What Shariah Law Did to Sudan

An immigrant who had escaped the horrors of the genocide in Sudan tells his story, and lends his reasoned opposition to the building of the Ground Zero Mosque. READ MORE

Remember in November!

In just a few short weeks we will participate in what could be one of the most important elections in American history. We will decide whether America continues what could become an irreversible slide into socialism.

A lot of intelligent people, who should have known better, decided to roll the dice in November of 2008 and vote for Barack Obama, a charismatic candidate who was long on platitudes and short on experience. A collapsing economy, and the unattractive Republican alternative of John McCain, helped to ensure Obama's historic election as our first black president.

Unfortunately, Obama has shown himself to be our most radical leftist president, and with his bullet-proof majorities in Congress, we have enabled him to inflict serious damage to the fabric of our republic. We have now seen what happens to our liberties when we allow ourselves to be ruled by a one-party government with a promiscuous lust for power.

This November 2, we have to remember what is at stake.

We have to remember that this regime is running budget deficits that are bankrupting our economy, and saddling our grandchildren with debts they will never be able to repay.

We must remember the 2,000-page legislative bills that no one had time to read, that were passed in the middle of the night in defiant disregard of the clearly expressed will of the majority of American voters.

We must remember Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Obama's first two appointments to the Supreme Court. How many more left-wing justices like them can our constitutional system endure and still remain intact?

We must remember the blatant disregard for the rule of law (aka "the Chicago Way") employed by the Obama regime in the takeover of General Motors and Chrysler. The federal government basically stole the pension money invested in GM and Chrysler bonds (a supposedly "secured" investment) so that Obama could reward his union supporters at the expense of retired schoolteachers and firefighters.

We must remember the vast, new, mind-boggling array of medical-device taxes coming our way as a result of Obamacare, with new fees being levied on everything from band-aids to hearing-aids.

We must remember that the Obama administration has found only one area in the budget that it believes needs cut: national defense. In today's dangerous world -- a world awash in terrorist states, an ascendant Communist Chinese military machine, a saber-rattling Iran and a nuclear-armed North Korea -- Mr. Obama is perfectly content to scale back our missile defense systems and our military hardware procurements.

We must remember the liberal members of Congress who have decided that they know what is best for us, and how they have arrogantly dismissed the desires of their constituents. Who can ever forget Nancy Pelosi's infamous retort to questions about Obamacare: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it."

Someone should buy every liberal member of Congress a dictionary and force them to look up the definition of "representative."

The events of the past 20 months have made it painfully obvious: These people don't care what we think. They don't care what we want. The only thing that will stop these leftists from steamrolling over our liberties is to hand them a pink slip on election day and send them back home.

This November 2, we need to send a loud, clear message to everyone who seeks the honor and privilege of representing us in Congress: If you want to keep your job, you had better remember who you work for. In America, "we the people" rule!

I Don't Know Where They Are

A number of people I loved have died in recent years.

They were all people I had known for a long time. They were honest, decent people -- people who had loved me and treated me kindly.

I miss them all.

If you live long enough, you will realize that kind people are few and far between. So when the Lord brings kind people across my path, I do my best to keep them on my radar.

Good people are hard to find, and I hate to let any of them go from my life. But death, being no respecter of persons, will take them away in a heartbeat.

What bothers me most of all, besides the loss of their companionship, is that I don't know if I will see many of them again. To the best of my knowledge, few of those people -- good people, people with kind hearts -- few of them had ever bent their knee before the God of heaven.

The Bible teaches clearly that no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born again. Unless a person has surrendered his life to Jesus and obtained forgiveness through His blood, there is no entry into heaven. Only Jesus can impart the gift of eternal life. Apart from Him, there is no hope for salvation.

Few of the people I loved could testify that they had given their hearts to Jesus and found forgiveness for their sins. Few of them, good people though they were, humanly speaking, were ready for eternity, at least as far as I knew from discussions I had with them while they still walked this earth.

Of course, there is always the hope, and always the chance, that someone nearing their final hours could experience a death-bed conversion, and depart from this life into eternal glory. That is always a possibility, but not really very likely in most cases. Generally speaking, people who harden their hearts towards God find it more difficult to come to Him after so many years of telling themselves that they can make it on their own.

So, while I hope for the best for so many of my departed friends and relatives, I cannot be certain of their eternal destiny.

This saddens me more than words can convey. I dread to think what a godless eternity would be like. I dread to think that someone I love could be facing eternal darkness, all because they were too stubborn to kneel before the Creator of the universe and ask His forgiveness before it was too late.

Please listen, my friends who are still alive -- death is too late. You need to give your life to the Lord NOW, while it is still within your power to do so. There is no guarantee that you will have tomorrow.

So I keep hoping for the best. I pray that there was a last-minute decision by my friends to surrender their hearts to Jesus. It is a slim hope, but I often remind myself about the thief on the cross, who repented just hours before his death, and lived to hear Jesus tell him, "Today you will be with me in paradise."

I wish I could somehow know if they had made peace with God in their final hours. I wish I could know where they are.