The Path to Freedom or The Path to Tyranny

 

Great News: You Can Choose:

The Path to Freedom or The Path to Tyranny

By Dr. Ted Baehr, Publisher

There is a cacophony of voices in America today asking and answering the question: how do we fix our society? Clearly, the majority of people feel there’s a problem, but the real choices and the consequences of those paths has escaped them, so many are following the crowd down the road to perdition.

Growing up far outside the faithful church with two Hollywood and Broadway stars as parents, I sought the answers to the angst that besets the examined life in far leftwing activities, including in the National Lawyers Guild (an overt Marxist organization, representing the infamous Chicago 7) and in radical causes such as helping to start the environmental law studies at NYU School of Law to bring down the polluting robber barons, as well as in lots of libertine pastimes, including drugs and sexual exploits. In fact, at Dartmouth in the 1960s, I participated in weekend after weekend of heavy drug use and hosted an infamous acid, Quaaludes and grain alcohol punch that sent some of my friends permanently over the edge and one into the abyss. At reunions, I am still reminded of the drug saturated party.

Just before graduation, a group of us sat on the roof of the new gym and pondered the fact that the acid and other drugs never delivered the Dr. Timothy Leary promised universal consciousness, nor did the time with a Sadhu in India, American Indian Chief Rolling Thunder in Nevada, Occult Guru Andrija Puharich, and the other days, weeks and years of serious searching while at Dartmouth, Cambridge, University of Bordeaux & Toulouse, University of Munich, NYU School of Law, Northwestern Graduate English Dept. etc with honor degrees as well as diverse professions such as a research engineer for NASA at Precision Scientific and, of course, the minor acting gigs and film financing. There were many memorable and even fun moments, but like the mirage of a crystal clear lake in the parched Death Valley desert, all promised and failed to deliver… a symbol of the lies of the forces of darkness and their prideful fallen anti-hero.

In the midst of material prosperity and leftist commitments, a wonderful older woman and her friends asked me the read the Bible to tell her what I found to be wrong with it, using my vast amount of graduate education. I promised to do so just to get away from her. After months of stalling, I started reading the New Testament and found that the Gospel of Matthew started as a genealogy. Urged to continue reading and arguing with the text, God eventually freed me from the angst and chaos to wake up the next morning after asking Jesus Christ into my life into a world that had wonderful meaning and delivered what other paths only promised.

Renewed, I got married and had four wonderful children and see His hand in everything good every day. For instance, thanks be to God: I was chosen to be the Director of the TV Center at City University of NY; then, chosen as President of the organization that produced THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE on CBS which had 37 million viewers and won an Emmy Award; and then, our work with Christian Film & Television Commission® and MOVIEGUIDE(r) to redeem the mass media of entertainment.

The most amazing of all blessings become crystal clear when I look back at the trajectory of the ministry. When we started MOVIEGUIDE® in 1985, the major studios in Hollywood released few movies with any positive Christian content – less than 1%!  By the time we started the Annual MOVIEGUIDE® Faith & Values Awards Gala and Report to the Entertainment Industry in 1992 and 1993, however, there were 27 such movies, or about 10.38% of the market share.  And, 20 years later, in 2011, 171, or at least 56.62%, of the movies released by the movie industry contained at least some positive Christian content! Also, when we started in 1985, only about 6% of the major movies were aimed at families; in the past several years, movies marketed to families have increased to nearly 40% of the top movies released in your local movie theaters.  Furthermore, when we started in 1985, about 80% of the top Hollywood movies were R-rated, but, now, about 40% or less are R-rated! The former chairman of a major Hollywood studio told me he attributed these positive shifts directly to MOVIEGUIDE®’s influence as well as the Christian Film & Television Commission’s box office analysis and Annual Report to the Entertainment Industry.

God desires blessings for each person who comes to Him in the name of Jesus Christ. He says that He wants to adopt you having had Jesus pay the price, so that you are an heir to His Kingdom, and to give you and each person who has real faith in Jesus “the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4)

There are too many blessings to name them, all waiting for all of us who call upon His name, but an instructive vision of His picture of how life should be is in Isaiah 65:17-27. Isaiah is the only Old Testament prophet who writes about the New Heavens and New Earth, 790 years before the Apostle John transcribed the Book of Revelation from Jesus Christ.

