Watchman in the Wilderness

It appears that Bernie Sanders may actually get the nomination he’s coveted for years. Right now he’s trailing fellow Democrat Joe Biden in South Carolina, but Biden is fading. Sanders, meanwhile, is leading in Nevada and also in national polls. Could it be, then, that we may get a socialist President in 2020? Why not? Electoral politics in America is becoming quite strange indeed. We elected Donald Trump in 2016. How many people believed that was going to happen?

Why do so many Americans, particularly young Americans, find Bernie and his socialism so appealing?  I think a good deal of the appeal revolves around marketing. Bernie’s been at it for a long time and demagogues have a strange appeal. In the  late 1920’s, for example, Huey Long, was elected governor of Louisiana by running on a populist platform that attracted Louisiana’s masses to his side. His promise of chicken in every pot and a fair deal for Louisiana’s poor was a powerful message and it catapulted him to power.  By the mid 1930’s he set his sights on bigger and grander things. His “share the welath program,” with its catchy slogan, “every man a king, but none will wear a crown” had incredible appeal with the masses. And, why wouldn’t it? It sounded so much like a socialist fair deal. By 1935, Long had over 4 million Americans willing to support him if he were to run for the Presidency. What the masses never saw, though, was Long’s ruthless ways. Once he got to the top, he intended to stay there. This is how he did it:

“Long’s folksy manner and sympathy for the underprivileged diverted attention from his ruthless autocratic methods. Surrounding himself with gangsterlike bodyguards, he dictated outright to members of the legislature, using intimidation if necessary. When he was about to leave office to serve in the U.S. Senate (1932), he fired the legally elected lieutenant governor and replaced him with two designated successors who would obey him from Washington. In order to fend off local challenges to his control in 1934, he effected radical changes in the Louisiana government, abolishing local government and taking personal control of all educational, police, and fire job appointments throughout the state. He achieved absolute control of the state militia, judiciary, and election and tax-assessing apparatus, while denying citizens any legal or electoral redress.”

I’ve always found it fascinating that demagogues always tell the masses they’re all about fairness and equality. Always! Bernie Sanders is no exception. He’ll tickle people’s ears to get the votes and leave out the “unimportant,” dirty details.

In 1988, Bernie and his wife, Jane, took a honeymoon trip to Russia. It was an absolute swoonfest, as this YouTube video  link to one of the events he attended attests. He talked about the Moscow subway at length and extolled its beauty, all but bowing before Josef Stalin’s corpse in worship. He was absolutely right. Nancy and I have seen the Moscow subway first hand. The stations have gorgeous murals on the walls and massive, ornate chandeliers hanging from the ceilings.  Bronze statues of Soviet soldiers line the corridors, with their jut jaws and firm stances poised and ever ready to defend the socialist utopia. They stand guard over other bronze statues of Russian peasants, some of whom are more than likely Kulaks from the Ukraine.

Bernie was right. The Moscow subway is absolutely stunning. What he failed to mention to his listeners was where Stalin got the wherewithal and money to build this Soviet showpiece. First of all, Stalin’s socialist utopia had no one with the necessary skills to design or engineer such a grand projet, so Stalin brought in engineers who had worked on London’s subway (affectionately known as the Tube). According to a 2015 NPR report, somewhere in the process “Stalin worried that they were learning too much about the layout of the city, so he had them tried for spying and deported.”

That just about covers the logistics, but where did the money for the project come from? Stalin, ever the clever opportunist, looked to Ukraine, the Soviet Union’s breadbasket. He collectivized the wheat farms of the Kulaks, Ukraine’s wealthy wheat farmers, and the remaining poor farmers,  took their crops, including the meager subsitence crops the Kulaks and poor farmers tried to hide from Soviet thugs who roamed from small farm to small farm. They even stole the crops that might have kept the Kulaks and other poor farmers alive. Once Stalin sold the wheat on international markets, he had more than enough hard cash to fund his showcase.

When all was said and done, about four million Ukranians had died in Stalin’s deliberately induced famine. That grisly period is now known as the Holodomor, or death by famine. I think genocide is probably a more accurate descritpion.

Did this trouble Stalin and his henchmen? Not at all. To them, the Kulaks and peasant farmers were nothing but cockaroaches or vermin. They needed to be exterminated.

There you have it. Stalin got his subway and the propaganda benefits that came with it. Someone, perhaps Napoleon, Robspierre, or Lenin, once said “you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.” In Stalin’s socialist utopia, the eggs became corpses and the omelet became a gorgeous subway.

I wonder if Bernie ever had an opportunity to ask his Soviet guides or Mikhail Grobachev himself how Stalin really managed to fund his project. Probably not, but if he had, they’d have him told that in their socialist utopia they actually defacated money whenever they needed it and had a massive bureaucracy that was dedicated to that task. I’ll bet Bernie would have believed them, figuring that bureaucracies like that explained why everyone in the Soviet Union was employed. 

If he ever does get elected President, I wouldn’t be surprised to see batallions of Ex-Lax munching “stimulators” roaming the halls of federal agencies all around this country.  

I knew Bernie and his adoring campaign staffers wouldn’t tell you about these inconvenient little deatils of Stalin’s utopia. It’s up to counter-revolutionaries like me. 

Am I saying that Bernie Sanders would do what Stalin did to the Kulaks? He seems like such a nice guy. You’re right, he does seem like a harmless old coot. I’d wager that he’d sit down and swill down a beer with me and puff a cigar or two while we politely discussed equality and justice for the masses. 

Appearances are often deceiving. In the case of Bernie Sanders, they’re meant to be. Demagogues and tyrants often  seem like nice folks with wonderful ideas, but their marketing skills can’t hide the ruthless nature of the beasts within them. I’ve seen lots of glossies of Hitler hugging little children or playing games with his belved dog, Blondie. I’ve seen photographs of Josef Stalin cuddling up to little girls.  

I can’t say for certain what Bernie Sanders would do as President to actually convert the United States to a socialist state, mainly because we have a Constitution and Bill of Rights as a buffer against demagogues and tyrants and their convoluted ideas of justice and equality. But, I have no doubt there is something sinister churning around inside Bernie’s gut. It comes as part of the socliast package, like peas and carrots or Forrest and Jennie.

