Dr. Robert Sumner passed away in December 2016. The Biblical Evangelist newspaper is no longer being published and the ministry of Biblical Evangelism has ceased operation.

The remaining inventory of his books and gospel tracts was transferred to The Baptist Tabernacle of Los Angeles and may be ordered here.

Off the Cuff (Part 2 of 3)
Evangelist Robert L. Sumner

SORRY, NO ACCOLADES!

In early December the media went wild, first in mourning and then nominating Nelson Mandela for sainthood. Obama even compared him to the father of our country, George Washington (our local paper editorialized under the banner Nelson Mandela: a beacon of freedom, “Mandela … is a modern-day George Washington and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one man.”) Nonsense! Washington and Lincoln he was not! We knew too much about him to be taken in by that hogwash. Columnist Mona Charen was right when she said of him, on the occasion of his first visit to America nearly a quarter of a century ago: “If the kind of public worship and adulation now being showered upon Nelson Mandela were offered instead to God, the American Civil Liberties Union would declare it unconstitutional.” Alas, and it is still true.

Wasn’t he a great fighter against apartheid? Let’s put it this way: when he finished serving his sentence in the slammer for crimes he committed, battling apartheid was the popular topic of the day and he wiggled his way to the front to lead the war. Until then, his only concern seemed to be for political power – and promoting Communist causes.

What kind of morals did he have? Well, he married his first wife, Evelyn, after a “torrid love affair” at her aunt’s house while he was still a law student. Married in 1943, about a year later he helped organize the Youth League in South Africa, a militant branch of the African National Congress (Communist). After some years of domestic fighting – largely because of his ‘carrying on’ with Winnie, an attractive social worker, and his ‘long absences’ from home – Nelson demanded a divorce from his wife, abandoning her and his four children. In short order, he married Winnie and she became known as the “Mother of the Nation.” Evelyn was conveniently forgotten.

His first two children by Evelyn died: the son in a highway accident and the daughter of meningitis. Their two remaining children – a son, Makgatho, and a daughter, Makaziwe (graduate of the American University of Massachusetts at Amherst) – are both still living, as far as we know.

Evelyn moved to the remote African village of Cofimvaba. She found it difficult to speak kindly of the man who was once her husband, but had treated her so poorly. She opined, “How can a man who has committed adultery and left his wife and children ‘be Christ’?” Good question! How can he be a saint when he acted so sinnerish?

Yet shortly before his wife Winnie went on trial for her crimes, Mandela announced to the press that he and she were “separated” after 30 years, but not because of her criminal problems. They were still ‘estranged’ when he was sworn in as president, although she was given a place in his cabinet – did she ‘know too much’ not to honor?

What kind of politics did he have? As hinted above, they were red, red, red! He was very active in the Communist African National Congress (ANC). During all the hoopla over his funeral, it is too bad they didn’t show him singing the national anthem of MK arm (of which he was commander) of the ANC in September of 1992. This film showed him in the ‘black power’ salute of a raised clenched fist, belting out, “We the members of the Umkhonto have pledged ourselves to kill them — kill the whites.”

Standing beside him in the film, also in the ‘black power’ salute was a white man, Ronnie Kasrils. Old Ron was a member of the cCentral Committee of the South African Communist Party and a Soviet-trained terrorist who helped Mandela found his MK arm of the party.

Ah, but that would have spoiled the image, wouldn’t it?

All of his buddies were radicals and Communists. The London Telegraph said he was not only a member of the South Africa Communist Party (SACP), but that he held “senior rank.” When he addressed our Congress in 1990, Patrick Buchanan called him “the latest Marxist messiah.” At that time he also received a Wall Street parade and met with the first President Bush – using the latter occasion to justify “the use of violence” in his activities.

In fact, when it was over, the Communist People’s Daily World called his tour ‘unprecedented,’ adding that it “displayed the power of the mass media and showed that it can be used to promote progressive causes”; i.e., meaning the cause of communism, which is always called by its followers ‘progressive.’ Mandela’s wife, Winnie, called the Soviet Union the “torchbearer for all our hopes and aspirations.”

Enough said?

However, just as Obama here in the States, South Africa’s first black president did not do much for blacks while in office. His publicly announced goals were all socialist/communist in nature. “The nationalization of the mines, the financial institutions and monopoly industries, is the fundamental policy of the ANC, and it is inconceivable that we will ever change that policy,” was the way he expressed them.

