Interesting Times

A purported ancient Chinese curse says, "May you live in interesting times," and so we do. Important events seem to occur about once a week these days, and over the past week, in my estimation, we have witnessed at least two of them. One happened right here in Charlotte, North Carolina, while the other happened a few days later a world away.

The first of these, which took place last Tuesday, September 5, 2012, at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, concerns the re-inclusion of references to Jerusalem as Israel's capital and to God in the official Democratic Party National Platform. Earlier in the week, the exclusion of these terms had been made public, and the reaction to them from Joe and Jane American was decidedly negative. Thus, the decision was made, evidently by high-ranked party leaders—President Obama himself certainly gave his approval—to return the pro-Israel, pro-God language to the platform. To do that, however, a two-thirds majority of the assembled delegates had to approve the reinstatement.

The matter was brought up in Tuesday's session. The convention chairman, Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, brought the change to the floor for a voice vote. The video of this is clear: He did not get the required two-thirds majority. In fact, Villaraigosa had to ask the delegates three different times, and each time it sounds as if the "nay" votes became louder. After the second request, the L.A. mayor was clearly perplexed, and a Democrat party official had to advise him, "You got to let them do what they are going to do," which he took to mean that he was to ignore the crowd and its reaction. He asked for their votes a third time, and then read the scripted response from the teleprompter: "In the opinion of the chair, two-thirds have voted in the affirmative. The motion is adopted, and the platform has been amended as shown on the screen."

While the official platform now retains the mentions of Jerusalem and God, it cannot be denied that the original document purposely left them out, and further, that the sentiment of the convention delegates was at least evenly divided on the matter. Those who shouted, "No!" louder and louder each time were clearly agitated that the approval had been rammed through over their objections. How ironic that the party that proudly bears "democracy" in its name did not abide by democratic principles on this issue but applied the heavy hand of authoritarianism to do its leaders' will. If the parliamentary process had been followed at the convention, God and Jerusalem would not have been part of the party platform.

What is more, some commentators have made a point of drawing a line between the three nay votes on this issue and the apostle Peter's three denials of Christ before His crucifixion, which is found in all four gospel accounts (see Matthew 26:31-35, 69-74; Mark 14:27-31, 66-71; Luke 22:31-34, 56-61; John 13:36:38; 18:17, 25-27). Like Peter, the Democrat Party has a longtime association with Christianity and Christian values and claims to be doing the Lord's work in caring for the poor and powerless in society. However, when its delegates are asked to choose to support mere language about God and Jerusalem—when they must take a stand one way or the other—they, in effect, deny Him.

Since those at the convention were delegates of Democrats all over the nation, the loud denial makes one wonder how closely they represent party members at home. Does at least half of the largest political party in the nation want nothing to do with God? Have America's citizens drifted so far from its religious roots that association with God and Jerusalem are considered a political liability? These are serious questions because of what Paul calls a "faithful saying" in II Timothy 2:11-13, part of which reads, "If we deny Him, He will also deny us" (verse 12). That has truly frightening implications.

The second "interesting event" occurred in Benghazi, Libya, on the eleventh anniversary of the al Qaida attacks on September 11, 2001. Protesters stormed the U.S. Consulate there, and in a night-long, well-planned and well-coordinated attack by professional militants—a violent, anti-Gadhafi group connected with al Qaida—the American Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed along with three other embassy staff members. When the killers attacked the U.S. compound, they were heavily armed with anti-aircraft automatic cannon and rocket-propelled grenades.

The news media reported that the attack was in response to a YouTube trailer for a low-budget, anti-Muhammad film, Innocence of Muslims, made by a Christian Egyptian-American filmmaker in the U.S. Many Muslims across the Middle East consider the film blasphemous for its negative depiction of Islam's founder. According to Reuters, the film trailer portrays Muhammad "as a fool, a philanderer and a religious fake," while others add that the movie characterizes him as a pederast, a murderer, and a homosexual. However, as more information surfaces, it appears that the attackers used the protest over the film to carry out a terrorist strike against the United States, if nothing else, to commemorate the 9/11 attack.

