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A grizzled shadow stretched itself over my office floor. Silhouetted against outside light, its threatening form convinced me that the zoo had certainly lost a dangerous inmate. And then, to my horror, it stepped inside! Two glaring eyes, almost lost in facial brush, peered at me. I darted into a darkened corner. We eyed one another silently. Gradually it became clear that whatever it was, it was human. A beerbelly under a skin-tight undershirt struck a profile similar to an ape forced to stand erect. His trousers bagged until it seemed certain that an entire family had vacated them. Emblazoned across his chest appeared the word:

Shocked and still reeling, I ventured from my dark corner and asked, “Wh … what can I d-do for you, mister… mister… ?

“Just call me Otto, maaaan.”

His speech articulate, the voice was as one who had doused his vocal cords with thousands of gallons of alcohol; clouded and barely audible.

“Uh-huh, okay, ah…Otto, is there a problem? Your child is one of our bus riders?”

“Jimmy Johnson’s my kid”, he said. (Ah yes, Jimmy. Not a violent kid; just infused with the spirit of a orangutan.) “Whatever your mode of therapy is for resolving juvenile rowdyism, it is quite effective, maaan. It has transformed my boy. Why, he thinks the bus ride home is better than home itself. I must say that you are an excellent pupil transportation manager. Our School district is fortunate to have you on its staff. But that’s not the purpose of my visit. Actually, my colleagues would laugh me to scorn if they knew my reason for consulting you, but, well, your successful method of counsel might assist me in resolving a personal physical problem.”

(Hah! My “method” was simply an exercise in practicality. All I did was wipe snotty noses, clean up vomit, root like a neurotic for the team, snatch heads bald, and astutely place my foot on deserving seats. The kids loved it. Besides, I was backed by an old fashioned school principal who brandished a three-foot paddle with holes bored in it. His graduates knew the exact size of their playground and where the gate was. I was Otto’s senior by a number of years, but I couldn’t recall Otto ever attending our school.)

“Okay,” I said, stunned, “this is most unusual, but I’ll help if I can. What is the problem?”

He glanced around the room furtively. “I lost track of which hand is which and up and down.”

If allowed, a grin would have crowded my jaws. “I see, Otto. Ah … lessee…you, ah, where … I mean … what do you do? For a living, I mean?”

Again, the glance around. “I’m a psychology professor over at the university.”

Hilarity whistled past my ribcage and burst out as a fit of coughing. (Surprise should not have taken me–this was the mid-seventies.)

” You should see a doctor, maaan!”

“I’m okay. You lost track of what?”

“Up and down and which hand is which.”

Momentary silence. “Uh-huh. Up and down and left and right.”

“Right, maaan, left, right, up, down.”

“Left, right, up, down.” (Isn’t that a psychiatrist’s trick or something? Parroting your client is supposed to keep him spilling his guts.)

“Why are you repeating me, maaan?”

“Ah, never mind, Otto. Why do you think you can’t tell up from down and one hand from the other?”

He shuffled further into my office, (Converted utility room) and stood before my full-length mirror. (It allowed student offenders to watch themselves lie).

Slowly lifting his right arm, he waved to me in the mirror. “Which arm did I raise, maaan?”

I chuckled. “Your right, Otto; so what?”

He stepped forward with his back against the mirror and waved again, but this time with his left.

“See, maaan? First time I waved, it was my right, but you can plainly see that from the plane of the mirror both arms were on the same side of my body.”

More silence. I scratched my head. Suddenly I wasn’t sure which hand I did it with.

He scuffled with two chairs. By the time I switched hands and scratched again, he was prostrate across the chairs facing the mirror, left arm down, right up.

“Now which hand is waving?”

“Your hand or the one in the mirror?”

“In the mirror.”

“Uhhh…right”, I said hesitantly.

“Okay,” he said, “but if I move over there with my back against the plane of the mirror, my…

“Uh, left would be waving. Look, I realize it’s a little confusing, Otto, but…”

“A little confusing! Man, here I am with my right up and my left down, but you just said that from a different perspective my left was up and my right down all at the same time. Don’t you see that down is up one way, up is down the other and left and right are easily switched? The question is which one is correct?”

Stunned silence.

Surely there was a simple explanation for this cockeyed scramble of reversals. Let’s see: If I had my…

Suddenly he was standing on his head in the chair, his trousers bagged in reverse!

“Now, maaan. My undershirt–is it right side up or upside down?”

“Ah… the one on you, or…”

“Either!”

“Upside down!” (Confidence mounted. It was upside down either way).

He flipped to his feet, caught the tail of his undershirt with both hands and, in one swoop, peeled it off and held it before me inside out, upside down.

“Which is it now, maaan? Right side up ? Upside down?”

“Hah! Upside down, of course!”

“Wrong! I changed the state of it when I turned it inside out. You’re thinking of it in its former state. If I turned it to what you call right side up I must either switch the left to right or the back to the front. The only way I can maintain its new state of inside out is to keep the left left, the right right, the front front, the back back, the tail up, the neck down. What’s more, I’m sure you’ll agree that simply because an undershirt is inside out shouldn’t mean you can’t wear it. But in its new state of inside out, the only way I can wear it right side up, which you say is not, is if I walk around upside down.”

“Wh …! Uh, well, I…yeah but…”

“But look in the mirror, maaan. There it changes state again. The left is right, right left. Even though it’s inside out I can turn it neck-up so right is right, left left. But notice: the only way I can wear it inside out and walk on my feet is if I got into the mirror with it where I’ve turned the neck up so my right arm will go into the right sleeve.”

“Well, yeah, but it’s jus…

“So you see, maaan, my left is left on me and my right right, but the mirror says my right is my left, my left right. If my right is up, in the mirror my left is up, right down. Inside out my undershirt reverses right side up and upside down, thereby switching right and left to left and right. I should be able to walk normally with my undershirt on inside out, but the only way is in the mirror where upside down has been switched to right side up.”

Agonizing silence.

Even more silence.

“Any comments, maaan?”

“Iyahhhhh…”

“I can tell, maaan, your method of counsel isn’t working for me.”

Otto left, his sandals slapping his heels down the walkway.

A sudden fear came over me.  Loose in society, this man might multiply and confuse an entire generation! He might collapse everything from law and order, to churches, families, nations, even a whole world! I rushed to the door and raised my arm to hail him back–and that confounded mirror caught me in the act. Now, which arm…no, I must do this with the other … but, no, I’m right handed … no no, in the mirror…

I visited Fourth street last week where the protesters, gurus, chowder-heads, whiz-bangs, dope addicts and draft dodgers used to gather back in the seventies to encourage one another. Suddenly a slick-faced, baldheaded fellow in a white robe stopped me and said he was Otto. He finally found contentment, he said, in a personal mixture of eastern mysticism, transcendental meditation, voodoo,  environmentalism, aquarianism, and something to do with hoot owls, dinosaurs, bird beaks, yak’s feet, platypus’s, Egyptian mummies, and many other such figments.

We talked a bit, and when we parted I glanced back. Ceremoniously standing on his head, his robe had fallen into a little pile surrounding it, exposing his beerbelly and two gangly legs rod-straight through his loin cloth. If he was wearing his undershirt, I thought, it would read:

I grinned. Hah! All along down was down, left was left, up was up, and right was right. And I’ll bet nobody ever noticed that when I wore my undershirt inside out it was actually upside down………I think..

DA

The Veil over the Nations

“And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. ” (Isaiah 25:7 KJV)

Many people feel that every nation should be encouraged simply to practice its own religion. God’s Word, however, makes it plain that all nations are blinded, cut off from the truth by a deadly covering. This is true of the Jews, for “even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart” (2 Corinthians 3:15). It is also true of the Gentiles, who have “the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Ephesians 4:18).

The veil that keeps them in such darkness is a Satanic blindfold. “The god of this world [i.e., Satan] hath blinded the minds of them which believe not” (2 Corinthians 4:4). And how did the devil ever gain such control over human minds? “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened…. Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator” (Romans 1:21, 25).

So today, men and women almost everywhere atheists, Communists, humanists, Buddhists, Confucianists, animists, Hindus, Taoists, Shintoists, occultists, “New Agers,” and even the “liberals” in the monotheistic religions (Judaism, Islam, Christianity)–really all believe and practice the same religion, rejecting God as Creator and worshipping instead some man or manexalting evolutionary philosophy.

Someday, God will destroy this pervasive veil over the nations. In the meantime, we must reach everyone we can with the true and everlasting gospel of Christ, for that “vail is done away in Christ” (2 Corinthians 3:14). —Henry M. Morris

That system in it’s purest essence had the effect of conveniently putting the real monkey of responsibily on God’s back and a fake one on ours. How? It simply determined that God foreordained the whole physical scene, start to finish, the good, the bad, and the ugly before He ever even lifted a finger to create anything! We are all just victims of it. No matter what happens, so goes the notion, “God is in control” anyhow, no matter how we behave. No kidding! Why, some of us were created for the express purpose of going to Hell to burn forever, and the rest were created to go to Heaven without a genuine choice in the matter! In fact, the church Calvin founded, the Presbyterian Church, later met together and established a doctrinal confession called THE WESMINSTER CONFESSION, part of which states unequivocally, “God did from all eternity, by the most just and Holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass.”

Well, strains of that confession drifted over all of Christendom like a heavy fog, becoming a vital part of Christian brain wrinkles. It still goes on today. But original Calvinism was so harsh in its approach, many saw need to modify it to be more universal in it’s scope, making more room for greater numbers to be saved. Besides pure Calvinism, there was Hyper-Calvinism and many other splinters adopting some variation of sublapsarianism, supralapsarianism, and other isms, all crossing Theological swords over the Doctrine of Decrees in creation, all of it crawling with pride of intellectual prowess, while all along the good old image of God in them bit the blood from them because, despite their ramblings, their FREE WILLS were doing whatever they jolly-well pleased anyhow, even as the Lord stood away arms akimbo in the shadows shaking his head. Amazing!

One of the most quoted Scriptures by all Calvinists is Romans 8:28 in making the “God is in control” claim. Many non-Calvinists unknowingly also use the same terminology. What they all seem to always ignore is what that verse states exactly in plain language. The meat of the verse that pleases the Calvinist mind is “…All things work together for good to them that love God…” (KJV).

You see, this entire phrase expresses verbal ACTION, including the word “love.” In the original Koine Greek the word is AGAPOSIN. Please be patient while I explain something technical about this Greek word and the grammar in which it is couched. It is in the Dative Case of the Indirect Object. It is a masculine, plural, Present Participle in the Modal (mode) form, signifying the MANNER in which the action of the Verb is accomplished. For example, “Came John the Baptist preaching (Matthew 3:1), meaning John’s preaching was what his coming accomplished.

Now, these rules of grammar applied to Romans 8:28 tells us love is the manner in which all things work together. But hold it right there: The Greek word for love here is not the noun the Calvinists have made it out to be. No, it is in the verb form, an ACTION word! Put into plain street English of today, the verse says, “Everything in this world work together for those whose love (a verb) has legs!” Friends, simply sitting around IN love (a noun) with God, waiting for Him to work out His sovereign will in spite of your own will, will NEVER get all things to work together for your good. It takes DOING your love. God made His created women to thrive on their husband’s words, backed up by DEEDS to prove it. WORDS only makes her sick; DEEDS only, starves her to death.

And so we Christians at large today PARROT the Calvinists when we do something stupid, but then throw up our hands and sing, “God is in control.” Nonsense! God was NOT in control, WE WERE! That’s exactly why it was stupid. And stupidity is stooped to, not just by individuals, but by churches, cities, and nations. Contrary to Calvinism, the providence of God doesn’t elect evil to office vicariously through our “free” wills, WE do. God doesn’t have some kind of mysterious PURPOSE in mind in ALLOWING wickedness to become law, WE do. God respects every evil our FREE WILLS concoct and put into place by simply stepping back and letting us suffer the consequences for crowding Him aside. No, friends, God is only in control when we exercise sanity and PUT Him in control! Otherwise, His promises, such as He made to Israel to give them “as the Days of Heaven on upon the Earth” (Deut. 11:21) if they would only put Him first, would be absolutely meaningless.

Calvinists can put together a plethora of Scriptures they believe refutes this fact of reality, but the law of free will put there by God Himself bites them like an Adder regardless of their reasoning, with a pure known reality as certain as the law of gravity. No, some were not decreed to be saved; no, once saved does not mean one cannot will to trash it and go to Hell instead; and no, when it comes to the human free will, God is NOT in control unless we put Him there. He Himself guarantees it! That’s why human history is an unbelievable pile of twisted human carnage, and the express reason God will finally say it is enough and catch away His few remaining faithful and judge a whole planet who shakes their rebellious fists in His Divine face. It was the entire human race who purposely abused His holy image within us in order to control our OWN lives, instead of entrusting them into God’s pristine control. It is who we are and where we are FREELY heading, although from the very beginning NONE of it was necessary!

Yes, God did make provision for our redemption through sheer mercy and love for His own. No matter, it is the human race the Lord was talking about when He said, “Straight is the gate, and narrow is the way…and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:14). That is why the cross of Jesus was, is, and ever will be such a heartbreak for God the Father.

What is that other natural law of God? It is this: Humanity’s free will, born of God’s own image He created within us. Now I can just hear the chorus of moans and groans and “Oh, brother! I thought he was going to say something important!” Better cup your ears, folks, because this is indeed extremely important, and grossly overlooked across the board of Christianity. Why so important? Because THAT ONE THING IS WHAT GOD WILL JUDGE IN EVERY SOUL, FACE TO FACE, ONE ON ONE! (Hebrews 9:27). Nobody escapes! If you’re a human, it WILL happen!

You see, that one natural law, unlike all the rest in one very important respect, is not ASSUMED in God’s creation. The others exist externally to us and impose themselves on our whole physical bodies, throughout our physical existence. But humanity’s free will first works within us and then radiates outwardly into God’s physical creation around us, governing in a limited way the laws of nature. That governing, or harnessing, Divinely meant to be constructive, can be either constructive or destructive, according to how we freely will it. The creation of that natural law of God is very explicitly described in Scripture: “…And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” and, “…And God said unto [Adam and Eve]…replenish the Earth, and subdue it: and have dominion…” (Genesis 1:26, 28).

Friends, God’s own image of free will, free choice, a creaturely endowment of a portion of His Divine attributes of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience, His express image, if you will, was the VERY ESSENCE God used to create humanity! If He had not done that, He would no more bring us into personal judgment than he would a rock or a lowly lizard.

Now here is the crux of the matter: God Himself maintains His image in our creaturely existence! Without it we would indeed be a rock or a lizard. It is who and how humanity is forever. It is who we all are, free-will creatures, with the God-given power to make our OWN decisions, APART, yes, APART from God’s choice. Otherwise, Adam’s choice to sin would have been GOD’S CHOICE, not ours. Such a thing is totally and completely foreign to God’s own revealed pristine nature. To judge us for that would be to haul HIMSELF into His own court of infinite law! The naked truth of this is simply that God is ever in control of seeing to it that our FREE wills operate in absolute freedom, no matter what we choose to choose, good or evil. That’s what He did in Eden, and that’s what He still does. God always honors His own endowed image in humanity, whoever He finds it in, just like he honors the law of gravity, whoever harnesses it for whatever purposes. Hear it, friends: God always honors our own choice whether it is good or evil, even if it shakes it’s fist and curses God to His Divine face!

You see, God’s image in us was a Divine trust from the very beginning. Sin was not part of His prestine image in us. No, God’s image of pure freedom in us exercised its own freedom of freedom and CHOSE to believe a lie instead of God’s sublime Word of warning. Adam himself was in control of WHAT he chose, not God. And once that decision was made, God backed away and respected it. It was going to be what Adam and Eve made it into, not what God was controlling it into. He as much as said, “Okay, you made your bed; now you must sleep in it. Someday I’ll bail you out of the mess you made for yourselves, but until then you can’t live in this beautiful garden I made for you. It’s certainly not what I intended for you; the making of this one is on you, not me. Meanwhile, I warn you: Things will go much easier in the future if you obey me instead of trashing my Word.”

Therein is the sordid story of all human history since then. Sadly, the main ingredient in the tragedy of human sin is the vain pride of blaming someone else for it, God included, instead of our own selfish will. Adam said it was the woman’s fault whom God had given him, thus blaming God. Eve, on the proverbial spot, probably nonplused by Adam’s accusation, simply dodged by blaming the Devil for it. Everyone but the Devil himself claimed innocense and passed the buck, and he would have himself but he had no one qualified to pass it on to. Neither Adam nor Eve simply admitted guilt, repented, and begged God’s pardon. We’re still at that guilty business.

In the third and final part of this three-part subject we will deal with the practical aspects of this “God is in control” business sweeping Christianity. One of the main Scriptures often quoted by those who promote this error is Romans 8:28. We will show that, instead, this Scripture actually plainly says the exact opposite, not only in plain English, but in the original Koine Greek language of the New Testament!

Possibly the most used phrase in Christian circles today is, “God is in control.” No matter what awful thing happens, disaster, disease, war, tyranny, all such things, “God is in control” is shouted from the housetops by everyone from the least of laity to the height of scholarship.

Well, excuse me, but in the sense universally used, GOD IS NOT IN CONTROL! This article is intended to prove that fact.

Really now, is God in control? Well, depending on the usage, yes, but no. Because of that, if we’re going to say “God is in control,” then it behooves us to clarify what is meant, especially any Christians in positions of influence. Indiscriminate usage of it sends confusing signals into listening ears, saint and sinner. They rely on Christian leaders for what to think about God’s role in such inconsistencies of right and wrong.

Yes, God is most certainly and sovereignly in control of the Laws of Nature which He originally created and set to work in flawless order for all time. He ordained them that way. Only He alone can temporarily suspend those laws, and the times He has done it can be counted on your fingers without running out of fingers. What’s more, those laws are completely neutral in nature in regard to good and evil. They work just as well for despots such as Hitler, or an Abraham Lincoln. Fire will cook a pot of oatmeal, but it will also melt a whole city in a nuclear explosion. In every case, God’s laws of nature operate the same, no matter if it is used for good or evil. The hijackers of 911 skillfully employed it to bring down the Twin Towers in a slaughter of thousands of innocent people because God made certain His morally neutral law of gravity operated in absolute flawless manner. Fire heated the homes of America while Hitler incinerated over six million innocent Jewish people.

Now it doesn’t take a scientific genius or a great theologian to realize those obvious facts of nature. No, even an ignorant bum on the street corner is never heard to say, “Ho-hum, guess I’ll levitate today; I’m getting tired of sleeping on this concrete.” Why do we not see a religious order “prove” by Holy Writ that it is possible to levitate if they will only believe they can? Simple answer: There could be a large church of them making the claim, but anyone with eyes can plainly see that none of them are “floating” around in the church house. No, we all know about the laws of nature, even if we can’t even pronounce their names. We just know they have to be respected, or we pay the sad consequences. So what happens to a religious nut who leaps from a high-rise to prove his faith to levitate? Better ask him about it on the way down, because once he splatters the argument is over.

Oddly, we don’t even NEED Scripture to tell us to obey God’s laws of nature. Doesn’t matter anyhow. Even an atheist is forced to obey God’s laws of nature, or die. Just the act of living is absolute proof that these laws are ironclad for every human, belief in God or not. The factual essence of them is as much of who we are as the noses on our faces! We have to look cross-eyed to see our noses without a mirror, and one has to be a little cockeyed who examines God’s laws of nature to find out if they are real or not.

So what does this have to do with “God is in control,” you ask? EVERYTHING! You see, what we seem to overlook on purpose is yet another of God’s natural laws. Remember, God’s natural laws are set in stone to work flawlessly in neutral between good and evil. He guarantees it by His ordained providence. Like the others, this one God established from the beginning of creation, as secure and solid as gravity itself, if not more so. This one played THE major role in Hitler’s Germany, 911, Hurricane Katrina, and much more throughout history. God always maintains it in full working order, and will throughout all time. He’s not about to change it for anyone. And like the others, this one actually needs no Scripture to prove it’s existence, because it is always as real and present as light and gravity.

However, unlike the other natural laws, would you believe that large religious orders formed hundreds of years ago, and continue today, who have adopted and promote the ridiculous notion that they can suspend this law at will so it ceases to operate for them ever again? I’m not kidding! The thing is addictive, too. Multiplied millions have bought into this fictitious notion. Why? Because of the wonderful convenience it serves in not having to be bothered with it’s troublesome presence everyday of our lives.

