Tag: Destiny

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON POLITICAL UPHEAVAL

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON POLITICAL UPHEAVAL

Just for fun, and to provide a little perspective on our present political perturbations, see if any of this sounds familiar. The answer or speaker in each paragraph corresponds to the same number at the bottom of the page.

1. “A burden of doubt had been cast over” the press. When the wrong man won, reporters and editors said they had been deluded, “not just by the polls, but by the politicians in both parties. Everybody should have known better.”

2. The FBI illegally assisted a presidential campaign. In the expectation that he would be named attorney general when his candidate won, the director of the FBI, who was friends with the candidate, put the Bureau’s resources at the candidate’s disposal months before the election.

3. The candidate believed campaign victory was destiny.

4. The two candidates have vastly different campaign strategies. The incumbent, whom many despise and most expect to lose, is on the road to large and small cities. Huge crowds stand in line for hours to hear him speak and shower love on him when he does. His opponent, happy to run on widespread hatred of his opponent and assured of victory by the polls and pundits, ventures out very little and makes few commitments about what he will do once elected.

5. “You can understand what the president has to stand. Every day in the week, he’s under a constant barrage from people who have no respect for the truth, and whose objective is to belittle and discredit him.”

6. On hatred and calls for the impeachment of the president over a controversial decision: “People signed petitions and fired off furious messages to Washington.” In Worchester, Massachusetts, and San Gabriel, California, the president was burned in effigy.  In Houston, a protestant minister became so angry while composing his message to the White House that he died of a heart attack.[1]

1. Henry Luce, the founding editor of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated magazines, referring to Harry Truman’s victory in 1948.

2. Assistant to J. Edgar Hoover, William Sullivan. “We tried to create the impression that the president was too ignorant to deal with the emerging communist threat. We even prepared studies for Dewey, which were released under his name, making it appear as if his staff had done the work. No one in the Bureau gave Truman any chance of winning.”[2]

3. “It was written in the stars,” said Thomas E. Dewey. He was the first Republican to use statistical polling in a national election. The polls showed him winning.

4. President Harry S. Truman, Democrat v. Thomas E. Dewey, Republican, in the 1948 election. Truman toured the country in his private rail car, The Ferdinand Magellan, speaking to hundreds of thousands along the way. Dewey stayed mostly in New York.

5. Harry Truman, in a letter to Owen Latimore’s sister. Latimore was a China scholar, accused by Joseph McCarthy of being  “the top Russian espionage agent in the United States.”[2]

6.  The reaction after President Truman sacked General Douglas MacArthur for insubordination.  

Reading presidential biographies (Audible is great for this) provides an excellent perspective in times like these. Here’s a summary of what I’ve learned from George Washington to George H.W. Bush with a little Churchill and Tony Blair on the side.

Trust God. 7 It is God who judges:

He brings one down, he exalts another. [3]

Don’t panic. Our country has seen worse times and corrected greater wrongs. Does anyone remember 1861? Did you know that Franklin Roosevelt was the first to attempt to pack the Supreme Court? His Democrat majority stopped him.

Be sober about the biases in the media. They’ve been misrepresenting the facts and pushing an agenda for a long time. Develop discernment by reading good biographies and history, not the halo-biographies written by cheerleaders. Get your reporting from people committed to finding all the facts, not just the ones that support their side. That’s why I keep recommending World News Group’s podcast, The World and Everything In It. They are committed to reporting “sensational facts with understated prose” from a biblical worldview perspective. More importantly, they are transparent about their point of view.

Participate intelligently. Consider carefully the people advising a candidate. They have far more influence on a president Trump or Biden than most of us imagine.  

Hope in Christ alone. The Kingdom of God does not arrive on Air Force One.

[1] McCullough, ch. 16, Commander in Chief. Audible book.

[2] TRUMAN, David McCullough, ch. 14 Fighting Chance. Audible Books

[3] The New International Version. (2011). (Ps 75:7). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

CLOSE CALLS AND THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD

CLOSE CALLS AND THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD

My friend and fellow pilot, Lee Hilty, had a close call Saturday night. The main rotor blade of his Robinson R22 helicopter hit about fifty feet up a sixty-foot tree, chopping the top off the tree and destroying the helicopter. One of the gas tanks separated from the craft and the other caught fire. The chopper fell about fifty feet with Lee in it, hit the ground, and burned.

Lee walked away, albeit with significant injuries. His report on the accident is quoted below, then I’ll make a few observations about providence.

“Hey Everyone! Thank the good Lord that I am alive! A slight mistake on takeoff was all it was.

I was at a friend’s house for supper at his private airstrip. The last thing I remember is playing rook. The friend said that I told him that I was going to hover, turn 180 degrees, then depart down his runway to the south, which would have cleared all trees in the area. This was in the dark of course. Instead, I hovered, turned 160 degrees and departed and hit a tree.

I remember seeing a flash of a pine tree. At this point, I was 50-60’ in the air. Somehow, the helicopter came down. Somehow, the helicopter stayed level. Somehow, I unbuckled my seat-belt. And somehow, I walked away from the helicopter myself.

If any one of these “somehow” things had not happened, I would not be here. I feel so blessed to have so many friends that are more than willing to say a nice word, to offer a prayer, to pay a visit or offer a helping hand. Thank you all very much!”

Providence is the practical outworking of the will of God in the lives of men that appears from our perspective as tragedy, chance, or circumstance.

As Winston Churchill wrote: “The longer one lives, the more one realizes that everything depends upon chance, and the harder it is to believe that this omnipotent factor in human affairs arises simply from the blind interplay of events. Chance, Fortune, Luck, Destiny, Fate, Providence, seem to me only different ways of expressing the same thing, to wit, that a man’s own contribution to his life story is continually dominated by an external superior power.”[1]

I have been a pastor for twenty-seven years and had many encounters with God’s providence. In each case the issue of life or death usually comes down to a unique set of circumstances, often micro-second timing. A few inches, a slight turn, one way or the other, and someone lives, or someone dies.

From our point of view these events are completely random, but not from God’s. As Jesus said, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.”[2]

But that often leads to another question: If God is completely sovereign, why should we take precautions?

Commenting on Deuteronomy 22:8, the command to provide parapets on roof tops lest someone fall off, John Calvin wrote, “For he who has set the limits to our life has at the same time entrusted to us its care; He has provided means and helps to preserve it, he has also made us able to foresee dangers; that they may not overwhelm us unaware, he has offered precautions and remedies. Now it is very clear what our debt is: Thus if the Lord had committed to us the protection of our life, our duty is to protect it; if he offers helps, to use them; if he forewarns us of dangers, not to plunge headlong; if he makes remedies available, not to neglect them…Thus folly and prudence are instruments of the divine dispensation.”[3]

Lee made a simple mistake, but the prudence that led our civilization to develop seat belts, energy absorbing cockpit seat frames and landing skids,  volunteer fire departments, hospitals, emergency rooms, burn units, and life flight helicopter services probably saved his life.

In a fallen world there is no such thing as life without risk, but with the right rules and procedures, risk can be mitigated. So, as the old saying goes: “Trust God and keep your powder dry.” Or, trust God, buckle-up, and put the phone down!

[1] Winston Churchill in Winston S. Churchill: Thoughts and Adventures. Christianity Today, Vol. 41, no. 12.

[2] Matthew 10:29-30

[3] Calvin’s Institutes on the Christian Religion