Big Security Council Members Agree on Iran

By on January 16, 2006 in Politics

The AP reports that the members of the U. N. Security council are coming together against the recent, provocative steps taken by Iran. Here’s the article: “Big Security Council Members Agree on Iran.”

The developments reported here are significant because it’s the first sign that Russia and China might oppose the actions taken by Iran. Russian and China are permanent members of the Security Council and can veto any sanctions that the other members might propose. Hopefully, this is a sign that they are moving toward challenging Iran. According to this article, Russia is hinting that it may do just that.

If you are wondering what might happen if the problem in Iran is not addressed, then read my previous post.

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The Great Gulf War of 2007

By on January 16, 2006 in Politics

A great big Hat Tip to Dr. Mohler for bringing our attention to Niall Ferguson’s OP-ED piece in today’s LA Times: “Tomorrow’s world war today.” This piece is narrated as if it were written by a historian looking back on the “Great Gulf War” of 2007. The essay rings eerily prescient and is a must read. If you don’t read any thing else today, read this one.

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Fighting the Good Fight against Abortion

By on January 16, 2006 in Culture, Theology/Bible

Dr. William Cutrer is the medical director of a crisis pregnancy center that is featured in today’s New York Times. The article is titled “Some Abortion Foes Forgo Politics for Quiet Talk.” Dr. Cutrer is an OB-GYN who also serves as a Professor of Christian Ministry at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also a special friend who ministered to my wife and me while we were living in Louisville, KY.

This article puts to the lie the notion that pro-life people do not care about women. A Woman’s Choice Resource Center where Dr. Cutrer works not only counsels women against abortion, but also provides material and financial resources for those who decide to carry their babies to term. Moreover, the center also has open arms for any woman in need of counseling after they have gone through with an abortion.

The kind of work being done at the Center is probably the most important front in the ongoing public battle over abortion rights. At the end of the day, abortion-on-demand will only be turned back when the hearts and minds of the American people are won over to the pro-life cause. The work being done by people like Dr. Cutrer will go farther to win people over than any piece of legislation passed in Congress or any judge confirmed to the U. S. Supreme Court.

Thanks, Dr. Cutrer, for fighting the good fight.

[You might be interested in checking out some of the books that Dr. Cutrer has authored. The titles are listed below.]
When Empty Arms Become a Heavy Burden: Encouragement for Couples Facing Infertility
Sexual Intimacy in Marriage
Simply Romantic Nights
Lethal Harvest (fiction)
Deadly Cure (fiction)
False Positive (fiction)

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Cronkite Joins the Ranks of the Not-Serious

By on January 16, 2006 in Politics

It would be an understatement to say that the Iraq war has caused some controversy here in the U. S. and abroad. Public opinion about the war ranges all the way from “This is a just war worth winning” to “This war is an evil act of aggression, and the U. S. should pull out of Iraq now.” In other words, opinions range all the way from totally serious to totally not serious.

Unfortunately, it appears that the man who was once hailed as the most trusted man in America has joined the ranks of the decidedly not serious. Walter Cronkite, former CBS anchorman, delivered these remarks just yesterday to a group of reporters in Pasadena, California:

“We had an opportunity to say to the world and Iraqis after the hurricane disaster that Mother Nature has not treated us well and we find ourselves terribly missing in the amount of money it takes to help these poor people out of their homeless situation, to help rebuild some of our important cities of the United States, and therefore we are going to have to bring our troops home . . . We would have been able to retire with honor . . . We’ve done everything we can. We’re going to have to leave it with [the Iraqis] someday, and it is my belief that we should get out now” (source, source).

Apparently, Cronkite has taken leave of himself (and common sense). If the U. S. were to retreat from Iraq now, it would leave pro-democracy Iraqis in a lurch, the country would likely descend into civil war, and the region would be even more destabilized than it was before the U. S. went in. Moreover, not only would it be immoral to make up a lie about the Hurricane being the cause of the withdrawal, it would also project weakness to all our enemies who would then think that the U. S. can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.

So my question to Cronkite is this: How in the world can it be considered honorable or safe to tuck tail, run, and then make up a lie to explain why the country chooses to lose the war? If that’s what honor is to Cronkite, then someone needs to tell him that that’s not the way it is.

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Peggy Noonan on the Confirmation Hearings

By on January 12, 2006 in Politics

I look forward every week to Peggy Noonan’s column in The Wall Street Journal, and her piece this morning is a gem. Today she decided to lampoon the outlandish senators and their preposterous grand-standing in the confirmation hearings of Judge Alito. My favorite part of the article is when she begins channeling Senator Biden of Delaware, who is notorious for patronizing, self-aggrandizing speeches that do not stay on topic. Here’s the kind of “question” that Biden so often “asks” according to Noonan:

What if a fella–I’m just hypothesizing here, Judge Alito–what if a fella said, “Well I don’t want to hire you because I don’t like the kind of eyeglasses you wear,” or something like that. Follow my thinking here. Or what if he says “I won’t hire you because I don’t like it that you wear black silk stockings and a garter belt. And your name is Fred.” Strike that–just joking, trying to lighten this thing up, we can all be too serious. Every 10 years when you see me at one of these hearings I am different from every other member of Judiciary in that I have more hair than the last time. You know why? It’s all the activity in my brain! It breaks through my skull and nourishes my follicles with exciting nutrients! Try to follow me.

What a hoot!

“Biden His Time: Judge Alito’s low-affect tour de force” – by Peggy Noonan

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The New York Times Blames President Bush for the Mining Disaster!

By on January 11, 2006 in Politics

I can’t believe it. Someone has found a way to blame President Bush for the mining disaster in West Virginia last week. Who better to make such a charge than one of the usual suspects, the editors at The New York Times? Here’s the money-line:

The pro-company bias of the administration is itself a factor deserving full investigation if the inquiries now being promised are to have any credible effect.

The editorial is titled “Lost Time, Lost Lives in the Mine.”

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Review of Bart Ehrman’s ‘Misquoting Jesus’

By on January 11, 2006 in Book Reviews, Theology/Bible

Misquoting JesusBart D. Ehrman. Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. HarperSanFrancisco, 2005. 242pp. $24.95.

UPDATE! (January 15, 2007)
Touchstone magazine recently published my review, and it is now available in their December 2006 issue. They also have made available an online version which can be accessed here.

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Bird Flu: How Deadly Is It?

By on January 11, 2006 in Culture, Politics

I wrote in October that the biggest story of the year might be the possible outbreak of a flu pandemic. According to The New York Times, I and many others may have been sounding the alarm too quickly. Here’s an excerpt from the Time‘s article:

Two young brothers, ages 4 and 5, who have tested positive for the dreaded A(H5N1) avian virus but shown no symptoms of the disease were being closely watched at Kecioren Hospital here on Tuesday. Doctors are unsure whether they are for the first time seeing human bird flu in its earliest stages or if they are discovering that infection with the A(H5N1) virus does not always lead to illness.

In any case, the highly unusual cluster of five cases detected here in Turkey‘s capital over the last three days – all traceable to contact with sick birds – is challenging some of the doctors’ assumptions about bird flu and giving them new insights into how it spreads and causes disease. Since none of the five have died, it is raising the possibility that human bird flu is not as deadly as currently thought, and that many mild cases in Asian countries may have gone unreported.

Here is at least one instance in which I will be thrilled to find out that I was wrong.

Update: There’s an editorial today on this topic in The Washington Post: “Bird Flu Harbingers.”

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Please Pat, We Don’t Need Anymore Help (part 2)

By on January 8, 2006 in Culture, Politics, Theology/Bible

patrobertson.jpg

Photo: Jamie-Andrea Yanak/Associated Press

Pat Robertson has stepped in it all over again this week with his pronouncement that Ariel Sharon’s illness is a judgment from God. The Washington Post reports: Continue Reading →

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Need Christ? Not if you are Jewish.

