slavery today and setting the captives free. 2 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 17. Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. This is the word of God. It is remarkable How much discussion and debate and media attention is still given to the old slavery, which was exposed and opposed by Christians such as Member of Parliament, Evangelical William Balboa Forge, over 200 years ago. And how little attention is given to the much worse, much more pervasive, much longer, with much greater numbers enslaved by the Muslim slave trade, which is actually still continuing to this day. but which was primarily exposed by Dr. David Livingston and others in the 19th century. But it is absolutely scandalous that so little attention or concern is given to the ongoing Islamic slave trade continuing today, especially in North Africa and the Middle East. Even more outrageous is the virtual silence over the worst slavery in history, which is prevalent today, which is pervasive today, which is pervasive throughout the whole world, human trafficking and the sexual slavery industry. which is colossal. And yet, if you want an example of the hypocrisy and the cowardice of our age, you just need to look at the silence of the media, of the UN, of the governments, and even of the cowardly silence of so many churches. Most churches over this the biggest and worst slavery in the history of the world. Freedom is a fruit of Christianity. The abolition of slavery was a fruit of Christianity. However, those who believe that the days of slavery are over are mistaken, horribly mistaken, deceived, as Christians have retreated from social and political arenas. Teaching, we're living in the last days. Don't get involved in politics. Don't get involved in social issues. Why rearrange deck chairs in a Titanic? Why hang up wallpaper in a burning building? These are the last days. This is the last hour. We're in the last minutes. The prophetic clock is right there at one minute to midnight and all the rest of it. A lot of Christians have justified silence, cowardice, apathy and complicity in the worst slavery and the worst sins and evils in the history of mankind. As Christians have retreated from being salt and light in society and from making disciples and teaching obedience to all things they've commanded, we're talking about the post-Christian era. Personally, I think we're in the pre-Christian era. We are seeing a resurgence of all these evils as Christians retreat from being salt and light and being a positive influence in society. We are seeing a resurgence of every kind of evil that the church in the 19th century opposed, exposed and defeated. Yet the Church of Christ has not yet awakened and mobilized to expose and oppose the prevalent and pervasive evils of prostitution, perversion and paedophilia, which is probably worse now than any time since the ancient Greek empires. Those who reject Christianity will in time embrace every vice outlawed by Christianity, so we are seeing in this time of apostasy a resurgence of legalized child killing through abortion. Isn't it incredible that you have today feminists who are totally silent about the 42 million people enslaved today, but they rejoice in the fact that they're able to legally kill their babies. Women today are less respected, less protected, more likely to be divorced, more likely to be abused, more likely to be murdered and raped than ever before in history, and enslaved. And yet they rejoice in the fact that they at least are now able to kill their babies legally, and work in the mines, and enter boxing, and other things which I don't think most women in history ever thought was important or necessary. And yet they want to be silent about the greatest abuse of women around. Quite aside from the fact that more than half of all babies killed by abortion are women. So what about equal rights for unborn women? So what we are seeing in this day and age is a resurgence of child killing through abortion, the resurgence of the killing of the aged and infirm through euthanasia, the legalization of adultery, the legalization of polygamy, the legalization of perversion, in fact not just in the back alleys but paraded down Main Street now, The legalization of prostitution, effectively, because they don't prosecute it in this country, even though it's still technically on the books, even though we've had a lot of people trying to legalize it. And we've got a massive resurgence of pedophilia and of human trafficking, worse than any time in the last two centuries. There are a number of films, both documentaries and dramas, which dramatize this, taken shockingly exposes the kidnapping, human trafficking and slavery that's going on at this moment. That's the mainstream form which documents something, which dramatizes something which is really real. kidnapping for the sex trade. But then there's the whistleblower, which is based on the true story of policewoman Catherine Bolkevar from Nebraska, who went to work with the United Nations in Bosnia. And she thought her job as a policewoman was to protect women. She thought. She was wrong. She rescued two girls from Moldova, which used to be part of Romania, but is part of the old Soviet Union. The Soviet Union stole it at the end of the Second World War, rather it was given to them by the Alter Agreement. But Moldova is one of the worst human-trafficked areas in Eastern Europe. They estimate that something like 10% of the entire population of Moldova have been human-trafficked. Because the economy is so distraught because of old Soviet economics and socialism, many of them have been opened to being exploited for jobs overseas, or even being trafficked by their own relatives, can you believe? And so she rescued two of these girls in Bosnia who were kidnapped, lured, tricked, trapped, and being used for sexual slavery in Bosnia. She rescued them and put them in the Witness Protection Program of the United Nations Police in Bosnia, who immediately handed those girls back to the very pimps who tortured them to death. She of course protested this, went to the head of the mission, they all threatened her to shut up. She went to the General Secretary of the United Nations. who basically put a price on her head. And she's now living in a witness protection program in Great Britain, not able to return to the United States out of fear that her life is threatened because she blew the whistle on the United Nations' involvement in human trafficking. Now, you may think, how could the General Secretary of the UN be involved in human trafficking? Well, in fact, the entire United Nations is run by human traffickers. 161 member nations of the United Nations are involved in human trafficking. Not just the countries, the governments. 161 member states of the United Nations are involved in human trafficking. Now you can get a lot of shocking facts under freetheslaves, I think it's freetheslaves.net, which tells you that human trafficking today is a $150 billion industry. at least 150 billion that's billion with a B and that's not Zimbabwe dollars that's US dollars 150 billion dollar a year industry they estimate in fact when the film was made we're talking about Whistleblower there were 27 million slaves in the world today they estimate there's 41 million slaves in the world today that's according to freetheslaves.net The average cost of a slave today is $90. Now, a slave back in the days of the... if you went back over 200 years, the days when William Wilberforce was fighting, the cost of a slave then, converted to present-day money allowing for inflation, was about $40,000 a slave. That was the cost of a slave then. The cost of slaves today has never been cheaper. They are completely disposable. Life is so cheap that when a slave today, and we're talking about sexual slaves, kidnapped, lured and so on, even trafficked by their own relatives, when they get sick or injured, they just get killed. It's cheaper to replace them. Why would they spend any money on medical for any of their slaves? They can just replace them. It's so easy. It's never been easier. Because of the huge amount of migrants. Migrants provide a vast amount of vulnerable people to be tricked and trafficked. Because of the huge amount of runaways and throwaways. Some of the biggest areas where they're recruiting slaves today is in the foster children industry. Foster children, many of them are adopted by those who immediately trafficked them. So the corrupt governments, corrupt police forces, complicit governments have made slavery today huge. We're talking about vast, vast, vast numbers. Now the whistleblower of Catherine Volkovac, who exposed that the United Nations was not just covering up for it, the United Nations was involved in running the human trafficking industry. UN organization we're talking about. And she did the whistleblowing all the way up, not just to head the mission in Bosnia, but right to the head, to General Secretary UN himself involved. She knows, because she appealed directly to him, and next thing hitmen were coming after her, and she got no protection from them. And the British Court of Justice agreed that she was in danger of her life, she had to change her name, change everything, hide in England, under protection there, because if she wouldn't be safe to return back to her home country of America, they would kill her. for exposing it. Now that's Katherine Boldt-Kavarov's story. It's a book, it's a dramatized film, but unfortunately it's true. And then there's another film that came out, Nefarious. Now, I think Whistleblower came out in 2010, 2011, and Nefarious came out in 2011. Nefarious is a shocking indictment an expose of human trafficking today, of slavery today. We've got the Nefarious filmed here, we've got it in both the shop and in the library, and we've shown it at a Reformation site today. Made in 2011, Nefarious, Merchant of Souls. It's a Christian documentary of slavery today, and of the trafficking industry, but most importantly it gives practical, positive examples of how slaves can be set free, how we can work against it, how we can fight it. and it gives testimonies of people who came out of it, including ex-pimps, ex-prostitutes, and ex-customers of the sex industry who would travel to places like Thailand. The theories which was produced by Exodus Cry, a Christian