Anglican Mainstream

If God's people had always 'steered clear' of politics: 

1. The Hebrew midwives wouldn’t have disobeyed Pharaoh to save the baby boys;

2. Moses wouldn’t have confronted Pharaoh in order free his people from slavery;
3. Rahab wouldn’t have lied to save the lives of the Hebrew spies;

4. Nathan wouldn’t have confronted David about Bathsheba; there would be no Ps. 51;
5. Daniel wouldn’t have disobeyed the new law about prayer and there would be no story about Daniel in the Lion’s den;

6. Daniel’s friends wouldn’t have disobeyed the king’s decree and there would be no story about their rescue from the fiery furnace;
7. Esther wouldn’t have risked her life in an appeal to King Xerxes to save the Jews;
8. The wise men wouldn’t have disobeyed King Herod to protect Jesus;
9. John the Baptist wouldn’t have confronted King Herod about his adultery;
10. Jesus wouldn’t have called Herod a “fox” and told his followers to: “Render unto Caesar [only] the things that are Caesar’s.”

11. Peter and the Apostles would have obeyed the authorities and would not have said: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29);

12. St. Paul would not have appealed to Caesar in his own legal defense (Acts 25);
13. Ignatius would have obeyed the emperor and escaped the lions in the Colosseum;
14. Polycarp would have obeyed the governor and not been burned at the stake;
15. Justin would have appeased the governor and escaped martyrdom in 166 A.D.;
16. Cyprian would have appeased the emperor and escaped beheading in 258 A.D.;
17. Telemachus wouldn’t have given his life to stop the gladiator fights in 404 A.D.;

18. Becket wouldn’t have challenged Henry II and been murdered in 1170 A.D.;
19. The English nobles wouldn’t have challenged royal tyranny in 1215 A.D.;
20.  Luther wouldn’t have told the emperor: “Here I stand.  I can do no other;” nor would he have translated the Bible or started the Reformation;

21. Tyndale wouldn’t have translated the Bible and been burned at the stake in 1536;
22. Robert Raikes wouldn’t have challenged British child-labor laws to begin the Sunday School movement in 1780 in an attempt to reach children for Christ;

23. John Wesley wouldn’t have championed abolition and prison reform;

24. William Wilberforce wouldn’t have labored for twenty years to stop the slave trade;

25. Abraham Lincoln would never have signed the Emancipation Proclamation;
26. Mary Slessor wouldn’t have fought the vicious, entrenched tribal customs in Africa;
27. Amy Carmichael wouldn’t have rescued girls from Hindu temples in India;
28. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Cory ten Boom and hundreds of other Christians would never have risked their lives to save Jews from the concentration camps and gas ovens;

29. Martin Luther King Jr. would never have challenged racial segregation;

30. There would have been no abolition of slavery; no prohibition against prostitution; no prison reform; and no restrictions upon abortion, infanticide or euthanasia.

Dr Norman Lund is a High School teacher in Seattle, WA.  Norm and his wife Judith have three daughters. He did his Ph.D. in Systematic  Theology at Wycliffe College in Toronto, Canada.  
Email: nlund@oxfordtutorials.com

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