Friday, October 18, 2024

Part I

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Hamas Leader Killed by Israeli Forces: The Death of Yahya Sinwar Raises Important Theological and Moral Principles about Rightful Killing in a Dangerous and Fallen World

There can be no doubt what, at the moment, is the leading news story around the world, and remarkably, it isn’t about the 2024 presidential election in the United States. It is instead about the obituary for Yahya Sinwar, the former leader of Hamas, who was killed by IDF forces, Israeli forces, on Thursday. Now, in the course of human history, one of the hard questions comes down to the impact an individual can have. And you can look at many individuals throughout human history, and you can try to measure their importance. And you could say that on the good side of the ledger, you would put those rulers, those leaders, those kings and princes, prime ministers, and presidents, who sought to defend the value of human life and sought to defend human freedom around the world.

But you would also have to look at a list of those whose names are written forever in infamy. And those would include names such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, but that list would also include Yahya Sinwar, and it would also include Hassan Nasrallah. And over the course of the last several weeks, forces allied with the Israeli government or the Israeli Defense Forces have basically led to the deaths of Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah, and now, as of yesterday, Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas. And it’s interesting to note that in both cases, you have the President of the United States, the incumbent President Joe Biden, responding with a statement of unbridled celebration at the death of this individual at Israeli hands. Now, we are talking about life and death here, we’re talking about human beings here, so that requires us as Christians to put this into an immediate moral context.

And here is where a Christian understanding that’s defined as realism enters into the picture. And so, Christian realism understands that in a fallen world, excruciatingly bad things have to take place in order to protect human life. That’s a short summary of the Christian realist ethical understanding. It is a theological understanding that is rooted in the fact that, at times, here’s a horrifying reality, someone has to die in order to stop him from killing others. And it’s easy to understand, or at least easier to understand if you talk about some of the cases of world shaking magnitude. So, from the very beginning, say of World War II and the American confrontation, the allied confrontation with Hitler, it was assumed that taking the life of Adolf Hitler, which could lead to an end to the Third Reich, that that would be a righteous act. And this just reminds us of the fact that requires a worldview that says, the Bible says, “You shall not murder,” but this is not murder.

This is a justified governmental action that is undertaken to protect others. It’s one of the reasons why, for example, you take the nation state out of the equation. There is a defense in the law when it comes to self-defense or the defense of others for that matter, who may be under mortal danger from an attacker. And this is a difficult thing. This is one of the hardest questions that is confronted in terms of the use of violence. And the Christian worldview has come down to authorizing the use of violence in a limited number of cases that have to be properly authorized and also have to be inherently defensive. Okay, so, that’s what’s key, inherently defensive. It must not be an offensive act in order to gain some kind of territory or treasure. It must be a defensive act in order to protect human life, human dignity, or for that matter, the defense of the nation state or the community as a way of protecting the people therein.

And so, yesterday, Israeli Defense Forces and the Israeli government announced the death of Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas, an Islamist, militia and terrorist organization, most infamous recently for the terror attack undertaken on Israel on October the 7th of 2023. Now, notice we are just one year past that horrific terrorist attack, that murderous attack that killed more than 1200 people in Israel. And Hamas, of course, is still holding many hostage. Here’s the thing, this is another clear signal sent by the state of Israel that it will defend itself. This is another very important moral statement made by Israel that is traceable back to its founding in 1947, 1948, in which Israel made very clear that it will go after its enemies. I just want to state something. The United States of America acts in similar ways. The United States of America would not exist if it did not act in similar ways.

Now, sometimes you have the American government, and I talked about this on The Briefing just earlier this week because of another occurrence. Sometimes you have a government like the government of the United States acting like it is somewhat distant from this kind of activity, but that is not honest and it is not true. The United States government acts in the very same way with the support of the American people. Just remember the September 11, 2001 terror attacks against the United States undertaken by Al Qaeda, and you’ll remember the leader of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden. And it did not take just a year, it took a sizably longer period of time, but eventually the intelligence agencies of the United States tracked down Osama bin Laden to the rooftop of a house in Pakistan, and special forces from the United States removed the threat. How’s that for a use of the English language? They removed the threat of Osama bin Laden. They to use the military language “neutralized the threat.” That means they killed him. 

