freedom

Look at our situation today, you hear so often of the word freedom. We want to be free. We want to be free from this we want to be free from that. And look at the many ways that man is free today.
Technology has freed him, so that he can travel from one end of the globe to the other and travel through space at thousands of miles an hour.
Industry has freed him to move from one job specialization to another.
Education has freed his mind.
Electronics has freed him to be able to press a button and enter into experiences quite foreign to his own.
Medicine has freed him from sickness.
Chemistry has freed him from his emotions.
Psychiatry has freed him from guilt.
Art has freed his imagination
…and yet the man who wanted to be free technologically, travel at thousands of miles an hour and some of them end up with nervous breakdowns. Education has become a treadmill. Television has homogenized our tastes, fastens upon our sensitivities so that 3 million people are forced to the same thing by a pummeling of their minds. Art has fastened upon us. Drugs have enslaved. Wars have become stalemated. Diplomatic negotiations have become deadlocked. Anarchy has erupted. Law has answered with repression. And determinism is still a reality word in a psychologists lexicon.
In an endover to be free we have bound ourselves and man has now been called homo-perturbatus. — restless man intoxicated with a sense of freedom he doesn’t know what to do with.
Be extremely careful what you pursue in prayer because what you are seeking may be procured in Gods way and not in our way.

denominationalism

Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to invite a black man to dinner at the white house. Booker T Washington was that man, founder of Tuskegee University (check out the Tuskegee Airmen of WWII). That event stirred anger in the minds of white racists and brought a slew of criticism and death threats across the nation. Another taboo was that Washington apparently sat next to Mrs Roosevelt which stirred an outcry to commit acts of terror.. even murder (see the senators quote below). Consider the hate that was rampant during that time.

Look at some of the newspaper heading:

“Roosevelt Dines a Darkey”
“A Rank Negrophilist”
“Our Coon-Flavored President”
“Roosevelt Proposes to Coddle the Sons of Ham”
An article appearing in the Memphis Scimitar dated 10.16.1901—reads:

“The most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States was committed yesterday by the president when he invited a nigger to dine with him at the whitehouse. It would not be worth more than a passing notice if Theodore Roosevelt had sat down for dinner in his own home with a pullman carporter but Roosevelt the individual and Roosevelt the president are not to be viewed in the same light. It is only very recently that president Roosevelt boasted that his mother was a southern woman and he is half-southern by that fact. By inviting a nigger to his table he pays his mother small duty. No southern woman with a a proper self respect would now accept an invitation to the white house nor would president Roosevelt be welcome today in southern homes. He has not inflamed the anger in the southern people he has excited their disgust.”

In the book Theodore Rex, Senator Benjamin Tillman was quoted as saying:

The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place again. (pg 54-55)

So now can you feel the prejudice that resonated over the country at the time of this event? Can you feel the hate, and disunity that resulted from a DINNER??

Now all great events pertaining to revivals, reforms, and the like, begin with someone who is willing to stand against the grain—-to break the chains of convention—to manipulate (or perhaps GODipulate) traditional thinking to that which is consistent to the mega themes of scripture (love, unity).