In the U.K., a doctor who had served three decades as a medical assessor recently lost his government job because he believes that gender is determined before birth. Dr. David Mackereth was fired by the Department for Works and Pensions because he refused to use a transgender pronoun to describe a bearded man. “The Bible teaches us that God made humans male or female,” the doctor said. But a judge at an employment tribunal in England ruled that the doctor’s religious beliefs were “incompatible with human dignity.”
The threat of the cancel culture has gotten worse as social media giants like Twitter and Facebook have started censoring free speech and banning some users from their platforms. Recently, they shut down former President Donald Trump, and they have also targeted numerous private and public individuals, many of whom simply espouse traditional moral values.
Just a few weeks ago, Lifetime TV canceled “Truths That Transform,” the program of D. James Kennedy Ministries. Lifetime TV had demanded that the ministry eliminate “controversial” topics from the program, which would have meant eliminating programs that addressed issues like abortion. The ministry refused to do that, so the program was canceled.
Even our country’s treasured and storied history is not safe. The San Francisco Board of Education in January issued an edict asking that the names of some of our nation’s greatest presidents—Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln—be removed from all of their schools. Can you imagine!
Last year, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association scheduled an evangelistic tour across Great Britain, only to be literally canceled as a result of pressure on the venues by groups with a bias against Christians who hold traditional, historical Biblical views and believe in the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as Savior.
Here we were, seeking to tell people how they can have peace with God through repentance and faith, yet these groups sought to shut down our events because they disagree with what the Bible teaches.
Try as they might, however, we know that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus can’t be stopped.
Jesus said that He would build His church and that the “gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). As Paul spent his final days in a Roman prison, he wrote his final letter to his young disciple, Timothy. Despite being incarcerated by the Romans, Paul called himself the Lord’s prisoner (see 2 Timothy 1:8) and assured him that “the Word of God is not bound!” (2 Timothy 2:9).