As I look back on my life of over 40 years in radio, one of my all-time favorite interviews was with former New Mexico Congressman now Pastor Bill Redmond, pictured at the very top.. What a god-send into my life and that of Sharon’s. I always tell Bill to pray about running for Governor of New Mexico! Bill is one of the most godly men, so highly intelligent, biblically sound Christians I have ever met! I am blessed to call him a best friend and mentor. I will never forget the live interview I did with Bill on KKIM radio while he was in China! It was 3am China time! I will never forget that Bill brought the late, great man of God Chuck Colson to New Mexico to speak! Life of Chuck Colson I got to meet Chuck and interview him on KKIM radio! That was a historic day in New Mexico, all 33 counties in New Mexico were represented by Pastors and other folks at this meeting at the Albuquerque Convention Center!! This past week I spoke to the Los Alamos, New Mexico Federated Republican Women. I spoke on God and politics. I thank them for inviting me! God Bless you Shona Neff and all the wonderful folks I met! Bill sent me the following quote and I used it in my presentation, IT FIT’S TODAY MORE THAN EVER!
“Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature…”
“If the next centennial does not find us a great nation…it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.”
Pastor and President
James A. Garfied
James Garfield is the only pastor to become president of the United States, he was a Republican. This quote is addressed especially to Christians.
James Garfield THE 20TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
This message is so fitting for the time we live in……………
Former Congressman and now Pastor Bill Edmond of New Mexico William T. Redmond wrote this for us in 2/12/20:
What If Abraham Lincoln Was Correct?
In the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson wrote, “WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness . . . “ We’re very familiar with these words. But what words immediately follow those three rights deeply branded into our memories? Jefferson and the signers of the Declaration of Independence state as if quoting Romans 13, “ . . . That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, . . . “
The basic faith statement of the American Republic is that a Creator exists and that the Creator gave each individual the Right to Life, the Right to Liberty, and the Right to Pursue Happiness. It is clear the American Founders believed that the primary responsibility of government is to secure for the individual that which came from the hand of their creator, The Right to Life, the Right Liberty and the Right to Pursue Happiness. No government on Earth could ever separate a human from those rights that God has given. A government may take ones life, ones liberty and impede ones pursuit of happiness. But a government can never take away the right of those endowments. Those rights are grounded in Eternity and out of reach of any human institution, especially the government.
If at any time these three primary rights seem to be in conflict with each other it is then important to notice the sequence in which they occur in the Declaration. We know too well the sequence of their appearance, “Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness.” Notice that Right to Pursuit of Happiness is last and the Right to Life is first. These are in logical order. Think it through for yourself. Is it not difficult to pursue happiness if you are not free? Yes, but, it is impossible for you to be free if you are not alive. The right above all rights, is the right to life!
Abraham Lincoln practiced this order of priority in his support of the abolition of slavery. Lincoln held that the slaveholders desire to pursue happiness by owning humans could not supersede the foundational right of all rights, the slaves’ God-given right to be free. It is therefore also true that the right to life is superior to the right liberty.
Lincoln accepted this self-evident truth in a serious way. In his second inaugural address Lincoln said, “ . . . He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
The word sunk used by Abraham Lincoln was a 19th-century accounting term that meant that the books were balanced. The volume of blood lost due to slavery would be the same volume of blood shed in the Civil War, and it was. The Civil War is the bloodiest war America ever fought.
So, here’s the question to you and me my friend. If Abraham Lincoln was correct and that the Civil War was God’s judgment on America for the sin of slavery, which is only a violation of the right to liberty, how much more severe will God’s judgment to be on America for a violation of the sin against the right to life? The tragedy of slavery in American’s history is sad. Yet, the slaughter by abortion, of more than 62 million unborn American babies dwarfs the bloodshed that resulted from American slavery.
Abraham Lincoln is known as the “Theologian of American Anguish.” The challenge of preserving the union and ending slavery simultaneously weighed heavy on his shoulders and in his heart.
Just as the sin of slavery divided nation in the 19th-century, the sin of abortion has divided our nation in the 20th and the 21st-century. Lincoln knew that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” He also knew that God does not stay His hand of judgment forever.
Please ponder this my friends for just one moment. If what Abraham Lincoln said is correct, and I believe it is, that the American Civil War was God’s judgment on America for a violation of the right to liberty, what will God’s judgment on America be for a violation of the right to life if there is no national repentance?
There were Christians who supported slavery. There were Christians who opposed slavery and worked to end it. There were Christians who were silent while the drops of blood let by the abortion knife flowed. But what about me and you today? As Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who suffered and died in a Nazi concentration camp stated so truly, “Silence in the face of evil, is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
If Lincoln was correct, America must repent or America will pay a penalty, “for His judgment does not sleep nor does it slumber.”
It’s past time to speak and act on behalf of those who do not have a voice.
Pastor & Congressman, Ret.
Bill Redmond
2/12/20
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NOTES:
Inaugural speech[edit]
Fellow-Countrymen:
At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of this great conflict which is of primary concern to the nation as a whole, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the
offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.[7]
