ReformationUnderway

A recent column by Pat Buchanan begins with the following passage:

When Woodrow Wilson went to Congress to ask for a declaration of war in 1917, the U.S. Army was ranked 17th in the world, behind Portugal.

On Armistice Day, 19 months later, there were 2 million doughboys in France, where they had helped to break the back of Gen. Ludendorff’s theretofore invincible army in its final offensive, and 2 million more in the United States ready to march on Berlin.

No other nation could have done that.

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, FDR demanded that a disarmed America “build 50,000 planes”—a seemingly impossible number, but one America met and exceeded.

Starting from scratch in 1941, the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos designed, built, tested and detonated three atomic bombs by August 1945 to end the war.

After Sputnik humiliated America, Wernher Von Braun and the boys at Redstone Arsenal had a satellite up in three months. In 1961, JFK declared we were going to the moon and would be there before the decade was out. Cynics scoffed. This writer was at Canaveral to watch Apollo 11 lift off in the summer of 1969.

Whatever became of that can-do nation?

As an American, and as someone who was just barely old enough to remember the first lunar module setting down on the moon, I am filled with pride to read about what our forefathers accomplished. And I am sorrowful, because it appears that our nation today is incapable of truly unifying behind any single cause to accomplish such amazing things in short spans of time.

I don’t pretend to know what event or movement set us on the course to our present state. Maybe it was the war in Vietnam. Some might suggest it was Watergate. Perhaps the stark changes in the attitude and purposes of the press in the last half of the 20th century were the key piece of the puzzle. I don’t know the answer, but I do know that our people are vastly different from the nation that confronted tyrants in the two world wars.

Having said all of that, I must affirm my conviction that the hope of our people is not, or should not be, in our government or some reform of our political system, but in God. Our greatest needs are not temporal, but rather eternal, and no act of a government or ruler can determine our final destiny as individuals. Even our destiny as a nation is ultimately in the hands of God, not in elected officials or appointed judges.

Because our fate truly is in God’s hands, none of these other considerations strip us of the ability or need to uphold our nation and it’s leaders in prayer, seeking His favor for our future as a free and sovereign society. But let us not confuse the source of our hope because of national pride or political furor.

If you wish to read the remainder of Buchanan’s column, you can find it here.

Men Like Trees Walking gives an account of Ernest Grant's life, and notes his passing in December. Grant was a young airman in WWII, and shot down over German-occupied France. He was the lone survivor among the crew, and was hidden from the Nazis for more than a year by a French family.

The little bit of Grant's life story in the article is worth reading, and left me wishing to learn more about this ordinary hero. There were so many stories of similar trial and triumph borne out of WWII, and relatively few of them will ever be told to future generations. Most in our contemporary culture cannot fathom the depth of the sacrifices made by the American people in order to win the war. Hats off to Grant and all those who left behind their families and all that they knew to battle for this American future.

(HT: Justin Taylor - He says this article was written by his brother)

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This post is a bit of departure from the norm here, but as an aviation buff, I couldn't take a pass on this one. Chris Kjelgaard of Aviation.com has commemorated the 50th Anniversary of the first flight of the Boeing 707 jetliner, which took place on December 20, 1957. The 707 airframe, and its military and cargo variants, were in production for almost 40 years, with just over 1,000 total aircraft built during that time. Many of the airplanes I saw as a child, when my dad took me to watch planes landing and taking off at Dallas' Love Field in the late 1960s, were 707s. (Yeah, I'm not sure how I learned to love airplanes, either.)

The most famous 707 variants were almost certainly those that served as the Presidential aircraft in the U.S. Air Force, commonly known as Air Force One. These aircraft served as the primary air transport platform for six U.S. Presidents, from 1962 until 1990. These aircraft remained part of the Presidential fleet as late as 2001, being used for transporting the Vice-President, or the President when visiting locations lacking an airport capable of accommodating the larger 747-based aircraft which succeeded them in the Presidential fleet.

(H/T: In From the Cold)

I have been reading Bishop J. C. Ryle's 1890 book on the Marian martyrs, Light From Old Times. The stories of the bravery and single-minded devotion to Christ shown by these English reformers as they were delivered to be burned at the stake, most within view of the churches where they had pastored, are striking, humbling, and challenging.Ryle's account of the reason why these men were burned is shocking. He identifies the doctrine of the real presence as the reason for their burning. What is the doctrine of the real presence? In Catholic doctrine, the elements of communion, the bread and the wine, after the priest's words of consecration, are taught to be corporally, literally, locally, and materially changed into the physical body and blood of Christ. No matter what other charge was brought against them, the documents of history seem to confirm that it was their rejection of this doctrine which led to their condemnation.Why would these men have regarded this doctrine as being so significant that they judged it necessary to die as a martyr rather than accept the doctrine? Ryle summarizes what was at stake this way:

[T]he Romish doctrine of the real presence, if pursued to its legitimate consequences, obscures every leading doctrine of the Gospel and damages and interferes with the whole system of Christ's truth. […] [G]rant for a moment these things, and then see what momentous consequences result from these premises. You spoil the blessed doctrine of Christ's finished work when He died on the cross. A sacrifice that needs to be repeated is not a perfect and complete thing. You spoil the priestly office of Christ. If there are priests that can offer an acceptable sacrifice to God besides Him , the great High Priest is robbed of His glory. You spoil the scriptural doctrine of the Christian ministry. You exalt sinful men into the position of mediators between God and man. You give to the sacramental elements of bread and wine an honour and veneration they were never meant to receive and produce an idolatry to be abhorred of faithful Christians. Last, but not least, you overthrow the true doctrine of Christ's human nature. If the body born of the Virgin Mary can be in more places than one at the same time, it is not a body like our own, and Jesus was not "the last Adam" in the truth of our nature.

That paragraph from Ryle is densely packed with gospel truth. I highly recommend that you take the time to deliberately read the paragraph again. Truly the heart of the gospel is packed up within those few words.