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Dr Kameel Majdali – Are Lockdowns Impacting Religious Freedoms?

by | Fri, Sep 17 2021

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In this 20Twenty conversation, we are turning our attention to Biblical wisdom. As we continue to live through challenging times, as Christians, we are often familiar with the concept of global chaos as a necessary precursor to developments. We read the Biblical prophecy that characterises the End Times, and we see the monumental changes happening in the world today.

If we believe the news headlines, the main story is the COVID pandemic and the distress of losing life and livelihoods. But what about the changing power balance in the world with the rise of an aggressive China and the threats of world war? What are the changing ideological worldviews fueling the rise of tyranny, the emergence of cultural Marxism and the culture wars? What about the rising racial tensions and the altered definitions of marriage and family, and the lack of concern about the value of human life?

Then there’s the rise of persecution that comes with the end of religious freedom. We can identify danger ahead, but what’s the source of all this distress? To answer this question and share his thoughts on Biblical wisdom, 20Twenty regular Dr Kameel Majdali joined us.

Kameel says that there is a definite link between lockdowns and all of our freedoms, including the idea of religious freedom. He believes there has been abuse of lockdown privilege. Throughout the whole Western world this crisis has been used for an advantage to advance political agendas. For example, in the United States, there were some draconian lockdowns where churches could not meet, but people could crowd shopping centres and protest with no social distancing.

“In Australia, we face a very different challenge, and that is we technically don’t have anything in the law to protect us from being harassed by going to church. I urge everyone to contact their local representatives, because it’s time we codify religious freedom in Australia.”

Kameel believes that we can’t take for granted that we’re always going to maintain the sorts of freedoms we’ve been used to. “We have seen an alarming erosion of freedom of religion happening in the Western world. It’s not unusual for the left of centre parties, especially if they claim to be progressive, to be more coercive in a time of emergency and crisis. But when you’re getting right of centre parties being just as coercive, then you kind of scratch your head. We’ve got to wake up and take action to preserve our freedoms.”

“We really need to have robust religious freedom laws, and we need to see that they’re enforced.”

Kameel says that he thinks there is the danger we all face of taking things like the stolen generation situation and using that as an excuse to blame churches. “Then we have the media in a sense cheering them on because they see it as an injustice and shame for the church. Law enforcement is either very slow or non-existent to protect them. Can we honestly say it wouldn’t happen in Australia? Hopefully, it never would, but we need to be vigilant.”

Kameel believes we live in an age of increasing deception and this is very much part of the last day scenario. The very first thing Jesus told his disciples when they asked about the end of the age, was to see that no man deceives you. “If ever there was a time to put on the whole armour of God and exercise the spiritual gift of discernment, it’s now.”

“When we understand what the problem is, then we’re halfway towards the solution. We can call it communism. We can label it fascism. We can label it whatever we like, but there is an anti-God, anti-Christ spirit in our world today. And it can be defeated.”

“It is not insurmountable, but it takes an awakened, prayerful and dare I say, activist church.”

Listen to the rest of this fascinating 20Twenty discussion with Dr Kameel Majdali below.

Tune into 20Twenty and join the conversation with Neil Johnson, weekdays on Vision Christian Radio. Click here for your local times.

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