What Is FREEDOM?
Plain Truth Magazine
July 1964
Volume: Vol XXIX, No.7
Issue:
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What Is FREEDOM?

This month of July commemorates the independence of the United States of America. But how much real freedom is there in a nation which leads the world in crime, divorce and degenerative diseases? This article shows the only source of REAL AND LASTING FREEDOM!

   "UHURU!" That's the word that means freedom to the natives of the Congo, Rwanda, Kenya and most of the rest of the newly independent nations of Africa.
   As the rhythmic, swelling chant of "UHURU" rises from the throats of thousands of excited natives, often wild thoughts of lust surge in their minds. To the average African, "uhuru" — freedom — means that he will now be able to take what the white man has — his car, his business, his house, even his wife!
   RAPE, PILLAGE, PLUNDER, BURN, DESTROY AND TAKE — that's all FREEDOM means to many thousands, even millions, of the restless people of Africa — especially in the Congo.

Today's Headlines

   This idea of freedom is not history, it is today's news — and it is prophesied to get MUCH WORSE!
   In 1960, when the Congo was given its independence, the daily newspaper stories read like the most grotesque of horror stories. One woman who fled to Brazzaville, the French Republic of the Congo, stated with revulsion the stark reality of the situation: "How many times the Africans said before Independence Day, 'That white woman will be mine, that house will be mine, that car will be mine' — NOW IT HAS HAPPENED AS THEY SAID!"
   This woman was one of those fortunate enough to have escaped the Congo with her life.
   Others were not so fortunate! Among the U.N. personnel sent to police the Congo, 16 Italians were surrounded and massacred — but killing them was not enough! As each one was shot, he was cut up into pieces and these pieces were passed out to the crowd. Still other pieces were saved and sold in the Kindu market place! A few days later no remnants of any of these bodies could be found — except one solitary hand which was given to a World Health Organization doctor in a sadistically mock ceremony.
   How many of these pieces were actually eaten by the citizens of the Congo, reveling in their new-found "freedom," is not known. It is a documented fact, however, that at least one Irish soldier — among eight captured in a Northern Katanga ambush — was eaten in a cannibal ritual!
   Those who shout "uhuru" want to be independent of the white man's justice and judgment — and some of them want to be free to eat anybody they choose! It is their belief that if they eat their enemy, they will be strengthened by it. In fact, some believe that the more dreaded and hated the enemy is the more powerful the magic will be when they have consumed the body of that person. They DEVOUTLY BELIEVE that eating the legs of their enemy will give them increased speed — that eating the brain will give them increased intelligence — that eating the heart will bring courage! AND SOME WANT TO BE FREE TO PRACTICE THIS BELIEF!

Natives Suffer Also

   IF is not only the white man who has suffered in this chaotic explosion of "freedom" throughout Africa. Actually, the number of white persons being killed or mutilated or eaten is far less than the number of blacks who suffered at the hands of their own! The reason you hear more about the white man suffering, is that the white man has control of most of the news media — and because it seems to western minds that it is more of an explosive headline crime when a white man suffers than when equal pain and indignity is executed on a colored person.
   Since 1960, well more than 100,000 natives throughout Africa have suffered most violent and gruesome deaths at the hands of their fellow natives. As was reported in the pages of The PLAIN TRUTH of March of this year — "In Rwanda — a former Belgian colony — the now-independent Bahutu tribesmen, given 'freedom,' are literally butchering like animals the famed Watusi (their average height nearly 6'6") by the thousands! The current toll of the Watusi lives may well be approaching 20,000!" Those 20,000 human beings butchered in an inter-tribal blood bath were not warriors and soldiers. Many men were included, but also thousands of women and children!
   The object of the Bahutus was to completely do away with all of the Watusi in their realm! The Bahutus could not consider themselves truly free — living in the spirit of "uhuru" — until they had deprived the last Watusi of the breath of life! One of the favorite modes of killing the Watusi was to tie their forearms and their forelegs together, behind their backs, and throw them into a river — and watch the crocodiles devour them.

Uhuru — Freedom's TORTURE!

   It is not enough for these primitive peoples to merely kill a human being. "A detachment of this army {the native Congo Peace Force} herded over 60 men, women and children into the Mission of St. Jean de Bakwa near Bakwanga, then murdered them. Machine gunners blasted tiny tots huddled in terror under school desks. Swinging machetes, the Central Government Force butchered many of those who escaped the fusillade. After the massacre, the Congolese detachment retired to its camp for a repast of canned fish — supplied by the U.N.!" (Ray Vicker, Wall Street Journal, Sept. 8, 1960)
   Space does not permit — and I do not have the heart to go on — telling of the thousands of bloody atrocities that have taken place in the last four years! When Angola revolted against its stern colonial rulers, news sources revealed that both sides were guilty of some of the most heinous crimes of man against man ever recorded — pregnant women, little children, old men were hacked to pieces in a blood-lust, "freedom" frenzy!

