The Biblical Right to Self Defense | Dr. Conrad Vine

So, today we have um we're going to have um three sermons. The first, as you can see on the screen there, uh well, you could see it on the screen. We had problems with my laptop. It did connect, then it didn't connect. So, we're now running it from the uh the laptop back on the uh main audio-visual desk.

So, our first talk today is is called the biblical right to self-defense. And I've written this because we're living in a violent world. And we want to know what the Bible says about this. And uh how do we respond as Christians to the surge of violence all around us? And then uh we have uh for our main worship service, um uh we have another talk.

And uh you know, I wrote these 2 weeks ago. So, I have to try to remember what these talks are about. Yeah, that one's called Dying to Live. I'm talking about decadence and uh distress and the mental health crisis in America and then how Jesus sets us free from that. And then this afternoon, um I'm talking about the um the economic reset that's taking place and the digital reset and um digital IDs and what the gospel has to say about that.

Uh so, um you know, I wrote these sermons a couple of weeks ago and um I'd churn out about three a week at my kitchen table. And so, uh I I pray about these things. Lord, I pray these sermons are relevant, they're applicable, they talk to the issues that we're dealing with today. And so, it's my humble prayer today that that uh what I share with you will be an offering acceptable to God and it will feed each of our hearts and our souls. Uh so, I I invite you to bow your heads with me and we'll begin with a word of prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the blessings of the Sabbath day. Father, I thank you that we can gather here in the fairgrounds. Thank you for the freedom we have to worship you according to our conscience. And Lord, we're living in troubled times. Uh Lord, uh people who aren't Christians sense that something is going wrong with our world.

And so, Lord, as we spend this day together, I pray that by the end of this day we will each have heard your spirit speaking to our hearts. Each Each one of us will have a closer walk with you. I pray that our witness for you will burn more brightly and more fervently. And I pray that our hearts will be filled with ever more hope because we shared these hours together here today. Lord, I ask that as I speak that you will speak through me and for me.

May you and you alone be glorified today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. All right. So, um [clears throat] the biblical right to self-defense.

And if I go to the the next slide. So, um there we are, the introduction. All right. So, have you noticed there's been more attacks on churches recently in America? Yes, it's hard to avoid this in the news.

Um almost every week we go on the news and we see there's been an attack. And actually, um there are hundreds and hundreds of attacks on American churches every year. The vast majority don't get reported upon at all. And uh we we see these attacks, they we know they normally come on the news on Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening, and then on Monday people are asking, "Why did this happen?" And by Monday evening, Tuesday, the news cycle has moved on. And uh it takes a moment just to sit down and think and reflect and say, "Just how many attacks are happening in our churches?" And it used to be in the 1990s that most violence in our churches was happening because of custody disputes.

And so, um parents, a mother would have custody. She would drop little Jimmy off in the Sabbath school or the Sunday uh class the Sabbath School classroom. And then the father would come along 50 minutes before the end of the class and say, "I want my kid." And the teachers who didn't know that there was a custody dispute going on, but they knew this was Jimmy's daddy, they would hand little Jimmy over and then you'd have a scene in the parking lot. And so, in the '90s, a lot of the the disturbance in our churches was caused by custody disputes gone wrong. And then we started to see the rise of ideologically driven violence in our churches uh such as the shooting in Charlotte uh by a young um white supremacist of nine African-American worshipers.

He sat in their prayer meeting. He sat at the back all through the prayer meeting. He prayed with them. He became friends with them. And then he shot nine of them when it was over.

That was a terrible event. And we've seen other ideologically driven violence in our churches. And in recent years, we're seeing more attacks um from within the trans community on Christian institutions. But we're also seeing the rise of nihilistic violence. Now, the Family Research Council did a report in 2024 um called Hostility Against Churches on the Rise in the United States, analyzing incidents from 2018 to 20 2013 to 2018.

And so, uh this was part of their conclusion here. What they said was, "Although the motivations for many of these incidents remain unknown, the rise in crimes against churches is taking place in a context in which American culture appears increasingly hostile to Christianity. Criminal acts of vandalism and destruction of church property may be symptomatic of a collapse in societal reverence and respect for houses of worship and religion, in this case, churches and Christianity. Americans appear increasingly comfortable lashing out against church buildings, pointing to a larger societal problem of marginalizing core Christian beliefs, including those that touch on hot-button political issues related to human dignity and sexuality. Attacks on houses of worship may also signal a discomfort with religion in general." End quote.

And so, um there are plenty of reports out there. And basically, um the the incidents or the number of attacks that are taking place on American churches is simply skyrocketing. And uh some of these attacks make the news, some of them don't make the news. Um it seems that only if there's a large loss of life will these attacks make the national news. But this is becoming an increasing problem.

And more recently, we're witnessing the rise of what we call nihilistic violence. And uh these are violent acts that lack any ideological motivation, but they're driven by a misanthropic worldview. And the word misanthropic means that you simply hate humanity. So, nihilistic violence means that those who have this kind of worldview, they reject all uh religious and moral and social values. And they believe that life is meaningless.

And because for them life is meaningless, they want to destroy anything that has meaning to anybody else. So, they're not driven by um this ideology or that ideology. They're not driven by um the say let's say Al-Qaeda in the name of Islam. They're not uh trans shooters in the name of social justice. They're not Ulster loyalists in the 1980s in Northern Ireland in favor of British rule.

The nihilistic violence is on the rise across our our society because our younger generations are imbibing a philosophy of despair in the schools, public schools and in our universities. This translates through to a sense that nothing matters, nothing has meaning, whether I live or whether I die, it does not matter. And so, we're seeing this um sudden rise in what is called nihilistic violence. And uh there've been recent, if you follow the news around the world, uh when there are these attacks, people always ask, "Why?" You see it on the news, people say, "We're trying to figure out why the shooter did what the shooter was doing." And uh but it's not just shootings. If you go to Europe, you have plenty of stabbings and attacks with machetes and axes.

And if you go to China, the worst school shootings in the last 50 years have been in China, but they weren't with kni- uh with guns, they were with knives. And so, the Chinese authorities have turned their kindergartens into mini fortresses because so many children were being killed by men with knives um in China. And so, uh there is a rise of violence around the world. And so, oftentimes the media asks, "We need to understand why. What was driving this particular act of violence?" And with nihilistic violence, the answer is there is no answer.

It's just violence for the sake of violence. Because if we think we can understand why they were motivated by what they were doing, that helps us to understand the rationale and the reason. And that helps us to kind of process it in our minds. But increasingly, there is no answer to the why. There's just simply a because.

And so, what we're finding is that there are more and more online nihilistic violent communities that celebrate these attacks. They celebrate their clothing. They celebrate their hairstyles. They celebrate what's written on the bullets. They're celebrating their mannerisms.

And many of these people are using images from political right and political left. They're using images that reflect um racist ideology and and also um other ideologies as well. And so, it's very very hard to identify what's causing many of these young people to turn to violence. Um there are some very famous um online nihilistic violence communities. One is known as the true crime true crime community, TCC.

And they're online. This is a loosely connected group of fans uh who celebrate serial killers, mass shooters, mass murders, and terrorists. It's mostly made up of young female fans of mass murderers. Now, this This is an an age-old phenomenon. If you go back to the time of ancient Rome, the gladiators had huge female fan bases.

