coping with conflict and controversy. It's a key part of Reformation. You cannot get involved in Reformation without getting involved in conflict and controversy. It's also part of a Great Commission course, putting feet to our faith. How do we cope with conflict? How do we deal with controversy? Luke 6, verse 22 to 26, our Lord Jesus Christ said, blessed are you when men hate you and when they exclude you. and revile you, and cast out your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy. For indeed, your reward is great in heaven, for in like manner their fathers did to the prophets. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets. It's interesting how, in spite of all the warnings in scripture against gossip, slander, tail-bearing, just how much stock we tend to place in people's opinions. I heard, did you hear, did you know, just for your prayers, or I saw this, or sharing things even, it's extraordinary. It said, where there's smoke, there is fire. However, the smoke might be nothing more than dust and hot air. It's not always so that when there's smoke, there's fire. Mark Twain observed, a lie can travel halfway across the world while truth is still getting its boots on. That's where it used to be. Today, a lie can go 10 times around the world before truth gets its boots on. We're living in an age where it's never been easier to gossip, slander, do character assassination, and really spread lies far and fast. In fact, a lot of people are tried by media. You get some people who are keyboard warriors. They'd never go out in the streets, they'd never confront you face-to-face, but they would gladly spread rumors, involve people in controversy, damn people to hell behind their keyboards. They're like keyboard warriors, spineless wimps that never face you, never debate you, never do anything themselves, but they criticize those who do. Now, people have seen recently some of the most extraordinary campaigns. This is for Senate hearings. You know, if a person wants to, or is being nominated like Judge Kavanaugh in the United States, we saw that just recently. He was being nominated by President Trump to take a vacant space on the U.S. Supreme Court. And just look at the media. It's like an absolute attack of vultures. this judge Kavanaugh who I don't know from a bar of salt but no man deserves to be attacked like this man was and vilified in the media and You could see that the reason why they were against him was not because of him or his track record But because he was against abortion. He's a pro-life judge. They don't want a pro-life judge because Roe v. Wade So they say Roe yes cover Nope. Code Pink. Now this is just one of the demonstrations against him. There is all kinds of accusers who came out of the woodwork, you know, people who, you know, he's had no problems for decades and then suddenly is about to become a Supreme Court judge who could tip the balance against Roe v. Wade, in other words, bring about a decision banning abortion allowing the local states to bring in legislation against abortion, criminalizing it. Suddenly, there's all kinds of accusers who come out of the woodwork and, well, some, since he's won the battle, have come out and have admitted, well, yes, they did lie. This is one of the accused of the judge who agreed that, you know, she had actually fabricated. You know, slander is criminal, liable. When you fabricate things, when you give a false version, it actually is criminally liable. And here they were trying to destroy the life of a judge who had apparently a good track record just because he was pro-life and just because there was a chance that he could change and bring about laws that could end the abortion holocaust in America. A man that we do know more about, Judge Roy Moore, a fine, upstanding, marine, Christian judge. He had no end of attacks when he was running for the Senate recently. There were every kind of attack on him. There were people out there charging him with outrageous things, which have been proved since to be lies, but not before they cost him the election. They brought in a three-way split. They brought in another Republican to run against him to undermine. And you don't always have to, you don't have to prove a thing. All you need to do is create enough doubt. and give people other options, and so he lost this opportunity of getting into the Senate as a result, by a minus margin, just because of the lies. And one of the accusers, Christine Ford, who has a hideous background, obviously extremely dishonest, her whole family's a bunch of liberal leftists, pro-abortion, hates everything he stands for, and it's been proven since that they're a bunch of liars. And these people had their five minutes of fame on the network news. They ruined this man's life, destroyed his ability to get into the Senate. And then later on, it was proved, yeah, total, complete, and utter liars. Some of them being arrested and charged with falsification, which is the correct thing to do with libel, slander, and perjury. So here, they claim that Judge Roy Moore was not fit to serve in the US Senate because somebody accused him that he groped a girl when he was at college. But Ted Kennedy left a young girl alone to die, asphyxiated in his car, upside down in a creek, didn't tell anyone for 10 hours. He's elected to the Senate seven times. He served 46 years in the Senate, despite the fact that he was culpable in a homicide. and highly suspicious, everything about it and so on. Anyway, Judge Moore wasn't even guilty of what he's accused of. We know people like Colonel Aitmo, he's also a lawyer, and Colonel Aitmo said he knows Judge Moore personally, served with him for years, said this man is as upright as it comes, it's just terrible that they could destroy a man's life and his career and his running just with false accusations. What you now have is not trial by jury, you get trial by media. The jury box is actually trial by error. These people don't even have to... give account for bad decisions, bad everything they make. The media can print lies, innuendos, falsehoods, and they don't have any problem, but they can destroy people's lives just by character assassination. And today you've got a lot of people using social media, Facebook, Twitter, and so on, in order to create doubts or to smear and slander and denigrate people who are out there doing any kind of good work. It's a Marxist tactic, of course, to bring down people who are making a stand. So, when you get down to debates, a good debate is when you deal with the issues, facts, arguments, according to reason and logic, scripture and so on. But when you get down to name-calling, and you get down to character assassination and attacking people, then basically you admit that you've lost the argument. Socrates said, slander is the tool of the loser of the debate. Because if you could win the debate factually, fairly, objectively, then you would do so. When you start to attack the person, it means you've lost the debate. You're actually admitting that you're the loser in the debate. And so, for example, Margaret Thatcher would say sometimes in British Parliament, thank you for proving me right. Now