With forty-one candidates for president, Thursday’s election in Afghanistan certainly won’t be remembered as offering too little choice for the people of that war-torn nation. Although with the Taliban’s dark threat to kill poll workers and voters alike who show up for this national exercise in fledgling democracy, the choice for many may simply have been between life and death.

At the risk of oversimplifying the issues and demonizing the opposition, the parallels between the Afghan crisis and the intergalactic civil war that grips our own universe are striking. If the ancient Scriptures are to be believed, the divine Sovereign of the universe has risked the very existence of his government by granting to all citizens in his cosmic domain the inalienable right to choose whom they would have as Leader. Because of that guaranteed freedom, an angelic being long ago chose to reject the authority of the ruling God and rebel against his administration, thus igniting an internecine conflict that has now been isolated to this single planet in the galaxy and universe.

And on this planet that you and I call home leaflets from the sky have been announcing the final election of Leader for the citizens of earth. Although in our case, there are no forty-one candidates—there are only two: the apocalyptic dragon and the apocalyptic Lamb. And as surely as it was in Afghanistan, so for this election it has become the choice between life and death. But because it is still a choice for this planet’s inhabitants, the opposition’s guerilla warfare is an overt and obvious attempt to dissuade us all from voting at all—which would leave us plunged in the bloody status quo of this planet in rebellion.

Even a university campus like our own becomes a battleground for voter loyalty and citizen allegiance. None of us is accidentally thrust into this final election. The small choices of our day and night existences accumulate to become our final vote. “‘Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. . . . But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD’” (Joshua 24:15).

Because this election is so critical and because the final vote is potentially imminent for you and me, we plunge next week into a new exploration, “The Temple.” What is it that is transpiring in the throne room of the universe—even as we write and read these words—that carries eternal consequences for us here below? The unfolding events in the war room of the divine Candidate surely are consequential for the choice you and I must finally and fully make. Come to “The Temple” here at this website and at Pioneer Memorial Church Saturday mornings beginning next week. An educated electorate is liberty’s greatest hope.