Hi, I'm David Bercot. And tonight we're gonna be talking about when persecution comes. Are we likely to face persecution here in the United States in our lifetimes? Well, yes and no. The answer depends upon what type of persecution we're talking about. You see, there are two types of persecution, primary and secondary. Now, both are equally serious, and they can both be equally deadly. Tens of thousands of Christians have died under both kinds of persecution.
Hundreds of thousands of Christians have been imprisoned under both kinds of persecution. So let me define what I mean by primary and secondary persecution. Primary persecution is where the intent is to outlaw Christianity itself, or to force another religion or belief system on everyone. In the ancient Roman Empire, you had primary persecution. It was actually illegal to be a Christian.
Now, it wasn't illegal during the days of Paul and the New Testament, but beginning around the year 90 is when the Roman Empire passed laws making it illegal to be a Christian, even though the laws were not strictly enforced. It was very sporadic, the enforcement. And the other thing the Roman Empire did was to require everyone to believe in the divinity of Caesar. The Romans didn't care normally what kind of God you worshipped. You had all kinds of religions being practiced throughout the Roman Empire.
The issue with Christianity is that Christians would not accept or believe in the divinity of Caesar. And there is still primary persecution going on today, for example, in North Korea, where just to be a Christian is enough to have you imprisoned or put to death. Now, secondary persecution is where the intent is not necessarily to persecute Christians. It may not have anything to do with Christianity.
Rather, secondary persecution occurs when the laws of any particular government require us to do something or to say something that would violate Christ's teachings. I'll give you just two examples from the past. One would be military service, and this is still a genuine issue today throughout the world. The laws requiring all men, or in some places, all men and women to serve in the military. They're not aimed at persecuting Christians, not as a general rule.
But for kingdom Christians, we're not going to comply with those laws, and people have been put to death, and certainly tens of thousands have been imprisoned because of the refusal to do military service. Now, another example from the past would be where there have been state churches, and everyone was required to belong to the state church to attend it, to participate in the sacraments conducted in that church. Now, some kingdom Christians felt like they could go through the motions of that.
For example, during the Middle Ages, when the Roman Catholic Church was the state church throughout Western Europe, many of the Waldensians would attend the Catholic Church, but then they would also have their own meetings in private. They would practice their own brand of Christianity, but they didn't feel it violated Christ's law to attend church or to even receive communion there periodically in the Roman Catholic Church.
But other kingdom Christians during the Middle Ages or Renaissance period felt like they could not attend the state church or participate in the sacraments there. Again, this state was not trying to outlaw Christianity. In fact, they thought they were supporting and promoting Christianity, but it caused a conflict for many conscientious kingdom Christians, and for many of them, it cost them their life to refuse to attend the state church.
Now, as I said, we're not likely to face primary persecution, the direct outlawing of Christianity here in the United States in, say, the next 20 or 30 years. Nor are we likely to see the imposing of a state church and making independent churches illegal that is here in the United States in the near future. Now, that's not to say that none of those things couldn't happen. I say that because the scriptures indicate there will be persecution once the Antichrist comes to power.
So none of us can say for certain what we may experience here even in the United States in the next 20 or 30 years. So that's one reason for my delivering this message is because it's better to be prepared in advance rather than to be caught completely off guard if things suddenly change. And certainly, if we look at the history of Christianity, there have been a number of situations where everything looked very safe and secure, and in a matter of just a few years, the religious scenario completely changed.
One example would be in the 20th century in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. There had been Mennonites living in Russia safely for quite a number of years up to that time. But in just a few years, they went from being a state-protected minority to being outlawed. So we never know what may happen anywhere. At the same time, we should primarily be preparing ourselves for secondary persecution. Because I think in the years ahead, we are increasingly likely to face secondary persecution. The U.S.
government is not likely to command us to denounce Christ or to deny that we are Christians. Rather, it will likely pass more and more laws or enforce existing laws in such a way that it creates a conflict between Caesar and our Christian faith, even though that may not be the intention of the law. Now, even though I'm talking about the United States, because that's where I live, obviously everything I'm saying could apply much more so in, say, Canada, Western Europe, or any country here on the earth.
Oftentimes, this secondary persecution may be over issues of conscience, where perhaps it's uncertain exactly where we should draw the line as kingdom Christians. Well, in such situations, our starting place should always be Romans 13. That is, we obey the laws of the land where we live, even if we don't like them, unless, unless obedience to the law would cause us to directly violate a law or principle of Jesus Christ. In other words, as disciples of Jesus, we should not break Caesar's laws lightly.
Of all people, we should be the ones most conscientiously obeying the laws of Caesar. That is up to the point where they would cause us to violate Jesus ' laws. I'm going to give you an example, a first-hand example of what I'm talking about, where sometimes Christians break Caesar's law because the law is inconvenient, and yet we play games with our minds saying, " Well, this law makes me violate Christ's law, so therefore I have the right to break it.
