Spiritual Slavery

A reader of my blogs sent me an interesting response to my item of September 3 entitled “Misplaced Criticism.” I thought it would be good to share it with you:

Here is an interesting thought. According to Ken Ham's blog, an anonymous letter said, “How can ‘Christians’ be taken seriously when before the Civil War, many Christians were also slave owners?” How indeed.

Of course, to be consistent, the author should also note that Thomas Jefferson was also a slave owner—so I guess the author can no longer believe in the “separation of Church and State,” which Jefferson wrote about. He will have to throw that out. And the author will need to stop believing in democracy, which originated in the Greek city-states where slavery was common. Nor will he find any solace in humanistic philosophy, since many of the philosophers were slave owners (as documented in the classic work Lives of Eminent Philosophers). The author will also find Islam equally unacceptable, since there is a long history of Muslims owning slaves, both black and white.

If the author rejects Christianity because some Christians owned slaves, then to be consistent, he needs to reject the rest.

Man is a sinful creature. It was man’s sinful heart that gave birth to the evils of the slave trade. But, as Ken pointed out, it was the work of mostly Bible-believing Christians that brought it to an end. Why then should anyone reject the religion that ended slavery?

But there is a worse slavery that the Bible discusses, a spiritual slavery. Everyone who sins is a slave to sin. And only Jesus Christ can set a man free from his spiritual bondage and give him a life of true freedom.

Yesterday I wrote about our dinosaur builder Buddy Davis—he is also a musician with several CDs, and I wanted to follow up my posting of yesterday with a letter he received recently about his wonderful music:

Dear Mr. Davis,

Last week we had VBS [Vacation Bible School] at our church and used the Answers in Genesis curriculum for the first time. We used last year’s VBS material—Amazon Expedition. The curriculum was great and we were very pleased with it.

I’m writing to tell you that instead of the jungle jam music that came with the curriculum, I chose to use 10 songs from your Creation Musical Adventure CD that especially went with the lessons. We printed out the words and used the CD. What a blessing! The kids learned the songs very quickly because of the lively rhythm, and I heard several teachers (myself included) say that they awoke in the mornings with one of the songs going through their heads. What better way to awaken!

Thank you so much for using this talent for the Lord and for making your music available to us. I personally have all your CDs and am blessed by every one of them. Keep up the good work for the Lord. The Lord bless you. Hope you have a new CD coming out soon!

Devotion

Does not bar

(Numbers 9:10, 13) Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If any man of you or of your posterity shall be unclean by reason of a dead body, or be in a journey afar off, yet he shall keep the passover unto the LORD. . . . But the man that is clean, and is not in a journey, and forbeareth to keep the passover, even the same soul shall be cut off from among his people.

The gospel is a commandment for all men to acknowledge their sin and be saved; the Lord Jesus Christ does not bar any sinner from coming to Him.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken