Category Archives: Christian World View

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

A cool, gentle breeze ruffled the tree branches overhead.

Beth and I were at our daughter’s home. We had just finished lunch and were enjoying sitting in the spacious backyard watching our grandchildren play.

I thought about family and how blessed we are. Beth’s parents had joined us for lunch. They’re in great health at 83. I considered the beauty and joy of four generations together in a backyard on a perfect Sunday.

These gatherings are always special.

Family’s great. And family’s important.

In recent times the American family has changed – a lot.

The redefinition of “family” has been moving forward with breakneck speed.

This spring, as Americans traditionally celebrate Motherhood and Fatherhood, five men and three women, sitting on an unelected United States Supreme Court, are on the verge of morally re-aligning civilization. These justices will decide if the covenant institution of marriage will be expanded to include gay men and women. They have been asked to sanction homosexual union as a constitutional right.

Much of the argument before the Court, on both sides, has invoked children and the role of procreation in advancing society. This pending decision has as much to do about family as it does about marriage.

They are inextricably linked.

Marriage cannot be redefined without changing the meaning of being a mother. And what it means to be a father.

Our founders could appeal to “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” in making their eloquent case for fundamental human dignity and freedom. In a western culture now steeped in moral relativism and spiritual rebellion, the case for gay marriage appeals to neither. Instead, it defies both.

The advocates of this unnatural alteration have public opinion squarely on their side. Never in American history has the tide turned so swiftly and dramatically. With a politically shrewd strategy and a sympathetic media, proponents have outmaneuvered, out-talked and out-hustled their adversaries. They have intimidated the voices of traditional morality into incoherence and ultimately silence.

They have won. And we’ve all seen this coming for some time.

Our churches often seem at a loss to address the central moral and spiritual issues at stake. They too have been intimidated – cowered by the harangues against “intolerance” and “bigotry” – and too anxious to sell their spiritual birthright for a hot bowl of popular cultural stew.

Who wants to be a religious Neanderthal?

The present famine of God’s Word has made us drink the sand of a moral desert.

Still, might doesn’t always make right.

In fact, history shows us the frequent fallacy of shifting opinion and political totalitarianism – and the undeniable consequences of moral decline.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is, after all, supposed to be a judicious arbiter and not a strident ideologue, pondered the serious implications of the court’s decision during oral arguments.

Not least of all because he may cast the deciding vote.

“This definition (of traditional marriage) has been with us for millennia,” Kennedy observed. “And it’s very difficult for the court to say, “Oh well, we know better.’”

That reluctance was previously echoed by a lower court judge:

“A dose of humility makes us hesitant to condemn as unconstitutionally irrational a view of marriage shared not long ago by every society in the world.”

Yet without a vision of God, “the people cast off restraint”(Proverbs 29:18, NIV).

I’m not sure what Justice Kennedy had in mind when he spoke of “millennia”, but the first book of the Bible describes the arrangement that he and his black-robed colleagues may soon overturn:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27, KJV, emphasis added). Later, when the Book of Beginnings describes the creation of woman, it says:

“This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one” (Genesis 2:24, NLT, emphasis added).

Jesus quotes this directly as God’s plan “from the beginning” (Matthew 19:4-5) and the apostle Paul also endorses it explicitly in his letter to the Ephesians (5:31).

Gay marriage or the Bible: they can’t both be right.

And while some insist God got this wrong, I’ll take my chances.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, in an article titled Saving Civilization, writes:

“When a man and woman make a lifetime commitment to one another they each benefit from the resulting stability, sensuality, and happiness. When a wife revels in her femininity and her husband submits his masculinity to the silken bonds of matrimony, the couple and children they create form a cocoon of security and joy.”

That’s why today, on our National Day of Prayer, I will pray for mothers and fathers and children and families. And it’s also why this Sunday I will rejoice in the celebration of womanhood and motherhood. I’ll thank God for my beautiful wife and three lovely daughters, two of whom are also mothers. I’ll offer praise for the women and mothers who guided history and have helped to change the world.

And, along with millions of my fellow Americans who will never surrender, I’ll thank God for the greatest institution, next to the Church, in the history of the earth:

The God-ordained family. Then, now and forever.

