Monthly Archives: January 2015

He stood high on the admiral’s bridge.

The great, gray warship floated in Placentia Bay, as the sun began to slowly rise over the coast of Newfoundland.

The rumpled stout man with thinning and unkempt sandy hair peered intently across the Atlantic. He had just gotten up but he couldn’t wait – not even to comb his hair.

Eager anticipation crossed the countenance of his determined features.

He had carefully labored and hoped for this moment – this meeting.

“Can you see any sign of them yet?” he asked an aide.

When the U.S.S. Augusta approached the HMS Prince of Wales at 11:00 AM, he had already dressed into a dark blue military uniform. He crossed the bay and boarded the ship.

There, on Saturday morning, August 9, 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill met President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the first time. Roosevelt, supported on the arm of his son Elliott, smiled broadly and shook Churchill’s hand. Though always a painful risk, especially on board a ship, the president had insisted on standing in his braces for this historic occasion.

It was a warm greeting FDR extended to his British counterpart. They had been in communication by cable. The meeting had been kept from the American press and public – a secret rendezvous on the high seas that would help determine the course of the world.

FDR jauntily lifted his head and smiled again at Churchill. “At last – we’ve gotten together,” he said. Churchill nodded and smiled back.

“We have,” he replied.

They hit it off instantly.

England was standing alone against Hitler’s Germany in World War II. Churchill hoped to persuade FDR, who faced staunch isolationism at home, to help Great Britain.

The stakes had never been higher for civilization. Both men knew that.

The next day, Sunday, on board the Prince of Wales, the President and Prime Minister joined American and British sailors in a church service.

Churchill had carefully selected the hymns.

They were rich and glorious Anglo-Saxon declarations of faith and courage. They are not so frequently sung in churches today.

The first was O God, Our Help in Ages Past, based on the 90^th Psalm.

The second was Onward Christian Soldiers.

 The service concluded with the singing of a hymn that FDR and Churchill, lovers of the sea and the Navy, would have found moving: Eternal Father, Strong to Save, known traditionally as “the Navy Hymn.”

Churchill wept and pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket. “It was,” he later said, “a great hour to live.”

Prayers were offered. The scripture passage was from Joshua 1. The words rang clear and strong:

“…as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong and of a good courage …be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest” (Joshua 1:5, 9, KJV).

Military and political strategies aside, that single worship service on the deck of the Prince of Wales, moved FDR deeply.

Later he confided to his son Elliott:

“If nothing else happened while we were here, that would have cemented us. ‘Onward Christian Soldiers.’ We are Christian soldiers, and we will go on, with God’s help.”

And they did.

Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill forged a close friendship of rare candor, warmth and mutual admiration.

It was the friendship that won the war and saved the world.

Yes, it was a “great hour to live.” And a time of maximum peril and challenge for the whole world. There was nothing quite like it before. There has been no time like it since.

And as great as the danger was, great leaders rose to meet it.

In a poignant scene from the film Lincoln, the president asks a young soldier:

“Do you think we choose to be born? Or are we fitted to the times we are born into?”

While interesting, it’s not likely Lincoln ever said that. He did confess that events had controlled him, rather than he controlled events. He quoted Shakespeare’s Hamlet about the “divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.”

History reveals the hand of a sovereign God.

Great events and great lives remind us that this is indeed His Story.

No one who believes in God would dismiss the close collaboration of FDR and Churchill in the world’s greatest war as mere coincidence.

It was divine providence. It was God saving his world.

This year, interestingly, will serve as reminders of God’s sovereign control of events. January 24^th marks the 50^th anniversary of Sir Winston Churchill’s death. This April marks the 70^th anniversary of FDR’s passing. That month is also the 150^th anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination and the end of the Civil War. In August, we commemorate the 70^th anniversary of victory in World War II.

History, like a kind father, reminds us of the power, purpose and watchfulness of God and points us to a renewed faith in his judgment and care for us.

He rules the nations.

But let us remember too that the Lord of Hosts is also the God of Jacob. He cares about the individual no less than the universe.

“Remember the days of old,” sang Moses, “consider the years of many generations …” (Deuteronomy 32:7, KJV).

And thank God for the day when giants strode the earth.

May God bless you and your family.

It again struck.

Unreasoning, brutal and deadly, its calling card read “revenge for the honor” of the prophet Muhammad.

