[Note: The following is the prepared text of a #2 speech given to the Portland United Church of God Spokesman’s Club on Sabbath, December 21, 2024.]

For those of you who have never heard of Nathan Bedford Forrest, he is most noted for having been a poor Southern boy who gained a fortune by slave trading, having been an immensely successful cavalry general in the American Civil War suspected of leading a massacre of surrendered black troops at Fort Pillow, and for being the founder of the first Ku Klux Klan after the South lost the war. He is an easy example of someone who is easy to hate in our generation, but today I would like to point out by an argument to logos, ethos, and pathos that however our generation justly judges Nathan Bedford Forrest, we also open our own generation up to judgment by the same standard.

When we look at the Word of God to see the condemnation for slave traders, we find that such people are viewed as kidnappers. In the Old Testament, kidnapping was a capital offense, and Paul speaks very negatively of kidnapping in 1 Timothy 1:8-11 we read the following: “But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, or fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust.” By the logic of scripture, viewing Nathan Bedford Forrest as a manslayer and as a kidnapper who made a living by making a commerce of men’s bodies and souls, he was certainly unrighteous by the standards of the Bible. That said, our own society with its love of lying, its rampant fornication, and our other sins, is guilty and under judgment by the same standard by which we can condemn Forrest by the logic of scripture.

In general, it is an ethical standard that it is unjust to judge other people who live in different places and times by the anachronistic standards of our own time. We know, however, that the standards of God’s word are applicable to people at all places and times, whether we are looking at the behavior of someone who lived a hundred and fifty years ago or those who sin today. We must also note that Forrest was judged as having failed to live up to godly standards by the people of his time, as Abraham Lincoln in his Peoria speech noted the lack of fond feeling that even Southern whites had for slave dealers because of their behavior, and must note that the sins of our own time are judged by those brave souls among us who are willing to speak out against the evils around us.

One of the unfortunate aspects of our existence as human beings is that it is easy for us to rage against the sins of others but hard for us to recognize our own sins. Jesus Christ, in His Sermon on the Mount, reminded us that we will be judged by the same standard that we use to judge others. He also reminded us that we tend to see the speck in the eyes of others while failing to notice or deal with the beams in our own eye that hinder us from seeing and judging accurately. It is hard to be merciful to a man who sins against our own standards and sensibilities to the extent that Nathan Bedford Forrest did, but unless we are prepared to be merciful to even the great sinners of the past, we can expect little mercy for ourselves, for as Jesus Christ reminds us in His instructions on the Model Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, we will be forgiven of our sins only if we are willing to forgive the sins of others against us.

Whether we look at logic, ethics, or emotion, properly understood all such arguments lead to the same conclusion. It is easy to condemn a man like Nathan Bedford Forrest for his sins, but as our generation is in desperate need of mercy from God and also from history, it behooves us in turn to be merciful to others, even to great sinners like Nathan Bedford Forrest.