Speak Up!

It’s been a momentous week with the devastation of Hurricane Helene, Iran launching missiles into Israel, and last night’s vice presidential debate. There’s much for which we must pray and act as God leads us. 

Central to many world events is another very important issue. Vast forces of evil, both demonic and human, are trying to limit free speech worldwide. But momentum is building on the side of truth.

Now is the time to speak up!

Speak Up!

I apologize to my students for using an exclamation point in both the title and the introduction. I teach that exclamation points should be rare in professional writing because they smack of amateurish sensationalism. We should use powerful, expressive words to make the reader exclaim by themselves. 

But I’m breaking the rule today because I want to make a point: We are slowly losing freedom of speech in our world to make way for totalitarianism. 

It’s past time to speak up.

A recent article by the Heritage Foundation in The Daily Signal reveals the growing problem. They reported that fully 58% of Americans said they cannot express their private opinions publicly, and 61% admit to “self-silencing” their political views, according to the survey. 

Only 36% of Democrats publicly said that they trust the government to tell the truth, but only 5% agreed with the statement in private, according to the survey. Similarly, 42% of Democrats publicly report that they trust the media to tell the truth, while just 9% reiterated this belief in private.

I contend that “self-silencing” is a sin that leads to devastating consequences.

Lloyd Pugh, one of my former high school teachers, recently gave me Erwin Lutzer’s best-selling book Hitler’s Cross: How the Cross Was Used to Promote the Nazi Agenda. Written in 1995, it’s so relevant today that I’m reading it for the third time in a month. I strongly recommend you buy a copy.

In three chapters on the rise of Nazism which led to the slaughter of of 20 million people in World War II, Lutzer gives clear evidence how the Church (and most other Germans) became deceived, divided, and then dismembered as a people. They allowed the propaganda to take over their nation, went silent, and then woke up when it was too late. 

On “The Church is Deceived”: “Hitler said, ‘They will betray God to us.’ Unfortunately, many pastors did just that…In the dark night of persecution they betrayed their God. In the end, both Catholics and Protestants found themselves powerless to stop the Nazi steamroller.” And: “Whether in Nazi Germany or America today, believers cannot choose to be silent under the guise of preaching the gospel. Because, as Hitler mused, ‘One god must dominate another.’ He began by demanding an inch, then a yard, and finally a whole mile.”

In “The Church is Divided,” begins with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a hero of the Nazi resistance, appealing to the believers in Germany: “The church will not be taken form us…Come you who have been left alone, you who have lost the church, let us return to [the Bible], let us go forth and seek the church together…For the times, which are times of collapse to the human understanding may well be for her a great time of building…Church, remain a church: “Confess! Confess! Confess!” 

Which means in modern vernacular: “Speak up!”

In 1933, Bonhoeffer admonished a World Alliance conference: “Speak out so that though the world gnash its teeth, will have to hear, so that the peoples will rejoice because the Church has taken the weapons from the hands of their sons, forbidden war, and proclaimed the peace of Christ against the raging world.” In 1934 he rebuked the German Church leaders for adopting an “attitude of safety first” (shutting up to not make waves).

At another Church Synod in 1934, Bonhoeffer was grieved that “the Church managed to skirt the major issues (of resisting Nazism). No word was spoken about the freedom to teach and preach the Gospel. Hitler’s perversion of the German Church was not addressed. Nor was a word spoken on behalf of the Jews.”

That cowardly silence led to the murder of six million of God’s people (two-thirds of all European Jews).

And in “The Church is Dismembered, Lutzer says the majority of pastors and churches “capitulated,” some even taking an oath of loyalty to Hitler. Most of them went silent on on the great issues of the day.

Dr. Martin Niemoller was a courageous exception. He boldly proclaimed, “We have no more thought of using our own powers to escape the arm of the authorities than had the apostles of old. No more are we ready to keep silent at man’s behest when God commands us to speak…We must obey God rather than man.”

Niemoller suffered for seven years in a concentration camp. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was shot to death by the Nazis on April 9, 1945 at the age of 39. There is a price to speaking truth in the face of evil. We learn that from the example of Jesus Himself.

But follow the Master we must.

In Judges 19 we read the story of the Levite and his concubine during a time of growing evil in early Israel. After the young woman is brutally raped and killed in the city from which we get the term “sodomy,”  the Levite announces the need of the hour:

“Such a thing has never been seen or done, not since the day the Israelites came up out of Egypt. Just imagine! We must do something! So speak up!” (Judges 19:30).

We must do the same.

Abortion kills babies. A nation without borders is not a nation. There are only two genders–male and female. Child mutilation (transgender operations ) is destructive. Bigger central government leads to socialism, Marxism, totalitarianism and fascism. Iran is a terrorist nation. Israel is a peace-loving democracy. And on and on.

The Church must repent of its cowardice and silence and regain its prophetic voice. We must speak up because the present world elite want to take away freedom of speech. John Kerry said recently at the World Economic Forum:

Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to hammer [disinformation] out of existence. What we need is to win…the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change.”

That totalitarian attitude is the true threat to democracy.

Matt Taibbi warned recently at the “Rescue the Republic Event” in Washington, D.C.: 

Because “freedom of speech” is now frequently described as a stalking horse for hate and discrimination — the UN High Commissioner scolded Elon Musk that “free speech is not a free pass” — it’s becoming one of those soon-to-be-extinct terms. Speech is mentioned in “reputable” media only as a possible vector for the informational disease known as misinformation.

The end game is not controlling speech. They’re already doing that. The endgame is getting us to forget we ever had anything to say.

It’s time for us to speak the truth to our world. Let Matthew 10: 26-28 (The Message) empower you:

“Don’t be intimidated. Eventually everything’s going to be out in the open, and everyone will know how things really are. So don’t hesitate to go public now. Don’t be bluffed into silence by the threats of bullies. There’s nothing they can do to your soul, your core being. Save your fear for God, who holds your entire life–body and soul–in his hands.”

Through God’s grace and truth, let’s speak up!