ministry designed and founded specifically to rescue people out of this industry, they show that in Asia most of the slaves in the sex industry in Asia are groomed and sold by their own parents and not the poorest. It's often those who want luxury goods and so on. and so that the complicity of parents who literally groom their children to be prostitutes to make their country rich, to make their family rich. is the driving force of, for example, Thailand and Cambodia industry. It's absolute evil and you wonder, where is the outrage? Where are the Christians today speaking out against this? Why is it that they all want to talk about the slavery that ended 200 years ago and they don't want to talk about the slavery that's going on today in our own city? This isn't just something I'd be talking about in Thailand. It's happening here too. 25% of the slaves today are children. 25%. It's so staggering, just to give a few local examples. At a Christians for Truth conference, Doctors for Life presented a major paper exposing human slavery and prostitution today in South Africa. Doctors for Life reported human trafficking has become the third largest industry, international criminal industry, after drug trafficking and arms industry. And so, human trafficking today, or slavery today, is the third largest criminal industry in the world, after drugs and arms. According to the United States Department, United States State Department, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked internationally every year. This excludes trafficking within countries, but 80% of these victims are women and girls, and as many as 50% are children. Make no mistake, a lot of slaves' boys are trafficked for the homosexual pedophilia industry. 20%. The majority of female victims are trafficked for sexual exploitation, and the majority of boys trafficked are also for sexual exploitation, although they form only about 20% of the victims. There's a very strong link between prostitution, pornography and the human trafficking slavery industry. Human trafficking and pornography and prostitution all feed one another. It's all one big industry actually when you get down to it. You could say the pornography industry is advertising and grooming for prostitution. which feeds the human trafficking industry to provide more of the slaves needed for the industry. The Doctors for Life report included the testimony of one girl from Eastern Europe who was lured across the border in response to a job offer for a modelling career. She was kidnapped, gang raped, addicted to drugs, enslaved to a life of prostitution which prematurely aged her so much that she died within four years of a drug overdose. Now this is a South African example. These slaves mostly come from Russia, Romania, Moldovia and so on. Moldova. They bring them in, in fact we've met some of them here. Taron has encountered and tried to speak to them but they were under control of their pimps so that they would prevent from speaking to them. The House of Rasputin, it's a Cape Town based prostitution industry where they like bringing in people from foreign countries who can't speak the language, so they can't ask for help for anything like this. They take away their passport to meet you to come into the country. They warn them that they're coming to the country illegally and they're going to be arrested if they go to the police anyway for being illegal. And, of course, they're told that everything they earn is actually owed because they've got to pay back for their airfares and everything else. And then their accommodation basically works out that they never get enough. Next thing they give them drugs. And, well, we've got to deduct this from your pay for the drugs. And it works out in the end that they're just slaves. This came to court in Cape Town. In fact, one of the people being prosecuted by a vice squad under J.P. Smith, he set up the Metro vice squad. We used to have a vice squad in the South Gham Police, but the South Gham Police Service abolished all these groups like the vice squad. I think Cape Town is about the only Metro police in the country having a vice squad. There's no longer a vice squad focused on trying to deal with us within the South Gham Police Service. because we had criminals involved with the gangsters like Salaibi running the police, they got rid of every single group that could actually do something about it. But in Cape Town we still have a vice squad. And one of the people who were prosecuting got ventilated by, his car was riddled with machine gun fire, probably by another rival gang, but his privilege would be to silence him from making a deal with the police and want to cover himself by exposing others in the industry. But it's in Cape Town, we've got these gangs. Mavericks has been implicated in human trafficking as well. They're the ones who fly their planes around with their big banners advertising opening of the city. And Mavericks' biggest place, as far as I know, is right next to the main police station in downtown Cape Town, within a stone's throw from Parliament. And literally, the police station, when we've gone to demonstrate outside against human trafficking, Mavericks