that you've resort to name-calling and slandering me, you admit that your arguments are void. And that's true, in fact. We need to never put up with it when people attack the person. For example, in soccer, you must play the ball. You're not meant to play the man. You kick the ball, you don't kick the other player. If you kick the other player, that's a foul. You're meant to play the ball, not the man. And the ball, in terms of what we're dealing with in media and so on, is you deal with the issue. You deal with the scripture, you deal with the facts of history, whatever it may be, but you don't attack the person. When you start, well, you're just an idiot and you're a racist, Nazi, homophobic, anti-Semitic bigot who's also guilty of homophobia and well, what's that proving? That you can throw names at people? That doesn't prove a thing. So name-calling is the lowest form of argument. In fact, it's not an argument at all. Well, then you get the Inquisition, and as has been said, nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition, but these days we have a new Inquisition. It's an Inquisition by media, by people who hide behind the keyboards and try to send out verbal missiles that are gonna bring down other people's lives, destroy people's lives, destroy their support bases. We've had people who have, for example, there's a man who came to this mission about 17 years ago. We moved in here about 18 years ago to this mission house. And 17 years ago, there was a man who turned up at the gate and he said to Schalf and Vake, who was working with us at the time, I'm going to dedicate my life to the destruction of Peter Hammond. He said, mark my words, Frontline Fellowship won't last another six months. And this character, a foreigner, who's living on a pension from America, felt that he could dedicate his life, and he could, because he was single, he was unmarried, he was the same age as me, born the same age, so 1959 or 60. And he would send out reams of paper. I would get to a church, and his people would show a ream, you know, like 250 pages of photocopies. And he would send these accusations against me, anything that had been cooked up by anyone, no matter what, whether it was somebody who was fired here for different reasons or people who were attacking me in the media, which included Hustler magazine that brought out a front page attack on me. because we'd produced Finding Freedom from the Pornography Plague and campaigned to get over 8,000 stores in South Africa to not stop pornography anymore. And so this one chap, the editor of Hustler Magazine, phoned and spoke to us and said, I'm going to put 100,000 rand, now that's 24 years ago money, I'm going to put 100,000 rand into a private investigator to find all the dirt in Peter Hammond, I'm going to splash it all over our magazine. And the best he could come up with after about a year of this nonsense was, Peter Hammond, Blue-Eyed Gunrunner. That was the title and inside was, this man smuggles guns to Mozambique, to the renown of resistance fighters, to the UNITA freedom fighters of Angola, and the SPLA, the Sudanese People's Liberation Army in Sudan. Well, if I did, I'd be proud of it. I mean, what's wrong with helping freedom fighters fight against communist and jihadist oppressors? But no, I actually smuggled Bibles. And what's wrong with taking guns to people fighting for their lives against communist tyrants? But I didn't do that. I didn't need to. They already had the guns. What they needed was the Bibles. They needed chaplains. They needed medics. They needed medical training. They needed chaplains training. They needed evangelism, discipleship. And that's what I was doing. But anyway, that's the best that that character could come. Lo and behold, even Hustler Magazine's attacks on me made it into this character assassin's reams that he would send to any church conference that was inviting me. And so we'd often find a case that I would be preparing for and ready to travel overseas and at the last minute getting a cancellation, generally with just a few days spare, not even a week to spare. that the conferences cancelled because they got this and they panicked and they thought well if there's smoke there's got to be fire and they cancelled the conference. This has happened as recently as even last year. that a conference cancelled because of character assassins who have said, in fact, we've got some on Easter last year, and that was Good Friday last year, and on Christmas Day this year, the same individual has launched attacks on me personally. Obviously, I don't think worshipping the Lord in those days is very important, but he's put his goal to destroy the support base of Frontline Fellowship. So we've got people who just spend their life out there trying to destroy our mission. And we say, well, why don't you go out and do what we're doing better? Shame us by doing a better job of helping to persecute church and caring for people in restricted access areas. And do more in Bible distribution, Bible smuggling around Europe. Show us how we can do a better job of caring for people who are suffering in Africa, people who are suffering under Islamic persecution. Do a better job for the Nuba Mountains than we're doing. I mean, please. I wouldn't mind if there was another 10 groups doing a better job than us. Praise God, we need more ministries. There's not enough being done in literature, leadership training, or love and action in Africa. I would love more competition, but these folks don't even witness. In fact, most of the attackers don't even belong to a church. They excommunicate us, but they don't belong to church themselves. In fact, what you've got is a new inquisition today, where they're ready to burn you at the stake of public opinion for whatever. The great Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon warned, believe not half you hear, repeat not half you believe. And when you hear an evil report, halve it, then quarter it, and say nothing about the rest of it. The great reformer John Calvin declared, no greater injury can be inflicted upon men than to ruin their reputation. You heard the saying, give a dog a bad name and you might as well hang him. It's true. When I went to school, we used to sing a song, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never harm me. Well, it sounded good at school, but actually it's not true. Certainly not true in the age of social media today. In fact, words can harm you very much. In fact, sticks and stones can't do anything near as much damage as slander, gossip, libel, and everything else. There's no greater injury that can be inflicted upon anyone than to ruin his reputation, which is why we've got a command, do not bear false witness against your neighbor. Thomas Brooks wrote, of all the members in the body, there's none so serviceable to Satan as the tongue. John Calvert wrote, there's nothing more slippery or loose than the tongue. The scriptures command us, Titus 3.2, to slander no one, to be peaceful and considerate, and to show true humility towards all men. You know, it's also been said, don't criticize another man's limp until you've walked in his shoes. Ephesians 4 31 get rid of all bitterness rage and anger brawling and slander along with every form of malice notice malice Goes along with slander anger and bitterness. In fact, it's extremely malicious to spread slander and gossip about anyone. Extremely malicious. I have heard some of the worst things out there about some of the finest Christians on earth. I've had people come to me, even people who should know better, Christian leaders even, pastors, say to me, did you know, and they tell you, ghastly things about people that I know it's not true about. Some of the finest Christians on earth have got entire websites dedicated to slaughtering them. When we started to try to do our Reformation days, we had some creep attack us, because Martin Luther, he had all kinds of slogans against him, direct us to websites from unbelievers dedicated to attacking Martin Luther, and so on. We discovered that there were so many attacks on James Dobson. James Dobson had six bodyguards, two working eight-hour shifts with him through any day. He had to get a bulletproof car, had to have a separate entrance, even had people come in and shoot up the foyer of Focus and the family. Why? because he stood for marriage between one man and one woman for life. Can you imagine such a radical? We had people riding against Frontline Fellowship saying, Frontline Fellowship is associated with right-wing extremist groups like James Dobson's Focus on the Family. I didn't think James Dobson or Focus on the Family was that extreme. They're pretty middle of the road, family first. What's extreme about James Dobson? He was averaging two death threats a week Back at the heyday of all this, when he was head of folks and family, James Kendi told me that there's just no end of ex-members, ex-elders, and so on and so forth, dedicated to slandering him, spreading gossip, and so on and so forth. The first time I went up to Summit Ministries to go and minister with David Noble's ex in Summit Ministries, one of the first things was a South African, well actually he's an American from South Africa, but still, a person from South Africa invited me around to his home and then dumped on me vast amounts of innuendo, guesswork, and slander against David Noble and Summit Ministries, telling me that without a doubt Summit won't last another six months. Now that was about 28 years ago. But anyway, David Noble did more than anyone else to advance a biblical worldview in the Summit Ministries, great ministry under him, and yet there were people, small-minded people, who wanted us to cut all contact to them for whatever reasons. Kwasi Sabantu, the greatest mission on the continent of Africa. has so many pathological antagonists determined and dedicated to attack and to destroy everything they stand for. And we've been attacked and we've been slandered for not cutting fellowship with Kwasi Bantu because they've got all kinds of things against them. There's huge amounts of malice. Do you know one girl, and we know the family she comes from, she published articles that were in the biggest newspapers in the country, Sunday Crimes, Gee, they had Natal Mercury, the Natal Witness, and then there was different magazines, personality and others, and the headlines for these was, I escaped from the mission from hell. Now those of us who've been to Kwasi Wantu regard about as close to heaven as we're going to see on earth. This girl escaped from the mission to hell. Now I've been to Kwasi Wantu many, many times in the last 30 years. And honestly and truly, you don't need to escape from there. You can walk out the gate. But you know, the impression given was that she crawled on the minefield. past the barbed wire, the Dobermans with the searchlights and the machine gun towers and these killer gods and run by the NKVD or KGB or something. It was such a dramatized piece of rubbish. And it's got prime time, front page, top-of-the-hour news, radio, TV, magazines, newspapers, they were gunning for Quaestor Munchen. Again, I heard someone say at that time, some disgruntled ex, this mission won't last another six months. So that was over 20 years ago. And she also had articles of mission of hate, mission from hell, and so on and so forth. How on earth can I say about one of the most blessed and effective missions on the continent? Now if they would go out there and shame Kwasi Bantu and do a better job than they're doing, you might want to listen to them. But no, they don't do anything. The people doing the criticizing have a gift of criticism and a ministry of slander. Yet gossip remains prevalent within the church. The arrogance, the bitterness, the jealousy, the malice that so often goes along with it remains unchallenged. Today, it's more common to publish the slanders than to silence or rebuke them. We are commanded in Scripture to silence those who slander others. But in fact, most publish it. We've got friends, friends, who, without comment, post attacks on me, our mission, and so on, and those we affiliate with, on their Facebook homepage. And then when people question us, they say, oh, well, I just wanted to give them a chance to respond to it. Well, you know, with friends like that, who needs enemies? It's a fact that anyone who gossips to you will gossip of you. A person who's going to come and tail bear behind someone else's back to you, don't think they're not going to tail bear about you to someone else. The best thing to do when a person comes to you with gossip, have you spoken to this individual yourself personally? And if not, dial him up, hand the phone over, say, I'm just concerned he's got some concerns about you, hand it over right in front of you, get them to talk directly. I mean, gee, isn't that the most constructive biblical thing to do? The teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ are clear. In everything you do, do to others what you would have them do to you. For this sums up the law and the prophets. Would you like to be judged guilty? without any chance to defend yourself, without any chance to face your accusers, without any chance to cross-examine those who would attack you. Would you want to be judged by your worst enemies? Do to others as you would want them to do to you. Don't do to others what you don't want them to do to you. When we pray, we are to pray in this way, Jesus said, forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors. Jesus said, for if you forgive men when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. So Matthew 6 makes it very clear. If any of us live in unforgiveness and bitterness, we're unregenerate, we're unsaved. If we refuse to forgive someone, we break the bridge over which we must travel in order to be saved. So when you've got people who are plainly bitter for years and years, then there's a problem. When I went, for example, first time to Ian Paisley's church, Martyrs Memorial Church in Northern Ireland, Ian Paisley said to me, he asked a name, he said, who's so-and-so? And I said two words to him. It's a character assassin. He nodded. He took this ream. I'd seen those reams many places. He dropped it into the bin. I mean, from this kind of height. He had a thud. He never mentioned