By Paul Blackham

How can these thing happen in Afghanistan?

The classical Christian view of the heavens and the earth is of the Great Divine Emperor, the LORD Jesus, ruling over all things, giving beauty, truth and goodness to everything.

He is appointed by His Father and empowered by the Spirit - and that eternal life of the Trinitarian God flows through Jesus to the whole cosmos.

What He asks of us is NOT submission but.... love!!

The Infinite God wants most of all for us to love Him in return for His infinite love, shown in His death... an idea almost impossible to understand from the perspective of the religious zealots.

If we trust Jesus, then He promised that we can never truly die...

• and so His followers do not kill for His glory...

• they die for His glory!!

Human kings and lords receive their authority from Jesus. Emperor Jesus raises up nations and tears them down; He pours out plagues and He takes them away; He shakes and wakes a world that seems determined to sleep walk into eternal Hell.

When men and women follow the LORD Jesus Christ to His Father in the power of the Spirit, civilisation blossoms, the arts flourish, science expands, music diversifies, architecture creates buildings that last the ages!

When we walk in the light with Jesus, we learn to be truly free:

• free from the enslaving passions that degrade us;

• free from the obsessions that humiliate us;

• free from the addictions that rob us of time, energy, money and life itself.

The huge achievement of the past 500 years of Western history is to erase nearly every memory of this divine authority and replace it instead with the "freedom" to do and be whatever each one of us chooses:

• whatever our passions decree;

• whatever our obsessions demand;

• whatever our addictions crave.

Much of the world does not want that vision of "freedom"... in fact, they fear it and see it as a terrible, blasphemous oppression.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"Humanity has forgotten God... and that's why all this has happened."

As Carl Trueman says:

"The result is a world that has accepted the challenge of Nietzsche's madman, to remake value and meaning in the wake of the death - indeed, the killing - of the Christian God...The repudiation not only of history but of any authority that might pose a challenge to the present... is something that marks all... areas..." [The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, p381]

So...

...faced with a radical ideology that adherents will fight and die for... the new Western order cannot win hearts and minds, cannot beat rag tag groups of 300 fighters.

The fanatical Communists of the 1950's were vastly outnumbered... but won.

The religious zealots of this present age are vastly outnumbered... but consistently win.

Why?

The power of a cause - a creed - a holistic vision...

Perhaps we enjoy the modern Western world - maybe we are comfortable in it... but do any of us truly believe in it?

What is there to truly believe in?

For all their fear, brutality and death-cult violence... the Taliban have something to believe in, and it drives them to defeat vastly more powerful armies...

"The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven..." (Deuteronomy 28:25)

The women, children and vulnerable always suffer when the strong madmen rule - and they always do when the world rebels against the Divine Servant King Jesus.

The crowds rushed towards Jesus... but now the crowds desperately try to flee from the Taliban...