Category: Resource Notes

            On August 20, 1619, 395 years ago, the first African slave was brought to Virginia. Along with him came the curse of slavery.

The slave trade is as old as humanity, with African slaves being sold to Arab slavers long before Europeans appeared. The Europeans, however, took slave trading to a whole new level as they used Africans in the New World to replace the Native American populations who had been decimated by European diseases. By the time African slave trade had been brought to an end, almost 10 million Africans had been brought to the New World. Millions more died to in the passage.

The curse of slavery fell hardest on Africa. The work of catching and selling slaves was done by local African kings and traders. In exchange they received European goods and weapons, enabling them to expand their power to catch more slaves. However, the incessant warfare depopulated and destabilized both victors and victims. Ultimately the African kings were subjected by the Europeans. Even today, much of the poverty in Africa can be traced back to the slave trade and its aftermath.

European slavers also suffered greatly from the slave trade. Since they had no immunity to African diseases, over half died in their first year in Africa and only 10% made it back alive. The slave ships took yellow fever and other African diseases to the New World, creating deadly disease zones in the jungles of Central and South America. Areas like the Amazon River Basin, which had supported large Native American populations, became virtually uninhabitable. Only in modern times has science rolled back the areas dominated by the deadly African diseases.

The Americans also fell prey to the curse of slavery as the institution undermined American values and then divided the country. The American Civil War was fought to end slavery, and one American died for each slave brought into the country. Even today, race relations remain strained because of the curse of slavery. Every so often we get a reminder of our past as we are now getting with the racial riots in Fergusson, Missouri.

Some have tried to use the Bible to support slavery, but they twist the Scriptures to do so. Slavery was a fact of life in the ancient world, but God established Israel with laws that forgave debts and gave liberty to slaves every 7 years. Our modern bankruptcy laws come from God’s debt forgiveness laws.

Slavery, like its modern cousins Socialism and Communism, is a manifestation of the Spirit of Money, or Mammon, which steals the labor of its victims. Make no mistake, God wants to see people set free from bondage.

Let us pray that the curse of slavery will be banished from our world. We must ask and give forgiveness so that God’s blessings can bring healing, and reverse the curse.

In recent weeks we’ve seen horror stories come out of Iraq as the fanatic Islamist “Caliphate” has begun a genocidal campaign against Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq.

The Yazadis, a group following the Zoroastrian religion of the ancient Persian Empire, with a mixture of Islamic and other religions, faced extinction as the Caliphate army has driven them out of their homes. The Caliphate also set their sights on the Kurds, a Muslim people group living in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran who are related to the Iranians. The Kurds, who have appreciated the U.S. for freeing them from persecution under Saddam Hussein, are asking for help to fight off the Caliphate forces. And, finally, it appears that America has responded with humanitarian aid for the Yazadis and military aid for the Kurds.

Meanwhile the Chrsitian population of Mosul (formerly Nineveh) and other areas in Northern Iraq has been told to convert or die. These ancient communities were actually welcomed by the real Islamic Caliphate of 1200 years ago, and included Nestorian Christians who has carried the Gospel to China. Even before the Caliphate persecution, over a million Christians had fled from the increasingly hostile area of Northern Iraq. The persecution and genocide against Christians, it seems, has not drawn the humanitarian outcry and response that the persecution of the Yazadis has drawn. As Americans, we were right to help the Yazadis but wrong to neglect the Christians.

American politics has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq. We have wasted the sacrifices of our troops and abandoned our friends in a shameful rush to make political points back home. Now the consequences of our reckless retreat, easily foreseen and easily preventable, have come to pass. Their blood is on our hands.

The Church in America cannot turn its back on the suffering Church and people in Iraq. We must intercede for our brothers and pray that our leaders will have wisdom and compassion, repenting of their errors and not compounding them by covering them over.

We must also pray that the American Church will be moved with compassion to meet the needs in Iraq. The refugees need food, water, clothing and shelter. We can and should send help in the name of Jesus. We must also pray blessings on the Islamists, that their eyes will be opened to the truth and their hearts to God.

Oh, and don’t foreget to pray that the Yazadis will be open to the saving message of Christ.

In the end, our spiritual weapons of prayer and love can overcome Satan’s weapons of hate and fear. Lets start using them.

            This week marks the 40^th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

The sad story of Nixon’s fall and the Watergate Scandal have become deeply ingrained in the American psyche. We now know that, in his desire to be reelected, President Nixon directed a campaign of sabotage against the other party which led up to the botched break in to their offices in 1972. Over the next two years investigators in and out of government followed the evidence from the lowest levels into the White House and then to the President himself. Dozens of politicians were disgraced in the Watergate Scandal.

One of the disgraced politicians was Charles Colson, but his story did not end with Watergate because this week also marks the 41^th anniversary of his conversion to Christianity and salvation. Scandal stopped him in his tracks, and Mr. Colson went to jail. But, like the Apostle Paul, he used his jail time for God’s purposes. When he got out, he founded Prison Fellowship and ultimately became a respected Christian leader.

Colson’s life illustrates the power of the Gospel: that God loves us and will not only forgive our sins but will restore our lives. It is a message Colson carried to prisoners and it is a message that the Church is commanded to bring to society: failure is not final with God, and that’s why they call it the “Good News”.