Yet Relatively Few Die by Violence

   Despite these statistics of horror, the news becomes even more alarming when you realize that many more thousands of individuals have died, since the cry of "uhuru" burst forth on the black continent, from the pangs of HUNGER and the ravages of DISEASE! And no wonder! Whole chapters of the Bible are devoted to four basic catastrophes that befall any people which seek to have freedom without law!
   Those four basic plagues are
   1) The ravages of wild animals: beasts gone mad and destroying the population of the countryside. Africa has long suffered from this, and the nights of terror spent by natives are innumerable!
   2) Famine: When law and order go out the window — when there is no central authority to govern and rule the actions of mankind — each man lives in fear of the other. This has happened in the Congo — crops have gone untended. And now, since years have passed, crops are not even planted any more. As a result, thousands are losing their lives by starvation. The United States and the United Nations are sending millions of tons of food to supply the need — but the need is far greater than the supply!
   3) Pestilence: Always in the wake of malnutrition — and as a result of not knowing the laws which govern even common sanitation — disease rears its ugly head. You yourself have probably seen heart-rending and stomach-turning pictures in Life, Look and Post magazines of the poor, disease-ridden bodies of natives suffering with every disease known to mankind, from rickets to smallpox! Under present conditions these disease epidemics can only continue and grow worse.
   4) The sword! WAR: And so the vicious cycle continues. (See Lev. 26; Deut. 28; Ezek. 14)
   These conditions are real TODAY! They exist throughout vast areas of the continent of Africa, of Asia — and they are PROPHESIED to exist in North America and throughout the British Commonwealth! These conditions are the inevitable result of striving to have freedom without law!

No Liberty without Law

   Most of today's responsible political leaders realize that there is one real, absolute truth — that you cannot have liberty and freedom without law! These leaders have publicly expressed the fact that mankind's only salvation from a nuclear holocaust lies in a world-governing body capable of executing LAW throughout the world and punishing offenders!
   While the Congo was being governed by the Belgians, the natives were free to plant and harvest. They were free to travel from one area to another. They were free to build homes, to hunt animals — they were free to learn more in the schools — free to educate themselves! Then they began to shout for "freedom!"
   But their idea of freedom was to do away with the laws which provided that freedom!
   Immediately after they gained their "freedom" they were no longer free to plant and harvest — to build homes and to educate themselves! When they began to disobey the laws of order, those laws brought the inevitable and brutal punishment of chaos! What freedom they had, was wiped out completely.

The Real Trouble

   You can plainly see that the real trouble in the Congo is not primitive agriculture or a backward people, alone — the key to the situation is the fact that the Congo is no longer GOVERNED at all! In the Congo especially, and in other areas, the only word for the political situation is CHAOS! The people wanted to become independent — wanted to govern themselves — wanted to have "freedom!"
   But they did not realize the price one has to pay for freedom! They did not realize that you cannot have freedom without law and the exercise of self-discipline.
   You yourself may realize this to be true. You yourself have rejected the law of the jungle. What you may not realize is how precipitously close to this same law of the jungle THIS WHOLE WORLD Is!
   In the African chaos the means of inflicting injury on fellow human beings is rather primitive and restricted. The frightful weapons now in the hands of technically educated rulers of this world are capable of WORLD DESTRUCTION! Communist leaders have the same basic human nature that the natives of Africa has. Each has HIS OWN interpretation of what freedom is. Each wants HIS OWN liberty to pursue what HE feels is the right way of life. Yet each is just as completely separated from true freedom as are the primitive peoples of Africa.

The Modern Trend

   The more one understands this world's ways the more one can see that humanity has not found the answer to how to live — why we are here on this earth and what the purpose of life is!
   The most sophisticated of today's schools of learning blatantly instruct their students that the only thing that is consistent is inconsistency. They teach that there is no basic truth, that truth varies with time and occasion. Yet they diligently strive to learn the laws of chemistry and physics — realizing that these are ABSOLUTE PHYSICAL TRUTHS — they teach that there are no such laws for human conduct. This is ignorance in the highest degree!
   They teach that each man must find his own moral code — that each man must decide for himself what is right and what is wrong! Don't you see that this is exactly what they are doing in the Congo!