By on January 8, 2006 in Politics, Theology/Bible

Today’s Washington Post observes the widespread support for Israel and for Jews among evangelical Christians. The piece is titled, “Among Evangelicals, A Kinship With Jews.” The paper quotes excerpts from an interview with Mark Noll that should raise the eyebrows of anyone who cares about the gospel.

Mark A. Noll, a professor of Christian thought at Wheaton College, a center of evangelical scholarship in Illinois, said evangelicals are beginning to move away from supersessionism — the centuries-old belief that with the coming of Jesus, God ended his covenant with the Jews and transferred it to the Christian church.

Since the 1960s, the Roman Catholic Church and some Protestant denominations have renounced supersessionism and stressed their belief that the covenant between God and the Jewish people remains in effect.

Evangelicals generally have not taken that step, but ‘among what you might call the evangelical intelligentsia, questions of supersessionism have come onto the table,’ Noll said. “It’s in play among evangelicals in the way that it was in mainline Protestantism and Catholicism — but wasn’t among evangelicals — 30 or 40 years ago.”

What Noll refers to here is not the belief among many evangelicals that there will be widespread conversion of Jews to Christ at some point in the future (along the lines of Romans 11:26). What Noll refers to is the idea that the Jews have a favored status with God apart from Jesus. This favored status consists in their election by God to be in covenant with him—a covenant that God made with the patriarchs all the way back in Genesis beginning with Abraham.

This idea has been popular among mainline Protestant for some time, and it holds that God’s promises to bless Israel are still in effect for the Jews even though the Jews by and large do not embrace Jesus as their Messiah. In other words, because of the covenant with Abraham, the Jews can have salvation apart from faith in Jesus the Messiah. The shocking thing that Noll brings forth is how this idea is making inroads among the “intelligentsia” of evangelicalism.

But what Noll doesn’t address is the somewhat ironic fact that many conservative evangelicals, who would otherwise affirm that there is no salvation apart from faith in Jesus the Messiah, make the claim that non-Christian Jews have a favored status with God even though they do not embrace Jesus as their Messiah. This is in fact what the Post article is all about. These sentiments characterize the remarks of a Southern Baptist pastor who was interviewed:

“I feel jealous sometimes. This term that keeps coming up in the Old Book — the Chosen, the Chosen,” says the minister, who has made three trips to Israel and named his sons Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. “I’m a pardoned gentile, but I’m not one of the Chosen People. They’re the apple of his eye.”

Comments such as these are unfortunate because they actually detract from the central truth that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, and all the blessings of the covenant with Abraham can only be obtained through faith in Jesus. The blessings of the covenant only come to those who believe in the crucified and risen Messiah, and any Jewish person who does not believe in this Messiah has broken the covenant and is liable to judgment. If one wants to drink from the rich root of Israel (Romans 11:17), they must do so by faith in Jesus the Messiah.

These Gospel truths have a profound impact on how Christians should feel about the middle-east conflict today. The secular state of Israel today may not claim a present divine right to the Land as long as they reject the Messiah and are thereby covenant breakers. Until the mass of Jews convert their allegiance to Jesus the Messiah, God will not bless them according to the terms of the covenant. That is why every evangelical who anticipates a “future for Israel” in the Holy Land also anticipates a mass conversion of the Jews before that blessing comes. So even traditional dispensationalists are inconsistent when they claim that the Jews have a right to the land now.

This does not mean, however, that there are no reasons to be supportive of the secular state of Israel. It is the only democracy in the region (Iraq, nothwithstanding). You will hear me from time to time expressing support for Israel on this basis because I think democracies promote justice. But I will never argue that God is obligated to bless anyone apart from Christ. That idea simply does not appear in the Scriptures anywhere.

For more on this topic, I recommend John Piper’s sermon “Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East.”

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