“Above the hills of Bethlehem are gathered an innumerable throng of angels. They wait the signal to declare the glad news to the world. Had the leaders in Israel been true to their trust, they might have shared the joy of heralding the birth of Jesus. But now they are passed by.”

Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 47.

A recent controversy over a holiday display in Iowa’s state Capitol should cause Christians to pose the ultimate question to our own selves: Regardless of our profession, do we in fact belong to the synagogue of Satan?

Neither popular culture, traditional values, formal scholarship, spiritual fads, nor one’s preferred experiential comfort level can carry any weight with the true Christian, in particular those called to leadership.  As with King Zedekiah of old, despite his persistent disobedience to the prophetic voice, the inquiry of all true leaders in God’s church must be, “Is there any word from the Lord?” (Jer. 37:17).

Time has lingered through Inquisition and genocide, racial animus and economic injustice, gulags and global warming, calamities natural and unnatural, because the ultimate contrast between the two contending kingdoms in God’s universe remains to be demonstrated, ensuring once and for all the just and final extinction of rebels and rebellion.