Listen to Wisdom

   In modern man's headlong rush toward anarchy and chaos, he is even ignoring the wisdom of mankind! Read here what wise men of the past have written, and recognized to be true: "Anarchy is the choking, sweltering, deadly, and killing rule of no rule" (Carlyle). "Anarchy is hatred of human authority; atheism of divine authority — two sides of the same whole" (MacPherson). "WHERE LAW ENDS, TYRANNY BEGINS" (Wilkes). "True freedom consists with the observance of law" (Thornton). "Liberty is the right to do what the law permits" (Montesquieu).
   These men and many others like them — responsible, thinking men — realize that you cannot have freedom or liberty in a society where each man does what is right in his own eyes! And God Himself thunders at this generation: "There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the END THEREOF are the ways of death" (Prov. 14:12 and Prov. 16:25).
   What has the teaching that there is no absolute truth — that there is no divine governing law that brings freedom, peace and liberty — produced? You will find the answer in the conduct of the men of the United States Armed Forces taken captive in the Korean conflict. Many of them were guilty of collaborating with the enemy on a scale never known before in United States history! One out of every three of the American prisoners in that war collaborated with the Communist enemy!
   Government authorities later established that the reason was basically one of education — that these soldiers had not been taught what was right and what was wrong by their mothers and fathers. These same young men, when they went to school, were not told by their teachers that there is a right and a wrong way to do things. They were rather taught permissively and allowed to do as they pleased, each seeking "his own moral code." And these young men's church affiliation did not help them either — because they were told from their pulpits that God's grace and mercy does away with any necessity to obey law.
   When these mis-educated young men were faced with a new set of circumstances — when a Communist government was in control of them — they decided that what HAD been right back in the United States was NOT right in a prisoner-of-war camp; and what HAD been wrong in the United States was NOT wrong in a prisoner-of-war camp.
   They responded in exact proportion to the teachings they had received!
   They had been taught there are no absolute truths — that each occasion demands a separate code of ethics! And that's why one third became traitors to their own country!

Washington's Advice Forgotten

   The United States of America has gone a long way from the principles of its founding fathers. Today, in a public campaign sanctioned by the highest court in the land, the name of God is being systematically erased from buildings, schools and human minds. Yet George Washington, the first president of the United States, said, "It is impossible to govern the world without God. He must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligation."
   Perhaps it is easy for us to see that the atheistic communist concept of freedom is in error. But what of the possibility of world law under the aegis of the United Nations?
   Will the U.N. provide the answer? It certainly DID NOT provide the answer for the natives of West New Guinea when it turned them over to the covetous rule of Sukarno! It DID NOT provide the answer in the Congo where chaos continues! It is NOT helping soothe the hatred between Greek and Turk on the island of Cyprus!
   Perhaps if we could get the laws of the United States — where there is true freedom of individual action — to be the laws of the world, we would then have freedom. But what about the growing chaos within our own borders?
   What about the rising crime rates that make the United States a leader in crime around the world? What about the fact that many of our cities have become concrete jungles!? Our women and children are afraid to go out even during the daytime, and grown men must go by twos or threes and even then avoid certain sections at night. What about the accumulating effect of our sin against the very air we breathe by belching forth millions of tons of waste into it every single day? What about the waters which suffer from every pollutant from human excrement to dangerous insecticides to radioactive waste?
   No, evidently the thirty-two million laws which are on the statute books of the United States in Federal, State and local governments are not sufficient to bring peace and prosperity, the liberty and freedom that every man wants. We have become a giant in the world — but we are a blind giant, stumbling, weak from cancer within, trying to fend off blows from without from every other nation on the face of the earth!
   NO ONE CAN REVEAL WHAT LAWS GOVERN LIFE EXCEPT THE ONE WHO GAVE LIFE!
   God gives life — and only HIS LAWS can govern its freedom. Yet mankind continues to write his rejection of God's LAWS in pain, suffering and the shackles of disobedience and rebellion.

Satan's Example

   Satan made this mistake originally. Despite the fact that he was a great cherub (Ezek. 28:14) — despite the fact that he had the freedom to travel from one end of the, universe to the other, the freedom to stand at the right hand of God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son in the very throne-room of heaven — despite all these freedoms and more, he REBELLED! (Ezek. 28:15)
   Satan reasoned he could not be FREE and still have God rule over him! So, as with all who feel they cannot be free while they are living under authority and in accord with laws, he rebelled directly against the only authority that existed which was greater than himself! He reasoned in his own mind, "I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like' the most High" (Isa. 14:13-14).
   This first instance of rebellion against law and authority graphically illustrates what happens to those who do not understand what true freedom is. Satan could not succeed in his rebellion against God, because God is ALL-powerful. Jesus, who was present at the time of his rebellion, records for us what happened: "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven!" (Luke 10:18). Immediately Satan's dream of liberty and freedom under HIS OWN TERMS faded into the nothingness that it really was in the first place. His action, contrary to the law of love, had a direct Reaction which began immediately to strip away what freedom he had! Satan and his rebellious angels with him are now imprisoned by spiritual bonds in darkness waiting their day of judgment! (Jude 6).
   Now, instead of having the freedom to enjoy the magnificent creation that God has made in the star-spangled heavens, Satan and his angels — now become demons — are bitter and frustrated, spiritually bound and sick — like "... wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever" (Jude 13). Satan and his demons soon will be chained literally in one small place for a thousand years — THIS IS THE RESULT OF THEIR SEARCH FOR FREEDOM WITHOUT LAW! (Rev. 20:1-3)

How About Adam?

   Satan the Devil, Jesus Christ tells us in John 8:44, was the original liar and murderer. When Adam was created nearly 6000 years ago, he too chose to follow in Satan's footsteps rather than obey the laws of freedom that God offered to him. He went the way of his human nature, rather than using God's strength to overcome his human nature and live by God's laws of love which bring perfect freedom.
   When first created, Adam was for a short moment living a life of complete freedom! He and his wife were the only human beings on earth, and therefore free from any enemy. All that they saw was theirs — they were not placed in a primitive jungle. They were given the complete freedom of a beautiful garden, manicured and planted and planned by the Creator God Himself! Food was on every tree — therefore they were free from hunger and want.
   The only freedom they did not have was the freedom to cause themselves harm!
   Yet Adam and his wife took the liberty of taking the only thing that was not theirs and, in so doing, opened a Pandora's Box of evil that is still producing its fruit to this day!
   Immediately after Adam and his wife chose to go their own way — as opposed to GOD'S WAY — the TRUE freedoms they had were stripped from them! They were no longer free to roam through the garden that God had created for them. They no longer had free access to the very tree of life! Now their only freedom was freedom to sweat and toil and labor to produce enough food from an unyielding and thistle-infested ground to feed their mouths and the mouths of their children (Gen. 3:17-19). Their first-born son became a murderer — and that of his own brother. Adam found out the HARD WAY that sin confines and withholds and denies — that SIN (which I John 3:4 defines as "the transgression of the law") is NOT the way to freedom and life's blessings!
   Adam's descendants went from bad to worse. God finally had to cut off even the breath of life from the nostrils of all but eight souls. Each man, going his OWN way, brought such chaos, pain and agony to this world that God destroyed it with a flood. And God warns us in His Word that, "As the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be" (Matt. 24:37). Read God's description of the way things were just before the Flood. It's like today's world: "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Gen. 6:5).
   What happened? "... The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust unto the Day of Judgment to be PUNISHED: but CHIEFLY them that walk after the flesh and the lust of uncleanness, and DESPISE. GOVERNMENT"! (II Pet. 2:4-10.)
   God will not save any soul He does not govern! Do not misunderstand — your keeping of the law does not save you — but unless you do keep the law GOD will not save you!

Is There a Way to Freedom?

