Dear friends:

The reaction to the death of Jerry Falwell is revealing.  It dramatically reveals the deep division in this world between darkness and light.

Even relatively positive editorial comments spoke of him as "controversial."  The media have to throw in that word so they dare not appear too complimentary.  They think the use of that one word absolves them.  One TV program had the audacity to refer to him as "controversial," then later in the program aired a positive feature on transsexuals and sex-change surgery.  They obviously considered that as not controversial.  Only people who take a stand for Jesus are controversial.

Some anti-Christian bloggers are hateful to the extreme, hoping that he is burning in hell.  It's ironic that their concept of hell comes from the Bible, which they otherwise reject.  To raise your blood pressure, see http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55715

But the same bloggers confirm the Bible, when it says that followers of Christ will be hated for His name's sake.  "You shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake" (Luke 21:17).

“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you" (Luke 15:18-19).

That the world hated Jerry Falwell was his badge of ownership -- it showed who chose him and who owned him.

I thank God for Jerry Falwell, a faithful servant of God.  He helped make the world a better place and he spent his life glorifying the Lord.  Exercising his duty as a private citizen in the field of politics, for which he was castigated by the unbelieving left and by some nominal Christians, he was salt and light. 

We need more salt and light like Jerry Falwell.  The nation will miss him, more than it realizes.

"Devout men are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil" (Isaiah 57:1).

Jim