FRIDAY MORNING MANNA
Biblical Numerology: NUMBER THREE- Part XLV
Spiritual Liberty Not Legal Tolerance
MAIN QUOTE FOR THIS ISSUE: “What other nations call religious tolerance, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights, of which government cannot deprive any portion of citizens, however small. Despotic power may invade those rights, but justice still confirms them.”– U. S. Senate Report Against Sunday legislation, January 19, 1829.
Toleration. “Act or practice of tolerating; spec., policy of permitting the existence of all (or given) religious opinions or modes of worship contrary to, or different from, those of the established church or belief.”-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Fifth Edition, Largest Abridgement of Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition, 1942.
This definition hits the nail right on its head. Globalism plays a far greater role which many yet do not realize—in the grand scheme of the great controversy between Christ and Satan. The toleration aspect of the prophesied nature of the final American, then global crisis is not a financial meltdown, or global warming, or a meteor hitting the earth causing “another ice age,” etc., etc., but is a church and religious crisis—the final blow against the most important of all freedoms and liberties—the right, and we intentionally repeat ourselves—to worship God according to the dictate of conscience and according to the Bible.
“The noble men who framed the Declaration [of Independence] did not ask for toleration. They understood the fundamentals of true liberty and declared: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’ Sacred truths these are, written in the Independence Hall: ‘Within that temple was born a nation, in whose destiny were wrapped the interests of Liberty and Civilization to the end of time.”
“In the Virginia Convention of 1776, James Madison objected to the use of the word, ‘toleration,’ in the proposed Declaration of Rights, because toleration implies the ‘power of jurisdiction’ over others. Instead of saying ‘All men should enjoy the fullest toleration in the exercise of religion,’ Madison said, the Bill of Rights ought to say, ‘All men are equally entitled to the full and free exercise of it according to the dictates of conscience.’ (See James Madison, in ‘American State Papers,” p. 243).” – Charles Longacre, “Aims of the Founding Fathers,” The Church in Politics, pp. 100,101.
As a reminder peaking in urgency, I reiterate what I wrote in our July 2, 2010 issue of the Friday Morning Manna (Yes, that’s 6 years ago. Time flies, doesn’t it?): are we aware that inalienable right of all mankind to worship and obey the Creator and His laws only according to the dictates of conscience is defined as HERESY by a prominent religious dictionary? Note: “Heresy (Gr. hairesis, choice), deciding for oneself what one shall believe and practice.” – New Catholic Dictionary, published by the Universal Knowledge Foundation, NY, 1929; cited in “Facts of Faith” by Christian Edwardson, p. 62, Southern Publishing Asso., 1942.
With the recent Brexit as a backdrop in some shape or form, Lord Stanhope way back in 1827 said in a Speech in the British Parliament: “The time was when toleration was craved by dissenters as boon; it is now demanded as a right; but a time will come when it will be spurned as an insult.”
That time is now. All lovers of “the truth as it is in Jesus” (Eph. 4: 21), and “the liberty which we have in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 2: 4; 5: 1, 13), who are all to be “judged by the law of liberty” (James 2: 12) by “standing before the judgment seat of Christ” (Rom. 14: 10)— should, by now, as Lord Stanhope envisioned, “spurn as an insult” any attempt to write in “toleration” as a provision of any modern-day “policy” by whoever claims preeminence as “the established church” of any nation. 0But do we?
The highly respected historian Dr. Philip Schaff wrote: “Toleration is an important step from state-churchism to free-churchism. But it is only a step. There is a very great difference between toleration and liberty.Toleration is a concession which may be withdrawn; it implies a preference for a ruling form of faith and worship, and a practical disapproval of all other forms . . . . In our country we ask no toleration for religion and its free exercise, but we claim it as an inalienable right.” – “Church and State in the United States,” p. 14.
Charles S. Longacre wrote: “Judge Cooley says that the American Constitutions ‘have not established religious toleration merely, but religious equality ; in that particular, being far in advance not only of the mother country, but also of much of the colonial legislation, which, though more liberal than that of other civilized countries, nevertheless exhibited features of discrimination based upon religious beliefs or professions.’ – ‘Constitutional Limitations,’ fifth edition, chap. 13, par. 1. Quoted in “The Church in Politics.”
Patrick Henry declared: “When our fathers left their land of nativity for these American wilds,— from the moment they placed their feet upon the American continent,—from that moment despotism was crushed, the fetters of darkness was broken, and Heaven decreed that man should be free,—free to worship God according to the Bible. In vain were all their offerings and bloodshed to subjugate this new world, IF WE, their offspring, must still be oppressed and persecuted.” – In a speech in defense of the Baptists of Virginia, who were persecuted for preaching the gospel, quoting Parton’s “Life of Thomas Jefferson.”
In Bible prophecy “horns” are a symbol of strength. (See Cruden’s Concordance, art. “Horns,” p. 291.) The “two lamb-like horns” of the “other beast coming out of the earth” shown to John in vision (Rev. 13: 11) are explained thus: “The real strength of this republic of America has been its two great principles of civil and religious liberty—‘a government in which the ecclesiastical should be separate from the civil power. “The secret of our power at home, and our influence abroad was the citizen’s love for, and enthusiastic devotion to, their country, which guaranteed liberty to all, instead of oppression by taxation and religious despotism, as had been the rule of former ages.”
Early American History of Religious Liberty Intolerance: Type of America’s Final Crisis. Source: The Great Controversy by Ellen G. White (1911), ch. “The Pilgrim Fathers,” pp. 292-295:
“It was the desire for liberty of conscience that inspired the Pilgrims to brave the perils of the long journey across the sea, to endure the hardships and dangers of the wilderness, and with God’s blessings, to lay, on the shores of America, the foundation of a mighty nation. Yet honest and God-fearing as they were, the Pilgrims did not yet comprehend the great principle of religious liberty. The freedom which they sacrificed so much to secure for themselves, they were not equally ready to grant to others. ‘very few, even of the foremost thinkers and moralists of the seventeenth century, had any just conception of that grand principle, the outgrowth of the New Testament, which acknowledges God as the sole judge of human faith.’ – Martyn, Vol. 5, p. 297. The doctrine that God has committed to the Church the right to control the conscience, and to define and punish heresy, is one of the most deeply rooted of papal errors.
“While the Reformers rejected the creed of Rome, they were not entirely free from her spirit of intolerance. The dense darkness in which, through long ages of her rule, popery had enveloped all Christendom, had not even yet been wholly dissipated. Some said of the leading ministers in the colony of the Massachusetts Bay: ‘It was toleration that made the world antichristian; and the church never took harm by the punishment of heretics.’ – Ibid, vol. 5, p. 335.
“The regulation was adopted by the colonists that only church members should have a voice in the civil government. A kind of state church was formed, all the people being required to contribute to the support of the clergy, and the magistrates being authorized to suppress heresy. Thus the secular power was in the hands of the church. It was not long before these measures led to the inevitable result—persecution.”
Enter Roger Williams. Please don’t’ forget his name and what he did for America!
“Eleven years after the planting of the first colony, Roger Williams came to the New World. Like the early pilgrims, he came to enjoy religious freedom; but unlike them, he saw—what so few in his time had yet seen—that this freedom [religious liberty] was the inalienable right of all, whatever might be their creed. He was an earnest seeker of truth, with John Robinson [see D. Neal, History of the Puritans, vol. 1] holding it impossible that all the light from God’s Word has yet been received. Williams was the first person in modern Christendom to establish civil government on the doctrine of liberty of conscience, the equality of opinions before the law.” –George Bancroft, pt.1. ch. 15, par. 16. He declared it to be the duty of the magistrate to restrain crime, but never to control the conscience. He declared it to be the duty of the magistrate to restrain crime, but never to control the conscience. ‘the public or the magistrates may decide, he said, ‘what is due from man to man; but when they attempt to prescribe a man’s duties to God, they are out of place, and there can be no safety; for it is clear that if the magistrate has the power, he may decree one set of opinions or beliefs today and anothertomorrow; as has been done in England by different kings and queens, and by different popes and councils of the Roman Church; so that belief would become a heap of confusion.’ – Martyn, vol. 5, p. 340.
“Roger Williams was respected and beloved as a faithful minister [do we still have ministers and pastors of his ilk today?], a man of rare gifts, of unbending integrity and true benevolence; yet his steadfast denial of the right of civil magistrates to authority over the church, and his demand for religious liberty could not be tolerated [by those in power]. The application of this new doctrine, it was urged, would ‘subvert the fundamental state and government of the country.’ – Ibid., pt. I, ch. 15, par. 10. He was sentenced to banishment from the colonies [!], and finally, to avoid arrest, he was forced to flee, amid the cold and storms of winter, into the unbroken forest.
‘For fourteen weeks,’ he says, ‘I was sorely tossed in a bitter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean.’ But ‘the ravens fed me in the wilderness’ [like Elijah], and a hollow tree often served him for a shelter.’ – Martyn, vol. 5, pp. 349, 350. Thus he continued his painful flight through the snow and the trackless forest, until he found refuge with an Indian tribe whose confidence and affection he had won while endeavoring to teach them the truths of the gospel.
“Making his way at last, after months of change and wandering, to the shores of the Narragansett Bay, he there laid the foundation of the first state of modern times that in the fullest sense recognized the right of religious freedom. The fundamental principle of Roger Williams’ colony was ‘that every man should have liberty to worship God according to the light of his own conscience.’ – Martyn, vol. 5, p. 354.
“His [Williams’] little state, Rhode Island, became the asylum of the oppressed, and it increased and prospered until its foundation principles—civil and religious liberty—became the cornerstone of the American Republic.” – Great Controversy, p. 295.
There was literally only one “honest Abe”of America. His assassination still remains mysterious to this moment, with so many loose ends in the official version. He wrote the following lines and others like it, which may have contributed to his early demise:
“Our reliance is to the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy this spirit, and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your own doors. Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage, and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence, and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.” – Speech at Edwardsville, Illinois, September 13, 1858.
(Continued nest week)