And the the rich Roman women would pay to spend time with gladiators. And uh Charles Charles Manson, who was in prison, that mass murderer here in the United States, he had a large following among women. And many ladies would write him offering their hands in marriage um because there there was something special about um Charlie Manson. And so, today we have the same we have the same phenomenon where female um fans are celebrating the mass killers of today who are considered to be tragic celebrities who are loved and beloved by their own fan bases. And they each have their own defining traits, they have their origin stories and their own mythology.

And members of TCC, the True Crime Network, they're using platforms such as Tumblr and Telegram. And then you also have, parallel to that, and this is more male-dominated, you have No Lives Matter. Now, we've heard of Blue Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter, but there is also movements out there called No Lives Matter. And No Lives Matter is a nihilistic structure of belief that believes that there is nothing inherently good or purposeful about human life or existence. And so, No Lives Matter has a cellular structure very similar to many terror cells, and their core belief is misanthropy, that is the hatred of human beings.

And these leaders believe that evil has no limits. They believe that we should kill or be killed as No Lives Matter, and they promote antisocial behavior as a way of tearing down society around us. And their publications online focus on teaching people how to identify and stalk and take out random targets. So, in October 2024 and February 2025, um those Swedish teenagers who are associated with No Lives Matter, they chose elderly victims waiting for the buses at the bus stops, and they stabbed them. And then they uploaded the footage to NLM chat rooms on the internet.

And so, within the NLM movement, um the boundaries between violent extremism, nihilistic violence, and wider identity-based violence are becoming more and more blurred. Increasingly, it does not matter the country in which you live. You could be attacked, as we saw recently in Charlotte, uh that young um Ukrainian refugee, Iryna Sarutska, as she was simply on her phone scrolling. She told her boyfriend she'd be home in a few minutes, um but you've probably all seen the pictures. Or we see the attack on the Church of the Annunciation in Minneapolis just a few weeks ago.

In Sweden 2024, this is a screenshot from the knife attack on an elderly man who didn't make it for one of the No Lives Matter um killers. Or I was in uh Traverse City this year in July. My wife and I took a day trip up to um see the Mackinac Island, and we drove back through Traverse City, and a few hours later, it was on the news there's been a gun attack in Traverse City as people waiting at the checkout in Walmart, of all places. And so, our Western societies are grappling with a a toxic mixture of political polarization, the demonization of anybody who disagrees with you, identity politics replacing natural relationships. We have a growing mental health crisis that we'll cover in our second sermon together.

We have a philosophy of despair in our schools. We have a pro-death culture because through the pro-choice movement. And we have frag- we have fragmented online subcultures and the discussion boards that encourage, advise, and celebrate nihilistic violence. So, do we have your attention this morning? Yeah, we have your attention this morning.

And so, in the final crisis, if you read the book of Revelation chapter 7 and chapter 14, um the Apostle John discusses there the 144,000. And in Revelation 13, the Apostle Paul John talks about those who receive the mark of the beast upon their foreheads. But the 144,000, they receive the seal of God on their foreheads. And they It says there in Revelation 14:1, it says, "Then I looked, and there was the lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him were 144,000 who had his name and his father's name written on their foreheads." And so, the righteous who make their way through the final crisis just before Jesus comes again, from the time of the sealing at the close of probation all the way through the seven final plagues and Jacob's time of trouble, which is a period of of extreme violence and pain and suffering within our world, the 144,000, they have the name of their father written upon their foreheads, which means they now perfectly reflect their father's character. But the wicked, they have the mark of the beast upon their foreheads.

And the power behind the beast, that is the first beast of Revelation 13, is the dragon, which is Satan. And so, the world is divided into two groups of people. It's not Republican or Democrat, it's not black or white, male or female, young or old, educated or uneducated. It is those whose characters perfectly reflect the character of our heavenly Father, and those whose characters reflect the character of Satan. And that is why the angels are portrayed as holding back the winds of strife at the start of Revelation 17 until God has finished the maturing and the perfecting of his character in the lives and minds of his people before this final crisis breaks upon the world.

The The conclusion from this is that before Jesus comes again, we're going to see an upsurge of demonically inspired violence like we've never seen in human history. And so, we need to take this seriously. Because we are now targets as Christians. And if you follow the news, you'll know that in places like Nigeria, almost every week, 50, 100, 200 Christians are being killed. When I say killed, they're being macheted and their villages are being burned down on their heads as they sleep at night.

And the media portrays it as a clash over grazing rights. The reality is, these are Fulani jihadists coming from the north killing the Christian tribesmen of the south. This is a religious war that is going on. And while we may focus on who's doing the mid-time show at the Super Bowl and questions of such eternal significance as that, Christians are suffering all around the world today. And uh 1990, the leaders of our worldwide church issued an official statement.

As you know, I'm not a big fan of official statements. >> [clears throat] >> I uh I I think that maybe the only thing that should come out of the Adventist church is the good news that Jesus is coming again. And why we need to post a statement after every instance in the news, it uh it just just astonishes me. There's enough chitchat out there on social media. We're just one voice among tens of millions commenting on what's happening in the world today.

But we did issue a statement in 1990 on a ban on the sales of assault weapons to civilians. Now, if you look at all of our statements in the General Conference, there's a general trend to them. The COVID statement was in favor of mandates. The climate change statement is in favor of coordinated global climate change action. Um this statement here is in favor of banning certain weapons being sold to certain and so forth.

And so, what you realize there's a certain political direction in the statements that are coming out of our General Conference. Maybe that's because it's based in Washington, I don't know. But there is a certain direction to them. But we did issue a statement in 1990, and it deplored gun violence, and it called for restrictions on the ability of civilians to purchase assault weapons. But the statement never defines what it means by assault weapons.

So, we're not going to go into the statement just yet. We will come to that as we go through our time together here. So, this Adventist This statement from the General Conference forces us to ask a deeper question, and it says this, "Is it legitimate to act in self-defense?" Is it morally defensible to act in self-defense? Some people say, "No, God will protect you. And if God allows things to happen to you, you must accept that it was his Maybe it's his permissive will for you, not his perfect will for you." Some people take that position.

Other people say, "We need to be carrying an AR-15 to church in the back of the car." All right? And so, there we have these kind of two extremes out there. And I'm not driving to church today, if in case you want to know. But um this statement here um forces us to ask the question, "Is it legitimate to bear arms in defense of yourself, your family, your congregation, and liberty of conscience in general?" So, that's our introduction. Let's consider This is our Oh, there it is there.

It says, "The sale of automatic or semi-automatic assault weapons should be strictly controlled. This will reduce the use of weapons by mentally disturbed people and criminals, especially those involved in get in drug and gang activities." Now, we'll we'll we'll delve a little bit more deep little more in detail into that as we go through our talk here, um because words matter and words have meaning. Um we want to break that down in a bit more detail as we go through our time together. So, with that introduction in mind, this is our journey here today. We're going to first look very briefly at the general evidence of nature.

We're going to look at some general evidence from scripture. We're then going to look at the specific evidence in scripture that deals with self-defense. We're then going to look in the evidence from the spirit of prophecy. We then look at the evidence in the in the in general history. Then we're going to come back to the official statement on assault weapons, and then we're going to come to our conclusion.

So, that's the journey we're going to go on, all right? Okay. And um th- this is um my father. When I was born, um he wanted me to have unique names. And so, my middle two names are Athelstan and Raymond.

Raymond after my grandfather. Athelstan was the um son of Alfred the Great in about 800 AD, and he kicked the Danes out of the eastern side of England and unified the English kingdom. But the the net result is that my middle initials are AR. And so, it's kind of an an unfortunate set of a initials. So, when I I used to poke those poke post those up on my screens, some people saying, "Are those really your names or is that a like tongue in cheek?" But, they really are my names, but I try not to do it anymore because it causes confusion for people.

