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Series Code: TIJ
Program Code: TIJ005102S
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00:25 We think it was a terrible thing that haunted the world
00:28 ages ago. We think modern civilization is way beyond. 00:35 And yet the incredible fact is this, there are more slaves 00:41 in the world today than any other time in history. 00:45 Why is human slavery still such and issue? 00:49 And what can we do to finally eliminate it? 01:21 This Magnolia plantation near Charleston, South Carolina 01:25 is one of those places people love to visit in the 01:29 American South, it's a beautiful plantation which 01:33 embodies elevated antebellum culture that's in southern world 01:38 before Americas Civil War. 01:43 People still like to wander through these fields 01:46 where cotton, tobacco, and many other crops flourished. 01:50 They liked to visit this mansion where classy banquets and 01:55 social gatherings brought in those lovely southern bells 01:58 in their elegant gown. 02:04 This is in fact the kind of setting for one of the biggest 02:08 movies in history, Gone with the Wind. 02:10 But what's ironic is this, a beautiful plantation 02:16 also tells us why slavery is still a problem today. 02:20 It suggests why we haven't eliminated that 02:24 barbaric practice. 02:26 The impact of slavery on the Southern states was very huge 02:33 and very instrumental because the south was predicated 02:36 on slavery, they were predicated on the fact that they had 02:39 in-slave labor, the south was very agricultural. 02:43 So without slavery, the south never would have existed 02:46 it wouldn't have functioned like the north, it had a lot 02:49 of industry. So slavery actually was the foundation of the south. 02:53 Alexander Stephens who became the vice president of the 02:58 Confederacy after 1861 wrote a document and made a 03:04 famous speech where he talked about the absolute right of 03:08 each individual to determine who would be free and who 03:12 would be enslaved and then he went on to delineate the fact 03:16 that without slavery the south would economically not be able 03:20 to compete with the rest of the world. 03:22 And he felt that in owning human beings it would be 03:27 just like owning a piece of industrial equipment right now. 03:30 He had the absolute right, he and his neighbors had the 03:34 absolute right to own people of African descent, 03:38 to own native Americans to own anyone who was not Anglo-Saxon 03:41 and to exploit them for free labor. 03:45 The southern states are very lucky to give up slavery because 03:50 all their money was tied up in the institution of slavery. 03:53 Their money was mainly used to buy land and to buy slaves 04:00 so they were able to buy and borrow against the slaves 04:03 that they own. They own the people here and they used them 04:07 as collateral to maintain their wealth. 04:14 Slavery was why America prospered in the south, 04:19 slavery was the essential component of its economy. 04:23 These plantations would never have grown so big, 04:26 these mansions so high if it hadn't been for all those slaves. 04:31 Cotton would have never become such a profitable and widely 04:36 crop if it weren't for all those people laboring for free. 04:41 Now southerners in the 1800s weren't exactly uncivilized, 04:47 they weren't barbarians, they lived in nice homes like this 04:52 magnolia plantation house in Charleston. 04:54 Many regarded themselves as a part of America's elevated 04:58 culture. Many regarded them- selves as Christians. 05:07 But the economics of their world compelled them to keep 05:11 slavery going in these quarters. Yes, to justify it, 05:16 to defend it, saying we treat our slaves very well 05:20 yes, and to fight a violent Civil War against the 05:25 Emancipation Proclamation. That's why slavery is alive 05:29 and well in our world, it's all about economics. 05:32 It's all about profit, people still find ways to justify 05:37 slavery, they make excuses, they try to make others believe 05:42 their slaves have a better life thank they would otherwise. 05:46 Well, let's take a look at precisely how slavery is 05:51 happening today. 06:03 There are about five examples we talk about with modern day 06:07 slavery here at the Freedom Center. 06:09 The first being child labor where they are 18 years old 06:13 or younger doing hard labor not working at their parent's shops. 06:16 We talk about domestic servitude which has to do with Nanning 06:19 or working at country clubs. We talk about bonded labor 06:24 which is borrowing money and then never being able 06:26 to pay it back. We talk about sex trafficking which is the 06:30 forced body labor where you're doing things sexually 06:34 usually with children or young women and we talk about 06:37 forced labor which is the most like antebellum slavery in the 06:41 United States where you are forced to do something against 06:44 your will. Of all of these, it's really just about doing things 06:48 against your will. Once it becomes involuntary, 06:51 that's when we talk about modern day slavery. 06:57 It's going on in Contemporary Cities around the world, 07:00 yes, many cities that have freeways, office buildings, 07:03 traffic lights, and railroad tracks also have slaves hidden 07:07 away somewhere. 