We do have Constitutional protections. Thank God! But we also have something that could derail those protections.- a young, infatuated electorate. I’m not advocating shutting down the voting booths, mind you, but the right to vote does have its pitfalls, the primary one being a hoodwinked young elecorate. I say this because I was once young myself. I knew of no self-respecting Bostonian in my younger days who wasn’t a socialist at heart. I loved the sound of the word “free” as it  flowed ever so gently from the honey-dripped tongues of the soap box socialists and firebrands who roamed around the Boston Common back in the mid to late fifties. If I could have voted for a socialist back then I would have and so would millions of my fellow teenagers. I loved the idea of free, especially if the required capital for the free stuff was going to be exrtracted from some unsuspecting American Kulak. Thankfully, I wasn’t old enough to vote back then since the voting age was twenty-one. I survey our current scene and think it wouldn’t be bad at all to turn back the clock to those days.

How did America get to this place?  Can we fix ourselves or is the old saying true – there’s no fixing stupid? I’m beginning to wonder. I read an essay last night that Libertarian P.J. O’Rurke wrote back in 1982, some six years before Bernie and Jane spent their honeymoon extolling the virtues of soviet socialism. It was his account of ten days he’d spent on a Russian river cruise with a small group of  left-wing American peacenicks. He titled the piece, appropriately, “Ship of Fools.” 

Toward the end, in a section captioned “Loath Boat,” O’Rourke dsescribed a brief conversation he had with one of the left-wing women as they were passing through the locks of the Donn-Volga canal. The transcripton of the woman’s comments was classic:

“Isn’t it marvellous?” She said, staring at a gigantic blank wall of concrete. “They’re such wonderful engineers in the Soviet Union.” I agreed it was an impressive piece of work. “Marvelous, marvellous, marvelous, marvelous,” she said. She then peeked over the side. “And where do they get all their water?”

I’m tempted to go on and mention the warnings from some of the world’s great minds about the serious dangers that come with socialism, even socialism that’s branded as “democratic socialism.” I could mention the  literary works of Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak, and Dostoevsky. I could mention dissidents like Natan Sharansky or Andrei Sakharov. I could mention the Russian Orthodox, Baptist, Pentecostal, or Seventh Day Adventist dissidents. I could, but it wouldn’t help. Bernie has a one track mind that’s consumed by a non-existent socialist utopia and so do far too many ofAmerica’s adoring young. I’m afraid, as I said earlier, you can’t fix stupid.

There’s a lot of media buzz about the heroic defense of our First Amendment professional football players have mounted in response to our President’s intemperate remarks about what they’re doing.Many in the media seems to want us to embrace them as heroes, but I can’t bring myself to that place. The players were well within their rights to protest, but calling their actions heroic is a bridge too far.I can think of others who stood for what they believed who were truly heroic, not only because they stood up for what they believed, but also because they did so willingly, at considerable risk to themselves.On October 22nd, 1965, not long after I’d arrived in Vietnam, a young Chicagoan named Milton Olive, who was assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade, was killed in action. He and four other soldiers were moving through the jungle on a search and destroy mission. The Viet Cong started lobbing grenades at them. They were in trouble.

The medal of honor citation speaks eloquently of the type of man Milton Olive was: “Private Olive saw the grenade, and then saved the lives of his fellow soldiers at the sacrifice of his own by grabbing the grenade in his hand and falling on it to absorb the blast with his body.”Milton Olive risked everything for his fellow soldiers. He didn’t have to. He had surely felt the sting of prejudice during his life. He was African-American. Further, one of the men he saved, Robert Toporek, was southerner. He and Olive had fought one another before they arrived in Vietnam. Somehow, that fight opened the door for brotherhood. Toporek, who survived the firefight, described how it happened – “After that, we were brothers. We were fighting the same Viet Cong. We didn’t care what color your skin was, what race you were.”Robert Toporek, the white southerner, lived. Milton Olive, the African-American from Chicago, died to save him. That’s heroism born out of love.Sophie Scholl was born in Germany in 1921, to what has been described as “free-thinking Christian parents.” She grew up reading Socrates, Augustine, and Pascal. She learned from the Bible that “words must be made real in actions.” (James 1:22) Her father taught her that “What I want for you is to live in uprightness and freedom of spirit, no matter how difficult that proves to be.” By the time she was 21, she had seen the evil of the Third Reich and believed that time for both words and action had come. She helped form an organization called “the White Rose” in 1942. For about a year they secretly printed anti-Nazi literature and distributed it. The sentiments were printed in bold fonts with simple messages – “LONG LIVE FREEDOM’”or “DOWN WITH HITLER.”  It wasn’t a glamorous protest, with media breathlessly hanging on every word they published.
In 1943, she and her “co-conspirators” were caught and subjected to a show trial. The Nazi judge’s verdict was a foregone conclusion. Sophie was to be executed on the guillotine. Her last recorded words to her cellmate spoke volumes – “Such a glorious, sunny day and I must go…What will my death matter if, because of our actions, thousands of people will be awakened and stirred to action.”

Sophie Scholl was 22 when she died. She could have remained silent in the face of the evil around her, but remaining steadfast in principle meant more to her than life itself. That’s heroism of the highest order.The Little Sisters of the Poor is a Catholic order of nuns that was founded in 1839 by Saint Jeanne Jugan. Her mission statement for the order was simple – “My little ones, never forget that the poor are Our Lord; in caring for the poor say to yourself: This is for my Jesus – what a great grace!”The American branch of the order provides food, shelter, and nurture to the old, infirm, and poor. They ask nothing for themselves. They own their dignity and faith, nothing more. They take vows of poverty in order to do their good work.