" This example, the one that comes to my mind right off, is a brother who had a food business, preparing certain kinds of food and selling it. As probably most of you know, when you're doing that, particularly on a very large scale, the food has to be prepared in a commercial kitchen that has been certified by the local health authorities. You can't just prepare food in an ordinary kitchen and sell it to the public on a very large scale.
Now, often, these laws are burdensome, and it would be easier not to comply with them. But again, Christ requires us to obey Caesar's law. But this particular brother was not obeying the law fully. He was, to a large degree, but he was taking shortcuts in many areas. And I asked him about it because it had come out in the course of a conversation. And you know I said, " Brother, shouldn't we be obeying the laws of the government? That's what Romans 13 tells us we should do.
" And he said, " Well, he needed the business to be able to carry on his Christian life and his ministry in his life, and that the food business enabled him to do this, to provide for his family, to devote much of his life to the kingdom. And yet if he had to obey all the facets of the law, he would have to shut down the food business and do something else that might make it hard to support his family and give him less time to do things for the kingdom.
" So therefore, he reasoned he had the right to disobey the law because it was conflicting with obedience to Christ. Well, I would say no, that is very wrong. There was not a direct conflict here between Christ's teachings and Caesar's laws. Rather, Caesar's laws were inconvenient and maybe made conducting a food business impractical, so this brother might have had to do something else for a living, but he was not justified in breaking the law of the land.
Using the rationalization, well, the Bible requires him to support his family, and he needs to have time to serve the kingdom, and therefore he had to break the law concerning the food business. And I've seen Christians do that in a lot of other areas. And this is not a case of secondary persecution. When we do that, we're actually violating Christ's law. We're doing the very thing the Scriptures tell us that we should not do.
If we're going to violate or directly disobey a law of the land where we live, it needs to be because it is in direct conflict with Christ's laws. You may be thinking, but what about the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of religion? If a law of the land requires me to directly disobey Christ, shouldn't the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of religion, shouldn't that protect me? Well, let's talk about that for a moment.
To understand how the First Amendment works, you have to first understand how our entire legal system, our entire system of jurisprudence, works. We inherited our system of law from England, and under the Anglo-American law system, laws are made not only by the legislatures, but also by the courts. Let me repeat that. Under our legal system, laws are not only made by the legislatures, but also by the courts. Now, for many of you, I know that's going to come as a complete shock.
I mean, wait a minute, you might be thinking, I thought the legislatures make the law, and the courts only interpret the laws. Well, yes, that's a true statement to a large extent. But in the process of interpreting laws, the courts actually create laws. They fill in gaps that are left by the statutes. They decide how various laws interact with one another. They restrict the operation of certain statutes. They sometimes strike down statutes as being unconstitutional.
And they even interpret statutes in ways that seem to be the opposite of what the statute is saying. So when an attorney researches the law, he or she normally begins by reading what the relevant statutes say, but they don't stop there. You know, most people think, well, that's the beginning and that's the end of the law. If the statute says it, that's it. But no, that's not the way it works. The statutes passed by Congress or state legislatures are not the entirety of the law.
They're only the starting place of the law. I mean, an attorney who stopped his legal research after reading the relevant statutes would likely be guilty of malpractice. No, as attorneys, after we read the statutes, we then start reading all of the court cases that have interpreted those statutes. Because in the end, it's not the language of the statute that controls things. It's how the courts interpret that language, because their interpretation is the law, period.
Right now, I'm involved in a case in an advisory capacity where the key statute seems to me to be about as black and white as a statute can be. Yet a number of appellate courts have interpreted that statute just the opposite of what most people would think the statute is saying. But again, it's their interpretation that's the law. It's not the literal language of the statute. So, getting back to the First Amendment. When it comes to the First Amendment, the law is what the U.S.
Supreme Court says the First Amendment means. It's not what you or I think it means. It's not what the Constitution literally says. It's what the Supreme Court says that that language means. And whether we like it or not, that's the reality of what the law is in our country. And it's not unreasonable. You can't have a population of hundreds of millions of people, each having the right to come to his own interpretation of what the Constitution means. I mean, we would have utter chaos.
There does have to be a final arbiter. And in our legal system, that final arbiter of the Constitution is the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court has not interpreted the First Amendment in a way to give us absolute rights to practice our religion any way that we want. Now to be sure, the court has given us considerable latitude and protection. But in general, a citizen's freedom of religion ends when his religious beliefs cause him to infringe on someone else's rights.
For example, somebody might say something blasphemous about the Quran. Well, under Islamic law, that person maybe should be put to death. But the First Amendment doesn't give an offended Muslim the right to go out and kill that blasphemer, not in this country, because that Muslim's religious beliefs would interfere with the right of another person to live and his First Amendment right to say whatever he wants to say. Another example is the recent Ken Miller trial.
As most of you know, Ken was found guilty of aiding and abetting an international parental kidnapping. Now, at this time, that conviction is under appeal, we don't know how it will eventually all end out. Now, the parent in this case was a woman named Lisa Miller, and the Vermont Court had given her former lesbian partner visitation rights with regards to Lisa's biological daughter.
One of the issues in the case was that Lisa Miller had renounced her former lesbian lifestyle, and she was trying to live by Christ's teachings and raise her daughter accordingly. So she objected to her daughter being influenced by this lesbian woman whom she had formerly had a relationship with. And there were other issues besides that. That wasn't the only issue in the case.
Well, in the end, Lisa decided to flee the country rather than to comply with the court visitation order, and Ken was convicted of aiding her in that flight. After Ken was convicted, but before he was sentenced or before the case was appealed, quite a number of people contacted me and suggested that we should argue Ken's First Amendment rights. Well, the problem is that the Supreme Court has already made it crystal clear that that's not how the First Amendment works.
As a minister, Ken is free to believe whatever he wants to about homosexuality. He can believe that practicing homosexual sex is a sin. And he's free to teach that to his congregation. He's free to proclaim it publicly. The First Amendment gives him all of those rights, because none of those things infringe the rights of homosexuals. They are still free to practice their lifestyle. They may not like his opinion or his criticism, but they're free to criticize him as well. That's their First Amendment right.
In fact, in this country, Ken is even free to deny a practicing homosexual from joining his congregation. That's because the court views joining any particular church as a privilege. It's not a right that you have if you live in the United States. Ken is even free to refuse to marry a same-sex couple, even if the state he lives in gives a same-sex couple the right to marry. That's because their right to marry doesn't mean that they have the right to choose any minister they want to to perform the wedding ceremony.
It just means they have the right to go before a state official to be married, not before any religious minister of their choosing. So the First Amendment does give a minister like Ken considerable rights. But the First Amendment doesn't give Ken the right to deny a lesbian the visitation rights with a child that have been granted to her by a court. Because now Ken's religious beliefs are infringing on the government-granted rights of another person. That's where the Supreme Court has drawn the line.
The Court tries to balance the rights, the conflicting rights of the various citizens that are involved in a situation. Now, I'm not saying I necessarily agree with all of this. I'm explaining to you how the law works. The Court has also ruled that the First Amendment doesn't give citizens the right to violate governmental laws, even if those laws conflict with a person's religious beliefs. So long as the state can show a legitimate and overriding governmental interest.
For example, the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment doesn't give conscientious objectors the right to refuse to go to war. The Court has said that the government's interest in national defense overrides our religious beliefs. Blessedly, Congress allows for exemptions for conscientious objectors. But as a result, presently our rights as non-resistant Christians come from congressional laws that can be changed or repealed by Congress at any time. On the other hand, in the case of Wisconsin vs.
Yoder, the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Wisconsin didn't have an overriding governmental interest in requiring Amish children to continue their education through 10th grade. The Supreme Court ruled that the Amish beliefs in this case were bona fide religious convictions. They weren't merely preferences. The Court also ruled that the state had not shown how the Amish practice of going through eighth grade only was harming society. They pointed out that the Amish weren't a financial burden on the state.
Amish children received good vocational training. And the Amish were a stable, law-abiding, taxpaying people who were an asset to society, not a burden. So the court ruled that the state had not shown it had an overriding governmental interest. Society was not being harmed by the Amish religious beliefs. So in other words, the Court weighs the governmental interests involved versus the First Amendment rights of the people being affected. So this is how the First Amendment works, whether we agree with that or not.
That's the reality. Those are the facts, so we need to be aware of that. Of course, none of these things necessarily determine where we as Christians must draw the line. I mean, because the Supreme Court says that our First Amendment rights don't protect us, that doesn't mean we have to do what the government says. We still must obey God as ruler rather than man. It just means we need to know what the courts will allow and what they won't.
If we feel that obedience to Christ means we have to cross that line, we should have no illusions about the legal consequences we'll face. We shouldn't imagine that the First Amendment is going to protect us when it won't. With that legal background in mind, let's talk about the type of legal issues we're likely to face in the future. The two areas where I think we're most apt to face conflicts first are laws involving one, children and two homosexuals. Let's begin with children.
What we've seen in the last few decades is the government becoming more and more involved with people's children. I mean, to put it in perspective, in the 1920s, it was very rare for the government to step in and take someone's children away from them. There had to be a pretty bad case of child abuse. But today it happens all of the time. Maybe there's more child abuse going on today, but I think it's more a case of what the government defines as child abuse.
Now, at this point in time, it's not usually the children of kingdom Christians who are being taken. In fact, it tends to be the other way around. Many kingdom Christians serve as foster parents and often volunteer to adopt children that the state has taken away from parents. But we shouldn't be surprised if the time comes when it's our children the state is taking away. A chilling reminder of that possibility is what happened to the polygamous Mormon group in Texas back in 2008.
Now, obviously, we totally disagree with the beliefs and practices of that sect, and the mainline Mormon Church would as well. But the lesson from that episode is what can happen when a state doesn't like what a religious group teaches in practices. A branch of this particular Mormon sect had bought a large ranch in Texas and moved there, I believe it was from Colorado and Arizona. Now, at the time that they decided to start this new branch in Texas, the legal age of marriage in Texas was 14.
That might sound very young, but until the 20th century, that was not unusual, particularly for a woman to marry in her early teens, like 14, 15, something like that. However, when this sect moved to Texas, the state legislature raised the marriage age in response to them to, I believe it's 17 now in Texas. Like I said, this was in direct response to this group's practice of marrying girls who were age 14, 15, 16, stuff like that.
As I said, it was not unusual back in the 1800s when the Mormon religion began for girls to marry when they were 14, 15, that age. Often states required the husbands to be a bit older since they had the responsibility of providing for the family. But in many respects, this Mormon group simply were maintaining the traditions of life from the 1800s, including the way their women dressed. The only thing that would have been different from the 1800s was their practice of polygamy.
Well, anyway, in the year 2008, Child Protective Services in Texas conducted a raid on the ranch, and they removed the children into foster homes. Now, there are two disturbing things about the state's action. First, the thing that sparked the raid was that a young woman called the authorities in Texas, saying that she was a 14-year-old girl on the ranch and that she was being sexually abused. Now, on the surface, based on her complaint, it sounds pretty reasonable that the state went in and intervened.
The problem is that it turned out the caller was not a 14-year-old girl from the ranch. It was a young woman who lived in Colorado, who made the entire thing up. However, even when that came to light, the state didn't return the children. Now, the significance of that is if a disgruntled former member of one of our churches, or just a total stranger who doesn't like us, calls Child Protective Services and says that we're molesting children in our church, well, the state could barge in and take our children away.
I mean, I would assume we would get them back eventually, but it would still be traumatizing to our children and, of course, to us as parents. The second disturbing factor is that the state removed all of the children from the ranch, even babies and little toddlers. Now, if the state had stepped in and removed, say, all of the girls from age 10 to 17, okay, that would have been understandable based on the false complaint. It might have still been heavy-handed. But no, like I said, they took little babies.
Imagine the effect on a baby or a little toddler to be suddenly taken away from their parents and moved to the home of a complete stranger. They even took the boys, and there was no complaint against the boys. They said, " Well, the way the boys are raised in that sect, they're gonna grow up to be sexual abusers, " meaning that marrying underage girls. So that was their justification for taking the boys away.
Well, thankfully, the Texas Court of Appeals, when it was the sect took the case up to them, and it made the state return the toddlers, the little children, and the boys. But it took several months before the case reached them. So there was those two or three months that their children were extremely traumatized, and the girls were not returned. Now, it's very easy to say, " Well, that was simply a strange religious sect.
They shouldn't have been practicing polygamy and marrying off their daughters at such young ages. " Well, sure, none of us agree with what they were practicing. And if the accusations made in books and on the internet are true, the head of this sect, Warren Jeffs, is an evil man who got what he deserved. I'm not particularly concerned about him. It's how Child Protective Services treated the members of the Sect.
There's been no evidence to indicate anything other than that the members are all sincere believers who are living quiet and peaceable lives according to their religious convictions. From a legal perspective, it's very troubling how Child Protective Services handled the situation. Now, thankfully, both the Texas Court of Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court ruled that Child Protective Services went way too far. So the courts are still sensitive and protective of religious convictions and the rights of parents.
Let's hope it stays that way. When I talk about this Mormon sect case with fellow Christians, I find that we don't all see the situation the same way. Probably most Christians I've talked to share my concerns about what happened. However, others feel that this sect is so off the wall, and their prophet is so evil and self-deluded that the state handled it the proper way. They feel that this case shouldn't concern the rest of us because it turned on the peculiar beliefs and practices of this sect.
I hope they're right. And I certainly see their viewpoint. It's not an unreasonable position. I just hope the situation isn't comparable to what happened in Nazi Germany before World War II. You've perhaps heard the famous quotation from the Christian pastor, Martin Niemoller, who was eventually imprisoned by the Nazis. He said this, " First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me. I mean, what's scary is that a lot of people think we kingdom Christians are strange too. So what if the state should decide that wearing head coverings or homeschooling our children are against public policy? What if someone files a false complaint against us?
I mean, just this morning, I was reading an article from Smithsonian Magazine saying that the incidence of multiple sclerosis in Iran have increased markedly since the Islamic Revolution there in 1979. And these two researchers have concluded that the reason why there's been this increase in multiple sclerosis is that the women in Iran all now wear headscarves and modest clothing. As a result, their skin gets less exposure to the sun, and so they have a vitamin D deficiency.
Now, not everyone agrees with the conclusions of these researchers, and the researchers themselves are not saying that Muslim women should stop wearing headscarves and modest clothes. What they're saying is that the women should take vitamin D supplements. But it's not hard to imagine that the time may come here in the U.S. where the government says that wearing head coverings and modest dress is harmful to girls, and we might face a government edict against it.
