Shalom-Aloha, dear Reader,
This is the first communication from Hansi and Betty as individual citizens to other citizens of the United States of America. It is not coming from Hansi Ministries, Inc.
Betty was born in America: I (Hansi) came to America in 1955 as an emigrant and became a U.S. citizen in 1962. Both of us are very proud and thankful that America is our homeland.
Those of you who know the Hansi story know also about my former way of life, I was born in Czechoslovakia into a German minority group, left as an orphan, raised by a Christian peasant woman for God's and pity's sake in utter poverty and under many difficulties for the first 14 years of my life. I was trained by Nazi educators for the following five years and totally brainwashed. I was completely convinced that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi philosophy would bring food, hope and work for the entire world and that the German super race would show the way to order and peace for everybody on the planet.
At the end of World War II, I ended up in a communist labor camp in Bohemia. I escaped, fled from the Russians and Czech overlords to East Germany, and finally crossed over into the American military zone of Western Germany. The first human beings who treated me kindly were American soldiers which I feared and had been taught to hate. Their willingness to help and feed me made such a deep impression into my brainwashed thinking that I determined to go to America some day to find out what made those GIs so different.
Well, I did emigrate to America with my family after ten years of living as a refugee in southern Germany, and yes, I did find out what made Americans so different.
It took me a few years to figure it all out, because things were so very different from anything I had experienced in the first 30 years of my life. Sure, I got quickly used to a refrigerator, traveling by car in place of a bicycle, different and plentiful foods, and I even learned to speak and write in the English language. But my greatest puzzle for many years was the American form of government. I had lived under harsh dictatorship from babyhood on, even as a family, and I watched my American neighbors live, vote, behave and speak up so freely, it frightened me. They said anything they pleased, they criticized their government, they protested, but it was all done so nonviolently and the police never took people to jail for expressing individual preference for a certain candidate or when they loudly disagreed with a president they had not voted for. Americans called their way of life "freedom" and "democracy" and it was very hard to understand or live with because I expected rules and restrictions, structure and detailed orders for every area of my daily life. Fifty percent of life was required, the other fifty percent was forbidden. For me, there had never been a "free" area between the two and I did not know it existed. I had been told that total control was needed to keep a nation in proper order. One person gives orders, the people obey without questioning! To live in freedom is not learned overnight. Americans had their free way of life for so long, they can't explain it to a newcomer. My neighbors treated me with help and kindness, but when I asked how freedom worked as it did in America they shrugged their shoulders: What was there to explain? Isn't freedom as normal as breathing air and to be either a Democrat or Republican?
No, it isn't, and I could not explain it either - that most of the world never had freedom and perhaps never will, and that most countries were ruled by force and that might makes right, and most people are born to obey without questioning the iron rules of their dictator. They never know a different side exists! To live in freedom can be frightening at first!
I went to the Lord for understanding and new insights. My husband and I had become Christians before we left for America, and I had learned to cling to my wonderful Comforter and the new great "Truth" in my turbulent new way of life, which was so full of new challenges and scary living.
The Lord Jesus took me by the hand and led me step by step into the greatest discovery of my entire life! Freedom is a gift of God and the Bible is the Lord's freedom declaration to the human race, which is enslaved by sin and Satan and the fear of death.
The God of the Bible is a loving Creator-God who gives choices. I understood the gift of freedom of choice for the first time when I read a statement by William Penn who said that Americans had a choice. (Since choice demands two sides - or more - I had never known about any political choices before, so what gave Americans such a choice?)
That great American statesman gives the two sides very clearly: we may be either governed by God or ruled by tyrants. I had a full knowledge about the rule by tyrants and its total outer control, but how can a people be governed by God?
With inner controls, by their personal choices because they are willing to obey their conscience and the rules of God. Even if the police is not around, they stop at a red light when nobody else is at the crossroads. (I know that is true because Betty's driving amazed me when she stopped at any stop sign in the middle of the night, even if the town was asleep and no creature was stirring! She still drives that way!!)
When the Quaker leader William Penn spoke about the government of God, he spoke about the Judeo-Christian ethic and the God of the Bible. The God of Moses and the Son who came to live and die and bring Salvation by HIS death and resurrection to the human race is the only one who gives freedom of choice to every human being. Our God is Love and HE never forces. He puts His rules into the heart of man and HE lets people choose, even if they disobey and end up in hell by choice.
Can such inner control work to govern a nation? Yes, it can! As long as ancient Israel stayed true to the God of Moses and the laws given through him, they prospered as a nation among nations.
America has acknowledged its Christian heritage for the last 200 years and was blessed and became a beacon of light and freedom to all the world.
What has happened through the last few decades? The foundation of our American freedom has been shaken by new philosophies and lies that are taught to our youth and brought into every home through a biased media.
Our schools teach that freedom is free and the Judeo-Christian ethic is replaced by humanism and liberalism.
Humanism makes man the center of all things and God is accepted as an elevated idea or in symbolism. New Age teaches "good" things from any human philosophy and permits individual ethical choices as a measurement to live a "free" life. Such new freedom permits the American media to present only one side of the story according to the view of its reporter. Our teachers teach one side in many subjects, from evolution to history to ethics; choice is eliminated and when only one side is presented, it becomes brainwashing.
True freedom gives choices but is still subject to a God who set the principles about good and evil, light and darkness, sin and justice which have been unmovable. They were established long before the foundation of this earth was laid.
Freedom makes good people better and bad people worse. God's freedom not only gives us a freedom to choose but we must next learn to make the right choices and to take the responsibility for every choice we make. We have forgotten to teach that to the next generation and reap by now the consequences.
You see, humanism and New Age teachings encourage self centeredness, over-confidence and recklessness, disregard for human life and hostility toward those who oppose the political correctness of a given time. This is very obvious at the present moment, even within our new administration at the highest level.
Like so many of the younger generation, our self-confident young president sees leadership as a many-lanes, very broad freeway, that permits him to switch lanes as needed. He is willing to attend Easter services in a Christian church after coming home from Turkey where he stated to a Moslem audience that America is not a Christian nation. The American media gleefully picked it up, and Newsweek featured a cover story, "The Decline and Fall of Christian America", about the waning influence of Christianity in our nation.
No president has ever made such an assertion before and this is not just a casual statement, Barack Obama has said it before.
Why is this so alarming? It is the undermining of our American freedom at its highest level as it was given to us by the godly founders of our Nation. What can we do about it?
First of all, we must pray that the Lord God will not let freedom perish from this earth. If America loses its God-given freedom, the lights will go out for those who live and fight for freedom in their freedom-less societies. There will be no other place left to flee to or look for encouragement and hope! Next, we must accept our freedom in its fullness, which does not only demand good and moral choices but our responsibility to teach and proclaim them. It is our responsibility to speak up, to proclaim that there are two sides to consider, to declare and respond, to prove that Christians are still around, alive and strong and victorious in the Lord.
Betty and I wonder how many letters or e-mails have been sent to the White House to protest our President's claim? We shall never know, because the media will not tell it if there were many.
All that you or I can ever know is if we did or did not do our duty and spoke up while there was still freedom in the land.
If you or I ever go to jail for speaking the truth, and it is possible, if President Obama signs *"The Fairness Doctrine", we need the peace in our conscience, that we did our very best to keep America free! - And yes, I believe that America shall remain a nation under God and the lights will not go out, because Christ already won the victory and we are on the winning side!
In God we trust!
Joyfully yours in God's warfare,
Hansi and Betty
*I'll talk about that in the next letter!
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