Do not let mourning mutate into bitterness, anger, or wrath. A line has been crossed. A perfume bottle has been broken open. And something extraordinary . . . something wonderful . . . something redemptive has been released in the land. As my grandmother used to say, “Hide and watch.” And as Jesus said, “Watch and pray.”
“The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” -Tertullian (AD 155-210)
What follows is a series of loosely connected thoughts and observations about the Charlie Kirk atrocity. (I originally typed the word “tragedy” as the last word of that sentence, but it’s not the right word. Earthquakes and other acts of broken nature are a tragedy. Broken humans commit atrocities.)
-> Christians have been dying at the hands of pagans for 2000 years now. It’s always appalling. And it always leaves behind heartbroken believers. And it always . . . always . . . backfires on the pagans. Ultimately.
-> I had a text exchange with a friend about Charlie Kirk’s assassination the day after the event. He expressed concern that the event would accelerate and amplify the polarizing forces already tearing our nation apart. And that exasperated conservatives, weary of taking the high road, would begin to, in his words “fight fire with fire.” My response was . . .
“Very possible. But I hope not. My hope is that a big swath of the still-sane center-left people will recoil in horror at what they have been participating in and/or excusing. Something similar happened with the center-right with the assassination of MLK. The MLK murder is the closest corralary to this I can come up with, but on the mirror-image opposite side.”
-> A little later in that convo, I typed:
I’ve been thinking about the progression of events that let us to September 10 at Utah Valley University.
I tried to remember the first time I ever heard about a conservative being shouted down or rioted down on a college campus. I was pretty sure it had something to do with Jeane Kirkpatrick when she was President Ronald Reagan’s Ambassador to the United Nations. The first woman to ever hold that prestigous post; and a formidable intellectual—a Columbia PhD and fluent in three languages. (Side note: The Left has built a quasi-religious cult around Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but Reagan also appointed the first female Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Conner.)
In a saner world, Kirkpatrick, a former Democrat, would have been a feminist icon, but she carried the fatal flaw of being anti-Communist. And for Progressives, that’s the unforgiveable sin.
So I looked it up and, sure enough, In February of 1983, Kirkpatrick, one of the most powerful women in the world, was scheduled to speak twice at UC Berkeley for their annual Jefferson Memorial Lectures series. But hecklers so disrupted her first scheduled speech that the second one was canceled. At that point, Kirkpatrick had already had one address recently cancelled because of planned, disruptive protests (at Smith College—ironically a prestigious women’s college). But two weeks later, a Kirkpatrick speech would be disrupted at the University of Minnesota. Eventually, the brilliant, accomplished and insightful speaker largely gave up on trying to share ideas at the very places in America that should have been the safest and most welcoming to the presentation of ideas.
Jonah Golberg
In the years that followed, Robert Bork, Charles Murray, Ann Coulter, Ben Shapiro, and scores of other brilliant people with interesting ideas and thought provoking perspectives found their college campus speaking invitations either cancelled in advance or disrupted if allowed to commence. The perpetrators throughout the decades were the roll-call of Neo-marxist, Liberal Fascist, anarchist, anti-Western Civ. know-nothings who think they know everything and hold the moral high ground:
Communist Party USA (CPUSA)
Occupy Wall Street
Code Pink
MoveOn.org
Antifa
BLM
BDS groups (various)
Anti-Zionist orgs (various) such as, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights
PETA/Animal Liberation Front
Extinction Rebellion
Earth Liberation Front
The Open Society Foundation
The Human Rights Campaign
Various “trans” LGBTQQ+ advocacy groups.
The names and acronyms come and go, but the underlying philosophy and goals remain the same. As does the hellish spiritual roots of it all. And these groups tend to be secretly funded either by foriegn powers that hope to weaken the U.S. (China, Russia) or by socialist billionaires like George Soros or Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss or Blackrock’s Larry Fink or any of a variety of “dark money” sources.
If you’ve ever wondered how it’s possible that thousands of protesters can show up carrying identical, professionally printed signs at an event on short notice, just know that it’s because some deep-pocketed groups are providing funding and organizational recruitment. Often these protesters are literally being paid to show up.
It was true during “Occupy Wall Street.” It was true during the BLM protests. And it’s true today.
What we have witnessed over the last few decades is mainstream media and the dominant culture excusing and rationalizing rioting, theft and looting (restorative justice), and violence which has culmiinated in the assassination of a bright, young, Christian husband and father who had the courage and confidence to engage in debate with people who disagreed with him. This is how we got there.
Then there was this harbinger of dark things to come back in April . . .
-> In that text exchange I mentioned above, I made this observation about how the last fifty years of total left-wing college campus dominance brought us inexorably to the public murder of Charlie Kirk . . .
What was once tolerated and then rationalized and then celebrated on college campuses . . . culminated in what happened on 9/10. The assassination of a Christian for proclaiming Christian things. That’s literally the definition of a Christian martyr.
-> By the way, if you’re a left-leaning Christian and find yourself — if not outright celebrating what happened to your Christian brother Charlie Kirk — at least excusing or rationalizing it or, most offensive of all, “both sides”-ing it . . . please take a long hard look at the spiritual path you’ve been walking. It’s led you somewhere dark. This is your MLK moment. Your wake-up call.
Of course, the devil always overplays his hand. While grieving with those who grieve, I look forward to seeing how this blows back on those who have aligned themselves with darkness. There is a principle woven into the fabric of the universe by its Creator . . .
Whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and a stone will come back on him who starts it rolling. (Proverbs 26:27)
-> As I said to my friend:
Seeing those who rationalize and excuse and even celebrate the murder of a good man can easily make me want to invert the Antifa “punch a Nazi” ethic. But I have to resist that impulse. The “projection” that the Left routinely engages in is infuriating. And every fiber of my being wants to say, “To hell with all of you.” Literally.
But that is not an option for me. And I know in my deepest knower that the intensity on the pagan left is rising (murderously so) precisely because we’re winning.
Retreating armies often fight the most desperately and ruthlessly. That all we have to do to win is “stay the course.” In part because, as you’ve heard me say before, we’re in a moment in which the “least crazy seeming” side will control the levers of power in this country for a long time. Long enough, hopefully, for us to reform and or rebuild the core institutions of our culture, starting with Academia.
We’re in a conflict with pagans and paganism. Fortunately, we have a roadmap for winning that battle over the long term. This isn’t 1860. Or even 1776. It’s AD 65.
Brace yourself. Your Bible wasn’t originally written in English. No, some team of people translated Greek and Hebrew (and occasionally, Aramaic) from the best ancient manuscripts available . . . into English.
That means the task of those translators was to convert Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic phrases into English words and phrases as best they could. But those were flawed, fallible human beings undertaking that important work. And they don’t always get it right.
Sure, all scripture is God-breathed and infallible and inerrant in the original manuscripts. But, in contrast, Bible translators are human, and therefore flawed and fallible. All of them. (This, even though many of the 1611 KJV only folks contend that it, and it only, was providentially, supernaturally translated perfectly. lol )
Here’s the thing. Every translator brings a “lens” to his or her work of translation. That lens is their pre-existing theological assumptions. Translating Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic to English is not like math. Words in those languages had multiple meanings, just as many modern English words do. So . . .
As you read whatever your preferred English translation is, here are some words and phrases to be on the lookout for . . .
A great example is the challenge associated with translating words like ge and kosmos in Greek; and erets in Hebrew.
All three of these words are usually translated “world.” In the New American Standard translation, (and most other English translations). The English word “world” appears 38 times in the Old Testament and 181 times in the New Testament. But there are several different words underneath there in the original languages. And, to complicate matters further, those original-language words can be translated several differnt ways. So which way is the right choice for the the translators? Context often provides good clues. But context occasionally leaves room for more than one possibility.
The Hebrew word erets can mean “Earth (the planet), land, ground/dirt, country/nation, or territory. So when a translator comes across erets, he or she has to decide which of those English words is the right one to communicate the original text’s meaning.
So what informs the choice? The context of the passage often helps. But sometimes context still leaves the door open for more than one meaning. At that point the translator’s own theological assumptions serves as the tie breaker.
They can’t help it. Translators face a similar challenge in the New Testament with the Greek words ge (pronounced “gay,” deal with it) and kosmos.
The Greek word “ge” can mean soil; “land” in the sense of a territory or nation; or the earth, as in the whole planet. In Matthew chapter nine, Jesus uses the word “ge” three times. Most translations render it “earth” once and “land” twice in the same discourse.
Is that correct? Maybe. Maybe not.
The thing is, theology, and often a subset of theology called eschatology, informs the choices that the translators make.
Here’s an example of where this makes a HUGE difference.
Here’s Luke 21:34-35 . . .
“But be on your guard, so that your hearts will not be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life, and that this day will not come on you suddenly, like a trap; for it will come upon all those who live on the face of all the earth. (emphasis added)
This a classic example of translators letting their eschatology influence their word choice. The Greek word beneath the word “earth” at the end of that sentence is ge. Which, as we’ve just seen, can mean the planet or it can mean soil or it can mean a particular nation.
So is “earth” as in Planet Earth the correct English word there? Almost certainly not!
Jesus is clearly talking about “the land” as in “the land of Israel” in this whole discourse, not stuff that will happen to the whole planet in the end times. We can know that because Jesus is speaking to His disciples about what will happen during their lifetimes. He says so, explicitly. A couple of verses earlier, in verse 32 Jesus looks into the face of the people hearing His words and says, “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.”
Clearly, whatever Jesus is talking about in this passage will take place within the lifetimes of the people hearing His words. And what did take place was Roman armies marched into Israel (in A.D. 70), surrounded Jerusalem, laid siege to the city, and ultimately destroyed, leveling the Temple in the process.
If Jesus was talking about the whole planet, his prediction of that happening in that generation did not come to pass. But if the Greek word ge meant “the land” as in, “the land of Israel,” then His words did come to pass.
The same is true in several other passages in your New Testament. Take Romans 1:8 for example:
First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the world.
In this case, the Greek word Paul uses is kosmos. Like the Hebrew erets and the Greek word ge, kosmos can mean a number of different things. Kosmos can mean the whole universe, the whole planet, or a specific system–including a governmental system or economic system.
So when Paul says that the faith of the Romans is being proclamed “throughout the world” (kosmos), is he saying that their faith is:
Being proclaimed throughout the whole universe? (probably not)
Being proclaimed throughout the whole planet? (unlikely)
Being proclaimed throughout the entire system of the Roman Empire? (ding, ding, ding?)
In his gospel, John uses the word kosmos a lot. Sometimes he uses it to refer to the planet. Sometimes he’s clearly referring to all the people on the planet. Other times he’s referring to all the lost and ungodly people on the planet. And at other times he seems to mean all the people of the land Israel.
So given all of that, are our English Bible’s doing us any favors when it translates kosmos as “world?” Not really.
Whenever you see the word “world” in your Bible, you need to be aware that the translators may have made a wrong assumption in using that English word. The actual intended meaning my very well be “the land of Israel” . . . NOT the planet.
Coming up next . . . another tricky word in your English Bible.
Have you noticed there is something about reading the Bible in a new translation that allows you to see the Scriptures with new eyes? I’ve read and memorized from the NASB since I was 20. Sometimes over-familiarity with the words on the page works against gaining fresh insight.
Just the other day, with an open Bible in my lap, I was with a small group of believers talking about what God had been showing us in the Scriptures recently.
One person in the circle tossed out a good question about Romans 12:1-2. These are some of the most familiar verses in the New Testament. They can usually be found near the top of any list of verses a Christian should memorize. You know them, but here they are anyway:
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
NASB
The question in our little circle concerned what it means to be a “living” sacrifice (verse one). There was some great discussion around that point, which naturally led us into verse two. The familier concept of transformation through the “renewing of the mind.”
Now here’s the “fresh eyes” part. This is what came flooding into my awareness as I pondered the meaning of these immensly important lines. . .
I grew up in a Christian/Religious tradition that taught me to be SIN conscious. (As opposed to being RIGHTEOUSNESS conscious. And by “righteousness conscious” I mean being deeply aware that through the miracle of the New Birth, I’d received the gift of Jesus’ own righteousness, both imputed and imparted to me. See Rom. 5:17; 2 Cor. 5:21)
No, I was taught to constantly examine myself for sin, (and the enemy of my confidence before God made sure I always found a lot of it.) It’s an exhaustiing, shame-saturated, powerless, joyless way to try to live in God. And if I’m being frank, it is also deeply dishonoring to the enormous price the Father and Son paid to restore you and me back to connection to Father.
As I’ve stated countless times:
God did not send Jesus to us to restore us to good behavior. He sent Him to us to restore us to Himself. Progressively better behavior is simply an unavoidable effect of getting reconnected to Him.
Here’s the thing . . . when you’re sin conscious rather than righteousness conscious you read the whole Bible through that lens. You see condemnation on nearly every page. This is what I call reading the Bible at the “wrong tree.” (I’ll say more on that another time.)
And what hit me the other day was that–even after all these decades of absorbing the truth about the finished work of Jesus into my mind and spirit . . . I was STILL–from time to time–reading those two verses through that cruddy-old sin concious lens.
There’s a reason for that. All of my old “trigger” words are right there.
–> “bodies” (Most of the sin I grew up obsessing about involved my body and its appetites.)
–> “holy” (I grew up equating “holiness” with doing all of the “dos” and abstaining from all the “don’ts.”)
I remember seeing a poster on the wall of a children’s Sunday School classroom that read: “Holiness Is . . .” followed by a long list that included, “Not swearing. Not wearing makeup. Not going to movies. Not . . .” By the way, biblical holiness is simply: “Having been set apart by God for His plans and purposes and surrendering to playing your part in His plans and purposes.
–> “acceptable to God” (When you’re sin conscious, you don’t feel at all “acceptable” to your heavenly Father. Quite the opposite. And when you believe you’re unacceptable, you don’t press into His presence. Quite the opposite. And so you avoid the one thing that will actually change your desires and behaviors from the inside out. Quite the opposite. In other words, believing you may not be “acceptable” to God–in flagrant contradiction to so many of the New Covenant scriptures, including Romans 8:15–is a presecription for a joyless, powerless, unfruitful, Christian existence.
–> “conformed to this world” (I grew up in church with the term “the world” meaning “the sinful, ungodly, obscene, profane pull of the secular culture.” That is certainly a piece of what Paul meant when he used the term “this world” {Greek: houtos aion) in saying “do not be conformed to this world.” But, as you’ll see in a moment, there is much more there.
–> “transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Given all of the above, Sin-Conscious Me saw the word “transformed” in that sentence and assumed that the transformation that mind-renewal brought about was changing me from a guy who sinned a lot to a guy who hardly ever sinned. But here’s the problem, the deeper I got into the Christian life, the more “sins” I discovered. Sure there were all the outward, visible “biggies.” But once I had vanquished most of those, I discovered whole new categories of sins. Sins of the Mind. Sins of the Heart. And the real killer . . . Sins of Omission.
With that last one, it suddenly wasn’t just about the bad things I was avoiding. It was just as much about all the good things that I was failing to do consistently. No matter how much higher I managed to jump, the bar got ever higher and higher.
My sin-conscious interpretation of all of this set me up perfectly for the coup de grâce at the end of verse 2:
” . . . so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”
When you read that with a sin-conscious heart, what you see is: Memorize more Bible verses so you will DO BETTER so YOU can be viewed as “good” and “acceptable” and “perfect.”
And I truly wanted to be “good.” And the deepest cry of my shame-bound heart was for my heavenly Father to find me “acceptable.” And for that to happen, I needed to be “perfect.” And I never, ever was.
So you can see, I always viewed Romans 12:1-2 as being about my behavior or lack of maturity. Perhaps you have, too. But in the light of New Covenant revelation, it’s clearly talking about much much more than that me abstaining from a long and ever-growing list of “don’ts.”
It’s talking about being transformed from the twisted, cursed, post-Fall image of Adam, and getting untwisted and restored into what God had originally designed. THAT is the transformation that mind renewal brings about.
You see, two things were broken in the Fall of Mankind. (1) Humanity, and (2) Creation. Both got “twisted” in Fall.
It is these two things; PLUS the fallen spiritual principalities and hierarchies that the Fall empowered; PLUS the systems that all of those things combine to produce on this planet . . . that Paul has in view when he refers to “this world.”