I mean, after all, they banned head coverings in public schools in France. I'm not predicting that this is going to happen here. I'm just saying it's not inconceivable. And you don't have to be part of a strange sect for the state to step in. I was involved in a case in Dallas, Texas involving a family of evangelical Christians who had started attending Bill Gothard seminars. These are, if you're not familiar with them, these are seminars on raising godly children.
Anyway, this family decided to get much more serious about their spiritual lives. They began attending a Mennonite church in the area, even though they weren't Mennonites and they never joined the Mennonites. They began homeschooling their children, and they changed the way that they dressed, and they changed the types of entertainment that they were now watching or participating in.
Well, the oldest daughter, who was 18 or maybe even older, and had already left home, well, she called Child Protective Services and complained that her parents were abusing her brothers and sisters. Well, as usual, the state decided to step in and take the children away and then sort out the facts later. Anyway, I met the parents. I told them I would be willing to help any way that I could.
If I remember right, they already had an attorney who was representing them, but I told them I could help them more from the spiritual end. Well, I learned that the older daughter and some of her teenage siblings who had been removed from the home, that they were attending a conservative Southern Baptist Church there in the Dallas area. So I decided to call up the pastor to see if I could obtain his assistance in working to get the children returned to their parents.
Well, when I reached the pastor, it became obvious rather quickly that he had bought into everything the oldest daughter had been saying. So I suggested to him that maybe he could meet with the pastor of the Mennonite Church that the parents were attending right then in attempt to try to work things out in a Christian way. I'm not meeting with any cult leader, he snapped back at me. Well, the Mennonites aren't a cult. I tried to explain to him, but he wouldn't listen.
In the end, he did agree to meet with me, but when I met with him, it accomplished nothing. I mean, I was so surprised that here was a minister of a so-called Bible-believing church, and yet he was supportive of these children being taken away from their parents because their parents had taken a dramatically conservative turn. I mean, they weren't doing anything to harm the children or anything. They just weren't living the normal American life.
Well, in the end, the matter did finally go to court, and the judge ordered the children to be returned to their parents. But if I remember correctly, it was about a year after the children had originally been taken away. So as I said, we should never think that, " Oh, this can't happen to us because it can. " As I said, a second area where we're likely to face conflicts with the government is with laws concerning discrimination against homosexuals.
However, I would predict that such laws will probably affect general evangelical Christians before they will affect we kingdom Christians. That's because we aren't trying to change the societies and governments we live under, and many of them are. For example, about a decade ago, Canada passed a law against what is called hate speech, which under Canada law is defined as speech or writing that " incites hatred against any identifiable group.
" Now a Christian activist, a Canadian named William Whatcott, published and mailed out flyers to everyone in certain towns in Saskatchewan. The Flyers were protesting what was being taught in Canadian public schools, endorsing homosexuality as an alternate lifestyle. In early 2013, this Canadian Supreme Court found Mr. Whatcott guilty of violating the hate speech laws because his pamphlet said things like this, " Now the homosexuals want to share their filth and propaganda with Saskatchewan's children.
" The pamphlets went on to say that a sex education course in a certain public school, quote, " degenerated into a filthy session where gay and lesbian teachers used dirty language to describe lesbian sex and sodomy to their teenage audience, " end quote. This Canadian Christian talked about, quote, " ex-sodomites and other types of sex addicts who have been able to break free of their sexual bondage and develop wholesome and healthy relationships.
" And finally, he said, " Our children will pay the price in disease, death, abuse, and other things if we do not say no to the Sodomite desire to socialize your children into accepting something that is clearly wrong. " Now, all of those things he said would be legal to say in the United States. But it wouldn't surprise me if I lived to see the day that it won't be. At the same time, I don't see kingdom Christians being involved in the types of activities that Mr. Whatcott was.
We aren't political activists who mail out brochures to everyone in a given town denouncing homosexuals. Although we are uncompromising on the fact that the Bible condemns homosexual practices as sin, we don't single out homosexuals to publicly denigrate them. I mean, even in Canada, merely expressing opposition to legalizing gay marriage would not be counted as hate speech in and of itself. But who knows what the future holds? Here's a couple of possibilities of what we might see in the future.
One, laws that require church schools and homeschools to include curriculum that present homosexuality as an acceptable alternate lifestyle. And two, laws that prohibit preaching against homosexuality as a sin. Now, that hasn't happened yet, and hopefully it won't happen here in the U.S., but you never know. Now, there will be certain professions and trades that will be affected by laws concerning discrimination against homosexuals that almost certainly will affect some of our people.
Although, in general, we don't find kingdom Christians in these particular professions, although there are some. One would be certified counselors, another public school teachers. Three would be college professors, four government officers, five psychologists, and finally psychiatrists. Now, I know of some kingdom Christians in some of those professions, and I think they're going to find in the years ahead, there will be more and more legislation against teaching or saying certain sorts of things.
Like a certified counselor today, if you are studying to become one, you are not allowed to express the view that a homosexual, that there is something wrong there that needs to be corrected. If that's your view, you're not going to be able to get certified. At least that's my understanding in most states. And again, we'll see what happens in the future. Also, laws against discrimination may affect, in fact, in some states, they already do, people who operate motels, apartments, and B&Bs.