07:10 Now, these are the most common types of slaves 07:13 first, there is bonded labor, that starts with debt. 07:18 People in very hard times may pledge themselves to labor 07:22 to get a desperate loan and they often end up working 07:26 on and on for nothing because they are under that debt. 07:29 The services required, the duration of the labor may not be 07:33 clearly defined and often people in bonded labor find the their 07:38 debt is growing, not diminishing because the loaner 07:41 provides food and shelter. Tragically debt bondage 07:46 doesn't just go through a life- time, it is actually being 07:49 passed on from generation to generation. 07:52 Children are required to pay off their parent's debt, 07:56 this bonded labor, this debt bondage is the most widespread 08:02 form of slavery today. 08:07 But there is another form that is all too common, 08:10 and that is what is called human trafficking. 08:13 It involves the women you'll see standing on the streets in 08:17 many cities selling their bodies, (prostitution). 08:21 Many of these women started out very young and very distressed 08:25 something had probably kicked them out of a home and some 08:29 pushy business guy promised to take them somewhere else 08:32 where they can find a life. Human trafficking, 08:36 these young, these children often end up in another country 08:40 often there illegally and they're made to fear the police. 08:44 They have to keep their identity a secret, that's how their 08:48 supposed rescuer forces them into some sex industry, 08:52 Sadly these trafficked women and children come to believe 08:57 that giving up their bodies is the only way they can survive. 09:00 A recent study revealed that about 80% of transnational 09:05 slaves are women and girls and some 50% of them are minors. 09:11 Slavery is very extensive today we often don't have very good 09:16 numbers because we're talking about the differences between 09:20 historical slavery in the United States and modern-day slaveries. 09:23 So, historically it was legal so you had a lot of numbers 09:27 to work with, people were keeping track, today it's 09:30 illegal and so a lot of this is kind of black market and 09:34 under the rug, if we will say. So you don't have all the exact 09:38 numbers, but a lot of people do say that they percentage it 09:42 that there are more people in slave today than there ever 09:46 have been before and so when we are looking at that we say 09:50 yes, there probably are more people trafficked around the 09:53 world but also just been slaved within their own countries 09:57 and the number today although people are going back and forth 10:00 because we don't have the actual numbers can be anywhere from 10:04 27 million to about 30 or 31 million 10:07 depending on your definition of slavery. 10:15 Today slavery is illegal in every country almost every 10:19 society and yet there are some 27 million slaves worldwide 10:25 debt bondage and sexual bondage, all kinds of bondage. 10:29 For example about 40 million people in India are 10:34 bonded workers, most of Dallas or untouchables, they are forced 10:39 to work in terrible conditions trying to pay off a debt 10:43 year after year. In China slavery was officially abolished 10:48 in 1910 but in some regions in that vast country it still 10:53 sneaks in. Brick manufactures in the province of Shanxi 10:57 and Henan tried to get away with it. In 2007 the Chinese 11:03 government had to free 550 people stuck there in 11:07 brick factories and 69 of them were children. 11:11 In that Shanxi province, 95 province officials had to be 11:16 punished for allowing slavery to continue. 11:19 The North Korean government however does the opposite, 11:23 it operates six very large political prison camps, 11:28 some 2 hundred thousand people are subject to hard slave labor 11:32 There are political prisoners in their families are subject 11:36 to inhumane treatment and torture. 11:38 In the Caribbean, Haiti had been plagued by poverty and there are 11:44 over 225,000 children who work as restaveks, that's unpaid 11:51 household servants. The United Nations sees this as a form of 11:56 slavery. Mauritania in Africa was the last country to abolish 12:02 slavery, not until 1981, and yet today 20% of the population 12:08 is enslaved. Many men, women, and children used as bonded labor. 12:14 Do you get the picture? 12:16 It's happening all over the world, countless people are 12:21 being recruited into slavery. They are tricked and deceived 12:25 they get false job offers, false migration offers, 12:29 even false marriage offers, some are even sold by 12:33 family members, some are simply abducted. 12:36 And so, many are kept as slaves because of debt or through 12:41 isolation and threats. 12:42 Many, especially those in sex bondage, are kept as slaves 12:48 through drug addiction. 12:49 salvias is still alive today I think for a lot of reasons 12:54 some of it having to do with power that internal need 12:59 inherent need of people to have control over others 13:03 To think themselves better than other people, so I think that's 13:06 kind of the sociology of it, on the other hand, there is a lot 13:11 economics of material of product people need. In this case 13:17 human beings, labor, and other people who are willing to pay 13:21 for that product. So some of its about power, some of it is about 13:25 domination but a lot of it is about economics and what people 13:29 are willing to pay for unfortunately. 13:38 So what can we do to eliminate this tragic practice/ 13:41 What can we do to be part of an anti-slavery unit today? 