“I Have A Dream…” Is Jesus in Your Dream?

“I Have A Dream…” Is Jesus in Your Dream?             By Kelly Durant          1-20-14     John 3:16

2. You have heard the words “I Have A Dream…”   taken from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech, but can you continue the rest of this phrase?  Most people cannot.

Ask around, maybe only 1 in 50 people you know can state any more of the “I Have A Dream…”, MLK’s famous speech. It has only been 50 years and 5 months since he delivered it at the Washington Capital with a few hundred thousand civil rights protesters present.  Why am I reminding you of this? Because tomorrow is ‘Civil Rights Day’, and few people render importance as to what this means to us as society. For many people it is just another day and they give it no reflection at all. Only those who fight in the battle appreciate the victory!

In general, all of you here know it is the Christian way (of authentic Christians) to treat other races and people from other nations with love, equality, and kindness. This is one of the Christian founding fathers principles of this nation that makes it unique and better than other nations in the world, that here there is supposed to be “liberty and justice for all.” But are these values practiced fully? MLK said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”.

3. MLK was a preacher and in Atlanta many times I passed by the relatively small Ebenezer Baptist Church (Historical Site) where he served. His ideas of dreams of equality were not just His own but God’s as well, this is why these dreams resonated and woke up a new generation to support the civil rights of everyone.  What Jesus had in mind was the salvation of all races!

Herein is MLK’s legacy, when someone like him is brave enough to rise up and expose injustices, remind the masses of God’s truths, organize and get followers, then what will happen?  What happened to Jesus?  We will always witness that a certain group of people will either love them deeply and stand by them while there are others, who feeling they are losing power and control, swelter a pure hatred, and that hatred almost always leads to murder!

After MLK’s murder took place, it was so appalling that it was counter-productive in stopping the civil rights movement; it advanced the cause of the minorities more than possibly all of what MLK could have accomplished had lived and then just been ignored and shunned by the governing powers! Outstanding results require a total sacrifice; ‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church!’ Jesus gave it all, and his followers must be ready to give all as well!

4. Was Jesus pro civil rights? Everyone who is Christian can repeat the most famous verse of the Bible, John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”, but few people realize the radical implications of this verse! In theology one is taught to study in depth all key words in scripture.

The word “whoever” has a profound positive, often unnoticed implication. It means that God, through belief in Jesus, includes “everyone everywhere throughout all time”, so “whoever” by their choice may be saved and have eternal life in heaven! “Whoever” is God’s confirmation of His undiscriminating love to everyone everywhere for perpetual generations! Revelation 7:9 After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands,”

Contrary to man’s evil ways, the love and equality of God has always been for ‘whoever’, but only through Jesus’ life and sacrificial death could we understand it practiced as it should be:  with love for races and nations even those hated by others, and love in particular for the wounded, rejected, and despised.

5. Inclusive love, respect, and equality we learned from Jesus in the Good Samaritan account, so His love was not just for the Jews but also for the non-Jews and the lawbreakers (the sinners and prostitutes). His acceptance was so deep that He forgave them, healed them, and He even in the end gave up His life on the cross for ‘everyone’ which is a salvation for all people.  

Sadly though, even today in 2014, few Christians of any race have fully grasped the equality of what a non-discriminating inclusive love practicing civil rights should be because Sundays are the most racially divided day of the week. The vast majority of churches are not racially and social-economically mixed as ours is (and we still have work to do), but instead the majority of churches are divided up in worship in churches of like race, culture, social class, and doctrine.  

To mix races and cultures goes against the current of our nature don’t you think? True, everyone wants to feel comfortable. It seems natural for ‘birds of a feather to flock together” but the question would be, do you and I love all birds equally as God intended for us to love them? Jesus said Luke 6:32 “But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.” Take conviction, everyone needs improvement!

6. In the Salvation Army we usually have racially mixed Corps just from the dynamics of the neighborhoods in which we serve. But does it make you angry like I get when you learn of churches that out of personal interest give Christianity a bad name because they only target one certain race, one certain socio-economic class, and then preach that only their one doctrine, (with their aberrant interpretations usually on prosperity and superiority), will get you into heaven? These false churches with false teachers be they black, white or brown, yellow, or red are fulfilling end-time prophecy of the increase in false teachers.

2 Tim 4:2 Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. 3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; 4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.

Here is the crux of the matter; it is the nature of people (the unspiritual, uneducated and Biblically ignorant) to basically not accept equality. Equality and civil rights may be noted in history books, it may be somewhat enforced with laws, but many people in the depths of their minds don’t believe it really works in society and that it is not fair. The truth is the aggressive false people always want dominion so they can have their pride and ego inflated. Truth rejecters create governments and churches with leaders and teachers (false ones) that will piously exalt them as a race or class, so that then they can flaunt that they are better than the rest of the common folk because only they are members of royalty. Their fables are their conceived “so called” testimonies that always exalt their personal pride and agenda.

7.  These kinds of unconverted “so-called” Christians when exposed to healthy Biblical teachings on inclusive love and spiritual things sadly usually do not repent of their sin of pride and start loving God and their neighbor as their self. Instead they flaunt that they are superior to everyone else around them, that they are a, “chosen”, and “royal class” and what they say “goes”. So where did Christianity go wrong to accommodate discrimination ignoring Jesus inclusive love for all? I am just speaking from what I have personally experienced in white, black, Hispanic, and Asia churches and I have been to hundreds! Christians actually are “chosen” and “royal” but “elect, or chosen” to be submitted to a loving holiness, an absolute humility, and to a faithful obedience to the Holy Scriptures. So where does the confusion originate from that Christians don’t see their own prejudice and sins in this area?

