Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Growing Need

As I follow what most Americans are calling "the events unfolding in the Middle East" or Egypt, its pretty incredible to try and understand the value and severity of what's going on. 
Most of us here in the United States live camel-free, unless you smoke. We buy our groceries in packages, talk politics every few years then vote or don't vote, but we watch our very fluid world change often. We watch films like "V for Vendetta" and fall in love with the hero/protagonist as he says lines like "a government should be afraid of it's people, not people afraid of their government" and we nod, its a true statement.
Winston Churchill said "Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe.  No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.  Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been tried from time to time." His point being mankind is not satisfied, not good, and there is no perfect or even close to perfect system. In Tunisia several weeks ago a man set himself on fire and died in protest of having to have a permit to sell his groceries on a cart in the street. He felt that the permit prices and need for one in the first place was oppression, so he killed himself and the world took notice. Several days later the same thing had happened a half-dozen times in Tunisia, Algeria Yemen, and had begun to catch on. Then without much warning at all, Egypt awakened. The people poured onto the streets shouting "ALLAHU ACKBAR" in numbers so great that the local police in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez soon gave up and abandoned their positions and left. 
The people who had been protesting the corruption of their government for the last thirty years, the economic recession that had caused food to become so expensive and the lack of honest law-upholding turned on their purpose viciously in the unavoidable rip-tide current of huge mobs. Mankind cannot escape from themselves, much like the worst thing that can happen to a gambler is that he wins or continues to win until he loses everything, then the same is for humanity and mobbing. 
The worst will always happen in a mob unless it is controlled because the value of human life is lost in the sheer numbers, and man is not naturally good, so when he is allowed to be himself free and unstoppable, he is apart from the law and no longer free in it, ruled by himself. The very things Egypt began protesting became themselves. In acts of aggression and independence from the government they looted police stations and stores. 
They broke curfew by the tens of thousands, stopped all production and demanded change. A week later the country is running out of food, an unavoidable point in the natural cycle of not working. The death toll is around two hundred and many, many people are hurting.
"As curfew kicks in, young men carry sticks, swords, machetes, meat cleavers, axes -- anything they can find to arm themselves."
The world needs Jesus.


Luke 22:44 "And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground" 


1 Timothy 2:1-4 "First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thankgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way. This is good and it is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior who desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth."


Muslim Brotherhood

The Tech Offensive

Lack of Food

Taking Up Household Weapons


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