It’s Time to Stand up for Liberty

Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.

- Leviticus 25:10

As is the case with many Americans, I’ve watched with horror the violence and rioting that has gripped this nation for nearly six months now. Substantial parts of many of our largest and most famous cities lie in ruins from the predatory acts of mobs affiliated with organizations such as Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa.

These overtly violent and leftist organizations have, with the apparent consent of local government officials, loosed a reign of terror in America’s cities the likes of which most Americans never imagined possible.

The Covid lockdowns are another assault on liberty. As recently as the beginning of this year, who would ever have imagined we’d have government officials attempting to dictate how we celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas with our families, or attempting to interfere with our liberty to worship the Lord in our churches? Yet the so-called pandemic has been used as an excuse for government to suspend personal liberties we nearly all took for granted, close down our businesses, put us out of work and make us dependent on the government dole.

To add insult to injury, they have slapped masks on us, which do little and perhaps nothing at all to slow the spread of the virus but are most effective when it comes to humiliating and dehumanizing people and showing them who’s boss.

Then to top it off, the Democrats committed election fraud on a shock and awe scale resulting in a Joe Biden “victory” to which we’re all supposed to accede, no questions asked.

For as long as this author can remember, he’s heard talk of the decline of America and the decline of the West. John Robbins noted in his essay “The Religious Wars of the 21st Century” that the West has been in decline for more than a century. The reason for the decline? Writes Robbins, “The Biblical theology that created Western civilization five hundred years ago has all but disappeared from the West.” Robbins’ words were simply a restatement of the main thesis of Gordon Clark’s A Christian View of Men and Things that had been published over fifty years earlier.

The American republic and the freedoms and prosperity Americans historically have enjoyed did not come about as some random occurrence. It was not lightning in a bottle or happenstance. The freedoms and prosperity of the United States is the result of the ideas that were believed by the people of America at the nation’s founding. And their ideas about liberty – both political and economic – were the result of their believing the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation which began 251 years prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

In his booklet Christ and Civilization, John Robbins remarked that, “God blessed his people in Western Europe and America beyond anything they could have imagined, and his blessings spilled over into society at large, creating what we now call Western civilization” (45). Christ, Robbins tells us, promised this in his Sermon on the Mount, when he told his disciples to seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness and that all the things they sought – food, clothing, etc. – would be added unto them.

Robbins continued,

All these things – the things we call Western civilization – were added to the European and American Christians, on an historically unprecedented scale, just as Christ had promised. And they were added because their priorities were straight: They believed the Gospel, seeking first the Kingdom of God and his imputed righteousness, not their own righteousness or prosperity (46).

So how is it possible that a nation conceived in liberty, one that traces its founding back to the landing of the Puritans in December 1620, come to a point where liberty hangs by a thread and republican government is but a step from being extinguished?

In a word, unbelief.

As heirs of the founders of this nation, we have not guarded our doctrine. We have, as the Israelites in the time of Isaiah and Jeremiah, forgotten our God. And for this reason, all these things have befallen us.

It was mentioned above that this author has for most of his life read and heard about the decline of America and the West. But while he’s heard about these things for decades and has taken them seriously, they always seemed rather theoretical and distant, but now they are at our front door.

At the risk of sounding alarmist and of falling prey to the tendency to overstate the long-term implications of current events, it seems not a stretch to me to say that if Joe Biden is successfully cheated into the White House in January, it will be the end of our republic.

The entirety of the American establishment – political, academic, business, religious, media, financial, and entertainment – is behind a Biden presidency. The only thing that stands in their way are the Trump deplorables, and they have little to no institutional or cultural power.

In fact, they have so little power and are regarded with such contempt that they can be insulted and physically assaulted and no one – not even the people and institutions that supposedly are on their side - will defend them.

In a brilliant monologue from June 1, 2020, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson explicitly made this point. “When the mobs came, they abandoned us,” was his opening line. But it was really at the 12:31 mark that he got down to naming names of Republicans and conservatives who, when Republican voters needed them the most, instead turned on them, denouncing them as a bunch of racists.

It is scarcely possible for me to contain the anger I have for the cowardly politicians and others who, on the one hand say that they are behind you, but who, on the other hand, abandon you to the mobs when the going gets tough. It’s even worse than that, as Tucker Carlson pointed out. Not only did people in the Trump administration, including Trump himself, do little to nothing to defend their supporters, or even simple law and order for that matter, but many of them actually piled on, saying in effect, “You know all those terrible names the Dems and BLM and Antifa are calling you – fascists, racists, etc. – well, they’re right; you really are all those things and you deserve the beat down your getting.”

Yesterday, I was reminded once again of the astounding level of verbal and physical abuse Republicans and Trump supporters have been subjected to over the past five years. A peaceful protest – not mostly peaceful, but actually peaceful – by Trump supporters in Washington D.C. turned violent when the demonstrators were attacked by violent mobs of Antifa and BLM.

