your life, it's most important that you
14:33 meet God and understand viscerally what he
14:37 is and what he wants for you. And when Moses
14:40 didn't understand that you know,
14:42 he was self-centered enough to even strike against
14:45 those who are harming God's people.
14:48 He killed a man and I don't think that the Bible
14:52 record says he did it selfishly.
14:54 He didn't do it self-centeredly,
14:57 he did it with an honest application of religious
14:59 fervor, but it was wrong as most religious
15:02 persecution is and he fled for his life and spent
15:07 almost an equal amount in the desert as he had
15:10 spent in training in Egypt and here at the end
15:13 of that long period of surging as the Shepherd
15:16 in the desert, you know in the shadow of God's
15:19 Holy mountain if you like and I am not really sure
15:22 he knew much about that amount till this moment.
15:25 He comes face to face with God the burning fire,
15:33 it troubles me a little bit in many Churches
15:36 and some times even in my own Adventist Churches
15:38 to go there and here people express a relationship
15:42 to God that's overly familiar like he's a hailed
15:45 fellow well met. God wants our good,
15:49 God is our father as Jesus said Abba.
15:52 God is the benevolent father and a protector of
15:57 all those that seek him but he's not to be try
15:59 for worth and Moses had to learn that lesson,
16:03 there as he saw that burning bush and he
16:05 drew close out of curiosity.
16:07 I go again to those verses, in verse 2, it says
16:13 and the Angel of the Lord and we know that's
16:17 capitalized day, that was God, we believed as
16:22 Christians, Seventh-day Adventists that was
16:25 Jesus appearing there to him and appeared to him
16:26 in a flame of fire from the midst to bush.
16:29 He looked and behold the bush with burning
16:31 with fire but the bush was not consumed and
16:33 Moses said I will now turn aside and see this great
16:37 sight why the bush does not burn,
16:39 he still just wanted to figure out the wise
16:42 and way forth of religion. Basically little experiment
16:47 on the Divine or the supernatural and it says
16:50 when the Lord saw the decent, he turned aside
16:52 to look. God called to him from the midst of the
16:54 bush and said to him Moses and he said here
16:58 am I and then God said counter intuitive,
17:02 do not go near to this place, take your sandals off
17:05 your feet for the place where you stand is
17:08 Holy Ground and that was the beginning of Moses
17:13 rehabilitation, that was the beginning of his
17:16 empowerment to go back to Egypt.
17:19 The place that he had served God to the point
17:22 of murder to the place where he realized that he had
17:25 a destiny but he never realized that it was only
17:30 fulfilled in God to place where he was convicted
17:33 that his people were in slavery wrongly but
17:36 he didn't know how God would release them and
17:39 it's amazing there to hear the dialogue then between
17:43 Moses and the Angel of the Lord there in the desert
17:46 this broken man, I believe he was about 80 years
17:49 old and I know when they were 80 I can feel my
17:53 strength ebbing away what did this man you know
17:56 hobbling behind the sheep, it does say later on when
18:00 he died at a 120 that his eyes wasn't dim and you
18:03 know his strength hadn't ebbed, I am not so sure that
18:06 was true at this point. Moses was basically a lost
18:11 man and God said to him I have surely heard
18:17 the cry of my people. In verse 7, I have surely
18:20 seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt
18:22 and I've heard their cry. And when I deal with
18:26 religious liberty issues I pray that those that
18:29 support Liberty Magazine and those that haven't
18:31 taken the chance will remind themselves of that.
18:34 It's not just an abstraction when people had
18:37 denied their religious freedoms,
18:40 it is as real as those slaves who are burdened
18:44 day and night by the lash, by the persecution
18:49 by the you know the killing as we know when
18:52 Moses was born of their first born of their male
18:56 children, these are real things and God hears it
19:01 and if God hears it if it's something that moves
19:04 God why shouldn't we be moved by it.
19:08 I know within the Seventh-day
19:09 Adventist Church we have lots of different department
19:11 and it's easy for someone to think well today
19:13 is the day that you know our religious liberty
19:16 gets up, tomorrow it's may be ministerial
19:18 or something or you know the day after may
19:20 be it's ADRA. So, you know they're all sort
19:24 of just divisions of functionality.
