Biblical World Unity

I just finished listening to Barack Obama as he wound down his multi-country tour with a comprehensive speech in Berlin calling the world to its potential unity.

Proclaiming he was a "citizen of the world" and stressing his intimate friendship with Berlin and Germany, Obama indicated that this was the moment for politicians and nations to save the world. He cited the Berlin Airlift of 60 years ago and the more recent breaking down of the Berlin Wall as springboard events to underscore his apparent zest for breaking down all barriers to cooperation, freedom and human advance in the world.

Without directly indicating that he was a global messiah of sorts, Obama surely spoke as one who promotes religious, racial, cultural and economic global unity moving toward sweeping secular salvation.

Commentators noted that most Americans and even John McCain could agree with much of what Obama said. It was a safe speech without particulars, and it spoke to the basic yearning of most of the world’s people.

Global peace, unity, equality and progress are commendable goals by anyone, anywhere, in any time, but whenever such presidential hopefuls give exuberant speeches to a world audience, most of what the Bible says concerning causation and redemption is woefully absent. Sinful human nature is the source of violence, mayhem, war and conflict, but according to much of the current rhetoric, all we humans need is a little more universal understanding of man’s deepest yearnings and some minor readjustments. We all mean well and could do a little better if we’ll just respond favorably to positive rhetoric and rejigger our national priorities.

Europe’s woes arose out of the demon-influenced Hitlerian thinking that the state was God and its leaders were infallible. Except for effective evangelism, post-World War II Europe still lies in the throes of crippling secularism and even dangerous occultism with hatred of Jews, renewed Nazism and emboldened Islam threatening long-term stability.

In America, convictionless and tepid Christianity is growing with fewer so-called evangelicals holding to the inspiration of Scripture, the solitary way of salvation in Christ or the realities of Hell. Injecting personal Biblical faith into a presidential campaign is thought to be injurious to one’s political health. And many churches would rather entertain than teach sound doctrine.

While believers should never be pessimistically oriented, neither should we fail to see the pathetic folly of great political plans without Christ as Savior and God as Sovereign of the nations. Jeremiah’s soul analysis still stands: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). Exterior disorders are best addressed from interior redemption. 2 Corinthians 5:17 declares, "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new."

God still warns in Psalm 127:1, "Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain." And to the obstinate, He says, "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God" (Ps 9:17).

We should pray that the U.S. presidential candidates, both of whom say they are acquainted with Christ as Savior, see beyond the laudable rhetoric and sense that there is a higher power to which all nations’ allegiance is to belong.

And, while we are "in a holding pattern to keep the peace while we preach the Gospel," as former Senator William Armstrong once said, ultimately only the Lord Jesus Christ will rule a peaceful, unified world in an era to come. Hymn-writer Isaac Watts put it, "Jesus shall reign where’er the sun Does his successive journeys run, His kingdom stretch from shore to shore, Till moons shall wax and wane no more." Habakkuk 2:14 foretells, "For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."

Dave Virkler