DEFENDING FREEDOM IN A DARKENING AGE

DEFENDING FREEDOM IN A DARKENING AGE by Pastor Albert Moehler

Thank you so much! God bless you! It is an honor to be here with you tonight. Mary and I are particularly honored this many people would gather for our 38th wedding anniversary

Every good thing in my life has come either from the Lord or from my wife, Mary. And so sweetheart, thank you for sharing this night, allowing me to say “yes” to this invitation. And I’ll say with your blessing as well, we’re honored being here with you. Mary and I are honored to be here, not only this event, but with this people, all of you, and for what you represent. Particularly for the Alliance Defending Freedom, Michael Farris, the entire team. For all the clients who are here. For all the fellows, the staff, and the attorneys, and litigants. Litigators for the Alliance Defending Freedom. In a sense, I have been a champion of this organization from its very inception, and I believe that it has never been more important to the great cause than now. And so if I gave only remarks in a few seconds, I would simply say, do more better, fast. It matters. Give more to donors, support more, pray more. This is the moment to which we have been called.

I spend a lot of my life speaking to events like this. And the food tonight was marvelous, but we’re not here primarily for the food. But the food does become an issue at times. I was reading

a work actually by an author, a memoir about his life growing up in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. And he wrote about the awkwardness of those who’ve come from Western cultures to the African culture and how the miscommunication can often happen. And it just so happened that it was Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh who was the occasion for this particular communication challenge. He was representing the Queen at a state visit to Rhodesia.

And at a banquet very much like this, he was the guest of honor, and he was to give remarks. As he was seated, the waiter came up to him and he simply said, your Royal Highness would you like the beef or the duck? Prince Phillip got the scowl on his face he often does, and with a little bit of a Royal condescension simply said, “tell me about the duck.” The waiter paused and looked at him and then said, “your Royal Highness, it’s like a chicken but it swims.” I can tell you, it’s the best definition of a duck. And sometimes, it’s good to be told the right answer to the question, “tell me about the duck.” Tell me about religious liberty. Tell me about defending freedom.

We’re here to talk about these things, and you’ve been spending the better part of the last several days talking about these truths because they matter, these rights because they are fundamental, and because they are endangered. The title of my address is “Defending Freedom in a Darkening Age.”

I think there’s the temptation in any age to believe that darkness is right around the corner. If you hold to a Christian and Augustinian worldview, that’s never wrong. Except for the fact that the final turn will be the victory of Christ. But we are living in an age in which so many of the most precious moments of reality are so devastatingly threatened. We are reminded of the fragility of civilization itself.

I am drawn in my own thinking to so many crucial points in Western history. One of them is the dawn of the First World War, called by those who participated in it, “the Great War.” I am reminded of the words of the British Foreign Minister Sir Edward Grey, who said on August 3rd, 1914, on the night before the full outbreak of hostilities, “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.” In a sense he was right, and in a sense he was wrong. The most important sense in which he was right was understanding that the very principles and most fundamental convictions of Western civilization were at stake, were endangered, were on the line, and were worth fighting for.

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