19:28 I can't speak about the other departments but
19:30 I know religious liberty is not just something
19:33 convenient that was settled on, it's
19:35 the very heart and soul of what we are called
19:38 to do in releasing the captive and in Egypt
19:41 is where the captives are and to take the
19:44 figurative analogy, it's all way we are in Egypt
19:52 whether it's in the United States which is you know
19:54 constantly reminding itself that as President Bush
19:58 said you know God's favored country.
19:59 Well, we don't know if God favors but it is nominally
20:03 religious. But other countries believe that God
20:07 is looking their way but there is just too much
20:10 religion and not enough understanding of the God
20:13 of the universe. Amen.
20:17 And God said to him I've heard the oppression,
20:19 I've the heard the cries and He said I want you
20:22 to go down to Egypt. I want you to proclaim
20:27 liberty. I want you to make a difference there
20:29 and like most of us Moses said,
20:32 I can't do it, I can't talk, which is very interesting,
20:34 I am sure he had the debating skills in Egypt.
20:37 But in the desert he probably just heard the wind
20:40 whistling and heard his conscious beating on him
20:42 day and night that he was not good enough
20:44 and he's become convinced after these years
20:47 in the desert that you know he's hardly more than
20:51 a sheep herder, and God said I can use you,
20:55 I can use you, and he says you go down to Egypt
20:58 and of course this is where the hymn came from,
21:02 the Negro Spiritual, go down to Egypt and this is
21:04 verse 18 of chapter 3 say to the King of Egypt,
21:10 The Lord God of the Hebrews hath met with us:
21:12 and now please, let us go three days' journey
21:17 into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the
21:19 LORD our God. God's met with me, I think last time
21:25 I spoke on 3ABN and in this Church I was connecting
21:30 religious liberty to evangelism and
21:33 I am more and more convinced that evangelism
21:36 is not complicated, it's exactly what God said to
21:40 Moses to say. Tell this person tell the Pharaoh
21:46 that I have met with God and if I've met with God
21:50 I am changed you see that and on no one's
21:53 authority but God, it doesn't matter what I say
21:56 but I am now speaking for God and I say let
21:59 my people go. And God says you're telling this and he
22:05 says but I am sure he will not let you know,
22:07 very interesting description from God he says
22:11 I am sure he will not let you go. No not even by
22:14 a mighty hand remember later in the,
22:17 in the New Testament Exodus and in the Old Testament,
22:20 in Exodus, Moses had to hold this hand up,
22:24 but he needed other people to hold it for him,
22:27 he was not a mighty man in that sense, no, Pharaoh
22:30 will not let them go, not even by a mighty hand
22:33 which you don't have. But God says so I will
22:37 stretch out my hand, my hand and strike Egypt
22:43 with all my wonders which I will do in its midst
22:45 and after that he will let you go and there was
22:49 another thing that impressed me.
22:53 You know Paul said that the Greeks seeking signs
22:56 I think that's was some of the text there,
22:59 there's a lot of people that were in Paul's age
23:02 in the New Testament and many more in our day.
23:06 They want a sign, they want some sort of miracle
23:10 healing, they want some sort of burning bush for them.
23:16 They want some alternation of wet and dry fleeces
23:19 to prove to them that God is in this thing.
23:23 When I forget that when there is a thus saith
23:25 the Lord in God's Holy word that should be enough
23:28 for them and God said to Moses, he says,
23:31 I am with you, I will do this I will make you
23:34 the liberator you can bring religious freedom
23:37 to these oppressed people. And he says then
23:39 the proof of it is this. And it's found in verse 12, of
23:45 chapter 3, it's interesting, he says I will certainly
23:48 be with you and this shall be a sign to you that
23:52 I have sent you when you have brought the
23:55 people out of Egypt. You shall serve God on this
23:59 mountain, now that's an interesting sign,
24:04 because it's a sign that's only valid after the fact
24:07 and we have to have that faith, as Adrian Westney
24:11 I know did in talking to him. But this was not a
24:14 futile endeavor, that beating against the barricades
24:18 of those who would denied religious freedom
24:24 was not futile, because God was in this thing
24:27 and no matter how many millions of magazines
24:30 we might send out no matter how many times we meet
24:33 with stony-faced officials, which is not always the
24:36 case I must say, no matter how many times our
24:39 message of liberation seems to be fall on deaf ears.
24:42 The message has been given and God's mighty
24:45 hand will substitute for what we think we can
24:48 or cannot do, can or cannot do.
24:51 And one day in God's Holy mountain as that
24:54 chapter in Revelation I read to about the deeds
24:57 of the dead following them. Well, they will be there
25:00 raised again and then God's said we will see
25:03 the fruit of this labor. We will see that a
25:05 great multitude has come out of Egypt, has seen
25:09 a religious liberty issue, has seen the fact
25:11 that it's not just the right to you know to work
25:15 or what not, work on certain days of the week.
25:18 We have seen that it's an obligation to honor God.
25:21 The God of the Burning Bush, the God of the
25:24 liberalization from all that this world represents.
25:32 I have been told now and then that I should be
25:33 careful what I say about the United States
25:35 because I grew up in Australia but it's nothing
25:37 against the United States, but I must say it
25:40 troubles me. Those that live in the United States
25:43 say always you know we have freedom,
25:45 you know like it's a given. We've got to be careful
25:49 that we're proud in our apparent freedom,
25:51 there is only one freedom and that is absolute
25:55 with God as we understand him and as we obey him.
26:00 And I really believe that the ultimate test is coming
26:04 to many of us who live under what we think are
26:06 benign systems that in actuality maybe the most
26:09 tenacious deniers the faith the world has seen
26:13 as I've said Egypt, religious, 200 Gods,
26:17 they have space for another God.
26:21 There's no real evidence that Pharaoh rejected God
26:24 out of hand, he says you know who is he that
26:25 I need to obey him but he wasn't at all condemn
26:30 the tree of their, recognizing their God.
26:33 He says you can worship him, where the conflict
26:37 came and as you study that great battle there
26:41 in Exodus, the conflict came between the array
26:44 of Egyptian Gods and the one God and the pledge
26:48 were not by chance, they were striking at every
26:51 principle of Egyptian belief and in our world today,
26:57 in Western Democracies but more particularly
27:00 Western capitalistic systems.
27:02 The very system itself is opposed to everything
27:05 that God holds high and Holy. Where greed is sanctified,
27:11 where if, your care for your fellow man is swept
27:14 away and is made public policy, we need to recognize
27:19 these things not to be opposed to this system,
27:22 as in Egypt were they made those bricks to the
27:25 last minute. We have to do whatever necessary
27:30 as citizens of whatever land but we should
27:33 never think that whether its capitalist,
27:36 communist or whatever that any of these are
27:38 inherently Holy, there's no burning bush in
27:41 Washington, there's no burning bush in any
27:44 other place. The burning bush is in your heart
27:47 as you answer to the great I am who says the
27:51 proof of you following me is that we will meet
27:53 again on my Holy mountain and we really need
28:00 to recognize as Moses was a little slow to come
28:03 out that if God is in this thing nothing can stop
28:06 it and that while I think and I'm speaking as Moses,
28:09 I think that I have escaped that pernicious system,
28:12 I must go back to it and proclaim liberty,
28:16 proclaim liberty. In Isaiah chapter 60,
28:23 verse 2 it says well behold and I like this text
28:26 because when I reexamine my life and I was gonna
28:31 say late teens but it might even been
28:33 a bit later than that as I reexamine my life
28:37 and was tilting at the edge, whether I should just
28:42 leave religion alone or come into it all the way,
28:45 I listened to the Messiah, Handel's Messiah,
28:48 which of course is good music. If you like baroque
28:51 music as I do. But the power of that,
28:54 that piece is in that recitation of Biblical text
28:58 brought together in a way to speak of the coming
29:00 Messiah and he quotes from Isaiah chapter
29:03 60 verse 2 it says, For, behold, the darkness shall
29:07 cover the earth, and gross darkness the people:
29:12 but the Lord shall arise upon thee,
29:14 and his glory shall be seen upon thee.
29:19 We've got to recognized that God's ready to move
29:21 powerfully and you know as was said in the introduction
29:25 I can give you lots of illustration through world
29:28 of religious liberty denied, it's gonna get worse.
29:34 But something you need to understand about religious
29:36 liberty it's seldom as blatant as I saw
29:40 in Ambon, Indonesia and by the way in a few weeks
29:46 I am planning a trip with Dr. John Graz we're going
29:48 down to East Timor to see what's happening there,
29:52 there's a direct religious conflict between
29:56 Christian and Muslims down in that place but
29:58 as we went to Ambon it was incredible to see
30:01 the devastation, not quite as bad as is the
30:03 earthquake produced in Haiti but pretty close,
30:07 25-30 percent of everything that we ever came
30:11 upon was burned and abundant in religious
30:13 warfare between Christian and Muslims.
30:17 An amazing scene, but violent as that was,
30:21 that's really not the way religious liberty is mostly
30:25 fought out in its negative. Religious liberty
30:29 is the far more subtle thing, where the social
30:32 pressures mean that you feel that you dare not dare
30:35 move out and take the spiritual sand. Religious
30:38 liberty is restricted where there are an
30:41 array of little nip petty laws that may make it
30:44 impossible or hard for you to buy a Church
30:47 or to meet in a Church, may make it very hard
30:50 for you to organize, that's the most efficient
30:55 level that the Pharaohs of the world have
30:58 found to strike against another belief system,
31:00 take away the strong and religious liberty is not
31:07 always as clear cut as people imagine,
31:11 but it's importance is always singular.
31:16 It's subtle, many times in countries they'll say oh
31:19 we have religious freedom, but the majority of
31:21 our people are of such and such believes so it's
31:24 not important, what that means is that if you
31:26 come into that country or if you are someone
31:29 they moved to think differently,
31:30 every structure of society will be against
31:33 you and we need to pray that God's mighty
31:39 arm can intervene there because there's little
31:41 that we can do to stop that.
31:45 We certainly don't have the means and even
31:47 if all of our viewers send us all of their means,
31:50 we will hardly likely have enough to by force
31:54 of money turn back such a tide of prejudice
31:57 and tradition but as was said at the beginning
32:02 of the printing Revelation,
32:04 you know the pen is mightier than the sword,
32:06 but we mighty be moving into the computer
32:08 area where it's bits and bytes that we're
32:12 dealing with. The reality is that ideas are far
32:16 more powerful than ads or mechanical things
32:21 that we can do and ideas of what God deals
32:24 with because who could have such an idea as God,
32:28 to take a guy in the desert, to take someone
32:33 in the desert who to all intents and proposes who
32:37 know well he may have appeared to his wife
32:39 as a pretty great leader when he first appeared,
32:44 and she wanted to marry him but you know after
32:46 40 years I know my wife doesn't think as much as me.
32:49 I'm a little bit more decrypt and so and he
32:50 didn't have great prospects, but it was only
32:55 because God was willingly to work with him.
32:58 There's an aspect to the story that I really
33:00 want to bring out and it may not get strong
33:04 support for religious liberty but if you understand
33:06 it I'll be satisfied. When I was a young person
33:12 there was a great figure in the Seventh Adventist
33:14 Church H.M.S. Richards senior and I many times
33:19 listened to his program and at the end he always
33:22 finished it by saying have faith in God dear friend,
33:24 have faith in God. And that's seen me through
33:27 some bad moments remembering not his idea but
33:32 his words that was thoroughly Biblical,
33:34 but he preached a sermon once that impressed
33:38 me and I've actually got a book of sermons where
33:40 it's printed and it was titled with the curious
33:43 title, The Man God Tried to Kill.
33:49 Who did God try to kill? But it's found in the same
33:53 sequence in verse 19 of chapter 4 is after Moses
33:58 had listen to God at the burning bush and for
34:00 the first time in 40 years had his heard stirred
34:03 that something might happen through him that
34:06 God was going to enable, that he was indeed
34:09 called to go back proclaim liberty.