Isaiah says that, in God’s design for our lives, each person shall build a house and inhabit it themselves, and plant a vineyard and eat the fruit they grow. Our houses won’t be taken over by another through zoning, eminent domain, taxes, mortgages, and fees. Nor will our gardens be consumed by theft by another person or even civil entity. Moreover, Isaiah adds, each person shall live a long life, enjoy the work of his hands, and have healthy and wise children blessed by God. Also, He will answer us before we call on Him. This is worth reading in any translation, but here is a contemporary version:

“Pay close attention now:

I’m creating new heavens and a new earth.

All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain

are things of the past, to be forgotten.

Look ahead with joy.

Anticipate what I’m creating:

I’ll create the city on a hill as sheer joy,

create my people as pure delight.

I’ll take joy in the city on a hill,

take delight in my people:

No more sounds of weeping in the city,

no cries of anguish;

No more babies dying in the cradle,

or old people who don’t enjoy a full lifetime;

One-hundredth birthdays will be considered normal—

anything less will seem like a cheat.

They’ll build houses

and move in.

They’ll plant fields

and eat what they grow.

No more building a house

that some outsider takes over,

No more planting fields

that some enemy confiscates,

For my people will be as long-lived as trees,

my chosen ones will have satisfaction in their work.

They won’t work and have nothing come of it,

they won’t have children snatched out from under them.

For they themselves are plantings blessed by God,

with their children and grandchildren likewise God-blessed.

Before they call out, I’ll answer.

Before they’ve finished speaking, I’ll have heard.

Wolf and lamb will graze the same meadow,

lion and ox eat straw from the same trough,

but snakes—they’ll get a diet of dirt!

Neither animal nor human will hurt or kill

anywhere on my Holy Mountain,” says God.

– Isaiah 65:17-25 (The Message rephrased)

In other words, God’s world that He made for you and me is a world of freedom where each person can live his own life to the fullest!

This is what everyone He rescues understands and desires deep in their heart. And, He promises to give you the desires of your heart.

In contrast to God’s loving world of real freedom, all of man’s other systems, ideologies and religions promise a lot and deliver a mirage that masks a desert of tyranny, where you lose control over everything, including your children.

The advance of God’s kingdom used to be known as civilization, and it came by simply asking Jesus Christ into your heart. The advance of tyranny, as God tells the people of Israel, comes from people choosing to reject God’s love.

Therefore, each generation has the opportunity to choose freedom or tyranny. The contrast between them is stark. The consequences of freedom are blessings and prosperity, but the consequences of tyranny are slavery and destruction.

In 1 Samuel 8, the people ask for a king because the other nations have kings. Samuel feels personally insulted, but God says they haven’t rejected you, they’ve rejected me. To clarify the difference, God instructs Samuel about what the king will demand. He’ll force the boys to serve in his army, putting them on the frontlines to die. The king will turn the young ladies into menial slaves. Furthermore, the king will take the vineyards and even the homes to enhance his own lifestyle. Finally, the king will tax everyone. Ultimately, says God, the king will enslave the people, and their land will face destruction.

When they said, “Give us a king to judge us,” Samuel considered their demand sinful, so he prayed to the Lord. But the Lord told him, “Listen to the people and everything they say to you. They have not rejected you; they have rejected Me as their king. They are doing the same thing to you that they have done to Me, since the day I brought them out of Egypt until this day, abandoning Me and worshiping other gods. Listen to them, but you must solemnly warn them and tell them about the rights of the king who will rule over them.”

Samuel told all the Lord’s words to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, “These are the rights of the king who will rule over you: He will take your sons and put them to his use in his chariots, on his horses, or running in front of his chariots. He can appoint them for his use as commanders of thousands or commanders of fifties, to plow his ground or reap his harvest, or to make his weapons of war or the equipment for his chariots. He can take your daughters to become perfumers, cooks, and bakers. He can take your best fields, vineyards, and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He can take a tenth of your grain and your vineyards and give them to his officials and servants. He can take your male servants, your female servants, your best young men, and your donkeys and use them for his work. He can take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves can become his servants. When that day comes, you will cry out because of the king you’ve chosen for yourselves, but the Lord won’t answer you on that day.”

The people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We must have a king over us. Then we’ll be like all the other nations: our king will judge us, go out before us, and fight our battles.”

Samuel listened to all the people’s words and then repeated them to the Lord.[c] 22 “Listen to them,” the Lord told Samuel. “Appoint a king for them.”

Then Samuel told the men of Israel, “Each of you, go back to your city.”

– 1 Samuel 8:6-22

Every attempt to fix the system that rejects the Good News of His Blessings ends in failure no matter how well intentioned. To make a man a new Communist, Lenin came to the conclusion that you had to rid the world of anyone who did not fit his definition. By the time Lenin and Stalin were finished over 80 million people had been killed to create a society that contradicted the very nature of every human being. The same with Pol Pot and Mao.