While South Africa’s president, he flew to Zuwarah in Libya and bestowed the “Order of Good Hope” – his country’s highest award for a foreigner – on the evil dictator, Moammar Gadhafi, whom he called “my dear brother leader.” This was not long after Libyan influences shot down the Pan American jet Flight 103 on its way from London to New York over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people (the only person ever convicted of the crime was Libyan intelligence officer, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, whom the Scots released later on humanitarian grounds – he was dying of cancer). The big party with Mandela gave Gadhafi an opportunity to heap verbal scorn upon the United States, including banners outside the building, in English, that said, “Down, down U.S.A., the enemy of the peoples!”

He was not only the good friend and ally of Gadhafi, but other international hoodlums and murderers with bloody hands like Yasser Arafat, the Cuban Castro brothers, and even Saddam Hussein. When he visited Fidel at Havana in 1991 he enthused, “Long live the Cuban Revolution. Long live Comrade Fidel Castro.” With Castro at his side he spoke of the “craziness of capitalism” and its market economics. He also said, while in prison, that Cuba “was an inspiration and comrade Fidel Castro a tower of strength,” adding, “There is one thing where that country [Cuba] stands out head and shoulders above the rest – that is in its love for human rights and liberty.” Yeah, sure, ya betcha!

What was his “prison term”? The media loves to call his confinement as being “a political prison.” That is untrue. Buchanan noted: “… he was captured with explosives used in sabotage; he has endorsed terrorist tactics; his comrades in the African National Congress, he now concedes, have tortured and murdered their own in exile.” At his 1964 trial he admitted, “I planned sabotage … as a result of a calm and sober assessment.” In fact, The New American noted he would have been released from captivity years earlier if he had agreed to renounce violence. He absolutely refused to do so!

As former Indiana State Legislator Don Boys reported in his syndicated column, Common Sense for Today: “For the record, let me clearly declare that Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison because he was a saboteur (which he admitted at his trial), an espionage agent working against the government. He was not imprisoned because he fought for freedom but because he was involved in 23 different acts of sabotage and conspiring to overthrow the government. He should have been executed, but a soft court went wobbly at his 1963 trial. It is said by his worshippers that he experienced ‘inhumane incarceration,’ yet his Red buddies of the banned and Communist controlled African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) were charged with 193 acts of sabotage! What should saboteurs expect?”

Oh, did we mention that when Mandela was arrested on a South African farm, according to the Indiana Baptist, police found 210,000 hand grenades, 48,000 land mines, 50 tons of high explosives, the plans of 107 buildings and installations to be blown up – plus a hand-written document entitled, ‘How to Be a Good Communist.’

Wife Winnie seemed to be of the same bent. According to the Hawaii Tribune-Herald, she was sentenced to six years in the slammer after being found guilty of “kidnapping and being an accessory to assault” (four youths were taken to her house on December 29, 1988, and “whipped, kicked and beaten” – one youth, 14-year-old James (Stompei) Moeketsi Seipei, was killed and the head of her bodyguard unit, Jerry Richardson, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in the same case! Four of her co-defendants jumped bail before the trial came to fruition.

The Weekly Mail asked, “The central question being asked is: Are leading political figures above the law?” Yet this was strictly a civil trial, not a political one. One potential witness, identified only as ‘a man from Vosloorus,’ said, “I wouldn’t testify if I knew I was going to get killed,” adding, “The people around Winnie are not nice people. They are not interested in fair justice.”

After she was found guilty, Justice M. S. Stegmann denied Winnie’s defense appeals for a suspended sentence, noting she “showed no remorse”; in fact, the press described her as “defiant.” Nelson had been out of jail himself for about a year at the time, but was not in court during the sentencing festivities for his wife. Two co-defendants of Winnie were also convicted in the case. The Tribune-Herald called Winnie “a leading radical in the ANC.”

Nelson Mandela was not a good man. But may his body rest in peace.

OBAMATAX LOSES AGAIN!

