Pastor Don Mackintosh, pastor of the Weimar Campus Church, addresses the current unprecedented social situation, a country coming out of social isolation, the erupting into protest against racism. Pastor Don shows possible ways to spread the gospel during this unstable times.

<p>Pastor Don Mackintosh, pastor of the Weimar Campus Church, addresses the current unprecedented social situation, a country coming out of social isolation, the erupting into protest against racism. Pastor Don shows possible ways to spread the gospel during this unstable times.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Weimar University

Don Mackintosh

Protest and Pandemic: Opportunities for the Gospel

Father in heaven, Lord, thank you this evening for your amazing grace that changed John Newton, who was a racial bigot and who mistreated people and who exploited them.

But your grace came into his life and the word of God changed his life.

We ask that the word of God would change our lives tonight as well, in Christ's name, amen.

How many of you tonight would say that there's racism in America?

Racism is this idea that because of your skin color or maybe your ethnicity that you're somehow superior to others and of course It also is a spinoff of Charles Darwin who had various different origin of the species and he said that the Caucasian race was higher than others and then you went down and then you could evolve to higher races and whatnot.

And if you ask Americans back at poll in 2018 whether or not racism was problem America, 64% said yes.

30% said it exists, but it's not a major problem, and 3% said it no longer exists.

So the majority, even back in 2018, would say it's a problem in America.

But I think over the last couple weeks, people have seen that there definitely is a lot of race problems in America even today.

And, you know, because we're in the midst of a pandemic, it appears that people's underlying issues all are coming to the front, all are kind of bubbling up.

Earlier today, I listened to the former president, Barack Obama, who addressed the nation from his website.

And this is what he said, our country has experienced profound changes.

There's been pain experienced at a deep level by all, especially those who have lost people to violence.

There's a global pandemic as well and has exposed the vulnerable nature of our health care system, the disparities within our country, the challenges and structural problems that have been thrown into bare relief as a result of a long history.

And the reason I wanted to listen to the former president is because he comes from a culture and background that I don't.

And it really does help me to listen to people from other cultures.

Problem is, we don't often listen to each other.

So, Barack Obama, as he began, continued speaking, expressing the views, I believe, of millions of people.

He said, these structural problems have been thrown into bear relief as a result of a long history.

The history of slavery, history of Jim Crow laws, of redlining, of systemic or institutional racism, and he called it the original sin of our nation, the original sin of our nation.

400 years of racism, he said, but there is a bending towards justice.

He saw that there was hope because there's opportunities to look at things at a deeper level now.

We need to take charge, we need to tackle it, we need to change America, We need to wake up to the opportunity that's right in front of us.

Well, whether or not you agree with Barack Obama, I do believe that some of what he has said, in fact, all of what he has said, is believed by millions, and I see a lot of truth in it.

But I want to talk tonight about the Bible and racism.

Does the Bible have anything to say about race and racism?

It's the idea that I'm superior based on my race, my skin color.

You know, when people came to even this part of the country here in Northern California, in fact, in this very hamlet, there was a chief whose name was Wima and they couldn't pronounce his name down at the post office and so they called him Weimar, because the guy was German, but anyway, Weimar was an Indian who actually knew all the dialects of all the various Indians, and he was venerated and revered because he could talk to all the various Indian groups in this particular area of the country.

But you know, most of those Indian groups in this area of the country were killed during the gold rush.

Because the people that came here from the east, largely Caucasian, European, as they came from the east here to the west, they considered these, they called them natives, they called them savages, they did not have the same rights, and in fact, they did not social distance with all their diseases and whatnot.

That not only killed, but they killed also with the various pathogens they carried as well.

They think that around 50, 000 Indians died in California.

All because of this idea that they felt that this land is my land and I will take it from you.

I am more important than you are and I will take what's yours.

Well, others thought that those in Africa were of an inferior quality, and so they began to take them to the New World and enslave them.

It wasn't just whites that did this, it also was blacks.

So the blacks turned on their own countrymen and caught them and enslaved them and then would sell them.

So both black and whites were involved in the slave trade.

And it was a pervasive idea that, you know, they actually were better off as slaves of white people than being left in Africa.

And you can find people writing about that because they believed that they had a superior race.

Now, before we get into our Bible study, I would say I'm very thankful to be a part of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

And the Seventh-day Adventist Church started back during a time when there was a discussion concerning race and there would be a civil war fought in this country over the issue of race.

And the earliest Millerites and Adventists, many of them were coming out of the abolition movement.

Charles Fitz, who was 1 of the early Adventist promoters of William Miller, worked with William Lloyd Garrison for abolition.

How many of you ever heard of John Byington?

He was the first president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists But what he did before that was run an underground railroad station to help blacks escape slavery in the South.

Joseph Bates, 1 of the early Adventist pioneers, was also an early abolitionist and would help blacks escape from slavery.

William Miller was part of the abolition movement, though he never became a Seventh-day Adventist.

And then Ellen White, Ellen White, though white in name and also race, was an abolitionist through and through.

And she also, even though there were laws on the books, spoke against slavery and was involved in what some would call acts of civil disobedience as she protested slavery.

So I'm thankful to be from this heritage of the early Adventist movement.

In fact, our fundamental belief in this church, number 13, is in Christ.

Here it is pointed out, in Christ we are a new creation.

Distinctions of race, culture, learning, nationalities, and differences between high and low, rich and poor, male and female, must not be divisive among us.

We are all equal in Christ, who by 1 Spirit has bonded us together in 1 fellowship with him and with 1 another and we are to serve and be served without partiality or reservation." How many like that statement?

And it's easy, however, to make a statement.

Sometimes it's harder to live up to the statement.

The earliest Seventh-day Adventists, however, were all predominantly white, Caucasian Americans, and they believed they were all created equal in God's eyes, and additionally, they championed the cause of black Americans.

And when this movement began, God gave the prophetic gift, first of all, not to a white person, but to a black person.

He did not decide to accept that mantle, but the fact that God would give that mantle means a lot.

And at the beginning, both Hazen Foss and Ellen White, who were given that prophetic gift, were abolitionists or were against slavery as well.

So they championed the cause of black Americans.

They went to the South, early Adventist pioneers, to evangelize and they found segregation.

They tried to speak to churches together.

They wanted to bring them together, but they simply would not come together in the same house of worship.

And so the whites would stay in 1 place and the blacks would stay in another.

They being white reached out then to the whites with 1 big exception, and that was a man named Edson White.

Edson White, after having strayed away from the faith, came back and he felt this conviction that he should reach the blacks who were not being reached with the gospel and not being reached with the Adventist message.

Well, he was not received well when he went with the Morning Star, his riverboat.

In fact, he was often beaten, often driven out of town, and they would try and run him off.

They would say, don't try and mess with the race issue.

But he kept going, tried to open up schools and did open up many schools.

The whites would come and shut down the school, burn up the textbooks and whip people who were involved of both races.

It was tough going, but this was the early advent movement who went forth to reach others beside the predominant race, that being European Caucasian.

Now I'd like to say that continuing on the church has gone from strength to strength in that.

Many ways it has, but there are always spots on one's history that are not the greatest.

After Ellen White died, after those early pioneers died, there was a culture that was still very racist and there are many examples about people at all churches, including the Advent movement, did not do as well as they should have in this regard.

Tonight is not the scope to get into a whole history lesson of those things, but suffice it to say, if we don't acknowledge that, we're going to have problems.

And we do have problems, many of which we're unaware.

You know, as a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, I have many blessings in my life that I don't even know that are blessings.

Police officers treat me in certain ways when they don't treat black people the same way.

I worked for a number of years both in Chicago and in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

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Protest and Pandemic: Opportunities for the Gospel

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