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Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

Brian Hindman

For a Gift From God

Religious liberty, a subject that is very dear to me, but let's study together this morning.

What we're gonna see today with this topic, I'm gonna put together things that I've learned in world history as a teacher of world history, American history, in US government as a teacher of government and as a Bible teacher and putting it all together.

But I hope that it will be meaningful and valuable and impressionable to you as we study this eternal gift from God, religious liberty.

The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 3 17, now the Lord is that spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is what?

There is freedom, liberty, that only the only true liberty that comes from God, and that is a gift that he has given, I believe, to all of his intelligent created beings throughout all eternity.

From eternity past to eternity in the future the Intelligent ability with our conscience to choose what we will do who we will serve choose you this day Whom ye will serve Joshua says but as for me in my house, we will serve the Lord So it is a choice And as we begin our study though, if you would just bow your heads with me and let's seek the Lord in prayer.

Our gracious Father in heaven, Lord we have come to church to worship you.

We have come to learn from you and sit at the feet of Jesus.

And Lord I just pray that you would hide me behind your cross, that you would speak through me to share an important truth, an important eternal truth that you have committed to all of us, but especially to your people in these last days.

I pray that you would bless us as we study diligently your word as you've asked us to do in 2 Timothy 2 15 and I pray this in Jesus name.

Amen All right Go back with me 800 years to the Middle Ages the high Middle Ages and there was a king of England named King John King John got in a little bit of a squabble with a religious leader and was actually excommunicated.

Not only was he excommunicated, which means you are separated from the church, you cannot receive the sacraments, you cannot receive a Christian burial and so on.

The religious leader, who happened to be Pope Innocent III at this time, placed England and the territory that John ruled over under something called the interdict.

An interdict is actually excommunicating an entire city, town, village, or even a kingdom by whose authority by the authority and power Of the Pope who would dare to do such a thing to completely excommunicate so that no 1 can go to church Put chains on the church.

No 1 can go No 1 can receive any any worship services at all until the king would submit to the Pope.

Now King John valiantly held out for 6 years, but eventually as his kingdom is undermined and his authority is undermined because his subjects are mad because they are not able to experience what they believed were the channels for receiving salvation through the sacraments.

With enough pressure put on him, after saying he was sorry, the Pope gave him back England as a fief.

And if you know the Middle Ages at all, you have a time period of lords and castles and fiefs and vassals and so on.

A fief is a grant of land that's given to you by a lord.

Here is the king of England submitting to the pope so that he can receive his territory back and be the interdict and excommunication be lifted so that they can all continue to worship God.

Well, why did this happen in the first place?

Well, it had to do with a relatively seemingly minor issue of who would appoint and select the person to be in office of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The king wanted 1 person and the Pope wanted another.

They disagreed and when the king did not follow the Pope's wishes, the Pope says, I will place your entire kingdom under the interdict.

Well, that seems like a pretty high-handed, heavy thing to do, doesn't it?

And it begs the question, did Jesus ever compel people to do right and try to use some type of force to make people bow and give, concede to His wishes or His will?

If you have your Bibles, let's take a look here at Luke 9.

Did Jesus ever compel people to do right?

But beginning in verse 51 of Luke 9, the Bible says, "...and it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem and sent messengers, verse 52, before his face, and they went and entered into a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him.

Samaritans, you might recall, they were a mixture of the old northern kingdom of Israel, the 10 tribes that had been defeated by the Assyrians and had become assimilated amongst other nations and heathen tribes around them, and they had a form of godliness, but they did not have the true practice that the southern kingdom of Judah had followed.

So the Samaritans were hated by the Jews, and the Jews were hated by the Samaritans, and vice versa.

It says, the Samaritans, verse 53, did not receive him.

Now, should the Samaritans have received Jesus?

Yes, I mean, that's an obvious answer, right?

I mean, Certainly, if Jesus is inviting and asking to come and be prepared to be served in your town, certainly the right thing to do, I think we all can agree, would be they would receive him and welcome him into their midst.

But we keep reading, and it says, "'Because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem, in other words, that he would pass through Samaria and not stay by, they got jealous.

They got bitter and upset and decided to reject allowing Jesus to come, verse 54, and when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven and consume them even as Elias, that is Elijah did?

Do you want us to call down fire and destroy them because they should have accepted you, they should have allowed you to come in and welcome you into their home, into their midst?

Notice Jesus' response in verse 55, but He turned and rebuked them and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.

And then He says, For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them.

Jesus honored their request and continued on on his way to Jerusalem, even though he had designed to stop by and for a brief time give a blessing there to the Samaritans.

He only desires the freedom of choice from the beings that he created in their response to a relationship with him, he only wants them to choose because they have an intelligent understanding of who he is.

