by mike Evans
The thief [the devil] comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
—JOHM 10:10
It is up to Christians to face the present situation in the Middle East with moral clarity, to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, to oppose evil in this world, and to pray for justice and righteousness to prevail. It is time for the United States to remember its heritage in God, recalibrate its moral compass of right and wrong to God’s way of thinking, and stand beside Israel, praying for her salvation both for this world and the world to come.
Chapter Two
RECALIBRATING AMERICA’S MORAL COMPASS
Every time the terrorists kill a civilian, they win. Every time the terrorists get the democracies to kill a child, they win. It’s a win/win for the terrorists, it’s a lose/lose for the democracies, and it’s all because of the asymmetry of morality.1
—ALAN DERSHOWITZ
We can forgive you for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.2
—GOLDA MEIR
A wind of counter-revolution is blowing across the Middle East and directly into the faces of the Islamofascists and their hopes for spreading Khomeini’s Islamic revolution worldwide. Both Iraq and Afghanistan have held democratic elections. President Bush was right in his decision to invade Iraq—he has established a base to inject the vaccination of democracy into the bloodstream of oil-rich, tyrannical regimes that suppress the human rights of the masses and confuse them with outlandish conspiracy myths about Israel and the West. The terrorists, however, are trying to destroy this move toward truth, freedom, and democracy—and the liberal Left in America is helping them succeed.
America is not hated by liberal leftists, appeasement states, and oppressive regimes because it is doing wrong but because it is doing right. The belief of these regimes is that a perfect world is a weak and anemic America that embraces the perpetrator and castigates the victim.
President Bush’s plan, like that of Ronald Reagan toward the Soviet Union, will bring a new beginning to the Middle East. For the first time since the rebirth of their nation in 1948, the Israelis see the opportunity of a lifetime for a more democratic region. President Bush’s battle for the soul of the Middle East is beginning to succeed, much to the chagrin of the liberal Left. In order for his course to continue, God-fearing Americans must unite and battle for the soul of America.
The foundational promise on which the return of Jesus Christ and all prophecy is contingent is found in Matthew 24:14:
This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.
This doctrine is taught and believed by more than one billion Christians worldwide that consider themselves “evangelical.”
The Middle East is the last frontier for the proclamation of our Judeo-Christian principles, fulfilling Jesus’s last words on the earth:
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
—ACTS 1:8
The church will, in fact, respond to the words of Jesus, and in doing so will birth the greatest revival the Middle East—and the world—has ever known.
The basis for President Bush’s conviction is this: good versus evil. It is a doctrine of the Bible from Genesis to the cross and to the very end of the age, as well as the foundational doctrine in President Bush’s war on terror. As Edmund Burke’s oft-quoted saying goes, “All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” It was the same doctrine Ronald Reagan used in defeating the so-called “Evil Empire” of the Soviet Union.
Why do followers of Christ feel a God-ordained call to wage war against evil and to support Israel? How is this mission based on the Bible, and how will it birth a great awakening in America and the Middle East, causing these believers to refocus their passions on confronting the root of all evil?
For example, how can Christians support a war when Jesus has said, “Love your enemies”? The New Testament clearly states that civil magistrates can wage war against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. Romans 13:1–4 (nasu) says:
Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves. For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.
Today, the battle of good versus evil is being fought from within. Liberals hate the America of which Christian presidents dream. They hate Israel, the Bible, and Christians in general. They subject Christians to scorn, ridicule, and discrimination. There is no attack on American culture more deadly than the secular humanists’ attack against God in American public life.
The insults, verbal abuse, and attacks are so severe that anyone who contradicts them is labeled ignorant, evil, racist, and a bigot. The dumbing down of America has begun, and all in the name of political correctness and a new godless globalism.
The hippies of the ’60s have become the establishment against which they once railed. Even though they run the culture, the media, the educational system, the courts, the arts, and so forth, they are still self-destructing. From the public and private sector, from mainstream Hollywood to the public schools, from Washington politics to local judges, from the arts to the sciences, they are self-destructing.
America, the noble experiment, is under siege. The tidal wave of evil is sweeping over our nation: the self-injuring, spirit-destroying, conscious-searing practices of pornography, abortion, homosexuality, and drug and alcohol abuse are being supported as they never have been before. There is a vicious moral and spiritual war raging in the hearts and minds of Americans.
THE COST OF DENYING THAT EVIL EXISTS
At the heart of liberalism is a belief that evil really doesn’t exist, people are basically good, and thus individuals can’t really be held accountable for the wrong they do. The liberal tactic is that it is better just to talk with people since we are basically all the same and reasonable at heart, rather than bringing criminals to justice or fighting to stop those committing crimes upon humanity.
The liberal crowd wants God and the Bible out of America. Our first president, George Washington, said, “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion…. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”3 John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”4
Can the liberal secular humanists’ hatred for all things Christian pass Natan Sharansky’s “town square test”?
Can a person walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm? If he can, then that person is living in a free society. If not, it’s a fear society.5
The rights of Christians in America to express their views without fear of retaliation from liberal organizations are frequently challenged and are slowly being eroded.
I believe America is under attack from radical Islam because it is a Christian nation. Bush is hated because he is one of the most devoted Christian presidents in American history and because he applies Christian principles to every aspect of his policies.
President Bush has said, “When you turn your heart and your life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as the Savior, it changes your heart. It changes your life. And that’s what happened to me.”7
In his State of the Union address in 2002 (what is now called the “axis of evil” speech), President Bush drew a line in the sand for nations that he considers part of an axis of evil threatening the free world. On February 7, 2002, the president said, “Faith shows the reality of good and the reality of evil.”8
George W. Bush began his second White House term with his freedom speech, as did Ronald Reagan with his speech about the threat of evil in the world and the hope of freedom. Reagan quoted John 3:16 (kjv) as his favorite verse: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” He explained his relationship with God in these words: “Having accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, I have God’s promise of eternal life in heaven.”9
Reagan saw the evil of Communism not only as shutting down the churches, but also as threatening the eternal salvation of millions of people. He said of freedom:
Above all, we must realize that no arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors.10
Both Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush felt called to become president. Mother Teresa told me in Rome that she and her sisters stayed up two nights praying for Ronald Reagan after he was shot. She told me that she met with Mr. Reagan in June 1981 and said:
You have suffered the passion of the cross and have received grace. There is a purpose to this. Because of your suffering and pain you will now understand the suffering and pain of the world. This has happened to you at this time because your country and the world needs you.11
She said that Nancy Reagan broke into tears. The president was deeply moved. Maureen Reagan, the president’s daughter, told me that her father repeated the story often and said, “God has spared me for a reason. I will devote the rest of my time here on earth to find out what He intends me to do.”
A PROPHECY
In October 1970, Pat Boone, Harald Bredesen, Herb Ellingwood, and George Otis, with Shirley Boone, had joined hands in a circle to pray with then governor Ronald Reagan. Otis said that as he prayed, his hands began to shake. (He was holding Reagan’s hand.) Otis said, “Son, if you walk upright before Me, you will reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.” The other three men who were present that day told me the same story.
I had the pleasure of meeting personally with Ronald Reagan several times at the White House during his presidency. He talked freely about spiritual matters. I was invited to the White House for a private dinner with the Reagan cabinet and eighty-six of America’s top religious leaders shortly after his first inauguration and for the first Middle East national security briefing (on the sale of AWACS to Saudi Arabia) after Reagan’s inauguration. I was also invited to speak briefly at the Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas, in 1980.
Bush and Reagan were both greatly influenced by the writings of C. S. Lewis, and especially his book Mere Christianity, particularly book 1, which is entitled “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe.” The writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn were also an influence. Solzhenitsyn addressed the Harvard graduating class in 1978 with a speech entitled “A World Split Apart.” He characterized the current conflict for our planet as a physical and spiritual war that had already begun and could not be won without dealing with the forces of evil.
On January 20, 2005, after praying for guidance on the scripture he should choose as his inaugural scripture, George W. Bush placed his hand on his family Bible. He chose a scripture used by Ronald Reagan at the end of his famous “Evil Empire” speech at the Twin Towers Hotel in Orlando, Florida, on March 8, 1983. From Isaiah 40:31 (kjv), President Bush selected:
But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.
The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at root, it is a test of moral will and faith. Whittaker Chambers, the man behind one of the most divisive court cases of our time, the Hiss-Chambers case, wrote:
The crisis of the Western world exists to the degree in which it is indifferent to God. It exists to the degree in which the Western world actually shares Communism’s materialist vision, is so dazzled by the logic of the materialist interpretation of history, politics and economics, that it fails to grasp that, for it, the only possible answer to the Communist challenge: Faith in God or Faith in Man? is the challenge: Faith in God.12
For Chambers, Marxism-Leninism “is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: ‘Ye shall be as gods.’”13
The Western world can answer this challenge, he wrote, “but only provided that its faith in God and the freedom He enjoins is as great as Communism’s faith in Man.”14
Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech rocked the world. In it he said:
Let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness. Pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the State, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.
It was C. S. Lewis who, in his unforgettable Screwtape Letters, wrote: “The greatest evil is not done now in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint…. It is conceived and ordered; moved, seconded, carried and minuted in clear, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.”…
…So in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.
I believe we shall rise to the challenge. I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last—last pages even now are being written. I believe this because the source of our strength in the quest for human freedom is not material, but spiritual.
And because it knows no limitation, it must terrify and ultimately triumph over those who would enslave their fellow man. For in the words of Isaiah: “He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increased strength. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary.”15
Ronald Reagan’s speech impacted the world. Natan Sharansky told me in Jerusalem that he remembers fellow prisoners tapping on the prison walls to communicate the American president’s speech. Lech Walesa, the leader of the Solidarity movement in Poland, said the speech inspired him and millions of others.
A painting entitled “A Charge to Keep” hangs in the Oval Office. It was inspired by a favorite song from Charles Wesley. There is a determined rider ahead of two other riders urging his horse up a steep, narrow path. The rider bears a superficial resemblance to George W. Bush.
A charge to keep I have,
A God to glorify,
A never dying soul to save,
And fit it for the sky.
To serve the present age,
My calling to fulfill;
O may it all my powr’s engage
To do my Master’s will!
In November 1998, George W. Bush flew to Israel. The trip was sponsored by the National Coalition, a Republican-oriented, American lobby group that strongly supported the policies of then prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Bush had dinner with Mr. Netanyahu on November
30, as well as meetings with other Israeli leaders. One of the highlights of the trip was a helicopter tour conducted by the foreign minister at the time, Ariel Sharon. Bush said to Mr. Sharon, “If you believe the Bible as I do, you know that extraordinary things happen.”
When he and Ariel Sharon parted company, Mr. Bush shook his hand warmly and said, “You know, Ariel, it is possible that I might be president of the United States, and you the prime minister of Israel.”
Sharon laughed and said, “It is unlikely that I, such a controversial figure in Israeli politics, would become the prime minister.”16 But Sharon did, in fact, become prime minister in a special election in February 2001.
During the last U.S. presidential election, Sharon was the first prime minister to refuse to meet with a presidential candidate, John Kerry. He would not even meet with Kerry’s brother despite the fact that the majority of the Jewish community is Democratic. Sharon was willing to fall on his political sword for Bush. Had Bush lost, Sharon would have gone down with him.
