Pastors' Blog

The story won’t go away, will it? Because this killer virus doesn’t seem to go away. Now Dallas is jittery all over again with the announcement that a second nurse who treated the deceased Liberian Ebola-infected patient is herself infected with Ebola. And now a whole new network of family, neighbors, associates must be staked out to determine if this infected nurse accidently infected one of them as well. Add to these concerns the World Health Organization’s announcement this week that the infection rate of Ebola in West Africa will accelerate in two months to as many as 10,000 new cases a week. How does the global community build a fire-wall around that number? It doesn’t take an epidemiologist to recognize that just a handful of breaches in quarantine efforts—just a few infected humans slipping across a border or two into a previously uncontaminated region or country—could conceivably turn this regional plague into a trans-African crisis of unimagined proportions. And then how long would the rest of the world remain untouched? Just the typical media hype? I’m not so sure anymore. I read a report this week from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (part of the Academic Health Center at the University of Minnesota) stating: “We believe there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus has the potential to be transmitted via infectious aerosol particles both near and at a distance from infected patients”—the implication being that “healthcare workers should be wearing respirators, not facemasks” (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2014/09/commentary-health-workers-need-optimal-respiratory-protection-ebola). I.e., the virus may be transmitted in the air surrounding an infected victim. If those CIDRAP concerns are valid, then obviously the spread of Ebola virus is no longer limited to contact with bodily fluids. But doesn’t God promise, “No evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling” (Psalm 91:10)? The Adventist Review reported this week that Ebola has killed 16 Adventists in West Africa. The truth is, divine protection was never intended to be a permanent immune shield for the ills and evils of this planet. Then should we be worried? No. We should be concerned, deeply concerned both for the plight of the inhabitants of West Africa and for a world where “pestilences” will abound until Christ returns (Matthew 24:7). And where we can, let us act on our compassion in humanitarian ways that can help alleviate human suffering. We must respond like Jesus. (Go to Adventist Frontier Missions—www.afmonline.org—for ways you can respond.) In the meantime let us not dismiss too quickly the disequilibrium Ebola has already injected into global consciousness. Should this epidemic jump the firewall, life on this planet will be radically altered. And the difficulty of communicating God’s last appeal “to every nation, tribe, tongue and people” will be significantly ramped up. Jesus’ description of the global psyche when He returns may not be so far off—“men’s hearts failing them from fear” (Luke 21:26). So with hope and an urgency borne of compassion let us go to our neighbors and nations with the announcement that the Healer of the human family is coming soon. “Turn to Me and be saved, all you ends of the earth” (Isaiah 45:22).

Apparently it was quite a heated grilling last Tuesday at the House Oversight Committee’s Q & A with Julia Pierson, director of the Secret Service. Two recent lapses in White House and presidential security have certainly raised a non-partisan ruckus in Congress. And perhaps justifiably so. On September 16 a knife-carrying intruder leaped the White House fence and raced past guards, all the way into the East Room of the White House, an unprecedented breach of security. Then the nation learned that three days previous President Obama, in a visit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, had ridden up an elevator with an armed federal contractor. Turns out that gentleman had three convictions for assault and battery on his record. It probably didn’t help his case that he stood there in the elevator videoing the President as they ascended! Thus to note that Julia Pierson’s appearance before the Congressional committee was adversarial is perhaps an understatement. “What were you people in the Secret Service thinking?” Etc. To which Ms. Pierson asserted, “The president is safe today.”  Well. Let’s face it—security is a big deal in anybody’s book these days. Commoners like you and me have reason to pause many times in the course of a week over concern about our personal safety and security. We have a new family in our neighborhood that owns a pet pit bull. It may be the friendliest pit bull on earth, but as I run by the house each morning I keep a wary eye for any sign of a dog on the loose! No Secret Service details are assigned to us. But take heart—we don’t go out into this dangerous world unprotected. “The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them” (Psalm 34:7). That’s not only a statement of fact—it is also a divine promise! “A guardian angel is appointed to every follower of Christ. These heavenly watchers shield the righteous from the power of the wicked one.” And because this is a university, consider the following sentence: “ . . . it is their work to guard the youth. . . . Ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands of angels minister to the youth” (The Truth about Angels 14, 19). And besides, if one angel felled an entire battalion of Roman warriors at the resurrection of Jesus, you and I are hardly getting short-changed to have one angel as our night and day guardian! One of my favorite songs was written and sung by Fernando Ortega: “Jesus, King of Angels, Heaven’s light/Hold my hand and keep through this night./Let no evil come into my dreams,/Light of Heaven, keep me in your peace.” Yes, we have the angels. But best all, we have the King of Angels, too.

