I watched President Donald Trump’s hour-long speech at the United Nations yesterday. Since the UN was founded eighty years ago, every US president has addressed the General Assembly.
However, there is a scenario by which the event could have made history for cataclysmic reasons.
The Secret Service announced before the president’s address that the agency had disrupted a sprawling telecommunications network in the New York tri-state area. Investigators say this network could have disrupted telecom systems and threatened the UN meetings this week.
The servers were so powerful that they could have disabled cell phone towers and blocked emergency communications like EMS and police dispatch. If an attack had been staged on the president and the UN gathering, a network outage could have prevented security forces from responding.
There was a time when we would perhaps not have thought to connect the president’s UN speech and the Secret Service’s discovery. But after Charlie Kirk’s murder and two assassination attempts on the president, the second of which resulted in a conviction yesterday, this is not that time.
The good news is that the bad news of our day is fertile ground for the best news of all.
A perceptive explanation of our times
Cultural commentator Geoff Shullenberger notes that there was a time when the lone assassin dominated political violence. For example, the years between 1963 and the early 1980s witnessed the murders of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the attempted assassinations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.
Then came a shift toward mass shootings. Shullenberger theorizes that this aligned with “the shifting landscape of power” from sovereign individuals to groups and movements, focusing on schools and other public venues. In addition, the fragmentation of media could have motivated shooters to commit even more spectacular crimes so as to gain the attention they craved.
However, political assassins are now back, recently attacking leaders from both political parties, but mass shootings have not lessened. Within an hour of the shooting of Charlie Kirk, for example, a shooter in Colorado injured two classmates before taking his own life.
As Shullenberger notes, the fact that both kinds of killings are now making headlines is a “particularly grim indication” of our times.
Three open doors for the gospel
However, three factors contributing to these “grim” times are each an open door to the good news of God’s grace. The gospel offers:
One: Hope that counters despair.
According to New York Times journalist Jia Lynn Yang, “The most dangerous element in our society may well be hopelessness.” Her research shows the many ways individual hopelessness spurs violent actions. However, “the God of hope” is able to “fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope” (Romans 15:13). When we know that the all-powerful God of the universe is our Father and loves each of us as if there were only one of us, we find hope even in the hardest places and days.
Two: Community that bridges ideology.
Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank reports that relationships across ideological divides are proven to counter isolation and the political polarization it produces. Early Christians could have told us so. Gathered across fifteen different languages and cultures (Acts 2:8–11), they found unity in Christ and met the needs of others so sacrificially that “the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (v. 47).
Three: Courage that redeems persecution.
Theologian Bradley G. Green writes in First Things that the critical theorist Herbert Marcuse convinced generations of “progressives” that they must repress the speech and acts of those with whom they disagree. As Dr. Green notes, such “repressive tolerance” forms the backdrop for the silencing and canceling of conservative thought on university campuses and violence against conservative leaders. But as I noted yesterday, Jesus empowers his followers to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). By “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15), we become the change we wish to see.
Misquoting St. Francis
A fourth factor is foundational to the other three and especially opens the door to the gospel.
The Lord described Israel to Ezekiel this way: “Son of man, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house, who have eyes to see, but see not, who have ears to hear, but hear not, for they are a rebellious house” (Ezekiel 12:2). When we rebel against God’s word and will, we lose the ability to discern God’s word and will, which heightens our need for God’s word and will.
If we break our compass, we can no longer find our way and need the compass even more. If we throw away our flashlight, we sit in the darkness and can no longer find it.
This is why our lost culture so desperately needs Christians to boldly declare the essential truths of the gospel. To be blunt: Gone is the day when most non-Christians will attend church services, and gone is the day in many denominations when, if they did, they would actually hear the gospel presented.
I have often heard St. Francis of Assisi quoted: “Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” However, Francis never said these words. And he was famous for preaching the gospel in words; according to his first biographer, he sometimes preached “in up to five villages a day.”
What saved people owe lost people
Every lost person needs the salvation only Jesus can provide. As the apostles said of our Savior, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
However, a lost person cannot be saved without understanding that they are lost, but if they repent of their sins and confess them to Jesus, he will forgive them and give them eternal life as the child of God. These facts cannot be intuited from nature or “spiritual” activities. They must be understood, accepted, and acted upon.
Our lives are critical to our message, of course. We cannot expect people to believe that Jesus will change them if he does not obviously change us. But our lives are not enough. Pastor and missions leader David Platt is right:
“Every saved person this side of heaven owes the gospel to every lost person this side of hell.”
How will you discharge your debt with the lost people you know today?
Quote for the day:
“Jesus did not come into the world to make bad men good. He came into the world to make dead men live.” —Leonard Ravenhill
Our latest website resources:
Denison Forum
DAILY DEVOTIONS, NEWS AND INFORMATION 