34:11 First call of Jesus remembers He began His
34:13 ministry, it's not a little secondary part of what
34:16 God's on about, it's central and Moses told
34:21 his father-in-law, I must go back,
34:23 I am sure his father-in-law thought he was crazy
34:25 because he knew he fled for his life,
34:27 even though the Angel of the Lord said those
34:30 who seek your death are dead but here to go
34:32 back to the center of you know belly of the beast,
34:37 no but he did it, he took his wife and his son
34:42 and he headed off and it says in verse 19,
34:47 I'm sorry verse 24, it's says as it and it came
34:50 to pass on the way, on the way back to Egypt
34:53 at the encampment, that the Lord met him
34:56 and sought to kill him, very interesting,
35:03 what did he do? He immediately rose up and
35:06 circumcised his son, started a little bit of family feud,
35:10 his wife Zipporah said you've become a man
35:14 of blood to me and the Lord spared him and he
35:17 continued on his way, I am not really sure
35:21 that the mechanics of that could be worked out
35:24 or should be worked out in our day but the principle
35:25 is the same. We are called to a high and Holy
35:29 business, we are called to proclaim liberty and
35:33 God holds us the messenger of such a message
35:36 to a very high standard and God sought to kill
35:42 Moses not because he was against Moses but Moses
35:46 himself understood it, he was out of harmony
35:48 with God, because his first inclination was to bring
35:53 himself in line with God's requirement and there's
35:56 nothing magical about it as Paul pointed out,
35:59 but it was a sign that was given then
36:01 and he was not willing to mark himself and his family
36:04 with dedication to God, not till that moment
36:08 and then he realized that it was important to God
36:10 had changed him and there's text very few
36:13 people seem to have noticed
36:15 as Moses and Aaron then appeared before
36:18 Pharaoh and repeated the Lord words and they
36:20 said you know let us go into the wilderness
36:22 we want these, these little disingenuous I guess,
36:26 but three days journey I've studied on that
36:29 and 3 days was as long as you could last in the
36:31 desert and so Pharaoh I think understood it
36:34 from the outset, they go three days they're
36:36 beyond recall. They are gone into the desolation,
36:42 but they said to Pharaoh, we want to go this
36:46 is in verse 3 of chapter 5 of Exodus,
36:49 Exodus chapter 5 verse 3 and they said to
36:52 Pharaoh well of course after that Pharaoh says
36:55 who is the Lord that I should obey him and
36:57 they said to Pharaoh, the God of the Hebrews
36:59 has met with us. This is what God told him
37:02 to say and then they continued,
37:04 please let us go three days journey into
37:07 the desert and sacrifice to the Lord our God.
37:10 Lest He fall upon us with pestilence,
37:13 or with the sword. God is not to be trifled with
37:19 and when God says I have heard their cry,
37:23 I have heard what the Pew forum is saying
37:26 that 70 percent of the world is suffering under
37:29 a restriction of civil and religious liberties,
37:31 something has to be done about it and it's time
37:35 now to get your act together to be serious
37:38 about it not just you know something that's listed
37:41 on department or publications or good works
37:44 that you do, this is not, you know like how many
37:46 items of literature given out this weeks
37:48 and so on, that's not gonna cut it with God. Amen.
37:52 We have to show that we are serious, that
37:54 our life is in accordance with this and that
37:58 we will go even to a Pharaoh who he says
38:00 I don't know your God and say we must go because
38:05 our own life is on the line and by extension if you
38:08 deny God you're at risk, but that's a message
38:11 that is not told enough today,
38:14 it doesn't cast God as some vindictive evil
38:17 destructive being, not at all. It shows God
38:20 as we would expect him to be, someone intimately
38:23 concerned with human events, determined
38:26 to make it happen, determined to free the
38:28 captives, determined for us to proclaim religious
38:31 liberty, has to be, has to be serious business.