In part it is due to the fact that Christians have not been taught well about the ‘old pact’ of the law of God contrasting with the ‘new pact’ in Jesus Christ. Some Christians today want to think of their selves as the powerful old Jewish priests who were the ones that controlled the community, spiritually, legally, and economically. But isn’t it obvious, that system passed away with Jesus! The old pact could have served its purpose better if God’s “chosen” had not become so legalistic and hypocritical, cold and discriminatory murdering Jesus and countless others. The priesthood monarchy served its purpose for a time but all things changed with Jesus. (read the book of Hebrews!)

In Jesus day the priests were so full of pride, so secure of their connection to God, so discriminatory against other races and full of hatred, that Jesus exposed them as vipers, murderers, and as the stench of someone rotting in a tomb! Absolute power corrupts absolutely! The ‘new pact’ for eternal life is in Jesus who was sacrificed for all time ‘to take away the sin of the world’ and we no longer need priests to sacrifice and mediate for us; Christians with the Holy Spirit have a direct connection with God! You are responsible now!  

8. Since Abraham was called to be a special man of faith and start a new ‘faithful to God’ race, one might erroneously assume then that God could be considered racist due to the fact that He chose in the past just one race to be “chosen” and the others were not accepted (unless they converted and submitted). Why is that? Don’t forget, human sacrifice and horrors dominated.

Historically God has been at war with sin and man’s evil injustice to man which imposes slavery, sacrifice to false gods, and war. God hates abuse and violence, and mega-millions have been murdered by every world dominate power that never submitted to worship Him, their Creator; such as the Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Europeans (and hundreds more!) The idea was for there to be a special people who would be the exemplary ones on how to live in peace and love as “it is in heaven”. Christians today have this responsibility to impart!

Cultures and races that oppose God’s people, that oppose His worship and love, are destined to be obliterated and be conquered. In the Bible we know God’s people dominated over the evil tribes. Exodus 23:23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off.  And in the ‘new pact’ Jesus reaffirms domination by God’s people because the ‘meek will inherit the earth’. This will be after the great tribulation and His return though.

9. Historically God has always been on the side of the minorities, of the weak and oppressed, and usually that is the category under which God’s people fall. But when God’s people, be they black, white, brown, yellow, or red become prideful un-submitted oppressors and bullies, and do not follow and teach His holy ways of love, they then open the door for severe punishments from Him, to become the slave oppressed class again. It is cycle after cycle of up and down.

Israel fell into this over and over. Judges 10:6 Then the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals and the Ashtoreths, the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the people of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines; and they forsook the Lord and did not serve Him.  Israel, the dominating minority, was taken captive by their enemies many times!

Apply this historical repetitive principle to today and it will make you fear for God’s judgments! Do you not currently see in this nation black, white, brown, yellow, and red oppression from within and extending out happening? Contrast the folklore music pre MLK with the hip-hop of today and we hear words of beauty and suffering from the culture decayed into rude vulgar disrespect! The Civil Rights Movement still has a long way to go because there still exists repression and oppression by those on the inside, by the governing powers, by the pseudo-Christian (false) churches, by the mafias, by the multitudes of local gangs, and by racist groups of all colors. This is worldwide! Only a change of heart with Jesus can correct any part of these injustices rooted in prideful violent behaviors because only Jesus’ follower display proof that they can bring about a real change of heart within and without influencing a brother and sisiter love for a better community and loving peaceful world!

10. The world’s historical long standing divisions of races (racism), cultures, and beliefs, are mended by the word, “whoever” in John 3:16! Jesus has been the inspiration of countless leaders who stand up in God’s power to demand fairness, freedom of the slaves, equality, and healing. And they have accomplished beneficiary and noteworthy feats!

All people are born to a certain race and culture (we have no control over that) and the behaviors and religious affiliation of our certain race is influenced by the good and bad of the past forefathers.  In the case of the Afro-Americans, historically they have the baggage of their past forefathers practicing the dark arts and magical incantations which spread to the Caribbean Islands and the American continents, but MLK, however, represented a new generation of Christians that were free from those past sins through Jesus.

Today I observe that all races (and I have lived in communities of races very different from my own for decades) always have those within their group certain ones that will remain unashamedly racist.  A certain percentage of unconverted people will always discriminate while in their carnal ignorant state. However, wise others will learn and understand God’s ways and love everyone no matter the race, culture, or class. It takes righteousness, persistence, patience, and suffering to win battles and many years of spiritual battle to undo the hundreds of years of evil we have inherited! It takes authentically converted individuals with Jesus on their side to have God esteem their worthiness of victory!

11. In order to demand justice and a higher standard one must be an example of it! The situation was that MLK and his followers were a people empowered by the Lord and free in spirit, but they were not free from the past sins of the other people in their cities that accepted unjust laws, racism, and oppression in the 1960s.

We conclude that when things are oppressive and unfair in a nation, when little or no justice is served, God through his servants changes the course of history and his grace overpowers the sin but only if His people will humble their selves, repent, obey, and fight for the right. The types of sins in all cultures shift and change though out the ages, but we know well the enemy does not sleep. He will use racism, the economic divide, religion, different doctrines, sexuality, and anything to divide Christians and the people of the world. Don’t get tricked! Watch and pray!

If you take a stand with Jesus, love others and convert them to His way you may get to watch the oppressors, haters, and false teachers and warmongers fade away into oblivion under the light of His truth! His Kingdom will reign one day forever and ever, and then we will forever be free and then be able to shout, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, free at last!’