41 - Islamic Impact Part 3

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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Well, I am going to do my best to stick to the topic and not give you a travelogue.

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I would need my projector and my computer to do that. I took a couple hundred pictures over the past less than two weeks.

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And when we do get to Luther, it's going to be great.

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I will have the best keynote presentation ever on Luther's life, having spent a solid week traveling around Germany.

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And for those of you that are on Facebook, you got to see at least some of those pictures.

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Including what can only be described as a bucket list experience. I'm awful glad Kelly got to be there.

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But every day was amazing. But certainly that Friday in Wittenberg, there are very few people, very few people that know what it looks like to look down on a congregation from the high pulpit in the

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Schlosskirche in Wittenberg, the castle church. And as far as preaching from up there,

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I only know of two. At least Orthodox Protestants that aren't wild -eyed liberals that have preached from up there.

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A month and a half ago, Dr. Albert Mohler preached from up there. Actually, he gave a lecture from up there. I actually preached.

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And that will be posted sometime between now and probably

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Thanksgiving or so. And I'll try to remember to link to that. But it was quite the experience.

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And just one thing I'll mention, aside from the echoing that you get in a place like that, there was this little buzz in the sound system every once in a while.

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And I jokingly mentioned to the group afterwards, that was actually Luther spinning in his grave. Because the pulpit, the high pulpit, you go up a winding staircase to it, which in and of itself is interesting.

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And if you look straight down, well, the way it's faced, sort of an angle, so it's right there is

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Luther's grave. And over there is Melanchthon's grave. And so you're within a few feet of Luther's remains.

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And I could not help but be struck with the reality that now in his glorified state,

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Luther wouldn't mind. But back then, to have a Reformed Baptist preach in there would not have made

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Brother Luther a happy man at all by any stretch of the imagination. Though I did quote him. I quoted him three times in the sermon, and I did so in German.

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I did give a translation, so I didn't violate that biblical command to provide the translation if you speak in tongues.

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But, yeah, I did speak in tongues in the castle church, but it was a known tongue, and it was

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German. And I provide translation myself. But anyway, but it was interesting.

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At one point, I looked across, and I had noticed this before. In the stained glass window straight across from me was

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Luther's translation of Romans 328. And Luther is often criticized by Roman Catholics today for having, quote unquote, inserted the word allein, glaube allein, faith alone.

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And they say, there's no word alone, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, there are actually at least two,

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I think three, Roman Catholic translations that preexisted

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Luther's that used sola fide at Romans 328. So Luther didn't invent it, but Luther obviously made it popular.

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And right across from the pulpit was Romans 328, and I did bring that into the sermon there in German.

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So it was, you know, what can you say, never ever dreamed sitting in church history class at Fuller Seminary years ago hearing about the castle church in Wittenberg that someday

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I would preach there. But it was quite the, and then going to the Wartburg Castle likewise was just amazing.

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And tomorrow on the dividing line in the morning, Lord willing, I'll be talking about Fritz Erba, E -R -B -E,

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Fritz Erba, probably never heard of him before. But I'll talk about him tomorrow.

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So I'm going to, I better stop there, or we'll be talking about far, far too many things without a proper context.

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But like I said, when we get to Luther, we're going to have, I don't know if I'll project it over there or where I'll project it, but we will have killer pictures to put it all together, it'll be great.

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So anyway, we are talking about Islam, and I guess according to Brother Sean, we are going to be talking about the

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Sunni -Shia split, which must mean that I got to Muhammad's death. I don't remember getting that far, to be honest with you.

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Well, you specifically said right down that we're talking about the Sunni -Shia split next time.

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How Muhammad died, once, because I don't remember discussing his conquering of Mecca, to be honest with you, there were a number of battles, the

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Battle of the Trench, the Battle of Uhud, these are some of the only places in the Quran, by the way, when you read the

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Quran, that you can actually identify what the background is, is some of the major battles. Most of the

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Quran, you cannot identify what the background is. It is either a traditional thing, but there's really nothing in the text itself that identifies specifically what the context is.

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That makes exegesis of the Quran extremely difficult, and the vast majority of historic interpretation of the

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Quran has been based upon traditions derived from the Hadith, not from the actual exegesis of the text itself.

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In fact, I remember going to Nashville years ago and doing some, recording some stuff for live translation to Farsi for satellite distribution in Iran, and after I went through Surah 112 in the

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Quran for like half an hour in this program, the former

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Muslim people who were doing the recording, mainly Shiites, came up to me and they said, you've got to understand, that just never happens in Islam.

