America’s Children will play with evil again this Halloween.  They will be encouraged by their parents to dress up as devils, demons, ghouls, and ghosts.  They will play with evil. They will come home with shopping bags full of candy taken from strangers.  I played the game.  I had more loot gathered for Brooklyn apartment houses in 1950 than Blackbeard had gold.  Playing with evil may seem innocent, and non-habit forming, but take my advice, don’t play with evil.  

Iran has been called part of an “axis of evil.”  It lived up to that billing this week when it’s President declared that “Israel should be wiped off the map.”  It is not often that we get to look inside the head of a fanatic.  What we saw was the abyss.  We also saw a ticking “time-bomb.” What we saw was a glimpse of evil.

We cannot smile evil away.  Polly-Anna prescriptions of cheer and potpourris of rose petals will not protect us.  We are told by authorities that a pandemic is coming.  Stocking up and hoarding Tamiflu won’t help much either.  As if that is not enough, there is another outbreak the Center for Disease Control does not have on its radar.  Evil. 

The President of Iran gave us a glimpse into the mind of fanatical Islamic fundamentalism. He said that “Israel must be wiped off the map.”  It was chilling.   Many thought Smallpox had been completely eradicated from this planet, but it still lives in test tubes and laboratories across the globe just waiting for someone to let it loose.  Anti-Semitism is alive and well also.

The idea of “wiping Israel of the face of the earth” is an old idea.  Assyria tried it, Babylon tried it.  Rome burned Jerusalem to the ground.  Hitler used gas chambers and incinerators, but all have failed to destroy God’s promise to Abraham.  

Rather than rebuilding Babylon and saving Iraq (Ancient Babylon) or hoping democracy will save Iran (Ancient Persia), we should be both kneeling in prayer for and standing in friendship with Israel.  I decided a long time ago not to die on the wrong battlefield, if I could help it.  For that reason, I have always been un-enthusiastic about our military adventures, or misadventures.  But when it comes to this battle, the survival of Israel, this battle of battles, I want to be on the right side. 

I don’t suggest our CIA “take out” anybody.  The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. I do not suggest any “preemptive” strikes by the US of A or by Israel.  What I do suggest is that Christians stop playing games like politics or pretending there is a “road map” for  Palestine, and playing with evil.

Revival comes when we repent and renounce evil, not play with it.   We cannot win the war with the axis of evil when evil has access to our own hearts.  We cannot destroy evil with any laws that come out of Washington.  Evil can only be held in check when the Law of God’s Love and the Love for God’s Law are mixed together in the apothecary of a broken and believing heart. Many don’t want to choose sides.  Israel and Iran are all the same to them, unfortunately so is good and evil.  Israel’s prophet has a word for you: “Woe.”   We cannot eat the world’s candy without getting a belly ache, and wishing we hadn’t.    

                                                                                                              id