Believe in Fast and Pray in Jesus Name

Our Hope in Christ's Victory Over Death

4/10/2020 - David Limbaugh Townhall.com

Many things about Christianity are counterintuitive but none more than this: God the perfect Father sent Jesus the perfect Son to Earth as a human being to suffer and die for the sins of imperfect human beings so that those who believe in the Son would receive the perfect Holy Spirit and live in eternal love with God.

Scripture makes all this clear.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16).

"In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death -- even death on a cross!" (Philippians 2:5-8).

"And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you" (Romans 8:11).

While we properly emphasize Christ's deity, we sometimes underappreciate His full humanity. It's distasteful for lowly humans to imagine that the God of the universe could or would take on human form, let alone do so to save us. Shouldn't that be beneath Him?

Of course, that's precisely the point. It was beneath Him, and He did it anyway out of His pure love for us -- each of us as individuals. He became human to save us but also to empathize with us through His suffering so he could feel our pain. His human suffering, which is worse than ours could ever be considering He is God, makes Him approachable, as the writer of Hebrews affirmed. 

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:15).

Through His incarnation and passion, Jesus not only relates to us but also enables us to understand Him. Given His perfect attributes, one would think mere humans couldn't fathom His nature, much less relate to Him. And yet we can do both. 

Perhaps we can't fully comprehend God's infinite love, power and knowledge, but we can understand His nature. The Gospels reveal Jesus' nature and thus God's nature. Jesus tells us, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9), and "The one who looks at me is seeing the one who sent me" (John 12:45). Apostle Paul (Colossians 1:15) and the writer of Hebrews (Hebrews 1:3) express the same truth.

Christ's perfection is so sublimely revealed in the Gospels that the finest fiction writer couldn't have created a character like Him, because He is beyond the capacity of the human intellect and imagination to construct.

Christ spoke with divine authority: "The crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes" (Matthew 7:28-29). He radiated the full power of God. His words exude truth, making His teachings irresistibly attractive to all who heard Him. When the authorities asked the temple guards why they didn't arrest Jesus, they replied, "No one ever spoke the way this man does" (John 7:46). Don't you see? They sensed He was God.

We must, then, appreciate both Christ's deity and humanity, because it is only through understanding His deity that we can grasp the profound sacrifice in His decision to become human, and to suffer and die for us. God's salvation plan required Christ's dual nature because if Jesus were not both fully human and fully divine, He could not have lived a sinless life, and He couldn't have become sin for us.

One of the major stumbling blocks to the Christian faith is the reality of human suffering in the world, and we are getting a megadose of that now with the coronavirus pandemic. We are comforted, however, by the Bible's assurance that we have a God who intimately understands our pain even more than we do because He lived it -- and continues to live it. Our pain is His pain. Jesus doesn't stand apart from our suffering but lives in it, and He promises us that despite the agony we will endure on Earth, the glory and bliss of Heaven will infinitely eclipse it.

On this Easter holiday, as we try to make sense of the human pain around us, let's focus on the cross and on Jesus' triumphant declaration: "It is finished" (John 19:30). Yes, it was a triumphant statement. 

"This was not the despairing cry of a helpless martyr; it was not an expression of satisfaction that the termination of his sufferings was now reached; it was not the last gasp of a worn-out life," says Christian writer Arthur Pink. "No, rather was it the declaration on the part of the divine Redeemer that all for which he came from heaven to earth to do, was now done; that all that was needed to reveal the full character of God had now been accomplished; that all that was required by law before sinners could be saved had now been performed; that the full price of our redemption was now paid."

What was finished? Christ's victory over Satan, sin and death so that we may live and live abundantly (John 10:10). "Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death -- that is, the devil -- and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death" (Hebrews 2:14). "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work" (1 John 3:8).

Prayers for all who are suffering physically and financially, and for America to recover from this nightmare.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is "Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win." Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com.

Disease - Just One Horrific Consequence of Open Borders

Our Southern Border Is the Polar Opposite of a Quarantine

3/9/2020 - Matt Pinsker Townhall.com

One day in the courtroom, while serving as a special prosecutor on the American/Mexican border, I noticed a strange statistical oddity: 100 percent of all the defendants were men.

I queried the US Marshals and was advised that the women’s sector at the detention facility was under strict quarantine because of a chickenpox outbreak. Border Patrol and ICE were working diligently to keep the outbreak under control and provide emergency medical care to the sick, striving to prevent the disease from reaching the greater American public. 

We were extremely lucky with the chickenpox outbreak (and incidentally, Border Patrol and ICE —the twin whipping boys of the far-left —deserve an enormous debt of gratitude for protecting all of us from vast numbers of dangerous diseases, often at great personal risk). But in an era where a global coronavirus pandemic seems increasingly probable, it’s critically important to note that the true “statistical oddity” that day in the courtroom wasn’t the gender of the defendants, but the fact that we caught them in the first place. Of every 10 people who cross the border illegally, only three will ever be caught. 

It was either the grace of God —or a lucky roll of the dice —that we prevented a larger outbreak. With tens of millions of undocumented migrants spreading all across America, and large communities of “anti-vaxxers” who eschew modern vaccinations, it wouldn’t take much for this powder keg to ignite.

There is a health crisis at the border. Unfortunately, we don’t know how bad it is, because we have absolutely no idea who is coming and going —or where they’re going to go once they get here. 

It’s the polar opposite of a quarantine.

Of the thousands of migrants who illegally cross the border into the US each day, many carry third-world diseases, parasites, and other deadly contagions. Sometimes in the courtroom, we’d see defendants with clearly-visible skin conditions. Often, the detainees were wearing masks while coughing blood. This was especially true of the Bangladeshi migrants, of whom we were catching about 20 to 30 per week (Bangladesh has one of the world’s highest rates of tuberculosis). 

As a special prosecutor, I had access to defendants’ files, and contagious diseases and parasites were commonplace. Sometimes at the courthouse, an unknown medical condition would emerge, and instead of going forward on the charges, we would transport the illegal alien directly to the hospital for emergency treatment instead.

I always shake hands with prosecutors and defendants in my home state of Virginia. But while working on the border, I learned to avoid physical contact for my own health and safety —and for the health and safety of others. After court each morning (or, sometimes, in between dockets), we would scrub our hands with soap and antibacterial/viral spray. It’s chillingly foreboding, but we were basically taking the exact same precautions that the CDC is now telling us all to take for the coronavirus. 

That’s because life on the border is like always living in the crosshairs of a potential pandemic. All the ingredients are right there: cramped conditions, diseases, zero oversight. It will only take one spark. And when that spark ignites, thousands (or more) Americans will die.

What happens at the border will eventually happen everywhere. That’s how pandemics work; it’s literally what “going viral” means.

A secure border is at the heart of our nation’s health. The proposals of Bernie Sanders and the “open borders” politicians are sowing the seeds of the next pandemic. It’s not a question of if, but when—and how many.

***

To read more about Pinsker's experience at the border, check out his new book, Crisis at the Border: An Eyewitness Account of Illegal Aliens, Violent Crime, and Cartels."

Be Calm, Cool, Collected - We Will Overcome

The Facts and Fears Behind Continuing the Coronavirus Shutdown

4/1/2020 - Betsy McCaughey Townhall.com

President Donald Trump is extending the nation's shutdown at least until the end of April. He's largely basing his decision on predictions from the University of Washington that even if the nation sticks to the shutdown, 83,967 Americans will die of coronavirus by early August, including 15,788 in New York state.

Deaths will likely soar over the next two weeks, with the daily toll peaking April 15, and then dropping off sharply by June. The graph of the coming death toll looks like a steep mountain peak we are just about to ascend. And that's with the shutdown continuing.

You can go here to see some of the same predictions the president is watching: covid19.healthdata.org/projections. They're adjusted every Monday based on news from foreign countries, public health officials and hospitals across the U.S. Admittedly, working off of projections involves guesswork, but it beats flying blind.

From the start, UW scientists predicted New York would be hit earliest and hardest. Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday, "I want to prepare for that apex." That's expected on April 9, when 73,620 hospital beds will likely be needed for coronavirus patients, and on April 10, when deaths per day are expected to max out in New York state.

The UW experts predict New York will need 9,055 ventilators. Cuomo is predicting 30,000. No problem. It's the governor's job to plan for the worst-case scenario and to stockpile for the possible return of the virus in the fall. And it's the president's job to allocate the ventilators to every state based on need. The rest is political brouhaha.

Despite speculation that warm temperatures tame the virus, Florida is predicted to be among the hardest hit, with 5,568 deaths by August. Still, that's far less than half New York's toll, though Florida is a more populous state. One reason is that Florida has enough hospital beds. When health systems are overloaded, patients have a lower chance of surviving. In Italy, more than 10% of coronavirus patients are dying. The hospital system simply can't handle them.

Survival is the issue, but here in the U.S. lives are also being threatened by layoffs and business failures, which will inevitably lead to suicides, drug overdoses and heart attacks. Many are asking why we should shut down the nation for this virus when the seasonal flu kills 60,000 Americans in a bad year. The country doesn't shut down for that.

Keep this in mind. The coronavirus is forecast to kill 80,000 Americans even with the draconian shutdown. Without it, the death toll, say some experts, could be as many as 2 million.

In part, that speculative forecast is based on the belief that coronavirus is estimated at 10 times the seasonal flu, But we don't know that for sure, because so little testing has been done. The death rate is a fraction. We know who's died -- the numerator. We don't know who has caught the virus and survived -- the denominator.

Regardless, the major reason coronavirus is more deadly is that it is overwhelming an unprepared health care system. The flu season spans almost half the year. This coronavirus is attacking in a compressed time frame, necessitating a huge supply of ventilators, masks, beds and other supplies.

Coronavirus also strains the health care system more by putting people in the hospital and on ventilators for weeks, while hospital patients with seasonal flu stay only a couple of days. The shutdown is designed to "flatten the curve," meaning slow the spread enough to allow our shamefully understocked health care systems to function.

Shamefully is the right word. For the past 20 years, through Democratic and Republican presidencies, health officials were warned about the lack of emergency medical supplies, including masks and ventilators. Ten federal reports sounded that alarm, even as the nation witnessed one pandemic after another circle the globe: SARS, MERS, avian flu, swine flu. Federal health bureaucrats dithered despite the warnings. They kept the Strategic National Stockpile budget to about $595 million, even as they spent nearly 10 times that on medical aid to Africa during the Ebola crisis.

In short, federal health officials got caught with their pants down. It's our unpreparedness, more than the virus itself, that has necessitated the shutdown.

This preparedness lesson will be key to conquering the next pandemic, or the return of coronavirus in the fall, a possibility. Thanks to American ingenuity and impressive wartime mobilization of the private sector, we will likely have drugs to treat the victims and a vaccine near completion. Most important, we'll have a supply chain of lifesaving medical equipment within reach.

Betsy McCaughey is chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former lieutenant governor of New York. Contact her at betsy@betsymccaughey.com.

America First - Then Engage the World

Can This Pandemic Usher in a New Era?

3/27/2020 - Pat Buchanan Townhall.com

To fight the coronavirus at home, France is removing all military forces from Iraq.

When NATO scaled back its war games in Europe because of the pandemic, Russia reciprocated. Moscow announced it would cancel its war games along NATO's border.

Nations seem to be recognizing and responding to the grim new geostrategic reality of March 2020: The pandemic is the real enemy of us all, and while we fight it, each in his own national corner, we are in this together.

Never allow a serious crisis to go to waste, said Barack Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel during the financial crisis. Emanuel was echoed this month by House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn, who called the coronavirus crisis "a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision."

What Clyburn had in mind is what Democrats advanced as their alternative to the $2.2 trillion emergency bill. It was designed to force President Trump either to swallow it whole or to take responsibility for vetoing a critical transfusion of federal funds to keep the economy alive.

Among the items stuffed in the Democrats' proposal:

A $15-an-hour minimum wage imposed on companies receiving funds. Blanket loan forgiveness of $10,000 for students. New tax credits for solar and wind energy. Full funding of Planned Parenthood. Federal dollars for fetal tissue research.

$300 million for PBS, which has been promoting the LBGT agenda to school kids. Mandating "diversity" on corporate boards as a condition of companies receiving funds. Election "reforms" to increase Democratic turnout. Insistence that airlines, to get a bailout, offset carbon emissions from jet engines. $35 million for the Kennedy Center.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and congressional Republicans ash-canned almost the leftist wish list. But Trump should go further, turn the tables, and seize this crisis to do what he was elected to do -- impose a new foreign policy.

Isolate America, not from the world, but from the world's wars.

The New York Times and Washington Post editorialized Thursday for an easing of the economic sanctions we have imposed on Iran.

This would be a humanitarian gesture when Iran is suffering more than any country in the Middle East from the virus. More than that, it would be a statement that America is not at war with the Iranian people.

This unilateral gesture by Trump, asking nothing in return except negotiations, would put the onus for Iran's isolation squarely with the ayatollah and his regime.

As for Vladimir Putin's cancellation of war games in response to NATO's cancellation, Trump could seize upon this as an opening to engage Russia as candidate Trump promised to do.

Does anyone believe Putin wants a war with NATO? Should he do so, does anyone think Italy and Spain, two of the largest NATO allies, but both suffering greatly in the coronavirus crisis, would invoke Article V and declare war on Russia?

When Hitler was our foe, America created a wartime alliance with Stalin in the common cause of crushing the Axis powers. Liberals and leftists yet defend the Popular Front between the democracies and Stalin. If we could unite with Bolsheviks to defeat Nazis, surely we can join with Iran's rulers to cope with and crush the coronavirus.

When, if ever, will there be a better time to make good on Trump's campaign pledge to extricate America from the wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan?

Consider also the Korean Peninsula. Kim Jong Un has been testing rockets again over the Sea of Japan. Transfixed by the coronavirus crisis, however, the world is paying him no attention. We should make a final offer to Kim Jong Un to pull our U.S. forces from South Korea and lift sanctions for verifiable reductions and restraints on his nuclear arsenal.

We are ready for a deal. But If Pyongyang refuses to talk, we should tell him we are going home and are allowing South Korea and Japan to develop their own nuclear weapons. And let Kim deal with them.

The coronavirus pandemic is the greatest crisis since the Cuban missile confrontation of 1962. After that crisis, John F. Kennedy sought to use the world's brush with Armageddon to establish a detente with the Soviet Union of the Communist dictator who had put the missiles in Cuba.

Following our Cold War victory, we have not done that. Instead, we plunged into wars that were none of our business to deal with imagined threats and advance utopian causes like establishing Jeffersonian democracy in lands where tribalism and dogmatism are rooted in the very soil.

The coronavirus is the enemy Saddam Hussein never was. And the ayatollahs never had tens of millions of Americans "sheltering in place."

What the coronavirus crisis tells us is not that we should turn our backs on the world but that, in engaging with the world, we should put our own interests first, as every nation in the world is doing now. 

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Nixon's White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever."