Leaders have a Voice:
Franklin Graham & Alveda King
Franklin Graham
The Antidote to Fear
“Believers in our
Risen Lord and Savior to stand firm in their faith and bear strong and godly
witness to a panicked world” (Graham).
-Inflation: cost of groceries, gas, and heating bills
-Violence: brazen daylight brutal attacks, shootings,
looters, and stealing. Evil acts have made people feel unsafe and helpless
-Government: turning our country into a socialist welfare
state
“God recognizes that fear does rise in the believer’s heart
on occasion. The Lord knows our tendency to worry and fret, and He also tells
us what to do about our worries” (Graham).
Psalm 56: 3-4 “when I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In
God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh (or any circumstance in life)
do to me?”
We can look confidently to all-knowing, all-powerful,
Almighty God in simple trust and faith when the turbulent waves of anxiety that
sweep through our so easily frightened culture are raging.
Ecclesiastes 12:13 “Fear God and keep his commandments, for
this is the whole duty of man.”
R. Albert Mohler Jr. (Pres.
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary & Boyce College)
Duty Calls: The
Mandate for Christian Citizens
“Christians in the United States hold dual citizenship. The
Apostle Paul spoke to all Christians that we are citizens of a heavenly
kingdom. Our heavenly citizenship is the most important possession we have
secured by Jesus Christ our Savior” (Mohler).
No Earthly citizenship compares to eternal citizenship in
Heaven. Paul even claimed his Roman citizenship when he was unjustly arrested
Paul for preaching the Gospel in Jerusalem. “I am a citizen by birth” Paul
announced (Acts 22:28).
Like Paul, Christians are American citizens who have dual
citizenship. Augustine, one of the fathers of the ancient church, taught his
flock to understand that there are two cities that demand our attention and
allegiance. The City of God and the City of Man.
-City on Earth: the drive is for the love of humanity itself
-City of God: the
passion is for the love of God
“He was trying to help Christians be faithful in our earthly
citizenship, even as we wait for Heaven” (Mohler).
Christians are called to be salt and light in a darkening
culture, and faithfulness calls out our deepest convictions and our active discipleship:
Our Voice
1. Christian citizens must exercise the power f our voices
and speak truth about the issues of our day.
2. The left chants “silence is violence,” but Christians
must know that silence is unfaithfulness.
3. We are called to tell the truth, even when it costs us.
4. Speak on behalf of the unborn; against the destruction of
precious human lives in the womb.
5. Speak out for marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
6. Speak out for the sanctity of the family as the most essential
unit of human civilization.
7. Speak for righteousness and goodness and contend for laws
that are just for policies that uphold what is right.
8. The Christian citizen must be ready to speak, to make
arguments, to engage in conversations and to make our convictions known.
-Book of Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time to speak and
when it is right to be silent.
-The prophet Ezekiel tells us that a failure to speak when
danger approaches is a horrible sin. The Watchman on the Wall is to make the warning
clear.
9. Christian citizens must be ready to speak, to make
arguments, to engage in conversations and to make our convictions known.
Our Vote
1. American constitutional system is based upon the right
and responsibility of citizens to vote.
2. Participate in elections and fulfill the citizen’s duty
to choose the best candidates and make the right choices, vote by vote.
3. Voting is an enormous act of stewardship, so all
elections are important from national elections to those offices such as the
local school board.
Our Victory
“Politics Is not for the faint of heart, and Christians know
the political fray can be tumultuous. Furthermore, we do not win every battle
or election. But we stay involved, engaged and energetic, knowing that we must
work for what is right until Jesus comes. We will know both victory and
setbacks in the City of Man, but only victory in the City of God. Every vote
count, every election matters, and every Christian citizen is called to be
faithful. We have work to do, and DUTY CALLS” (Mohler).
“Choosing courage over comfort; choosing what is right over
what is fun, fast or easy; and choosing to practice our values rather than
simply professing them” (Brene’ Brown).
Alveda King
The Gospel’s Answer
to Racism
Critical Race Theory: Seven Hard Truths
1. America is about individual equality, not group equity
-The idea behind CRT is that America is just groups, defined
by skin color. They do not see America as individuals with separate souls,
goals, dreams, schemes, skills, hopes, and God-given attributes.
-As a self-governing people, we have a constitution that
recognizes our individuality, gives us each the same rights under law. Our
differences give us separate paths to success, defined by free will. No group
equity is written in the Constitution.
2. Equal opportunity is not an equal outcome. The
Constitution gives all Americans an equal shot: education, employment, property
ownership, returns, and resilience. Equal protection means the right to rise or
fall, to succeed or fail= equal under the law
-CRT concentrates power to equalize outcomes, regardless of
who earned what. Hard work and trust in the individual are gone.
3. CRT is itself racist. CRT not only assigns all life
grievances by one race to another. Merit based achievement is rejected in favor
of reverse racism. Easier to hate and blame than love and support.