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You don't get someone walking through the text the way that we walk through the text of the

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New Testament all the time. That's just not, that's just not done. That's not how it's approached.

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And so, the Quran itself is extremely difficult to interpret in that way, and that's why

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I did mention to you, I'm pretty sure I mentioned to you last time, if you ever do read it, it's very short, make sure to read it in chronological order.

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In fact, there's now, as of last year, something called the study Quran, which looks a little bit like an

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ESV study Bible. You know how in the ESV study Bible you've got this much text and then that many footnotes?

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It's the first one like that. Yeah, there you go. Big, huge thing, and it's decent

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Islamic scholarship drawn from a wide variety of sources, which is why it gets criticized a lot, but it is a good source to use, and if you read it in chronological order, at least you'll be able to sort of follow the development of Muhammad's beliefs over time.

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That's really the only way to be able to do that. So, Muhammad conquers

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Mecca, and unlike a lot of the stories, there are probably only about a dozen people that were killed in that conquering of Mecca.

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Mecca pretty much just capitulated, and instead of a huge bloodbath, there are only about half a dozen to a dozen specific individuals that Muhammad had executed who had been behind the wars against him in the past, because he was attempting to build an empire, basically.

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He was attempting to build a connection with all the

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Islamic tribes, and so killing a bunch of people there in Mecca would not be something that would assist him in doing that.

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So, he takes over Mecca, he goes back to Medina, he only lives a few more years.

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Now, how he dies is interesting. Many of the Islamic sources say that after a certain battle, he, it's really strange, after a certain battle, he accepted a meal from a woman whose husband, and I think father, he had killed in the battle, and she poisoned the food, which

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I don't think I would go to a McDonald's run by the people I just defeated, but anyway, and he, even though it was a couple years earlier, he blamed the effects of that poison on his own death, he said he felt that his aorta was splitting open, and it was some type of heart situation, probably a heart attack, some type of thing.

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But, when he dies, of course, one of the big issues is who's going to run the

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Islamic state? And, obviously, different people claimed that Muhammad had made certain statements that, well, this person was to be in charge, or that person was to be in charge.

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His closest kin is a man named Ali, A -L -I, and some people felt that Ali should be, that it should be a generational type thing, it should be done through the family.

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But, the majority follow Abu Bakr, I put his name up before.

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If you recall, the first mosque

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I ever debated in, and actually in the mosque itself, was the Abu Bakr Siddiq Mosque. Siddiq means righteous, it's the same root, zedekah, in the

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Hebrew Old Testament for righteous, so the Abu Bakr Siddiq Mosque in Erasmus, South Africa, named after Abu Bakr, the first rightly guided caliph.

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The caliph is the head of the ummah, the Islamic people. A caliphate, you've heard about ISIS proclaiming a caliphate.

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The caliphate is the worldwide governing authority of Muslims.

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The last caliphate was done away with over 100 years ago now. And, there has been no caliphate since then.

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And, for many, in classical Islamic jurisprudence, you have to have a caliph who can proclaim a state of jihad for Muslims to engage in jihad.

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So, people like Al -Qaeda and others like that tried to get around that by saying, no, a state of jihad can exist without a caliph.

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But, historically, the wide majority of Islamic jurisprudence says there has to be a caliph up to proclaim a state of jihad.

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And then, it becomes an obligation upon all Muslims to do what the caliph says. That's why

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ISIS did it differently than Al -Qaeda. Al -Qaeda never claimed a caliphate.

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They never claimed a caliphate. They went the back door and said, because of what

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Western powers have done in the invasion of Iraq and places like that, that a state of jihad exists whether there's a caliph or not.

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ISIS went the other way and decided to proclaim a caliphate so they didn't have to fight against the traditional interpretation of things.

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And then, once you have a caliph, then he can pronounce the state of jihad. So, Abu Bakr becomes the first caliph.

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And, it is under Abu Bakr that you have allegedly, and there's reason to question this, but allegedly the first collection of the

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Quran. Because the Quran existed in memorized fragments, things written on camel bones and leaves of scraps of papyrus and things like that, it had not been collated.

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There are people who will tell you that it was today, but the historical sources are very clear that the

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Quran was not collated during the days of Muhammad himself. And so, according to Sahih al -Bukhari, remember

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Bukhari is one of the most authentic, respected collection of Hadith.

