SHOULD CHRISTIANS STAY SILENT WHEN TRAGEDY HITS

PRAYER VIGIL IN NEWTOWN, CONNECTICUT

Well, the answer to that question is NO! As America faces Judgment (yes JUDGMENT) from God for its mounting sins against Him, more and more events like Hurricanes Katrina (2005), Sandy or Tornadoes that destroyed Joplin Missouri (2011)...or the current horrific massacre like the loss of over 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut are going to draw people's attention to the time-worn question of "HOW CAN GOD LET THIS HAPPEN"?!!!

Whether it is an earthquake in Haiti or a Tsunami in the Far East where hundreds of thousands of lives are lost and millions affected, God always gets the blame - either the blame FOR it, or the blame for ALLOWING it to happen! We can go even farther than that - World War II and the Holocaust where six million of our Jewish brethren were murdered by the Germans and Hitler. Did God cause that? When the great American President Franklin D. Roosevelt REFUSED to allow the SS St Louis to land in the United States 1939 with 937 Jews fleeing Hitler by ship, and they were forced to return to Europe and sure death, did God cause that? NO! FDR did! They even made a movie out of it called the VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED.  We can look at the ill-fated voyage of the SS St Louis some other time. By the way, the Prime Minister of Canada Mackenzie King did the same thing as FDR!

Apart from natural disasters like tsunami, earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes, criminal acts like what happened in Newtown are simply acts of Evil. 
It is the same evil of national socialism (Nazism) which caused the Nazi Holocaust.
It is the same evil of communism and Stalin killing 30 million Russians.
It is the same evil of communism and Mao killing 40 millions Chinese, some of it in an effort to wipe out Christianity.
It is the same evil of demonic tinhorn dictators like Castro, Pol Pot, the Ayatollah, Saddam....and on and on....
It is the same evil and political calculation to stay as far away from getting involved by FDR and Canadian PM Mackenzie King (re: the Voyage of the Damned).
It is the same evil at Columbine, Aurora, Waco, Jamestown Guyana...and now Newtown, Connecticut.
It is the same evil of 55 million abortions in America since Roe vs Wade in 1973.
It is THAT evil which entered the world in Genesis 3 and the Fall of Man.

The world refuses to blame Satan and the evil he has wrought on mankind since he ushered in SIN into the world, because the world has walked hand in hand with what the Bible calls 'the god of this world'. Former Pastor and Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee was asked by Fox business anchor Neil Cavuto the usual question which secular media people always  asked "How could God let this happen?" During Hurricane Sandy, people in the media, who do everything to dishonor, disregard and just plain "diss" God from their "exalted" chairs on ABC, NBC etc were asking the same question.

Maybe, as both a pastor and political commentator, Gov. Huckabee's answer was not as fully fleshed out as say Rev. Franklin Graham's or David Wilkerson's would be, but he was on the right track. Huckabee said "It’s an interesting thing. We ask why there’s violence in our schools but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage? Because we’ve made it a place where we do not want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability. That we’re not just going to have to be accountable to the police, if they catch us, but we stand one day before a holy God in judgment…  Maybe we ought to let [God] in on the front end and we would not have to call him to show up when it’s all said and done at the back end".

Well, the good former pastor is now catching a lot of flack from it from secularists in the public square, both on the left and the right. Forget what those people think, was Governor Huckabee CORRECT? Yes. Should he have answered it that way? Maybe or maybe not, but he WAS asked a question. What was a man of God supposed to say? This is going to be a debate coming up soon, right before the evil and corrupt American culture tries to enforce laws against Christian speech, but watch for this phrase in the next two years "Freedom of Worship". US government officials at the highest levels are starting to use it both in this country and abroad. It is meant to silence Christ followers from proclaiming God's Truth of Salvation, Hope, Love, Sin, Pain, Death, Evil and the coming Judgment....and to prevent men like Huckabee from saying precisely what he said above. It is okay to preach inside your church, but "just don't take your Jesus" into the marketplace of ideas. 

When horrible shootings like Newtown or Virginia Tech happens, and well-known American pastors do not speak up, they leave a vacuum for secularism, pluralism and the growing "inter-faith" movement. You are moving to see more and more of this as the True Hope of Jesus Christ is watered down, as the followers of the god of this world play into the Hands of Biblical Prophesy. When the tragedy of Columbine happened, the good people of Colorado allowed a deeply moving service led by Rev. Franklin Graham where he brought the true comfort and hope of Christ to a grieving nation. However, we have not seen that sort of Gospel-centered message since (in response of national tragedies), except for Franklin's dad, Billy, at Washington DC's National Cathedral a few days after Evil from the Middle East hit us on September 11, 2001. 