Why? Because power corrupts. First, the leader wants to help people do something worthwhile, like losing weight; then, he outlaws foods; and, finally frustrated, he must rid the world of those who refuse.

In trying to “fundamentally transform” the United States of America and its Christian/Biblical heritage, the politically correct negative nannies are leading the country on a impoverished path of socialist tyranny and, eventually, total destruction. As the father of the free market, Adam Smith proved in 1776 in his book THE WEALTH OF NATIONS, the ruler is too distant from a particular problem to solve it, even if he could. Also, the ruler usually gives mercantile contracts to his cronies, not the best and the brightest. With a free market, the person most concerned with an economic situation, such as = harnessing steam power in Smith’s time, was the most likely to solve it.

For instance, my wife has a very rare disease, ocular cicatricial pemphigoid, that only occurs to a few people every year. As of this writing, she has been on chemotherapy for 19 years. When the government insurance agent was asked about a necessary treatment for her, he said that they do not cover that. Why? Because the government has never dealt with her disease before, but her doctors know how to treat her. The decision should rest in her and her doctors who Annual Report closer to the problem not in a bureaucrat thousands of miles away.

Those who support the government making micro decisions have not had to face yet the fact that the bureaucrat has no expertise or ability to gain enough expertise to deal with the problem. Freedom from government interference allows the person closest to the situation to deal with it.

The present leftist rulers are not the originators of this Anti-American and Anti-Christian vision, they are just the latest power mongers trying to fix things according to their limited vision.

Therefore, it’s time for regime change, not only in Iran and North Korea, but also in the United States and throughout most of Europe too.

Regrettably, too many people get confused and even seduced by the mirage, and so they die in the dessert of statist folly that promises what it cannot deliver. Even those in the church have followed the siren song of worthless promises that sound good but are merely tinkling brass. They believe what they think they can see that is only a lie, rather than the truth which is faith in the secure guaranteed promises of their Creator and sustainer.

It is time to choose the Good News of the Blessings of the Creator who wants to adopt us through the price paid by Jesus Christ – who gives us Freedom!

If you want freedom from bondage and impoverishment, then call upon God, your Father, in His name, Jesus. He will save you and bless you. After all, He reigns with all authority.

Deuteronomy 26:1-11 says that God is giving you the land — a land overflowing with milk and honey— as a free gift. He asks only that you acknowledge Him.

Thank Him for the gift by lifting up His name and remembering His miracles in your life. Then, celebrate by sharing His bounty with His ministers and others.

Psalm 91 states that when storms come and trials and temptations, God shelters us in His fortress when we call to Him by repenting and accepting His salvation through Jesus’ death and resurrection, so we can pray and praise Him.

He promises that no evil and no plague will attack us.

Therefore, refreshed we can go forth and advance into the arts, media, news, culture and you can advance into the territory He has given to you.

He promises that He is giving you the territory.

His angels – not just one, but many – will protect you and guide you so you can defeat and tread on the enemy whether the enemy comes as a young lion or crafty snake.

You will defeat him when you know – really know in your heart, intellect and will – Jesus Christ and His sacrifice and victory and salvation. Then, He will deliver you. He will answer. He will bring you honor. He will give you a long life. He will give you immortality.

It is faith not works, so:

1. Believe in your heart, intellect and will that God raised Jesus from the dead, so Jesus lives.
2. Confess it publicly in word and deed now and everyday, everywhere.

He calls you. So, answer now and be filled with His Spirit.

So: accept His victory over the many temptations facing you at your points of weakness; accept His love; accept His sacrifice; accept His salvation; accept His shelter, accept His Holy Spirit.

He will give you the territory, whatever He calls you to inhabit. As He does, thank him.

So, choose this day – the Good News that brings freedom or the mirage that offers bondage:

“If you decide that it’s a bad thing to worship God, then choose a god you’d rather serve—and do it today. Choose one of the [false] gods your ancestors worshiped from the country beyond The River, or one of the gods … on whose land you’re now living. As for me and my family, we’ll worship God.”

– Joshua 24:15 (The Message)

After all the Great News is:

“It is impossible for you to have a need that I cannot meet. After all, I created you and everything that is. The world is still at My beck and call, though it often appears otherwise. Do not be fooled by appearances. Things that are visible are brief and fleeting, while things that are invisible are everlasting.”

– Ephesians 3:20 – 2 Corinthians 4:18 (AMP)