The Day Everything Changed

 

As I write this it is the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in New York, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon in Northern Virginia. It is one of those times when you remember exactly what you were doing and where you were when it happened. In my case, I had been hired by what we affectionally called "No Such Agency" (NSA) in April of that year. I had retired from the Air Force the previous September after 20 years and 20 days of service. And, ironically, I had been attending a counter terrorism measures presentation in the main auditorium of the Maryland complex that morning. The presentation dealt with measures that the agency was going to implement to ensure that terrorism targeting, if there were to be any, would not be successful against our property or personnel. I remember coming back to my office and seeing people running about in obvious bewilderment. As we now know, the attacks had taken place early that morning and we were all trying to make sense of what had happened.

"Blessed is the Nation Whose God is the Lord"

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Most of us will recognize these lines as coming from the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. The Founding Fathers were well aware of the fact that their revolution, if it was to succeed at all, had to be founded on the ideas of Christianity and Christianity’s God. Although some among them were deists and others were non-believers, the fact is that these were the exception. The great majority of them understood that nothing and no one can overcome whatever obstacles are to be overcome without Divine help.

Socialist Ignorance!

In his book “Animal Farm,” George Orwell tells a fictional story about farm animals who rebel against their farmer. The animals decide that they are being mistreated by the farmer and that their only recourse, if they expect to live good lives, is to throw the farmer out of the farm and run it themselves. Eventually, the pigs rise to the top and make a compact with other humans who provide them with many amenities in exchange for trading with them. Thus, the pigs become a sort of oligarchy within the system that they initially instituted, the original design of which was to make all animals equal and abolish the hierarchy they had previously labored under.

Our Privacy Obsession

One of the issues that are most prevalent in our 21st century society is the obsession that people have with privacy. Take for example the issue of abortion, to name one glaring matter. A primary argument for what some say should be the legality of abortion is that denying a woman the "right" to an abortion is violating her privacy. In many, if not most, cases even the father of the creature being aborted is not afforded the opportunity to have a say in his child's fate.

“God Must Ask Permission”

Years ago, famed “faith healer” and charismatic preacher Miles Monroe, had a conversation with another so-called “faith healer,” Benny Hinn, where he told Hinn that God must ask permission to do anything on earth. According to Monroe, this permission had to be asked of men because, paraphrasing him “God is in charge in heaven but He has given men the rule and power over the earth.” This conversation reminds us that the health and wealth and supposed miraculous healing movement has some extremely strange ideas. Who could possibly believe that God must ask His creation for permission to do anything. In fact, folks who hold such a position should be reminded of Psalm 115 where the psalmist says that “God is in the heavens. He does whatever He wills.”

“The Preacher is Insignificant”

The apostle Paul is perhaps the best known among all the disciples of Christ. That likelihood is owed to the fact that it was Paul who carried the gospel “to the ends of the earth.” It was Paul who was responsible for the conversion of countless thousands of gentiles throughout the Roman world, the city-state which at the time was the dominant power in the ancient world. Yet, we have scant knowledge of Paul outside the New Testament.

The Lesson of Charlie Kirk

 

As most of you will likely be aware of by now, Charlie Kirk, a firebrand conservative commentator, was gunned down at the campus of a Utah college yesterday as of this writing. Mr. Kirk was famous for engaging college students on campuses all around the nation with his conservative message and made no secret of his faith in Christ and the fact that, ultimately, that faith and the message of the cross is what matters and what will make a difference in our society.

Whose Rights?

The other day on Capitol Hill, senator Tim Kaine was interrogating a witness during a recent Senate Foreign Committee hearing. During the question-and-answer session, Riley Barnes, whom President Trump has nominated to be assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, said that human rights are divine rights. In other words, the rights that we all agree every human possesses come, not from the government or any other earthly entity, but from the Creator.

Jesus – YHWH is Salvation

“She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” – Matthew 1:21.

Jesus is an English version of the Latin Jesu, which is Latin for the Greek Iesu, which is Greek for the Aramaic Yeshua, which is the Aramaic for the Hebrew Yehoshua. Some people like to put a lot of emphasis on what we call our Lord and Savior, but in every case, be it in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, or English, it has only one true meaning: YHWH (Yahweh) is Salvation.

Promised first in Genesis 3:15, this is the seed of the woman that crushes that foul serpent’s head. This is the root of Jesse, David’s son yet David’s Lord. This is the long awaited Messiah, the one who comes in the name of the Lord, and conquers sin, the grave, and death, and gives the believer newness of life to the one who believes.

He saves HIS people from their sins. What is a sinner? A person who sins it at enmity with, alternatively, one who is an enemy of the Living God. Scriptures tell us, “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” -Romans 5:8.

In Isaiah 53:5 it says “By His stripes we are healed.” The wound was mortal, the balm immortal. We were enemies of one whose wrath against all unrighteousness cannot be satisfied, so He, in love, sent the righteous one to fulfill the requirements of the law, the curse, sin, death, and the wrath to come.

John 14:6 is the statement of exclusivity. There is only one way to the Father, the God YHWH, and it is through the Son, the Risen Lord Jesus Christ – “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.”