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According to Sahih al -Bukhari, Volume 6, 509 to 510, what happens is

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Abu Bakr is convinced to collect the

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Quran, he assigns a committee, they collect the

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Quran in the Qureshi dialect, because Muhammad was of the Qureshi tribe. And, they make one manuscript, and that's pretty much it.

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And, about 15 to 20 years later, after Abu Bakr, you have

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Umar and then Uthman. So, he's number one, two, third is

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Uthman. And, during the days of Uthman, they come to him and say, we've got a problem.

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Up in Baghdad, because the Muslims are expanding rapidly. As they bring the various tribes together under Islam, they take over all of what we would call today

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Saudi Arabia. They're expanding, they've expanded all the way up through Iraq. Very quickly, they're up into what was formerly completely

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Christian area, Syria. John of Damascus, one of the best known church fathers of this time, is alive when

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Islam takes over, and he has to interact with Islam. And, now they're a minority religion over against the majority religion.

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And, so on and so forth. They're spreading across North Africa, Egypt. They're spreading very rapidly.

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In fact, the century, there was exactly one century of Islamic expansion between 632, when

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Muhammad dies, and 732, when the Islamic forces are defeated at the

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Battle of Tours by Charles Martel in France. So, that's, they've gone across North Africa, across straits, up through what today would be

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Spain and Portugal. And, that expansion has stopped in France. So, anyway,

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Uthman, they come to Uthman, and they say, we've got a problem. We don't want to be like the

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Jews and the Christians who argue over the scriptures. And, the Quran is being cited differently and recited differently up in Iraq, Baghdad, than it is other places, and it's causing a scandal.

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So, you need to produce, I guess what we would call the official version of the Quran. So, what you have, about 20 years after Muhammad, is what is called the

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Uthmanic revision. And, I don't have time to go into it, but this is extremely important.

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The vast majority of Muslims believe that the Quran they have today, in Arabic, is, you know, just simply came down from heaven to Muhammad, and there's just no question.

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There's not a single difference, not a single dot, not a single piece of punctuation that's different. Educated Muslims, educated in the history of their religion, know differently, but 90, well, here in the

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United States, it might be 95. Around the world, it would be 99 % of Muslims are not aware of the textual history of the

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Quran. And, in comparison to the state of New Testament studies, the study of the text of the

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Quran is in its infancy. There is what's called the Corpus Chronicum Project, where they are working on a critical edition of the

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Quran. But, you know, we can open up a Greek New Testament, and here's all the manuscripts, and this is where they're found, and this is what they read.

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Doesn't exist for the Quran as yet. They're working on it, but it's primarily a Western project, not a project from inside Islamic countries.

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There are Muslims involved with it, obviously, but they're primarily either secularized or more in the

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West. So, the Uthmanic revision is extremely important, because according to Sahih al -Bukhari, even in collecting, in putting together the

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Uthmanic revision, they found verses that were not in the preceding collection under Abu Bakr.

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And, the reason that Abu Bakr did it initially was because of the battle of, I love saying this,

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Yawmama. And, I always stop to let people giggle, because it doesn't matter what audience

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I'm in, as soon as you say the battle of Yawmama, hey, battle of Yawmama, yeah, and somebody laughs, and I just have to wait, and go, yep, that's funny, and we move on from there.

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There was a major battle against another person that claimed to be a prophet, interestingly enough, and many of the

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Qur 'an, the Qur 'an were those who had memorized the Qur 'an, many of the Qur 'an died, and some of the early sources believe that parts of the

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Qur 'an were lost in that battle, that no one else knew what they knew. But, that was why

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Abu Bakr put the first one together, is, if we don't put it together, if there's another great loss of the

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Qur 'an, large portions of the Qur 'an could be lost forever, and so that's why they put that first manuscript together.

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The reason for Uthman's revision was we need an official version that everyone can follow.

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And so, Uthman puts together this version, he sends copies to the major Islamic cities, and then he orders that anything else be burned.

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Now, it's possible that we might have a pre -Qur 'anic,

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I'm sorry, a pre -Uthmanic Qur 'an. In the 1970s, at a archeological dig in Sana 'a,

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Yemen, capital of Yemen, they found a cache of manuscripts, and what we have is what's called a palimpsest, palimpsest, palimpsest, a palimpsest is an ancient manuscript that once had one book written on it, but since these are made of animal skins, you can wash the ink off.

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And so, you wash the ink off, and you write another book on top of it. Well, since you use a quill, you actually mark the parchment when you write the first one.