38:36 I don't know if I've shared it before on 3ABN
38:40 but every time I see it and I read it again last
38:43 night it impresses me that the Apostle Paul,
38:47 who admittedly he was always a hard case,
38:49 you know he's a perfect persecutor and then became
38:53 a perfect promoter of the truth, but
38:57 there in his ministry as he was traveling around
39:00 the world attempting to spread the wonderful
39:04 news that God was not just set to save the
39:08 promised people, but would save anybody,
39:10 the gentiles. There he came to Caesarea and he
39:15 met in the home as it says of Phillip the Evangelist
39:19 and he had four daughters who prophesied,
39:23 which is interesting, you know we should expect
39:25 more so much prophecies but we should expect
39:28 as we're dedicated to God, that God will
39:30 communicate to us more directly then we
39:32 think he does. And a Prophet named Agabus
39:37 came down from Judah, he'd been told something
39:39 from God, given a more than intimation and he took
39:44 Paul's belt bound his own hands and feet and
39:47 he says thus says the Holy Spirit so shall the
39:51 Jews of Jerusalem bound the man who owns
39:53 this belt and deliver him into the hands of the
39:55 Gentiles. What would you do? I don't know what
40:00 I would do, I mean I know what I should do
40:03 and that's what I am preaching about,
40:04 but that's the moment of truth who've dedicated
40:07 your life. You've decided that you will proclaim God.
40:11 You will go out and say you know God has free us all.
40:14 God has freed us from sin, he's freed us
40:16 for the more abundant life. That's all sounds good
40:21 but when the crunch comes and you know for sure
40:24 in this case God was prophesying to Paul
40:27 if he went back to Jerusalem would be bound
40:29 and imprisoned. What do you do? As Moses,
40:37 determined to go back after he'd been impressed
40:39 at the burning bush. Paul said,
40:42 you know they started the weeping and why everyday,
40:44 he says, what do you mean by weeping
40:46 and breaking my heart for I'm ready not only
40:49 to be bound but also to die at Jerusalem
40:54 for the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.
40:57 We often say in our religious liberty
40:59 work that we believe in religious freedom
41:03 and we will defend, we'll defend to the death
41:06 you're right to be wrong. You're right to believe
41:10 something that I might found of obnoxious,
41:14 that's very hard for people of faith to understand
41:17 that, it's extremely hard in the United States
41:19 at the moment and we just passed a period
41:22 where the religious right for want of a better
41:24 term have been empowered and you know they
41:26 were on their way to structuring the
41:29 United States as the happy haven for such
41:31 a belief system. That's not religious freedom,
41:35 that religious exclusivity. We have to have the idea
41:39 which God exemplified from Eden and right up
41:43 to that moment where he says let him who is
41:45 Holy be Holy still and he who is not forever not.
41:50 We have to allow people the right as sovereign
41:54 beings created by God to choose him or reject him.
41:58 If they reject him, there are very bad consequences,
42:02 but they are not consequences that
42:04 we visit upon anybody, not consequences that
42:07 we visit. I made a resolution shortly after
42:10 9/11 that I would always share something
42:12 from a wonderful collection of quotes that
42:15 the Seventh-day Adventist Church prepared,
42:17 last day events and on page 127 of this collection
42:24 and it was put together at that time of the Gulf,
42:26 the first Gulf war. So I know that the custodians
42:29 or the writings of Ellen G. White who I believe
42:32 was used mightily of God. I know that those
42:35 custodians were impressed that we were in
42:37 dangerous end times and writing in 1889 at a time
42:44 when the Seventh-day Adventist Church
42:45 and the Liberty precursor the Sentinel were
42:48 battling against a National Sunday Law in the
42:51 United States. I don't know how many of you
42:55 know about what's predicted, Revelation
42:57 13's fairly specific about a power that is easily
43:01 identified with the United States as compelling a
43:04 certain religious observances and I don't know how
43:06 many of you know that in the 1880's there was a
43:09 more than passing push for a National Sunday Law,
43:13 not a blue law but a law that mandated worship
43:16 on Sunday, a wrong day, but even if it was
43:20 the right day we would have opposed it,
43:22 you don't mandate by civil law a day
43:25 of worship. Amen.
43:27 And Ellen White at that time wrote this,
43:29 she says we're not doing the will of God if we sit
43:33 in quietude, doing nothing to preserve the liberty
43:38 of conscience. Fervent, effectual prayer should
43:42 be ascending to heaven that this calamity may be
43:45 deferred until we can accomplish the work
43:48 which has so long been neglected.
43:51 Let there be most earnest prayer,
43:54 and then let us work in harmony with our prayers.
43:57 Now, its easy to pray I mean it's hard to pray properly
44:01 but it is easy to pray, but it's very hard to pray
44:03 correctly and than to act on our prayers.
44:06 Then the what are the quotes in 1889 also,
44:09 it was printing in the Review and Herald extra
44:11 in December 24 that year, and Ellen White said
44:15 there are many who are at ease as it were,
44:19 who are is it were asleep. I mean I don't really
44:22 know how you could sleep in these days but
44:24 you could be asleep to the truth.
44:27 These are shocking times, but many people are
44:30 oblivious to the real situation and she says
44:33 there are many who are at ease,
44:34 who are as it were asleep, they say if prophecy has
44:39 foretold the enforcement of Sunday observance,
44:43 the law will surely be enacted; and having come
44:47 to this conclusion they sit down in calm expectation
44:50 of the event, comforting themselves with the thought
44:54 that God will protect his people in the day
44:57 of trouble. But God will not save us if we make
45:02 no effort to do the work he has committed
45:05 to our charge. That's really serious business,
45:08 she says as faithful watchmen you should see
45:12 the sword coming and give the warning that men
45:15 and women may not pursue a course through
45:16 ignorance that they avoid if they knew the truth.
45:21 I didn't mean to connect to them but that
45:23 just puts me to mind you know the sword coming.
45:26 Right now you know we, the United States
45:29 as a nation you know we projected the sword
45:34 to other countries and you can argue as people
45:35 do whether that's correct public policy or not.
45:38 But the sword is not to be trifled with and you know
45:41 there's a curious symbol that's just emerged
45:42 in the last few days, did you know of 300,000
45:45 gun sights that are sitting atop the weapons
45:48 of the soldiers in the United States,
45:51 300,000 of them have Bible text printed into
45:54 the metal. If that isn't the most profane application
46:00 of faith for our day I don't know what could qualify
46:04 and guns with Bible texts on them pointed against
46:08 secular or other religious enemies of the state can
46:12 just as easily be turned against those of us
46:15 who have a differing view of what those texts say.
46:21 Religious freedom needs to be proclaimed not
46:24 as a in a political context but any political context.
46:29 Amen. Egypt will always be with us.
46:33 Egypt will always be polytheistic even if it
46:37 calls itself Christian, Muslim or whatever,
46:40 because Egypt is the potential and the willingness
46:43 of man to just basically reach out willy-nilly and
46:48 embrace all views of religion including self worship
46:53 and it takes a Moses, it takes a Paul and it takes
46:58 you and I as we're committed to God and emptied
47:01 of self. It takes often a vision metaphorical for most
47:06 realistic and actual for some of a burning bush
47:11 and to know that a lot is at stake here that we might
47:16 be freed and that's a hard thing to do.
47:20 You know back to that, that image of D.H. Lawrence ship
47:25 of death and die the death, he says the long and
47:28 painful death that was between the old self
47:31 and the new. He got it right there you know
47:33 that battle we have to win between the old
47:36 self and the new. But the new man as CS Lewis
47:39 it was nearly always wrong but had a right in
47:41 mere Christianity, the new man needs to get with
47:45 the old God and proclaim liberty, liberty for all.
47:50 Amen. This is a wonderful challenge
47:54 I believe that we should accept, it's thoroughly
47:56 Biblical, the analogy is not just for a nice sermon
48:00 illustration it's before us and you know I grew
48:02 up hearing, reading any number of sermons
48:05 telling us not to go back to Egypt, you know not
48:08 to go back to Babylon. Well, on that level no
48:11 we're not to become Egypt, we're not to become
48:12 Babylon. But if we don't have a burden
48:16 to go back to Egypt. If we don't see that in Egypt
48:20 there is a principle in the message of liberty
48:23 to be to proclaimed then we are indeed someone
48:27 who has never lifted because you can take Egypt
48:30 into the desert just as easily as you can,
48:33 you can tell it's, it's greenery by the water side
48:36 there are on Nile. Egypt is a state of mind and we
48:41 need to have the state of mind of God to be
48:44 proclaiming liberty throughout the land.
48:47 And obviously I stand before you as someone
48:50 who edits Liberty Magazine, it's not the only
48:52 way to proclaim liberty, I'd be foolish to say that,
48:57 but we have been given many mechanisms in
48:59 the modern world that will facilitate the proclamation.
49:03 You know it started with someone with a capital
49:06 O I guess, someone standing on the mountain
49:10 of blessing, I don't know how those thousands
49:12 of people heard Jesus voice, no more than
49:15 I know, you know that they heard Abraham Lincoln
49:17 at the Gettysburg address, people spoke
49:19 powerfully before PA, but then came the PA
49:22 and you can have a megaphone you can go
49:25 to a you know a game, a football game now
49:28 and that thing reverberates admittedly not very
49:31 clearly but people can hear greatly.
49:33 The radio broadcasted across,
49:35 I remember reading years ago about a philosopher,
49:42 Thoreau, wrote in his book Walden Pond against
49:46 the radio giving use of England, he says what
49:48 is the great flapping area of the United States
49:50 need to hear what happens in Europe.
49:52 The reality is communication is a
49:54 gift that God has given to our modern world
49:58 and we can broadcast on the radio,
50:00 we can broadcast through television and
50:02 simultaneously contact millions of people we're
50:06 not just standing before Pharaoh and his few minions
50:10 and his magicians we are standing in some ways
50:14 not just figuratively but literally before the world
50:17 and we can proclaim liberty. The liberty that
50:21 God would have us proclaim, let's bow our heads
50:25 in a word of prayer. Dear Lord, we thank you that
50:27 we are your agents to proclaim freedom,
50:29 we thank you that, that while Egypt can be
50:33 pretty well pervasive and a delusional reality that
50:38 with your word and your instruction and a vision
50:41 of your Holy Burning Fire that we can be
50:44 empowered to take on anything,
50:45 proclaim liberty because we have liberty.
50:48 Thank you for this privilege,
50:50 for Jesus sake. Amen. In the few minutes that
50:53 are left I just want to remind you that today
50:56 is Religious Liberty Sabbath, but by no means
50:59 is it a one short thing even within the
51:01 Seventh-day Adventist Church,
51:02 our period of time to promote liberty
51:05 and to fund what we're doing for another year
51:08 goes at least in the Churches till the end
51:10 of April and not every Church can do it on the
51:14 one day, but we hope that every Church
51:16 does it beyond the Seventh-day Adventist
51:19 Church which is an enabler of Liberty Magazine
51:21 because it's not just your magazine,
51:22 only about 10 to 15 thousands Seventh-day
51:25 Adventists get copies of liberty but those that
51:29 are watching we hoped that you are moved to send
51:32 some means to facilitate a cry of religious
51:36 freedom because it doesn't matter whether
51:39 you're a Seventh-day Adventist or a Roman
51:41 Catholic or a Buddhist whatever,
51:42 I don't necessarily believe that all those belief
51:45 systems are correct but I believe that my God
51:48 would have you seek him and however means
51:53 you want and if you are moved toward God
51:55 I believe you will respond but in the mean time
51:58 you have to have the ability and the freedom
52:01 to seek God and I'm not gonna deny that
52:03 and Liberty Magazine is holding out a broad sway
52:07 for freedom for all who will answer and please
52:10 give your means toward that, beyond that I will
52:13 be regresses, regressive if I didn't remind
52:18 those that watch this channel regularly that
52:22 we have the Liberty Insider that appears on 3ABN
52:25 regular. We will bring examples of restricted
52:29 religious liberty and of course good examples
52:32 of freedom allowed around the world,
52:34 because Liberty is on the march,
52:36 it's not just in around that they march and
52:39 demonstrate for a new government, I believe
52:40 there is a spiritual stirring in the world
52:44 and that people are as it says there is a God
52:48 shaped void that people are more and more recognizing
52:50 and as the stresses, politics of disasters
52:56 and whatever you name it of the modern world
52:59 as they impinge upon people's very souls,
53:03 they recognize that they must have God.
53:06 And not just God but that they must exercise
53:10 that belief in God and at Liberty Magazine we
53:13 call that religious liberty, it's something vital,
53:17 it's something eternal, something God given
53:20 and it's something that we will fight and die for.


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Revised 2014-12-17