There was plenty of celebrating.

That’s the way it is when you win.

It’s human nature to whoop and holler and congratulate yourself.

Winning is for winners. Losing is for losers.

The tall, gaunt man dressed in black moved slowly to the open window and wearily smiled at the exuberant crowd of 3,000 gathered below.

The band had been playing for some time and now waited for his request.

Abraham Lincoln paused and smiled again at the joyous crowd. He had never been particularly musical and always graciously declined to join in public singing. Yet he also enjoyed music, describing it, according to one friend, as a “simple unalloyed pleasure.” Self-deprecatingly unpretentious by nature, Lincoln once professed, “I only know two tunes, one is ‘Old Hundred,’ and the other isn’t.”

“I have always thought ‘Dixie’ one of the best tunes I have ever heard,” the president told the expectant crowd. “Our adversaries over the way attempted to appropriate it, but I insisted yesterday that we fairly captured it…I now request the band to favor me with its performance.”

The crowd cheered and the band struck up Dixie.

It was Monday, April 10^th. Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant the day before, ending the most devastating and tragic war in American history. This was a first symbolic step toward Lincoln’s noble vision of a re-United States of America.

That Friday, 150 years ago this week, Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. Without regaining consciousness, the president died at 7:22 the next morning. It had been an act of vengeance committed in the name of the defeated South by a deranged narcissist.

Lincoln’s vision of national reconciliation after four long and costly years of bitter and blood-drenched conflict would perish with him. In a sad irony, the South had lost its most powerful ally – and its best friend – in the long and painful effort to heal the deep wounds of civil war.

The nation would eventually once again become the United States. But the path to reunion would be more difficult and filled with recriminations. Lincoln wanted the South restored. Now it would be punished.

As a presidential historian, I am often asked if I believe Lincoln was a Christian.

He kept his faith a private and personal matter, as most presidents have. It’s therefore impossible to say for sure, regardless of what some historians insist. While he often attended, he never joined a church. As a young and intemperate politician, he published a pamphlet advocating against religion. He later retracted it. Some suggest that after the death of his 11-year old son Willie in the White House, Lincoln gave his life fully to Christ.

It’s easier to make the claim that among all our chief executives, Abraham Lincoln – ambitious, scheming and shrewd politician that he surely was – was also among our most Christ-like presidents. He need not be deified as some American messiah, sacrificed on the altar of freedom on Good Friday. But in his temperament and his character, Lincoln consistently displayed those qualities that Christians seek and God desires.

Lincoln carefully read the Bible and knew it better than most ministers.

In his humility and patience, Lincoln was Christ-like. His favorite poem was Oh! Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Man Be Proud? Often slighted and mocked by the press and other politicians, he took it all in good humor.

So too in his mercy, his forgiveness and his extraordinary and tender-hearted compassion, Lincoln displayed an impressive Christian outlook that might be the envy of many believers.

There is not a single instance of Lincoln ever seeking mean-spirited revenge against his enemies or ever fretting of what any of them thought of him. His magnanimity was most fully and eloquently displayed toward the South as the war drew to a close.

It was his humble appreciation for the inscrutable purposes of a sovereign God that led Lincoln to refuse to blame the South for the war but to lay the blame upon the country as a whole. He recognized that “both sides” had responsibility. And he perceived God’s divine judgment in it all.

That is Christ-like wisdom.

He pleaded at his second inaugural for “malice toward none and charity for all.” He urged the nation to go forward “with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right,” and to “bind up the nation’s wounds” – to heal the deep divisions. He said the country must “care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan” – both North and South.

This was Lincoln’s vision for a stronger – and in the end – a happier republic. It was not steeped in angry and arrogant retribution but guided instead by “the better angels of our nature” – by kindness and goodness.

Even in the midst of violence and hate.

In his letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul called them the “fruits of the Spirit.” He said the followers of Jesus Christ should display these spiritual attributes in our daily lives. It’s remarkable that Lincoln’s towering place in history is cemented, in large part, by these Christian virtues.

And 150 years later, it’s an inspiring example for us all.

May God bless you and your family.

“Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man.

Bake me a cake as fast as you can.”

Well, not so fast, actually.

What is that distant thunder we hear in the heartland of America?

It is the collective voice of conscience. It is the cry of faith.

It is the bugle blast of courage.

The State of Indiana set off a firestorm of controversy in recent weeks when its legislature passed – and its governor signed – the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Christians who supported it drew a line in the cultural sand of our new morality and said, “No further.” It would now be illegal to force any person to deny his or her religious beliefs.

That declaration was met by other cries:

“Bigotry!” “Discrimination!” “Jim Crow!” “Intolerance!”

People were getting hoarse.

The new law was over-broad, flawed in its wording, awkwardly explained and often sheepishly defended. Corporate interests, fearing the vindictive wrath of an articulate and wealthy constituency, lined up to threaten Indiana’s political leadership (ironically Republican) with economic sanctions were the law not immediately repealed or, in the nomenclature de jure, “fixed.”

We’ve seen all this before.

Homosexual activists and their liberal allies invoke the weary shibboleth of racist comparisons. Business cowers and politicians either grandstand or temporize, depending. And the envelope is once again pushed forward, a victory for the forces of correctness.

But this time may have signaled a difference.

Despite its legal weaknesses, Indiana’s new law was as morally sound as a dollar. In seeking to protect the sincerely-held religious convictions of all its citizens, the law sought to balance the need to prohibit discrimination with the need to guard an inviolate constitutional right.

One wouldn’t have concluded much thoughtful nuance from the hyperventilated debate, but the reality is that this issue is about competing and yet equally valid rights and protections.

Discrimination is wrong.

Religious freedom is sacred.

Most Americans agree with both these propositions.

The government’s job is to balance these interests when they come into conflict.

The Christian’s duty is to place obedience to God above allegiance to the state.

While refusal to serve gay people at a place of public accommodation – a restaurant for example – was the unsavory and unrealistic illustration invariably cited by the law’s opponents, the protections sought were of a quite different nature.

If a baker who is a Christian is asked to bake a cake for a gay wedding and he is religiously opposed to homosexuality, as most Christians are and will remain, is he being asked to deny his faith by participating in the wedding? Would he be disobeying his conscience before God if he joined in an activity which he believes is sin? The same may be asked of a Christian florist.

Should civil authority force him to do this? Should the law have the right to punish him if he refuses? With anti – religion and especially anti-Christian sentiment growing, these questions will become increasing relevant and paramount.

This concern is the result of the legal triumph of gay marriage. It prompted the Indiana law.

The state will need to decide. And so will the church.

So too will the individual believer.

Where will the line be drawn? Where should it be drawn?

And in a sea change of morality, what will come next?

Will the law and the courts now be used to force people to forsake their moral convictions – to coerce under threat an approval of behavior against conscience itself? Could churches eventually be targeted? In Houston, led by a lesbian mayor, they already have been.

This is not “live and let live.” This is becoming, “renounce your beliefs or else.”

Followers of Christ must continue to display respect and charity toward all people.

No thoughtful Christian believes we should return to the days when homosexuality was illegal. Nor do most believe a gay citizen should lose his or her job because of sexual orientation or be refused public accommodations or service. In this sense, we have, as a society, advanced along the course of a reasonable justice. Christians in this country have accepted gay people as fellow citizens entitled to the equal protections of the law.

In the Old Testament book that bears his name, Daniel, living in captive exile in a land that rejected his Jewish faith, offered the king an accommodation on the rule about the food he and the other captives could legally eat. Let them eat as they wished and then see who was more physically fit at the end of ten days (Daniel1). Daniel prevailed and he and the other young men passed the test.

In making this offer, Daniel displayed both discernment and decisiveness; diplomacy but also determination. He showed respect to the authorities without compromising his righteousness.

But later, when the law insisted that the king alone be worshiped over God, Daniel refused to bow to anyone except the Lord who reigned supreme over all civil authority. He knew the price for his unwavering loyalty. He was willing to pay it.

Christians must remain conscientious objectors to all sin, whether in the guise of “rights” or not.

“So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (I Corinthians  10:31, NLT).

Even if it’s baking a cake – or not.