“Here’s a Fourth Watch story for you,” emailed one of the readers of this blog. And I agree. Early Sunday morning, June 25, 2006, Corporal Gilad Shalit, a nineteen-year-old soldier with the Israel Defense Forces, was kidnapped by Hamas militants on the Israeli side of its border with Gaza. Abducted back into Gaza, Corporal Shalit became the rallying cry of a nation caught between two clashing ideals: never negotiate with terrorists versus never abandon one of your own. Hamas refused International Red Cross requests to visit Shalit on grounds that it would reveal the captured soldier’s whereabouts. Over the five years of his captivity “Free Shalit” rallies across Israel increased pressure on the Israeli government to achieve his release. The news this week that Hamas had agreed to return Corporal Shalit was met with jubilation by Israelis . . . until the negotiated terms of the release were reported. And suddenly the country was divided. How much is one Israeli soldier worth? 1,027 convicted Palestinian prisoners? Listen to one Israeli family’s reaction: “Embittered father Zeev Rapp, 66, sat at home and watched the television in disgust. In 1992, Amrin [one of the released Palestinian prisoners] stabbed Rapp’s daughter Helena, 15, in the heart as she was on her way to school. Now, he was . . . walking free with other smiling prisoners, flashing victory signs and kissing the ground. ‘We feel as though our daughter has been murdered all over again’” (South Bend Tribune 10-19-11). And Shalit? Egyptian television released the first images of the now freed corporal, “pale, gaunt . . . in a dark baseball cap, exiting a car in Egypt, which mediated the handover” (ibid). Ecstasy for his family, mourning for another. How much is one Israeli soldier worth? So how much is one sinner worth—Israeli, Palestinian, American, Afghan, Chinese, Sudanese, Mexican, Indian? How many earth children would God be willing to pardon and release for the exchange of His own Son? I realize the metaphor shifts and collapses the moment we introduce Calvary. But you do have to wonder, don’t you, the prisoner exchange that effected our salvation and release? The psalmist struggled over the dilemma: “No one can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for them—the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough” (Psalm 49:7, 8 NIV). How true. How could any of us possibly provide the ransom for just one sinner even in a thousand lifetimes? And yet the stunning announcement of the Good News is that God found the ransom for this rebel race within His own circle, within Himself. “And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6 NKJV). That’s not 1,027 to one. Nor is it seven billion to one. It’s every human being in the history of this planet to One—“‘The Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many’” (Mark 10:45). Very many! Because God has been into prisoner exchanges for a long time, hasn’t He? Take that Friday morning the rabble clamored for a murderer in exchange for the Innocent—and got Barabbas instead of Jesus of Nazareth. But whether it’s one for One, or billions for One, the numbers really don’t matter, do they? Love’s radical prisoner exchange is beyond comprehension.

So when do the beheadings stop? The dark revulsion the world community has expressed over these diabolical, taunting, on-camera killings certainly has not dissuaded the terrorists. Today they butcher captured journalists. And when they run out of journalists, who will be next? Subjugated women, children, and men—both Muslim and Christian—have already been the human fodder for ISIS and its grizzly on-camera executions. Who will be evil’s next choice for extermination? Twice now the black-hooded executioner has taunted by name the President of this nation. But the sobering reality is that the greatest political, military powers on earth are simply unable to staunch this hemorrhage of evil. The other day someone suggested that they simply nuke the living daylights out of the entire region. But what would that solve? And besides, wouldn’t such a response be guilty of the same black-hooded sin—butchering the innocent for the sake of making a point? Jesus identified “the increase of lawlessness” as the contributing factor for the moral collapse of this civilization on the eve of His return (Matthew 24:12). In fact, He warned, “as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man” (v 37). And what were “the days of Noah” like? “Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). “Only evil continually.” Perhaps we still have a ways to go. Which is why “go” is the operative command for the followers of Christ in this global descent into darkness: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation”—“for I am the Light of the world”—“and you are the light of the world, so let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven”—“for night is coming when no one can work” (Mark 16:15; John 9:5; Matthew 5:16; John 9:4). The followers of Christ can wring their hands and rage against the dying of the light. Or they can light a candle and move out into the night of human suffering and need—like medical personnel who have flown to the Ebola-racked nations of Africa to minister to the victims, irrespective of the personal cost—like volunteers at an inner city soup kitchen, who incarnate God’s love in the midst of impoverished suffering—like self-supporting evangelists who pay their way to a country they can’t pronounce to share a message they know by heart, by simply moving next door to perfect or imperfect strangers. Let the talking heads plot their political responses to earth’s unraveling conditions. We who follow “this same Jesus” have but one response He calls us to make—in His name we must go.