-Teaches the assumption that we are not equal in God’s eyes
or the eyes of the law, and never can be in each other’s eyes. Teaches children
resentment, blame, and hopelessness. This kills the American Dream.
4. CRT denies upward mobility. It denies that hard wok and
equal protection succeed. Upward mobility is the gaping hole in Marx’s bucket,
draining it of power.
-To believe in CRT, you must believe your skin color defines
your ability to succeed.
5. CRT immorally pushes intergenerational guilt. It is a
fraud because the only way to justify putting one race down for another and
openly teaching resentments is to pin the past on the present.
-Intentional guilt infliction of intergenerational guilt,
making successors responsible for ancestors, is fundamentally immoral.
-Morality centers on individual accountability
-Individual sovereignty under natural, constitutional, and
statute law; every life is sacred and belongs to itself.
-debt slavery and peonage and CRT are concepts that builds
resentment is immoral
Ezekiel 18:20 “The child shall not share the guilt of the
parent.”
6. CRT empowers elites to persecute: Marxist countries uses
racial, ethnic, religious, or economic group to blame for society’s ills (elite
push mass persecution)
7. CRT ignores data. America The biggest lie is that America
is racist.
-America attracts more minorities than any country in the
world.
-By wealth, Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans account for
25% of America’s Millionaires
-American dream is upward mobility through Capitalism-work
hard and you will be successful
“CRT is Marxism, pushing resentment, blame, guilt, fear,
silence, and compliance. Do not buy it. Americans cleave by values, not skin
color. Critical race theory is junk--A disgrace.” Robert B. Charles
The Problem with the
1619 Project
“Together with
critical race theory, wokeness, and cancel culture, parents and patriots alike
will have to monitor their local school curricula carefully.” Jeff Szymanski
Claim: August 1619 a ship arrived in coastal port in the
British colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were
sold to colonists. America was not yet America, but this was the moment it
began.
Written: summer of 2020 after the death of George Floyd
Problems:
1. “One critical reason that the colonists declared their
independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of
slavery in the colonies, which had produced tremendous wealth.”
Nikole Hannah-Jones “Our democracy’s ideals were false when
they were written.” And “Some of the colonists fought to preserve slavery.”
2. History: American Revolution originated as a rallying cry
of “no taxation without representation” as Great Britain levied taxes on
colonists in America without any input (Tax on Tea)
3. America’s founding takes on a dark view where blacks
forever struggle for rights that will never be achieved. “anti-black racism
runs in the very DNA of the country.” (Hannah-Jones).
4. Leads to political paralysis as there is nothing, we can
do to get out of it as you can’t alter DNA.
-America is so inherently racist to its core that people
cannot grow or change over time.
-Education itself would be useless as society fated to be
racist forever.
Promotes:
-Curriculum: Hannah-Jones claim that she discovered a
fundamental truth about American History that has eluded the historical
profession: That the central defining feature of American history and culture
is racism
-Redefines America’s history as a struggle between
‘oppressors (white people)’ and the ‘oppressed (everybody else)’
-Marxism’s reduction of human history: majority-white
societies are “systemically” or “structurally racist.”
-used to divide American people based on color of their skin
that creates dysfunction, hate, and strife between white Americans and black
Americans which is opposite of Dr. Martin Luther’s teaching of not being judged
by the color of your skin but content of your character.
Negates:
-Pilgrims landed in the Mayflower in 1620 in Massachusetts
-1776 Traditional date of the Declaration of Independence is
our National Holiday on July 4th
“A racially divisive, revisionist account of history that
denies the noble principles of freedom and equality on which our nation was
founded Not a single cent of federal funding should go to indoctrinate young
Americans with this left-wing garbage.” Senator Tom Cotton
Affecting Today:
HR 1 (S1) “For the People Act” applies racially
discriminatory Jim Crow descriptions of state election reform and integrity
laws. (ID at the polls is discriminatory as marginalized people of color don’t
have access to get an ID to vote)
-used in the disastrous “open border” policy which is an
egregious assault on our nation’s sovereignty and the safety of Americans.
-used to increate punitive tax increases that spawned
inflation, high interest rates, business closures, and job losses leading to
dependency on the federal government welfare (tenant of national socialism)
Voting Rights Act: Give the Justice Department’s Civil
Rights division the authority to march into any election to pick political and
economic winners and losers.
HR 5 “Equality Act” intended to sow division between sexual
identity and biological sex issues that arise in the broad range of community,
educational, religious, and sports and recreational circumstance.
HR 842 “Protecting the Right to Organize Act” intended to
increase Democrat party control by promoting labor union organization and power
in businesses also known as “Workers of the World, Unite!” right out of Marx
and Engel’s Communist Manifesto.
Examples: Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police, Cancel
Culture, and Critical Race Theory