No time for complacency. We have our work cut out for us

Judging by the number of books that are churned out every week, there are writers aplenty. Harder to find are writers of substance – men and women with something to say that is worth reading, and then re-reading, because what they are conveying is well grounded, well stated, well argued, useful, wise and prophetic.

While reading the latest book by Os Guinness (reviewed on page 14), I realized part way through that I needed to start highlighting excerpts because I didn’t want to lose those valuable insights in the flow of words.

Problem is, there are now highlights on almost every page of my copy of Last Call for Liberty. But that’s a good problem to have. Because there is so much to share.

Given the times in which we are living, we need to be readers and we need to be good listeners because we’re in a serious battle where everything we hold dear is up for grabs. So to be unarmed does not do our side any good, and we become complicit in the losses on so many fronts.

To say that God is in control and we need not worry, is true in itself. But that is not to say that we can become spectators in the front row seats of our crumbling culture.

“For such a time as this” should mean something to us, as Uncle Mordecai was quick to remind Esther (Esther chapter 4). God raises up people for his service, to use their gifts for the furtherance of the Gospel in our time. We look to leaders to do what leaders do – carry the ball and inspire us to positive action.

Yet whenever we lose a leader who was considered prophet in their time, we despair of their loss because we wonder how they will ever be replaced. That feeling occurred to me when R.C. Sproul was lost to this earth.

History is replete with men and women who excelled and served well the cause of the Kingdom, and our hope is that many more will follow in their footsteps.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (pictured above) was a voice who cried out against the political system of communism that destroyed so many lives, and which also had its sights on the Church. His work awakened the West to the brutality that was going on in the Soviet Union.

When he moved to the United States, he did not sit idly by, but continued to write, this time warning the West of the dangers facing it in its complacency and materialism.

Those warnings are still valid today. In fact, an article written by one of our long time writers, Harry Antonides, on Solzhenitsyn with particular emphasis on a speech Solzhenitsyn delivered at Harvard University, is being reprinted in this issue (it was first printed in 2008).

According to Antonides, “The thrust of his message to the elite Harvard audience was that the seeds of the disaster that has befallen the Russian people are also present in the free West.” Those seeds are sprouting today.

Read the article on page 24 to see what Solzhenitsyn said at Harvard. Then get a copy of Os Guinness’s book reviewed on page 14. And then consider what you can do to make a difference for the sake of the current and future generations.

John Vandyk, Editor
Christian Renewal Magazine