Slavery was the moral issue of the 19th century. And the abolition movement was made up of northern Christians and ex patriot southern Christians. This is what the secular media doesn’t talk about much. But William Lloyd Garrison of the Liberator, Charles Finney, William Wilberforce of England all were evangelical Christians.
This is why I find it sickening that Graham defended a statue dedicated to Robert E. Lee put up during the 2nd period where the klan was ascendent. My forefathers spoke out against slavery. I wonder what Graham’s did?
There were many ministers who bowed down for the evil that was slavery. They used the curse of Ham to say that ” why make equal what God has made unequal” disregarding Galatians 18 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
One notorious Whore for slavery and White Supremecy was a Southern Baptist minister from Macon Georgia named Ebenezer Warren. These are his own words. From his own pulpit.
…Slavery forms a vital element of the Divine Revelation to man. Its institution, regulation, and perpetuity, constitute a part of many of the books of the Bible …. The public mind needs enlightening from the sacred teachings of inspiration on this subject …. We of the South have been passive, hoping the storm would subside …. Our passiveness has been our sin. We have not come to the vindication of God and of truth, as duty demanded …. it is necessary for ministers of the gospel … to teach slavery from the pulpit, as it was taught by the holy men of old, who spake as moved by the holy Spirit …. Both Christianity and Slavery are from heaven; both are blessings to humanity; both are to be perpetuated to the end of time …. Because Slavery is right; and because the condition of the slaves affords them all those privileges which would prove substantial blessings to them; and, too, because their Maker has decreed their bondage, and has given them, as a race, capacities and aspirations suited alone to this condition of life ….
No Christian now except for those on the far alt-right neo-confederate side would agree with these words. But thousands did at the time. He could have been Brave and stood up and spoke out against it. And now many Southern Baptists are saying that war was not about slavery even though their own church, their own sinful church said this in a May 1863 Southern Baptist Convention on slavery.
… the war which has been forced upon us by our assailants, is grounded in opposition to an institution which is sustained by the sanctions of religion. They [Northerners] assume that slavery is a sin and therefore ought to be abolished. We contend that it is a Scriptural institution. The very nature of the contest takes the point in dispute out of the category of politics, and delegates it to the sphere of Christianity. We are really contending for the precepts of religion, against the devices of the wisdom of this world, and it is, therefore, not only the policy, but the duty of religious bodies to define their position in this great contest. The [SBC] convention has done well in giving unambiguous utterance to its sentiments on this subject.
Thankfully the Southern Baptist Convention repented of this sin but looking at the confederate flags at Charlottesville and the defending of the statues. I don’t think they got the memo.
Compare this to the true Bride of Christ during this time, Charles Finney, the man who started the 2nd great awakening and Franklin Graham if he would gird up his loins and follows suit might trigger the 3rd.
The startling fact is but too apparent that our Union is virtually a slaveholding state, and that Congress have seriously undertaken to make the entire domain of our country a slaveholding land. They enact their Fugitive Slave Bill into so-called law, and then send their commissioned agents into the free states, upon free soil, to compel free men, whose souls abhor slavery, to become slave-catchers, and to deliver up unto their masters or claimants, the servant that has escaped–in the very face of God’s own command to the contrary, not to say also in the very face of every dictate of humanity. When the Northern states set their own slaves free, they had no thought of ever being dragged thus into the support of slavery. They expected, and were authorized to expect that the example of emancipation would be followed by the Southern states. But instead of this, what do we see? Laws enacted by Congress which people all the free states with commissioners authorized to seize men as slaves–which deny them a jury trial and the right of habeas corpus–which leave them only the miserable mockery of the forms of trial, and which then, under heavy pains and penalties, compel us to sustain all this iniquity, and aid in dragging the arrested victim into hopeless bondage.
So in this series devoted to Franklin Graham. Where I ask is he part of the Bride of Christ or is he simply like Ebenezer Warren either a coward who is playing and afraid of his base, or a man who actually agrees in supporting a man who is the symbol of pride. Does he actually agree with this administrations racist immigration policy that will doom thousands of innocent refugees both Christian and Muslim to war torn lives?
I don’t know. But I do know this is the moment of Decision. Will He make the right one and lead a revival to rival the 2nd great awakening or just end up in the dustbin of history filled with all the other false prophets who went before him.?
2timothytrump 