So, uh Dr. Conrad A.R. Vines. So, um let's look at the evidence of nature, shall we? So, what do we see here?

This is known as open carry. And this is um a porcupine. >> [clears throat] >> Now, did he evolve those on his own or are they given him by God? They're given him by God. Does God want this innocent little creature to have the right to defend itself?

Yes. Is this an offensive weapon that God has given this this little porcupine? No, it's a defensive weapon. This porcupine has the ability to defend itself um against attackers. Uh the next animal we have is this here.

Um this is known as concealed carry. >> [laughter] >> And uh the skunk. Now, has [clears throat] any has anybody here taken out a skunk? Yes. All right.

I can assure you, stay 100 yd away when you take out a skunk. I've done it once and I came home and uh my wife and sister I strip off outside the garage um before I come into the house. And um anyway, so skunks and porcupines are evidence that God has given uh many of the animals in the animal kingdom the ability to defend themselves. We also have if you go to uh the north, you have the elk and you have the moose, which are magnificent animals. And so, nature teaches us that in a fallen world, God has given and the I've just chosen some a few examples here.

God has given the means for self-defense to many animals because we live in a sinful world. So, if we look at the general evidence of scripture, we'll start out by looking at Matthew 10:16. Jesus says this. He says, "I'm sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves." End quote.

So, we are living among wolves. And when Jesus sends us out to bear the gospel to the ends of the earth, um sheep among wolves means that uh you're likely to face a lot of persecution. And Jesus says explicitly in John 16:1-2 that we'll be hated by all men for his name's sake. He goes on to say, "There is coming a time when those who kill you will think that in so doing, they're offering an act of worship before God." So, when I was in northern Iraq in 2014-2015 and ISIS were capturing Westerners and you know, um cutting their throats, and before they do it, they say um uh bismillah al-rahim al-rahman, which means in the name of Allah, the most merciful, the most gracious, and then they'd cut the throat. This was an a religious deed.

They thought that they were worshipping God in the process of cutting the throats of those Westerners. So, this text tells us that um we are to use our God-given common sense to enact wise decisions while maintaining a peaceful atmosphere, free of fear, and full of trust in almighty God. Matthew 10:22 says this. "All men will hate you because of me, but he or the one who stands firm to the end will be saved." So, we recognize that the more we love God, the more we hate this world. Or the more there is enmity with this world.

We either serve the King of kings and Lord of lords or we serve the prince of this world. And if we are in love with the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the desires of wealth and so forth, that constitutes enmity with God. And so, when we live our life um loving our heavenly Father, this verse says that all men will hate you because of me. That tells us that in a divided world, you know, we live in a divided society, yes? Just look at what's happening in Portland night after night.

We live in a bitterly divided society. But, there is coming a time when there will be one thing that unites all the factions on planet Earth, and it's the hatred of those who bear the name of Jesus Christ. And so, that is coming upon this world. We recognize that when we identify ourselves as followers of Jesus, disciples of Jesus, and joint heirs with Christ, we're putting ourselves in the crosshairs of those who hate the gospel and do radical things to destroy the fellowship of believers. And Hebrews 13:5, the second half that verse says, "Cuz God has said, never will I leave you, never will I forsake you." That is God alone can override the effects of free will and prevent the logical results that take place happen as result of disastrous free will actions.

We always seek God's help and protection, particularly when evil men seek to put us in danger. So, God's promise I will never leave you and I'll never forsake you is a precious promise for Christians today. But, let's look at some of the specific evidence of scripture. We started out by saying in general that God himself and his angels utilize weapons of war. The angel sent to guard the the gates of the Garden of Eden was armed with a what?

It's in Genesis 3:24. There was a an angel placed with a flaming sword to prevent Adam and Eve getting back into the Garden of Eden. When the angel appeared before Balaam and his donkey, what did the angel have in his sword in his hand? He had a a sword. When Jesus appeared before Joshua in Joshua chapter 5 as the commander of the armies of the host of heaven, what did Jesus have in his hand?

He had a sword. And so, um all these images, particularly in the Old Testament, are of of um angels and of Jesus himself who utilize a sword. And if you look in um the first verse we'll go in a bit more detail, it's here Exodus 22:2-3, which says this. It says, "If a thief is found breaking in and is beaten to death, no blood guilt is incurred. But, if it happens after sunrise, blood guilt is incurred." And so, what this verse here enshrines in the Mosaic law the rights to lethal violence in self-defense, particularly when you're not sure what's happening.

You're caught unawares. Somebody breaks into your tent at night, you can't flip on the light, they didn't have that back then. All you know is somebody is in your tent and there is your family, and the Mosaic law says in those cases, you are allowed to use lethal force to defend your family. Psalm 46 and verse 1 says this. "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." And the psalmist goes on to say later in the Psalm 144, he says, "It is God who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle." So, when David faced Goliath, did he know how to use that sling?

Was he a novice or was he an expert handler of the sling? Now, a sling may not sound much to us in 2025, but a sling back back back in those days was a lethal weapon. And they could take out a guy over 100 yd, and they could fire seven or eight shots a minute. Those things were the rapid-fire, you know, assault weapons of their day. And when David picked up five stones by the brook there, why did he pick up five stones?

Because he was confident that he could take out one shot will take out one giant at a time, and Goliath had four other brothers. David knew he was skilled in the art of war, and with five shots, he could take out five five giants. So, David was prepared for his battle with Goliath. He didn't wait until the time of crisis before preparing, but he prepared himself before the time of crisis arose. And then you have Proverbs 23:31.

As as Solomon says this. "The horse is prepared against the day of battle, but safety is of the Lord." And what we find here, as we find repeatedly through the scriptures, is there was a principle that we do our bit and then we trust God for the outcome. In this passage here, it says that the horse is prepared for the day of battle. So, we do our bit in training our war horses, but safety and the ultimate outcome belongs to God. And so, um throughout um throughout the scriptures, we find repeated examples of God's people preparing for war in a physical sense, um but they always trusted God for the outcome.

And so, this passage here, "The horse is prepared against the day of battle, but safety is of the Lord," um gives us a clear principle that yes, in in violent times, we may need to prepare to defend ourselves, but we always trust the outcome to God. Um we trust God, but we prepare the horse for battle. We have to play our part. We prepare and we work, and then we trust the outcome to God. As as Solomon goes on to say this.

He says, "Like a muddy spring or a polluted fountain is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked." Proverbs 25:26. And so, there's no use coming to a muddy spring or to a polluted fountain, is there? A fountain promises much, but when you discover that it's polluted, you want nothing to do with it. And so, Solomon compares a man who gives way before the wicked, that is a man who does not stand to defend that which is right and true and good and moral in his life, he he declares that a man who thinks he's righteous to be essentially a polluted spring that is fit for nothing. Then we have a very clear example in Genesis 14 and verse 14.

And this is the story of Abraham and when he heard that his nephew Lot had been taken captive by the northern kings, Abraham set off with his household of trained men. Now, the text tells us that Abraham, we'll read it together. It says, "When Abraham heard that his nephew had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men born in his house, 318 of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan." That is in the far north of Israel. He divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants enrouted them, and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus. So, when Abraham entered the promised land, he wasn't just leading a flocks, you know, cattle and sheep and some camels and donkeys and mules.