and the police station are literally facing one another on opposite sides of the street. So the police can look down from their top floor on the slaves who are sunbathing by the pool on the top roof of Maverick's building. That's how close it is. And when we've spoken to them about it, the Mavericks people said, oh the police are some of our best customers. In fact Parliamentarians are our main customers. And when Parliament was discussing the possibility of moving from Cape Town up to the Kowtung area, the prostitutes marched to Parliament and protested that they would lose their main customers if Parliament moved from Cape Town. That's how bad it is. Incredibly, in 2007, the then National Police Commissioner and head of Interpol, Jackie Salebi, recommended to Parliament that prostitution be legalised in time for the 2010 World Cup soccer. I thought it was about soccer, but apparently it's about prostitution. In 2008, ANC Parliament, George Legato, recommended prostitution be legalised in South Africa. At the same time, Durban Municipality announced they want to create red-light districts for the sex industry. Later, Head of Interpol National Police Commissioner Jackie Salebi was removed from office when his extensive links with organized crime was exposed. You cannot prosecute pimps and the human traffickers easily if prostitution is legalised. Prostitution and human trafficking are totally and absolutely linked. They're inseparable. Siamese twins. Doctors for Life International sent out press statements saying that Doctors for Life was appalled by the fact that South Africa would continue rolling out the welcome mat for organised crime syndicates who trade in human lives, exploiting the poor and the desperate by forcing them into this new slavery. Doctors for Life reported that approximately 40,000 women and children were trafficked into Germany for prostitution during the previous World Cup soccer. by Middle Eastern pimps. The same could be expected for South Africa if it had been legalized here. Well of course we still have these syndicates working in the country but at least they can technically still be prosecuted as is proven in Cape Town. And these drug dealers and human traffickers, these slave traders, line their pockets during these major events and they won't go away at the end of the World Cup Soccer, obviously. Prostitution is an act of violence. It's intrinsically harmful. It's traumatizing to people involved. Improving the circumstances in which the slaves worked doesn't reduce the harm done. The idea of legalizing a vice is the wrong way to go. In South Africa, the cry for help was echoed in a survey done amongst 475 of what they called sex workers. When asked, what do you need, 89% responded to leave, to be able to escape. And Doctors for Life did this survey. In fact, Doctors for Life has got a 24-hour helpline and they've got an office right down in the point in Durban, in the middle of the worst of this which is going on, where they organise helping them to escape and they have rehabilitated many. I've met many who've escaped through Doctors for Life's work in Durban and we've been working amongst them. In fact, I was invited by Uncle Erlo to organise back in 1997 was it, or 96, a Christian Action Workshop at Crossbunter on how to reach out to the people in this industry. And it was quite an interesting episode because I took them all downtown to the point and to West Street to these different so-called escort agencies which were nothing but a cover for human traffic victims and for these slaves. and I placed the volunteers from Cross the Bunter around there to sing hymns, to take photographs, and to hand out Gospel literature and evangelise outside then. And of course it totally frustrated the plans of these people because while I want to claim there's nothing wrong with it and so on, Some of the customers, when they see people outside and hear the hymns and people taking cameras, they all suddenly drive off to the next one. We saw these combi loads arrive of soccer supporters. They'd stop outside one, see all this, move on to the next one. But we knew our people were next, weren't we? And at the next, and at the next. And so, at one point, Uncle Erlo gave me his oldest daughter Helga to come with and said he wanted her to be, she was only a teenager then, to understand what's going on out there. So I felt very responsible. Elizabeth Stevens' daughter and I made sure I was standing right next to the protector while she was taking pictures and of course this really made the pimps furious and a pimp came striding up, a massive Russian man, big chap, he came striding straight towards Hilda and he was obviously going for a camera so I immediately took a camera, stood in front of him, put the camera under me. He picked me up off my feet like I was nothing and threw me over the Park Cross into West Street which is a one-way racetrack. And I was rolling in the road there trying to protect the pimp from getting damaged while cars were swerving and hooting and screeching tires to get around me. Well, I found out that later that week that very same pimp who had thrown me was shot dead with his own