Well, like gravity, though, God is always faithful to make absolutely certain the thing is in full operation all their lives, no matter what they choose to believe about it. It is just THERE! Yep, like gravity, light, heat, and perpetual motion, this one just goes right on being itself, forcing us to recognizing it, no matter what. Millions of folks go about claiming to “levitate” free of it, but not one among them, ever, floats away from it. Frankly, of all the examples demonstrating the lengths humanity will go to ditch having to deal with it’s grasp on us, this one takes the proverbial cake!

Think of the thousands of years humans have spent trying to figure out how to suspend the law of gravity. It is only within the last two centuries that we managed to come up with a fake of it: The balloon and the aero plane. But really, did we suspend the law of gravity? Nope. Not at all. We simply obeyed one law to temporarily override another. Trouble is, old gravity makes sure a deflated balloon crashes; an aircraft engine fails and down it comes, people and all, in a fireball. Suspend one of God’s natural laws? Come on! Let’s not be silly!

So what is that other natural law of God? So sorry; we are going to save that part for the next segment of this three-part article. If you haven’t figured it out, boy are you going to be surprised!

Paul’s shipwreck of Acts 27 is devastatingly and metaphorically applicable to another later ship, called The American Ship of State.

Paul’s ship of Alexandria (v.6) hosted a total complement of 276 souls. Many of them were prisoners bound for Roman justice, including the Apostle Paul. By his side, though not a prisoner, was his faithful friend, Luke the beloved Physician, to whom we owe this detailed log of the journey.

These 274 other souls were unwittingly, but Divinely fortunate to have aboard two of God’s choice servants, both of whom had a reputation for telling the plain truth, like it or not. They had hardly begun when Paul, the most outspoken of the two, being in touch with God, had the boldness to tell them plainly, even though everything seemed to be going just fine, “Sirs, I perceive that this voyage will be with hurt and much damage, not only of the lading of the ship, but also of our lives (v.10).

From there, the entire story of horrible loss hangs on Luke’s “nevertheless” of verse 11. The Centurian, charged with Roman authority, decided to ignore the John Hagee-like ravings of God’s prophet and listen more to the ship’s master and owner instead. It was to be a foolish error of judgment with dire consequences, too often the case when governmental authority ignores God’s prophetic warnings.

You see, in Chapter 26 we find that Paul had made a strong case for God and his own innocence (26:32) in the presence of King Agrippa and Governer Festus, to the extent that Agrippa admitted that Paul almost persuaded him to become a Christian (26:28). These two dignitaries showed respect to this man of God and no doubt passed their sentiments on to Julius, the Centurian in charge of the prisoners being shipped to Rome. But Julius paid more heed to temporal assessment than the spiritual foresight of God’s prophet.

At first it appeared all was well as the south wind blew softly (v.13), but suddenly they took a broadside by a tempest called “Euroclydon”! It went down hill from there. Try though they did to regain control (vv.15-20), they were now in the storm by a foolish misjudgment, until “all hope that we should be saved was taken away.”

So God in his mercy in the person of His man Paul, who had been ignored into silence until now, stepped forward, possibly with a boney finger pointing at their noses, said, “Sirs, ye should have harkened unto me…” (v.21). This time, in the midst of violent waters, they were finally willing to listen.

Paul had good news: God would save their lives, but that’s all. Every temporal thing they had trusted in would be completely destroyed from under them! Now they would have to swim for their lives! But even that had a catch to it: They must do what they failed to do from the start—they must listen to and obey God’s prophet! Otherwise, they would all surely perish. Simple as that.

Well, that is the metaphor. Here’s the fulfillment:

A new American ship of state has set sail. We can expect the “south wind” to blow “softly” for a while. However, before that wind ever blew, God’s mighty voice swept out to all quarters of the nation saying, “Sirs, I perceive that this voyage will be with hurt and much damage…” Why the voice? The facts were certainly no secret. As Paul said to Governor Festus regarding King Agrippa’s awareness, “For I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him; for this thing was not done in a corner” (26:26).

The platform of the Democrat party and it’s candidates, both for Congress and the Presidency, had over the decades deteriorated into what Scripture explicitely calls “evil.” Some planks in it God points at with special Divine disdain (Leviticus 18:22; Romans 1:24-32. God destroyed two whole cities for this great sin: Genesis 19:1-29). One plank is abortion, which kills the fetus, although many Scriptural references can be cited showing the sacredness of the unborn. Some have gone so far as allowing the newborn fetus to die unattended. Grave errors against God, such as racial bigotry and sexual deviations have already been shown favoritism. We could continue with a sordid list of nose-thumbing at God Himself. Quoting Luke’s “nevertheless,” we must sadly point out that multiple millions of God’s people cast their ballots freely and with vigor for this God-less platform! Our congressional body and the Oval Office are now going to occupy the governing forces that will determine the set of the sail and the angle of the rudder of our American ship of state. It should also concern us greatly that such values will be the Commander in Chief of the mightiest military forces the world has ever known.

Therefore, “Euroclydon” is inevitable. It cannot be otherwise, especially if we dare touch the Apple of God’s Eye, Israel. God has solemnly promised that the dreaded law of sowing and reaping is as certain as the law of gravity—which never fails to simply be itself. Frankly, if God were to allow this nation to get away with throwing it’s free vote in support of such evil, He will have to be fair about it and apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.

But God never reaches that stage suddenly. He is merciful and longsuffering, sending warning after warning as a government stoops lower and lower. Meanwhile, our beloved nation, like Paul’s ship, loses control and begins breaking up on the rocks of godlessness, until at last it is too late to save the vessel. No, we should look, not for sudden, but slow destruction, but disaster nonetheless. Meanwhile, we as Christians should pray for the powers that be, not for their success in their evil designs, but for their salvation, even as we pray for their removal from power in a peaceful manner.

Who will be saved in the destruction of our ship of state? I am reminded of fearful Elijah to whom God reminded that He yet had 7000 souls in Israel who had not kissed nor bowed their knee to the wickedness of Baal (I Kings 19:18). But look more carefully: Suppose the population of Israel at the time was, say, three million. This means that less than one percent of Israel had not sunk to the evil engulfing their beloved nation. That should also inspire a sobering reminder of Jesus’ solemn words, “…Straight is the gate, and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:14).

America, let us beware and brace ourselves, for we have enthusiastically placed our national lives into unscrupulous hands when we should have sought for a safe haven for the bitter winter facing us. You see, once in a “Euroclydon,” there is no steerage, regardless of the skills of the helmsman. Meanwhile, we should:

* Beware an evil government, for without a single exception, all of them promised anything in order to come to power, but then they took it all away and reigned in terror.

* Beware of wicked intent, for deception, coverup, manipulation, scandel, and surprise leading to far worse, have always been its cardinal marks.

* Beware of evil itself, for the adage is always true, “Evil knows no bounds.”

All of civilized history has gone forward on knowledge of truth, but has always stalled on lies and ignorance. Dr. David Noebel spoke truly, “If you’re going to be a leader, you have to be a reader.”

Any advocate of truth must also communicate truth. There is a difference. If one’s manner of speaking is crippled by a form of speech limited to a narrow segment of listeners, then only that narrow band will hear the truth while all words to the other hearers are wasted.

One’s speech must therefore be carefully crafted to be heard and understood by all hearers in a given audience, from the very young to the very old, from the educated to the ignorant, the rich to the poor, male to female.

Each and every audible word must be carefully chosen, diligently pronounced by the tongue, the lips, the facial expressions, honed razor sharp for the listeners’ ears.

Content must be true to the human condition and made real to each listener through examples or parables. This is what made Jesus Christ the absolute Master of all communicators.

Satan has always aimed at counteracting the truth of this with deceptive images for our eyes, sweetness for our tastes, and false words in our ears. But speakers of truth should pay this no mind; humans, you see, are endowed with a God-given bent for identifying truth, an instinctive recognition of it. Theologians call it a “rational intuition,” a permanent wrinkle in our natures.

Speakers have but to communicate the truth. God does the rest. And that particular truth cuts across all lines of religion and politics. It is who we all are. May we all learn to speak the truth. –DA