Freedom of religion won in the court and ObamaTax was defeated! The Obama administration, which has repeatedly violated the separation of powers since entering office in 2009, has had another power grab overturned in the courts. United States District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal, in the federal District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston Division, ruled in favor of two area schools, East Texas Baptist University and the Houston Baptist University, that claimed the Obama health law forced them to finance birth control and drugs causing abortions against their sincerely held religious beliefs. Also involved in this case was the Westminster Theological Seminary (Reformed Presbyterian). The reference below to RFRA relates to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

In his 46-page opinion Judge Rosenthal determined: “The court grants the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment on the RFRA claim and denies the government’s cross-motion for summary-judgment on the RFRA claim ... The government is enjoined from applying or enforcing the regulations that require the plaintiffs, their health plans, TPAs, or issuers, to provide or execute the self-certification forms that enable or require the TPA or issuer to provide health insurance coverage for the plaintiffs’ employees for FDA-approved emergency contraceptive devices, products, or services under the requirements imposed in 42 U.S.C. § 300gg-13(a)(4), Pub. L. 11-148, § 1563(e)-(f), as well as the application of the penalties found in 26 U.S.C. §§ 4980D & 4980H, and 29 U.S.C. § 1132. An order of injunction will separately issue.”

It was signed by Judge Rosenthal on December 27, 2013, a nice belated Christmas present for the institutions. Earlier in the document His Honor admitted,  “The religious organization plaintiffs have shown a sincerely held religious belief that the court cannot second-guess.”

Judge Rosenthal also granted the schools a summary judgment, ruling, “The plaintiffs have shown that, based on the undisputed facts in the record, the accommodation violates RFRA as a matter of law. The plaintiffs are entitled to summary judgment on their RFRA claims. The government’s cross-motion for summary judgment on the absence of a RFRA violation is denied.”

To date, there have been 89 such cases filed in federal courts against this ObamaTax mandate and nine have been adjudicated in the courts. The score: Freedom of Religion: 6 - ObamaTax 3!

ARE 'MILLENIALS'

ABANDONING THE FAITH?

Everywhere we turn, it seems, we are being bombarded with ‘the fact’ that the so-called Millennial Generation kids are abandoning their faith. Doomsayers are predicting the worst.

The problem seems to be: it isn't entirely true! A new study by Focus on the Family, "Millennial Faith Participation and Retention," looked at those kids born between 1980 and 2000 and discovered that most of them that were reared in homes with religious influence were "keeping the faith, brother." In fact, 60% of them were! While we could wish for 100%, well over half were remaining true to what they had been taught at home and church. In short, it is not quite the disaster some are painting.

What about those 'hoards' of kids who had abandoned their faith? Focus found it was only 18% ‘with any measure of religious influence’ who were now out of church. And only a mere 11% of them said they had ‘a strong faith' as a child. The Focus study concluded, "This is not a crisis of faith, per se, but of parenting ... Parents who provide a home where faith is vibrantly practiced – even imperfectly – are remarkably likely to create young adults who remain serious Christians, even as they sometimes go through bumpy spots in the road ... [N]ot surprisingly, homes modeling lukewarm faith do not create enduring faith in children."

The study concluded, "Churches clearly teaching the Bible (conservative evangelical churches) grew while those that do not (mainline denominations) declined. Young adults want 'uncompromising truth' that 'calls them to something beyond themselves' ... Truth trumps trappings."

One 'abandoning' the study discovered was a fact and that was about one-fifth of them were 'switching faiths'; that is, leaving one denomination for another, with the abandoning being mostly among the mainline churches where liberalism had been creeping in.

In short, don't let the doomsayers fool you!

FRANKLIN IS RIGHT!

We want to salute Franklin Graham for refusing to back down, in an interview on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ on the last Sunday of 2013, about the matter that sodomy is a sin. The interviewer used a comment by Pope Francis (‘who am I to judge?’) to try to get Billy’s son to soften (‘shift’) his stance. His biblical response was, “God would have to shift, and God doesn't … God's word is the same yesterday and today and a million years from now, that it's sin.”

And Franklin added, “To wink at sin, and to tell somebody that it's okay; I know the consequences of what will happen one day when they have to stand before God … I want to warn people.”

That is, indeed, the biblical position and the new head of the Graham empire went on to explain, “I've never really been one to try to be politically correct … I just feel truth is truth, and sometimes I probably offend some people.”

Now if he would just take the same position on opposing false cults and heretics …!

MORALS … OR MONEY?

Should the foxes be allowed to play with the chickees in the hen house? The Kentucky Baptist Convention's children’s services agency has long been embroiled in battle over the firing of a Sodomite on the staff of its children's ministry, a matter we have reported in the past. Bill Smithwick, president of Sunrise Children's Services, whom we have praised for his long insistence that Sunrise would not change its hiring practices to include Sodomites, has now done a 180º flip-flop and is recommending a change in policy to show 'love' for the sinners.

More to the point, perhaps, is his claim "that Sunrise cannot operate without government funds and that it risks losing major secular sponsors if it fires homosexuals.” In short, it is a decision of Faith v. Filthy Lucre. Smithwick now favors the mercenary argument. Rick Fyffe, a trustee, resigned in protest. Another trustee, Stan Spees, is being threatened with removal from the board for publicly voicing opposition.

The secret of success is not going to the government trough in the first place. As Bryant Millsaps, president of the Tennessee Baptist Children's Homes, whose ministry has never accepted government funds during its 122 years of service to children, put it in the Baptist Press release on the matter (that also admitted only four or five of the 23 state children’s homes in the SBC do not accept federal funds): "Most agencies who get dependent on those large sums of money [cannot] raise the funds to cover that loss, especially in these times." He compared it to drug dependency, saying, "You get hooked on it, and getting unhooked is very, very difficult. And in some cases it's impossible." He added, "Our clear willingness to depend totally on God and His people is why we're still open and operating today." God bless him.

The executive director of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, Paul Chitwood, urged Smithwick to take that same step of dependence upon God, even if it meant dramatically scaling back its work "in order to be faithful to Scripture and to model biblical values in front of hurting children." He also noted that Smithwick's capitulation "ignores the investment of untold tens of millions of Baptist dollars and surrenders the very reason Sunrise came into existence as Kentucky Baptists' gospel-centered ministry to orphans and neglected children." He pointed out, "The Covenant Agreement between the KBC and Sunrise states, 'This relationship is built upon many years of faithful commitment and trust by many individuals and by many millions of dollars contributed by Kentucky Baptists in support.'" He and KBC president Dan Summerlin asked for a meeting with Smithwick to discuss the issue, but the latter refused.

According to Smithwick, "The core question is not about separation of church and state or government money. The question is whether we will walk away from the pain, suffering, loneliness, and brokenness of the kids we serve and have served since 1869."

That, of course, leaves God and His Word completely out of the equation, making some wonder if he is primarily concerned about the kids or the possible loss of his own position and salary. While that is judgmental, perhaps, it is also a very fair conclusion.

[Later: Since writing the above, following an ‘overwhelming’ vote of no confidence in Smithwick at the Kentucky Baptist Convention in November, he submitted his resignation and it was quickly accepted. The organization’s chief financial officer also stepped down. Dale Suttles, Sunrise's eastern regional advancement director, has been named interim president by the trustees.]

DO WE HAVE A NUT HERE?

Is actor Tom Cruise a closet idiot? I’m not charging; I’m asking, and here is why I’m asking. Tom, who earns about $75 million a year – recently, in a deposition for his $50 million libel suit against a magazine that claimed he abandoned his daughter, Suri – testified that his job as an actor was as tough as ‘serving a tour in Afghanistan.’ He said, regarding his last shoot (no pun intended), that it ‘was brutal. It was brutal.’

As TMZ.com noted, “Hollywood liberals like Tom Cruise have NO IDEA what it’s like to be serving overseas away from their families for 9, 12, even 15 months at a time, The physical and mental difficulty of being in a war zone, being shot at, seeing your friends shot at or blown up by IEDs are unimaginable. Tom Cruise wouldn’t last five minutes in Afghanistan … How ungrateful to downplay the sacrifice our troops go through to protect the freedoms of this man who obviously doesn't appreciate the difficulty of what they go through.” Amen to that!

What do you say? Is Cruise an idiot? If so, he is now out of the closet.

‘SCHOOLING’ IN OREGON!

He was one of the most qualified math teachers at the Benson High School in Portland (OR). In fact, Bill Diss was the only math teacher at the school “qualified to teach dual high school and college credit math courses.” Not only so, he was an 11-year veteran of the Benson classroom, highly respected.

So why would the school district ‘diss’ him (pun intended) and send him and his belongings packing? Had he raped a coed, cursed for ten minutes at an ignorant and uncooperative student, or perhaps announced that he was a Communist seeking the overthrow of the government? No, no, nothing like that.

It seems Bill told Planned Parenthood they couldn’t turn his classroom into a show place for their agenda and a recruitment ground for their immoral projects. Not only so, “the ‘facilitators’ had not gone through the mandatory background checks that are required for school personnel/volunteers, nor did they have the certifications for sex/child abuse that the state requires.” As he saw it, PP wanted to use his valuable classroom time for such nonsense, which he felt was a definite no-no!

The boys and girls at the ‘mass killing’ home of Planned Parenthood had also announced that their visit was to enroll the boys and girls of his class into their TOP (Healthy and Human Services, Teen Outreach Program).

Naturally, the school district could not have such a vile and violently anti-PC maverick in its classrooms, so they fired him!

Did you ever hear such nonsense? And this was done by educators in the name of education for young people? Gimme a break!

THIS ISN’T DUCKY!

Mark Creech, who leads the NC Christian Action League and is president of the American Council on Alcohol Problems (formerly, the Anti-Saloon League) came out with a comment or two about one of the stars of the newly popular ‘Duck Dynasty,’ Willie Robertson. It seems the Free Will Baptist Family Ministries in Greenville (TN) scheduled him in a big fundraising campaign expected to raise $70,000 to $85,000 so they could add an additional 10,000 square feet to the ministry’s school, a valuable project.

They canceled! Why? Well, it seems the Robertson family decided to go into the wine business and create their own line of table booze. The Baptists canceled Willie, according to the ministry’s director of development, Dereck Bell, because of fear it would send the wrong message to the ministry’s youth. Some one-half of the adolescents in their program are forced to undergo treatment for alcohol and drug addiction. Bell correctly explained, “Our message must be consistent. The lives of these children may well hang in the balance.”

We only recently learned of the “Duck dynasty” when Mrs. Sumner found it on television and said it was a good clean humor program. She got me to watch one edition and it was fair, but I certainly didn’t like some of the language.

Creech spoke well of the Robertsons, saying they are “committed to spreading the Word, seeking to lead people to Christ and helping various Christian groups and nonprofits.” That is good, but going into the damning wine business is not the way to do it!

And we commend the Free Will Baptist group for taking a stand, even though it meant a financial loss.

Later: On the other side of the coin, we salute ‘Dynasty’ Phil Robertson (father of Willie) for telling the truth even though it cost him his job. Calling sodomy “illogical” and then quoting the Bible in condemning it resulted in his studio, A&E (Arts & Entertainment Network), suspending him from his own show and making a statement of its own: “We are extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson’s comments in GQ, which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series Duck Dynasty … His personal views in no way reflect those of A&E Networks, who have always been strong supporters and champions of the LGBT community. The network has placed Phil under hiatus from filming indefinitely.”

So much for A&E. By the way, within hours of the A&E action, tens of thousands of people had signed a petition demanding the network reinstate him – some reports as high as 300,000. And Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal hit the nail on the head when he correctly observed, “It is a messed up situation when Miley Cyrus gets a laugh, and Phil Robertson gets suspended.”

The Robertson family released a statement following A&E’s declaration: “We have had a successful working relationship with A&E but, as a family, we cannot imagine the show going forward without our patriarch at the helm … We are in discussions with A&E to see what that means for the future of Duck Dynasty.”

By the way, Cracker Barrel was one of the first corporations to remove Duck Dynasty trivia from its shelves, on orders from its CEO, Sandra Cochran, but the customer backlash was so great they became one of the first to put everything back again. The huge restaurant chain publicly apologized. However, it made me wonder about an article I wrote years ago, praising it for firing a Sodomite from its staff and saying it would never knowingly hire any such individual. Does Cracker Barrel still hold to that? Or have they done a 180º there, too? Do any of our readers know?

Wal-Mart, by the way, did not make the same mistake. Nor did, we assume, many others.

In my personal devotions I’m reading through the New King James Version again. Here were a couple of verses in today’s reading:

Leviticus 19:22, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.” That is plain enough, isn’t it? All the jazz about God only condemning inhospitality, etc., seems pretty silly in light of the plainly revealed revelation from Him.

Leviticus 20:13, “If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.” While, fortunately for today’s homosexuals we are not under law in this dispensation, it certainly does show clearly how completely God hates this abomination, doesn’t it? They deserve, God said, the death penalty.

Does that make Almighty God guilty of ‘homophobia’ (a favorite Sodomite epithet for people standing for truth) that the guilty ones are always talking about? No, it just means, as He expects of all of His true followers, they will hate the sin and love the sinner. That is not a cliché; it is a command!

Still Later: A&E woke up and smelled the coffee, the roses, and all the other wake-up aromas and reversed its decision. Apparently the television channel didn’t care to commit suicide after all.