Tokarov by one of his slaves in that very same place that we were standing outside, I think it was Galaxy. And interesting, I didn't hear that till much later, but that's how it was going on. At some of these places the things we saw and heard was staggering. And some of the people high up in the several floors up were shouting down asking for help. We asked for the police's help. I've jumped ahead of myself. That first day I took them out and I placed these volunteers from Kwasi Banti to pray and protest and do sidewalk counselling. I went all the way through to West Street and then I came back to the point, I came back to West Street to see how they were going and I saw all of our volunteers were gone. I was disappointed that they'd given up so early. I mean, they couldn't have been there more than 40 minutes. I thought, that's disappointing. Well anyway, next, that was Saturday night. Sunday morning I'm sitting in the auditorium across the lunch for the morning service and somebody runs up to me and says, did you hear that auntie so-and-so and uncle so-and-so and auntie so-and-so and uncle so-and-so have been arrested and spent the night in prison? These are people that I'd left outside Galaxy and other places for outreach. They'd been locked up. No wonder they'd disappeared. Then I heard ominously, Uncle Lola wants to see you right now. I thought, oh my. And I went there and Uncle Ola was elaborately furious. Fortunately, not at me. He wanted to declare war on these brothels. And so he gave me whole busloads of people and we went for the next weeks and months. And they had no peace morning, noon, night. He laid a charge against the Minister of Police for wrongful arrest. It turned and won that. And the police had to pay a massive settlement to Kwasi Dante for daring to arrest the people for no good reason. And it turned out that an Indian policeman, I think he was a warrant officer, who is a relative of and brought out by one of the pimps at these places, had been phoned to come and arrest these Christians who were interfering with their business. And without any due process, without any reasonable cause, without going through a magistrate's arm, he locked up these law-abiding Tanis and Uwams and tossed them into jail overnight with drug dealers and criminals. You know, shocking abuse. And that was the beginning of Kwasi Bansi's war on these brothels. Well, we closed down those brothels. But it was shortly after that that I had this experience of this Russian pimp throwing me head over heels into the street. Well, after we came down to Cape Town, we went to Seapoint and we started staying outside these brothels and making a stand at Seapoint. Well, in one, a pimp came outside without any warning. He took a bucket full of alcohol and violet liquids and tossed it over my head. Head to toe. Stinking, filthy and... You can imagine coming home at two in the morning, explaining to your wife that you gave her the brothel. Smelling like that. And that's the kind of battle we were dealing with. Fighting these characters. And it was vicious as anything. You could just see it was organized crime. And at the end of this battle, many of those places were closed. In fact, we fought outside many of these seaport places until they were shut. They were operating on the main streets. They're so blatant. But it's hard for them to operate if the church is active. Now we know, for example, one dear old auntie, she would take her German shepherd dog and stand outside some of these roads, like the main roads running through Kenilworth and Claremont, where many prostitutes would stand and look for people who'd stop in the car and pick them up and so on. And she'd walk up to these girls, obviously dressed like prostitutes, and say, oh dear, you shouldn't be out here alone, it's dangerous, let me just stand with you until you get your lift or so on. And of course they couldn't get any customers while there's some auntie there with her killer dog. And so there are different ways to undermine or make them move away from your area. But they manage to operate because most churches are silent, apathetic and inactive. And if the churches won't make a stand and be salt and light in their communities, then these things really get out of control. Well, Member of Parliament Sherrilyn Dudley was to be commended for having the courage to actually call this trafficking what it is, slavery, in Parliament. Parliament can't say they haven't had this brought to their attention. She said, The report funded by the United States Agency for International Development claims that crime syndicates of human traffickers, slave traders, are increasing operations in South Africa. Organizations involved in investigating cases and providing therapy for victims say that human trafficking with sex slavery is rife especially in the Eastern Cape. Human rights activists said they feared that things would escalate with the World Cup 2010 being hosted in our country. We urged the government to beef up dedicated police units to close down human trafficking operators. Who are known? I mean, Doctors For Life knows exactly who they are. I knew where they were. I knew where they were