It has also been reported that vital intelligence files have gone missing after the attack, including sensitive documents identifying Libyans working with the American government and private information regarding oil contracts. Also missing was information locating the supposedly secret safe house where much of the consular staff had retreated and which itself came under attack later that night.

Worse, the Independent reports:

According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and ‘lockdown,' under which movement is severely restricted.

This is being called "a serious and continuing security breach." The Obama administration denies that the information was actionable.

To this point, the U.S. response has been tepid, issuing an apology to Muslims for the insult against Muhammad, condemning the attack, and sending a Marine response team to Libya. Two Navy destroyers armed with Tomahawk missiles have been dispatched to patrol the Libyan coast, and drones have begun flying over the country to search for the perpetrators.

These two events, occurring within days of each other, seem to be signs of the time. It makes one wonder if the two are linked—a quick response from God to show what happens when a people thinks to remove Him from their lives. Will this nation recognize God's warning (see Amos 4:6-13)?

Evil Is Real (Part One)

Back on March 8, 1983, at an Orlando, Florida, meeting of the National Association of Evangelicals, the President of the United States at the time, Ronald Reagan, gave a speech amid an ongoing Congressional debate over a proposed "nuclear freeze," a policy advocated by the Soviet Union. His comments made national and international news because he had the audacity to call the Soviet Union "an evil empire," referring to communism as "the focus of evil in the modern world." Many of us whose memories stretch back that far remember the furor of the media's reaction to his statement. Because he dared to call another nation "evil," Reagan was, according to opponents, the worst person who had ever lived.

First, the press derided him for his simplicity. How could he reduce the Cold War to such black-and-white terms—to the altogether silly notion that "They" are evil and "We" are good? That is what they claimed he implied, although the text of his speech proves otherwise. Then, after deriding him, they chided him for being judgmental, saying that the U.S.S.R. was not evil, just different from America and opposed to our ideas of "good government." Then, they called him "bellicose" and "dangerous," implying that he was trying to provoke the Soviets into war. To his credit, Reagan did not back away from his remarks.

A significant criticism of liberalism is that liberals rarely consider actual outcomes—that is, they often promote a course of action without studying how such actions have worked out in the past or in similar contemporary situations. Not wanting to repeat this mistake, we should consider what resulted from Reagan's identifying the Soviet Union as "an evil empire": Ultimately, the West, led by the United States, won the Cold War! Certainly, the process was not quite as simple as that, but his speech "alarmed moderates of the West, delighted millions living under Soviet oppression and set off a global chain reaction that many believe led inexorably to the fall of the Berlin Wall and to freedom for most of Eastern Europe" (Frank Warner, "New Word Order," The [Allentown, Pennsylvania] Morning Call, March 5, 2000, p. A-1).

It was by defining the enemy in stark terms and facing the problem realistically that Reagan's America brought down the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union. In 1989, the Berlin Wall indeed came down, and the Soviets watched helplessly as their superpower status slipped away in less than a decade. Even today, more than twenty years later, it is still desperately trying to regain its lost territories, its defanged military, and its lost influence and prestige—and it is slowly gaining them back. Nevertheless, Russia has been sidelined and diminished for a generation.

Can we Christians learn a lesson from this?

In contrast, during the 1990s, America experienced an administration that considered every matter from a post-modern viewpoint, that is, a way of looking at things in which no absolutes exist. There is no right. There is no wrong. According to this philosophy, every belief and opinion is equally valid because each person determines for himself what is true. Unlike Reagan, President Bill Clinton failed to identify and define America's enemies in realistic terms. In fact, America did not have any enemies during his administration—unless they were right-wing religious fanatics and domestic militias. These were the only people the Clinton administration dared to tar as "evil"—because conservatives and the religious right opposed nearly everything it attempted to do.

In terms of international relations, America's military activities were mere "conflicts" fought before making those on the other side our friends. So, we sent our armed forces to Haiti, Bosnia, Somalia, Kosovo, and many other places—in fact, up to his time, Bill Clinton sent more military personnel to fight in foreign lands than any other President in history. Worse, they went to those places with few clear objectives and ended up staying for extended periods. America's military was often part of a multinational, humanitarian "Meals on Wheels" effort, a kind of foreign aid at the point of a gun. Few of those soldiers, happily, came home in body bags.

As in Reagan's example, the effects of his stance did not manifest themselves until a few years later. America did not feel the full consequences of Clinton's "conciliatory" approach until he was out of office. While America's soldiers did not return home in body bags due to Clinton's forays into international relations, ironically, the nation was less fortunate at home.

By failing to recognize and identify—and fight—evil for eight long years, the United States paid the piper when about 3,000 American civilians died in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania in the attacks of September 11, 2001. The evil that went unrecognized and unnamed was radical Islam. By failing to make a moral judgment about it, our leaders failed to anticipate how its hatred for America would reveal itself. In not taking it seriously, the nation did not have its guard up against it, did not prepare for it, and so suffered from it.

People are still grieving over this tragedy, and they will be grieving for the rest of their lives because an American administration—and, to be frank, much of the nation in support of it—would not make a judgment about evil. Regrettably, the subsequent Bush administration called for a "War on Terror," playing semantics to avoid "offending" and "radicalizing" Muslims, and the Obama administration has continued and compounded the farce by renaming the war the "Overseas Contingency Operation." The whole world still finds itself beset by radical Islam, enduring the penalty of failure to identify and eradicate the evil of Muslim terrorists.

In these examples resides a spiritual lesson for everyone who is a Christian, and a few questions can help to delineate it: Is evil real to us? Do we believe in evil? Can we recognize it? Do we know how evil works? Are we aware of the forms that it takes? Do we realize that we are in an all-out war against evil? Are we prepared to fight that war?

Sun Tzu, a Chinese military strategist of many centuries ago, wrote a book called The Art of War. It is now frequently used as a textbook on how to fight one's way to the top of the ladder in the cutthroat business world. However, he did contribute one remarkable yet simple maxim that applies to this lesson. He wrote, "Know your enemy."

How can a person fight an enemy about which he knows nothing? He cannot—in fact, he will be slaughtered on the battlefield! For starters, he will not even realize he is in danger! Once he gets his nose bloodied, he will not know how to react to his enemy. He will not know his enemy's strategies or tactics. He will be totally ignorant of his numbers, his weaponry, and his experience. A person who does not know his enemy will quickly suffer ignominious defeat.

Do we know our enemy? Do we recognize that we are in a fight for our lives? Do we appreciate how real evil is? We will consider more on this next time.

The World's Need for Atonement

This past week saw a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, before which President Barack Obama gave another "historic" speech, or so the media tell us. That same media breathlessly reported about how significant it was that all these world leaders could come to the same place and speak openly about the world situation and try to "embrace a new era of engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect," as Obama put it in his address. From behind the same lectern, not only would Obama address the assembled delegates, but also Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Israeli President Benyamin Netanyahu would also speak.

From all the faith that the administration and the media seem to have in this policy of engagement—without preconditions, as Obama has promised—we should expect the dawning of world peace at any moment. Is that not all it takes? All we have to do, according to this formula, is to get world leaders in one room, and after a few handshakes and a couple of beers—voila! World peace! It is so simple: Just let them jabber at each other for a few hours, and they will walk out arm in arm, best friends forever!

If this will work so well for nations with deep-seated enmities and ancient disputes, just think how far it will go in solving our petty personal and domestic problems. Just apply the formula: Gather the fighting parties in one place, tell them that they have mutual interests and need to have mutual respect for one another, and let them talk it out without preconditions or anything. They should be bowling partners before dinnertime!

