Greetings, this is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. Today, what do ancient Persia, Greece, and contemporary Islam all have in common? We are examining a long-neglected area of a nation's survival and prosperity, and this has to do with us, the United States of America, and that is the spiritual life of nations.

Now, with all three of these nations that I mentioned to you, and more if we include nations like ancient Rome, or increasingly our own nation, what they have in common is that they opposed, and they still oppose, God and the people of God, and they do so not only on this physical plane of existence where steel and lead meet flesh, where word and language meet mind and thought, and where physical borders define and demarcate nations, but they also meet, and perhaps more importantly, in the spiritual plane of existence, where invisible power meets power, to decide great eternal questions, where angelic beings struggle with one another on behalf of their respective nations, and where you and I dwell as well, simultaneously with our physical existence, and we, too, are engaged with more or less awareness of the daily, hourly impact we are having in this invisible spiritual realm.

The nations of the earth presently have physical borders, which help define them with shared language and culture and institutions, but nations also simultaneously exist in this same spiritual realm, where the borders consist of moral and ethical power, and the force of will, where distance and time and space are multidimensional, and culture in the spiritual plane consists in the manner, mode, and habits that shape the actions and products of that nation by the beings who inhabit the physical and spiritual plane.

Now, as we observed last week, intrinsically, the human heart recoils from and rejects God, even as the major religions of the world recoil and reject Christianity, even as Islam did, even as Adam and Eve first recoiled from God and hid themselves after they had rebelled against Him by eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This intrinsic hatred, when shared by enough of one fellow citizens of the nation to which He belongs, then comes to characterize that nation as a whole. The gods of these respective nations may differ, but they have the common theme of a shared hatred of God and His people.

The Bible is very clear on this. For example, Psalm 2 says, Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against His anointed one. Let us break their chains, they say, and throw off their fetters, from Psalm chapter 2. Well, nations and kings and peoples and rulers, Assyria, Babylon, and Persia, all conspired with the nations around Israel, like Edom and Ammon and Moab.

They conspired, they plotted, they planned to invade and destroy and take into captivity Judah and her people, God's people at the time. The Old Testament prophets observed, for example, about Edom, that they, and I quote the prophet Obadiah, who said that Edom rejoiced over the people of Judah in the day of their destruction, unquote. And then when Babylon invaded and even went so far as to, Edom did wait at the crossroads to cut down their fugitives and hand over their survivors, unquote. They handed them over to the chains of her captors, Babylon, Assyria, and Persia.

This is hatred of God and His people, but it is not unique to history, dear listener. We see this same hatred of God's people being displayed all across the Middle East today as the exponents of the religion of peace. Slaughter our Christian brothers by the thousands as infidels. Now, most recently, we saw the bloody spectacle of 21 Christians being beheaded by the true followers of Mohammed, that is, ISIS in Iraq. And all that our servile president could say in response was, let's not forget that Christians committed atrocities during the Crusades.

Do you remember this? What? I asked. What? Not only is this an irrelevant non sequitur, Mr. President, it betrays your true religious identity, that of a crypto Muslim.

The only reason Obama is not practicing his true faith openly, that is, the Islam of his youth, is because he would be an unelectable pariah if he were to do so. Progressives in the naive politically correct apologists for Obama huff and puff when it is even suggested that he is anything but a conventional Orthodox Christian. Yet when you read his own material, for example, his biography, Dreams of My Father, you find him reminiscing fondly of his youth growing up under Islam, where he heard the daily call to prayer. It was one of the most beautiful sounds he'd ever heard, he says.

He also fondly remembers his indoctrination in Islamic schools in the Quran, and he says it resonated with his soul. He acknowledged the truth of the teachings of Mohammed, too. Additionally, when Obama joined the so-called Church of Jeremiah Wright in Chicago, Reverend Wright assured him that he would not have to surrender his Islamic beliefs in order to become a Christian. Ha, that is a Christian as understood by Reverend Wright, not so much the Bible, my dear listener. Well, even if this were not the case, Obama's administration's policies also betray him as at least sympathetic to, if not outright enthusiastic toward radical Islam.

How many Americans are aware of the access and advisement that the Muslim Brotherhood, originating in Egypt, radical to the core, how the Muslim Brotherhood has had access and advisement with him and his policy makers? In fact, 10 of them are documented as part of his administration, and numbers of others are on record as guests on the White House Registry coming in to offer advice on foreign policy in the Middle East. Consequently, because of this, we have the toppling of President Mubarak in Egypt in favor of Sharia, imposing Islamists hand-picked by the Muslim Brotherhood.

We have also the violent overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya in favor of Sharia, imposing radical Islamists, and whence the attempted overthrow of President Assad in Syria by ISIS, and now the successful overthrow of the U.S.-sponsored government in Iraq by ISIS. These were all coups, dear listener, coups aided, abetted, encouraged, and secretly funded, and armed by the Obama administration. Our troops are now fighting radical Islamists in the Middle East with arms and training provided by who? Who do you think? Russia?

Saudi Arabia? No, you guessed that, the United States of America. Even General Wesley Clark, former NATO commander in Bosnia under Bill Clinton, even Wesley Clark freely admitted the other day that ISIS in Iraq was originally funded and armed by the United States in order to topple Assad in Syria. Evidently, the Muslim Brotherhood advisors informing Obama must be telling him that Islamic regimes imposing Sharia upon the people is infinitely better than the secular dictatorships presently there. Ha!

But the proof is in the pudding. What would you say, dear listener? And with his predisposition towards the romantic Islam of his youth, Obama is drinking deeply from the wells of the Muslim Brotherhood, blind to the demonic nature of Islam that is playing out for everyone else to see except for him and his administration. I say that the nature of Islam is demonic in the very same sense in which Muslims call it so. That is, Muhammad, for example, was regularly visited by demons.

In Arabic, they're called jinn, also known as genies, anglicized, right? The genies in a bottle, for example, taken from things like tales from a thousand and one Arabian nights. And these little jinn, these genies, are not the cute little blue genie in the feature film cartoon version starring Robin Williams' voiceover. No, these are not the jinn that Muhammad faced. In his revelation of and transcribing of the holy book of Islam, the Quran, he faced an entirely different type of jinn.

Note these salient features of Muhammad's reception of the Quran. For example, he was ostensibly visited by the archangel Michael in A.D. 611 in a cave on Mount Hira near his home in Mecca where he was meditating. So terrifying was this apparition to Muhammad that he ran home and sat shaking in the lap of his wife for hours. And subsequently, Muhammad would be visited by various other jinn spirits of such frightening magnitude that Muhammad would be reduced to the state of a babbling child for hours or even days at a time. Muhammad could never quite figure out whether he was being visited by demons or angels until his wife intervened.

She is rumored to have disrobed and presented herself naked before the apparition. And when she did, it fled. So his wife determined that he did sell this jinn out of modesty and therefore assured Muhammad that this jinn was an angel. Muhammad therefore listened to them and their ostensible chief Michael, and he transcribed the Quran over the period of a number of years. Well then, the name of the god in which the jinn commanded that Muhammad go out and preach was Allah, who was at that time a minor god already in the panoply of pagan gods in his local Arabian tribe, the Qurash.

Suddenly, this minor spirit, Allah, was being elevated to the position of supreme god of the universe. The jinn who tormented him told Muhammad, and I quote now, recite in the name of Allah who has created, created man out of a germ cell. Recite for your lord is the most generous one who has taught by the pen, taught man what he ought to know, unquote. Dear listener, do you see how plain it is that we as human beings inhabit two realms simultaneously, a physical realm and a spiritual realm. Who is this lord of Muslims in reality, I ask?

Who are they? Who is this lord of Muslims in reality? This lord, this Allah, certainly bears no resemblance to the god of the Bible, does he? And he produces fruit directly contradictory to that of biblical Christianity. They are not the same religion.

They are not the same god. Now, while it may be true that, as Obama declares, we are not at war with Islam, oh, the same cannot be said when it comes to the stance of Islam with Christianity, can it? From the Quran, from Surah, number two, for example, the Quran says, fight in the cause of Allah, those who fight against you. Slay the infidels wherever you find them and turn them out from where they have turned you out for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter, unquote. Oh, from the Quran as well, from Surah, number three, if anyone desires a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted of him, unquote.

This is why you have the choice of the sword or the Quran, the sword or Islam when they conquer or else you are oppressed as a Christian and a Jew under, um, under the, the treaty of, uh, Omar. Also from the Quran, Surah, number four, seize the infidels and slay them wherever you find them and in any case, take no friends or helpers from their ranks, unquote. Or how about this, the unbelievers are open enemies to you, from Surah, number four, in the Quran. And finally, fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day, unquote, from Surah, number nine, in the Quran.

Well, these and other portions of the Quran make it quite plain why the Muslim world today is seething and boiling with hatred and bloodlust and demonic rage against Christ and his people. We live in two realms simultaneously, dear listener, both the physical and the spiritual. And at both levels, the Islam, the Muslim world is seething and boiling with hatred and bloodlust and demonic rage against Christ and his people.

It comes from the evil spiritual realm to inspire followers to act in the physical realm, which then in turn completes the loop of destiny by transforming also the spiritual realm in turn from which it emanated, making it stronger and more virulent. These play upon one another. Please don't insult our intelligence, dear apologists, with lies of equivocation that excuse this behavior either. For example, we hear that these jihadists represent only a tiny fraction of the largely peaceful Muslims of the world. Obama says this all the time.

Yet, how many cheer on their fellow believers in this barbarity from the sidelines? Just note, for example, the film of the celebration in the streets all over the Muslim world after 9-11. Just because the over one billion Muslims in the world now are not at all at once slaughtering the infidels of the world does not mean that they will not be doing so in the future if given the opportunity or else, as many are doing, offering money and resources and moral support for those who do, even now. Additionally, if the majority of Muslims are peaceful, why are they not strenuously objecting to the hijacking of their religion? Christians would.

Why are they not rising up and taking Islam back, crying out to all who would listen, that this is not Islam? Why are they not removing these inauthentic leaders, if they are inauthentic, and replacing them with true leaders that represent what Islam really is? Well, I submit to you it is precisely because they are content with those in the vanguard, those waging jihad, those who seize the infidels and slay them wherever they find them. To those leaders committing acts of atrocity, these leaders exactly represent what most Muslims think their religion represents.

Especially with the successful resurgence of Islam all over the world, the average Muslim is content with those who are bringing this revival. Now, there is a truism in political and cultural life, dear listener. Silence is assent. Yes, silence is assent. If you do not object and act to intervene and stop a behavior, it continues, it grows, it increases its field of influence like an unattended cancer.

Even if you may not agree with a behavior in theory, for example, thinking that waging violent jihad is not true Islam, even if you agree with that in theory, your silence and passivity is a virtual assent, a tacit agreement that this behavior is acceptable and will proceed. Most Germans were silent and passive in Hitler's rise to power. Does it excuse the Holocaust in World War II?

Does the silence and passivity of the German people in Hitler's rise to power excuse them responsibility for constituting the armies of Germany, for working in the factories of Germany that produced the bombs, tanks, and guns of Germans who ran rivers of blood all over Europe and Russia? Does the silence of the German people and the rise of Hitler excuse the doctrine and practice of Nazism and the master race? Ha, I submit to you, no. The world held all of Germany responsible even during the Nuremberg trials.

Most Japanese as well were silent and passive during the rise of the militant emperor cult in Japan in the early decades of the 20th century. It only took a tiny percentage of fanatical military leaders in conjunction with the emperor and his family to fashion all of Japan into an aggressive militaristic empire. that ran rivers of blood during World War II. Does this excuse the silent passive population of Japan? They worked the factories.

They grew the food. They constituted the armies of Japan that went about the evil dictated by the emperor. Were the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Were they selective in who they killed, slaying only those who actively, vocally supported the emperor and his generals? No.

Well, I submit to you today, this is what is happening all over the Muslim world. Muslims give their virtual assent, their tacit agreement that what the jihadists are doing in Iraq and Syria and Egypt and Afghanistan and countless other Muslim regions represents them and their religion. They may be silent and passive in the face of the demonic frenzy of their co-religionists, but the large 99%, if you will, allow and entertain and turn a blind eye to what their co-religionists do, the ones who are leading.

Despite crypto-Muslims like President Obama who make excuses for them, all of Islam must be held accountable for what is being done in its name. I say this again, all of Islam in the spiritual realm and the physical realm must be held accountable for what is being done in its name. We also hear things like Islam is a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of peace. Jihad is the exception, not the rule.

Oh, Islam in the first place. Islam does not mean peace. It means submission. Islam translates as submission. Are you blind?

Can you not see that wherever the religion of peace obtains? There is not peace, but war and blood and death in submission to the jihad of Allah. Wherever the religion of peace obtains, there is not liberty, but submission to religious and political tyranny. Wherever the religion of peace obtains, there is not prosperity and opportunity, but submission to poverty and want. Wherever the religion of peace obtains, there is not freedom of expression for ideas, but submission to suppressed speech and strangled ideas.

And wherever the religion of peace obtains, there is not flourishing art and culture look around you, but rather the submission to an arid wasteland of culture, like the desert from once this desolate religion came. And wherever the religion of peace obtains, there is not a flourishing science and technology, but an ignorance and stupidity imposed by the straitjacket of submission to the Koran. And wherever the religion of peace obtains, there is not a love for life lived in freedom. But as Osama bin Laden put it, rather, there is a love for death in submission to Allah.

Yeah, as Osama bin Laden put it, the West, you love life, but we love death. That is why we will win. Ha! Well, I'm tired of being told that what I see is not what my eyes are seeing. I'm tired of being told by apologists for Islam that what I hear is not what my ears are hearing, and that what is happening is not really what is going on.

When a rabid dog, when a rabid dog is tearing at my ankles, don't tell me that really inside there's a puppy who only wants to lick my boots, and he's just waiting to get out. No, I will shoot the rabid dog. I am not going to believe you, Mr. President. You are a proven liar, but rather I will believe my lying eyes. Islam does not mean peace.

It means submission. Submission to the demonic, the tyrannical, and the life-negating. Now, in this larger theater of the spirits, in this larger theater, behold the consequence for the lives of nations when they choose Allah as their God. Look at the nations presently under whom Allah is the undisputed God. Nations like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Afghanistan, and many, many others.

Dear listener, would you choose to live in any of them as opposed to where you live now? Look at the products. Look at the fruit of the religions. Listener, though you may not be in battle right now in the streets of your city with Islamic jihadists, there is a war nevertheless being fought in the spiritual realm even now. All through the history of mankind, nations have lived a life simultaneously in the physical realm as well as the spiritual realm.

Those in vituperative hatred of God, those in vituperative hatred of God and his people, they have been at war with the people of God in this spiritual realm, even if the battlefields of the earth were relatively silent at the time. There nevertheless has been pitch battle. Here we see constant warfare in us in the spiritual realm, do we not? We see this reflected throughout the pages of the Bible as we turn in our Bibles. For instance, the angel to the prophet sent to the prophet Daniel reveals to Daniel that which had delayed him for so long in coming to Daniel, and he tells him with this message.

He says, "...the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me 21 days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me because I was detained there with the king of Persia." This all happening in the spiritual realm. Nations have princes or mighty angels in regular rank and order like armies in this spiritual realm, and they fight in the realm of the spirit on behalf of those nations. This is part of the spiritual life of nations.

Now, at this time in the Bible, Israel was the people of God. Israel was the people of God, the nation who alone stood like a shining beacon in an otherwise dark and pagan world. It was true in the physical realm, where Israel sat at the cusp of Asia and Africa, a tiny spot of land in the southeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea. But it was also true not only in the physical realm, but also in the spiritual realm, where Israel stood alone against the hatred and bitterness of the nations around her. The angel said to Daniel, "...soon I will return to fight against the prince of Persia, and when I go, the prince of Greece will come.

And no one supports me against either of them except Michael, your prince. And in the first year of Darius the Mede, I took my stand to support and protect him." Unquote. Oh, here we see constant warfare in the heavenly realm. Though we may not see it ourselves or feel it directly down here, it is an ongoing war and profoundly affects our daily lives as we see in Daniel's own life.

Did you note how desperately alone the prince of Israel, Michael, was with only a few angelic hosts to support him against the princes of both Persia and Greece? This has always been the case with God's people, dear listener, fighting that battle against God's enemies in both the spiritual realm and in the physical realm. Now, we see this now, today, in the world's hatred of the church. The church is now the people of God, not Israel, but the hatred is still vituperative. It is still hot, both against the church and her Christ, Jesus of Nazareth.

For example, in Revelation 12, we see St. John's figurative portrait of the church in the figure of a woman clothed with the son, giving birth to the Christ, who is then pursued by a great red dragon, which the Bible says is that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan who leads the whole world astray and who is intent upon devouring that male child. Well, how does the Bible describe this contest? Does the dragon challenge God to a game of chess, perhaps a chili cook-off? No, the text is very clear. And Revelation says there was war in heaven.

Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down to the earth and his angels with him, unquote, from the book of Revelation. Dear listener, this is not some future contest during the great tribulation, no, but a battle that has already taken place. That great red dragon, Satan, has already done his worst. He slew the Christ at the cross, thinking he had gained the triumph, but actually God used this very malice to achieve his own secret purpose.

That is the redemption of the church by that very bloody cross upon which Satan conspired to slay Jesus. Jesus' death stood in the place of ours in the eyes of his Father, the righteous for the unrighteous, the place where the cross was, the place where, as Paul says, God made him who had no sin, that is Jesus, to be made sin for us, so that in him, that is in Jesus, we might become the righteousness of God, unquote. How beautiful that is. What an elegant, wise, wise plan.

That was the best shot Satan could offer, the cross, and God, the Father, in his infinite wisdom, used Satan's own wiles to undo him, defeating him at the cross, and making of him a cosmic fool. Paul says in Colossians, having disarmed the powers and authorities, that is the powers and authorities of heavens, the demonic ones, the evil ones, he that is God made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross, unquote. But does that mean that the rest is easy street for us? Are we, the church, the New Testament people of God, beyond the reach of this vicious, voracious dragon, the devil, and his minions?

Hardly, I say, for Revelation also tells us, and I quote, he who was hurled to the earth and his angels with him, woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you. He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short, unquote, from the book of Revelation. We see that fury even today in the spiritual lives of nations, like those under the possession, those under the possession now of Allah and the religion of Islam. What else can we call this murderous bloodlust, dear listener, but satanic? What else can we saw, or what else can we call, excuse me, this obsession with submission and oppression?

What else can we call it but tyranny and demonic? There is a corresponding spiritual component to the physical life we see being played out by the nations of the earth, including our own. To whom do we belong as a nation, dear listener? Daniel prayed, did he not? Daniel prayed mightily and persistently for 21 days before the emissary of the Prince of Israel was able to reach him.

We must pray as well. Dear listener, we were founded as a nation given over to Christ and his gospel. Check our early charters, including the Declaration of Independence, how this has been seeded to our enemies, including the progressives, the secularists in our own nation. There is a spiritual life, dear listener, to our nation. One lives simultaneously with that of the physical.

It is our responsibility, yours and mine, to so live our individual lives that we in part contribute as we can, as Daniel did, to live that life for our nation on behalf of Christ and his gospel. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We meet for holy worship on Sunday at 10 a.m. at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Call us at 523-0196.