For example, just recently, I read about a lesbian couple who sued a B&B owner in Hawaii who refused to rent a room to them, and the lesbian couple wanted judgment against them. Recently in Washington, a Christian florist, Barronelle Stutzman, was sued by the state of Washington for refusing to provide the flowers for a gay wedding. Mrs. Stutzman had no problem with selling flowers to gay customers. She treated them the same as any other customers.
However, when it came to doing the floral arrangement for a gay wedding, she felt that this was crossing the line, and that as a Christian, she couldn't do this. She saw this as a personal service that would involve her in something that violates God's law. She had no desire to be mean to homosexuals or anything. She was simply saying, " Look, I don't approve of same-sex marriages, so leave me out of it. I don't want to be involved in the ceremony of one.
" Now, this case is still pending, so I don't know how it will turn out. It would seem like she would have a strong case under the First Amendment. There are a number of other similar cases. Not long ago, a retreat place in New Jersey was sued for refusing to rent the facilities to a gay couple who wanted to have their civil union ceremony there. Recently, a bakery in Oregon was sued for refusing to make a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding.
And in New Mexico, a wedding photographer was sued for refusing to be the photographer at a gay union ceremony. No doubt we're going to see more and more of these kind of cases in the years to come. Again, it's unclear how the Supreme Court will rule on these various kinds of cases. But if the Supreme Court rules against the Christians involved in these, then it certainly will be a big factor when we Christians think about what kind of profession or business we want to enter into.
So what do we do as we face more and more conflicts with governmental laws in the future? Well, when it comes to certain trades and professions, the answer may well be, we just have to change the profession we're in. We may decide it's not such a good idea to operate a hotel or bed and breakfast or rent out apartments, depending what the law is.
Often, the laws will not affect a small business, like if you're only renting out five apartments, then certain laws may not affect you, but they will affect you if you're renting out 15 or 20, something like that. The second thing I think is to heed Jesus ' advice, where He said in Matthew 10:23, " When they persecute you in this city, flee to another. " So one of our first options is always to simply move.
We may not be forced to flee in the dead of the night, as the early Christians often were, but the best thing to do may be to simply move. I mean, here in the United States, state laws and policies vary widely from region to region. And if the conflict is with a state law or a municipal law, then moving to another state or to another city may totally solve the problem. Of course, we don't want all kingdom Christians to move and leave any state without a kingdom witness at all.
But let's say it's an issue involving raising or educating our children. Well, then single kingdom Christians and kingdom couples with grown children might want to move to those states, and parents with children in school might decide to move to another state. As Jesus said, we want to be as wise as serpents, but innocent as doves. Now, if the conflict is over a federal law, I think we're going to want to first see if there's a way to legally work with it or to work around it. Often there is.
I mean, like in Canada right now, even with their law, nobody has been arrested for just simply preaching in a church. Jesus and his apostles didn't try to change wicked Roman society, and it's not our job to try to do that today. So without compromising one bit, often we can work around a federal law. But if worse comes to worse and there's no way to work around it or with it, then we might want to choose to move to another country. As kingdom Christians, our lives are not bound with any particular country.
Personally, I spend a bit of time in Honduras every year, and I've seen from observation that they are not nearly as hostile to Christianity as the United States is. I mean, we Americans think of the United States as the bastion of religious freedom, and it used to be. But today, there are places that actually grant more freedom of religion than the United States does. So maybe Honduras or another Central American country would be a better choice to live if things got unworkable in the future.
Now let's talk about fleeing, disappearing, and operating covertly as a church. If we're faced with laws in the future that criminalize the way we raise or educate our children, the wise thing to do is to move before the state steps in to remove our children. I mean, we're perfectly free to move with our families to other states here in the United States or to other countries. And we're not breaking any law in doing so.
Well, that's assuming we're not in a situation where a former spouse or other relatives have court-ordered visitation rights or custody. But if you wait until the government starts investigating your family and then you flee, well then the state may get an order to obtain custody of your children. Of course, it's even worse if you wait until the state actually removes your children from your home.
In either of these latter two situations, if you flee with your children, you're probably going to be charged with parental kidnapping, which is a felony. And because it's a federal offense, and because it's considered kidnapping, you end up with the FBI going after you. And legally, parental kidnapping is a continuing offense. That means that the FBI doesn't ever stop looking for you. The statute of limitations doesn't even begin to run until you're actually apprehended.
So even if you successfully flee, you know that they are always out there looking for you. So again, the time for families to flee is either when or before laws are passed that would make us criminals simply for raising or educating our children by biblical teachings and methods. At the same time, if your children are taken away from you unexpectedly by the state, it's probably going to be wiser to work through the legal system to get them back rather than to snatch your children and run with them.
I say that because if you run and you're caught, well, you may never get them back. You may permanently lose custody. Nevertheless, there may be situations beyond our control where it will be necessary for our churches to operate covertly, or for us to flee or simply disappear with our families despite a court order. When that time comes, it's important that we are aware of the problem of leaving digital footprints and electronic footprints. As an attorney, this is a fact of which I've become increasingly aware.