Yet, the Little Sisters have run afoul of our government. They’ve refused to obey what they believe to be an immoral Obamacare mandate to provide abortifacients to those they employ. They’ve been threatened with fines so steep they would have to shut down their operations. Their case has gone to the Supreme Court. It’s still in limbo. The Little Sisters are standing firm. They’re risking everything for what they believe. That, I submit to you, is heroism.I have no axes to grind with the N.F.L. I just don’t consider what they’re doing heroic. When it comes to heroism, there are plenty of candidates who are more worthy of that honor.

Our Presidential campaigns have begun in earnest, with the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries under our belts. In other words, silly season in America has begun.

On the Republican side, Donald Trump, as bombastic and crude as he’s ever been, is gobbling up delegates like a famished Pac-Man. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders, promising a socialist utopia, high paying jobs, free health care, free college education, and a chicken in every American pot, won the night in New Hampshire. Pete Buttigieg, who promises everything to everyone except the right to life for the unborn, is nipping at Sanders’s heels. In a surprise, Amy Klobuchar sprinted past Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden into third place.  Interestingly, she is the only Democrat who has told pro-life Democrats they can still be part of the familty and function as cigar store indians when the rubber really meets the road.. Elizabeth Warren finished a distant fourth. For quite a while now she’s been imitating another famouse citizen of Massachusetts, Lizzie Borden, who chopped her mother and father up back in 1892. While the good Senator from Massachusetts hasn’t given her mother “40 whacks” or her father “41,”  she has all but cut up her chances of being nominated. Voters tend to shy away from candidates who flit from place to place in a private jet railing about fat cats or sport a deer in the headlights look on the stump. Joe Biden, the presumptive front-runner when all of this started, left for South Carolina as the polls in New Hampshire were closing. Knowing he was in for a brutal beating in the Granite State, he decided that pandering to the African-American vote in South Carolina was a far better option. Andrew Yang decided he’d had enough and took his thousand dollar bills back to Silicon Valley while Tulsi Gabbard and Tom Steyer are still hanging by a thread. I suppose I should mention that Deval Parrick and Michael Bennett have also dropped out. The tell-tale clue that this was their best otpion was the three tenths and four tenths of a percent of the vote they garnered in New Hampshire. That leaves the Democrats with only one other candidate worthy of mentioning – Michael Bloomberg. While he wasn’t on the primary ballot in New Hampshire, he did manage to pull off a coup of sorts by getting two Democrats and one Republican in Dixville Notch to write him in. It’s a humble start for sure, but with billions to spend, he is just getting started. In fact, I think he deserves a good deal of attention and I’m going to give it to him.

Here in the Kansas City area, Bloomberg is spending money on campaign advertising like a drunken sailor. I remember when he first started talking about running, everyone seemed to know him as Michael Bloomberg, It’s a good name for a Presidential candidate. It has a dignity to it and I think it may even have a hint of wealth as well. But, with the Kansas City area advertising something has changed. He wants us to call him “Mike.” In one splashy ad he makes it plain with his closing worlds – “I’m Mike Bloomberg and I will get it done.” Why, shucks. He’s just one of us old hayseeds. If you put a straw hat on his head and a blade of grass in his teeth he’d be a dead ringer for Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn.

Mike, as he is now known, seems quite confident. He’s got a lot of money and he doesn’t mind spending it by the boatload. But, even the most confident campaigner can occasionally engage his mouth before the “better angels” of his nature kick in. And, wouldn’t you know, it actually happened…..twice. The news media found something he’d said in an interview back in April of 2014.. It was a classic Freudian slip. This is what he said in that interview as he touted his gun control and healthy eating campaigns in New York City: “I am telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.” A few years after that interview, he decided it was time for another Freudian slip in an interview with CBS News: “I like what I see when I look in the mirror….We’ve probably saved millions of lives, and certainly we’ll save tens of millions of lives going forward,” referring to the causes he has supported and funded for the future. “There aren’t many people that have done that. So, you know, when I get to heaven, I’m not sure I’m going to stand for an interview. I’m going right in.” 

There you have it, from Mike’s lips to God’s ears. In our midwestern vernacular it will probably sound something like this whenever he gets to the gates of the Celestial City and sees Jesus for the first time. “Hey big man in the sky, I’m comin’ through so get outta’ the way. Ain’t got no time to answer no questions. I earned the mansion. Now, where is it?

Mike’s megalomania was in a class by itself, but the candidates who had actually campaigned in New Hampshire were suffering from their fair share as well. Did they catch it from Mike? It made me wonder whether megalomania might be contagious. I think it is.

This all reminded me of a trip Nancy and I took to Russia back in 2013. We spent a few days in Moscow. One night we did a tour of the city, which was beautiful. Our guided mentioned seven tall skysrapers as we passed them. Josef Stalin had them designed as Soviet showpieces and had them named, appropriately, the Seven Sisters. One of them was to be a building designed to honor Vladimir Lenin, the true architect of the Russian Revolution that began in 1917 and ended in 1923. When Lenin died in 1924, plans were undertaken to construct a 1,624 foot tall skysrcaper with a statue of Lenin festooned on the top of the building, with his finger pointing skyward. It was to be called the Palace of the Soviets. The project began with the demolition of the Christ the Saviour Cathedral, a huge Russian Orthodox Church. The symbolism of the proposed new scraper was almost impossible to miss. God was dead and he was being replaced by Vladimir Lenin. Interestingly, the skyscarper never got built. The Second World War put the kibosh on it.The hole remained in the ground until 1958 until Nikita Krushchev transformed it into “the world’s largest open air swimming pool.” We visited the site  while we were in Moscow. It had been re-transformed back into Christ the Saviour Russian Orthodox Cathedral. It’s an absolutely stunning structure.

Lenin is, of course, dead. He died in 1924 from a hemorrhagic stroke. His statue never made it to the top of the Palace of the Soviets. He never did become God. You can, however, see his corpse on display in Red Square. He’s decked out in a nice dark suit, a pink dress shirt and a matching tie. His beard is neatly trimmed. You can pass by his body if you’re ever in Moscow. I understand it’s free, except for the five cents it will cost you to store your valuables. Neither Nancy nor I did, figuring that gawking at a soul on ice was a bit too much. But, lots of American tourists do pass by his body and shell out the nickel. I asked one of the locals if the Russians ever pay homage to him and pass by. He laughed and in impeccable Engllsh said, “Nah, he’s dead and so is communism.”