This time it was the Paris headquarters of a satirical newspaper that had dared to poke fun at the Prophet. Twelve people, including the editorial director, were killed. Three of the terrorists were later cornered and gunned down. But not before four other innocent victims lay dead on the floor of a kosher market.

France was stunned. Nothing like this had happened in a half century.

The civilized world recoiled and then united in defiant solidarity against terrorism. Millions marched in Paris and throughout the country. The mayor of the city made clear her determination to fight back. President Francois Hollande joined the leaders of Germany, Great Britain, Israel and representatives from more than 40 other nations, arm in arm, for the show of resolve.

And once again, pains were taken to explain that this was a united resistance only to “radical” Islam, not Islam itself.

With each attack, with each mindless invocation of Muhammad and each bloody cry for “Allah”, even the most reasonable are beginning to question this persistent premise.

Is it true?

Is the religion of Islam, the world’s second-largest with 1.57 billion followers, totally blameless in the rising tide of global butchery committed in the name of its god and his messenger?

Is it possible that the guilt-ridden and dangerous dogmas of political correctness and multiculturalism have blinded us to the stubborn facts – the unvarnished truth – about Islam? Have we, in the name of a false peace and uneasy co-existence, turned a blind eye to the troubling reality of this oftentimes fervent, harsh and unforgiving religion?

By embracing acceptance do we practice cowardice?

“Tolerance,” observed GK Chesterton, “is the virtue of a man without convictions.”

Ideas have consequences. And some of the ideas – and history – of Islam lend themselves to a stridency of belief and an extremism of behavior.

It is ideas that unite terrorists around the globe who repeatedly shriek that they are acting in the name of “Allah.” And when we see this religious violence committed in the name of a single religion – over and over again – we have every right – and the duty – to be aware, informed and suspicious.

And we have the moral obligation to condemn any religion that breeds this violence; whether it is deliberate or unwitting. The danger is no different.

If our political leaders had any spine they would stand up.

These attacks, such as the one in Paris, may appear to be isolated but they are in fact united. What unites them is a sworn hatred of Western civilization and of Christianity in particular.

Muhammad is diametrically opposed to Jesus Christ. They cannot both be God’s sole messenger.

In Pakistan last November, a young Christian couple, living in poverty, was beaten to death with hockey sticks, rods and crowbars by an angry Muslim crowd of more than a thousand. The couple had been accused of burning a Koran while disposing of trash.

Muslim clerics used loudspeakers to incite the crowd while the couple was held captive. After being clubbed to death, their bodies were burned in the kiln where they had labored their whole lives. They left three small children. She was pregnant.

Where then was the outrage of Islam at such an act? Where indeed has it been throughout the Middle East in the face of savage persecution of Christians?

Even the new president of Egypt warned imams that they must rise up and condemn this terror committed in the name of Islam or their religion will disintegrate in a cauldron of vengeance.

When Abraham, doubting God’s promise, listened to his wife and was intimate with her slave Hagar, the son they had, Ishmael, was destined for violence. “‘This son of yours will be a wild man,’” the angel told the pregnant Hagar, “‘as untamed as a wild donkey! He will raise his fist against everyone, and everyone will be against him. Yes, he will live in open hostility against all his relatives’” (Genesis 16:12, NLT).

Ishmael is the father of the Arab race – the progenitor of Islam. Hate and violence are his legacy.

“I have been ordered (by Allah),” declared Muhammad, “ to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah’s Apostle”

Blasphemy against Islam is a criminal act in many nations, punishable by death. Responsible Muslims must call for the abolition of these repressive laws.

There are many peace-loving Muslims and we must never hate anyone. The right to worship must be protected in this country – for everyone.

This must be the Christian response.

We must continue to evangelize Muslims – to lead them to the love of Jesus Christ and the freedom, grace and forgiveness that only he offers. This is both right and effective. Haggai Institute, the great ministry for which I work, has trained thousands of ex-Muslims in leadership for evangelism. At their grave peril, they spread the Good News to their friends, family and colleagues.

Many Muslims around the world have told of seeing the Savior in dreams and visions.

Yes, he loves and he comes. Yes, he comes to them too.

Let us pray that the scourge of religiously-inspired violence will end.

Let us love all people everywhere, as He wants us to.

And let us recognize the destructive danger of falsehood, the glorious power of truth and the triumphant reality that Jesus Saves!

May God bless you and your family.