In both civil and criminal cases, all kinds of people are getting trapped because of digital footprints they leave. Now, of course, in most situations today, that's a good thing. I'm not at all decrying it. Today, it usually helps justice prevail. But digital footprints won't serve the cause of justice when persecution comes. Again, other than issues with our children, I think the area where we're most likely to conflict with the government will be over so-called hate speech laws.
I mean, I think that's where it's going to begin. Now, may it never be true that any of us would actually be guilty of hating somebody or speaking hatefully about them. But simply repeating what the Bible says, whether we're talking about homosexuality, abortion, divorce, war, or any other subject, that may someday be against the law. And when that day comes, I'm satisfied that we're not going to change what we believe, but we will need to be careful when and how we say things.
For example, I don't think we're going to change what we preach in our churches, but it might not be a good idea to record a sermon that would end up causing someone to be arrested. And as I said, in those situations, we have to be very careful about our digital footprints. And let me explain what I mean by that. First of all, there are emails. I can't tell you how many corporations have been liable for millions of dollars, often because of a single email.
When persecution comes, emails may well serve as silent witnesses against us. Now you may be thinking, well, when that time comes, we'll just delete all of our emails off of our computers, and then we're safe. The problem is that deleting an email or any other computer file doesn't remove it from your computer. It becomes invisible to you, but it's still there on your computer. It just means now your computer can write over it. And it might eventually get written over, but you can't count on that.
And even if it's written over just once, computer forensics might be able to recover the original document. Computer forensics can find virtually anything that has ever been on your computer. It can even determine the brand of a USB flash drive that's been inserted on your computer and on what date it was inserted. I recently read of a legal case where an employee was stealing company secrets. He was downloading them onto a personal USB flash drive, and he thought he was pretty safe.
But through computer forensics, the company was able to discover that on July 4th of a given year, a USB flash drive was inserted into his computer at work. They were able to determine the brand of this flash drive, and it was not a brand used by the company. And of course, the company was closed on July 4th. So this means it was being done surreptitiously. Now those facts alone didn't clinch the case, but coupled with other evidence, it did. But back to computer files.
There are steps you can take to make it very difficult for someone to recover or decipher deleted files. In fact, there's software that you can get, I think it's actually free. You just need to look online that will overwrite deleted files hundreds of times with Gibberish, making it very difficult or impossible for someone to ever recover them.
Now, it's probably not something any of us want to do at the present time, because most likely we're the ones who are going to want to recover a file that we've deleted on our computer and later realize, oops, I needed that file. I mean, I doubt any of us have anything on our computers right now that we need to hide. I'm mentioning these things for the day when we're having to operate underground or covertly. When that time comes, it might be a little late to try to get information like this out.
The authorities can also trace on your computer any Google searches you've made, and those searches might end up being incriminating against you. Or if you're fleeing from the government, it might give them evidence where you're headed. Again, if we're in a situation of having to operate covertly, then all files like that, all computer searches, emails, everything, they have to be totally eradicated using the kind of software I mentioned.
Let's say that you take the necessary steps to totally delete a certain email from your computer. Unfortunately, you're still not safe. That's because emails are not just stored on your computer, but on other computers as well. I mean, first, there's the computer of the recipient, if you're the sender of an email. If you're the recipient of an email, even though you erase that email from your computer, it might still be on the computer of the sender. In the case of Gmail, Gmail is stored on Google servers.
So the government can access those records by forcing Google to turn them over. And if you use another type of web mail, again, a copy may well be on your service provider's server or on some server somewhere else. Well, the moral is this. When persecution comes, don't use email to communicate about things that are sensitive. Cell phones are another problem. So you may think that you're safely fleeing, but you're talking to people on your cell phone as you go.
Well, the government can trace your journey based on which towers your message is pinged off of. In fact, authorities can trace where your cell phone has been just from the GPS information stored on it, even if no phone calls were ever made during the trip. So if you're involved in Christian activities that have been declared illegal, or if you've been forced to disappear, don't communicate by cell phone.
Not only that, turn your cell phone totally off when you travel to sensitive places in order to disable the GPS. In fact, it's my understanding that with some cell phones, you actually have to go in and remove the battery in order to completely disable the GPS system. And of course, we're talking about cell phones, but likewise, turn off any other GPS devices you have during persecution unless you absolutely need it for navigation. Talking about telephones, what about landlines?
Well, unless you're under investigation or are connected with someone who is, it's highly unlikely that your landline telephone has been tapped. Because it takes a court order to do that, and the order is not for an unlimited length of time. However, even if your phone line isn't tapped, the records of the phone company will show the government who you have called.
So if you're having to " disappear " with your family, your phone records may reveal where you've gone to based on who you've been calling, or it will at least enable the government to come up with witnesses to use against you. The lesson to be learned is that if you're ever in that kind of situation, and you must use a telephone to contact someone, use a public phone for crucial calls. In short, the government has enormous capabilities, and their funds are virtually unlimited.
