Happy birthday, America. But I have to be honest. I'm worried about America. There are violent and very powerful forces that call America evil and seek to bring her down. There are forces that want to destroy, especially, freedom of speech in America. And I have to say, as I thought about it this last week, the destruction of America seemed unimaginable just a few years ago. But not anymore. Not in the last couple of years. Arnold Toynbee, who's one of the world's most erudite historians, wrote a massive study about why great nations like Babylonia and Rome collapsed. He concluded that nations commit suicide. They collapse from within. And I ask us today, are we seeing the beginning of that in the last couple of years? The greatest threat to America is not China or Russia. And it's not global warming. It's groups within our country that seek to destroy what makes America America. Niall Ferguson. Have you heard this name? He's really quite well known. He's an eminent Oxford historian, and he wrote a massive book on why nations collapse. And here's what he concluded: "What is striking about Rome's collapse was its speed. It collapsed in a single generation." The collapse of every world power has happened in a single generation. Did you know that? I didn't know that. I thought it was a slow process. But historians say it happens very quickly, in a single generation. I wonder if ours is that generation for America. I'm not an alarmist, but my eyes are open. And it looks like a real possibility that history is about to repeat itself in America, unless we speak up and stand up and challenge the destructive groups. And that's why the title of my message is "Defending America Against Cancel Culture." It's a risky title, but I'm very serious about it. America is not perfect, because America is people. It's us. And we're not perfect. Did you see this in the news this last week? They were interviewing college students at Georgetown, and found that one after another said America is evil, and they were willing to give up their American citizenship. Then I say, by all means, do, and leave. But this is the killer. When these same students, who characterize our country as the most evil ever and are willing to give up their citizenship, were asked, "Then what country do you think is better, that you'd like to go and live in?" do you know what they said? They had nothing to say. They could not name a country they would rather go live in. All they could do was bash America. That's robot thinking. Robots that have been programmed. If you think this country is so bad, and you're willing to give up your citizenship, but you can't think of a country you'd go live in: robot thinking. In the Vietnam War, America's POWs suffered terribly. And in one prison camp, 30 Americans, all of them pilots who had been shot down, were crammed into a single cell. They were tortured. They were given very little food. And they were forced to labor for the VC. One was a Navy officer, Lieutenant Commander Mike Christian. And over several months, with pieces of cloth and a piece of bamboo that he had fashioned into a needle, he constructed an American flag. He sewed it inside his prison shirt. And each night he would stretch his shirt on the wall, and those 30 Americans would stand at attention and say the Pledge of Allegiance. And one night, the guards caught him. And they came in and beat him in the head with their rifle butts, and then dragged him out to be tortured. After a couple of hours, they threw him back into the cell like a sack of coal. He was almost unrecognizable, because his face was so swollen. His eyes were just tiny slits because of the swelling of his face. And he lay there. But in a few minutes, he slowly began to crawl towards the bits of the flag that the guards had torn up. And he gathered those pieces together and began to sew a new flag. Why? Because he was thankful to be an American. Why? Because of the priceless freedoms so many of us take for granted. Why? Because of the high price so many before him have paid for the freedoms we enjoy. The high, bloody price. One of the lines C. S. Lewis, my favorite author, wrote was this: "We laugh at patriotism, and then we're surprised at traitors." America needs patriots who will stand up, speak up for her, and protect her. And I want to be in that group. First, she must be protected against groups using deceptive language to trick us. BLM, Black Lives Matter. That organization defended rioters in Portland and Seattle. This is a fact. They defended looting stores, including businesses owned by Blacks. They defended it this way. They said looting is racial justice. Racial justice. There you go again, deceiving us with words. "Racial justice." They said it is, because Blacks have been treated badly and even enslaved, and so looting is just reparations. But wait a minute. You were looting the businesses of Black business owners. How is looting Black businesses racial justice? They don't want to talk about that. "Inclusive" and "diversity." Those are two trick words, too. The so-called Equality Act has passed in the House and is pending in the Senate. And what this Equality Act would do is force Christian schools and churches to hire gays, lesbians, and transgender people, and others who reject the biblical morality that churches and Christian schools stand for and teach. And the question is, how could this group teach biblical principles when they're living against them? No matter. The Equality Act says that if it's passed, we are compelled. Notice the word "equality." Equality. Who could be against equality? But it's been redefined. It's been redefined to mean morality is irrelevant. And actually, morality is not only irrelevant, it's prejudicial against people who have a different morality. Equality now means that all behavior is equally moral, and morality is a non-factor. So moral boundaries are called prejudice and white oppression. We are told that we need diversity, not only in skin color, but diversity in morality. It's a trick word. Where does this lead us? Well, it won't be long until churches and preachers are forbidden to call anything sin and immoral in God's eyes. Do you know what biblical preaching will eventually be called? We're on the way. Hate speech. To call people to repentance will be called hate speech, and prejudice against their way of living. "We have to be inclusive and diverse." Trick words. Trick words. It takes courage to be a Christian. But I tell you, America will remain free only as long as Christians are brave and are salt and light. A 14-year-old girl in Virginia challenged the school board of Loudoun County Public Schools for allowing boys to use the showers and bathrooms of girls. The school said its policy was to, and I quote, "be inclusive regardless of sexual orientation or sex or gender identity." They did not want to have what they described as "sex-segregated spaces." Trick words. Using "segregation," which nobody is in favor of if you're a Christian, but coupling that and using it in this case: "sex-segregated spaces." That is, boys out of the girls' bathrooms. But the girls wanted sex-segregated spaces. The school argued that having different showers and bathrooms for males and females was a form of segregation and prejudice. And the women rolled their eyes and said the school was cuckoo. There they go again, using words, twisting them to be deceptive. This issue has become very big in women's sports, hasn't it? National track champion Shannon Arena said, and I quote, "I don't care what a person claims as their gender identity. When women are competing against a biological male, it's not equality," even if they are on hormones. That's the craziness we've come to with this inclusiveness and this politically correct language. And we're being indoctrinated and duped. She's right. Black Lives Matter is another trick label. And I know this is going to be controversial, but you check out the facts yourself and make up your own mind. The fact is that the two founders of BLM admit that they are self-described trained Marxists. They are communists, and their heroes are Marx and Castro. Does that matter? Patrisse Cullors is one of the founders. She brags about being trained by the terrorist group the Weather Underground. Remember them from the '70s? She is also loudly anti-Semitic, and is a close ally of Louis Farrakhan, who preaches hate against whites and Jews in America. And who is the chief financial contributor to BLM? George Soros. Now, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. But when you stack up all of those facts… I am very supportive of anything that is against racism, whatever the issue is. But I am not supportive of an organization like BLM that has Marxist and communist roots and is deliberately stirring up insurrection within America. And if that's not enough, Patrisse is stepping down as leader of BLM. Did you know this? Because she was caught using donations that people made to stop racism. She was caught using those donations to buy million-dollar homes for herself. So we have hate, communism, and ultimately a lack of character, and theft, at the leadership of BLM. A founder of BLM in Minnesota, Rashad Turner, left BLM recently. He's an insider. Do you know his story? He left it because he says BLM is not interested in rebuilding Black families. In fact, their platform was to destroy the nuclear family, until they saw that it was alarming people, and they took it out of the charter. But he said it still is their goal to destroy nuclear families. They're not building up strong Black families, with male leadership, with males staying in the home. And he said that on top of that, they're creating barriers to Black children getting a better education, opposing charter schools and other efforts to give Black children an excellent education. He's an insider, but he left, because he said BLM is not interested in really helping Black people. It's interested in getting money and causing division within America. He left. And yet so many people have uncritically and blindly drunk their Kool-Aid, simply because of the name they gave themselves. Now, I say this as a tip to you: look closely at the labels, the names people give themselves. So often, real evil stands behind what looks so good. And so often, the devil has the best names. Think about that. And don't be duped by titles and names. The biggest threat to America is the movement called cancel culture. Have you heard about cancel culture? Cancel culture needs to be canceled. It promotes what is called critical race theory. This teaches that all whites are intrinsically oppressors, because they are from the privileged class. They can't help it. So it pits skin color against skin color, class against class. It teaches that white males are always racist. But even Blacks are criticizing cancel culture, because it teaches Black children that they cannot achieve, since they are always victims of the elite class. It disincentivizes Black children. It teaches them they'll always be victims. And so there are Black leaders rising up against this and saying, "No, that is not true." This is identity politics. "Your gender and skin color are more important than your character and hard work." And the chief tool of cancel culture is called the 1619 Project. If you don't know about the 1619 Project, the 1619 Project, you'll never be salt and light. We have to be informed about things that are happening around us. This is promoted by the New York Times. It's been thoroughly criticized by historians as inaccurate and, yes, full of lies. Misleading lies. For example, it teaches that America began in 1619, not on July 4th, 1776. It teaches that America began not by winning the Revolution against Britain, but when the first African slaves were brought to America. That was 1619. It fails to mention to you that it was Black chiefs in Africa who were selling their own people, and other tribes they had defeated, to slave traders. It was Black chiefs supplying the slaves. But anyway, 1619 is said to be the beginning of America. This group goes so far as to teach, and now it's trying to teach this from kindergarten on up, that the American Revolutionary War was fought to keep slaves. Yes. Because by then, Britain had outlawed slavery and freed slaves. And the teaching of 1619 is that the American colonists