13:46 Well interestingly enough, the best answers go back to that 13:51 same Era in the mid-1800s, except they go back to a 13:55 different place, up north. 14:03 A woman named Harriet Beecher Stone for a time lived here 14:07 in this homestead in Cincinnati its architecture reflects that 14:11 19th-century world. She grew up in a very Christian home in 14:15 Connecticut. When she was 21 she moved here to Cincinnati 14:19 with the father who was the president of Lane Theological 14:23 Seminary. Well slavery in America was becoming a bigger 14:27 and bigger political controversy. 14:29 It was threatening to split up the 14:32 United States but many people living in this nice19th century 14:37 homesteads didn't even want to think about that problem 14:40 their terrible thing slavery. They had a hard time even 14:46 hearing about the awful things slave-owners could do. 14:49 And Harriet Beecher Stone could have just lived her stable 14:55 educated life too and ignored those ugly things across the 15:00 Ohio River. 15:01 Instead, in 1850 she wrote a book a novel called 15:08 Uncle Tom's Cabin, it was based on the narrative of a former 15:12 black slave Josiah Hansen. And he was described by 15:16 Harriet Beecher Stone and the public when they think about 15:20 a gentleman called Uncle Tom, that's the person she was 15:24 describing and he was not a fictional character, but 15:26 he was a gentleman who in fact lived and he was enslaved in 15:31 Kentucky. And if you could imagine he had a five-year-old 15:35 son and a seven-year-old son and a wife and he made two 15:39 cotton sacks, he put one son in one bag and the other son 15:45 in another bag, he put them on each shoulder and he and 15:48 his wife would walk almost 15 miles a day and they walked 15:53 almost 500 miles from Kentucky through Cincinnati, 16:00 then they went due north to a place called Sandusky, OH 16:03 and from there they went to Canada and he not only 16:09 successfully escaped but he was able to escape with his 16:13 wife and two sons. Later he would come back and help 16:18 other people to get out. 16:23 Harriet's novel explained what the life of a slave was really 16:28 like, what it's like to be abused day after day, what it's like 16:33 to watch family members sold away to other plantations, 16:37 what it's like to risk your life just for a breath of free air. 16:45 Her Christian faith compelled Harriet to expose something so 16:49 inhumane. This woman's book grew out of the contact with 16:57 slaves and the underground railroad, well this book became 17:00 the best-selling novel of the 19th Century, it would move 17:04 America to abolish slavery. 17:11 Harriet Beecher Stone shows us the first important step 17:15 in fighting something like slavery, we don't ignore it. 17:20 We don't just push it aside as someone else's problem 17:23 as something ugly in some other parts of the world, 17:27 the first step is to face it, acknowledge it, deal with it. 17:32 We have to confront the fact that some 27 million human 17:38 beings today cannot get a life of their own. 17:42 Let me tell you about a man who made many speeches passing 17:49 through these North American towns in 1848, he campaigned 17:54 for the Whig Party as the anti- slavery movement was growing. 17:58 This was congressman Abraham Lincoln before he ran for 18:02 President and his speeches would become very memorable printed 18:07 all over the east coast. As a young congressman in Illinois 18:13 he proclaimed. 18:19 Now that was a time when his fellow legislators wanted to 18:24 pass a resolution against Abolition Societies, against 18:28 people trying to help run away slaves and southerners were arguing 18:33 that slaves in the south were better off than hired laborers 18:37 in the north. But Lincoln stated this, 18:56 That issue would erupt into the American Civil War which began 19:00 here at Fort Sumpter where a Confederate Army began 19:05 canon fire on this union fortress, that battle would 19:09 turn into a very long conflict. But Abraham Lincoln's passion 19:14 would eventually bring the real issue of slavery home to the 19:18 heart. After signing the Emancipation Proclamation 19:22 as president, he said this, 19:32 During the Civil War when the City of Vicksburg in the south 19:38 fell to General Grant, Lincoln would describe a big union 19:42 victory in this way 19:53 Abraham Lincoln was extremely significant in the freeing of 19:57 slaves, he is one of the most complex characters I think 20:01 when we talk about it, because some herald him as the great 20:05 emancipator, he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation 20:08 which was really a war-time measure that freed slaves in 20:12 rebellious territories. However once the war was over 20:16 there had to be something that Congress passed which 20:19 would then brought about the 13th Amendment. 20:21 So, between this war-time measure that kind of stirred 20:24 everything up and gave enslaved idea that they could be free 20:29 and become a movement up to the north, then we have 20:34 after the war we have reconstruction, we have the 20:37 13th Amendment and so he was really important to kind of 20:40 getting the ball rolling to make slavery illegal in the 20:44 United States. Abraham Lincoln, the man behind 20:50 the end of slavery in America embodies something very 20:54 important, he didn't just believe the right thing, 20:58 he didn't just support the right political organizations, 21:01 those opposing slavery, he expressed his convictions 21:05 passionately. He spoke out against something and entire 21:10 culture had justified for so long. 21:13 Yes, it's like standing in a battlement at Fort Sumter and 21:17 facing that Confederate canon fire, it was about 21:21 opposing slavery anyway. 