May God bless you and your family.

Last month, they set it ahead by a full two minutes.

It now stands at three minutes to midnight.

It hasn’t been this close since 1984, during the arms race.

The only time it’s been closer to midnight was in 1953, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union tested thermonuclear devices within nine months of each other. Then it was set at two minutes to the fatal hour.

It’s the Doomsday Clock.

First set in 1947 during the advent of the Nuclear Age at seven minutes before midnight, the symbolic clock is supposed to remind us of the precarious position of the world. It represents a “countdown” to global disaster, usually associated with the threat of nuclear weapons. Maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Doomsday Clock has been a sort of modern Damocles Sword hanging over the whole human race.

Sometimes the hand is set ahead – sometimes back. And so it goes – depending on a certain scientific view of world events.

As with the original ancient sword, the Doomsday Clock cautions those with great power of the accompanying responsibility.

From another point of view, one might conclude that the Clock is like the boy who cried wolf.

After all, it’s been warning us of impending worldwide doom for almost 70 years.

Nothing’s happened yet.

We’re all still here and life continues pretty much as it always has. Oh sure, change is a constant, but we adjust and move on. Let the hand of the Clock be moved as the scientists will.

It doesn’t affect us.

The scientists tell us they’ve moved the Doomsday Clock to 11:57 because of nuclear proliferation – more nations have nuclear weapons than ever before in the history of the world – and because of climate change. Both problems are getting worse, they say, and little, if anything, is being done about it.

Despite politics and theories, it would seem that circumstantial evidence would justify the scientific concern.

The weather of the world is wilder.

Extreme swings break old records.

Forty inches of snow in Boston recently over seven days made it the snowiest week in the area since records began in 1891. Reports show the oceans rising. Yes, climate change is real. And it’s becoming increasingly undeniable, even for naysayers.

Jesus foretold of climate change:

“And there will be strange signs in the sun, moon, and stars. And here on earth the nations will be in turmoil, perplexed by the roaring seas and strange tides” (Luke 21:25, NLT).

So this is not simply scientific fact. It’s prophetic fulfillment.

Ironically, the end of the Cold War has made the world, in many ways, a more unstable and dangerous place.

No one should be more concerned about the earth and the wise stewardship and conservation of its resources than Christians. No one should be any more dedicated to working and praying for peace in the world than those who follow the Prince of Peace. A Jordanian pilot’s barbaric death reminds us of the depravity of man and the long and difficult road to shalom.

Yet, for the follower of Jesus Christ there is no reason to give way to doom over the future. We must avoid the cavalier attitude of those who dismiss the coming cataclysm. “What happened to the promise that Jesus is coming again?” they mock. “From before the times of our ancestors, everything has remained the same” (II Peter 3:4, NLT).

But it hasn’t and it won’t.

One day, the clock will strike midnight.

Afraid? Not at all!

Jesus told us that this would be “the beginning of sorrows” (Matthew 24:8, KJV – “the first of the birth pains, with more to come”, NLT).

Creation is going into labor. The world is dilated. Perhaps even nine centimeters – or more.

Paul writes in Romans that “all of creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8: 22, NLT).

That’s a long labor!

Since the infection of Eden, the world has labored under the curse of sin. We call it “the human condition.”

But pain always precedes the abundant joy of birth and new life.

“You will grieve,” Jesus told his disciples, “but your grief will suddenly turn to wonderful joy” (John 16:21, NLT). He likened it to a woman in labor. “When her child is born, her anguish gives way to joy because she has brought a new baby into the world.” (verse 21, NLT).

So it is with us who wait for his return.

Some day and in some way, this old world and all its anguish and suffering, will come to an end.

No Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists can ultimately prevent that. Time will end. The clock will strike.

But then will come new birth and new life.

A new heaven and a new earth.

You and I will enter that glorious land – the city with eternal foundations, the city “whose builder and maker is God” (Hebrews11:10, KJV).

No more sorrow, no more pain, no more death and no more tears.

“I will see you again,” Jesus promises, “and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you” (John 16:22, KJV).

In the meanwhile, every tick of the clock just leads us closer home.

May God bless you and your family.

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.