Words saved the world.

William Stephenson was a World War I hero, businessman, inventor, and spymaster. Ian Fleming called him the “real thing” behind his James Bond character.

A Man Called Intrepid tells Stephenson’s incredible story (“Intrepid” was his code name). The book reads more like a novel than the historical narrative it is. Here we learn that early in World War II, Stephenson created a secret network that eventually involved thirty thousand intelligence experts. They worked behind enemy lines in Europe to provide intelligence to President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill.

These operatives were able to feed false information to German authorities, convincing them that D-Day would be launched at Calais rather than Normandy. This kept Hitler from committing forces that could have defeated the Allied invasion.

When the Germans began launching rockets into London, these intelligence spies fed the Nazis false data on where their rockets actually fell, saving thousands of lives. They helped the Allies free Niels Bohr from Nazi captivity, which kept the Germans from developing atomic weapons and helped America create the bombs that ended World War II.

These secret heroes did not fire weapons or drive tanks. They risked (and many gave) their lives to communicate words that helped defeat Hitler and save the world.

When Switzerland invaded Liechtenstein

A Florida congressman made news with a tweet directed at Michael Cohen, which the congressman later took down and for which he apologized. The Florida bar has now opened an investigation into whether the congressman, a licensed attorney in the state, violated professional conduct rules with his tweet.

Even wordless events require words to record and interpret them.

You may not know that on this day in 2007, Switzerland invaded Liechtenstein. A detachment of 170 Swiss infantrymen got lost on a training mission and accidentally crossed their neighbor’s border.

Liechtenstein is seventeen times smaller than Rhode Island. Its thirty-seven thousand residents were not aware that they had been invaded. Since they have no army, they chose not to retaliate.

We know of this ironic event only because it was reported in words.

We send 6,000 tweets a second

We are the most verbal society in history.

One study concluded that women speak 16,215 words per day, while men speak 15,669 words per day. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Six thousand tweets are sent every second, which corresponds to five hundred million tweets a day. Every sixty seconds, 510,000 comments are posted on Facebook.

Add the 1.7 billion websites on the internet and the information exchanged on social media sites such as WhatsApp (one billion users a month), WeChat (697 million users a month), Tumblr (555 million users a month), and Instagram (400 million users a month), and it becomes clear that we are exchanging more words than ever before in human history.

This can be good news for the gospel, but bad news for our souls.

Good news for the good news

Mart Green is the Chief Strategy Officer for the Green Family Businesses, board chair of Hobby Lobby, and founder of Mardel Christian Supply. At a recent conference in Washington, DC, I heard him describe the IllumiNations project he is leading. Its goal is to translate God’s word into all six-thousand-plus languages in the world. Digital technology is making this dream a reality.

Walt Wilson is a retired Marine, brilliant businessman, longtime personal friend of mine, and founder of Global Media Outreach. This online evangelism and discipleship ministry has documented more than two hundred million decisions for Christ since it began in 2004.

Digital technology is enabling us to “make disciples of all nations” more effectively than ever before in Christian history (Matthew 28:19).

The secret of the Reformation

Amid the cacophony of words in our culture, it can be hard to hear God’s voice. But human words cannot change human hearts. Only God’s words have the power to convict of sin, save souls, and transform eternities.

Explaining the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther testified: “I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing.”

The declaration “Thus says the Lord” appears more than four hundred times in the Bible. Each time, a human listened for God’s word before speaking or writing his truth to the world.

Now it’s our turn.

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

To speak God’s word, we must first listen for God’s word. When last in our frenzied, social-media-driven culture did you accept your Father’s invitation to “be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10)? When last did you listen for the “low whisper” of God’s Spirit (1 Kings 19:12)?

Our Father speaks through his word as we study Scripture (Hebrews 4:12). He speaks through his worship as we pray and focus on him (cf. Acts 13:2). He speaks through his world as we look for the Creator in his creation (Psalm 19:1–4).

As Francis Schaeffer noted, “He is there and he is not silent.”

In fact, your Lord wants to speak to you today. When will you make time to listen?

Note: In today’s chaotic culture, we are increasingly faced with faith-related questions that can be challenging and impossible to answer. In this week’s video from our YouTube series, “Biblical Insight to Tough Questions,” we tackle the question: Why do we believe the Bible is actually the word of God? Thanks for turning to Denison Forum to discern news differently and build a movement of culture-changing Christians.

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The Vietnam summit has ended.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un insisted all US sanctions be lifted on his country, offering to dismantle his Yongbyon nuclear complex in return. President Trump said Washington wanted a deal that includes other parts of the North’s nuclear program. “I just felt it wasn’t good enough,” Mr. Trump said. “We had to have more.”

The two sides ended their meeting amicably but without producing an agreement. Whether the summit is a setback or a step toward peace is open to interpretation.

While Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim were meeting in Vietnam, Michael Cohen was testifying before Congress. The president’s former personal attorney spent more than six hours yesterday answering questions from the House Oversight Committee. Whether his statements damaged the president or not is open to interpretation.

