Awake Thou That Sleepest or Who are You Sleeping With?

Now is the time to get it on. The Man is playing games with us, and our people are sleeping. Sleeping. Sleeping. Now you know, and I know, and the Man knows that if the Man ever allows our people to wake up, He will be in big trouble. Because the Man is really only a human. And his Power is really only power—in the face of our God. The Church sleeps through the games, and the Man thinks that he is cool. The only problem is that his games are deadly.

The church must commit itself to two issues that are still with us. These two issues are: the Vietnam war and Black liberation in America. The gospel does commit itself to these two specific issues. The gospel says that it is wrong to kill for profit and power; that is what's going on in Vietnam. The gospel says that it is wrong to keep a human down because the person is a non-white in a white-ruled society. The gospel speaks of good news, not bad news, to those who are alienated, downcast, oppressed, and overall dumped on in the United States and other countries.

So what is the gospel? It is the message of hope. It is the message that God entered history, in the man of Jesus of Nazareth. What this man said, what this man did, what this man taught, must be proclaimed today, because it is significant to the times in which we live. It was Jesus, who in the beginning of his ministry stated, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. The Spirit has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:18-19). It is time for the Church once again to awaken to the message and power of the gospel. If and when we can get ourselves together, perhaps the Man will be stopped in playing his games.

Glen Melnik was an associate editor of The Post-American when this article appeared.