Today, as we look at scandals rolling their way up through government agencies, we see another example of political ambition turned wrong. We’re also beginning to see people like Charles Colson caught up in the web of scandal.

Our job as Christians is to pray for those people, as we should pray for all sinners. Some are enemies of the Church, but we should pray blessings on our enemies and hope that they have an encounter with God like Charles Colson and the Apostle Paul did.

Then there is the President. One of our intercessors once had a vision of another President famous for scandals, a vision where he was wrapped up like a mummy. The intercessor was given to understand that the wrapping represented the curses of Church people, and that God would not deal with the President because of this wrapping. The intercessor and others began to pray blessings and not cursing on the President, and shortly thereafter the truth behind a scandal was revealed. Ultimately that President had to make a public apology for his actions, and we can only hope that he asked God’s forgiveness as well.

We must begin blessing and not cursing President Obama. Let us pray that his eyes will be opened and that he will have a Damascus Road experience of his own.

Above all we pray for our President that, like Charles Colson, he will have a closer walk with God.

 In 1918 a new strain of influenza emerged which eventually killed as many as 100 million people. Unlike most illnesses, most of the victims were young and healthy. The reason for this mystery was soon discovered: the victims were not killed by the disease, but by their own immune system’s response to the disease.

 Like the human body, our social body also has an immune system designed to fight off toxins. The immune system is composed of our laws and those who enforce them. The toxins are people whose behavior is damaging to society. But in America we are reaching the point where, like the 1918 influenza pandemic, our immune system is attacking the body.

Take the war on drugs. We all know that drug abuse is a terrible thing, so we passed laws against drug abuse and drug dealing. The effect of those laws was to criminalize common behavior in many minority communities and thrust the drug dealing business into a highly profitable big business. We passed more laws with tougher penalties, sending many minority community members to prison and allowing law enforcement to seize suspect property. The result is a devastated minority community and laws that let police confiscate cash from anyone, as in a recent case where a man on his way to buy a car had his money seized by police. The immune system has turned on the body, creating toxic results.

There is real oppression in the minority communities, but it comes not from the old evil of racism, but from the modern war on drugs. The minority community lives this reality, while most middle class whites are unable to understand what would drive a young men into a life of drugs and gangs. Thus, more division is created as the social body is infected with more and more toxins.

It is time for Christians to deploy their spiritual weapons to bring healing to our society. The spiritual weapons needed are love and forgiveness, and we are going to have to let go of some of our cherished political positions to do so. We must admit that the war on drugs, like prohibition before it, is a good idea gone bad. We have made criminals richer and prisons fuller, destabilized minority communities and put all of our freedoms at risk, caused crime wars in our cities and abroad, and subsidized killers and terrorists around the world.

Drug crime can be stopped the same way prohibition era bootlegging was: legalize it, tame it, and tax it. Laws can be changed to restore our freedoms, and restoration can begin in the minority communities. Such monumental changes will not come unless the Church humbles itself, prays, seeks God’s face and repents (2 Chr 7:14). Then God will forgive and heal our land.

Let us pray that the Church will awaken to society’s immune system disorder and use its spiritual warfare weapons to heal our land.

 Just the days after the Americans celebrate their Revolution, the French celebrate theirs, on Bastille Day July 14.

The two revolutions could not have been more different. The Americans honored God (See our Blog of 7/2/14 “Declaration Day”). The French, on the other hand, adopted the atheistic, anti-Christian values of the French Enlightenment and set out to eradicate God from public life. Churches were closed, priests were persecuted, and the calendar was remade without any Christian holidays. To replace the Virgin Mary, the revolutionary leaders invented the atheistic “Goddess of Liberty”, which became the emblem of Godless liberty.

The fruit of the revolutions was also very different. America became a beacon of hope for the world as it worked to make its dream of equality and God given rights become a reality. In France, the godless foundation of the revolution meant that all moral restraint on power evaporated, and the infamous Reign of Terror began. Neither life no liberty were safe, and even the leaders were carried off one by one to the Terror. Finally order was restored but all hope of liberty vanished under the iron fisted rule of Napoleon Bonaparte. It turns out that Godless liberty is no liberty at all.

Sad to say, the lesson of the French Revolution has been repeated over and over since then. The Communist revolutions in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, and elsewhere produced massive death and eliminated freedom. The same holds true for the Nazis in Germany and the Fascists in Italy who, like Napoleon, lead the whole world into war. The post colonial socialists in Africa grabbed power after elections, giving rise to the famous statement of “One man, one vote, one time”. And now we watch the same thing happen as Islamist extremists try to turn the “Arab Spring” into winter for the God given rights of their people.

Our hearts and our prayers go out to the people in the Middle East who are struggling to achieve some measure of equality and freedom. We especially pray for the persecuted Christian minorities in places like Iraq and Syria who are continually under persecution from the Islamist Militants. And let us also not forget Israel, which is caught between the Sunni and Shia in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria.

Let us pray that the precious gift of Godly Liberty, and especially religious liberty, can overcome the evil of Godless liberty.