Seriously, do the administration and media really think we are so naïve? When has this formula worked before? Have we not lived through previous administrations that have tried variations of this policy only to meet with unmitigated failure and reduced international respect? Jimmy Carter tried this with the Iranian revolutionaries when they took Americans hostage at our embassy in Tehran. Did that not embolden terrorists throughout the Muslim world? To them, it was a perfect illustration of the fact that America was weak and easily led about by the nose.

The same could be said for Bill Clinton's disastrous policy in Somalia, where the "Black Hawk Down" scenario played out. The Somali warlords were not appeased in the least by our humanitarian efforts in Mogadishu and elsewhere. American soldiers were sent into that city without the military strength or the standing orders to be effective in anything except as targets for snipers and gangs of militants. Playing nice and being understanding and talking incessantly about peace did nothing but put Americans in harm's way—in Somalia and around the world—because it was clear to Muslim extremists that America was still soft and could not stand to see bloodshed.

So it was just nine months into the George W. Bush presidency that al Qaida hijacked four domestic airliners, flying two of them into the World Trade Center in New York City, crashing one of them into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and plunging the last into the ground in Pennsylvania. About 3,000 people lost their lives because Islamic fundamentalists believed that, because America had been all talk and little action in the recent past, it would be a pushover this time too. However, they failed to realize that the Bush administration was made of sterner stuff, and America's retaliation was severe, at least in comparison to its former lackadaisical behavior.

This is the real world, but the Obama administration is looking at it through rose-colored glasses. Tyrants cannot be talked out of power. Millennia-long conflicts cannot be solved by timely concessions and photo-op handshakes. Radical ideologies cannot be disputed with reasonable arguments so that their adherents suddenly say, "Sorry! I was wrong."

That is not how the real world works. Tyrants fight to the death to hold onto their power. Ancient feuds blaze into war. Radical ideologies are stamped out—if that—only by overwhelming force. Human nature guarantees that this is the only way it works because human nature rarely, if ever, thinks that it is wrong. In fact, human nature will often choose death before surrender. This is the simple reason why humanity has never progressed into any kind of "Golden Age" of universal peace, mutual understanding, and prosperity. Our nature will not allow us to.

Obama's policy will fail, just as Bush's did, Clinton's did, Reagan's did, and Carter's did. Mankind cannot find the way to peace because it is not in man to be at peace. Even if peace suddenly broke out all over the world, it would soon pass—very soon—and the people of the world would be back at each other's throats in no time. On this, the prophet Isaiah writes, "Their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths. The way of peace they have not known" (Isaiah 59:6-8).

Yet, the same prophet predicts, "It shall come to pass in the latter days that . . . they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore" (Isaiah 2:2, 4). What happens between the utter sinful, violent chaos of this world and that peaceful world to come?

Two things: The first is mentioned in Isaiah 2: "The mountain of the LORD's house shall be established" (verse 2). This is a reference to the return of Jesus Christ in power to rule all nations with a rod of iron (Revelation 19:11-15). Because of mankind's recalcitrant nature, He will be forced to deal with humanity sternly, as a conquering King, because man has rejected Him as the gentle and loving Lamb of God. He will set things right. This intervention in human affairs is foreshadowed in the Feast of Trumpets (Leviticus 23:23-25).

Yet, that is not enough; the second event must occur, which is seen in the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur, as the Jews call it. In the typical ritual of Leviticus 16 is illustrated what will happen after Christ's return. Two goats are selected, one to be sacrificed to pay for the sins of the people (fulfilled by the sacrifice of Jesus on Golgotha), and one to carry the guilt of sin and be led into the wilderness. This latter type will be fulfilled when Satan the Devil is captured and imprisoned in the Bottomless Pit (Revelation 20:1-3), where he will not be able to influence mankind with his rebellious, sinful, destructive attitudes (see II Corinthians 4:4 Ephesians 2:2-3; Revelation 12:9; etc.).

Until the minds of human beings are freed from this constant persuasion to live selfishly, there can be no peace. Such is our need—the world's need—for the atonement only God can supply.