a saint! He was no saint. He was no man of God. He was hardly a man at all. He was a mass murderer worse than anything our country has ever seen. He was like the Hitler that our fathers fought to destroy sixty years ago. But to the people who run that country, that killer, that murderer, that destroyer of life and freedom is the new god. That ‘god’ is
“There are those who say that what evil we see in the world is just the absence of good. But we know better than that. There is a devil in creation, and that devil has agents among us, and some of those agents run countries! Some of those agents start wars. Some of those agents take innocent people from their homes and put them in camps and murder them there like cattle in a slaughterhouse. Those are the agents of Satan! Those are the devotees of the Prince of Darkness. They are those among us who take the lives of the innocent, even the lives of innocent little babies …”
And so, those three men of God went to the hospital. One of them, our friend Skip, went to assist his parishioner in her time of need. The other two, the Catholics, went because they, too, were men of God, and they, too, stood for the same things that we do,
“Yes, sir,” the same white voice agreed, and there were nods in the congregation.
“And so those three men of God went to the hospital to save the life of a little baby, a little baby that the government of that heathen land wanted to kill-and why? They wanted to kill it because its mother and father believe in God-and, oh, no, they couldn’t allow people like that to bring a child into the world! Oh, no, they couldn’t allow people of faith to bring a child into their country, because that was like inviting in a spy. That was a danger to their godless government. And why is it a danger?
“It’s a
“And when those three men went to the hospital to preserve the life of that innocent baby, they stood in God’s own place. They took God’s place, but they did so in humility and in the strength of their faith. They stood in
You people probably don’t know this, but when I was first ordained I spent three years in the United States Navy, and I served as a chaplain to the Marines. I was assigned to the Second Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. When I was there, I got to know people we call heroes, and for sure a lot of Marines fall into that category. I was there to minister to the dead and dying after a terrible helicopter crash, and it was one of the great honors of my life to be there and to comfort dying young Marines-be-cause I
“Well, so did Skip, and so did Renato. They sacrificed their lives to save a baby. God sent them. God gave those men their orders. And they heard the orders, and they followed them without flinching, without hesitating, without thinking except to be sure that they were doing the right thing.
“And today, eight thousand miles from here there is a new life, a new little baby, probably asleep now. That baby will never know all the hubbub that came just before she was born, but with parents like that, that baby will know the Word of God. And all that happened because three brave men of God went to that hospital, and two of them died there to do the Lord’s Work.
“Skip was a Baptist. Renato was a Catholic.
“Skip was yellow. I’m white. You people are black.
“But Jesus doesn’t care about any of that. We have all heard His words. We have all accepted Him as our Savior. So did Skip. So did Renato. Those two brave men sacrificed their lives for The Right. The Catholic’s last words-he asked if the baby was okay, and the other Catholic, the German priest, said ‘yes,’ and Renato said,
“That’s right!” three voices called out.
There is so much to learn from their example,” Hosiah Jackson told his borrowed congregation.
“We must learn, first of all, that God’s Word is the same for all of us. I’m a black man. You folks are white. Skip was Chinese. In that we are all different, but in God’s Holy Word we are all the same. Of all the things we have to learn, of all the things we have to keep in our hearts every day we live, that is the most important. Jesus is Savior to us all, if only we accept Him, if only we take Him into our hearts, if only we listen when He talks to us. That is the first lesson we need to learn from the death of those two brave men.
“The next lesson we need to learn is that Satan is still alive out there, and while we must listen to the words of God, there are those out there who prefer to listen to the words of Lucifer. We need to recognize those people for what they are.
“Forty years ago, we had some of those people among us. I remember it, and probably you do, too. We got over all that. The reason we got over it is that we have all heard the Word of God. We’ve all remembered that our God is a God of Mercy. Our God is a God of Justice. If we remember that, we remember a lot more besides. God does not measure us by what we are against. Jesus looks into our hearts and measures us by what we are
“But we cannot be