who held slaves were very afraid that Britain was going to force them to free their slaves, and so they fought the Revolutionary War. That's ludicrous. We fought the Revolutionary War to no longer have a government church, a state church, and because of high taxation, and simply to be free from a monarchy. Cancel culture is just that: cancel American culture. Rewrite it, so that America is seen as totally racist. Now, you teach young children and college students all of this about America oppressing people and being racist, and what do you get? A lot of anger. And you get what we saw on TV: a big, 350-pound Black man getting out of his car at a gas station and walking over to a Latino woman and beating her to a pulp, getting back in his car, and driving off. He didn't know her. He was just motivated by race. And so buildings are renamed to abolish history, and statues are torn down, because they are statues of people who are not pure in the eyes of cancel culture. They either owned slaves at one point, or in some way they were racist. On the list of people who are impure and whose statues must come down are Gandhi, FDR, Churchill, John Robert, and Ted Kennedy, and even Nelson Mandela. People are judged by the values of 2021, not as people of their time. You can't go back and judge people from a hundred years ago by the mentality of today. That's just unfair to them. Gandhi was a racist. Did you know that he went on record saying Black Africans were inferior to people from India? Yes, he did. But he did so many good things. He was wrong there, but he did so many good things. Take his statue down? You know, with this criterion, that everyone must be perfect if you have a statue up, America is not going to have any statues. There will be none, because no one can meet that criterion. Cancel culture and BLM advocate the destruction of statues as part of getting rid of racism and changing American history. So Columbus has been toppled and thrown into a river, and Lincoln's memorial has been defaced. Lincoln, who fought the Civil War and was assassinated because he wanted to free slaves, is now called a racist, and his memorial is defaced. Robot thinking. Programmed thinking. One of the best books that I've read in recent years is by James McBride, and it's called The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. Oh, I recommend this book. It's about a white Jewish woman who married a Black preacher and had 12 children with him, all of whom were Black, and all of whom they put through college. Some are now doctors, and others engineers, and others journalists, and various professions. They were taught they were not victims, and they achieved. The book gets its title because one of the children asked his mother if he was white or Black. He was a little confused, because she was white, but his father was Black. And so he wondered what color he was. She snapped, "You're a human being." She wouldn't even answer it. "You're a human being." So the little boy asked what color God was, and she said God is the color of water. Meaning no color. She was saying color is not your identity. What's important about you is your character and your morality and what you achieve in life. This book is against identity politics. BLM needs to read it. In Boston, a cancel culture and BLM mob tried to destroy the statue of Colonel Robert Shaw. Who's he? Well, he led the 54th Boston Regiment, a regiment made up entirely of African Americans, who fought against slavery. He was killed leading his men into battle to free slaves. And this statue of him, which cancel culture and BLM wanted to destroy, was actually paid for by slaves who were grateful that he had fought to free them. Paid for by slaves. And yet, "Let's tear the statue down." Why? "Because he's white. He must be a racist." That's the kind of indoctrination many of us are on the verge of believing. And we need to speak up and stand up and be light. They think that being white means you are automatically racist. Wrong. Billy Graham. Lincoln. Me. Yes, me. When I was in the inner city of Oakland, I led the only all-Black Young Life club. Boy, the music was great. The way I related to the Black kids in our Young Life club was to play poker with them during lunch. I lost a lot of money, too. Don't tell me I'm racist. Heinrich Heine warned, years before Hitler and the ovens of Dachau, "Where they burn books, they will eventually burn people." We must stand up against BLM and cancel culture, which are spreading this poison that all white people are racist. Jesus said to be salt and light. Do you know what salt was in the ancient world? Not a flavoring for food. It was a preservative. You put meat in salt in order to preserve it, because they didn't have fridges. And that's what Jesus is saying to us: you are to be preservers of the good things of a culture. Edmund Burke famously said evil grows where good people do nothing. We cannot say, "This does not apply to me," and ignore what's happening. Because evil that is tolerated will just grow. Secondly, we must make crime illegal again in America. We must make crime illegal again. The attorney general of Missouri blasted the chief prosecutor of St. Louis, Kim Gardner. He said, and I quote, "She has released every single rioter and looter arrested in the riots that saw four police officers shot and one killed." She apparently doesn't believe that breaking the law is illegal and a crime. The same thing happened in Portland and Seattle, where liberal district attorneys released, the next day, all those arrested for rioting and looting stores and burning buildings. Those DAs do not believe that breaking the law is a crime. Do you see what they're saying? They're saying the ends justify the means. That if the end is to stamp out racism, then burn the city down and shoot police officers. The ends justify the means. You know who said that? Marx. That is at the core of communism. The ends do not justify the means. Break the law, and it's still illegal and a crime. There are other ways to achieve your purpose. But so many of us in America are becoming sympathetic towards the ends justifying the means. We must vote these DAs out of office