This is a simple truth, Grace, through Faith in Christ, is the only remedy for your separation from God. Grace is the only path to Holiness. To walk humbly with God is to lay the burden of sin on Christ, who took the cross, so that you could take the crown.

Yes, this is the Christ. Look to Him and live. Look to the cross and see your shame, look to the Christ and see your victory. Then, pick up your cross and follow Him.

What's the Harm?

Recently, President Trump signed an executive order that stipulated that all official government buildings were to fly only official flags on all their facilities. That means that only flags that have been determined by the government to be “official” can be flown at buildings such as social security facilities, state and city municipal buildings, court facilities, and such.

Living for Christ by Vox Doulos

Romans 8:12-13 (NASB1995) reads:

"So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live."

This past Resurrection weekend, we meditate on the glorious wonders of God in our Lord Jesus Christ, who, knowing no sin, became sin in our stead, and bore our condemnation on Himself so that in His resurrection, we also might live. He did not die because we are so valuable, as so many claim. Rather, He died because God chose to ascribe value to us in Him, in the Christ, our Lord.

Jimmy Carter: An Example of Christianity?

This past January 10^th, 2025, former President Jimmy Carter was laid to rest in Georgia. Carter was 100 years old and was the longest living president in our nation’s history. Since Carter often claimed to be a Christian, much is being said and written about his supposed faith. As it was when Billy Graham died, many have attempted to decipher whether Carter was a true Christian or not, at least at the end of his life (Graham said many things in his later years that led many to question whether his faith was biblically based). It is not my intent to speak ill of the dead but to examine what Carter believed in order to determine what a true Christian is. In that spirit then, let us look at some important aspects of Carter’s “faith.”

Sovereign Grace: The Glory of God in Salvation by Vox Doulos

28 "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.29 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;30 and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified."

"The Sandlot"

One of my favorite movies(maybe the favorite) is “The Sandlot.” That 1993 movie centers around nine boys whose sole reason for existing is seemingly to spend their summers playing baseball in an abandoned makeshift field from which the movie takes its name. Throughout the movie, we hear the voice of the narrator, one of the boys who is now grown up and telling us the story of his first summer in the sandlot. Smalls, the boy’s last name, tells us how when he first arrived in the neighborhood, he felt somewhat like an outsider who did not seem to be part of the “team.” In time, however, and after much ribbing and “evaluating,” Smalls becomes as much a part of the team as the other boys. He even becomes the star player’s (Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez) protégé.

Revival or Reprieve?

The election is now over. For the second time in our history, a president who served a previous term in office will once again come to power after being out of office for four years (Grover Cleveland’s second presidency was the other instance). Many, especially among those who are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, are relieved that Donald Trump won the presidency rather than his opponent, whom many considered a great danger to our nation. Many others, however, see in Trump a dangerous actor who will be a “dictator” and impose some sort of harsh retribution on his political enemies.

The Essential Nature of Discipleship

Just before Jesus left the disciples to return to the right hand of the Father, He gave them a number of commands related to their subsequent ministry. One of them, recorded for us by Matthew in the 28^th chapter of his gospel, was to go into the world and, as they were going, to “make disciples of all nations, teaching them all that I have commanded you.” Thus, the disciples were to basically reproduce themselves by forming new disciples, we could say they were to do so in their own spiritual image. This they did with great zeal for, as we read in the book of Acts, their passion for spreading the good news of Christ was unmatched in the annals of history.

Chaos and Mayhem

William Shirer, witness to what was the Third Reich and author of the “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” once made an interesting and insightful comment about Germans as they stood by watching Hitler and his rise to power. “How did it happen that an ancient and cultured people steeped in Christianity, cultivating the arts and sciences, preeminent in technology who gave us Luther and Kant, Bach and Beethoven, Gorta and Einstein, collapsed into savage barbarism in the mid-20^th century?”

Busybodies For All!

The human mind is a fickle thing. It will become captivated by just about anything whether worthy of such attention or not, at least for a little while. The current political season is a great example of such a tendency. It has been just over a month since Kamala Harris managed to bump Joe Biden off the Democrat Party ticket, without winning a single primary vote, and become the party’s new presidential candidate. As if by magic, overnight she went from having an approval rating that was even lower than Biden’s (somewhere in the 20’s) to quickly becoming the darling of the left. From being disregarded and soundly criticized even by the leftist media, to becoming the superwoman of everyone’s dreams.

"Ignorance is Strength"

We often hear people speak about George Orwell's famous book "1984." In the book, the motto of the fictitious country (Oceania) that is at the center of the story in the book was that "War is peace," "Freedom is slavery," "Ignorance is strength." When one witnesses the current political landscape in our land, one can be forgiven for believing that the majority of people in our society have fallen prey to this motto. And this gullibility for such ideas is especially prominent among people who hold left of center political views.

The Mind of Christ

This past week (two Sundays ago), I spoke from the pulpit about the mind of Christ and what it means for us as Christians. I mentioned that Paul spoke of the mind of Christ in the context of that attitude serving as the ultimate example for us to follow. What is the mind of Christ? We would ask. We are, thankfully, not left to wonder just what Christ's mind and attitude really are.