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And so, with the use of infrared light or ultraviolet light, depending, and various other mechanisms, you can read what was originally written even underneath the second writing that was put on it.

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We have palimpsest manuscripts in the New Testament as well. And so, a palimpsest manuscript was found in Sana 'a that may be pre -Uthmanic.

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It may have been written before Uthman's revision. We don't know. It's hard to say. And it does contain a number of variants in it.

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I just got a book on it before I left for Germany. I haven't had a chance to do much with it. There are so many variants that what some of the

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Islamic scholars are arguing is this was a school child's project. An interesting way of explaining all the variations is that, ah, we shouldn't worry too much about this.

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It's just a kid messing around. Seems a little desperate to me, but I haven't finished reading the book, so I can't argue against it too much.

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Anyway, Uthman, if he had been successful in destroying everything else, then you could only get back as far as Uthman.

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And what this does, this demonstrates that the Quran has been transmitted in a different way than the

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New Testament. And if you want to see why that's important, the

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New Testament has what's called a free transmission process. It was freely copied.

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And so it exploded across the known world. Copy after copy after copy being made.

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The Quran has a controlled copying process, where you have a governmental revision and control over the transmission of the text.

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And a controlled process will always lead to a more tight text. But, if there was a revision back here, you can't get any earlier than that.

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You can't know that you have the original. Free transmission gives you a much better basis for knowing you have the original than a controlled transmission does.

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If you want to see how hard it is to try to explain that to people, though, there have been two double debates

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I've done. One at Potsdam, South Africa with Yusuf Ismail. One in London with Adnan Rashid on the transmission of the

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New Testament versus the transmission of the Quran. And both of them, I think, illustrate this major difference between the two very, very importantly.

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Well, what happens after Uthman is the next caliph is

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Ali. The guy that could have been caliph up here. He is the relative of Muhammad.

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And under Ali, you get the beginning of civil war amongst the

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Muslims. And what happens is,

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Ali's, I believe it was his children, are slaughtered in a particular place.

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And that death of those individuals is commemorated to this day in Shiite countries.

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On a particular day, you will see Muslims, and many of the countries have moved to make this illegal, but it's got ancient tradition behind it.

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Walking through the streets, cutting themselves with swords, blood all over them.

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And it is to commemorate this particular slaughter. And this is where the

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Sunni -Shia split takes place. The forces that oppose

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Ali are called the Baqirites, after Abu Bakr.

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The Shiites believe Ali was always the proper caliph. They would reject the first three and say

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Ali was always the proper caliph. And the followers of Abu Bakr, and then

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Umar, then Uthman, would say they were all rightly guided caliphs. The followers of Ali and his successors are called

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Shiites. And the followers of Abu Bakr and the others are called

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Sunni. And the Sunnis are 85 -90 % of the world's

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Muslims today. The Shiites are a much smaller group, 10 % of the world's Muslims. Theologically, very, very similar on major issues in the sense of rejection of the deity of Christ or things like that.

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But Shiite theology is interesting in that because of the focus upon almost the sacrificial death of Ali and his family, those who came after him, there is almost an atonement concept amongst the

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Shiites that actually can provide somewhat of an opening for discussion with them that isn't present amongst the

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Sunni. There are other differences. And obviously, as you know, the

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Shiites blow up the Sunnis and the Sunnis blow up the Shiites all around the world. Though it's interesting, if you go out here to ASU, you will see at the mosque there

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Sunni and Shiite praying together. You can always tell when the

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Muslim community is growing. It's reached sort of a critical mass when the

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Sunnis and the Shiites split up and found their own mosques. When they're together, that's a small group.

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That's a small number of Muslims. Out at ASU, they pray together. Once you see a

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Shiite mosque and a Sunni mosque, you've reached the next step in the number of Muslims. So you go to Dearborn, and you have very clearly

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Shiite mosques and Sunni mosques, and they do not mix together. So if the

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Shiites don't really acknowledge Abu Bakr, Umar, or Uthman as basically legit...

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But they still use the same Quran. That's what I was going to ask. How do they feel about the Uthmanic revision? They still use the same

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Quran. I've heard rumors of secret Shiite Qurans, but I've never verified anything like that at all.

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So yeah, you go to Egypt, and you will hear

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Imams in Egypt calling for the destruction of the

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United States, and the subjugation of Christians, and the subjugation of the

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Copts, and stuff like that. But you won't hear anything about us that comes close to the fervor of their denunciation of the

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Shiites. And vice versa in Iran. I've seen videos of Imams in Egypt praying for cancer for Shiite leaders, and stuff like that.