and make crime illegal again. And third, there's the new McCarthyism. The McCarthyism of the '50s ruined careers with false and exaggerated accusations, and it created a fear of speaking your opinions freely, or you'd be smeared and canceled. That is the same thing that's happening today. And it began years ago, with people trying to compel you to be politically correct. What is politically correct? It's groupthink. It's robot thinking. It's conforming to whatever the majority is thinking. That's politically correct. So people are quick to accuse others of racism, aren't they? With no evidence whatsoever. All kinds of us are being accused of racism, just to silence us. Even this church and I have been accused of racism this last week. Karen, my assistant, received a call from a person who has not come to this church, whom nobody knows. And this is a verbatim of what she said: "Do you know that your church is racist?" Karen said, "That's definitely not true." Now, remember, Karen was married to a Black man. That marriage fell apart, but she was married to a Black man. "Oh yes, your church is racist." Again, Karen said, "No. I don't know where you're getting your information, but that's not true. We have Hispanics and Blacks in leadership, and everyone is welcome in this church. Just look around." The woman started yelling on the phone, saying that she had heard Father Mike's message, and it showed that Father Mike is a racist, and that Karen had been brainwashed. I guarantee you she's never been to this church, and she's never heard a message from me, because I have never preached a racist message. Quite the opposite. But this is an example of a person just throwing mud, hoping it sticks. "You're racist." Alan Dershowitz, the famous Harvard professor and lawyer, and a supporter of liberal causes, was himself canceled. Why? Because he was part of Trump's defense team in the impeachment, and his liberal friends shunned him for defending Trump's constitutional rights. You see, Dershowitz has the idea that a person's constitutional rights must be defended, regardless of their political views. He wrote that the same people who came asking him for help with legal battles they had, the same people he had socialized with at Martha's Vineyard and in Boston, shunned him. They canceled him simply for defending Trump's rights. Robot thinking. Another example is the removal of Lieutenant Matthew Lohmeier from the US Space Force. Do you know about this? Just a few months ago, he publicly opposed the Marxist influence within the military, and he was relieved of his command because of that. I mean, what's happening to us, that you oppose Marxism and you get removed and canceled? Dershowitz, remember, he's a card-carrying liberal, says we are in a very dangerous situation in America, where cancel culture and the left have control of universities and tech companies like Facebook and Twitter and Google. And he says, "These tech companies are engaging in massive censorship." And they are. And that ought to alarm us. For example, doctors and scientists who opposed Fauci with scientific evidence, proving that he was wrong about certain things, were banned and censored. Their evidence was erased. Their science was censored. And yet anybody who stood against Fauci, and I'm not saying anything other than that, was called unscientific, even though they were erasing the science of scientists and doctors. Twitter banned Trump. Dershowitz said this, and I quote, "I may disagree with every word he tweets, but he has a right to say it. And just as important, the First Amendment protection says that you and I have a right to hear and read what he says and decide for ourselves whether to reject it or accept it." Now, that's just ironclad logic. We have a right to decide for ourselves, not some large tech company deciding for us what we can read or not read. He goes on: "When you ban a person's opinions, you're also banning others from hearing his opinions and ideas. And that's not good for the country. The free exchange of ideas in the marketplace is essential to being a free country. And no tech company has the right to begin to censor what we read or hear." End of quote. Now, Farrakhan can tweet all day long, but you erase conservatives or other politicians? No, that's not free speech. Tanner Cross was suspended as a teacher because he refused to call a boy by his preferred pronouns, which were "she" and "her." He wanted to be called "her." He said gender identity is not a choice. You were born one way or the other, and to call a boy "she" is a lie, and he wouldn't lie. He was fired. America will remain free only if we are brave. A favorite tactic of the thought police is to say that if someone's opinion is offensive, if you're offended by their thoughts and opinions, they should be silenced. They're supposed to be silenced because their opinion offends people. That's simply a way to control us. The idea is that we ought not to offend other people with what we think. Think about that. Orwell said this: No one has a right not to be offended. No one has a right not to be offended. If free speech means anything, it means the right to say what people don't want to hear. Yes, it does. America needs to be defended. All the things we cherish and hold dear need to be defended, especially free speech. We're called to be light and salt. And that means we cannot be silenced. We cannot be passive. And we as Christians cannot be uninformed about what is happening. And we can't say, "That's not my problem," and ignore it. Because the question is this: What kind of America do we want our children and grandchildren to live in, the way it's going? That's why we need to be light and salt, and to be brave. Go ahead and write your emails. I don't care. Lord, I pray You'd give us courage. A lot of us aren't naturally courageous and brave, and we don't like conflict. But Lord, there's got to be conflict, because of the aggressiveness of cancel culture. Lord, we pray that You would protect all that we enjoy in America, because, as of today, we will be light and salt, and speak up, and not be cowards, and not be controlled. I pray this in Your name, Jesus. Amen.