He actually had a over 318 adult men who were trained for battle in his household. Because he knew he was entering the badlands. Canaan was a was a shifting mixture of city-states who were always at war with one another. It was a nation It was a land of shifting political alliances. And Abraham knew that when he entered the promised land, he wasn't just going to enter like the Garden of Eden.

There was going to be fighting there. So, he had already prepared 318 adult men ready for battle for when they entered the promised land. And when when Lot was taken captive, Abraham went after Lot and his captors, and he retrieved Lot and all his property, and none of the family were destroyed. And when Abraham came back from that military adventure with his trained men, he met with Melchizedek, who is a type of Christ himself. And we read that story in Genesis 14:19-20.

And um uh this is Melchizedek speaking. It says, "He blessed him and said, 'Blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand.'" So, was Abraham a pacifist? Yes or no? No.

He was not a pacifist. Um and Melchizedek, who was a type of Christ, he says that yes, you took physical action, you took military action, but it was God who delivered your enemies into your hand. So, once again, we see this principle that we prepare ourselves, but we trust God for the outcome. This was played out in the story of Abraham. Now, Sister White goes on to comment on this particular story.

And this is what she says. She says, uh this is Patriarchs and Prophets, page 134-135. She says, "Seeking first of all divine counsel, Abraham prepared for war. From his own encampment, he summoned 318 trained servants, men trained in the fear of God, in the service of their master, and in the practice of arms. The worshiper of Jehovah had not only rendered a great service to the country, but improved himself a man of valor.

It was seen that righteousness is not cowardice. And that Abraham's religion made him courageous in maintaining the right and defending the oppressed." So, does the Spirit of Prophecy speak positively about Abraham's self-defense or negatively? Positively. That Abraham had trained men ready to defend the family when they came under attack from those northern kingdoms. It was his heroic act in this event here that gave him the the fear of God fell upon the neighboring peoples, not because of what Abraham was preaching.

In fact, there's no record of Abraham preaching anything, but it was because Abraham was righteous in his defense of his family. And people saw that you don't mess with Abraham. He has his own He's a basically his own militia as they've come into the promised land then. Then you come to 1 Samuel 11:1-4. And the story here the story here is that the Ammonite king had invaded the northeast part of Israel up near the Golan Heights.

They attacked an Israelite city named Jabesh Gilead. And they threatened to gouge the right eye out of every man living in Jabesh Gilead. And they wanted to enslave them all. This was designed to humiliate the Israelite people. And so, the the people of Jabesh Gilead, they said to the foreign invading king, they said, "Give us 7 days to ask for help from Israel, and if help doesn't arrive, we'll open the doors, we'll surrender to you, and you can push out our right eyes." So, there was a 7-day deadline.

And the message comes to King Saul, who's out plowing his oxen. So, the text says, "Nahash the Ammonite went up and besieged Jabesh Gilead, and all the men of Jabesh said to Nahash, 'Make a treaty with us and we will serve you.' But Nahash the Ammonite said to them, 'On this condition will I make a treaty with you, namely that I gouge out everyone's right eye and thus put disgrace upon all Israel." The elders of Jabesh said to him, "Give us 7 days respite that we may send a messengers to all the territory of Israel. Then, if there is no one to save us, we'll give ourselves up to you." And so, the message comes down to King Saul, who was actually following his oxen in the field. He just become made king. He still wasn't sure what a king was supposed to do.

But when the message came to King Saul that the people of Jabesh Gilead had been attacked and they have 7 days or they're all going to have their right eyes taken out, something happened to Saul that was quite incredible. The text says, "The spirit of God came upon Saul in power when he heard these words, and his anger was greatly kindled." So, this was a case of righteous indignation. And there is another principle in this here, which is nowhere in the scriptures are Christians ever given permission to use arms for wars of conquest or wars of greed or wars of empire. Nor are we given permission to use arms for acts of revenge, vengeance, or in anger. But in this case here, Saul, the spirit of the Lord comes upon Saul and he's stirred with a righteous indignation that there's an innocent group of people about to be hurt and we need to do something about it.

And so, when this is a this is a case of righteous indignation in this particular stall story here. So, Saul responded militarily and he raised an army and he marched to Jabesh Gilead and he defeated King Nahash and the Ammonites, and he delivered the people of Jabesh Gilead once and for all. So, in this story here, the spirit of God inspired a military deliverance on the part of Saul. Are you following me on this? All right.

So, then we come to the story of Nehemiah. Uh this is a very famous story and the Jews have come back from foreign captivity in Babylon. And the Medo-Persian emperor Cyrus has set them free and they've come back to Jerusalem and they're going to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Now, we don't think of the walls as meaning very much these days because most of our cities in America don't have city walls. City walls lost their significance in about 1450 after the the the Ottomans destroyed Istanbul Constantinople.

They they brought in these bronze cannon and they destroyed the walls of Constantinople. And if you ever If you want a 7-day break, go to Istanbul. It's an amazing city. And you see the walls of Constantinople, they're incredible, huge things. And you can see where the Ottomans punched holes through the walls with those bronze cannon.

And so, from the 1500s onwards, walls don't mean so much. But when Nehemiah wanted to build the walls of Jerusalem, this was like establishing the national sovereignty of the Jewish people once again. That once we build these walls, we're going to be we It's harder for you to attack us. We can live our lives within those walls. We can have watchmen on the walls and nobody's going to come and mess with us again.

And so, the the Samaritans, they didn't want the walls of Jerusalem to be built. So, they kept sending threatening envoys. They kept send They kept They kept sending people to deceive Nehemiah, to try and persuade them not to build the walls. They sent letters to the Persian emperor saying, "Don't let the Jews build the city walls cuz if you do, that city will be a hotbed of rebellion once again." So, the Samaritans did everything they could politically and through intimidation to stop Nehemiah rebuilding the city walls. But Nehemiah, he says in Nehemiah 4:9, a simple verse says, "So, we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night." So, once again, you have that basic biblical principle that we we prepare and we also trust in God.

And so, the story goes on in this passage here. Some of you are very familiar with this. Nehemiah said, "Do not be afraid of them." That's Nehemiah speaking to the people of Israel as they're rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. He says, "Don't be afraid of those Samaritans who may have threatened to come here." He says, "Remember the Lord." And that word Lord is in capitals, which means it's referring to Jesus Christ. Remember You might say, "Remember Jesus, who is great and awesome, and fight for your kin, your sons and your daughters, your wives, and your homes." And so, the story goes on that those some people were were working and they were carrying the bricks by in one hand and they had a weapon strapped to their side on their thighs.

The story goes on, "From that day on, half of my servants worked on construction and half held the spears, shields, bows, and body armor. And the leaders posted themselves behind the whole house of Judah, who were building the wall. The burden bearers carried their loads in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and with the other, they held a weapon." And so, in these stories here, we see that they one hand held a trowel and strapped to the waist, there was a sword. God blessed their work and those walls went up in record time, 52 days. It was one of the most amazing reconstruction jobs in history.

And then the neighboring nations were astonished that the Israelites could take the old burnt down walls from Nebuchadnezzar that had been destroyed almost 70 years before and they could refashion a functional city wall within 52 days. When God Well, God promises to protect us, he expects us to make smart decisions within the realm of our capabilities. Such as the Jews in Nehemiah's time who when when they came under attack, they defended themselves from Haman and those who are I'm trying to kill the Jews. Uh when they came under attack, you know, um there was the Feast of Purim, yes? And uh the the Persian emperor, um he said to he said to Haman who wanted to kill the Jews, he said, "Well, let's cast lots and that that'll be the dates on which the Jews are going to get killed." And the word for lots, the the plural is Purim.

And so that became known as the Feast of Purim in in in the Jewish festival. And that was the on that date, rather than Haman who's now dead, but his friends attacking the Jewish people in the Persian Empire, um Esther sent out a letter and said the king allowed the Jews to defend themselves. So, on that day, whenever the Jews were attacked, they fought back and overwhelmed their attackers. And so we see in this in the time of Nehemiah on the building of the walls of Jeru- of Jerusalem and also in Esther and the deliverance of the Jews from the attacks in the Persian Empire, that um the Jews prayed, they fasted, they did what they could, and they trusted God for the outcome. So, that's what we find in the New Testament.

Do we have the biblical right to self-defense in the Old Testament? Yes, we do. Is the Old Testament as inspired as the New Testament? Yes, it is. All right, so let's see what the New Testament says.

The New Testament doesn't say much about this at all. But there's a few verses that we're probably familiar with. And one is this, Matthew 5:38-39. This is the Sermon on the Mount. And uh this is Jesus teaching about turning the other cheek.

Jesus says, "You've heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, do not resist an evil doer, but if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also." So, what is Jesus saying in this passage here? Well, uh first of all, Jesus discusses the eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth tooth principle. That is known to theologians as the lex talionis. Um and it basically said that if someone um if someone kills your donkey, they have to pay you back a donkey. And if somebody injures you, so you maybe lose your left eye, then the the most punishment that can come upon you is maybe you pay for the equivalence of losing a left eye or you'd have your left eye gouged out.

But the point about this law in the Book of Moses is that the punishment has to fit the crime. That's the whole point. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth means if we get into a fight and I and you knock out your tooth, um then you can't chop my head off in revenge. The most you can do is take out one of my teeth. And so what this law does, it it limits the human desire for vengeance.

Because in normal human interaction, if you hurt me, I'm going to hurt you back and give you a little little bit more so you learn a lesson. Is that not right? Does anybody got kids who fight among themselves? Okay, I have a brother and I've I've met this before. We were fighting once, and my mother said, "Who started this?" I said, "It all started, Mom, when he hit me back." And so >> [clears throat] >> if when I had a feud with my brother, I would do something to him, he'd do something to me, and it always amped up.

Cuz we were hoping that if if if you tripped me up, then I would push you into the fridge and you'd hurt your face. And then he's really upset about this, so the next day he maybe just pushes me off my bicycle. And so we're we're as this tit-for-tat goes on, the last person to it takes action always adds like 10% extra extra to teach you a lesson. Am I right in this? Yes, yes, so we all have fallen families.

That's good to know. But the lex talionis, the law of Moses said you can't do that. The punishment must exactly fit the crime. That if you take out a donkey, you can only take get a donkey back. If you take out somebody's eye, the most that can be given back to you is an eye.

If you if you do something um out of anger and you break somebody's arm, the most that can happen is that person maybe have their arm broken. So, the law of Moses was set to limit vengeance. So, when we think of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we think this sounds crude. No, this is God's way of of of managing fallen human behavior and limiting vengeance and revenge. And so Jesus says, "If somebody strikes you on the cheek," Now, let me ask you the question.

Is somebody threatening your life if somebody strikes you on the cheek? No. This is an act of humiliation. It's not something that's really threatening you. Uh do you remember when Saddam Hussein fell in 2003, 2004?

And uh Iraqi citizens were taking their shoes and hitting the pictures of Saddam Hussein on the walls. Remember that? And why were they doing that? Because the dirtiest parts of the body in at least in the Arab Middle Eastern thinking is the sole of the foot. And so when they were slapping his face with the soles of their feet, um they were showing that was a way of showing the utmost contempt for the man.

They were trying to humiliate him. It's why if you ever go to the Middle East and you're sitting on the ground, don't sit with your feet pointing at anybody, okay? Because they're going to be mortally offended because you're showing the dirtiest parts of your body. We sit in the in the West with our feet stretched out in front of us, yes? But in the Middle East, that's not something you do.

Rather, you torture yourself by sitting with your feet underneath you. Um but at least you're not offending anybody. So, when Jesus talks in this passage here, um what he's saying is that a slap to the cheek is it may be humiliating, but it's not life-threatening. That is if we're insulted, if we're ridiculed, or if we're demeaned, we're not to retaliate with physical violence. It is better to bear patiently the humiliation.

But Jesus is not speaking about life-threatening physical assault here. To be consistent with the teachings of the Old Testament where the Holy Spirit explicitly inspired military action in defense of God's people, the story of Saul and Jabesh-Gilead and Nehemiah, we must conclude that self-defense from deadly force is not what Jesus is addressing here. We're not to offer our jugular if under an attack that seeks merely to harm our reputation. Matthew 26:52 is another passage from the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus says to Peter, says said Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword." Peter was not told to throw the sword away.

Indeed, later on in that last week of Jesus, he made sure that his disciples had at least one sword in their possession. He recognized that they would need it in the days to come. But Jesus told Peter, "Put your sword back into its place." That is Peter was not to fight the detachment of soldiers sent by the Sanhedrin out to arrest him. Why? Because if Peter thought he could stop Jesus being crucified, he was interfering with a plan of humanity's salvation.

So, Peter was not going to be allowed to interfere with humanity's salvation. But Jesus, if Jesus means everybody in this statement, "All who take the sword will perish by the sword," it means he also is condemning all law officers throughout history, law enforcement officers. And that's not consistent with the rest of scripture, either. In Romans 13:4, we read that God gives the authorities the right to bear the sword so they may execute wrath on evildoers. And God The Romans 13:4 calls the authorities the ministers of God.

What you can deduce from that passage is that governments have God's blessing to use the sword or lethal force only in so far as governments are acting to uphold good and punish evil as defined by scripture. So, Romans chapter 13 is not teaching blind submission to every government. It is teaching submission to authority government that recognizes and limits itself to its sphere of action as revealed in scripture. And so we've thankfully in America we've never had to make that choice. But while we celebrate Dietrich Bonhoeffer, most famous martyr of the 20th century, um we need to remember that he was involved in the plot against Adolf Hitler.

And he paid for that with his life. And Martin Luther uh Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he said that uh when the wheels are crushing the the poor, we're not merely to stand by and watch the wheels are crushing the poor. We're to stick a rod through the spokes of the wheel to stop the wheel from doing any more crushing. I'm paraphrasing him here. And so he believed that as a Christian, he was morally obliged to take part in the assassination plot against Adolf Hitler in June-July 1944 because that would save millions of lives in so doing.

So, by God's grace, most of us have never been put in that position. And there were people in Nazi Germany who were pacifists. And they sent they put out young teenagers put out leaflets calling for people not to fight. And there were people who actively sought to assassinate Adolf Hitler. And uh in each of those cases, uh they all had um a Christian motivation for what they were doing.

What they wanted to do was to stop the killing. And so when we face governments that are acting not to uphold good and punish evil, but to uphold evil and punish good, we're not under a moral obligation to blindly submit to such governments. So, the Bible teaches therefore that there's a legitimate use of the sword, and there is an illegitimate use of the sword. And those who kill illegitimately will face eternal judgment in Revelation 13:10. So, let's come to the evidence of the Spirit of Prophecy, shall we?