in Seaport, I knew where they were in Hillborough, and knew where they were in West Street and in The Point. It was no secret to us, so how could the police not know? In fact, the police were protecting them and locking up people who were trying to protest them. More must be done to educate South Africans to the dangers of being lured by promises of work only to find themselves abducted and captive and drugged by modern day slave traders. Well, this is what we are fighting. I've exposed the slave trade continuing in Sudan, in Faith on the Front Sudan, and in the films like Sudan, Hidden Holocaust, Terrorism, Persecution. Muslims are enslaving people today. Some people know that. Most would prefer to close their eyes and their ears to the slavery that's going on in our neighborhoods, in our city. And so Mender Nazir is someone who was, as a teenager, kidnapped from the Nuba Mountains. by Mujahideen. She is enslaved to a family in Khartoum. Later when her owners travelled to work in London at the Sudan Embassy. They had the audacity to take their slaves for them, including Mender Nazir. Now she knew enough to know that slavery is illegal in England, it's a Christian country. She fled, got diplomatic immunity and protection, and she is protected in England to this day. She wrote the book, Slave, My True Story, published in 2003. That's pretty recent. She was kidnapped in 1992 though. Just imagine the audacity that we've got actual embassies with slaves in them. In fact, I know that slavery is going on in Cape Town. I've seen it with my own eyes. There are Muslim families who have slaves, and it's going on right here. And of course, when you consider how red China outbids everyone else when it comes to cheap things, especially children's toys, most children's toys today in the world are made in China by slave labor. Virtually everything that Disney and McDonald's provides in terms of toys are made by slave labour in China. And the amount of people who outraged that people 20 years ago tolerated slavery, when the people 20 years ago weren't tolerating slavery, they were fighting against it. You had missionaries like William Carey who would not imbibe sugar. He would not take sugar with his tea or anything, because sugar was produced by slave traders, with slave plantations in for example Jamaica and Cuba, and so he would not have sugar. So you had Christians boycotting these things at that time because they recognized the immorality of using slave labor. Yet how many Christians are concerned about China's slave trade? In fact, the vast majority of goods produced in China are used for slave labour. Many of them, millions of them, are Christians. Christian slaves who don't get remunerated for their work. No wonder China can undercut everyone else with their products, because they don't pay their workers. But what we are seeing today is worse than that. How many people watch films that are produced by low-life rapist paedophiles like Harvey Weinstein? Just about every major film out there that's dominated our landscape in recent years has been made by Harvey Weinstein. Just think the Mandela Long Walk to Freedom film. What's the first thing you see on the screen? A Weinstein production. Harvey Weinstein produced the most defiling films promoting everything from communism, pedophilia, child abuse, you can name it. Just think of even a film like Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones. It starts with promoting of pedophilia. We didn't notice it at the time, but it's been exposed since. Steven Spielberg, and it's not just in the realm of assumption, it's now proven, he made that film, Ray's Lost Ark, at the very moment that his best friend, Polanski, Roman Polanski, had fled America because he was wanted for pedophilia, for drugging and raping, was the 12-year-old. And he was, and he's still away from America because if he comes back he'll be arrested for this. It was a proven case of child abuse. And hundreds of Hollywood stars, including people like Harrison Ford, have signed petitions for Roman Polanski to be pardoned and to be allowed back into America. At that very moment that Rim Polanski was fleeing paedophilia charges for drugging and raping Plovdiv, at that very moment Steven Spielberg makes a film where the first words really spoken by the character for Harrison Ford's playing of Indiana Jones, as he walks into this Nepal bar, this young girl there who at that moment was 23, He said, I wondered when you'd walk through my door again. It was ten years ago. And he says, you knew what you were doing. She says, I was a child. Now, why did they put that in to this family film type of raised-lost arc? He was promoting pedophilia subtly as a push for his friend Roman Polanski to be pardoned for this crime, which any Christian country's got laws against pedophilia. Anti-Christian countries don't. In a Muslim country you can marry someone as young as six years old. Under Hinduism you can marry someone as young as four years old. Literally, that's Hinduism, that's Islam. Christianity has always been against pedophilia. And so Steven Spielberg promoted that. Well, we've got organized crime, government corruption, greed, lust