Unsilenced

That's the name of a recent Billy Graham documentary related to the attempt to silence Franklin Graham’s UK “God Loves You” tour. It is worth the watch and only takes about 30 minutes. You can view it here . It chronicles how a few anti-God leftist convinced the political elite in the United Kingdom to cancel the Graham crusades throughout England in 2019-2020. Even though numerous coliseums had signed legal contracts to host the events, cultural pressure initially caused them to illegally renege on the agreements and cancel the events. The Graham organization fought the cancelations in the English court system and finally after a couple of years won and were allowed to reschedule most of the meetings.

How did leftists initially shut down the events? They accused the Graham organization of hosting events full of “hate speech,” although the events were not in any way focused on any social or cultural issues but were rather gatherings designed for the single purpose of presenting the gospel and the Love of God to the communities where they were scheduled.
This is of course one of the new strategies sourced from hell, and used by culture warriors to marginalize and, if possible, eliminate the proclamation of the Christian message. Fortunately, and after significant legal challenges, the cancelations were not upheld. But this was and is a foreshadowing of the kind of increasing hostility on both freedom of speech and religion in the United Kingdom and America.

Regarding these issues Erwin Lutzer writes, “George Orwell, whom all of us should be reading, said it best: ‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’ Lutzer goes on to add, ‘Here is the irony: The censurers—the radicals who are all too ready to deny freedom to those who disagree with them—are perceived in our culture as being tolerant, while those who desire to adhere to Christian or traditional views are considered intolerant. In other words, the philosophy of the left is this: Preach tolerance, but practice inflexible intolerance against anyone who has the courage to express a different point of view.’ Adding, ‘There are two ways culture attempts to intimidate Christians. One is to criminalize what they say or do, and the other is to shame them. Many Christians will not be talked out of their faith, but they will be mocked out of it. Shame will cause many Christians to retreat into silence.’ Perhaps one 6-year old’s definition of “tolerance” describes today’s speech police best… ‘tolerance is the freedom to say anything you want as long as you do not say something I don’t like.’”

Don’t be surprised to see supposed “hate speech legislation” increasing as a guise for restricting the Christian witness. For Christian’s to speak and differ with the culture will be defined as hate speech and thus illegal. It has already happened in Canada with laws that forbid pastors to preach against things like same-sex marriage on television. One pastor was sentenced to 340 hours of sensitivity training by an imam for speaking out against Islam.

Gone are the days reflected in the old statement, “I may disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.” Those days are gone—in our universities, in our workplaces, in the military, and in some cases even our churches.

Standing on the scripture must be our foundation. And as scripture says, we must, in love, speak the truth. Knowing that there are many with an agenda looking for an opportunity to accuse us, even assault us, calling us names, and declaring us guilty, unloving, and intolerant, let us as Paul said, season our speech with grace and salt, but never be ashamed of declaring the gospel.

Remember, God is always trying to take you someplace new. I love being your Pastor!

For God’s Glory Alone,
Pastor Ray