again, just carried on. That's the first time I'd met Ian Paisley. He didn't know me. exchanged news and letters and corresponded, but we had never met, never spoken on the phone. And all he had to do was ask, who's this person? Said, Kerrick Sasson, ditched it. I remember the same thing when I met James Kendi. Not the first time I met him, but he asked about some certain individual. And I said, character assassin. And James Kennedy dropped the subject, walked with me to the radio station, did the interviews, preached in his church, invited me to minister for a 10-day missions week, which involved something in the region of 28 meetings. And in the next 10 days, radio, TV, preaching from his pulpit, and so on. Why is it that some of the most experienced founders of ministries don't need to investigate these sort of accusations? They know how this works. Backstabbing character assassins don't need another thought to just put it in file 13, as they call it, which is the bin. I remember one of these character assassins contacting our office and asking, Shaul, have you read my dossier that he had delivered by, what was it, when you have to sign for it, what do you call it? Registered mail. He had a courier brought registered mail, this dossier of about 250 pages. And so Charles said, no, put it in the bin. He's got no intention of reading it at all. Why? Because we had already investigated so much of this character stuff. There were times when you get a subcommittee, you investigate, they get sworn avidavits, and the moment you disprove something, Do they say, oh, I'm sorry, I was wrong? No, they ignore that, they've got another accusation. So you investigate and you get the eyewitnesses and dig this up and get sworn every day that it's from the bishops in the field in Sudan and from this and that and you bring this to them. Do they admit that they were wrong and they were spreading false accusation? Not on your life, they just cook up another thing. And so after a while, you don't even bother investigating it after a while, you just say, Nope, not interested, we've actually got something else to do. Matthew 5 verse 11 to 28, blessed are you when men insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad. Now wait a minute, how can we be blessed when people are insulting us and persecuting us? How can we be blessed when people are saying false things about us? Jesus says, well if it's because of your work for me, you can rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. So we may not feel very blessed when we're slandered and attacked, but actually it is a blessing. Why then do we continue to place such value upon people's opinions? After all, mass-murdering tyrants, like the greatest mass-murdering tyrants in the history of the world, I'm talking about Guinea's Book of Records, top mass-murderers in the world, Mao Tse-Tung and Joseph Stalin, they have been Man of the Year of Time magazine. Stalin, I think, was twice Man of the Year of Time magazine, or SLIME, as we like to call it. The five pillars of the liberal faith, you know the five Pillars of Islam, well here's the five pillars of liberal faith. Hysteria, denial of reality, thought control, name-calling and projection of guilt. They're never guilty, it's always someone else like you. So those are the five pillars of liberal faith. Am I now trying to win the approval of men or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I was still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ. You have a choice. You can be a man-pleaser or a God-pleaser, but you cannot be both at the same time. We cannot be people-pleasers and please Christ. Matthew 24 verse 10, our Lord Jesus Christ warned us, many will turn away from the faith and will betray each other and hate each other. Many, this is a warning from our Lord. We should not be discouraged, we should not be disturbed, we should not be depressed when we see people turning away from the faith, betraying and hating one another because our Lord warned us it would happen. Even one of our Lord Jesus Christ's hand-picked disciples, Judas, who was the treasurer. He was trusted as the treasurer of the twelve. He stole money from the Lord and he took money from the Jewish high priest to betray our Lord Jesus Christ into their hands. Even Jesus had a Judas. I remember when I was sitting in Sudan and Bishop Bulanduli I was dealing with a whole lot of hideous things that one of our teams had done in the field there. Absolute outrageous, disgraceful things. And I went there to sort out the problem. And as we landed, the team fled. And we had to literally cross the river, hand over hand, ankle over ankle. able to get to our mission base to find out what's going on because the mission team wasn't there to help us. All of our different straps and so on that we could use to get across the river because of the flood that had taken away the bridge weren't there because the team weren't willing to greet us because they were terrified of the consequence. They knew us coming to put right the complaints that the bishop had been telling us about. And we got there and the bishop said in front of the whole church where I apologize for the bad conduct of our team. And he said, do not be too disturbed, brother. Even our Lord had a Judas. And it's true. When Moses sent out 12 scouts to explore the land, 10 returned with a negative and defeatist report and made the whole community grumble. Only Josh and Caleb of the 12 came back with a good report. And the Lord severely judged the 10 complainers, grumblers, and he mightily blessed the faithful Josh and Caleb. They were the only two of that whole generation to be allowed to enter the promised land alive. The great French reformer John Calvin transformed Geneva through his preaching, his teaching, his writings, and his academy. Under John Calvin's ministry, Geneva became the intellectual center and hub of the Reformation, a place of religious freedom and a refuge for Protestants fleeing persecution. It became a sending base for evangelists, pastors, and mysteries who established literally thousands of reformed churches throughout Europe and further afield. Yet historians have noted no good man ever had a worse press than John Calvin. No Christian theologian is so often scorned so regularly attacked as John Calvin. Throughout his life, Calvin faced major opposition, often from fellow Protestants and other theologians, whose objections to Calvin were incessant and usually unpleasant. We've even heard somebody in the last few days saying that Calvin's teachings are a lie from the pit of hell and from Satan himself. Well, that's what people can say if they haven't investigated and don't know anything about the subject. Even today there are those who maintain John Calvin was a vicious tyrant who oppressed the people under an unbearable dictatorship and he had people executed for disagreeing with him. just for disagreeing with him. He had people executed, so they say. Yet the facts are John Calvin never ruled Geneva. The city was not a totalitarian state. It was a republic, a city-state, with elections and dissent. In April 1538, barely two and a half years after he'd started ministering in Geneva, the city council expelled John Calvin and William Farrell, and they went into exile. John Calvin held no civil office. He could neither arrest nor punish any citizen. He could not appoint or dismiss any official. To argue that his eloquence and his logic constituted tyranny is to invent a new standard. He was a tough preacher. He was a serious teacher. He was a great writer. That doesn't make him a tyrant on the level of Stalin and Mao Zedong. History records that refugees from all over Europe flooded into Geneva to find the freedom there they were not able to enjoy in their home country. So, under John Calvin's pastorage, People fled from the persecution of Bloody Mary in England. Many English people went to Geneva and found refuge here. More women fled to Geneva than anywhere else because women who were abused could find justice and protection in Geneva they couldn't find anywhere else. And now they're trying to tell us this man was some vicious tyrant. Under Calvin, Geneva developed into Europe's greatest concentration of printers and publishing firms. At one stage we were publishing more than half of all the printed works in the world. What Wittenberg was under Luther, Geneva became under John Calvin the second generation of the Reformation. It became the epicenter of the movement for freedom worldwide. From John Calvin's teachings came the Covenanters of Scotland. The liberation movement that freed the Netherlands from centuries of Spanish control. The Netherlands was a colony of Spain until 1642, and it's because of Calvinists like William of Orange, after whom the Orange Free State and Orange River is named, the father of Dutch liberties. They achieved their freedom from oppression of the Spanish Inquisition. It was Calvinists like the Puritans who brought freedom to Britain. It was Calvinists who brought the freedom to the United States of America. Calvinists were the ones the French Huguenots. So the greatest leaders in the forefront of every movement of freedom in the 16th and 17th centuries were followers of John Calvin's teachings. Yet John Calvin continues to be slandered by ignorant and prejudiced people who just don't know what they're talking about. The great German reformer Martin Luther continues to be slandered to this day. Whole websites are dedicated to depicting Martin Luther as anti-Semitic who laid the foundations for the Holocaust. Incredible. People who lived four centuries after his death and who didn't believe or follow him are Now we find that it's all being blamed on a man who taught Christ and the scriptures and so a bunch of secular humanists are blamed on the great reformer. How does that work? The accusation that Martin Luther was an anti-Semite responsible for massacres reveals an ignorance of history. Martin Luther was pro-Christ near zealous in evangelism. For decades, he lovingly and patiently reached out to the Jewish people in his area with the gospel. In 1523, Martin Luther accused Catholics of being unfair to Jews and treating them as if they were dogs. Martin Luther was outraged and he declared that such mistreatment makes it even more difficult for Jews to convert to Christ, which was his concern. Luther wrote, I would request and advise that we deal gently with the Jews if we really want to help them. We must be guided in our dealing to them, not by papal law, but by the law of Christian love. We must receive them cordially, permit them to trade and work with us, hear our Christian teaching, witness our Christian life. If some of them should prove to be stiff-necked, what of it? After all, not all of us are good Christians either. 15 years later, however, the persistent rejection of Christ and the repeated blasphemies of those Jewish people in his community provoked Luther to write on the Jews and their lies. Now, to accuse him of being anti-Semitic, well, then you've got to accuse Jesus of being anti-Semitic because Jesus called the Jews he dealt with in his day of their father devil, who's a liar and a murderer from the beginning, called them a synagogue of Satan. Is Jesus anti-semitic? When I write against pornography, does that make me anti-semitic? When I'm writing against Hollywood's blasphemies, does that make me anti-semitic? If we're against blasphemy, pornography, communism, usury of the bankers, does that make one anti-semitic? Because he's speaking against evils which the Bible condemns. In his book, booklet actually, it's not a big book, it's a small booklet, Luther wrote against the madness and blindness that blasphemes Christ in the rabbinic teachings. Luther declared he could not have any fellowship or patience with obstinate blasphemers and those who defame our dear Savior. These blasphemies included describing our Lord Jesus Christ as the bastard son of that whore Mary and a lot worse. Blasphemy was a civil crime. It was a capital crime in all of Europe, Protestant and Catholic. Luther taught to tolerate such blasphemy was to share in the guilt for it. Therefore he proposed measures of sharp mercy which included confiscating all Jewish literature which was blasphemous and prohibiting rabbis from teaching such blasphemy against our Lord and his mother. It's most disturbing that such a humble God-fearing man was who, against all odds, who gave to the church and the world the Bible freely available in the common tongue, who introduced congregational singing. Before Martin Luther, you went to church, you stood in church, there were no pews yet before the Reformation, people stood for the whole service, and you watched the priest conduct a mass, a sacrifice, in Latin. So if you didn't know Latin, all you could do is be an observer and you couldn't get The juice, the wine, symbolic of the blood, because what would happen if you spilled some of the blood of Christ? So that was only for the clergy. You only got the wafer, and that was it. You could bring your body to service, but not your mind. That stayed outside. And you might listen to some chanting from the choir of monks, but you couldn't sing. The Reformation introduced congregational singing, pews, preaching in the common language. Martin Luther championed justification by God's grace, received by faith on the basis of the finished work of Christ. He stood for sola scriptura, that scripture alone is the ultimate authority. He was wonderfully used of the Lord. He was used to bring about the greatest biblical reformation, the greatest birth of freedom that the world has ever known. That he could be the target of such vicious slander is outrageous. King David wrote, whoever slanders his neighbor in secret, him I will put to silence. Whoever has haughty eyes and a proud heart, him I will not endure. By the way, you know what it means when a king says, I'll put him to silence. That's like pretty permanent, putting a person to silence. That's what he's saying. That's what King David, a man of the God's heart, a man of the God's own heart who wrote the Psalms, the biggest book of the Bible, the most quoted part of the Bible, the heart of the Bible, the song book of the Bible, the prayer book of the Bible, David said, I will not endure a person who has a proud heart, who slanders his neighbor, I will put him to silence. That's what King David thought about slanderers. The scriptures implore us, James 4.11, brothers, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against his brother or judges his brother speaks against the law and judges it. What right do we have to judge God's law? There is a disturbing tendency throughout the church seen regularly in homes where they have roast pastor for lunch. to set ourselves up continually as judges of those who better than we are. Many have the gift of criticism and a ministry of discouragement. And I'm sad to say that as a new Christian, I slipped into this within my first year as a Christian. Very quickly after I got converted, I became part of the super hyper-spiritual holy huddle of the really deeply spiritual. And a year after my conversion to Christ, I was filled with the Holy Spirit. And I test about this in my in the worship service that we had on a Sunday evening in my Baptist church. And the church elders, the deacons and the pastors, started to preach against the charismatic gifts and preaching against me by name. And I got quite bitter. Now, I didn't know anything about, I couldn't spell charismatic at the time. I hadn't been in charismatic churches. I'd just read the Bible, read the Book of Acts, and I'd had an experience and I testified of this. Well, they drove me into seeking, well, where are these Pentecostals they're talking about? And I was then going to some camps and assemblies of God and learning from others what's involved. And so I started a whole different group in our church that was basically, because I ran a youth group and I ran a teen Sunday school. and the tracks down the book table so I had an ability to cause some grief for the pastor and I'd put up books and pastor would come right back and take off and confiscate a whole lot of the books and put up tracks he'd take them down. I'd be getting the youth group and so on busy attacking the pastor. I would say things like The pastor, Doc Watson, was guilty of the unforgivable sin. He was blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. He was doing nothing of the sort, but this is just the immature way we were thinking at the time. And somewhere along the line, God convicted me that I was involved in breaking a whole of these various commands and scriptures that I've been reading to you tonight. I still believed he was terrible but I realized that what I was doing and how I was doing it was absolutely unacceptable. And so I started to say good things about the pastor and I really had to think straight hard because I couldn't think of one good thing to say about Doc Watson at the time. But the first thing I recognized is, you know, he's a good pastor. Hospital visitation, things like that. And he really was. I mean, he brought a local Mormon family to Christ because they had a tragedy and he was there. He read about the newspaper. He helped the family through everything. The entire family came to Christ because this Baptist pastor showed more compassion and understanding and was a better neighbor than the Mormon church was for the people. Hard to beat them at that because they're normally very good at that sort of thing. Doc Watson was a great pastor, a great hospital visitation person. And as time went on, I came to realize that there was nothing wrong with Doc. The problem was with me and my little holy huddled clique of super spiritual teenagers who knew next to nothing about what we were talking about. But we were damning to hell all the leaders in the church because we somehow thought we were more spiritual than them, you know. Have you heard of the pastor that gave a medal for humility? Well, they had to take it away when he wore it. And this is the problem. We really thought we were humbler than everyone else. That's the kind of rubbish that we're into. And do you know, the day came, I went to the pastor and I repented and apologized to him for the horrible backbiting I'd been involved in. We'd do nothing but have roast pasta. We were endlessly, the youth group was a nasty little inbred group of bitter, critical, slanderous people, and I was the leader, so I was most responsible of all. When I went to the pastor and I apologized and I said that God's convicted me that this is wrong and I need to obey him, He later testified, which was one of the most difficult things he ever had to deal with. And he testified many times of that, how I became the best member he's ever had. And he became the first chairman of the Board of Frontline Fellowship. And for 16 years, he is our chairman of the Board of Frontline. And extraordinary, because at one time, I saw him as just under the Antichrist. To be involved in character assassination is a terrible thing, because you start to look for anything that can possibly justify your highly critical mind, and to come to realize that there was nothing wrong with him. He's one of the finest parts I've ever come across. And the problem was with us. But I've never forgotten that I was so convinced I was right. I was so right. Nobody's ever been more right than I was. And we were so convinced of our own arguments. And yet we were deluded. But this is not something unusual. This is a phenomenon. Throughout the world, there are wounded ministers who are being attacked by people in the pew who actually should be supporting them. Antagonists in the church, how to murder a minister, please don't shoot, I'm wounded already. These are just books that have come out testifying of this phenomenon of people attacking pastors. Therefore, rid yourself of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. 1 Peter 2.1 makes it clear that slander is inseparable from envy, hypocrisy, deceit, and malice. I mean, do you realize when we're getting into slander, we are actually showing we are hypocritical, envious, and deceitful with malice. As the scripture so plainly shows, a slander of every kind is inseparable from malice, deceit, hypocrisy, and envy. Dominic Peter Victor, who is a favorite of ours at our early biblical worldview seminars, he used to say, the middle letter of pride is I. The middle letter of lie is I. The middle letter of sin is I. The middle letter of Lucifer is I. self-centered pride is often at the root of our desire to slander great men and women of the past and to drag down those whom God has raised up. Do you know the first Item on the agenda of GECOWI, Global Consultation World Event, one of the biggest mission conferences of all time. Took place in Hatfield up in Pretoria. Wow, we had a lot of people there. 