1800s America was host to the underground railroad. No locomotive, no tracks; the underground railroad was a secret network operated by American citizens—mostly Christians—who were violating laws passed by Congress. The Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850 required citizens to hand over travelers unable to show papers proving themselves free men. The men and women who operated the underground railroad knew that law was immoral, and they were determined not to comply, determined to help others escape.
Freedom-seekers fled slave states to gain their liberty in free states or in Canada. They ran by night, guided by the north star. Under midnight stealth the illegal network transported these victims of oppression from safehouse to safehouse, providing food and hiding places. Government agents, slave patrols, slave-catchers claiming bounties, and posses arrayed themselves against all who sought freedom or who dared aid those noble refugees.
When they connected with the railroad, many continued northward to Michigan. Interstate 94 was built over one of the main routes. Detroit was code-named “Midnight” on the railroad, because when you make it to the Detroit river, you are only a half-mile from Canada and freedom!
People think they would have hidden Jews from Nazis or that they would have helped slaves pass to freedom via the underground railroad if only they’d lived in those times. Maybe you think you would have.
If that’s true, would you be willing to help the men and women being crushed by corporations and governments today simply for exercising their right to choose not to be vaccinated? Or, are you deep in the weeds of conformity?
Impositions against liberty are being experienced globally. People are in thrall; they’ve been hypnotized into a trance-like mania for submission and compliance to an all-powerful social-media, big-pharma, big government technomarxist surveillance state. In some places, travel, employment, even access to the purchase of food and automobile fuel, is withheld from the unvaccinated.
Governmental agents are enacting “vaccination passports.” Aren’t these, in effect, movement licenses? In some nations, freedom to move from state to state, for those choosing not to vaccinate themselves, has been usurped. People are being prevented from returning to their homes and jobs. The non-conforming are being crushed into a new subclass.
Listen to these world leaders:
Premier of Victoria Australia, Dan Andrews:
From a situation where, to protect the health system, we’ve everybody locked down, we’re going to move to a situation where, to protect the health system, we’re going to lock out people who are not vaccinated and can be. If you’re making the choice not to get vaccinated, then, you’re making the wrong choice. There’s going to be a vaccinated economy, and you get to participate in that if you are vaccinated.
Prime minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern:
Reporter: So, you’ve basically said, this is going to be like, almost like two classes of people, the vaccinated or the unvaccinated. You have all these rights if you are vaccinated…
Arden: That is what it is, so, yep, yep.
Prime minister of Canada Justin Trudeau:
Reporter: What happens to those travelers, who refuse to be vaccinated and do not have a medical exception? Will they be allowed and accommodation, or can they not travel?
Trudeau: Canadians know that the way to get through this pandemic is for everyone to get vaccinated. So, unless people have a medical exception, they will not be able to board a plane, or a train in Canada, if they are unvaccinated.
Premier of Victoria Australia, Dan Andrews:
“Now’s not the time to protest about anything.”
When rights to movement are arbitrarily limited to one space, it is incarceration. Healthy people are being oppressed, reduced to refugees, with some even denied life-saving medical treatment.
Pastors are being fined and jailed for holding worship services; mothers led away in handcuffs for Facebook posts; parents tasered for attending their kid’s sports events unmasked. Civilization is burning down before our eyes while masked, emasculated men blankly look on trying to figure what sex they are.
So, a Question. . .
When the unjabbed show up at your church or home seeking help, what will YOU do? Give aid? or become a government collaborator? Will you help refugees who are suffering unjust usurpation of their rights by jackbooted authorities? God made all humans with an unremovable right to liberty; an unjust law is no law at all.
A century ago it was morally wrong to obey the Fugitive Slave law. People by the thousands could see that. How is it that in the 2020s we’ve grown so cold? It is a moral violation to treat someone as less free because that person chooses not to inject himself with poison. These thefts of liberty are turning earth into a pharmaceutical plantation, a syringe gulag. Do we need a 2020s version of the underground railroad?
****
Larry Kirkpatrick serves as pastor of the Muskegon and Fremont MI Seventh-day Adventist churches. His website is GreatControversy.org and YouTube channel is “Larry the guy from Michigan.” Every morning Larry publishes a new devotional video.