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Just nasty stuff, nasty stuff. And those that are the closest to you are the ones you generally fire at with the most fervor, rather than the ones that are farther away.

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So there's where you have the split. And what's interesting is Aisha is still alive at this time.

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So in one famous battle where Aisha is riding this armored elephant,

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Aisha is leading the Sunni troops against Ali and what would become the

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Shiite troops. So she lives for quite some time after that. So amongst the

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Sunni, she's the mother, the faithful amongst the Shiites. They emphasize

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Fatima, Muhammad's daughter, over against Aisha.

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And the Shiites like to repeat stories, allegations of unfaithfulness on Aisha's part against Muhammad.

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And this is what gets the Sunnis just calling down cancer upon the

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Shiites. They have a grand old time yelling and screaming at each other about all of that stuff.

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So there you go. Just a couple other things. Normally I would spend a lot of time.

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I would read to you from the Quran. We'd go over Surah 112. I'm just not going to insert all that. I've done that in many other presentations.

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If you really want more on this, there is a multiple hour. I don't know, it's about four or four and a half hours.

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A presentation I did at a church down in New Orleans a couple years ago called Islam A to Z.

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And that goes through much more of Muhammad's life and the Quran. And just sort of an overview of things there with some good audience questions and things like that too as well.

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Yes sir? Do they both recognize the imams? Do they respect them and follow them equally?

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Each other's imams? No. So they're two separate. In fact, in Shi 'ism, you have this imams.

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A Sunni imam is just basically your local pastor type guy who may or may not have much in the way of training.

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The Ayatollahs and imams in Shi 'ism, Shi 'ism does have a doctrine of continuing revelation.

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And so an Ayatollah can receive revelation from God. It's almost like Mormonism. And so you remember

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Khomeini and his successors that are still there to this day. They receive revelation from God.

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By the way, Muslims have an eschatology that would make the most complex dispensational charts look childish.

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Muslims have, you've heard the 12th imam. You've got 5ers and 7ers and 12ers.

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And these are all eschatological theories about hidden imams.

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And once they come, what needs to happen. And what's scary amongst the

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Shi 'ites are theories that there needs to be this huge, massive upheaval amongst men to bring the last imam out.

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Which would be like nuclear war. Oh great, they're getting nukes. Wonderful. So you'd have religious reasons for people who really believe that to start a thermonuclear war just simply to bring about the revelation of the 12th imam and stuff like that.

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It's scary. But you can go to book bazaars and things like that in the

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Middle East. And just find rooms full of books on Islamic eschatology and stuff like that that makes anything we've got look really tame.

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Really, really tame. It's very interesting over there along those lines. And the problem is, like when we went into Iraq, basically nobody in the government had a clue about any of that stuff.

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Didn't know anything about the content of those documents or the theories that were theirs or anything like that.

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And that's why I really thought, in a well -meaning sense, that we'd come rolling in and people would be, oh, thank you for freeing us from the tyranny.

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And it didn't work that way. Because we didn't know the theology. These aren't secularists.

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And they don't have a secular worldview. And secularists struggle to understand a religious worldview. And so we see the results to this very day.

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But yeah, they have a really amazing eschatology. But now, the last thing

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I was going to share with you just blew out of my brain. There was something else.

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As soon as I started answering that question, it floated into the ether, which, like I said, happens the day after.

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Not the day immediately after you switch nine hours backwards in your time and spend 13 and a half hours on a plane.

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But it's the day after that now. It's really weird. So today is the day when I basically do not claim any, don't trust anything

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I say today, is basically what I'm saying. Don't trust a thing I say. Because I'm actually just spending, wasting time here trying to remember what it was

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I was going to tell you. Oh, yes.

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Good. There was one other thing. There is a quote -unquote spiritual group of Muslims.

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And it's sort of parallel to our own charismatic groups.

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Because you can have a charismatic, but that term can cross many, many, many lines.

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There are charismatic Catholics and there are charismatic Methodists and charismatic Lutherans. And believe it or not, you do have what we call continuationist

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Calvinists today out there. And so,

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Islam became very, very formalized.

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And many people would say rather dry. And you would expect, if you study world religions, every world religion,

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Hinduism, Buddhism, all have a history of renewals, Reformation movements, people coming along, a deeper spiritual version.