History can be quite interesting. The megalomania that’s plaguing our political candidates has wreaked havoc on quite a few tyrants over the ages. Pharoah had the Red Sea and Moses. Alexander the Great thought there weren’t enough worlds to conquer. He died when he was only thirty-two from typhoid fever before he could find the ones he’d missed. Caesar had too much Gaul and Napoleon had his Waterloo. They all may have thought they were God incarnate, but the grim reaper came for them and that was that.

Thankfully, I’m glad that in the end we don’t have to put our trust in megalomaniacs to save us. There was a man who lived over two thousand years ago who is the only person who  can truly lay claim to that lofty position. He was an itinerant Nazarene preacher. His name was, and is, Jesus. He walked the Judean hills and the streets of Jersualem. He brought sight to the blind. The crippled and lame could walk again when he touched them. He cleansed lepers. He brought hope to the hopeless. His words turned the world upside down then and they still do today. I thought about our current crop of megalomaniacs and the empty promises and proud boasts they make as I considered some of the things Jesus had to say during his short earthly life. For instance, there’s the account recorded in the twenty first chapter of Luke of Jesus’ observations of the temple treasury in Jersualem. He saw the rich offering their money out of their wealth. Was he impressed with them? It doesn’t seem so, because his eye caught something else, a poor widow putting “two very small copper coins” in the treasury. Then he made a stunning observation – “Truly I tell you,” he said, “This poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” On another occasion he told a parable to a group of self righteous people who “were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else.” (Luke 18:9) The parable went something like this. Two men, one a Pharasee and the other a tax collector were praying in the temple. The Pharasee prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” (Luke 18:11-12). The tax collector, on the other hand, “Stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and prayed, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” (Luke 18:13) Jesus then concluded the parable with these amazing words – “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Some of our current crop of candidates may think they have the power to save us, but the reality is  far different. They think they may be able to hide their megalomania with their talk of paradise on earth and justice, but they can’t. Michael Bloomberg may think that his wealth and so called good works have earned him the right to just barge right though the pearly gates, but they haven’t.

Someday, in the end, “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.” When that day comes, I find myself wondering what the megalomaniacs might say to Jesus. Would they try to justify themselves in the same manner they did here on earth? I wonder if Jesus might answer them with these words  as he stands between a poor widow and a repentant tax collector – “I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” 

 While I pray there is still hope, the course the megalomaniacs are on is perilous. Heaven is not the place for megalomaniacs. It’s the place for the humble and contrite. I truly do pray they will see the light and change course.

Right now I’m working on what will become a very long essay comparing the 1860 Presidential election of Abrham Lincoln’s time and the 2016 and 2020 elections of our time. I keep wanting to put it together, but every time I do, more information pops up. I’m promising myself I’ll be done with it in a few days.

In the meantime, I’ve been giving thought to a man I knew for far to short a time – Jim Kegin. He was the pastor of the church Nancy and I attended when we first moved to Emporia. It’s hard for me even now to believe he’s been gone from this earth for about 10 years. 

I’ve never met a man quite like him. He was down to earth, yet quite erudite. He was the only pastor I’ve ever met who actually earned his Doctorate in Ministry (1991) the hard way. He earned it in the classroom. He never flashed it around like a diamond studded stickpin. He was as conversant and understadning with a truck driver as he was with someone with an impressive educational pedigree. He was principled and lived out the truth of the Gospel until the end of his life.

I looked back through my archives and found an old essay I wrote about a few days we spent together in May, 2005 at a men’s church retreat. By that time, he was beginning to feel the effects of the diseas that eventually took his life, even with all of that, the Jim everyone knew had a way of shining through.  The essay that follows documents those days. I titled it “Sherbucky’s Secret.” the reason for the title will become obvious if you happen to read the essay.

SHERBUCKY’S SECRET

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”

• Proverbs 17:22 (King James Version)

I just got back last night from five days at a men’s retreat. In all about a hundred and sixty men attended, including nineteen or twenty from our church. I had a great time.

For me this retreat came at a time in my life when I’m not especially needy. Now it’s not that I don’t have needs, but right now my life is on a pretty even keel. I guess when I think about it my real need right now is to contribute. It’s a good place to be.

What the time meant for me was that I was able to just be myself and contribute in small ways to our group. As I said, it’s a good place to be. It also helped that the guys from our church are very accepting. I’m still a New Englander at heart, spending a good part of my time in a world of ideas and concepts. The guys at church are much more down to earth. Theirs is a world of cutting boards, cutting cows, or cutting pipes. At first glance you wouldn’t think that they’d fit into my world or that I’d fit into theirs. But, God’s grace and a bit of effort makes it so. The beauty of it all is that I think it brings balance to our lives. I once heard it put this way – “If you dismiss concepts and lofty ideals because you believe that those who live in those worlds are out touch or if you dismiss the work of the plumber because his world is beneath your dignity, then neither your pipes nor your theories will ever hold water.”

One of the immediate benefits of being around nothing but a bunch of guys is that the pressure is off. We could belch, pass gass, scratch our crotches, or wear mismatched clothes and no one really cared or even noticed. The getting together was all about being just company and companionship, not polite company. I don’t think I once heard statements like, “You’re not really gonna’ go out to dinner dressed like that, are you?” or “You can’t wear corduroy now, it’s past April 21st!” or “Did you just emit “something that smells like sulphur” near the punch bowl?” There in a collection of pot bellied men those things weren’t even on the radar screens.

The real highlight of the five days for me was rooming with Jim Kegin, our pastor emeritus. For those of you who haven’t read my blog for a good period of time, Jim had to step down from his day to day roles as pastor of our church and his district leadership role for the Foursquare churches in the Midwest. Not too long ago now he was diagnosed with Pick’s disease, which is described, in medical terms, as:

“A progressively degenerative neurological disease similar to Alzheimer’s Disease for which there is no known prevention, or cure. Pick’s Disease affects the frontal and temporal lobes first, with earliest symptoms showing up as changes in personality and a decline in function at home as well as work. Pick’s Disease is frequently first diagnosed as stress or depression and then as Alzheimer’s disease.”

Back in December when Jim and his wife, Judy, first announced what the doctors had told them, I wrote about the feelings it brought up in me and everyone else at Victory Fellowship. It all just seemed to be so unfair.

One of the things I really admire about Jim and Judy, though, is that from the day they made the announcement they wouldn’t allow us to wallow in pity. They’ve taken the lead by using a multi-pronged approach to this adversity – accepting it for what it is and seeking as much medical help as is possible, praying for healing, aiding the transition in leadership this has necessitated, compiling the wisdom they’ve gathered over the years, and moving on into this part of their journey of faith.

In the two days before the retreat actually began Jim and I were assigned to do some of the painting that needed to be done to get the campground in shape. It was a perfect assignment for two “thinkers” like us. While Ben Gray, Pastor Mike, Danny Horst and the other guys did the heavy work like tile, cabinets, and sheetrock, Jim and I plied our trade as “arteests,” adding the final touches. I dubbed the two of us “van Gogh and Gaugin.” If you ever get a chance to visit Camp Pomme de Terre and see the lower level of dormitory seven you’ll understand why. It’s impressionism at its very best!

I didn’t get much sleep on Wednesday night. Jim and Pastor Mike, my roommates, had a snoring duel going on. If I were to have to judge the competition I’d have to say that Mike won, more than likely because of a late spurt at about 4:30 am.

Come to think of it, I didn’t get much sleep Thursday night either. Mike had moved into one of the other dormitories and I’d found my earplugs, so I went to bed thinking that I was going to get eight hours or so of interrupted sleep. All went well until about four o’clock in the morning when, through the earplugs, I heard some mumbling. I turned over, thinking that the sound would dissipate. But it didn’t. For some reason I decided to take the earplugs out to see where the sound was coming from and what it was. As soon as I did I could hear Jim chuckling in his sleep. It was quite infectious and I began to chuckle a bit too. Then, at about four fifteen I heard the first of what where to be six words or statements. After laughing a bit Jim said, in low measured tones, “sherbucky.” I waited for a minute or two to see if something else would come to clarify, but it didn’t. Then, for the next fifteen minutes I pondered the meaning of that word – “sherbucky.” “Is sherbucky a concept I missed somewhere in my theology classes long ago?” “Something from Aquinas I’ve never read?” “Is sherbucky a place or a thing?” “Or is Sherbucky a person?” There in the stillness of the Camp Pomme de Terre night there were no answers.

My pondering was interrupted at about four thirty by the following words from Jim, who was still sleeping quite soundly – “Got a ladle for that honey?” His question was then punctuated with a chuckle or two and the silence once again enveloped the room. By now I was wondering about not only who or what sherbucky was, but also whether or not I should be adding a comma between “that” and “honey.” It was all becoming a great mystery to me. I decided it would be best to start writing down the things I was hearing. At about five I recorded these mysterious words – “It’s in Arizona.” At five-fifteen there was this gem – Woo, wah…..Rope a dope.” At five fifteen there was a reminder of sorts – “Gotta get more exercise.” At five forty five it all ended with this masterpiece – “Coke, no joke.”

From that point, until about six thirty, I tried to piece it all together. “Sherbucky…..sherbucky…..It’s got to mean something. But what?” I thought. “And just what’s in Arizona?” “Sherbucky perhaps?” “Or honey?” The mysteries began to deepen. “Woo, wah…..Rope a dope.” “I mean, what’s up with that?”

And so it went until a stroke of inspiration hit me. I had gotten a hold of the stuff that made Dashiell Hamett and Mickey Spillane famous. I had a mystery that needed someone to solve it, someone like Sam Spade.

There, in the pre-dawn darkness I began to create “Sherbucky’s Secret,” my homage to Spillane and Hammett’s literature noir. My hero was Clyde Club, king of the detectives. I could almost see him sitting at his roll-top desk as the story began, sipping week old black coffee, barking at his secretary, the ever loyal, ever snippy, gum chewing Alice, “Hey Alice pull the Sherbucky file for me, would ya?” A while later I could hear him responding wryly to some Brooklyn tough who was trying to, as we say in the Midwest, “pull the wool over his eyes,” as he was looking for leads in the “sherbucky” case. As only Clyde could express it he sneered and asked his adversary, “Got a ladle for that honey?” I could then see our intrepid sleuth finding an important clue. ‘That’s it…..That’s it…..It’s in Arizona.”

After subduing a thug I could hear him explaining his self defense methods. With hands raised, knees bent, he cut loose with his famous calling card just before he leveled the crook – “Woo, wah…..Rope a dope.” It was all over in a flash. Then, as he stood over the fallen thug he had this advice to offer as he walked away – “Gotta’ get more exercise.” Finally, as he was in Arizona trying to piece it all together he found himself in a “gin joint.” As he leaned over the bar he ordered “Coca-Cola, straight up.” The barkeep, not believing what he’d just heard gave Clyde that look, you know, the one that says, “Say it again, Clyde.” In a deadpan that only Clyde could muster up he snorted in response, “Coke, no joke.”

But, try as I might, I could never quite piece it all together. I never could figure out who or what “sherbucky” was. I even tried “googling” it a little while ago. All I got was “Did you mean sherbuck?” and “Your search – sherbucky – did not match any documents.”

I’ll keep on working on it. There’s got to be an answer.

Well, for the rest of the retreat I had great fun at Jim’s expense. On Friday as we were painting I’d occasionally ask him, “So, who or what is sherbucky anyway?” At lunch that same day I asked what was in Arizona. And so it went. It even became infectious enough that the other guys picked it up, re-dubbing Jim from “Gaugin” to “Sherbucky.”

Jim handled all the ribbing with his customary humor and grace, much like he’s handled this period of adversity in his life. It was a wonder to behold.

As it has been since December this has been a time of transition for Jim, and he’s handled it all with great dignity. I believe that’s important for him and also important for those who have stepped into the roles he once filled.