and the cowardice of Christians and the hypocrisy of the left are making this outrageous slave industry possible. Most Christians have been deceived and distracted into silence, into apathy and therefore into complicity with silence as consent in this colossal crime of slavery and abuse today. It is a disgraceful silence. Today we've got Jeffrey Epstein's scandalous paedophilia being exposed. And apparently over 16, or was it 20-something times, the American president, Bill Clinton at the time, flew to Paedo Island, as they call it. Jeffrey Epstein's Private Island, where he brings in famous people around the world in order to give them everything their hearts could desire, their evil, depraved hearts, on what they call Pedophilia Island. Hollywood Gates of Harvey Weinstein shows the entire Hollywood industry is rotten to the core, and insiders like Brad Pitt have exposed, yes, child abuse is completely normal it's written in, it's there, and you can get the documentation if you just want to google some of the exposé's for example on Steven Spielberg and his pedophilia and all this. Harvey Weinstein Steven Spielberg, the whole bunch who run the Hollywood industry. They're a bunch of sexual perverts. They are as vile as they come, and they have been degrading people, so I thought, and yet you've got people today who want to condemn to hell previous generations, centuries ago, who fought against slavery and ended it. But there's someone at Danden to help because it existed in their time, but they've got no problem with us living in a time of red China's slave industry, Hollywood's abuse industry, And they've got no problem with the slavery going on today. So what we are seeing today is a disgraceful silence. The silence is actually consent. While they promised them liberty, they themselves are slaves of depravity. For by whom a person is overcome, by him he is also brought into bondage. That's 2 Peter 2, 19. The spirit of the sovereign law is upon me, Jesus said at the beginning of his ministry. The sovereign law has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captors and release to the prisoners, to proclaim liberty to captors, the opening of prison to them who are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and that they have vengeance on our God. to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified. And they shall rebuild the old ruins, they shall raise up the former desolations, they shall repair the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations, instead of shame, You will have double honour. Instead of confusion, they shall rejoice in their portion. Therefore in their land they shall possess double, everlasting joy shall be theirs. For I, the Lord, love justice, I hate robbery. I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God. For he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness. And so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all nations. Now that is the Messianic Psalm in Isaiah 60 verses 1 to 11, which our Lord Jesus quoted at the beginning of his earthly ministry in the synagogue in Capernaum. He has come to proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of prison to those who are bound, to heal the brokenhearted, to comfort those who mourn, and to proclaim the day of the vengeance of our Lord. To love God is to hate evil. And may God forgive us for not hating evil enough. We to proclaim liberty throughout the land. That verse from Leviticus 25 verse 10 is on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, which is meant to be symbolic of America's Declaration of Independence. Proclaim liberty throughout the land. You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. Lies bring bondage, the truth sets free. Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. For you, brethren, have been called to liberty. Only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. By God's grace, we must preach the good news to the poor. We must bind up the brokenhearted. We must proclaim freedom for the captives and release for the prisoners. We must comfort those who mourn and provide for those who grieve. beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. We need to rebuild civilization on the Bible. We need to restore God-honouring laws and renew Christian vigilance. Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. If there's not liberty, obviously the spirit of the Lord is absent. Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Let us pray. Lord God, we want to thank you and praise you for your love, for your mercy, for your grace. We want to thank you, Lord God, that you came to set the captives free. And we pray, Lord God, that you'd forgive your people for being silent about the greatest evils that are going on, tolerated and even celebrated in our societies today. When the wicked rule, there is grieving. And where you judge the wicked, there are shouts of joy. Help us, Lord God, to love you more and to hate evil more. Help us, Lord God, to love those, our neighbours, maybe even strangers, who are enslaved today. Help us, Lord God, to work for full freedom today. We pray it in Jesus' precious and holy name. Amen.