A District of Columbia judge has ordered the Trump administration to immediately reinstate access to the White House for three news outlets banned from the building last week by the president. The temporary restraining order means CNN, MS NOW, and Politico must have their access restored for fourteen days as the legal process over this issue continues.
However, according to the Washington Post, it remains unclear when the reporters will have their access restored. Reporters from all three outlets were still blocked from entering the White House at this writing.
President Trump is only the latest in a string of presidents who were frustrated by the media. Thomas Jefferson complained, “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.” Bill Clinton condemned “purveyors of hatred and division” on the public airwaves. The Obama administration tried to block Fox News from a joint interview in 2009.
None of this should surprise us. From Cain and Abel to today, fallen humans have tended to harm other fallen humans as a means to their personal ends. If members of the media have been antagonistic to political figures, political figures have often returned the favor.
It is human nature to want justice when others sin against us, but it is also human nature to overlook the fact that such justice requires judgment for our sins against them.
There is a biblical remedy for this condition, one we embrace to our eternal gain but overlook to our eternal loss.
The world was predicted to end in 1996
In my first pastorate, a member of our church assured me that he knew the year the Lord would return. He based his calculations on a system of biblical chronology whereby creation was dated to 4004 BC. He then cited the biblical assertion that “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years” (2 Peter 3:8). Since God created the world in six “days,” he reasoned, the universe would last six thousand years. As a result, the Lord would return in the year 1996.
I tried to remind him that no one knows “that day and hour” but God (Matthew 24:36), to which he said confidently, “Yes, but I know the year.” It turned out, he did not.
My friend was not the first to want to know more than we can know. In Acts 1, Jesus’ disciples asked their risen Lord, “Will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel” (v. 6)? In Revelation 6, we find “the souls of those who have been slain for the word of God” asking the Lord, “How long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” (vv. 9–10).
Like the disciples, they were not given an answer to their question. Rather, they were told “to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been” (v. 11).
This quest to know the timing of the end of time makes sense in a way. If you know when the final exam will be given, you know how best to use the time between now and then to prepare. And, importantly, you know that the test will not be given today.
I suspect this is one of the reasons people have so often tried to determine the date of our Lord’s return—so we can be ready then without having to be ready today. But this is fallacious reasoning, not only because we cannot know when he will come back and thus must be ready today, but also because we can go to him in death just as abruptly as he can come to us in glory.
If you knew you would meet God next week
One reason our Lord does not tell us the day we will meet him is that being ready to meet him is the best way to live every day until we do.
If you knew you would stand before Jesus next week, what would you change this week? Who would you forgive? From whom would you seek forgiveness? What would you stop doing and start doing?
Making these decisions is not just the best way to be ready to meet God one day—it is also the best way to live every day until then.
Here’s the problem: There is a price to pay to be ready to meet God today.
Such readiness means that we are “filled” with the Spirit, intentionally submitted to his lordship in every dimension of our lives (Ephesians 5:18). But the more we step into the light of the Holy Spirit’s conscious presence, the more we see the sins that the darkness obscured.
If we listen for God to speak by his Scriptures, we are likely to be required to change our lives in response. It is easier to assume that we have time to get ready, that there is no urgency to the moment.
But this is to miss all that God wants to do with and through us today.
One day closer to eternity
The Lord called himself the “I Am” (Exodus 3:14), not the “I Was” or the “I Will Be.” Every moment is the eternal moment with the God who transcends time. The psalmist testified, “This is the day that the Lᴏʀᴅ has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24).
“Yesterday” and “tomorrow” are words, not realities. All of God there is, is in this moment.
I cannot tell you that you will meet Jesus today, but I cannot tell you that you won’t. What I can say is that we are all one day closer to eternity than ever before, and we have only this day to be ready.
If this is not good news for you, what will you change so that it is?
