Gate-crashers

The ultimate security breach was mysteriously accomplished at the first White House State Dinner, which honored Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. A clever and vivacious couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, managed to enter the affair and even have themselves photographed with high ranking guests including President Obama and Vice President Biden. They may have gone undetected had they not posted pictures on their Facebook page, evidently in hopes of momentary fame and a reality show slot in the future.

News analysts and investigators are still probing how this weird security lapse allowed these professional gate-crashers to slip through the ultra-tight security sieve and freely consort with the high and mighty of the nation in what is thought to be the most carefully guarded house in the land. Shocked and irritated security men and others who value Presidential protection in our dangerous world are calling for full-blown investigations and appropriate legal action against the adventurous couple.

Career gate-crashers are a fixture of public life with some previous innovators being banned from the Capitol. A more subtle spiritual deceit is a major theme of Christ’s teaching concerning entrance into the Kingdom of God. Every day, millions are guilty of a deliberate attempt to evade the entry requirements of Heaven. Mostly, they are self-deceived, establishing their own standards that contradict security passage. Christ outlined their attempts and condemned them in the strongest terms: "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber."(John 10:1)

That Christ Himself is the solitary entryway is clear in John 10:7–10. "Then Jesus said to them again, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.’"

This imagery of exclusive entrance to salvation is written into the old hymns of the church. In "There Is a Green Hill Far Away" by Cecil F. Alexander, we find one verse that reads,

There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin;
He only could unlock the gate
Of heav’n and let us in.

In "The Way of the Cross Leads Home" Jessie B. Pounds penned,

I must needs go home by the way of the cross,
There’s no other way but this;
I shall ne’er get sight of the Gates of Light,
If the way of the cross I miss.

Then I bid farewell to the way of the world,
To walk in it nevermore;
For my Lord says, "Come," and I seek my home,
Where He waits at the open door.

Somehow, the White House gate-crashers got past security without their names being on the official guest list—a remarkable feat of deception. But now, their lust for fame and wealth has done them in, and they sacrificed their honor and character for a few miserable moments in pictures—moments of infamy that mean permanent exclusion from the White House and possibly Washington, DC.

The "thieves and robbers" who propose entry to Heaven by a lie are consigned to permanent exclusion. The guest list is a registry of the redeemed. "Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it. But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life." (Revelation 21:25-27)

In the hymn "Is My Name Written There?" Christian author Mary A. Kidder asks the timeless question and answers in faith.

Lord, I care not for riches, neither silver nor gold;
I would make sure of Heaven, I would enter the fold.
In the book of Thy kingdom, with its pages so fair,
Tell me, Jesus, my Savior, is my name written there?

Lord, my sins they are many, like the sands of the sea,
But Thy blood, O my Savior, is sufficient for me;
For Thy promise is written, in bright letters that glow,
"Though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them like snow."

Oh! that beautiful city, with its mansions of light,
With its glorified beings, in pure garments of white;
Where no evil thing cometh to despoil what is fair;
Where the angels are watching, yes, my name’s written there.

Dave Virkler