Nevertheless, the government has to decide whether it's cost-effective to engage all of its resources against you, depending on what the issue is. Well, what's the best way to avoid the government's high-tech abilities? The answer is go low-tech. Use a public phone instead of your personal phone or your cell phone. Communicate by letter instead of by email or by texting or using Facebook. Of course, if you're already the target of an investigation, any mail coming to you might be opened and read by the government.
Likewise, mail you send out if you put it in your home mailbox. But if you send the mail through a public postal bin in some other town, you're fairly safe unless the government is following you. I mean, assuming you didn't put your name and address on the envelope. If need be, communicate face-to-face. When you do that, there's no phone record, there's no mail to be intercepted, and there's no digital footprints. In short, the best way to beat the government's high-tech abilities is to go low-tech.
Before closing, I want to quickly tell you about some important legal principles to keep in mind when persecution of any type comes. First of all, if you're arrested, you will be advised of your rights, your right to remain silent and to have an attorney with you when you're questioned. Take advantage of that. The police will tell you, " Oh, it will go a lot easier for you if you will just confess that they'll do what they can to lighten your sentence. " Oh, that's a total lie.
It's not going to help you one bit to tell them anything. Just exercise your right to remain silent, tell them you want to obtain an attorney to represent you. Period. Say nothing else. Secondly, you need to be made aware of a doctrine called search incident to an arrest. Now, we've been talking about the different evidence that the government can get against you during persecution, and I'm assuming we're still operating under our constitutional protections.
The day may come when all that's thrown out, but I don't think that's anywhere in the near future. Now, to get hold of your computer or something like that, they have to first get a search warrant. But under the doctrine of search incident to an arrest, if they arrest you in your office, your computer is there in sight, they may have the right to search it incident to the arresting of you. Or if you've got a cell phone on you, something like that.
So if the policeman knock at your door and say they've come to arrest you, just say thank you, empty your pocket of any cell phone, anything like that, and step outside and shut the door behind you. That way, when they arrest you, there's nothing incidental to it that they can search. Likewise, if you're gonna turn yourself in, maybe have a friend drive you down in their car or take a taxi, something like that. Don't go in your car that particularly would have cell phone, GPS, laptops, things like that.
Also, remember, destroying evidence is a crime. And you may wonder, well, then why did I tell you about all of this software to erase files and all that sort of thing? Okay, what I said was destroying evidence. That is, once you've been charged with a crime or that you're the subject of an investigation or have good reason to believe you will. But regularly cleaning old data from your computer is not a crime. And particularly if you're a Christian ministry, I'm not talking about right now.
We don't have anything to worry about right now, I don't think. But when the time comes, you should have a policy in place that every day, at the end of the day, everybody cleans off any files, any emails, things like that from their computer. And again, doing it with software that will totally eradicate it. That's perfectly legal. But yeah, once you know they're going to arrest you if you destroy it, well, they can charge you just with that.
People have gone to prison simply for destroying evidence or interfering with justice. Okay, now, another principle. Once you're charged with a crime and being investigated, if you employ an attorney, all communication between you and your attorney is confidential. It's protected by law. You need to, and you must talk openly and honestly with your attorney. However, if you talk to an attorney about doing something illegal in the future, you're planning to do something that the state's going to label as a crime.
Well, now that conversation is not protected. The state can force the attorney to divulge that or put him in jail until he does. Now, of course, you may want to get advice from an attorney in advance as to what is legal and what isn't, what your rights are and what they aren't. So you can stay within the boundaries of the law, or at least make informed decisions. That's fine. That's legal, again, if you enter into an attorney-client relationship before you talk.
But if you're planning to break the law, don't tell your attorney about it. In fact, remember that everyone you involve in your covert activities, whether it's getting them to help you in some small way, or just telling them in advance what you're going to be doing, well, you're making them liable both criminally and civilly. So don't entangle your spiritual brothers and sisters any more than you absolutely have to do so. In conclusion, let's briefly sum up some of the things we've talked about.
We first discussed primary and secondary persecution. In the near future, we're most likely to face secondary persecution. That is indirect persecution, laws that are not necessarily aimed at Christians, or at least not at kingdom Christians. We then noted that Romans 13 requires us to obey the laws of our government, unless to do so would require us to break one of Christ's laws. Third, we also learned that our First Amendment rights are not absolute.
If the government has what it considers to be an overriding public interest, well, that trumps our First Amendment rights. I also mentioned that the two areas where we will likely first face conflicts with the government are laws concerning raising and educating our children, and laws concerning homosexuals. Normally, the first step we want to take when such laws are passed, if we can't find a way to work with them or work around them, is simply to move. Move to another state if it's a state law that's at issue.
Move to another country if it's a federal law. Finally, if we do have to disappear or to operate our churches covertly, we need to be aware of leaving digital and electronic footprints. In short, as Jesus said, we need to learn to be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves.