Project 5782 | Day 6

Commandments AND Faith

Scripture Portion

Revelation 14.12
¹² Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus. (ESV)

Quote from Reading

“We may wonder why it took eighteen centuries after the Sermon on the Mount for Christians to develop an anti-slavery movement, but a more profound question is why not even the leading moralists in other civilizations rejected slavery at all. ‘There is no evidence,’ according to a scholarly study, ‘that slavery came under serious attach in any part of the world before the eighteenth century.’ That is when it first came under attack in Europe.
Themselves the leading slave traders of the eighteenth century, Europeans nevertheless became, in the nineteenth century, the destroyers of slavery around the world – not just in European societies or European offshoot societies overseas, but in non-European societies as well, over the bitter opposition of Africans, Arabs, Asians, and others. Moreover, within Western civilization, the principal impetus for the abolition of slavery came first from very conservative religious activists – people who would today be called ‘the religious right.’ Clearly, this story is not ‘politically correct’ in today’s terms. Hence, it is ignored, as if it never happened.” – Sowell, Thomas, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Encounter Books: New York, 2005, pg. 116

Provocative Language

Over hill, over dale,
            Thorough bush, thorough briar,
Over park, over pale,
            Thorough flood, thorough fire,
I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon’s sphere;
And I serve the Fairy Queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green.
The cowslips tall her pensioners be:
In their gold coats spots you see;
Those rubies, fairy favours,
In those freckles live their savours:
I must go seek some dewdrops here
And hang a pearl in every cowslip’s ear.
– “Over Hill, Over Dale,” A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare