The Call to Faith

We will get through today's wilderness

When George Washington took command of the ragtag Continental army, he did not know how the Revolutionary War would end; he did not know which side would win.

When Abraham Lincoln was elected to the Presidency, he did not know how the Civil War would end.

When FDR responded to Pearl Harbor, and later when he announced the D-Day invasion of France, he did not know how World War II would end. In families throughout America in 1941 and for years later, no one knew how World War II would end, and all faced the prospect of death of themselves or their loved ones as the war wound on.

When Ronald Reagan voiced his simple idea about the Cold War—‘we win; they lose’—he did not know when or how the Cold War would end.

And to really get back to basics, when God called Moses to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, Moses didn’t know when or how he would reach the Promised Land.

Only with the benefit of hindsight do we know how these tumultuous events in human history came out. And we know this: that ultimately—though not without extraordinarily difficult and dark times along the way—truth and good triumphed. Evil, bondage, servitude, tyranny, oppression—all failed.

As we look at the current war on truth and good—and make no mistake: the assault on Judeo-Christian teaching and its foundational principle of individual freedom and responsibility under God, as evidenced in government takeover of healthcare, government takeover of energy use, government acting behind closed doors, government endorsement of abject immorality and corruption in ACORN, government disdain for American ideals as preeminent in the human condition, and the list goes on and on, we are in the midst of nothing less than a war on humanity’s relationship to God—it may seem that we also don’t know when or how this war will end.

And not only do we not know when or how this war will end, we are endlessly tempted to believe multiple arguments that this war is really different and really worse than all the others. It’s an attack from within America, instead from without. It’s aided and abetted by institutional media like never before. It’s a product of decades of educational neglect, culminating in a president and an administration who have no concept whatsoever of America’s exceptionalism in human history and its linkage to the very beginning of mankind’s quest to escape from all kinds of bondage, slavery, and servitude.

Yet the examples of history ought to tell us that we in fact do know how this war will end. We do know truth and good will prevail. We know this. We may not know when or how this will occur, but we know that it will.

This is our call to faith and trust in God. It is the call to trust in the enduring vitality of God’s promise—that He sent His Son into the world not to condemn the world, but to save it.

Don’t buy any nonsense arguing that once nationalized healthcare is approved, America is finished. That’s no different than the argument that once the British decided to fight the colonials, the American independence effort was doomed.

Don’t buy the noise that American elections can be rigged so as to perpetuate this travesty. That’s no different than the argument that clever laws and ordinances could be constructed so as to preserve the practice of slavery.

Don’t buy the argument that economic chaos and collapse are inevitable. Faith, trust and resolve are the substance of ‘money’, and they aren’t going anywhere. World War II involved many ‘impossible’ economic challenges, but when the faith, trust and resolve came first, the solutions followed (lend-lease being just one example).

And whatever you do, don’t buy the illusion of an omnipotent, all-controlling media that can block, obscure, pervert or deny Truth. The Soviet Union exemplified that illusion, and it crumbled, just as the current media is in the process of crumbling.

America and her foundational ideals are good and true and right, and they are divinely inspired. They will prevail. Lies will not. The call to faith that we are hearing and feeling now is the call to affirm these truths, and trust them. It is also a call to action, with each of us responding in the ways that are right for us.

As the Preacher advised in the Book of Ecclesiastes, there really isn’t anything new under the sun. The wilderness takes different forms as humanity moves forward, but it’s always comprised of the same elements: a fear that there is no God; a belief that there is a power that can defeat or deny good; a suggestion that this time things are really different and the fear and the belief are justified.

This fear, belief and suggestion were not true for the children of Israel as they faced Pharaoh’s army and were stuck at the border of the Red Sea; they were not true as America descended into the Civil War; they were not true when Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan arose; they were not true as the menace of godless Soviet communism appeared to ascend to power. They are not true now.

Today's call to faith is flashing like a neon sign. Answer it.

Paul Gable

December 9, 2009