He respects our power of choice, and that choice is a dangerous gift because you can see how it's resulted and led to the great controversy and the entrance of sin into this universe because of allowing choice with angels, allowing choice with humans, but God respects that gift and freedom so much that he himself will not interfere with that.

Now, religious liberty worldwide, we live in a country that values and has historically valued from our inception religious liberty and the freedom of conscience.

Founded on principles of religious freedom, which we'll look at a little bit later, involving religion, 105 countries worldwide, 53% of those that were surveyed, experienced widespread government harassment of religious groups.

Over half of the countries in the world that exist today experience religious harassment because of their beliefs by the government that they live in.

It is a gift from God that our country was founded and originated based on an understanding that God desires people to have the freedom to choose who they will worship, how they will worship, what they will worship, when they will worship.

In the book The Great Controversy we're told this, "...freedom of religious faith was also granted, describing the early days of the United States.

Every man being permitted to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience, republicanism and Protestantism became the fundamental principles of the nation.

These principles are the secret of its power and prosperity.

Those 2 principles there, in a sense, republicanism is a state without a King, as many states or countries back in further distant times had a type of monarchy or dictatorship for a government.

So a country that would be founded based on there's no king telling people what to do with some kind of an absolute power arrangement.

It was really a rarity and a unique government that was created by the United States.

So republicanism, in a sense, is civil liberty.

Religious liberty is a key core principle of the power and prosperity of this country and its origin.

For hundreds and hundreds of years, essentially there was just 1 main church that existed across Europe, and that is, of course, the Roman Catholic Church.

And, of course, the true church in the wilderness in Revelation 12, that was in relative obscurity, but the main dominant church is the Roman Catholic Church that existed at that time.

And so a church that did not have a pope that would allow religious liberty was truly unique.

Did you know though that there have been efforts and inroads made to try and undermine and to take away religious liberty in our very own country.

A dialogue between a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church named A.T.

Jones and the United States Senate Committee, which he appeared before because of a Sunday law that was submitted, and I'm gonna talk about that in just a minute.

I'm gonna be sharing today with you some of the incredible arguments and principles that were outlined by A.T.

This began with a senator from New Hampshire whose name was Henry Blair.

Henry Blair himself had studied law before joining and getting involved in politics, had served in the legislature, National House of Representatives before being elected to the Senate in 1879.

And he worked his way up to become chairman of a powerful committee called the Senate Committee on Education and Labor.

Now the position of chairman is important in government because they determine what bills will be discussed by that committee and they determine when that will be discussed and how much time will be given to that discussion.

The chairman have that prerogative and it's a it's a powerful position.

Of course the chairman comes from the majority party, so they have the majority of the votes in order to get their way, essentially.

But they work together of the parties to determine these things.

But the chairman, it's a powerful position, and he introduced a bill in 1880, this is over 100 years ago, called the Blair Sunday Rest Bill on May 21, 1888.

In the 50th Congress of the United States, it was a not very long, but it said the following, a bill to secure to the people the enjoyment of the first day of the week, commonly known as the Lord's Day, which by the way, that's a misunderstanding.

The Lord's Day, if you study the Bible carefully, without a doubt, is the Sabbath, the seventh day.

Exodus 20, Isaiah 58, and Jesus and Matthew and Mark in the Gospels talks about the Sabbath is the Lord's Day, Lord of the Sabbath, as a day of rest, and then notice it says, and to promote its observance as a day of religious worship.

This is a bill that's introduced into the Senate to be discussed and debated upon and potentially passed as a law in our country.

At the time there was a young man in his late 30s at this time this is 1888-1889 named A.T.

Jones had been baptized as a young man at the age of 23 after he had been serving a stint in the army for several years, he became a diligent student of history and the Bible, and went on to become a Bible and history teacher.

I'm kind of partial to that, that's what I used to do for many years, and I think it's an awareness of those 2 pieces together that really gave him a tremendous advantage as he was asked by our church to appear before the Senate committee and speak against the measure to propose this law for Sunday worship, or keeping the day as a day of religious worship.

And he also became editor of signs of the times in 1885.

So he based his position on 3 key areas, and we're gonna try to look at those briefly, hopefully.

The principles upon which we stand, number 1.

Number 2, the historical argument or basis from history.

And then Number 3, the practical aspect or matter of the question.

So those 3 areas in which he spoke to and presented before a chairman, a group of senators and I tell you the Holy Spirit when you read this, this is just a copy of the transcript of what they said back and forth.

He was the 18th person to speak at this committee hearing on that day, and all the people before him had spoken for maybe 2 hours or so.

They grilled him for an hour and a half, and he was interrupted, I think, 169 times.

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