Because Sister White has actually quite a lot to say about this. And uh most of this is actually taken from the example of her life itself. So here we have manuscript 12 from 1873. This is what she says. She says our provisions have been very This is from her diary originally.

Our provisions have been very low for some days. Many of our supplies have gone. We expected supplies 3 days ago certainly, but none has come. Willie went to the lake for water. We heard his gun and found he had shot two ducks.

This is really a blessing for we need something to live upon. End quote. Now I'm not using this to show that ducks are clean food, all right? Because I know there's a big dispute are ducks a clean animal or not. I solved the problem by just being vegetarian, okay?

So it's not a it's not a question I face, but if you go to Southeast Asia, this is a matter of debate among Adventists. Are ducks clean or are they not clean? I personally think they're unclean, but this was given not so long after the Otsigo health vision in the early 1860s. So recognize that when God called Sister White to prophetic ministry, she was a pork eating Sunday keeper. That doesn't mean we all go back and start eating pork and worshiping on Sunday.

And she grew through her life in her understanding of all kinds of things. But in this case here, we see that in Sister White's family that they owned rifles and they used them to feed themselves. And when I was in Minnesota when I first came to America, it was in October and I said in the board meeting, we need to have a business meeting. I said, how about November the 7th? Something like that.

And all the men in the board says, "Oh, no pastor." I said, "Why?" They said, "That's the start of bow season." I said, "What's bow season?" "Well, that's when we hunt deer with bows and arrows." "All right. What about November the 14th?" "Oh, no pastor, we can't do that." "Why not?" "That's the start of black powder season." "All right, November the 21st?" "No pastor, we can't meet then." "Why not?" "That's rifle season." "Okay, what about November 28th?" "No sir, no pastor, that's grouse season and pheasant season." "All right, what about December the 5th?" "No, that's elk season in the Grand Canyon. We're heading out to Colorado for that." And it went that we went all the way through to like March before the men had a Sunday free. And I'd never come across this before in England where I We have no hunting season in England, all right? We have no hunting at all.

And so I was astonished that the men were out there collecting meat all through the winter. But what I discovered in my time there that in northern Minnesota, there is genuine poverty. And in northern Minnesota, if you're not a farmer with your own farm, the young people basically leave cuz there's no work for them on the farms. You're left with farmers and and a dependent population. A lot of retirees.

And a lot of people were struggling to make it through the winter. And so every day was 30 or 40 pounds of sausage. And so the guys were out there and they were stocking up on food for a wide network of family and friends so that they could make it through the winter. I had no comprehension of this coming from England. It was an eye-opening thing for me when I came to northern Minnesota.

But I soon discovered that one farmer, he had 4 acres of organic corn. And he says, "Pastor," he said, "the raccoons have come." I said, "What does that mean?" He said, "Well," he said, "there'll be no tithe from my farm this year." I said, "Well, why not?" He said, "Because the raccoons will come through about a week before the right corn is ready to be picked. They know it's almost ripe and they'll take one bite from every ear of corn and they'll trash the entire crop." I said, "So what do we do about it?" He says, "We have to get the raccoons." So that Sabbath night, we had a men's Bible study at the farmer's house. At 11:00 somebody gave a signal. And the table was filled with weaponry.

I'd never seen a collection like that in my life before. And I was very glad that we'd had a peaceful Bible study meeting. And my job was to carry this powerful lamp. You know what I'm talking about? It's like a million candlestick lamp.

And I was to walk through the around the 4 acres perimeter just slowly putting my lamp up into the trees. And there were 20 heavily armed guys all walking behind me. Fingers on triggers. I didn't realize it was kind of dangerous. And anytime we saw light some allies eyes looking down the lamp, the little beam of light, they said, "Stop there." And I'd stop there.

They'd all line up behind me. And then there'll be a like a wall of lead would go down that light. And you'd hear this kind of tumbling in the trees and you know, another one bites the dust. So that's how we protected the crops. And we got we got a good tithe from that farm that year because the raccoons were dead.

So I started to view the killing of the raccoons as being a sacred duty because that protected the farmer's crops. Anyway, the point is what is the point of all of this? Yes. The point is when Sister White was traveling with with rifles in her family and her family kept those rifles for food, this isn't this still happens today in North America. It does happen.

And if you live in parts where there's rural poverty, one or two deer in the in the fridge, it actually gets you through the winter. That much protein. It's not ideal, I recognize that, but this is what people do. Another quote here is in from letter 28 1879. Then there it is.

She says there She's talking about her travels west of the Mississippi. She says, "We have to be very well armed in passing through Indian territory. We have our wagons brought up in a circle. Then our horses are placed within the circle. We have two men to watch.

They are relieved every 2 hours. They carry their guns upon their shoulders. We have less fears from Indians than from white men who employ the Indians to make a stampede among the horses and mules and ponies." And so as Sister White was traveling west of the Mississippi, she had armed guards to protect their animals from theft by men who would stampede the animals. So she owned rifles and used them to feed the family. They traveled with armed guards.

The next quote here is James White when he was burnt out. Sister White wrote to him and she says, "Go off hunting in the woods for a few days." And then in this letter, this is now in manuscript release, she says, "The few days you now have together improve." She says, "Then come back to your work." So roam about, camp out, fish, hunt, go to places you've not seen, rest as you go, and enjoy everything. Then come back to your work fresh and vigorous. So clearly this is speaking to James White here who had basically died of overwork and burnout. So the lesson from this is that she counseled her husband to take time off to hunt, fish, and go camping.

One of the best quotes I've ever seen in the Spirit of Prophecy. >> [laughter] [clears throat] >> We then have a more serious quote here from fifth biography here page 62. This is talking about the racial prejudice in the deep south. And Sister White writes this. She says, "A mob of 25 men on horseback called at the school, sent the white teacher one of Venson's men out of town on a rye, nailed the doors and windows shut, and burned books, maps, and charts in the schoolyard.

Then they found one of the leading black believers in the area, N.W. Alvin, and thrashed him with a buggy whip, stopping only when commanded to do so by a white man who brandished a revolver." So Sister White speaks positively about a white man using a revolver to stop the lynching of an African-American in the deep south. So um to stop the lynching of what she called a leading black believer. And so Sister White recognized that sometimes you have to use or at least use the threat of lethal violence when when grievous violence and ideologically driven violence is being visited upon brothers and sisters in Christ. So you might say that Sister White's family, they owned rifles and used them for food.

She traveled with armed bodyguards armed with repeating rifles for personal protection. She counseled James White to take time off to fish, camp, and hunt. And she goes on to say in Adventist Home page 125, and you see that quote on the screen there. She says, "The Lord has constituted the husband the head of the wife to be her what?" To be her protector. He is her houseband, the husband or houseband of the family binding the members together even as Christ is the head of the church and the savior of the mystical body.

That is when physical violence comes threatening the your wife or your children, that is God's purpose for the husband is the husband intervenes to protect his wife and to protect his children. The world calls this toxic masculinity. It's not. I was chatting in a chat group with a bunch of pastors recently and there was a young unmarried man who was very passionate about the fact that no husband should ever have any kind of firearm. And I said, "Well, you know, if you get married, are you going to defend your wife?" He said, "I'm I said, "I'm not going to carry.

If it's a dangerous situation, I'm just going to pray and trust the Lord." And I said, "Well, that's probably the reason why you're still unmarried." >> [laughter] >> Because if you tell a young lady that if if if a man breaks into the house, I'm just going to kneel down and pray and not interpose yourself to defend your wife, why would she trust her life to you? And so ladies have the right to expect not abuse from their husbands, but protection. And we're not going to go down all those kinds of protection here today. Emotional and psychological and temporal protection and and provisions so forth. But she says in Adventist Home that the God has constituted the husband to be the head of the wife in order that for that phrase to be in order to be her protector.

So husbands, our job is to protect our wives. And if a wife knows that the husband will intervene to protect his wife and put his own life on the line, that's a demonstration to her that the husband really can be trusted and he really has her best interests at heart and therefore she can submit to that kind of leadership in the home. But if a wife does not believe that the husband actually would ever defend her, why would she ever to submit to such a husband? And so, >> [clears throat] >> this is an important um an important principle here for men. Uh that we read uh later on in 5:8, the text is on the screen.

If any provide not for his own and specially for those of his own house, he is worse than an infidel. So, husbands are to provide food and protection for their wives. The God-fearing husband is a self-sacrificing priest, provider, and protector for his wife and for his family. And so, if a man is to bear arms, it's not to glorify himself or to expand the his empire, you might say, it's because God has entrusted a wife and little ones to him and his job is to defend them in a world of evil. So, let's look at the evidence of history, shall we?

I was um raised in the UK as you can probably tell from my accent and uh we were brought up on studying European history. And if you've studied European history, you'll know that it was absolutely necessary for Protestants from the time of the Reformation onwards for these 300 years to bear arms in the face of constant papal onslaughts. And that history is all across Europe and uh the ground is is is soaking red in the blood of those who died to preserve the Protestant faith. And you see just some examples on on the screen there, the Spanish Armada, where the Spanish sent a massive fleet up the English Channel to invade England during the time of Elizabeth I and their goal was to turn England Catholic once again by military force if necessary. We're familiar with the Waldenses and their struggle for over a thousand years against centuries and centuries of brutal military attack by papal armies.

We think of the Hussites and the Bohemians in modern-day Germany and and Czechoslovakia um who fought long battles to defend their rights liberty of conscience. We think of the Huguenots. They were the Protestants of France in the 1500s, 1600s and they received brutal treatment at the hands of the French kings. Um there was the St. Bartholomew's Day's massacre.

There were decades of low-level armed conflict from the crown against their own French subjects and eventually the Huguenots were driven completely out of France and um that's the story of the the Three Musketeers, that's when that story is set and they fled around the world and most famously many of them went to South Africa. Then you have the Cathars of southern of southern France and the papacy actually waged um a crusade against them and eliminated them from southern France. You have the Battle of the Boyne in Northern Ireland when the English Parliament didn't like James II in 1688. He was too Catholic a monarch. They said, "We don't want a Catholic monarch, we want a Protestant monarch." And so they passed an act of Parliament and did they depose the king because he said, "You're a constitutional monarch, you're not the king by divine right." And they invited a a Dutch prince called William of Orange to come in to take to become the king of England and he became known as King William II um but his followers in Northern Ireland are called Orangemen.

Have you heard of the Orangemen of Northern Ireland? And the Orangemen were the men who fought for William of Orange in the Battle of the Boyne to defend Protestantism in the United Kingdom against James II and his pro-Catholic armies. And so then you have uh the English Civil War. Oliver Cromwell was Protestant, Charles I was bringing many Catholic-like reforms. You have the 30 Year War in Europe where armies um mercenary armies ravaged Europe for 30 years um ostensibly to fight against Catholic invasion, but it turned into just a free-for-all.

You have then more recently you have ISIS and the Christians of Syria and Iraq. And even just in the last few weeks, you know, they a new president got installed in Syria and the last couple of months he's been beheading Christians and Alawites. They're an offshoot of Shia Islam in Syria and that doesn't make its way into the news, but those Christians, unless they have armed men guarding them, they're being beheaded in in Syria as we speak. And then Nigeria, happening right now. Um you have a slaughter of Christians going on on a regular basis.

Um so, as we look through um history, we see that time and again, if Protestants are not willing to defend themselves against physical attack, nobody steps in to save them. That's the lesson of history. And if Protestants get killed today, nobody really cares about it. If if Christians were to kill 200 Muslims next week in Nigeria, there'd be a global uprising about that. But if 200 Christians get killed by Muslims in Nigeria, doesn't make the evening news.

That's just simple reality. Um we are counted we are counted as sheep when we are slaughtered all day long in different parts of the world. The world doesn't care about the slaughter of Protestants. Now, when it comes to uh the law system in the United States, this law court this decision here from the Fifth Circuit in 1961, it says um this decision says that there is no constitutional right um that Sorry, there is a there is a constitutional right not to be murdered by a state officer for the state violates the 14th Amendment when its officer, acting under color of state law, deprives a person of life without due process of law. So, we as citizens in America have a constitutional right not to be killed by a state officer um acting as as law enforcement officer.

However, the courts have also held here in North America in this very famous case Bowers versus DeBrito, it says in the in that decision it says there is no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen. That is, the police are not there to protect you from being murdered. That is not their job. They're there to pick up the pieces after you've been murdered. But you have no constitutional right to expect the police to intervene to stop you from being murdered.

They will generally try to do it, but it's not a constitutional right that you have. Essentially, when it comes to your own defense, you're responsible for your own defense and the legal system will catch up later on. And that is why throughout the last 120 years um gun registration, gun licensing, and then gun confiscation have all played a crucial role in leading up to genocide of a target population. Some of you are familiar with the genocide of the Armenians in 1915-1917 in Turkey. In 1911, the Ottoman Empire started the persecution of the Armenians who were the largest ethnic group in modern-day Eastern Turkey and who were Orthodox Christians.

They set up a registry of guns, then they disarmed the Armenians, stripping them not only of guns, but of knives and anything that could be used for military purposes. Then when the the Young Turks took over 1915-1917 in Turkey, um they decided to slaughter the helpless Armenians within the um the Turkish state. About 1.5 million people were marched in death marches into the deserts where they were simply left to die of starvation or hunger or they were executed. And uh this is one of the most tragic episodes of Christian persecution um in just over just 110 years ago. And it was a tragic tragic story, the the Armenian genocide, but in order to do that, the state had to disarm them first.

On the screen there you have the next guy to disarm his population. This is Joseph Stalin. And to his left, to his right as you're looking at that picture there, is a young man called Yezhov. Yezhov was the uh the director of the NKVD and he was the guy that oversaw the Great Purge or the Great Terror, 1937-39. He killed millions of people and he would send out lists of people to be killed and if anybody wanted their neighbor to be killed, they'd said they would say something to the NKVD and there somebody made a joke about comrade Stalin and that person would simply disappear.

But in 1926-29, the USSR under Stalin um abolished private gun ownership. Civilians could still own hunting weapons, but they had to be registered and stored in local police stations between hunting trips. And having thus disarmed the population by registration and confiscation, the Soviet regime then rounded up and exterminated almost 20 million disarmed Soviet citizens. And uh so, my wife is from Russia and in Russia they had a joke. They said, "Who was Adolf Hitler?" And the joke says he was a minor dictator in the time of Joseph Stalin.

Like if if Adolf Hitler killed, you know, 6 to 10 million, Joseph Stalin is 20 to 30 million on his body count. And most of those were his own people. Then when you come to Adolf Hitler himself, Adolf Hitler said, he said, "To conquer a nation, you must first disarm disarm its citizens." And so in Nazi Germany, the Gestapo prohibited local police officers in 1936 from issuing firearms licenses to Jews. Then in 1938, the Germans passed a law specifically prohibiting Jewish citizens from owning firearms or bladed weapons. And having thus disarmed the Jewish population in Germany, the Jewish population was forced into ghettos and labor camps that led the way for the final solution.

So, we go from this, the rallies at Nuremberg in the south of Germany in the early 1930s, we end up with this. Now, the entrance there to Auschwitz. And once again, the genocide was perpetrated as in the Soviet Union and in Armenia against a disarmed population. From 1935 onwards, Mao Zedong on that picture there, I took it many years ago. If you go to Auschwitz, they have these accommodation blocks.

The block is as long as this room here. And they would have people would be sleeping on wooden planks. The multiple layers on the side of the room. And as you go into those accommodation blocks, I'd encourage everybody make a trip to Auschwitz. It's it's a sobering experience.

Um when you walk through there, one entire section of the block is filled with with children's shoes. Two and three-year-old children. And on the other side of the block, it's filled with spectacles. Hundreds of thousands of spectacles. And when you walk through these blocks at Auschwitz, you realize just how many people were being killed.

It helps you kind of grasp the the volume of the murder that went on there. But the point for today's purpose for for today's discussion is that in Armenia with the Armenian genocide, with Stalin's genocide of his own people, and with the genocide of the Jews under Nazi Germany, in each of those cases, it took place with a disarmed population. The government disarmed them before they took action against them. From 1935 onwards, Mao Zedong took control of Communist China. And he took over the rural provinces.

And anybody found with a gun was to be executed by the Red Army. Um he believed, he said all political power comes from the barrel of the gun. The Communist Party must command all the guns. That way no guns can ever be used to command the party. So the Chinese executed gun confiscation and execution of anybody who owned a firearm.

And so all political power resided from 1949 all the way to today with the Communist Party of China. And you say, well, what did that lead to? Well, in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, they Mao produced his little red book in the early 1960s. The Maoist cadres read this book, the little red book. You can still find it on Amazon.

And then they set about wiping out the old practices, the old ideas, the old ways of life, the old beliefs. And over 65 million people died in that Cultural Revolution, 1960s to 1970s. This wasn't that long ago. And then you come to Cambodia. Where from 1920 to 1938, a strict gun licensing system was imposed that only allowed hunters to own a gun.

They could only own a simple a single simple shotgun. When the Khmer Rouge came to power, that is the Red Khmer in 1975, they used that registry to confiscate all the privately held guns. And then they began the systematic extermination of 25% of their own population. We know that time as the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Anybody with glasses was presumed to be educated.

They were sent to the fields to be re-educated as peasants. And they got some of the piles of skulls from the Killing Fields of Cambodia. So you what do we say as we conclude this section here? It's Since 1900, the single largest cause of violent death in world history has not been weapons, but it's been secular governments. Over 120 120 million people were murdered in the 20th century by ideologically driven governments.

Nazi Germany, the USSR, Communist China, North Korea, and the Khmer Rouge. This doesn't count the tens of millions who were imprisoned, exiled, deported, put to work in hard labor camps by those self regimes. And in some cases, China and North Korea, those those killings continue today. So uh clearly the biggest cause of murder in the last 120 years, the largest cause of man-made famines and violent death and deportations is godless governments who by virtue of their atheist ideologies place no value on human life, do not recognize the moral boundaries of the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, and murder by the millions in pursuit of their particular ideological aims. So that brings us back to the as we come to the end here, the official Seventh-day Adventist statement.

So, there it is. That's the key section of it. There's a There's a preamble that's basically waffle. You can ignore the waffle. But it says the use or the sale of automatic or semi-automatic assault weapons should be strictly controlled.

This is to reduce the use of weapons by mentally disturbed people and criminals, especially those involved in drug and gang activities. So the statement actually, the only teeth in the statement are that the General Conference only specifically recommends that mentally disturbed and criminal individuals should not gain access to certain certain weapons, but it has nothing to say about law-abiding citizens. The only people it specifically recommends should not get access are the mentally disturbed and those who are already criminals. And you may or may not realize this in Southern Oregon, but many Adventist leaders around the world have armed guards for themselves, paid for from our tithes and offerings. Their offices have armed guards.

If you go to the North American Division Year-End Meeting, they have private armed security outside literally every door and inside the building as well. They're very visible. And that's paid for from our tithes and offerings. And so when our leaders come together and they have large gatherings, um they pay for armed security for themselves. And that armed security is paid by your tithes and your offerings.

So therefore, you cannot use the official SDA statement to say that Adventists do not have the right to carry weapons to defend themselves or their local congregations when those selfsame leaders are using the money as we send through our tithes and offerings to pay for armed guards for themselves. That makes sense? So if anybody says you can't do it in the church, your first question is why are our leaders walking around with armed guards? And why they have armed guards in the buildings? So what are we saying in conclusion here today?

The right to self-defense is clearly biblical. But Christians are nowhere commanded in scripture or allowed to use violence to propagate the gospel. We're not allowed to use violence for personal revenge or out of hatred. But we do have the right to defend ourselves and use arms if necessary in defense of ourselves personally, our immediate families, our community of faith when we come under attack. The theologian Norman Geisler writes about this.

And he says this. To permit murder when one could have prevented it is morally wrong. To allow rape when one could have hindered it is an evil. To watch an act of cruelty to children without trying to intervene is morally inexcusable. In brief, not resisting evil is an act of omission.

And an evil of omission can be just as evil as an act of commission. A man who refuses to protect his wife and children against a violent intruder fails them morally. So, we do live in an evil world. And before Christ comes again, when the winds of strife are let loose, and this world is divided into those who upon whose forehead is the the character of their heavenly Father, they're living lives of righteousness, and those who are whose minds receive the the mark of the beast, their minds now driven and controlled by demons. So some are controlled by the Holy Spirit, some are driven by fallen spirits.

In that environment at the end of time, there will be an upsurge of violence like we've never seen on planet Earth. We read about this in The Great Controversy and a few other places. So every person must make their own choice. Every congregation must make its own choice. I believe that when parents bring their children to Sabbath school, and they leave those children in the Sabbath school room downstairs in the basement somewhere, there is There may not be a written contract, but there's an implicit understanding that this congregation knows the threats and will do whatever is necessary to protect those lambs.

And so every congregation should take this seriously. We do live in an evil world. And I hope and pray that none of us has to defend ourselves, our families, our wives, our children, our spouses from violent assault. But if that evil day comes, as a husband and as a father, it is my responsibility before God to take whatever measures are necessary to protect the innocents whom God has entrusted to my care. So, speaking particularly to the men here, God asks you to be providers and protectors for your children and your wife.

That's a God-given responsibility. Discharge it and honor your responsibility. And um if you're in a congregation, think seriously about the times in which we live. Because there are men of violence out there who'd love nothing more than to take out every member of your church on Sabbath morning. Think very seriously about this.

We have the God-given right to defend ourselves. We don't have the God-given right to kill for evangelism or other purposes like that. But we do have the God-given right for self-defense. So my hope and prayer that like Nehemiah, we will prepare, we will pray, then God will give us a good outcome. That's the best outcome for us all.

But Nehemiah was prepared, and he was praying, and had the Samaritans attacked, they would have stood watch, and they would repel the Samaritans. So it's my prayer that the finger of evil will never reach into our homes or into our churches. But if it does, as men in particular, we are to be the men of God who stand as protectors and providers for those whom God has entrusted to our care. May God bless us as we fulfill this responsibility. Amen.