October 2004

Finally, we have an answer to a six-month old question: who were the "foreign leaders" Senator Kerry claimed were opposed to another Bush term in the White House?

Reuter's just posted a piece reporting that Osama bin Laden has just released another video tape, this one critical of President Bush. Reuters points out the obvious: "It looked like a deliberate attempt to influence the U.S. election on Tuesday."

Back in March, Senator Kerry claimed foreign leaders wanted President Bush out of office, and that they supported his own candidacy. To which the White House responded:

"If Senator Kerry is going to say he has support from foreign leaders, then he needs to be straightforward with the American people and say who it is that he has spoken with and who it is that supports him...."

Kerry... declined to identify any leaders...

Well, here's one foreign leader with the guts to come forward.

Last night I read two articles on the upcoming election, both in the New Yorker: one was a profile of the American immigrant billionaire financier, George Soros, and his frenzied effort to see President Bush defeated at the polls; the other was a short pre-election profile of President Bush summarizing what we have learned about this man during his first term in the White House.

Published in the New Yorker, both pieces are quite predictable in their anti-Bush tone. But what a tone!

Never do I remember such vitriol coming out of the liberals of our nation; they seem to hate Bush with a perfect hatred, and I can't help but suspect the vortex of this pool of hatred is his simple (culpably so) faith and the way that faith has informed his approach to the world of Islamic terrorism. If you believe in knowing your enemies, go buy this issue of the New Yorker and read these pieces. Note particularly the Soros piece, including his statement that it's inappropriate for any born-again man to hold the presidency of the United States because, by definition, a born-again man cannot lead in submission to the most fundamental aspect of our nation's constitutional genius: yeah, you guessed it--separation of church and state.

In other words, with a straight face Soros says (and the New Yorker reports) that constitutional government here in the United States prohibits any born-again Christian serving in the White House.

Well, there's much more of interest, but having read it I thought maybe I should write a short piece explaining why I, a Protestant, evangelical, and reformed pastor with one marriage and five children and two grandchildren and a few decades' experience watching rulers govern while praying for a growth in truth and mercy, and an end to the slaughter of the innocent, will be voting for the reelection of President George Bush.

But before I could start, I was forwarded this article by Oxford Historian, Paul Johnson. Within the Academy, Johnson is one of my heroes. He's written stellar histories of the United States, the Jews, modernity, Christianity, etc. (The book I've recommended most often is The Intellectuals.)

The piece was forwarded by a friend with many years' missionary experience in the heart of the Islamic world of the Mideast--a friend who doesn't live in the United States and who has a great sympathy, personally, for the Arabic world, particularly the displaced Palestinians. No fan of the war in Iraq, he forwarded this article and commends it. Why?

Read on. I'm content for Johnson's piece to explain my vote.

It is increasingly clear that Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright, beloved Pauline interpreter of Reformed academics, has neither the slightest idea of the nature of the Church nor of the duties of a minister of the Gospel.

Wright played a key role in the recent report of the Lambeth Commission on Communion (the commission of leading Anglicans appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to resolve the controversy over the American Episcopal Church's ordination of homosexuals).

In an interview with Christianity Today Online subsequent to the commission's report, Wright was asked whether the commission had considered asking for a more sincere statement of repentance by the Episcopalian Church in America. Wright responded:

"We must stress, and I think the report says this two or three times in italics, that we were not set up to talk about sex. Had we been, we would have had very different membership, for a start. We were set up to talk about the issues of communion, because in a sense, an obvious example, the issue of sexuality may be the fire that somebody has lit in one room that is actually setting bits of the house on fire. But what we're doing is actually fireproofing the house, and then saying now we've got to deal with this particular fire, which happens to have broken out in this room. But we're really more interested in long-term fireproofing the house."

Wright clearly has not even the slightest comprehension that a fire-proof house is also a Word-proof house.

"Is not my word like fire, declares the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?"

Wright wants his Church fireproof.

Peter Akinola, on the other hand, archbishop of the Nigerian Anglican Church and leading critic of the Episcopalian Church's homosexual heresy clearly understands the role of the Word and of its servants, Christ's ministers. Speaking in the pulpit of All Saints' Church in Chevy Chase, Maryland, Akinola held his Bible in the air and said:

Each year someone asks me whether Church of the Good Shepherd has a policy (or I have an opinion) on Halloween.

I answer that this is an area reserved to the judgements of individual conscience in our church. Some families choose not to give out candy nor to allow their children to trick-or-treat while others choose to participate. But also, we've usually had some sort of Reformation Day party and other alternative (or additional) celebrations for our children and families, as well as observing Reformation Sunday during which our worship focuses on the Protestant Reformation.

This year again, I've been asked this question and I'm sending out this link forwarded by a former member of our congregation, Elizabeth Bortka, for your information. It's a well-done article on Halloween, seeking to put this holiday in accurate perspective for Christians. There are two pages to the article--make sure you don't stop at the bottom of the first page but click the link and continue to the second--and I believe there is real wisdom in this pastor's counsel.

Meanwhile, though, please do not judge one another on this matter...

Our Wednesday morning men's Bible study and prayer group has been going through 1Timothy. Two weeks ago, we looked at the Apostle Paul's command in 1Timothy 2:8, "Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and dissension."

What's with the "lifting up holy hands?" Is this an incidental description or a divine prescription? Is it simply a parenthetical note about the way men prayed at the time, or is it a command parallel to the next, "...without wrath and dissension?"

Patrick Fairbairn, who has written one of the best commentaries on the Pastoral Epistles, comments, "The lifting up of the hands in their more formal exercises of devotion appears to have been common among the nations of antiquity, Jew as well as Gentile." Similarly my friend George Knight comments: "Raising of hands in prayer is known in the Old Testament and in Jewish and Gentile literature, as well as among Christians... in catacomb illustrations (and in the writing of early church fathers) Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian." But Knight continues, "The reference to 'hands' seems to be introduced (only) to serve as a vehicle for conveying his concern for holiness...." Really?