Okay, so in a world of all kinds of blurry moral issues, the president of the United States yesterday responded to the death of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, by saying this, “This is a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world.” Now, to his credit, president Biden made a similar statement after the IDF took out Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, that is a Shiite militia and Islamic terrorist organization that had been killing people in Israel for a very long time. And both Hezbollah and Hamas are absolutely dedicated to the eradication of Israel as a Jewish state. And just remember that, they are committed to the absolute destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, and they’re both committed if necessary, to the destruction and the annihilation of the Jewish people.

And so, you are looking here at a genuine confrontation of murderers with a civilized state, and we are looking at an act that undertaken by Israel, has the support, the public support now, notice that, notice the level of the public support of the American government by this action. Not only that, but President Biden tipped his hand a little bit when it comes to the US government making clear that it had cooperated in intelligence efforts to try to track him down. So, this is a morally clarifying moment. We need to think about it. Now, when you look at this, you recognize that President Biden, I’m just going to look at the American President’s statement because I’m speaking as an American. And as I look at the response of my government, I find it very interesting that the president of the United States spoke of the death of a human being there in the Middle East and said, “This is a good day for Israel, for the United States, and for the world.”

Now, this is a hard thing for some Christians to think through. It’s an important question. It demands our Christian attention. This is a bit heavier than what we would normally consider on a Friday edition of The Briefing, but this happened yesterday, it demands our attention. And here’s where we have to understand that sometimes in a fallen world, there are persons who give themselves to such evil, that the only way humanity can be protected is with their removal. Now, that is actually why there is a biblical logic concerning capital punishment. This is found in Genesis chapter 9, where the Lord speaking to Noah and his family, said in verse 5, “And for your lifeblood, I will require a reckoning from every beast I will require and from man. From his fellow man, I will require a reckoning for the life of man.” In verse 6, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”

And so, here the Lord speaking to Noah and his family, which is to say to his people, made very clear that at times capital punishment is the only rightful punishment. And this is by the way, for premeditated murder. How does that apply to Yahya Sinwar? He was a premeditated murderer. And on a gigantic scale. Years ago, he gained the name, the nickname even among some Muslims as the butcher of Khan Yunis. Why did he get that name? He got that name because of his order for summary execution, not of Jewish people in this case, but of Palestinians, who were thought to be collaborating with Israel. He was absolutely ruthless. Get this. You also have even major media, even more liberal media in the United States reporting on the fact that he was quite willing to expend Palestinian lives for his political cause, that’s one of the reasons why he embedded himself and his leadership within the Palestinian people in order to make it such that when Israel attacked him and attacked other Hamas leaders, they had to risk killing civilians with whom these terrorist leaders had infiltrated themselves.

They had hidden themselves with these civilians. They understood exactly what they were doing. And Yahya Sinwar said it will be worth it for his goals of establishing a Palestinian state, an Islamic Palestinian state. And that meant also the elimination of Israel as a Jewish day. It was worth losing Palestinian lives, he said, if indeed he was able to eliminate Israel. As we’re looking at the moral calculus here, there’s something else to understand. Yahya Sinwar had been in Israeli custody at one point for his complicity in terrorist acts. He was among a large group of Palestinian prisoners who spent as much as 20 years in Israeli prisons. And during that time, what did Yahya Sinwar do? He learned Hebrew, he studied Israeli history, and he did so in order to find weaknesses. All that time he spent in Israeli jails, he was plotting how he could gain his revenge.

And that revenge became the motivation for his political and military leadership of Hamas. And there is no doubt, no one had any doubt, that he was directly responsible for the murderous attack on Israel that killed, as I said, more than 1200 people on October 7, 2023. His goal was not to stop there but to press on until the total elimination of the Israeli state.

Part II

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What Should Israel Do Now? Will the Palestinian People Forge Their Own Future? – The Death of Yahya Sinwar Raises Massive Questions about the Future

All right, two other big worldview questions come out of this. One of the first questions is, okay, what’s the follow up on this? What do we do about this? What should Israel do about this? What does this lead to? And this is where you understand that it’s not just Israel, but it is others who have the political tactic, the military tactic of deciding that at least one thing that could be done to reduce the threat of a group like Hamas is removing its leadership.

And the same thing with Hezbollah. And of course, as we saw with Hezbollah, the Israeli effort has removed several layers of leadership. And removing that leadership is a functional act of war in this case with Israel defending itself. But that then raises another question. And that question is, what does Israel intend to do next? And here is where you have people in the United States, you have the President of the United States, you have all kinds of major leaders in the United States, you have leaders, presidents, and prime ministers around the world, you have nations allied with Israel, who are going to encourage Israel to see this as a rare, unprecedented opportunity to establish a new dimension, a new political reality in the Middle East and to seize the opportunity. Now, the temptation on the part of the Americans is going to be to define that in terms of our own national interest rather than the national interest of Israel.

That’s a mistake Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, is not likely to do. But it might also be that the elimination of the threat in terms of the direct leadership coming from both Hezbollah and Hamas does afford Israel a new opportunity to define the political reality in a way that is to the advantage of its national survival. Thomas L. Friedman who has spent a lot of time in the Middle East and is very influential, he’s a columnist for the New York Times, and frankly, I often disagree with his analysis, but he says this about the death of Yahya Sinwar. He says, “It creates the possibility not only of ending the Gaza war, returning Israeli hostages, and bringing relief to the people of Gaza, it creates the possibility for the biggest step forward in a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians since Oslo,” he means the Oslo peace accords from decades past, “as well as normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which means pretty much the entire Muslim world.”

Okay. So, I find fault with this statement about this being an opportunity for the biggest step toward a two-state solution. I honestly am not at all convinced that the Palestinian authority and others will genuinely settle on a two-state solution. But nonetheless, if you just take that out of the sentence for a moment and understand that maybe we could insert a just solution of the Palestinian question, you could then say, well, the rest of it pretty much stands. And that includes the opportunity for the people there in Gaza and on the West Bank, Palestinians on the West Bank, who frankly have admired Yahya Sinwar, many of them have, and what he had done. This is an opportunity for the Palestinian people to act in their own self-interest, frankly, to act in their own self-interest and to distance themselves from Hamas. And as you look at the north, also to distance themselves from Hezbollah and make very clear they accept the reality of Israel and they want to live in peaceful coexistence.

This is an opportunity we’ll see if the opportunity is taken. But that also raises the question of what now would be the natural leadership for the Palestinian people? And that’s not a question anyone outside the Palestinian people can answer. That eventually is going to have to be answered by the Palestinian people. But that also raises the basic question about how the Palestinian people will forge their own future. And indeed, if they’re able to do so. One of the problems is that you have the unraveling of a social fabric to a significant degree in especially Gaza, but also extended to some other areas as well. And it will take some time to reweave that fabric under the best of circumstances. But at the very least right now, we can understand that Israel has taken a dramatic action, which is an historically significant action and a justified action. It is an action celebrated as far as the White House, but the next step is up not only to Israel, but also to the Palestinian people.

And as we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, well, this gives us a new strategic vantage point from which to pray. One last thought before we leave the story and turn to questions. It will also be very, very interesting to see how the major Arab states respond to this. How Arab governments particularly, let’s just say here, the government of Saudi Arabia, how it responds to this power vacuum. That nation and other Arab nations could play a very constructive role in helping an organic healthy leadership to emerge among the Palestinians. And that means keeping the forces of evil and nihilism away.

Part III

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How Should Christians Think About the Argument that Population Decline is a Good Thing? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

All right. Now, let’s turn to questions. I’m honored by all the questions sent in by listeners to The Briefing. You can send yours to just mail@albertmoller.com. I’ll get to as many as possible. A 17-year-old young man wrote in to say, “I want to know your thoughts on the world population decline and how it will impact future generations.” And then, he says this, “Some people say the decline in population will actually be beneficial, but how should we address this issue from a Christian perspective?”

So, Andrew, thanks for the question. And it’s a pressing question these days in terms of even public conversation as well as private interest. As you look at the Bible, it’s just really clear that you see in Genesis 1, the command to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Of course that raises the question, what does filling the earth mean? Well, evidently it means filling the earth with his glory, the Creator’s glory. And that means not so much filling the earth with the trees, I’m thankful for all the trees, but it means filling the earth with the image bearers of God. That is to say, with more human beings. God’s glory is magnified by the number of and the multiplication of image bearers that is human beings made in his image on this planet. Now, this can lead to some interesting situations in a fallen world. For one thing, we can have maldistribution of population.

So, I don’t think from a Christian perspective we can ever say there are too many people, but we can say there’s a maldistribution of people in terms of resources. We don’t want too many people crowded into, say, a small area where there’s not enough food or the ability to sustain themselves. But we can never say, “We wish that person had not been born,” simply because of the number of human beings alive. We should never say, “We wish this birth did not happen.” Instead, we should step back and say, “Okay, the biblical perspective says we are to welcome every human life as a fellow image bearer.” And the Lord’s command is to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. So, what do we say about the claims about too many people, a population explosion, etc? Well, Andrew, it comes down to this. Many of those people I think seriously believe what they’re saying.

And I’m old enough to remember when the population explosion prophets of doom first emerged. And frankly, they found themselves on television, on talk shows and all the rest saying the world’s going to run out of food and all the rest. Well, the problem right now is not, it’s been proved that it’s not the fact that the world will run out of food. There is maldistribution. Again, that’s a problem. We have people in some places where we don’t have enough food at the time. But the problem is not too many human beings, the problem is the distribution of the human beings and the distribution of resources. The Left hates the population question and it wants to reduce the human footprint. Frankly, the secular Left, the ideological left has adopted a basic anti-humanism, which now openly celebrates a falling birth rate, which by the way is catastrophic for societies.

And we’re going to be talking about this even in coming days on The Briefing. You have societies whose future existence is now dramatically called into question because there aren’t enough babies. And by the way, that’s never the only part of the equation. It’s not only enough babies, it’s too many people of the other end of the age spectrum, which is why the Left looks there. And also you have a support, especially among say, those holding to a secular worldview of well alternative forms of dying at the end, including open calls for euthanasia in some countries. At this time, I think it is really interesting just to note that even as many in the secular media and among the liberal intelligentsia and leftist political circles, they’ve been writing the efforts to try to lead to a decline in human population. They’ve been leading that crusade.

They’re all of a sudden at least waking up to the fact that it is now a problem that there are too few babies being born rather than too many, and that that is going to lead to dramatic problems, social problems, political problems, even problems just figuring out who’s going to grow the food when it comes to many nations. You can put South Korea, by the way, at the top of the list. That is where the birth rate right now is most catastrophic. But all across the world, including in the United States, we’re going to face some similar hard questions.

Part IV

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Can You Explain the Decline of Sunday Evening Worship Services? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

So, I appreciated another question from a listener, and this one has to do with evening services or the decline of Sunday evening worship services. This listener writes in and she says, I don’t believe this was the case that means this decline of just a few years ago, “But nowadays it seems to be the exception that a church holds an evening service. What, if anything, is this an indication of why the change from years passed?” Okay, I want to say to this listener, we at least need to put this in an historical context. So, as you look at the history of the Christian Church, even beyond the Lord’s day, let’s just say if you look at, for instance, the rise of monasticism and the rise of devotional orders in the early church, the late early church, in the medieval church, there was always a morning ceremony, a morning prayer, and an evening ceremony or an evening prayer.

And that was translated pretty quickly in even the time of the Reformation to a morning service and an evening service. And this really fit more than anything else in agricultural calendar and schedule. So, it really was more or less in a morning when there’s an opportunity for worship and in the evening when there is an opportunity for worship, the way to begin the day and the way to end the day. Now, the command to worship for the people of God, not to forsake the assembling themselves together for worship on the Lord’s day, that is a biblical command. We’re not given a time, we’re given a day. The Lord’s day, the first day of the week. We’re not given a time, we’re also not given a number of services. But it is interesting that throughout most of the history of the Christian Church, you’ve had a pattern of morning and evening.

And I think you see this even in the Scripture morning and evening, the beginning of the day and the close of the day, special attention given on the Lord’s day. But there was another development. This is really interesting. As you get to, for example, a city like London. And you look at the history of London and you look at the moment when electricity arrives, you have the opportunity for mass meetings at night. And so, it’s not just acts of private devotion or a few people gathered together, it is now an opportunity for a congregation to gather together, even in that place of worship and assembly and now at night in the dark with lights on. But then you had churches, and this is especially the more revivalistic inclined churches that began to have Sunday morning services and Sunday evening services. And sometimes there was a distinction between the two.

And at least in terms of at least my own experience as a boy, sometimes the evening service was less formal than the morning service. And in some cases it was more directed towards members of the church who would be more of an intimate group gathering together as members of the common church for praise and for fellowship, for preaching, and for prayer. And yet there was also something else happening in some of these evening services, and that was especially in the big cities using evening services, especially in the early time of the Industrial Revolution in the development of electric light, to draw people to mass assemblies at night. So, they were actually used for the opposite, more or less bringing unbelievers into the church in order that they will be confronted with gospel preaching and might turn to Christ. Now, I would say that one issue here would have to be that as you look at the history of the Christian Church, there should be some formal recognition of morning and evening.

And yet in the lives of many Christians, that might be acts of private devotion. It might be opening the day with prayer and closing the day with prayer. And on the Lord’s day, it certainly makes sense for a congregation to be together in the morning and in the evening. But you have a number of churches, a number of congregations that have moved away from an evening service. I’m not going to say that that’s necessarily a theological or biblical decline. I think it’s a decline of Christian culture, I’ll be honest about that. I think in some cases it’s also the pressure of the world, but sometimes just comes down to time with children having to get up early on Monday morning to go to school and families trying to say, “It takes us this long to get everybody ready for bed.” And there are other distractions to be sure, and some of them are less holy than taking care of your children and getting them to bed.

So, I think the history here is at least important to us. I do think there is a loss in many churches with the loss of the fellowship that comes with a Sunday night gathering. Even if people can’t make it, at least the church is gathering together, and those who are assembled can do so in full joy and in the power of the gospel. So, I do think it’s a loss. I think it’s a larger context of loss for the entire culture or a cost of our increasingly fast-paced, highly scheduled culture. It’s an encroachment on the Lord’s day that to be sure it’s also a recognition perhaps, of some basic changes in the society to which the church is having to adapt. We also need to recognize that there are some, because of circumstances, who really are unable to attend the evening services. So, it’s not a matter of some kind of legalism, it’s a matter of Christian joy in gathering together for as many as are able.

Part V

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Who Replaced Satan as Head Angel After Satan was Kicked Out of Heaven? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

Okay, next I want to shift to a question from a ten-year-old boy. I love this. And I just love the fact that in Christian homes you have young people, children who are being exposed to the Scripture and they’re coming up with just really good questions. So, here’s a question. And this comes from a little boy named Nathan. Here’s his question, “After Satan was kicked out of heaven, who replaced him as head angel?” It’s a really good question. And we do not have an answer that tells us exactly who is the head angel in this sense. We do have a designation, for example, of Gabriel as a primary angel who has given particular responsibility. I’m going to go a little bit out on a limb here, Nathan, and say, I think perhaps the rebellion of Satan, that explains why there is no longer someone who is designated as a head angel in those terms explicitly in Scripture.

And remember that Satan rebelled along with a lot of angels he took with him who were also cast out of heaven in terms of God’s judgment. And that story’s not over. In the Book of Revelation, we are told that the final victory over Satan and his legions is going to take place, yet to come when Jesus returns. So, Nathan, again, I want to tell you, you encourage me with your question.

Part VI

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Why Does Kamala Harris Use the Word ‘Values’ So Much? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

All right. Another listener writes in just asking, “Why do you think a politician like Kamala Harris uses the word ‘values’ so much? She says, ‘My values haven’t changed.'” Well, Laura, I appreciate the question, and I’m not going to read the rest of your question because I think we get the point. I think it’s very similar to when you have politicians, including Vice President Harris, who say things like, “I’m a person of faith.” And that becomes a sideways way of trying to associate or claim identity as a religious person, even maybe a generically Christian identity without any specific theological or biblical commitments.

And that I think is very much the case of many politicians. And the word values, you really put your finger on something when you ask this question, in the 1960s and seventies. It was a movement within even academic circles such as anthropology to try to say there is no such thing as an objective right and wrong or an objective morality. All we can speak about are social representations of a culture’s values, and that’s a way of destroying or at least subverting the objective reality of right and wrong. And I appreciate the fact that you caught it when you heard it. When you say, “values,” some people may use that word without intending to reject moral objective truth. But then again, that’s where the word increasingly comes from in terms of its usage. And the same thing with, “person of faith.” That’s where you want to say, “Well, okay, what faith?”