1 Kings 3:9 “Therefore give to Your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people, that I may discern between good and evil. For who is able to judge this great people of Yours?”
Clear back on 2001, Pastor Kennedy said that in recent years we have read and heard a good bit about the fact that we are involved in a “culture war” in this country. Having examined that issue in some depth for many years, I certainly would have to agree with the commentators who put it that way. It is a war for the minds and souls and lives of every American, and it has been going on a pace and growing in intensity. It is ultimately a battle of faith against unbelief. You may hear it described in many other ways, but I want you to remember that this is ultimately a battle for God or against Him.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the great German writer, has said that the only struggle [in this world] worth our attention and our effort is the struggle between faith and unbelief. We are living through just such a period in our country today in 2020 and the division in this country is obvious. Mortimer Adler, who edited the Great Books of the Western World, said that faith in God has more consequences for life action than any other factor. So, this is a pervasive, all-inclusive war we are engaged in.
Kennedy states that the first phase of any war, as a general will tell you, is the semantical phase, and that is where we have been for the last century. It is a war of words—a conflict that defines what the war is all about. The twentieth century, in almost its entirety, saw the unfolding and development of this semantical war—and I must tell you that Christians are very definitely losing. We have been out- generaled, out-strategized, and out-maneuvered on every side, and we are losing that war.
But, things are changing, and I hope they will continue to change even more. I am somewhat reminded of George Orwell’s famous classic, titled 1984. In it he talks about a tyrannical government where Big Brother was watching you and there were various departments like we never heard of before. One of them was the Department of Truth. If you were to call the Department of Truth, you would find people working twenty-four hours a day transforming truth into lies. Well, we have just such a department today in this country anwhoare calling good evil, and evil good. Now I can’t take you to a building in Washington, D.C., where it is housed, but I assure you that it does exist. Today I hope to show you a little bit of the handiwork so you can judge for yourself.
Kennedy would like to share with you three of the most strategic words in this semantic battle and the consequences of the changes and distortions in those words. Don’t ever forget that the war starts with words. For example, in 1857 the Supreme Court of the United States passed what is known as the Dred Scott Decision. In that decision they used a word: “blacks.” They said, “they are not persons.” This gave carte blanche to slavery in America. Being “not persons,” they were considered merely property. An owner could do with them whatever he wished, including killing them, because they were not persons. Does that word make any difference?
Or consider Nazi Germany. The Nazi Supreme Court passed a decision in which they said that Jews were not “persons.” The final outcome of that could be discovered at Auschwitz, but it began semantically, and that led to Kristallnacht [“night of broken glass” where nearly 200 synagogues were destroyed] and the beginning of the actual persecution. But it all was virtually settled with words. Or for that matter, you could come into America in the twentieth century, when the Supreme Court of the United States passed Roe v. Wade. (By the way, Roe now repudiates abortion, as does Doe in the Roe and Doe decisions. Both these women now repudiate abortion.) In that decision the Court said that babies in the womb were not “persons.” And almost 44 million babies have died since then in America. The semantical war can sometimes determine ghastly consequences and outcomes. If words get in the way of evil intentions, they will simply redefine the word to fit their wicked agenda.
Let's continue Pastor Kennedy's message on discerning good and evil in the next post.
In Christ, Brian
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