So . . . I have had a BUSY day of Facebook. No sooner did I
read a link from one friend and share it – another friend posted an idea,
prayer, teaching, current event equally pressing. If we were sitting all
together in one room – I don’t think I could have fully heard what all my friends were saying! Reading, one by one though, what
they thought was important enough to share, I could hear.
The most galvanizing were reminders from pastors:
They enabled me to listen calmly to Israel’s Prime Minister’s
address the United States’ Congress. *
Mr. Netanyahu reminded me that tomorrow is Purim – the Jewish holiday of
one woman’s courage to thwart a Persian man’s plan to annihilate the Jews.
. . . Queen Esther
exposed the plot and gave for the Jewish people the right to defend themselves
against their enemies. The plot was foiled. Our people were saved.
Today the Jewish people face
another attempt by yet another Persian potentate to destroy us. Iran's Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Khamenei . . .
tweets that Israel must be annihilated -- he tweets. . in English that Israel
must be destroyed.
. . .
But Iran's regime is not merely a Jewish problem, any more than the Nazi regime
was merely a Jewish problem. The 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis were but
a fraction of the 60 million people killed in World War II. So, too, Iran's
regime poses a grave threat, not only to Israel, but also the peace of the
entire world.
And the Prime Minister reminded us of how the world has
changed since 1979 when
. . . one of the world's great civilizations [was] hijacked by religious zealots --
religious zealots who imposed on them immediately a dark and brutal
dictatorship.
That year, the zealots drafted a constitution, a new one for Iran. It directed
the revolutionary guards not only to protect Iran's borders, but also to
fulfill the ideological mission of jihad. The regime's founder, Ayatollah
Khomeini, exhorted his followers to "export the revolution throughout the world."
He then said:
Iran
and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam. One calls itself the
Islamic Republic. The other calls itself the Islamic State. Both want to impose
a militant Islamic empire first on the region and then on the entire world.
They just disagree among themselves who will be the ruler of that empire.
In this deadly game of thrones, there's no place for America or for Israel, no
peace for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don't share the Islamist medieval
creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone.
So,
when it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of your enemy is your enemy.
I think back to two books and movies that changed me: The
Diary of Anne Frank, and On the Beach by Neil Shute: an eyewitness
account of Nazi occupation, and a frightening real imagination of the aftermath
of a nuclear holocaust.
Praying the world’s leaders will quickly turn to God in
Christ to calm the storms that threaten to swamp us – and that we -- His church -- will not give
up praying.**
We
know that in this way we cannot ever really pray wrong. God hears us, and the
distant god of our culture cowers in defeat.