Luke 4:1-30
“LETTER TO THE AMERICAN CHURCH” by Eric Metaxas
“What could conceivably be more deserving of complete freedom than that form – of all forms – of public speech? And if the conscience of the man of God in that pulpit would cause him to speak for or against a candidate, what is that to the U.S. government? In fact, it is none of its business.
Have we forgotten that pastors in the eighteenth century spoke boldly from their colonial pulpits against the tyranny of King George III, and opposed him by name? Was it not their voices that helped us to gain our freedoms and that helped us to create a Constitution in which all of our freedoms were enshrined in a way that has been the envy of the whole world ever since? Were pastors from their American pulpits in the nineteenth century not allowed to speak against those candidates who expressed racist and pro-slavery views? Did they not even have an obligation to educate their congregations on such things and to encourage them to choose leaders who shared God’s views?
This is no way for any Christian – much less a pastor – to parse what he may be ‘allowed’ to say, and certainly not from the pulpit. It can only be God – and our conscience guided by Him – that can determine what we should and shouldn’t say. So our total freedom – in and beyond our pulpits – is nonnegotiable. The truth cannot be contained and certainly not in categories that have been arbitrarily chosen and defined by others.”
“Perhaps the more important question is: why did Christian leaders submit to these un-Christian and un-American ideas? And why are they submitting to them today? Have they forgotten what the Scriptures say; that if they honor God, He will honor them?
Have they become like the leaders of American corporations, who have especially cowardly and seem willing to say and do whatever someone advises them is necessary to avoid trouble and keep them for being ‘cancelled’?
Have the blessings we have in America made us so comfortable and so soft that we have forgotten that God expects us to serve Him with everything we have, and that if we are in leadership, He requires us to understand that our greater position of authority comes with even greater expectations? Of course, many American pastors probably never had this kind of faith to begin with. And there are some who once had it, but who over time have lost their first love and drifted to that awful point at which they are in danger of judgment, just as the German Christians in the 1930 and just as the Christians in Ephesus in the first century were.”
“We Will Not Be Silenced” by Erwin Lutzer
This is a headline from THE JERUSALEM POST: “The Looting – and Muting – of America”
That headline appeared with on op-ed piece on June 18, 2020. It began, “America, I’m worried about you.” Then after a description of the riots that occurred after George Floyd’s death, the author continued. “Extreme as it may sound, when I saw the scenes of hundreds of store windows smashed and wild gangs of hoodlums allowed to rob at will -as law enforcement personnel stood immobile on the sidelines – I could not help but think of the image of Kristallnacht, 1938.”
“The Gestapo chief Heinrich Muller sent a telegram to all police units letting them know what was going to happen, and said the events ‘were not to be interfered with.’ Fire departments were told to let fires burn. Mobs killed Jews and vandalized businesses as the police and politicians watched.
Likewise, the anarchists who looted, burned, and destroyed more than 500 buildings in Minneapolis in May of 2020 were also ‘seeking justice for George Floyd. Kristallnacht indeed.
At a rally, one Antifa speaker echoed the words of murdered Nazi official Gregor Strasser;
‘We are Socialists, enemies, mortal enemies of the present capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, with its injustice in wages, with its immoral evaluation of individuals according to wealth and money instead of responsibility and achievement, and we are determined under all circumstances to abolish this system!’
How will this political movement accomplish their objective? By using the same tactics as the Nazi SA – Hitler’s Brownshirts – who disrupted meetings, halted free speech, and caused mayhem. No wonder one observer said that ‘they claim the unlimited right to police American’s freedom of speech, using violence and illegality to destroy anyone left-wing activists consider ‘racist’ or oppressive.’ Perhaps the only difference is that Hitler’s SA wore brown shirts and Antifa wears black masks.”
“Why the Censors Fear Information Freedom” by Jeffrey Tucker
“This is the age of censorship, pushed by government and interests and enacted by wholly captured Big Tech firms.
If, for three years, you had a sense that you were being fed a canned line through all major media platforms, that the science was being filtered, that the talking heads were merely telling you what they were told to tell you, that dissent was being crushed, you aren’t wrong. This is exactly what was happening.
We now know about a series of emails between former FDA commissioner and Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb and tech firms concerning the writings of Alex Berenson. Berenson was an early critic of COVID policies and among the first to sound the alarm about vaccine efficacy and safety. Gottlieb targeted Berenson by name and told Twitter and others precisely what needed to happen as soon as possible. Berenson had to be silenced.
It’s true that Gottlieb wasn’t a government employee at the time, but these things can get murky. We know from many reports inside the White House that Jared Kushner consulted him directly in the days when they were twisting Trump’s arm to approve a lockdown of society. Gottlieb’s connections in and out of government regulatory agencies are vast. It’s one case of hundreds, thousands, and countless other cases. People write me daily to report that LinkedIn has taken down a message without warning, that Facebook has slapped a warning on a post, that Twitter has taken down their account, or that Google’s You Tube has dinged or deleted their account. More intense forms are happening in web hosting (Amazon can throw you off) and even finance. PayPal has cut many individuals and institutions from access and even dared floating a fee for ‘misinformation’ – a word we now understand to mean opinions not approved by ruling class censors. If this practice is rolled our further – and there’s no question that many intend to do so – we could find ourselves surrounded in a Chinese-like social credit system.”