21:23 Today, I believe its people who speak out who will really 21:28 make a difference, who will really build a momentum of an 21:32 anti-slavery movement. It's when passionate expressions 21:36 encircle around towns, around neighborhoods that they impel 21:41 more and more people to do something about it. 21:43 The Freedom Center to me means a place where we can have safe 21:50 dialogs, where we can talk about all of these things that 21:53 that people are still very uncomfortable about talking 21:56 about but also very unclear about what their history was 22:00 and again so we talk about what is relevant and bring it back 22:04 and talk about how we can make a better world whether you 22:09 are white, black, from Australia, from the 22:12 United States, no matter where you are we have a story for you. 22:21 And today, we don't have to use canons, we can express 22:25 convictions in all kinds of ways that really get around. 22:29 We can e-mail, we can post things on Facebook, 22:33 we can tweet on Twitter, we can put things up on a blog. 22:37 Slavery is so often ignored today, it's so often rationalized 22:42 it really makes a difference when we give a personal voice 22:47 to why it must end. 22:53 Remember that Christian principle about God's laws 22:56 sinking into our hearts? 22:58 Well, the Bible also emphasizes expressing those moral principles 23:03 giving them a voice...The word testify pops up quite a bit 23:08 in the New Testament as Jesus would say about Himself 23:12 and His disciples in John 3:11. 23:22 Now primarily those apostles would testify about the gospel 23:28 about what Christ accomplished but that Messiah is the one who 23:33 proclaimed, if the Son sets you free, you will be 23:37 free indeed. Christ had people free in all kinds of ways, 23:41 free from disabilities, free from illness, free from guilt, 23:46 free from oppression, yes freedom is an essential part 23:52 of the truth of the gospel and the New Testament urges us 23:56 to speak that truth. Here's Paul in Ephesians 4:25. 24:11 In that same chapter, Paul writes this is verse 15. 24:24 Yes, speaking the truth helps us grow, it helps us grow into 24:30 the one who makes people free and when we express our 24:34 convictions, our passions, its important to that in love. 24:40 It shouldn't be just getting our anger out, it shouldn't just 24:44 be a way to vent our issues, it shouldn't be just about 24:49 hating slave owners, it needs to be about love. 24:52 We want to help people, we want individuals to have better lives 24:57 we can make a difference. We can put our energy behind something 25:02 that's bigger than us. We can help eliminate one of 25:06 the biggest tragedies in our world today. 25:09 How do we help fight slavery? 25:11 Well, first of all, by facing it, it's real, it's a present 25:17 problem, it's hidden in all kinds of devious ways. 25:21 It's promoted in all kinds of economic ways, 25:24 Secondly, we can invest in organizations that are opposing 25:28 slavery, that are helping implement laws that will abolish 25:32 it. Do some research. Find one that you feel is effective, 25:37 find one that you feel is taking on a critical issue and become 25:41 a part of it. And finally, express the truth that every 25:46 human being should be free, yes freedom, that's God's intention 25:51 that's what He helps us grow toward, that's what the 25:55 Savior Jesus Christ laid out in His in this sinful wounded world, 26:00 He longs to make people free. 26:02 What does freedom mean to you? 26:05 Freedom of choice, freedom from addictions, freedom from pain 26:09 and suffering, freedom from the past, or maybe it's freedom 26:15 from all of the above. 26:16 If you would like to experience this kind of perfect freedom, 26:21 then I'd like to recommend the free gift we have for all our 26:25 Incredible Journey viewers today. 26:28 It's the booklet Freedom Worth the Sacrifice. 26:32 This booklet is our gift to you and is absolutely free 26:37 I guarantee there are no costs or obligations whatsoever. 26:41 So, make the most of this wonderful opportunity 26:44 to receive the gift we have for you today. 26:48 Phone or text 0436.333.555 in Australia, 26:54 or 020.422.2042 in New Zealand or visit our website 27:00 TiJ.tv, or simply scan the QR code on your screen 27:06 and we'll send you today's free offer totally free of charge 27:10 and with no obligation. Write to us at 27:13 GPO Box 274 Sydney NSW 2001 Australia 27:18 or PO Box 766673, Manukau, Auckland 2241, New Zealand. 27:25 Don't delay, call or text us now. 27:35 If you've enjoyed our journey to America, and our reflections 27:39 on the freedom that Jesus can offer each one of us, 27:42 then, be sure to join us again next week when we will share 27:46 another of life's journeys together. 27:49 Until then, let's pray for God's blessing. 27:55 Dear Heavenly Father, We see the many terrible 27:58 problems in our modern world, you are the answer to all the 28:03 problems we face. 28:04 Please help us to find a way to accept your gift of freedom. 28:09 We ask this in Jesus name. Amen! |
Revised 2022-07-28