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Martin Luther King and His Partner in the Cause


Chapters

0:0
1:54 Martin Luther King Jr and Billy Graham
2:40 Martin Luther King's Power and Pathos
10:38 The Pan Ethnic Glory of Jesus

Whisper Transcript | Transcript Only Page

00:00:00.000 | The sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will they be able to sit
00:00:08.500 | down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state
00:00:17.360 | of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat
00:00:26.920 | of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream
00:00:33.760 | that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged
00:00:44.400 | by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
00:00:52.840 | I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
00:00:59.840 | not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have
00:01:06.840 | a dream today. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation
00:01:13.840 | where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
00:01:20.840 | character. I have a dream today. I have a dream that my four little children will one
00:01:27.840 | day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the
00:01:34.840 | content of their character. I have a dream today. I have a dream that my four little
00:01:39.840 | children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their
00:01:46.840 | skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. I have a dream that
00:01:53.840 | my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged
00:01:59.840 | by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
00:02:06.840 | I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
00:02:12.840 | not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have
00:02:19.840 | a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not
00:02:26.840 | be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream
00:02:33.840 | that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged
00:02:39.840 | by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
00:02:44.840 | I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
00:02:51.840 | not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have
00:02:58.840 | a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not
00:03:05.840 | be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
00:03:12.840 | I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
00:03:19.840 | not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
00:03:26.840 | I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
00:03:33.840 | not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
00:03:40.840 | I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
00:03:47.840 | not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
00:03:53.840 | I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
00:04:00.840 | not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
00:04:07.840 | I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
00:04:14.840 | not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
00:04:21.840 | I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
00:04:28.840 | not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
00:04:33.840 | I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
00:04:40.840 | not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
00:04:46.840 | I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
00:04:53.840 | not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
00:04:58.840 | I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
00:05:05.840 | not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
00:05:11.840 | I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
00:05:18.840 | not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
00:05:23.840 | I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
00:05:30.840 | not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
00:05:35.840 | I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
00:05:42.840 | not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
00:05:47.840 | If it had not been for my work, his would have been much more difficult.
00:05:52.840 | We demanded integration almost from the beginning of our meetings in the South.
00:05:57.840 | I think that laid a groundwork.
00:06:00.840 | Now, today, it's almost impossible for present—this is still Graham talking—almost impossible
00:06:07.840 | for the present generation to imagine what it took to be that way and how many threatening
00:06:14.840 | letters we got and how many threats against my family as a result of the stand we took
00:06:21.840 | at that time to demand the Crusades be integrated.
00:06:25.840 | And one biographer wrote, "He held Crusades in Little Rock in 1859 and in Birmingham,
00:06:31.840 | Alabama in 1964, not long after the racial tensions erupted there.
00:06:35.840 | And Howard Jones recalls King telling Graham, 'Your Crusades have done more to help race
00:06:42.840 | relations than anything else I know.'"
00:06:46.840 | Now, here are a couple observations that I would draw out as perhaps implications for
00:06:51.840 | our situation.
00:06:53.840 | Two things accompanied Graham's simple, straightforward, powerful, decisive, confrontive gospel message
00:07:01.840 | about sin, salvation, and faith.
00:07:05.840 | One was that he absolutely refused to hold a crusade that was not integrated.
00:07:13.840 | This he did across the South.
00:07:16.840 | This was simply unheard of in those days.
00:07:19.840 | The church I grew up in at that time—this is 1960, '61, '62—didn't even allow
00:07:26.840 | blacks in the services to our great shame.
00:07:30.840 | So that's the first thing.
00:07:32.840 | He took a decisive stand on a particularly pressing indignity, and that accompanied his
00:07:41.840 | simple gospel preaching.
00:07:44.840 | The second thing that accompanied this simple gospel message was that punctuating his message
00:07:53.840 | time after time, regularly, in this explosive season—and you can find him online and see
00:08:01.840 | more than once how he says the almost identical words, eyeball to eyeball, looking into the
00:08:07.840 | camera, "Jesus was not a white man."
00:08:10.840 | And this is a direct quote from a YouTube clip, okay?
00:08:13.840 | "Jesus was not a white man.
00:08:15.840 | He was not a black man.
00:08:16.840 | He came from that part of the world that touches Africa and Asia and Europe.
00:08:21.840 | Christianity is not a white man's religion.
00:08:24.840 | It's not a black man's religion.
00:08:26.840 | Let nobody, never let anybody tell you that it's white or black.
00:08:31.840 | Christ belongs to all people.
00:08:33.840 | He belongs to the whole world."
00:08:37.840 | Now, that note he struck, just very briefly—it took him a minute, say, to say that, or two
00:08:43.840 | minutes if he expanded it—he struck that note in the midst of his simple gospel message
00:08:49.840 | again and again into a very explosive situation, because that message is part of the New Testament
00:08:59.840 | global relevance of Jesus for all the peoples.
00:09:02.840 | That's not an extraneous thing tacked on to the gospel, if you read the New Testament,
00:09:07.840 | and its global definition of Christ's purpose in the cross.
00:09:13.840 | In the context of the 1950s, that message, combined with the integration of his crusades,
00:09:19.840 | could get his family killed.
00:09:22.840 | He said in an interview with Harvey, "I don't think of myself any longer as an American
00:09:27.840 | citizen," and he added, quietly, "only."
00:09:30.840 | That's good.
00:09:31.840 | That's true.
00:09:32.840 | "I think of myself as a world citizen.
00:09:35.840 | I've traveled all over the world a great deal, and I feel that I am part of a great
00:09:40.840 | mosaic of the human race that God has created, each made in his image, each needing the gospel
00:09:47.840 | of Christ, each having the same basic problems and desires and longings, and I'm part of
00:09:53.840 | this mosaic."
00:09:54.840 | Now, I'm assuming, Tony, that virtually everybody who listens to APJ—I'm sure there are exceptions,
00:10:00.840 | but most people who listen to Pastor John love the gospel of Jesus Christ, love Christ-exalting
00:10:08.840 | ethnic diversity in the body of Christ, love true justice in all of society, love God's
00:10:16.840 | grace that goes beyond justice, love the truth of God's Word, love the power of the Holy
00:10:22.840 | Spirit that conquers sin in our lives, and loves the global glory of Jesus Christ.
00:10:28.840 | And it's that last note that I want to trumpet on this Martin Luther King Day.
00:10:35.840 | The global glory—you could call it the pan-ethnic glory of Jesus.
00:10:42.840 | The note that both MLK—most people don't realize how international MLK's vision was—and
00:10:50.840 | Billy Graham, they both struck this.
00:10:52.840 | Jesus does not belong to America but to the world.
00:10:57.840 | Therefore, to belong to Jesus is also to belong to the world.
00:11:02.840 | The more Billy Graham walked with Jesus among the peoples of the world, the less distinctly
00:11:10.840 | American he felt, the less decisively defined he was by his nation and his ethnicity or
00:11:19.840 | his race—a spirit of confined, narrow, limited parochialism that has no glad heart, no biblical
00:11:30.840 | heart for the thousands of peoples of the world is going to be missing one of the great
00:11:38.840 | healing impulses for ethnic challenges in our day here in America or wherever you live
00:11:44.840 | around the world.
00:11:46.840 | Let's let Martin Luther King Day give us an impulse for what Billy Graham called "the
00:11:55.840 | great mosaic of the human race."
00:11:59.840 | It will make a great difference in our lives and in our ministries.
00:12:05.840 | Amen.
00:12:06.840 | Wonderful reflection on two lives.
00:12:08.840 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:12:09.840 | Here's that clip from Billy Graham's sermon in Chicago in 1971.
00:12:14.840 | We'll close with it.
00:12:15.840 | Here he is.
00:12:16.840 | Anyone that can see Jesus on that cross and not be touched has a heart of stone.
00:12:24.840 | They first took off his clothes, then they took long leather thongs with steel pellets
00:12:31.840 | or lead pellets on the end and beat him across the back until he could hardly stand up.
00:12:39.840 | Then they put a crown of thorns on his brow and his face was bleeding.
00:12:44.840 | And they laughed at him and they spit on him and they mocked him.
00:12:49.840 | And with one snap of his finger, 72,000 angels had already drawn their swords ready to come
00:12:55.840 | to his rescue and wipe this planet out of existence in the universe.
00:13:00.840 | And Jesus said, "No, to this end was I born."
00:13:05.840 | And he dragged and lifted and hauled that cross.
00:13:09.840 | And don't you black people ever forget one thing.
00:13:13.840 | The man that helped Jesus carry that cross was a black man.
00:13:20.840 | And don't ever forget another thing.
00:13:22.840 | Jesus belongs to Africa as much as he does to Europe and Asia.
00:13:31.840 | He was born in that part of the world that touches Africa and Asia and Europe.
00:13:36.840 | And Jesus was not a white man like me.
00:13:41.840 | Nor was he as black as some of you.
00:13:44.840 | We don't know what the color of his skin, but it must have been a dark color like the people of his day
00:13:49.840 | because he was a man like them.
00:13:52.840 | Don't ever say it's a white man's religion or a black man's religion.
00:13:57.840 | It's a world religion.
00:13:59.840 | He belongs to the world.
00:14:05.840 | Powerful. That is a powerful clip.
00:14:07.840 | We will see you on Wednesday. I'm Tony Reinke.
00:14:09.840 | You're listening to the Ask Pastor John Podcast.
00:14:11.840 | We'll see you next time.
00:14:13.840 | [Podcasts are available in English, Spanish, and Italian.]
00:14:18.840 | [Visit us at www.askpastorjohnpodcast.com]