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And then that grows old over time and then another one comes along. As we will see, the medieval period is filled with this kind of renewal, the founding of a new order that's exciting for a while and then it becomes fossilized and then a new group.

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But that's just how it works. And so, to this day, you have what are called the Sufis. And even now, there are

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Sunnis who would be identified as having Sufi tendencies. And so, you don't normally just run to someone and say,

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I'm a Sufi. They would say, I'm Sunni in my theology, but I find much to appreciate in some of the insights of some of the

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Sufi leaders and things like that. And Sufism has been persecuted, some of its leaders executed.

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But in general, basically what Sufism is, is an attempt to, in Sunni Islam, God is completely transcendent.

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There really is no such thing as a personal relationship with God. Even though the Quran says Allah is closer to you than your jugular vein, it says that in the context of punishing you.

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So, it's not closer to you than your jugular vein and loves you immensely as a result.

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So, you have to be careful there. Sufism attempts to create a spiritual life, a contemplative life, meditation, and find room in that within Islamic tradition to flourish.

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And so, for example, one of the better known American Islamic scholars, he was in the

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White House with George W. Bush two days after 9 -11. Hamza Yusuf is his name, would be identified as having a

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Sufi influence upon him, though he would be identified as a Sunni scholar. And he really is a scholar.

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I mean, he's well trained. What I appreciate about Hamza Yusuf is, for example, he will tell his audiences, look,

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I've studied Christianity. They're monotheists. They claim monotheism. And he's one of the people that would say, for example, that Christians are not mushrikun.

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Now, his explanation of that's interesting. Because basically his explanation is they can't be mushrikun because the

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Quran allows Muslim men to marry Christian women. And to be a mushrik is to be najas, filthy in God's sight.

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So if the Quran allows Muslim men to marry someone who's filthy in God's sight, that doesn't make any sense.

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So a Christian woman can't be najas, which means she can't be a mushrikun, a mushrik, one of the mushrikun.

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So that's his understanding of that. But anyway, so there are those people out there.

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And one other thing, I'll sort of close with this,

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I guess. The necessity of especially the Eastern Church, and hence what becomes what we would call

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Eastern Orthodoxy today, the necessity of the Eastern Church to have to interact with Islam, especially once Islam becomes predominant in lands that had once been

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Christian, the Church continues to exist in those lands.

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And while there are incidents of forced conversions, that was not generally what Islam did. I know the narrative of many people is

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Islam comes in, convert or die. Did that happen? Some. Was it the majority of the time?

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No, maybe 2 -3%. The Quran acknowledges the people of both.

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And you're supposed to pay the jizya tax, you're supposed to be protected by the Muslims. And in fact, when the Muslim armies came into some

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Byzantine areas, the Christians welcomed them because they hated their former rulers who were taxing them to death.

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And they had it better under the Muslims than they had under the Christians. So again, all these issues are far more complex in history than Fox News or MSNBC will ever allow it to be.

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Because when you're only allowed to speak for maybe 15 seconds at a time before you have to change topics, which is how

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TV works, you rarely really get into things in a deep sense.

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But Eastern Orthodoxy, you don't have statues in Eastern Orthodox churches.

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You have icons. Why? Well the rule they eventually worked out was if you could grab an image's nose, that was a statue.

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If you can't quite get hold of the nose, it can have form to it. If you can't grab its nose, it's not a statue and it's okay.

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Now where did that come from? It's called the iconoclastic controversy, we'll talk about it a little bit later on. Where did it come from? It came from the fact that Eastern Christians were having to deal with their

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Muslim overlords who were saying, you're a bunch of idolaters and we're giving them their statues. In the

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West, you didn't have Muslims and you didn't have that issue, so you've got statues everywhere. And one of the things that led in 1054 to the split between the

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East and the West was that very issue, the iconoclastic controversy. We'll see that as we look at the next few centuries and the expansion of the church and some of the issues that eventually leads to the great split in 1054 between the

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East and the West. That's another date, by the way, that you need to put on your to -be -memorized list.

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We've got 325 and the Council of Nicaea and you will eventually have 1054 and the great split between the

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East and the West. Let's close our time with a word of prayer. Our Heavenly Father, once again, we are so thankful for the freedom that we have to gather together to consider what has happened in the past.

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Lord, we do ask that as we learn these things, once again, we will be given tools to look at ourselves today, to learn, to appreciate the good things and the bad that has taken place in the past that we might be better servants today.

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We ask that you be with us now as we go into worship. May your word be honored. May you be honored and glorified.