A gracEmail reader in Ohio asks whether the Bible explains the origins of racial and color differences among humankind. *          *          * People in all nations share an original ancestor -- we all are from one blood (Acts 17:26). Because God created us, we are his "offspring" by nature, made for fellowship with him -- and with each other. Because sin has radically altered and distorted the human condition, reconciliation and ultimate fellowship are enjoyed only by divine grace, as we become children of God through faith in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:13-16; Gal. 3:26-29). The author of … [Read more...]

After reading my recent reflections concerning the Battle of Franklin and the Civil War, an African-American brother in Georgia responded with some pertinent observations of his own. I found his comments insightful and provocative, so I share them with you today. My original remarks are quoted first, followed by his responses in italics. I have added two further comments in brackets. * * * "No visible signs remain that this yard . . . once witnessed a carnage so terrible that battle-hardened soldiers were sickened by the slaughter. . . . The only remaining evidence of war lies beneath … [Read more...]

The battle began about 4:00 p.m. on November 30, 1864, and it raged for five hellish hours. Some 20,000 Confederate troops, commanded by the egotistical and miscalculating Gen. John Bell Hood, launched a suicidal, frontal assault along a two-mile front, across 400 yards of open fields. Their target -- the considerably smaller but well-entrenched and heavily-armed Union Army that earlier had captured the picturesque village of Franklin, Tennessee, a dozen miles south of Nashville. When the sun rose the next morning, more than 6,200 Southern soldiers and nearly 2,500 Union men lay dead on those … [Read more...]

A gracEmail subscriber who is a U.S. military officer asks how he should view killing in war. "I have an allegiance to Christ and to my country," he writes, "with the latter subordinate to the former. Can you provide any guidance?" * * * The Old Testament distinguishes between criminal homicide (murder, punishable by death), accidental homicide (for which asylum was provided in the Cities of Refuge), and justifiable homicide (self-defense and holy war). The New Testament forbids murder and makes no provision for "holy war" by the church, which is a spiritual rather than … [Read more...]

If there ever was a time for turning our eyes and hearts to God, current events scream that this is that time. The United States is bogged down abroad in unwinnable wars against undefined and unidentifiable enemies, at a present cost of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. At home, metaphorical bears have emerged from the jungles of high finance to ravage the stock market, which this past week saw the greatest losses of any week since the Great Depression. Desperate and clueless, the federal government is borrowing first-aid kits from Socialism's warehouse, in hopes it can save the … [Read more...]

A gracEmail reader in Romania writes that U.S. sanctions against Iraq have led to the starvation of about one million innocent citizens. "What have they done to us?" he asks. "Should we punish them because of their dictator? If we do, the same will happen to us. We reap what we sow. 'Suffer the little Iraqi children to come unto me and kill them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven' (my unauthorized version)." * * * In the Old Testament, the land we identify as Iraq was known as Mesopotamia. Ur of the Chaldees was there, and perhaps the Garden of Eden. This land also contained Babylonia … [Read more...]

On Saturday, March 27, 1999, I received a heart-wrenching e-mail from Goran Zarubica, a Christian brother in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, forwarded to me from a vocational missionary in China who is my cousin in the flesh. I reprint part of Brother Zarubica's unedited letter to remind us that God is not a nationalist, that his kingdom includes men and women of all peoples and nations, and that the day will come when the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. * * *"Brothers and sisters in Christ -- Hope is in God! The … [Read more...]