Historical events are objective, but the way they are reported and remembered is subjective.

30 million pages headed for the moon

Israel launched its first spacecraft last week. “Beresheet” (Hebrew for Genesis) will be the smallest craft to land on the moon, but it is carrying something of great significance: the so-called Lunar Library.

This is a disc containing twenty-five thousand books, a full copy of Wikipedia, and information on understanding earthly languages—in total, a thirty-million-page tome. The “library” is intended to preserve humanity’s knowledge and history long after we’re gone.

Did your story make the Lunar Library? On the day of your salvation, you joined a faith family that will be alive in Paradise ten thousand millennia after the moon and everything on it perishes.

Here’s my point: what makes history seldom makes headlines.

News that didn’t make headlines

Continue reading Denison Forum – Vietnam summit ends early: What makes history seldom makes headlines →

The second summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un begins later today. The two are scheduled to meet Wednesday night in a one-on-one session (with translators) before moving to a private “social dinner” and more meetings tomorrow.

We can look for the negative as the summit unfolds. NPR reports, “While talks may hold off the immediate threat of a military conflict, they also give North Korea time to continue to develop its arsenal.”

Or we could look for the positive. One example: the two leaders are meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam. I remember when news coverage from Vietnam showed bloody images of American soldiers fighting and dying in its jungles. We could not have imagined then that the US and Vietnam would be diplomatic and economic partners today.

“God can help you, he really can.”

I told the story yesterday of Craig Coley’s thirty-nine years in prison for crimes he did not commit. Rather than focus on the negative, Coley told New York Times reporters that he often talks to people about the power of perseverance: “People that are down and out or having a hard time, my message to them is don’t give up, tell the truth about everything because the truth will always come back and support you.”

He adds: “Lies never do. And God can help you, he really can.”

We can focus on the horrendous crimes Vatican Cardinal George Pell has been found guilty of committing. But we can also be grateful for the courage of clergy abuse victims who have told their story, intensifying the spotlight on such sins today.

We should be horrified by reports of sex trafficking that have surfaced in the wake of Robert Kraft’s arrest. But we can also support International Justice Mission and other organizations working to end sex trafficking and other forms of slavery.

We should be appalled by YouTube videos that offer children instructions on how to commit suicide. But we can be grateful for Christian Parenting and other ministries that help parents raise godly children.

In short, we can decide that the world is only getting worse. But, as the Wall Street Journal reports, in significant ways it is getting much better.

“She is not dead but sleeping”

Unfortunately, many in our secular culture consider faith to be neither a cause for the good nor a solution for the bad. Young Americans are especially less inclined to identify as religious or attend regular services. Studies consistently show that religion is declining in Western Europe and North America while growing everywhere else.

As our culture becomes increasingly secularized, more and more people agree with Karl Marx that religion is “the opium of the people” which must be abolished so that “the illusory happiness of the people” can be exchanged for “their real happiness” (his italics).

According to Marx, “Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man so long as he does not revolve around himself.” Of course, he learned how wrong he was the moment he died and faced the God whose existence he denied (Hebrews 9:27).

Marx was the prisoner of presuppositions that blinded him to realities he could not then see. He was not the first or the last.

In Exodus 5, Moses and Aaron said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go’” (v. 1).

But the Egyptian ruler responded, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord” (v. 2). In Pharaoh’s view, what he had not experienced could not exist.

When Jesus told those mourning the death of Jairus’ daughter, “She is not dead but sleeping” (Luke 8:52), “they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead” (v. 53). Because they had not seen Jesus raise the dead, they assumed that he could not raise the dead.

Two ways to demonstrate the relevance of our faith

Before we can expect the pharaohs of our day to believe that our God is real and relevant, they must see that he is real and relevant for us. Consider two principles.

One: Do not judge your future by your past.

Exodus 6:23 tells us that Aaron, the future high priest, was married to the daughter of Amminadab. Ruth 4:18–19 tells us that Amminadab was descended from Perez. Genesis 38:29 tells us that Perez was the child of Tamar, who pretended to be a prostitute and became pregnant by her father-in-law.

Nothing that has happened in your past need determine what happens in your future. Only Jesus can forgive the past, empower the present, and redeem the future. When you seek and follow God’s “good and pleasing and perfect” will (Romans 12:2 NLT), others will be inspired to do the same.

Two: Give Monday to God.

Jesus becomes irrelevant to our lives when we separate him from our lives. A Sunday faith must be a Monday reality.

Oswald Chambers: “Abandon to God is of more value than personal holiness.” Here’s why: “When we are abandoned to God, He works through us all the time.” When he is King of every part of our lives, others will see that he is King of all of life.

According to C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, God desires for us “the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water.”

David echoed this joyous fact more simply: “This I know, that God is for me!” (Psalm 56:9).

Do you know that God is for you today?

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