The retreat leaders spent some time honoring Jim for his work over the years and talking about the transition that has taken place. As I listened to all the talk of change and new things, I was struck by something else in all of this. Yes, there is transition, there’s no denying that. But even in all the change there are still important things that Jim needs to contribute to the greater good. It’s his wisdom and grace under fire.

On Sunday, before we left for home, I shared with him about things I’d been sensing during our five days together. There was a small portion of Holy Writ that struck me as quite appropriate. I’ts from Joshua:

Joshua 13:1 (New International Version)

Land Still to Be Taken

1 “When Joshua was old and well advanced in years, the LORD said to him, “You are very old, and there are still very large areas of land to be taken over.”

The first half of the statement seems to be an acknowledgment of sorts. “You are very old.” In the King James version the description of the aging process is put this way – “stricken in years.” I wondered what Joshua must have been thinking as he heard those words. Maybe memories of great victories raced past his mind’s eye, memories of Jericho and Ai, memories of great victories over the Amorites and the Anakites, memories of the day the sun stood still, memories of victories from the north to the south. Perhaps he was also thinking, on hearing the acknowledgement of his advancing years, that he was going to be lost in the transition, that his best days were now passed, that he was going to have wonderful memories of those days, but no real future.

I think it was at about that time that the Almighty reminded Joshua that “there are still very large areas of land to be taken over.” It’s was God’s way of saying to the great man, “Yes, Joshua, there is transition, but I still have a lot of work left for you to do. The years have advanced on you, but it’s not over for you by any stretch of the imagination.”

I shared my thoughts with Jim and told him that I sensed that the wisdom he’d compiled over the years needed to be documented and that the need was critical. “The generation ahead of you is going to need it,” I said. “There are going to be times coming up when the younger leaders will stumble and they’re going to need your wisdom to pick themselves up to keep moving on.”

There was a lot that happened in those five days, but for me nothing was more vital than those times I was able to share with Jim. I got to see God’s grace working in a very powerful way in his life. The shared laughter was indeed like medicine, the wisdom given, by way of transition, to a new generation of leaders was transformational.

You know, I doubt that I’ll ever finish the mystery of who or what “sherbucky” is. But something greater, more powerful was revealed in its place. It was the power of a merry heart and how, by God’s grace it is transforming Jim Kegin. While I can’t predict the future, I sense that his transition is going to be very active, very alive. Jim needs to press on with that work …..and so do we!

“Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”

Deuteronomy 5:16 (New International Version)

As a preface to what I want to write about, I’ll start with a little bit of personal experience.

Like most people, my experience with the poor and downtrodden, particularly the homeless is a bit checkered. When Nancy and I lived in New Jersey, for example, my duties with FedEx would often take me into New York City. From where we lived, the best way to get there was either by bus or train. I usually took a bus that would go directly from Parsippany, where we lived, to the Port Authority bus terminal on 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue. Back in the late eighties and early nineties that trip was quite an adventure. Any time I’d get to the main terminal I was greeted, so to speak, by hordes of homeless men and women panhandling, the smell of urine and rotting human feces wafting through the air, and cops wandering from storefront to storefront rousting the homeless out of what always appeared to be their assigned spots on the floor. This first few times I encountered them I felt sympathetic, but after after several encounters the ordeal started to wear thin and I became like the average New Yorker. I would either step over or around them, muttering under my breath, “Get a job, will you!” I wasn’t always that cold-hearted, Years before I’d had my own brief encounter with homelessness. I was going through a very painful divorce and I was completely out of resources. I had absolutely nothing but a beat up old Ford and a job in downtown Kansas City that provided me with enough money for gas, child support, alimony, and barely enough food to last from payday to payday. One night, in the dead of a bitterly cold winter, I found myself on Pershing Avenue between the main Post Office and the Riss Building, where I worked. At about midnight I crawled into the back seat and laid down. For me, this was going to be the end of the road. I tried to sleep, but I was crying so hard I couldn’t. I felt a wave of cynicism and grief sweep over me. “So this is it, Lord,” I prayed. The cynicism and grief morphed in to plans. “If only I had a bottle of sneaky Pete to drown my sorrows.” “Maybe I could mug some little old lady in the street come morning.” Somehow I managed to fall asleep. I don’t know how long I slept, but there was a sudden sound of knocking on my car window. I looked out and saw a cop. He motioned for me to roll down my window. I complied. “You okay, buddy?” he asked. “Are you sleepin’ off a bender?” The only response I offered was “I’m okay, I’ll be alright.” He knew things weren’t alright and he pressed me. “You got any family or friends that may be worried about you?” “Do you have a place to stay?” “I’d really like to help you.” It’s strange. His offer of help troubled me more than it comforted me. I wondered if he was going to take me into the jail to sit around with other homeless people and derelicts. That was something I did not want, so I told him I did have a place to stay and I’d drive over there was soon as he was done with me. I’m not sure if he believed me, but he did let me go. I spent the rest of the night driving around, from downtown Kansas City, Missouri, across the Lewis and Clark Viaduct and back. Morning finally came and I made my way to work, looking disheveled and defeated.

That was one of the lowest points in my life. Thankfully, God had mercy on me and I found a place to start living with a young friend from the church I was attending. 

There’s not a lot more to say about that encounter. It was painful and, yet, somehow providential. I learned that the things we sometimes think we see clearly aren’t nearly as clear as we think they are. 

This brings me to what I really want to write about.

I had a brief encounter a few mornings ago on my home from a bi-weekly Parkinson’s therapy group. I had stopped at Sam’s Club to fill up the gas tank and to get some paper towels. On my way out to the street I noticed a woman sitting in the island near the traffic light. She was panhandling. She was holding up a crude cardboard sign that had the word “Help” printed on it. I stopped, rolled down my window, and asked her to come over to my car. As soon as she got close enough I could see that she appeared to be in her early forties. She was short, a bit dumpy in appearance, and had a matronly look. She was wearing thick glasses. My original intent in stopping was to give her five dollars and be on my way, but my curiosity got the better of me. “Are you alright?” I asked her. As soon as she opened her mouth to answer I could see that two of her front teeth were missing. She half-smiled through the gap in her teeth and responded – “I’m just a bit down on my luck, that’s all. I’m gonna’ be alright.”