But the obvious violence went largely unreported in the mainstream media. No one asks Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or other Democrats to denounce such violence. And really, if Biden were an honorable man, no one would even have to prompt him. He’d do it on his own accord.

To borrow a phrase from Antifa, Joe Biden’s silence, and the silence of the Democrats, the silence of the media pundits, the silence of most Republicans, the silence of the academics, the silence of the Hollywood and entertainment elite, the silence of business big shots, the silence of the Big Tech executives is violence. They allow, permit, condone and justify the open assault of peaceful Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.

These are the same arrogant elites who will unctuously lecture their fellow Americans on justice while they themselves know nothing of it.

Is it not abundantly clear at this point that now is the time for freedom loving Americans, and I mean here in particular, freedom loving Protestants, to take a stand to defend the nation founded by their forefathers?

So what does that mean in practice? For starters, it means praying for your country. It means, in the first place, praying that the Gospel of Justification by Belief Alone be widely preached and believed. It is this truth that created Western civilization and it is what will sustain and preserve whatever can be salvaged out of the current mess.

It also means praying that justice prevail and lies be exposed. Never, never, never in all my life have I witnessed such fraud as what took place during the November 3 presidential election. It is imperative that Joe Biden be prevented from taking office in January. He is a fraud and a usurper, plain and simple.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said this in an interview:

NEWT GINGRICH: Well, it's a nice sentiment. First, you go out and the Democrats steal five or six states, and that's what Republicans believe we're watching. We think we have evidence of a lot of it. Then you turn around and you say let's forget four years of Nancy Pelosi, let's forget four years ago of impeachment, harassment, opposition, hostility, hatred, and now that I've won, why don't we make nice together?

I think he would have to do a lot to convince Republicans that this is anything except a left-wing power grab, financed by people like George Soros, deeply laid in at the local level, and, frankly, I think that it is a corrupt, stolen election. It's very hard for me to understand how we're going to work together without some very, very big steps by Biden. And I have -- I have doubts if the left-wing of his party would tolerate him genuinely trying to work with Republicans.

[…]

JEDIDIAH BILA: Yeah, Newt. No, I just want to ask you for clarity, because the accusation of incidents of voter fraud, which do happen in every election, unfortunately, is very different from the accusation of a stolen election. That's very serious. The implication here is that there's enough widespread voter fraud going on that would have changed the outcome of the election. I haven't seen evidence of that to this moment. Is that what you're suggesting has happened here?

GINGRICH: What I'm suggesting is you don't see the evidence because the local officials who are Democrats hide the evidence and then turn to you and say, "Since you have no evidence." So they say, "Oh, we let the poll watchers in the building." That's right. But they kept them far enough away they couldn't see anything. And I think I can show you case after case, it happened magically at almost exactly the same moment on election night that a series of key states quit counting, almost as though they were coordinating what they were doing.

The Bible says “Thou shalt not steal,” but the Democrats have stolen the election, and done it with breathtaking boldness. In doing this, they have lived down to the well-earned reputation as the party of rum, Romanism and rebellion. In truth, the Democrats simply can’t help themselves. It’s who they are. It’s what they do. It is, as it were, in their political DNA. And they must be stopped.

It was our Protestant forebears that founded this country, and in its hour of need it is up to us to defend her. We must pray and then we must act. Not in foolishness, but in knowledge of the truth. Not in fear, but in boldness. Not in doubt, but in faith.

In Proverbs we read, “A righteous man falling down before the wicked is as a troubled fountain, and a corrupt spring.”

If you and I remain silent in the face of obvious evil, we are that righteous man who falls before the wicked. We must not let that happen.

So what does it mean to act? What does it mean to refuse to fall down before the wicked? It has been my purpose to leave this open. What each of us does is dependent upon the opportunities presented to us.

Take, for example, when Jerusalem was surrounded by the Babylonian army and the enemies of Jeremiah lowered him into a dungeon to die. A certain Ethiopian eunuch named Ebed-Melech organized a rescue party and pulled Jeremiah out, saving his life.

Not long after when the Babylonians had breached Jerusalem’s walls, God spoke to Jeremiah and told him to tell Ebed-Melech that his life would be spared, “because thou hast put thy trust in me.”

“God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him,” says the author of Hebrews. Because of this, we can have confidence, as did Ebed-Melech, the he will reward our efforts on behalf of justice and truth if we put our trust in the Lord.

What will that look like in this case, a reward from God?

I don’t know.

Perhaps we can save the American republic. Perhaps not. Ebed-Melech didn’t save Jerusalem from being sacked and burned with fire. Jeremiah’s decades of preaching truth didn’t prevent the exile of the Jews to Babylon.

But God rewarded these men nonetheless. And he will reward us as well, if we seek his face and speak his truth with all boldness.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, it’s time to stand for liberty. It’s time to stand for the truth.

The ScripturalistSteve MatthewsNovember 29, 2020Black Lives Matter, Antifa, 2020 Election, John RobbinsComment