Hiding Place

Corrie Ten Boom, the larger than life, young woman who from her Dutch home, helped so many Jews to escape Germany's Holocaust, and before her death at age 91, had traveled America proclaiming the good news of Christ's redemption. Her book The Hiding Place, tells of her experiences during WW II. One can experience the museum in her honor in her home town of Haarlem, Holland. She said in her post war experience with other victims of Nazi brutality, “it was those who were able to forgive who were best able to rebuild their lives.”

We have all heard the expression, “you must walk in another Indian's moccasins in order to forgive and to understand another person's opinion and actions.” It has never ceased to amaze me how much baggage some people carry around. Most of the time, unnecessary intolerance, judgmental equations, promiscuous pessimism, will lead to fear which is a soul killer. Solomon tells us “that without vision people perish.” Proverbs 29:18 I can tell you as a totally blind person for most of my life, that you can walk without vision on a smooth, firm surface that you can trust, a firm foundation. But a shaky, rough surface will lead to a certain fall.

Recently, a group of older men came to the table where I was eating. One said, this is my friend, an Agnostic. The man said, “Don't try to scare me.” If I were faithless in these troubling times, I would be very scared. As Ms. Ten Boom said, forgiveness, not only of me by God, but by me of others is the most vital foundation I know anything about. It will keep you going when nothing else will.

Much is said in these days of political correctness about fairness. In his 10 rules for business success, the #1 Rule of Bill Gates, is “There is no such thing as fairness.” No one ever said life was fair. Life is a hectic interlude in an otherwise peaceful, nonexistence. On radio talk shows and many other times, I have heard ne'er do wells talk at length about one man making so much more money than other men. Many think it is unfair for one nation to have nuclear weapons and another nation not to have them. In this time of health care debates, why should the congress and the billionaires get better health care than the poorest citizen? Christ himself said, the poor, you will have with you always. Matthew 26:11

As long as there is a difference in DNA, as long as there is a difference in human behavior, there will be inequality. The one verse of scripture which should scare all of us is Psalm 98:9.Before the LORD; for he cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity.

For both the saved and the unsaved, faith is a verb; and faith is action based on belief sustained by confidence. If I am in my house, and believe I am having a heart attack, I must act on my belief and call for help, having the confidence that help will come and probably save my life. But, I must act. I have the confidence to believe that those of addictive behavior whether drug addiction, food addiction, sex addiction, things addiction, would all come into submission, if we really found the hiding place for our souls' recluse and aspiration that God has provided in His answer book. When you turn your life over to God, when Christ who is your life, regulates and resolves your very existence, you have a hiding place.

The rebellious preacher of old, Jonah, believed he could escape God's place for his life. There are 66 books in the Bible, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament, 1189 Chapters and 788,252 words in God's word. Five hundred and forty times we find the word love. Five hundred and sixty times we find the word grace. And four times in the book of Jonah we find the word appointed. God appointed a big fish to swallow Jonah. He appointed a fast growing plant to shade Jonah. He appointed a worm to kill the plant. He appointed a hot wind, sweeping across present day Iraq, where ancient Nineveh was located, to really punish Jonah in his doubts and rebellion. I truly believe that God will appoint a solution for the culture of death to eugenics, euthanasia and most of all abortion which is now gripping our nation.

For many years, I visited the great 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. When Princeton University was a small, struggling college, this church would give a new suit of clothes to each graduating preacher. Would those ancient people of this church ever believe that today's prestigious Princeton University would have a bioethicist, Dr. Peter Singer, who advocates the post birth abortion of any disabled child. Here is a direct quote from him; "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living.”

Cling to the promise that God is in control. It was no accident that on a clear day, a clear sky a tornado moved down the highway in Minneapolis, Minnesota, bothering nothing else, but went directly to the convention center where the Lutherans were to take a vote on homosexual preachers. The tornado tore up the roof of the convention center, the tents in the yard of the Lutheran church across the highway, took off the steeple of the Lutheran church and then disappeared. The stupid Lutherans went right on with their vote, never thinking God had a message for them and voted to put homosexual preachers in the pulpit. It is no accident that Dr. Tiller who had killed 60,000 babies in his abortion mill-clinic, the holocaust of Kansas, was killed. It is no accident that 87 year old, Dr. Noah Hutchins, President of Southwest Radio Ministry, author of 100 books, very ill, was miraculously delivered from his illness.

The truth is the truth whether anyone believes it or not. It is no accident that you know the truth, that you will read a commentary such as this. We cannot understand the doubts and fears of most young people. Living gives us an ability to face life. We become more tolerant. That is why grandparents get along so well with their grandchildren.

A young preacher, early twenties, fresh out of the seminary, filled with knowledge and worries of today's problems, told me he recently preached a “barn burner” in a local church. After the service, an old man approached him, with tears streaming down his face and said, “I thought you would tell us how much Jesus loves us.” Remember, Jesus loves us more than we love Him. In Him we have our hiding place.

Crown and Coronation

This week's front page headline of Newsweek.com is titled "The Case for Killing Granny," with a sub-header promising an explanation as to "Why curbing excessive end-of-life care is good for America."

Hitler, in the early days of his “Obama-care” rounded up two hundred seventy-five thousand old people, prostitutes, vagrants, homosexuals, gypsies, crippled, blind, and other disabled he did not think worthy of living, and using valuable money for extermination before he began to exterminate six million Jews. He so despised people who were not young and energetic. When he began his book burning in the libraries, the first book on his list was that of Helen Keller's autobiography – he so despised blind people.

Have we actually reached that place in this country? When in Kenya, Obama's birthplace, I found that it was the common practice to dispose of the old and disabled citizens by leaving them in the bush for wild animal disposal. In the northwest provinces of Canada and around the North Pole, I found it was the practice of the Eskimos to just put their old and infirmed citizens on iceflos and just let them drift out to sea for disposal by wild animals there. In India, crossing that continent by train, I was constantly amazed to find old people in blankets being heisted on top of a train by relatives so they could be transported to the sacred Ganges River for burning on the funeral pyres there. In a boat, out in the Ganges, where thousands were doing their Hindu religious rituals, I could not help but think of the old people who were thrown on the burning fires before they were dead. You expect heathens to behave in this manner, but in this Christian, civilized country, where life should be important, where our old people, regardless of condition, were at one time young people who worked hard to give you - in talent, time and treasure - what you are inheriting today. Don't you think they deserve better? Remember, if you keep living, you will reach old age too!

There are certain non-negotiables that a Christian society cannot tolerate or even consider:

1. abortion

2. euthanasia

3. homosexual or same sex marriage

4. pornography

5. stem cell exploitation

6. slavery of children

While it is true that most Medicare funds, most insurance health care expenses are used in the last years of our geriatric citizen's lives - either in taxes or in insurance - they have paid for their care. I can think of nothing more disgraceful or despicable than senior citizens spending their sunset hours worrying about their care, knowing that there are those that resent the dollars being spent on them.

The most innocent of life, the unborn, (1.3 million killed each year) are not aware of the earthly lovers of their soul – only their Heavenly Father who loves their soul. But the elderly, those who have planted the flowers that the rest of us have picked, are aware of what they have given to this thankless society.

The German people were first against the euthanasia of the disabled and elderly but, when they learned how much money they were saving, they went along with this Holocaust. They will forever suffer the pangs of God's judgment for their heathenism. Can you even imagine, that as the trains carried the Jewish people of Germany to the death chambers, the German hierarchy actually said, “they were doing it for their country.”

When the Christian is saved by faith through the marvelous grace of God, he is as saved as he will ever be; he is crowned with the glory of everlasting life. The Christian's coronation comes, when through the Holy Spirit of Christ in his life, he is a creation of God – living every minute of every day thirsty for God's Word, God's discipleship and God's redemption. (1 Corinthians 10:31)

We have the great blessing of God which completely monopolizes our lives. God is love and there is no love like the love of God. (540 times, 'love' is used in God's word.) One can give without loving but one cannot love without giving. The greatest gift of the Christian is to love one another and particularly to love those who are in need. I can think of no greater need than the need of the unborn for love and the need of the elderly and infirmed for love. One who loves does not murder. Those of you who voted for the culture of death, which now surrounds our country with a parameter of deceit, should seek the forgiveness of God and - with fasting and prayer - ask for His forgiveness for the sake of our country.

One of the world's great preacher was Dr. Vance Havner, author of 38 books, reared in North Carolina, graduate of Moody Bible Institute, one of the country's best known conference speakers. Like the great preacher Charles Hayden Spurgeon, crippled feet which never slowed him down. He said, “we often talk much further than we walk.” I heard him speak in many places, and it was always the same, an inspiration.