“Are you homeless?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “But I’m really okay. I start a job on Monday and I’m gonna’ get myself on my feet.”

I tried wrapping my mind around what I was seeing and I was having great difficulty. “How can things like this happen?” I started asking myself. Then the words just came out. “Oh, mother, mother, don’t you have any family who can help you?” I pleaded. “Not really,” she responded meekly. “I do have a son, but he’s too busy now in college.” 

I wanted to ask what “too busy” meant, but I found myself getting angry. How could a son, whose mother is homeless, be too busy to take care of his mother who was living in desperate straits. It just wouldn’t compute.

I gave her the five dollars I’d taken out of my wallet earlier, said a brief payer for her, and went on my way.

Could I have done more? I’m sure I could have, but I felt I’d tried my best. I’ll leave it at that.

I started writing again so that, as a Christian, I could make occasional statements about the things that I see in a culture that appears to have lost its moorings. What I encountered this morning was a perfect example of that untethering.

Early on in the Old Testament, God gave Moses, the man who had led the “children” of Israel out of the bondage of Egypt to the land he had promised to give them.In addition to the land, God also outlined his expectations for his liberated people.. Those expectations came inscribed on stone tablets.  We know them as the Ten Commandments. Each of those commandments was supremely important, but the one I want to focus on in this essay is the fourth commandment. “Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you.” That would be more than enough, but this commandment is the only one that has explicit seeds of blessing planted in it. “So that you may live long and that it will go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”

I suppose one could ask what it means to honor one’s mother and father. How should a person do that? Could that homeless woman’s son make the argument that by going to college he was honoring her desire for him to succeed in life? After all,  doesn’t any parent want their children to succeed in life? Could it have been that this woman hadn’t been a good parent? Possibly. Were there grievances that had caused a rupture between son and mother so deep they couldn’t be healed? Again, that might be possible.

With each question raised, however, there came an objection from heaven. There is no escape clause in the fourth commandment. It simply says we are to honor our mothers and fathers. We are commanded to honor them even if they haven’t been the best parents. We are to honor them even if it means we might have to sacrifice some of our goals and dreams to act on their behalf. There’s no line of demarcation, nothing that says we can honor them up to a certain point and abandon them when things get trying or difficult.

These are strange and difficult times in America. Our economy is booming. Our 401K’s are exploding. Yet, there are legions of us living on the streets. Are they all just down on their luck? Are they all worthless vagabonds? That’s not a question I can answer.

My mind keeps going back to that woman. She didn’t look like a vagabond, nor did she looked like the type of woman who would abuse her child. She simply looked desperate.

I find myself wondering how often we find excuses so that we can avoid doing what God expects of us. 

There’s an encounter between Jesus and the religious leaders of his day recorded in  the seventh chapter of Mark’s gospel. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+7&version=NIV The story begins with the religious leaders chiding Jesus and his disciples for not ritually washing their hands before they ate. I’m not sure what they were expecting, but it certainly wasn’t what they wanted. Jesus was furious and he let them have it. The full response follows:

“Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”  And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe[c] your own traditions!  For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’[e] 11 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)—  then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”

What Jesus was referring to in this passage was Jewish tradition called “Corban.” It was a tradition that allowed someone to set aside assets that would/should be used to take care of a parent and use those assets instead to avoid their responsibility. They brazenly called it a “gift to God.”

I’ve given thought to that woman since our encounter, I wonder what the modern day equivalent of Corban might me. “I’ve got to go to college.” “I’ve got a career and a life ahead of me to consider.” “She and I didn’t get along. Honestly, she drove me up the wall.” “The money is needed as part of the church building program.”

You can fill in the blanks from this point on. I’m done. I’ve said that I’ve said and that’s that.

This is what the Lord says:

“Stand at the crossroads and look;ask for the ancient paths,ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.”

• Jeremiah 6:16 (New International Version)

A few days ago, I read an essay from Rod Dreher’s “The American Conservative” titled “You Cannot Imagine the Worst.” 

The inspirational seed for the essay came from some e-mail correspondence between Dreher and a scientist who lived a good part of his early life in a Soviet-bloc country. The scientist was responding to a question Dreher was pondering out loud about whether, given the current anti-religious climate in the United States, persecution of religious believers was going to increase to intolerable levels. Dreher wasn’t sure that the threat to religious liberty was that dire. Like most Americans, he holds a firm belief in the idea that our Constitution and its First Amendment would protect us if things ever got out of hand.

The scientist, who is now a United States citizen, responded to Dreher in very stark terms:

“I think that you, and most of Americans, deeply misunderstand human nature; what it really is capable of. That’s what I loved about Americans. Unbounded and unfounded optimism, always willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. No longer. I see pent-up hatred all around me. People are looking for an outlet to vent it. Both sides. Myself included.”

He concluded his response to Dreher with a warning:

“I think that you cannot imagine the worst because it looks so normal outside. One can be hauled to the gallows even when it’s sunny and warm. It’s hard to explain but when I look out and it’s all beautiful I always think about what it is trying to hide, what’s in store.”

I now find myself asking the question – Are we Christians, pariticularly socially Conservative Christians, going to face increasing persecution in the not too distant future?

There’s a part of me that says that something like this could never happen in America. We have Constituional protections and, morever, we are a civilized people. We would never do something so abohorrent to such treasured American principles. We also place high value on societal peace and harmony. Yet, as much as I would like to believe the best of us, our own history warns us that we are not always as noble as we’d like to think we are.

In 1838, Abraham Lincoln, who was only 28 years old at the time, spoke to a group called “The Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illiinois. The title of his address was in part a statement and in part an encoded question of sorts – “The perpetuation of our political institutions.”

Today, the address has come down to us with the simple title “The Lyceum Address.”

Lincoln began his remarks by reminding his audience of the providential history that had formed us a nation – “We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.”

How, then, should such a nation preserve those highly prized freedoms? What is such a nation’s “task of gratitude” to those who bestowed those gifts and what is such a nation’s responsibility to posterity? How do we preserve them? At this point, Lincoln did not mince words. They were stark, foreboding words, but they had the ring of truth that still sounds with clarity and truth today, almost two hudred years after they were spoken:

“How then shall we perform it?–At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?– Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!–All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.”

“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

Lincoln, like most Americans, was an optimist at heart. He believe in the nobility of our national charter. He believed in the nobility of the American people. But, knowing he would be remiss in his duty, he spoke the following ominous words of warning:

“I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth, and an insult to our intelligence, to deny.”

Less than twenty-five years after Lincoln addressed those gathered at the Lyceum, America, the land that had been so blessed, was at war with itself.

Today, we in America find ourselves at another crossroad. We are the most prosperous nation the world has ever seen. We are the most powerful nation in the world. Our culture is omnipresent. Everyone in the world, it seems, wants to be like us. We can travel the world; we can communicate with electronic devices that give us access to information that no civilization has ever had. 

Yet, as it was in Lincoln’s time, there are ominous signs on the horizon. I’m seventy-seven years old now. I’ve seen America in good times and bad. I’ve lived through the sixties, the Vietnam War, the racial divisions. I’ve lived through them and learned through experience that we Americans were somehow willing to find our way through these times, to solve what seemed to be intractable problems, to compromise, to dig our way out of deep holes in our society. But, there’s something very different about our current divisions. The hate is becoming increasingly bitter. The political divisions are becoming deeper. The chasm between those who profess faith, particularly Conservative Christianity, and those who are openly hostile to that faith is widening. 

In the light of Lincoln’s 1838 warning, I find myself asking what things might look like in the United States in the next twenty-five years. Have our political, social, and religious divides become so deep that there’s no turning back? Is a wave of Chrisitian persecution looming here in the United States. Is national suicide on our horizon?

“Such ideas are preposterous,” you say. We’re Americans. We’re civilized. We would never destroy ourseleves. We would nver persecutre anyone who disagrees with us poltically or religiously. 

That, I contend, is an exercise in self-deception. As much as we think we’d never stoop to such levels, history, expecially the history of the twentieth century, stands as a powerful witness against us.

A few years ago, I read Elie Wiesel’s “All Rivers Run to the Sea.” It’s as moving as any biographical work I’ve ever read. Wiesel was born in the small village of Sighet, Romania in the late 1920’s. In the 1930’s he undertook religious studies at a yeshiva near his hometown. Life seemed to hold great promise for Elie. In 1940, things changed dramatically. Hungary annexed the village of Sighet. Elie and his family were forced to live in Jewish ghettos. Within four years, things got immeasaurably worse. Hungary made a political agreement with Nazi Germany that allowed the Nazis to deport Jews living in Sighet to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The results were as predictable as they were tragic. By 1945, almost all of Elie’s family had been murdered. Only Elie and his two older sisters were liberated.

Some in Sighet saw the tragic events on the horizon even before they happened. There was a man in Sighet that everyone knew as “Moishe the Beadle (a minor religious official).” Some called him “Moishe the Madman.” He kept trying to tell his fellow villagers that the German soldiers who occupied Sighet in 1944 weren’t there for some noble purpose. The people didn’t believe him at first. The Germans were often seen handing out chocolate to the children. Any time Moishe would plead with them that people were being taken away, never to return,  they would respond, “These are the people who have given us Goethe and Schiller. They would never harm us.”

How tragically wrong they were. How prophetic were Moishe’s warnings.

Years after he was liberated, Wiesel wrote about those tragic years. Like any reasonable person, he asked how somethng like this could happen. How could one of the most civilized nations on the planet have stooped to such barbarity? Was it just a few cohorts of uncivilized barbarians who were responsible for all the evil?  Elie argued otherwise, noting the following: “I believe it was Jean Améry who noted that the first to bow to the oppressor’s system and to adopt its doctrines and methods were the intellectuals.” 

While many refused to bow to the evil and preferred death at the hands of the nazis, far too many intellectuals, those who had positions of prestiege and power in society, became inteimately involved in the evil. Wiesel framed his observation in the form of a question:

“On the other hand, how many secular humanists and intellectuals renounced their value system the moment they grasped its futility and uselessness? Sobered, disoriented, and disillusioned, some allowed themselves to be seduced by the ideology of cruelty. The number was significant.”

Hate isn’t the exclusive purview of the uneducated and unsophisticated. The well educated, intellectuals, and society’s elite citizens are every bit as capable of great evil as any other setment of society. In fact, they can be even more dangerous. First, the evil promoted by such groups develops compelling ideologies to butresss their hate. Second, they almost always hold powerful places in our social structures. They’re leader, movers, and shakers. Hence, they have the power to implement their ideologies. Third, they have clever ways of masking their hate. Ther agenda is always shrouded in the lie that they want what is best for every citizen.  Fourth, and I believe most important, there is a visceral hatred of Christianity, particularly Conservative Christianity, at the heart of their agenda.

While I can’t see twenty-five years into the future, I can sound the warning. We Americans aren’t immune to such evil. Societies every bit as civilzed as ours have done monstrous things. Germans have done it. Russians have done it. The Chinese and the Japanese have, as well as Cambodians, Syrians, Iranians. The list of shame seems endless.

Of course it can happen here in the United States. We can pretend it’s not possible, but that would be an exercise in self-deception. Jesus himself said “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.” (John 15:18 – New International Version)

In seeing all of these unfold, I feel the need to sound the alarm, to act, so to speak, as a watchman in what has become a national wlderness. 

The warning signs are there. The national atmosphere is filled with hate and rage. If we continue along this disastrous path, it will explode. We will, as Lincoln feared, commit national suicide.

“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.”

Revelation 20:11-15 (New International Version)

The grisly spectacle is finally over. After what seemed to be an eternity of interrogation and accusations, Brett Kavanaugh has finally been sworn in as the ninth associate Justice to our current Supreme Court. Continue reading “The Great Judge and the Final Judgement”