So it is up to the people of God - us Christians - to pray for the salvation and comfort of the people of Newtown and especially the families of those who lost their precious young children, who are now in the loving Care of the Savior. It is up to us, the followers of Christ, to keep sharing the Gospel of our Lord and Savior...to keep sharing how folks can be saved from their sins...to keep sharing how to be delivered from evil and temptation and sin...to keep sharing, no matter what the world will say about us. Remember, my friends, the world hated our Lord Jesus, long before they hated us. What makes us think that they will love us now?! So be mindful WHO is watching us - God. He has the power of life and death - both now and in Eternity. He is the One to Whom we are accountable first and foremost. Let us now go and love others to Him. Evil is going to ramp up in these last days. God will get the blame. But the world will be sent to eternal shame.  Let's win many to Glory and Heaven, while there is still time. 

So, should Christians stay silent when evil and tragedy like Newtown hit? No...and a thousand times NO! We speak loudest when we speak directly to our God in prayer and through our love to our fellow man, regardless of what the world says.
Amen

WE'RE LOSING OUR YOUNG PEOPLE TOO SOON.....

In the past two days, there has been a blanket of sadness spread over the many at our office who had come to love our affable your security guard chief. Josh was only 34, kind, polite and a solid family man with the brightest of futures ahead of him. He loved to talk about spending time working with his stepson on the latter's car or about the new piece of property he just purchased to build a home for his dear wife. He was just a nice guy and everybody loved him.

No one knew what happened a couple days after the final time saw him last week. He had gone out to southern California to visit some longtime friends on a short vacation of a few days. Last Saturday night, Mountain View Police reports indicated that he was crossing California Street and was struck and killed by a car, out of nowhere. It was 10:20pm. He died on the spot. Josh left his wonderful family and friends to mourn this more than tragic accidental death. He may have been only 34, but the short time allotted him by the Lord, was up. 

You and I never know how much time WE have. It could be today or 10, 20, 30 years from now, if this old planet is still around. But what I have been noticing more and more in the past year in this area of less than 140,000 residents are the disproportionate amount of young people showing up in the obituaries. It is not a morbid occupation. I don't get the daily paper anymore. Occasionally, I will check the online version of it, but not daily, since news is readily available elsewhere. But young folks from as young as 20, up to their mid 40's are moving on to the next world at an alarming rate!

What is even more shocking to me and too few of my fellow ministers/evangelists and preachers of the gospel, is what their obituaries say about their lives! Almost none - ZERO - zippo of the portrayal of their lives indicate any following of the Lord; Jesus Christ or being anything else but a Christian in name only. Some of their services are not even officiated by a minister according to the paper, but they may a celebration dinner or...who knows what. This is so sad and scary to us because we know what all of this means. As nice as Josh was, the couple of us who spoke to him about spiritual matters could not say that he was even a follower of the Lord or had given his life to Christ. So many obits, when talking of the life of the young deceased, boldly proclaimed their love of the St Louis Cardinals; hiking and hanging out with friends. There is nothing wrong with that. I have yet to see one this year, of the dozens and dozens, that said "So and So....a firm believer in Jesus Christ, who loved and followed Him, and looked forward to meeting Him one day in heaven..." or similar.

This is a horrible reflection on the churches of the today...a horrible reflection on not just the church leaders of today, but the youth pastors of the past generation. They gave up our young people to the world, and an eternity of hurt without a fight. They give them up to the culture and political correctness and eventually eternal separation from God, because they did not take the time or energy and spend the money we gave them in the offering, to disciple these young people. They went ahead and built buildings with it, instead of the Body of Christ.

My close brother and fellow author, bi-vocational pastor Mike Henderson summed it up best of all here "The last three generations are nearly all lost when you look at percentages. Nearly 75% of all people never have had any affiliation with church or any religious activity. 15 % go to church once a year and 10% regularly. That my fellow saints is from the 2010 census for the city. Very sad. It is century one all over again and just like breaking new ground everywhere. We do not have the luxury on 3/4ths of those we witness to of building on another's plantings. Best to brush up on sharing Christ from scratch and pray for God to give the increase. Little by little we will take this city back from the lying stealing deceiving and perilous clutches of Satan's minions of death!"

Amen brother Mike, let us resolve - you, Mike and all of us, to do just that! Start teaching even 30 and 40 year olds, the basic truths and facts of just WHO Jesus Christ really is!!!! Amen!