In other words, as new, born-again, recipients of the very righteousness of Jesus–the thing we’re not to be conformed to (that is, pressured by external forces into looking like) is that twisted, broken, fearful, ashamed, God-disconnected thing that Adam and Eve became in the wake of the Fall.
That means mind-renewal isn’t exclusively about (or even mainly about) doing less sinning. The transformation in view here is about getting un-twisted and restored into what God had originally designed. And that original design was a person who had intimate connection and communion with Him, and who would partner with Him in carrying out His glorious plans for this planet.
THAT, dear one, is the transformation that mind renewal brings about.
Oh, and sure, when you have intimate connection and communion with God . . . your desires and habits begin to change from the inside out. This makes Romans 12:1-2 “good news.” This kind of mind renewal involves absorbing deeply intor your identity the truth of this verse:
And you did not receive the “spirit of religious duty,” leading you back into the fear of never being good enough . But you have received the “Spirit of full acceptance,” enfolding you into the family of God. And you will never feel orphaned, for as he rises up within us, our spirits join him in saying the words of tender affection, “Beloved Father!”
Romans 8:15 (The Passion Translation)
Yes, I love The Passion Translation’s rendering of that glorious verse. As it happens, the open Bible on my lap that recent night was The Passion Translation, (with my tattered, 45-year-old NASB sitting within reach) as we were discussing Romans 12:1-2. Here are those two verses in the always lovely and illuminating TPT:
Beloved friends, what should be our proper response to God’s marvelous mercies? To surrender yourselves to God to be his sacred, living sacrifices. And live in holiness, experiencing all that delights his heart. For this becomes your genuine expression of worship. Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you, but be inwardly transformedby the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think. This will empower you to discern God’s will as you live a beautiful life, satisfying and perfect in his eyes. (Romans 12:1-2 TPT)
That’s Brian Simmons lovely beautiful take on the original Greek of those two verses. Now here is the Authorized Dave Amplified Paraphrase:
V. 1: I’m pleading with you brothers and sisters in Christ, in the light of God’s inexhuastible mercies, completely abandon your whole self to the will and ways of God. I promise you, God will accept the offering of your life, because He has chosen you and set you apart for His grand plans and purposes. Doing so is the most beautiful and natural form of authentic worship.
V. 2: Don’t let the old, fallen, broken systems that remain try to squeeze you into a shape that no longer belongs to you. Instead, be naturally and progressively transformed into who you already truly are. How? By mentally and wholeheartedly adopting and embracing the truth about yourself. In doing so, you will become a visible demonstration to a watching world of God’s good and desired and perfect will for humanity.
{Let’s see how many people I can irritate with a single blog post. No matter who you are, there’s something in here to aggravate you!}
I’m increasingly convinced that hatred of Israel and of Jewish people has spiritual roots. Demonic roots. Roots that run directly to Satan’s rage that they were chosen to bring Jesus–“Emmanuel,” God in Human Flesh–to Earth to strip him of the authority the little weasel had swindled out of Adam and Eve.
You get a glimpse of that rage in Revelation, chapter 12, wherein the “dragon,” Satan, becomes “enraged” that he is not able to prevent the birth of the Child, Jesus.
If you want to know why Satan hates the Jewish people, and Israel, you’ll find your answer there. Every Christian has been told that the Israelite tribes were “God’s chosen people,” but they’ve rarely been told, “chosen for . . . what, exactly?” The answer is, “Chosen to bring the Savior of the world, the Second-and-Final ‘Adam’ into the timeline of History. That’s what they were chosen to do. And they did it. Barely. But it happened. And for that, the enraged dragon has seen a target on their backs for 2,000 years.
In a recent post, I pointed out that Christians who hold to the Dispensationalist narrative of the Bible make too much of Israel and the Jewish people. Well, the same is true of all of the people–Christians and pagans–who hate them. And we’re living in a day in which a lot of people–on the Left and on the far, far right–entertain nutty conspiracy theories about “the Jews.” I mean, within the last few minutes I’ve seen a post from a young woman on X.com that states, with all earnestness and conviction, that Jewish people in America don’t have to pay interest on their loans whereas all the rest of us do.
I don’t doubt for a moment this poor, deluded women is “dead serious.” Here’s another of her posts:
I wonder if she wonders precicely how much Jewish DNA gets one in on the secret “no interest on bank loans” thing. (Because there are a lot of people who have a little, as services like 23-and-Me have revealed lately.) And does she wonder if there some sort of secret signal you have to give at the bank to get the special Jews-only deal?
That last question reminds of an old SNL sketch featuring Eddie Murphy. In it, Eddie went undercover as a white person and discovered that white people were constantly giving each other special treatment when no black people were looking. The skit was poking fun at the what the most conspiracy-minded black Americans of the time half-way suspected was going on. (40 years later what was originally portrayed for laughs became an article of cult-like faith among those who embraced the term “white privilige.”)
This twisted soul openly earnestly posting crazy Jewish conspiracy theories is not a rarity today. They are everywhere. And they’re VERY “online.” They’ve always been among us, in hiding, in the shadows, concealing what they think. But we’re living in a moment in which they feel free to emerge into the light. But it’s actually a good thing when horrible things move from the shadows into the light. It allows us to see these things for what they really are.
It’s possible for two things to be true.
(1) It’s possible that, as I stated in the post below, that Dispensationalism has led many Evangelical Christians to make more of Israel and the Jewish people than the New Testament/New Covenant justifies. (2) At the same time, the open hatred and conspiracy lunacy agaisnt Israel and Jewish people on display today is rooted in deep, demonic darkness.
There is a reason that throughout the last 2,000 years, the same individuals and groups oppressing Jews (the Inquisition, the Nazis, the Communists, the Islamists) were also oppressing real-deal Christians. That’s because the same spiritual entities that hate the people of Christ also hate the people who were used to deliver Christ to the world.
Listen, my brothers and sisters in Christ . . . I’m pleading with you . . . don’t drink from the wells of Jew-hatred that are springing up all around us right now. They are toxic and will warp your soul.
Imagine being a Christian and seeing . . .
That Christians are being slaughtered by muslim extremists almost every day in hundreds of points all over the world;
That in many Muslim-majority nations, publicly confessing Jesus means prison or worse;
That the Chinese Communist Party has been oppressing and imprisoning Christians for decades and keeping millions of brothers and sisters in Christ worshiping in secret;
That in scores of nations around the world–from Russian to India to Turkey to Iran–evangelical, born-again Christians are oppressed or marginalized or live as second-class citizens;
Imagine being a Jesus-follower, taking all of that in, and then thinking . . . “You know what, these danged Jews and Israel are our big problem.”
If that’s where you’ve landed, I really don’t know what to tell you.
As with most spiritual things, the road of truth has a deep ditch on either side. If the enemy of your soul can’t drag you into one ditch, the slimy little twerp is happy to shove you into the other one.
The Five Disastrous Effects of Dispensationalism on the Church
1. By pushing the kingdom of Christ into the future, it robbed the Church of the motivation to push back darkness and transform cultures; and robbed the Church of any expectation of victory or lasting progress in this era.
2. By pushing the kingdom of Christ into the future, it, by default, left the Church with the assumption that Satan was still legitimately authoritative in this world, and will not be stripped of his authority until the physical return of Jesus. (This, in direct contradiction of Eph. 1:20-23; Eph. 2:1-2; Col. 2:15; Heb. 2:14-15; and 1 John 3:8.)
3. By effectively (if not explicitly) maintaining a separate covenant status for ethnic and national Israel, it demotivated and even delegitimized sharing the gospel with Jewish people (something that would have surely caused the Apostle Paul’s head to explode.)
4. By elevating national and or ethnic Israel to the centerpiece of God’s redemptive plan for Earth it, by extension, demotes the Church to a sidenote or secondary (parenthetical) position. This in spite of the clear New Testament witness that the Church (comprised of believing Jews and believing Gentiles) was always God’s endgame in His redemptive plan.
5. By creating an imminent secret rapture, it has robbed multiple generations of Christians of the ability to think generationally. And short-term, short-time-horizon thinking invariably produces bad decisions.
IS militants killed at least 20 Christian worshippers at St. Elias church in Damascus this morning. This thing that Islam has metastasized into in the last 80 years is the principle enemy of Christ in the world today.