5,000 odd, whatever it was, it was huge, absolutely huge. And the first item was a stupid, mindless skit that would have been embarrassing for a youth conference. This was a missions conference. Slandering David Livingston as an absolute idiot. And I turned around to people around me and said, well, we might as well pack up and go home. I mean, what good can we do? If Livingston was a failure, then how are we ever gonna go anywhere close to as good as he was? And I've heard slanders against the missionaries from the first missions conference I've attended, and I've been a Christian now since 1977. So for 41 years, I've been hearing slanders against missionaries at missions conferences. Some or another, the young upstarts seem to think by dragging down the mysteries of the past, they somehow exalt us. Well, I don't know. It works the opposite with me. That's why I've gone out of my way to write books on the great mysteries of the past and to lift them up as an inspiration that we get out there and we do better. than we ever could have otherwise, by examples of excellence. Jonathan Edwards, one of America's greatest theologians, a man most closely associated with the great evangelical awakening, was actually dismissed by his own church for applying biblical discipline. The elders of his church could not accept his position that unbelievers should not be allowed to participate in the Lord's Supper. In his farewell address, Edwards declared, avoid contention. A contentious people will be a miserable people. Heat of spirit, evil speaking, and things of the like, directly contrary to the spirit of Christ. Watch against the contentious spirit. The father of modern missions, William Carey, and his co-worker, John Marshman, had to endure vicious and unjustified criticism from young new missionaries who had come to help. They came to help at the mission base in Serampore, India. Many of these new volunteers actually split from the Serampore mission. This is the first mission ever launched in the modern missionary movement. They spent an inordinate amount of time slandering William Carey and his co-workers and the controversy lasted 13 years. So much so that the Baptist Missionary Society in England actually turned against William Carey and effectively excommunicated the founder of the Baptist Missionary Society and the father of modern missions. Can you believe it? Writing of this, William Carey said, The evil that they have done is, I fear, irreparable. Certainly the whole might have been prevented by a little frank conversation with either of us, and a hundredth part of the self-denial of which I found it necessary to exiles for the first few years of the mission would have prevented this awful rupture. But now we are traduced and the churches rent by the very men who came to be our helpers. Judge for yourselves whether it's comely that a man who has laboriously and disinterestedly, that means sacrificially, served the mission so many years should be arraigned and condemned without a hearing by a few men who'd just arrived, one of whom had been a month in the country before he joined the senseless outcry. I've found this is common. If this could happen 200 years ago, it happens more often today. On a speaking tour of Australia, a couple of people commented on my including Samuel Marsden in the Great Ascension of Mission's book. They frankly admitted they'd never heard anything good about Samuel Marsden, but only that he is a vicious hanging judge and a religious hypocrite. In fact, Samuel Marsden was a pioneer missionary and the founding father of Australia and New Zealand. He was a man who upheld justice impartially, who diligently preached the gospel. Throughout his life, he remained a humble, generous Christian who laid the foundations for the Christian church in Australia and New Zealand. Although he came to Australia as a chaplain to the convict colony of New South Wales, the governor compelled him to be a magistrate also. Now combining both demanding vocations in one person, being a missionary and chaplain and also being the magistrate, it involved controversies, one after the other. But Samuel tried his utmost to provide for the prisons, to establish a school for the orphans, to right the wrongs suffered by the Aborigines. His attempts to uphold principles of justice placed his life in danger. He got death threats. He endured many threats in his life. On one occasion he travelled to England, it's a long way by boat, to call the attention of the government to the unacceptable conditions and to secure intervention. Bear in mind, Britain was shipping all their criminals, sometimes for something as simple as stealing a loaf of bread, sentenced for transportation out to Australia. He presented these grievances to King George III himself. Samuel Marsden had a great missionary vision which extended to bring the gospel of Christ to the cannibals of New Zealand, the Maoris. Despite vicious disputes between some missionaries, answerable to him, and relentless criticism, Samuel Marsden conducted the first public worship service in New Zealand. He interceded between two warring tribes. He introduced education, stands of justice, and law and order to New Zealand. And by the way, the Maori were not the original inhabitants of New Zealand. They killed and ate the original inhabitants of Australia. And this often is left out. It was a sad experience to continually be a victim of malicious and unfounded charges throughout his life. His fearless denunciation of sin made him numerous enemies. But the Lord vindicated Samuel Marsden. Within 31 years of his first service in New Zealand, 98% of the Maoris had embraced Christianity. Cannibals won to Christ. Now, how many people have done that? In 1865, Hudson-Taylor prayed for 24 willing, skillful laborers for his new China Inland Mission. Willing and skillful they might have been, but four of these new recruits brought dissension and controversy. Soon the dissidents had poisoned the fellowship with the increasing bitterness and resentment. After two years of backbiting and disruption, Hudson-Taylor had to dismiss the ringleader. This is Louis Nicol right here. I don't know if you can kind of imagine what a troublemaker he was just by his body language, other troublemakers left with him. More unrelenting slander and lies undermined the work of the China Inland Mission. As Hudson Taylor wrote, if the spirit of God works mightily, you may be sure that the spirit of evil will also be active. As somebody else put it, when God gives you an important work to do, Satan sends people to waste your time. The China Inland Mission was engulfed in opposition, dissension, controversy, fire, and death from the beginning. Naturally, they were going into Satan's kingdom, they were winning people from Buddhism, from Shintism, from other religions, from paganism. Obviously, there was going to be a lot of dissension. There'd be disagreement about how to do it. He was doing a pioneer work, the first faith mission, the first international mission, the first mission that would take single women and put them in the field. Their mission house in Yangzhou was attacked and set on fire. Furious persecution engulfed them. Storms of criticism and controversy erupted. However, in spite of constant controversies, the number of China Inland Mission missionaries grew. In time, they became the largest mission organization in the world. By 1900, China Inland Mission was the greatest mission on the planet. By the end of Hudson Taylor's long life, the very mission organizations that had belittled and ridiculed his methods had begun adopting many of them, obviously without accreditation. On a Zambezi expedition, pioneer missionary explorer David Livingston was afflicted by interpersonal conflicts amongst his team, leading to everyone abandoning him in the field, even his own brother Charles turned against him. By the time he returned to England seven years later, Livingston found his disgruntled ex-co-workers had so spread an evil report against him, no one came to welcome David Livingston back. He was ostracized, presumed guilty without a chance to defend himself, and when he left on his third and last missionary journey to Africa, no one saw him off. Not one person. Not from family, church, nothing. Yesterday's hero, presumed guilty, However, in time, we've forgotten the name of his critics, but they've unveiled his monument on the 100th anniversary of his discovering Victoria Falls, 16 November 1955, they unveiled this monument, very noble monument. The greatest Baptist preacher of all time, if not the greatest preacher of all time, Charles Spurgeon, was actually the target of vicious, slanderous attacks by the Baptist Union of his day. Now his books are textbooks of the Baptist colleges and the statue stands outside Baptist Union headquarters, the very Baptist Union that had excommunicated him. Pretty interesting. George Whitefield, one of the greatest evangelists of all time, and a key figure in the great evangelical awakening, one of the greatest revivals of all time, was actually excluded from the Church of England, effectively excommunicated, not allowed to preach in any church of England. He served the church faithfully, but they kicked him out. Today, the Church of England in South Africa has named their college after George Whitefield. Quite extraordinary to go from being excommunicated to being a patron saint. Dr. James Kendi in his book, Delighting God, writes, if you rise just a little bit above the common herd, if you achieve just a modicum more success than your neighbors, most surely those barbs of criticism are going to be shot your way. To avoid criticism, do you want to avoid criticism? That's what you've got to do. Do nothing. Say nothing. Be nothing. There is no defense against reproach except obscurity. The more obscure, the less criticism. The more prominent or blessed, the more criticism you're going to get. Delighting God quotes one wise old man, if I try to read, much less answer, all the criticisms made of me and all the attacks leveled against me, this office would have to be closed to all other business. I do the best I know, the very best I can, and I mean to keep on doing this down to the very end. If the end brings me out all wrong, ten angels swearing I had been right would make no difference. If the end brings me out all right, then what's said against me now will not amount to anything. You know the only opinion that really counts It's the one who will say at the end, well done, good and faithful servant, or depart from me, cursed and lake of fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. That's all that really counts at the end. God's opinion. There is no doubt that adversity builds character. A faith that cannot be tested cannot be trusted. You know the flavor of a tea bag when it goes into hot water. But unjustified criticism is still better than flattery. Less dangerous. You should be more concerned about flattery than criticism. We can always benefit even from the most unbalanced criticism, because there might be just something there. Okay, maybe they're wrong, but what have I done or not done that's given them a foot or an opportunity to say this? Is there something I can learn from it? What man means to evil, God can still use for good. Now if Joseph could say to his wicked brothers who betrayed him into the hands of slave traders, who put him into not just slavery in Egypt, but into prison in the end, If Joseph could say to these wicked brothers, what you meant for evil, God used for good, then can we not be gracious as well? And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who called according to his purpose. Criticism in my life has sometimes driven me to more prayer, more to the word, to more diligent service. And in that sense, maybe the criticism has made me better. Such trial should drive us to prayer, it should humble us, it should deepen our devotional life as we search the Scriptures and ask, what is God saying to me through this? It can also enable us to empathize with and comfort others who are suffering such injustices. Christians suffering unjust criticism should find opportunities to glorify God and to witness for Christ. Ultimately, God's approval and His opinion is the only one that counts. It is Him who we should continually be seeking to please. And one thing that Christ requires is that we forgive those who sin against us unconditionally, wholeheartedly. It's not that they deserve it. We don't deserve being forgiven either. We who've been forgiven much should love much. Blessed are you when men hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and cast out your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for indeed your reward is great in heaven, for in like manner their fathers did to the prophets. United States President Theodore Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt observed, it is not the critic that counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, nor where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who's actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best, in the end, knows the triumph of high achievement, who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while doing greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who now know neither victory nor defeat. Everything in life is a test of character. Extreme situations expose and bring out the best or the worst in people. A person's character is accurately measured by their reaction to unfairness or bad treatment. The measure of a person's character can be seen by the size of those things that upset them. If you can be upset by small things, then you're a small person. If you get upset by big things, it means you're a big person. The true flavor of a teabag is only tasted after it's been placed in hot water. And so it is with ourselves. Our reputation is what men think we are. Our character is what God knows we are. And this is revealed under extreme crisis situations. People who have not been put under crisis do not actually understand what they're capable of. So when troubles and tribulations come, when you are insulted, excluded, reviled, mistreated, do what the Lord Jesus commanded. Rejoice in a day and leap for joy. On the other hand, woe to you when all men speak well of you. This is a chapter in character assessments dealing with ecclesiastical tyrants and terrorists. I would advise anyone to study the lives of victorious Christians who changed the world, because those lives of courage and faith will encourage you when you realize they faced worse than we face, and they survived, and they endured, and they thrived. And so that can encourage us. We can follow these examples of heroes of the faith, not put much store by what the critics say. As somebody said, who builds a monument to a critic? It is the people in the field who make the difference that matter.