An intensive manhunt is underway at this hour for a gunman who opened fire at a bowling alley and a restaurant in Lewiston, Maine, last night. At least twenty-two people are dead and as many as fifty are injured in this mass shooting.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Otis became the strongest recorded hurricane to hit Mexico’s Pacific Coast when it made landfall yesterday, unleashing a “nightmare scenario” in Acapulco with massive flooding and devastation. Jakob Sauczak was staying at a beachfront hotel when Otis hit. “We laid down on the floor, and some between beds,” he said. “We prayed a lot.”

Prayer is not how some are responding to the tragedies of recent days, however.

“Imagine that there’s no heaven”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t believe God exists.” This is what Maayan Zin said after her daughters Dafna, age fifteen, and Ella, age eight, were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7. She explained: “If he does, why are my daughters in Gaza? Why all this murder along the Gaza border? Why did they bring families there to fill kibbutzim, with innocent children now going through what they are?”

Innocent suffering is just one reason many may be doubting God’s existence and relevance today. Horrific atrocities committed in his name are another.

Violence is surging in the West Bank, fueled by weapons smuggled into the area by Iran and its allies. The leader of Hezbollah met yesterday in Beirut with senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) figures, each a proxy of Iran, which trained hundreds of Hamas and PIJ fighters in the weeks leading up to the October 7 atrocities. Militant-led violence in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen threatens to spark an even wider war in the region.

Religion is the common denominator here. As I have written, Iran is motivated by the belief that attacking Israel will hasten the return of the Mahdi (their version of a messiah). Hamas is similarly motivated and is also convinced that Allah intends them to return the land to its rightful Palestinian owners. Violence in the West Bank, especially if it involves the Temple Mount, could draw Hezbollah even further into the conflict to “protect” these holy sites for Islam.

A skeptic might easily agree with John Lennon’s famous anthem for secularism: “Imagine there’s no heaven . . . Nothing to kill or die for / And no religion, too.” In such a world, he claimed, “All the people [would be] livin’ life in peace . . . And the world will be as one.”

“A modern de facto alliance of tyrannies”

Such secularism is understandable in a world as broken as ours. Here’s the problem, however: we’re well along the road Lennon imagined more than fifty years ago.

Churches across Europe are being repurposed for nightclubs and hotels as worship attendance continues to decline. Historic church buildings in America are being turned into homes as well. Church membership in the US has fallen below 50 percent for the first time in American history, declining from 76 percent after World War II to 47 percent today.

How is this working for us?

“Polycrisis” is a term in use today to describe the constellation of issues we are facing. While fallen humanity has confronted death and despair from Abel’s time to ours, the acceleration and conflation of challenges we are facing magnifies and compounds individual problems.

All the while, a secularized worldview that denies objective truth and morality has no tools for truly understanding these issues. Here’s one shocking example: according to a recent survey, a majority of eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-old Americans believe the killing of Israeli civilians “can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians.” But perhaps we should not be surprised, given the shameful endorsement of Hamas’s terrorists on college campuses across our land.

The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker writes: “A modern de facto alliance of tyrannies—we might call it an axis of evil opportunism—advances across the globe.” He lists China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as members of this “axis” and notes:

They see a weakened and declining West, an America at odds with itself over its identity and its leadership in the world, a nation enfeebled by deepening self-doubt, widening division, widespread mistrust, timid leadership, institutional paralysis, and soaring debt. They see, as we have seen this last week, a culture—in the media, educational institutions, public discourse—that increasingly does their work for them, willfully propagating falsehoods that advance their cause, always eager to attribute evil to us and not to our enemies.

“Finish then, Thy new creation”

While those suffering from the atrocities and brokenness of our world understandably wonder why religion is relevant to their pain, it is clear that secularism is insufficient to save us from ourselves and each other. Paul taught that those who have not experienced salvation in Christ are “slaves of sin” and asked, “What fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death” (Romans 6:20–21).

By contrast, he could say to his fellow believers, “Now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life” (v. 22). The apostle famously concluded: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v. 23).

That our fallen culture might experience this “gift,” let us pray with Charles Wesley:

Love divine, all loves excelling,
Joy of heaven to earth come down;
Fix in us Thy humble dwelling;
All Thy faithful mercies crown!
Jesus, Thou art all compassion,
Pure unbounded love Thou art;
Visit us with Thy salvation;
Enter every trembling heart.

Finish then, Thy new creation;
Pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see Thy great salvation
Perfectly restored in Thee;
Changed from glory into glory,
Till in heaven we take our place,
Till we cast our crowns before Thee,
Lost in wonder, love, and praise.

Amen.

Denison Forum

The United States is preparing evacuation plans for up to six hundred thousand Americans in Israel in the event of a full-scale ground war in the region. In addition, there are as many as six hundred Americans still trapped in Gaza.

Meanwhile, we are seeing reports today that two dozen American military personnel were wounded last week in a series of drone attacks on American bases in Syria and Iraq. US officials have learned that Iranian-backed militia groups are planning to ramp up attacks against US forces in the Middle East as Iran seeks to capitalize on regional backlash to America’s support for Israel. There are “red lights flashing everywhere,” one official said. Another added, “We see a prospect for much more significant escalation against US forces and personnel in the near term.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the United Nations Security Council yesterday, “If Iran or its proxies attack US personnel anywhere, make no mistake. We will defend our people, we will defend our security—swiftly and decisively.” As our military heightens surveillance operations in the region, it is also sending an aircraft carrier, air defense systems, and additional F-16 fighter jets to defend American troops.

Where is this leading?

“The world is mustering for war”

Robert Clark is a British military veteran with postgraduate degrees in defense studies and Arabic. He served in operational tours in the Middle East and Afghanistan and is currently director of defense and security at the think tank Civitas. His sobering recent article for the Telegraph is titled “The US stands on the brink of global war with the Middle East and Asia.”

He writes: “The world is mustering for war. Conflict is already raging in Europe, with Russian and Ukrainian forces locked in offensive and counteroffensive. The aftermath of the Hamas terror attack upon Israel could now see the Middle East ignited.”

Clark points to drone and missile attacks on American forces by Iran’s proxies in Iraq and Syria. He adds that three cruise missiles launched by Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen were potentially targeting Israel before they were shot down by a US warship. If successful, such an attack could have led to Israeli retaliation against Iran, potentially triggering a direct war—and US involvement.

Meanwhile, Clark writes, “Washington is engaged in frantically regearing its own military to face the threat posed by an increasingly belligerent Chinese communist regime, intent on reunification with Taiwan by force if necessary.” (Read more in “Why does China want to invade Taiwan?“) Between the war in Europe and our increasing involvement in the Middle East, “Beijing may see this as a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

And Clark notes that Iran could “decide to further provoke the US in its attempts to assert regional dominance, attempting to drive the Americans to disengage and leave Israel to stand on its own.” In short, he warns, “Within months, the US could be directly involved in two devastating wars on two continents [while] bankrolling a third in Ukraine.”

The ultimate answer to all human conflict

One way I am praying for God to redeem the escalating crises of our day is by using them to expose our need for help beyond human capacity.

Our astounding technological advances in recent years have made our world not safer but more dangerous. Our growing secularism has directed our innate passion for transcendent causes into partisan tribalism. Our rejection of objective truth has rendered many Americans unable to recognize and condemn even gross immorality such as the atrocities committed by Hamas’s terrorists against innocent Israelis.

These facts remind us that the ultimate answer to all human conflict lies not in human agency but in divine transformation.

This is why we each need Jesus: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19a). And it is why believers need to share the gospel: “and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation” (v. 19b). With this result: “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, to be reconciled to God” (v. 20).

Our message is clear and simple: “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (v. 21).

This is why Paul said of his fellow Jews, “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1). And it is why apostolic Christians paid such a high price to reach the larger Roman world so that “the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe” (Acts 15:7) They were willing to give their lives so the world could say, “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1).

“The whole offer which Christianity makes”

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis described our need for personal intimacy with God: “There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made.” He explained: “If you want to get warm, you must stand near the fire; if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.”

He added: “They are not a sort of prize which God could, if he chose, just hand out to anyone.” Rather, “They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you; if you are not, you will remain dry.”

Then Lewis asked: “Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die?”

And he noted, “The whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have his way, come to share in the life of Christ. . . . Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.”

Will you “let God have his way” with your life?

Will you help those you know “share in the life of Christ” today?

Denison Forum