CONFUSION AND COLLAPSE
THE BATACLAN THEATRE in central Paris opened in February 1865. Designed in an imitation of Chinese architecture, the Bataclan is painted in bright, happy patterns of red, yellow, and white. Over the decades, a vast array of performers has appeared there, from Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West show to the rock bands Metallica and Guns N’ Roses. But on November 13, 2015, the Bataclan theatre became a death chamber.
That night, as part of a series of terrorist attacks across Paris, three French gunmen of Algerian descent entered the Bataclan during a packed rock show. Heavily armed and wearing suicide belts, they went to the mezzanine, overlooking the concert crowd. Then, with shouts of “Allahu Akbar!” (“Allah is great!”), they opened fire on the people below. They reloaded several times, threw hand grenades, and took hostages.
Soon, French tactical units arrived and determined that the terrorists were killing hostages. So they launched an assault, shooting one of the terrorists. The other two died by triggering their suicide vests. In all, the attack left eighty-nine people dead and more than two hundred wounded.
For eight months, the French government suppressed the truth about what happened inside the Bataclan that night. Many victims were so badly mutilated that the government wouldn’t release the bodies to the families. Initially, the government claimed the mutilating wounds were caused by shrapnel.
Then, in July 2016, the government revealed that, in addition to using bullets and bombs, the terrorists also gouged eyes, castrated men and shoved their testicles in their mouths, stabbed women in the genitals, and beheaded several victims. The terrorists recorded video of these horrors, planning to send the video to ISIS for recruitment and propaganda use. One police investigator who saw the bodies rushed out weeping and vomiting. For months, the French government had denied “rumors” of torture in the Bataclan attack. But the rumors were true.1
Terror struck the country again on Bastille Day, July 14, 2016, in Nice, in the south of France. After the fireworks show, an Islamist terrorist aimed a heavy truck-trailer rig at a crowd of some thirty thousand people on the Promenade des Anglais. For more than a mile, he mowed down everyone in his path, killing more than eighty people and injuring more than two hundred. Afterward, French prime minister Manuel Valls angered French citizens by declaring a state of helplessness, saying, “France is going to have to live with terrorism.”2
Less than two weeks later, on July 26, 2016, two teenage jihadists pledged allegiance to ISIS and then entered a Normandy church where a Catholic priest, eighty-five-year-old Father Jacques Hamel, was celebrating Mass, along with two nuns and two parishioners. The two young men seized the priest and slashed his throat. As the elderly priest lay dying in his own blood, the teenagers turned to the nuns and did something totally unexpected: they smiled. They seemed happy and calm after killing the priest—and they were in no hurry to leave.
For the next few minutes, the two young barbarians engaged the nuns, Sister Huguette Peron and Sister Helene Decaux, in a discussion of comparative religions. They talked about the Quran. One of the nuns said that she had read the Quran and especially liked the suras (chapters) that spoke of peace.
“Peace,” one of the murderers said. “That’s what we want. As long as there are bombs [being dropped] on Syria, we will continue our attacks. And they will happen every day. When you stop, we will stop.”
The conversation turned to the fear of death. One of the nuns said she didn’t fear death, because she had faith in God and knew she would be happy in heaven with Jesus. One of the killers countered with a core doctrine of Islam—a doctrine that attacks the essence of the Christian gospel. “Jesus cannot be God and a man,” he said. “It is you who are wrong.”3
Minutes later, as the two young jihadists were preparing to escape by using the nuns and parishioners as human shields, the police burst in through a side door. Police officers opened fire, and the two teenage barbarians died.
THE COLLAPSE OF CHRISTIANITY
Father Mark A. Pilon, an American priest writing at a Catholic blog site, has observed that the collapse of Christianity all across Europe has left the people and governments of that continent unable to understand the growing threat of political Islam. He wrote:
The dramatic loss of Christian faith in Europe is historically unprecedented. While some countries are slightly better off than others, the continent as a whole can no longer be described as a Christian civilization….
Even the latest horror of the beheading of an 85-year-old priest in Normandy and the revelations of the brutal tortures of victims in the Bataclan Theater in Paris in November (finally leaked to the press), don’t seem to have much raised understanding of the nature of the threat….
Europe is now almost godless, an almost totally secularized continent with little or no spiritual dimension in the various nations that constitute the European Union.4
Lacking an understanding of the historic conflict between the Christian West and the Islamic East, Pilon explained, the leaders of Europe today are in the same state of cultural and spiritual blindness that Jesus described in Matthew 13:13—“though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.” Western leaders don’t realize they face an existential threat from an ancient enemy: “the revival of a militant and determined form of extreme Islam bent upon, at long last, the domination of this formerly Christian continent.”5
A Christian army stopped the conquering armies of Islam at the gates of Vienna in 1683. That victory quelled the Islamic threat to Christianity and Western civilization for about three centuries. But in recent years, the barbaric Islamists have returned to the battlefield. They have declared the entire Western world as their battleground—and their objective.
The Islamist threat to the West is as real today as it was centuries ago, yet our political and social leaders don’t seem to know it. With every terror attack, our leaders look but do not see and hear but do not listen. They are culturally and spiritually blind. The apostle Paul aptly described the spiritual blindness of today’s leaders: “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4).
Being secularized and antireligious, Pilon says, Western leaders “simply cannot understand what they are seeing; that is, they cannot understand the kind of religious motivation that is behind the terror attacks, a deep religious conviction that believes in total war and the inevitability of a world domination.”6
THE ULTIMATE THREAT TO WESTERN CIVILIZATION
The ultimate threat to Western civilization does not come from Islamist terrorism but from disturbing demographics: Europeans are having children at far below the replacement level and are losing population. The large-scale Muslim immigration into Europe, combined with the trend of large families among Muslim immigrants, guarantees that Western culture will retreat in the face of swelling numbers of Muslims in Europe. And Western civilization may well be defeated at the ballot box. If current trends continue, it’s just a matter of time before Islam becomes the dominant culture, religion, and political system throughout Europe.
The farther our Western civilization drifts from our biblical roots, the deeper we plunge into confusion, fear, and blindness. The danger is upon us. The barbarians are already here—yet as a society, we still don’t realize the very real threat that confronts us. The Islamists are not only bent on conquering our land. They also seek to conquer our minds and our souls. They want to eradicate the Christian gospel.
So they commit the most horrifying atrocities imaginable against so-called infidels, performing acts of torture that you and I could never imagine doing to another human being. Our minds recoil as we picture the scenes of horror inside the Bataclan theatre, on the streets of Nice, or in the church at Normandy. We don’t want to even believe such barbaric acts are possible—yet they are happening with increasing frequency.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of simply complaining about the gathering darkness of this dying world. I know. I have made the same complaints myself.
But we who know and love the Lord Jesus Christ are citizens of the City of God. We should never allow terrorism and other events to break our spirits or weaken our commitment to spreading the good news of Jesus Christ. As the darkness of barbarian terrorism grows, we should seize this opportunity to shine the light of God’s love even more brightly than ever before.
FROM CAIN TO LAMECH
So far in this book we have been tracing the biblical account of the two contrasting humanities that formed two cities—the City of God and the City of Man. In chapter 6 we saw how Cain tried to make his own religion, offering a sacrifice to God according to his own will instead of the will of God. After God rejected Cain’s offering and accepted the offering of his brother Abel, Cain murdered Abel—then he fled from the presence of God to build his own city, the first City of Man.
Continuing that narrative, we find that rebellious Cain was the father of a line of descendants. In the sixth generation from Cain, we meet Cain’s descendant Lamech. In just a few sentences, the Word of God defines Lamech as a violent, rebellious, and self-centered man. Genesis 4:19 tells us that he married two women and became the first known polygamist in history. In verses 23–24, Scripture records Lamech’s “Song of the Sword”:
Lamech said to his wives,
“Adah and Zillah, listen to me;
wives of Lamech, hear my words.
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for injuring me.
If Cain is avenged seven times,
then Lamech seventy-seven times.”
In other words, Lamech was boasting to his wives of his violent and vengeful temper. In the original language, it is clear that Lamech was saying that a man struck him with his fist, and Lamech responded by running him through with the sword. He boasted that if anyone injured him in any way, he would repay that injury seventy-seven times over.
That is the bitter, vengeful, and violent mind-set of the City of Man. That is the legacy of Lamech’s murderous ancestor, Cain.
