Whatever Happened to Live and Let Live?

      I’ve always loved the movie The Hiding Place—Hollywood’s version of the life of Christian author and speaker Corrie Ten Boom and her family. The Ten Boom’s were arrested for hiding and helping Jews during the German occupation of Holland in World War II. Betrayed by Hollanders who prided themselves in obeying German law, the Ten Boom family spent several years in concentration camps. God graciously rescued Corrie, but most of her family died there.

 

     More recently, I found another movie, The Zookeeper’s Wife, a true account of Antonina and Jan Zabinski, who also hid Jews when the Germans occupied Poland. Yad Vashem in Israel aptly recognized them with the “Righteous Among The Nations” honor.

 

      I love Israel. And it breaks my heart to see the unquenched resurgence of anti-Semitism in New York City. Or to be reminded of Jews suffering at the hands of pure evil—Hitler and his Nazi regime.

 

     But lest we forget, Hitler’s rise to power was slow at first. For example, in his 1919 letter to Adolf Gemlich, “…Hitler argues that antisemitism should be based on facts, Jews were a race and not a religious group, and that the aim for the government ‘must unshakably be the removal of the Jews altogether.’”[1]

 

     In 1925 and 1926, he published Mein Kamph and dedicated it to his mentor, Dietrich Eckart, a member of the occultist group, The Thule Society. In the book, Hitler equated Jews with germs, and he expounded upon his plans to transform German society into one based on RACE. By 1934, well over a million copies had been sold.[2] Any of this sound familiar??

 

     Hitler undermined Germany’s understanding of right and wrong. He twisted the minds of children (and adults), claiming, “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.”[3] When the German people were thoroughly indoctrinated, they gladly betrayed Jewish neighbors believing them to be sub-human.

 

     With the rapid erosion of America’s freedoms, I see Hitler’s same ideologies rising up. So, I better speak while I still can.

 

     Last month, The Salem News carried an article written by Connie Schultz, wife of Senator Sherrod Brown, titled, Get thee vaccinated, evangelical friends. Since I attend Alliance Evangelical Friends Church, I began reading, but halfway through, I was fuming.

 

     The author bases her opinion piece on a New York Times article. Schultz’s “good news—65 million people in the US have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.” However, her “pull-out-your-hair news from a Pew Research study—out of 41 million white evangelical adults, 45% said in late February they don’t plan to get vaccinated.”

 

     Quoting Jamie Aten of Wheaton College, an evangelical institution in Illinois, Shultz wrote, “If we can’t get a significant number of white evangelicals to come around on this, the pandemic is going to last much longer than it needs to.”

 

     Whoa — déjà vu — a teacher punishing the whole class for one child’s misbehavior. But after school, isn’t it the classmates who correct the one child?

 

     The Times also cited, “Lauri Armstrong, a Bible-believing nutritionist outside of Dallas…[She]…said she did not need the vaccine because God designed the body to heal itself, if given the right nutrients. [And] it would be God’s will if I am here or if I am not here.”

 

     Appalled, Schultz then commented, “I am related to many evangelicals, and some of them I love, but we are at an impasse here. Listing all the reasons to get vaccinated is like reading a restaurant menu to a giraffe. They are smart and attentive, but we’re not speaking the same language. If I hear one more person tell me, “It’s in God’s hands…”

 

     Shultz claims she’s a Christian. But it’s clear she’s not a true believer, because she then asks the question, “When did white preachers stop telling the helicopter story?” This where I paused my reading to cool off a bit. How dare her write such a “racist” article.

 

     Long Helicopter story short:  A man who drowns in a flood says to God, “I trusted You to save me.” God says, “I sent you a police officer, a boat, and a helicopter. What more did you want?”

 

     Is Schultz claiming God sent the vaccine to save us, and the unvaccinated are too dumb to realize it? I think so.

 

     This mindset is doing the same to our citizens as Hitler did to Germans. It’s twisting our thinking, causing us to trust government more than our real Savior or our fellow man, thereby making criminals out of the unvaccinated.

 

     Think I’m overreacting? Consider New York’s Excelsior Pass, vaccine passports, and The Epoch Times article, “Oregon First State to Require Vaccination Proof for Maskless Entry Into Businesses, Workplaces, and Churches.”[4] Now Facebook is tracking its members for vaccine hesitancy. What’s next?

 

     To me, these government requirements are like the Nazi-required armbands for Jews. It’s the same type of recognition. The armband was the first step used to separate and dehumanize Jews.

     Where is our freedom of choice? Women are free to choose to murder their unborn baby, but the unvaccinated are not free to put only themselves at risk?

 

Whatever happened to live and let live?

 

     If you have strong convictions that the vaccine is good—take it. If you have solid beliefs that the vaccine is harmful, the agenda behind it malicious, and the subsequent mandates Naziesque—don’t get vaccinated. But be prepared for persecution because the days are evil.

 

“Therefore He says: ‘Awake, you who sleep, arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.’ See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”[5]

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