   Perhaps you have been deceived along with the rest of the world into thinking — as Satan did, as Adam did, as the men of Noah's day did, as Nimrod and every other rebel against the laws of God in all history did — that the laws of God are harsh and unjust! That the laws of God curtail freedom, that the laws of God are pinched and old-fashioned. That the laws of God are evil!
   But what does your Creator-God in the New Testament say?
   God tells us that He created mankind in the first place with the downward pull of human nature for a PURPOSE — "For the creature [creation] was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who bath subjected the same in HOPE" (Rom. 8:20). Did God plan to leave us hopelessly entangled in the mess and problems in which we find ourselves? Moffat's translation of the Bible answers: "... The hope being that creation as well as man would one day be freed from its thralldom to decay and gain the GLORIOUS FREEDOM of God's children. To this day, we know, the entire creation sighs and throbs with pain [as a result of SIN great deserts cover vast areas of the earth, the air we breathe is polluted, the waters we drink are polluted, etc] and not only so, but even we ourselves, who have the spirit as a foretaste of the future, even we sigh deeply to ourselves as we wait for the redemption of the body that means our full son-ship!" (Rom. 8:21-23, Moffat Translation)
   Yes, the TRUE FREEDOM that this world is searching for is offered to us by our CREATOR-GOD! If we will learn to be subject to the laws of His Kingdom, He will invite us to be very members of that Kingdom! Sons of God in every sense of the meaning of the word son! When we come to that point we will be ULTIMATELY FREE!
   The glorious liberty that Paul talks about in this book of Romans is the abundant, joy-filled, law-abiding life that God Himself lives!
   But as even the wise men of our world have pointed out, you cannot have freedom without law. The question to ask is: WHOSE LAW? By now you must see that only God who is the original Law-giver can be the One to answer that question!
   And He does answer it!
   James, the brother of Jesus Christ and an Apostle of the New Testament church, writes, "ACT on the word, instead of merely listening to it and deluding yourselves, for whoever listens and does nothing, is like a man who glances at his natural face in a mirror; he glances at himself, goes on, and at once forgets what he is like. Whereas he who gazes into the FAULTLESS LAW OF FREEDOM and remains in that position, proving himself to be no forgetful listener but an ACTIVE AGENT, he will be blessed in his activity" (Jas. 1:22-25, Moffat Translation).

New Testament Law Different?

   Many people today think that Jesus Christ was included among the rebels against the law of God — that He came to do away with the harsh judgments of His Father! Yet by His own words He stated — "Think NOT that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am NOT come to destroy, but to fulfill" (Matt. 5:17) You might have thought before that this law of liberty that James, Jesus' brother, is talking about is some nebulous "law of love" that doesn't really have any definition — perhaps a moral code that each individual must find on his own!
   But that is not the case — James explains very specifically which law that law of liberty is! "For whoever obeys the whole of the law, and only makes a single slip, is guilty of everything. He who said, Do not commit adultery also said, Do not kill. Now if you do not commit adultery but if you kill, you have transgressed the law!" (Jas. 2:10-11, Moffat Translation) Very plainly the law being spoken of here is the TEN COMMANDMENTS.
   THESE ARE THE LAWS OF LIBERTY THAT EXPRESS GOD'S CHARACTER. These are the laws of liberty that God is going to require YOU to follow if YOU are ever going to be His Son! "Speak, act, as those who are to be judged by the law of freedom!" (Jas. 2:12, Moffat Translation)

This IS the Gospel

   The Gospel that Jesus Christ taught was NOT a gospel of rebellion! It was NOT a gospel of doing away with law and order that His Father had established! It is NOT a new preachment of freedom without law!
   The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the Gospel of the KINGDOM OF GOD! A Kingdom must have four basic things: First of all it must have a king or governing leader; second, it must have subjects or inhabitants; third, it must have an area or territory for the subjects to inhabit; and fourth, it must have laws to govern those subjects or inhabitants.
   God's Kingdom is very real — not some figment of the imagination! The Kingdom of God has all of the attributes of any kingdom. The KING of God's Kingdom is God Himself! (Rev. 19:16). The SUBJECTS in God's Kingdom are those individuals who repent of and change from THEIR ways of living, and begin to live the way that this great King prescribes (Rev. 20:4). The LAWS of that Kingdom are the Ten Commandments of God and many other laws mentioned in the Bible which magnify those Ten Commandments (Jas. 1:25). The TERRITORY of that Kingdom is this entire earth (Rev. 5:10).
   To understand this more fully read our free article, "Just What Do You Mean — Kingdom of God?" and also our very thorough booklet — "The Ten Commandments" — explaining how each of the Ten Commandments is applicable today.
   Because of rebellion against God's laws this world is teetering on the brink of Cosmocide — YOU KNOW IT IS! As far as YOU know the next moment could bring oblivion to every man, woman and child on the face of the earth! Fortunately God reveals in His Word that there are a few years left yet before this fury of destruction will be unleashed on mankind by mankind! Jesus pointed out this time almost 2000 years ago when He said, "And except those days should be shortened, there should NO FLESH be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened" (Matt. 24:22).
   MERCIFULLY God is not going to allow mankind to destroy himself! Lovingly God is going to intervene very soon! But when He intervenes it will be only to save those who have chosen to live His way — to be judged by the law of liberty — to come out from the chains and bondage of sin (the breaking of God's laws) and step into the glorious liberty that God offers to those who keep the laws of His Kingdom!
   The choice is yours! Will you choose uhuru — or GOD'S TRUE FREEDOM?

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Plain Truth MagazineJuly 1964Vol XXIX, No.7