But there is another man descended from Adam who represents the City of God. His name is Enoch. After Cain killed Abel and ran away, Adam and Eve had another son. His name was Seth, and Enoch was his descendant, born six generations from Seth. Enoch was as godly as Lamech was ungodly. Enoch illustrates the contrast between those who belong to the City of God and those who belong to the City of Man.
Enoch personifies the City of God. The book of Genesis tells us something truly amazing about Enoch: “Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years. Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away” (Genesis 5:23–24). Does that really mean what it seems to mean? Did Enoch live such a godly life that he didn’t have to pass through physical death but was instead translated straight into heaven? Yes.
Hebrews 11:5 tells us, “By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: ‘He could not be found, because God had taken him away.’ For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.”
From Cain’s rebellious offspring came Lamech—a violent, vengeful, self-willed man. From Seth’s godly line came Enoch—a faithful believer who was spared the experience of death. Lamech was of the offspring of the serpent. Enoch was of the offspring of the woman—representing the godly line of descendants that would eventually lead to Jesus Christ. Enoch feared God and walked with God. And he belonged to the City of God.
FROM NOAH TO BABYLON
The demarcation between those who belong to the City of God and those who belong to the City of Man becomes even more obvious following the flood of Noah’s day. A godly man who was a descendant of faithful Enoch, Noah was a preacher of righteousness, living in a time of great wickedness. God warned Noah of the judgment that was coming upon the earth, and He gave Noah detailed instructions to build the ark. By obeying God and seeking refuge in the ark, Noah and his family were saved. His three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, were saved as well.
But in these three sons, we see once again the contrast between the City of God and the City of Man. Genesis 9:20–27 tells the story of how Noah’s son Ham sinned against his father. As a result, Ham’s son Canaan was cursed—a curse that would remain on Canaan’s descendants.
This story is a stark reminder that if you are living in the home of your parents, under their authority, you should obey them and honor them. If you are older, and on your own, then you are no longer under your parents’ authority, but I still urge you to honor and respect your parents.
Children who obey their parents—and young adults who honor their parents—receive a blessing that is passed down, generation by generation. The Bible says, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’—which is the first commandment with a promise—‘so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth’” (Ephesians 6:1–3).
Noah’s other two sons, Shem and Japheth, honored their father, and as a result, they received the blessing that their brother Ham forfeited for his descendants.
What was the result of the curse on Ham’s son Canaan? He dwelled in the City of Man. Canaan’s brother Cush was the father of Nimrod—a man who took rebellion and defiance against God to new depths. Nimrod was a hunter, a warrior, and a builder of cities, and every one of the cities Nimrod built became an enemy of God and His people. The cities of Nimrod were centers of idolatry and astrology and occultism.
By looking at the works of Nimrod, we can easily discover his mind-set. His attitude toward God was one we often hear in our Western society today: Why should I obey God? Why should I care what God says? What are God’s moral laws to me? I am the captain of my own soul. My will is sovereign, and I don’t answer to the will of God.
The book of Genesis tells us:
Cush was the father of Nimrod, who became a mighty warrior on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; that is why it is said, “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the LORD.” The first centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Uruk, Akkad and Kalneh, in Shinar. From that land he went to Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah—which is the great city. (10:8–12)
You may recognize the names of a few of those cities. Over the centuries, Israel repeatedly had conflict with the armies of those cities—especially Babylon. Did you realize that the wicked city of Babylon was founded by the great-grandson of Noah? Nimrod, the son of Cush, the grandson of Ham, a great-grandson of Noah, built the city of Babylon as an act of defiance against God.
Do you see now the clear contrast that God draws in His Word between the City of God and the City of Man? In both the Old Testament and the New Testament, the city of Babylon serves as a symbol of the City of Man—and the city of Jerusalem symbolizes the City of God. The Lord sent an unmistakable message to the rebellious people of Israel when He used Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, as an instrument of destruction against the rebellious people of Jerusalem. Babylon is a symbol of all those, in every era of history, who oppose God. Jerusalem is a symbol of all those who fear God and serve Him.
In Revelation 21, John sees a vision of the new City of God—the New Jerusalem. It is not the old, earthly Jerusalem but a brilliant, shining, gemlike city that comes down from heaven:
He carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.…
The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. (Revelation 21:10–11, 23–27).
The glorious New Jerusalem is the ultimate victory and reward for all who belong to the City of God.