Fight to the Finish

© Copyright 2011 Thomas D. Logie.

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isbn: 978-1-4669-0148-3 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4669-0147-6 (e)

Trafford rev. 12/29/2011

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Contents

CHAPTER 1:

THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST AND THE SPIRIT OF THE SIXTIES: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

CHAPTER 2 —

UNEMPLOYABLE UNDERCLASS

CHAPTER 3 —

REASONS TO BELIEVE THE SCRIPTURES

CHAPTER 4 —

GENESIS & REVELATION

CHAPTER 5 —

AN ACROSTIC PORTRAIT OF

JESUS THE MESSIAH

CHAPTER 6 —

MEDITATIONS ON RESURRECTION

CHAPTER 7 —

HITLER’S HELL

CHAPTER 8 —

WHO ARE GOD’S CHOSEN PEOPLE?

CHAPTER 9 —

ISAIAH & REVELATION

CHAPTER 10 —

THOUGHTS ON THE RAPTURE

Appendix A —

More about Samson

Appendix B —

GOOD AND BAD FEAR

Appendix C —

Notes on when Revelation was most probably written

CHAPTER 1:

THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST AND THE SPIRIT OF THE SIXTIES: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

I myself am a child of the 1960s. I graduated from high school in 1969, from college in 1972 and from law school in 1975. So I am writing of my own generation, having experienced many of the same things that my fellow Baby Boomers did. I was in 7th grade when President Kennedy was assassinated and a high school junior when Sen. Robert Kennedy was also assassinated. During the summers I spent considerable time at Jones Beach on Long Island tagging along with other teens or sometimes alone when I was not working at a summer job. I can remember from my teen years songs sexually charged songs such as Lady Willpower (sung by Union Gap), Sweet Caroline (sung by Neil Diamond) and Light My Fire (sung by Jose Feliciano). Another song urged its hearers, If you’re not with the one you love, love the one you’re with. The Woodstock Gathering and the Haight-Asbury scene showed some of this in action. Another song proclaimed that They say that the best things in life are free, but money, money is what I want. The Beatles were singing that All you need is love—love is all you need. I never understood that song in a sexual connotation but rather in context of the message of love and peace in contrast to conflict and war. Looking back, I still hear those words the same way even though I believed then and more strongly believe now that the Beatles were hopelessly naïve about human nature.

Admittedly I was and remain different, having been and still being a professed follower of Jesus Christ in contrast to the majority of my own contemporaries. Many observers expected my generation to settle down after sowing a few years of wild oats. Now we have had another 40 years to see if this prevalent forecast was in fact true. As a matter of history, it is important to see whether the generation of the 1960s reverted to the previous American norm or whether the cultural and spiritual cleavages persist even today.

I will try to be as fair to my own friends and contemporaries as I can. To permit you to evaluate my own standpoint, you should know that I was on the opposite side of the political battle lines from the general flow of my age. In 1964 I debated in junior high school for Barry Goldwater. In 1968 I was a strong supporter of Nixon over Humphrey. During my junior year at Princeton in 1970, the academic calendar was altered to permit students to go home and work on Congressional campaigns for the last two weeks before the election. As I had the previous summer, I did almost daily nuts-and-bolts political work for Norman F. Lent, who challenged the famous ultra-liberal incumbent Allard K. Lowenstein for his seat in the New York 5th Congressional District, which was my home district. At night I drafted a junior paper for a policy conference supporting all three legs of the nuclear deterrence triad (land-based missiles, B-52 bombers and submarines). Within the conference I also supported anti-ballistic missile defense as a replacement for mutual assured destruction (MAD). None of these view commanded majority support on campus. Election night in 1970 for me was a night of rejoicing, with the elections of Senator James Buckley (later a Federal Circuit Judge), of Jack Kemp in the 39th Congressional District (later Secretary of Housing under President Reagan) and the unseating of Allard K. Lowenstein by Norman F. Lent. That district has remained Republican ever since, with Peter King now holding the seat. I still am thankful to have been able to play a small part in an important election in the New York 5th. So as I write, I am chronologically part of the generation of the 1960s but I do not and have not shared its mindset. Yet I still view this generation as my own.

So what were the principal characteristics of the Sixties Generation? One clear tenet has been to seek pleasure rather than give priority to duty. This has shown itself in the sexual history of the generation. In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan (later Senator from New York as a Democrat) wrote a prescient warning that a 25% illegitimacy rate in births among blacks portended trouble within the black community. Not long after came the riots of 1967, which probably had some of the same roots. Instead of regressing to the mean, we now have a situation in the United States built on the Sixties foundation where more than 25% of all births are out of wedlock, and the rate in the black community is over 50%. Juvenile delinquency and violence rates have skyrocketed. Even as the Sixties Generation is reaching retirement and no longer is bearing children, it still shows scant respect for the previous culture that insisted that marriage precede intercourse. One example is the reported high rate of sexually transmitted diseases in The Villages, a community mostly of retirees in Central Florida. So in this respect the Sixties Generation has persisted in its youthful pattern and has not as a whole retraced to previous norms. The Sixties Generation has as a whole sought pleasure without duty.

This same characteristic shows in my generation’s conduct over abortion, whether in China, Europe or the United States. (I am departing from strict chronological order; Roe v. Wade came in 1973, when the Vietnam War was essentially ended so far as direct American combat missions were involved.) Morally, Roe v. Wade is awful and almost all of its legal reasoning is strained at best. It is based loosely on outmoded science as well. But unlike China, in the United States there never was a law compelling a single mother to seek an abortion. There is no law compelling parents or friends to pay for one. Doctors and nurses have had liberty of conscience. People made choices to kill. Legal permission by itself is no excuse to murder a child. Suppose a regime passed a law permitting the killing of a particular ethnic group without punishment. Does that mean that you or I should participate in the pogrom? If my generation had had moral integrity, abortions would have remained rare because practically nobody would have desired an abortion for the sake of one’s own conscience and for the sake of obeying God. The only exceptional cases that can be passed over are rare instances of ectopic pregnancy or similar cases where the mother will be killed absent an abortion. Even then, the baby’s life should be preserved by medical means if possible.

The Holy Scriptures are clear that human life begins at conception. In Psalm 51:5 David wrote that in sin did my mother conceive me. (Note: Unless stated otherwise, the Scriptures are taken from the Modern King James Version or the original King James Version, both of which are in the public domain. Occasionally I have made a clarification.) There is no sin without life; dead stones do not sin. In Jeremiah 1:5 the prophet wrote that God informed him that before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you came out of the womb I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations. It is clear that God was working both before and after Jeremiah’s conception. Rebekah experienced within her womb the struggle of two brothers, each to be a founder of a nation that later would be at war with the other. Genesis 25:21-23; Romans 9:10-13. John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb jumped for joy at the presence of Jesus Christ, at that time in Mary’s womb. Luke 1:39-45. The text indicates that John the Baptist was about 6 months older than Jesus Christ. Chinese tradition indicates that human conscience knows that life begins at conception; babies are traditionally thought to be one year old at birth. So the wave of abortions which my generation has committed has been a gross and bloody mass of sin against both the Bible and conscience. The sheer numbers of murder by abortion dwarf the more traditional kind of murder started by Cain against Abel. Both are equally inexcusable, although with genuine repentance murder has been forgiven. For example, Saul of Tarsus—later known as Paul the Apostle—was forgiven his part in the mob lynching of Stephen, one of the first deacons.

Do you have blood on your hands by reason of abortion or other form of murder? It is not just the mother who is guilty in abortion cases. In many cases the parents of the mother, the father of the child or other people close to the situation share the guilt as accomplices. The person who pays the money, the abortionist and those who form the support structure for the abortion provider all share responsibility before God. Being male does not give one a pass on this. Consider Jeremiah 2:32-35:

Can a virgin forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? Yet My people have forgotten Me days without number. Why did you trim your way to seek love? Therefore you have also taught the evil women your ways. Also in your skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor innocents; I did not find them by breaking in, but on all these.

Yet you say, Because I am innocent, surely His anger shall turn from me. Behold, I will plead with you, because you say, I have not sinned. (Jeremiah 19:4 and 22:17 speak more briefly in a similar vein, with 19:4 being clearer that innocent children are in view.)

The words of Isaiah 1:15 to rebellious Israel apply here: When you spread out your hands [in prayer], I [God] will hide My eyes from you. Yes, when you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood. So do the words of Isaiah 59:1-3: Behold, Jehovah’s hand is not shortened so that it cannot save, nor is His ear heavy so that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have come between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, from hearing. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered perverseness.

I realize that this seems harsh. As a criminal defense attorney who has represented hundreds of guilty and some innocent defendants, I know from experience that one cannot help a client by sugar-coating the truth. The client is entitled to know and indeed must know the extent to which his or her conduct has transgressed the law and what the possible consequences might be. My clients practically to a man appreciated getting a straightforward answer. So I speak the blunt truth not to castigate anyone but to help someone confront his or her own past or present honestly and squarely.

Yes, there is forgiveness even for murder. David murdered Uriah; Paul participated in murdering Stephen. True crime fans already know this. Karla Faye Tucker in Texas knew the forgiveness of Jesus Christ before she was executed. So did Velma Barfield in North Carolina. Jesus Christ forgave every one of the executioners at the Cross itself. If you will believe that He died for sinners and rose from the dead, and if you will worship Him as Lord and plead with Him to forgive you, He will. You must face and acknowledge your guilt, but you will not have to drag it with you. Instead, Jesus will lift the burden of the guilt through forgiveness just as John Bunyan pictured it in Pilgrim’s Progress.

Vietnam was a defining controversy of my generation. I was among those who went through the lottery. Of the people that I knew from my high school, it seemed that there was an inverse correlation between willingness to serve and draft priority. I am sure that over a large sample this would have been random, but I relate what seemed true at the time. I was willing to serve but I was never required to enter any branch of the military upon graduation from college. So I went to law school and worked a little on the home front in 1972 in support of Paul Cronin in his one-term success against John Kerry, later the 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee. Cronin’s career was ruined by a corruption scandal that erupted after the 1972 election, and he might have been doomed even without the scandal in the 1974 elections in his Massachusetts district.

Looking back, I still believe that my own generation sought safety over duty concerning Vietnam. I can remember talk of people inflicting injury upon themselves to make themselves 4F. Others fled the country. Many did honestly believe that the Vietnam War was unwise, but this is not a good reason to reject military service. You could argue that I too avoided military service, although I honestly thought that I could do more good for the political causes I supported by standing up for them at home than I could have done in uniform. I did advocate publicly before hostile audiences for intervention in Vietnam, in Cambodia and in Laos against Communist efforts to take over those countries. At both Princeton and Harvard Law School I was received with a certain amount of respect but also with considerable hostility. Academically, I was treated fairly by professors who disagreed with me. The courage of men who have faced live ammunition in the line of duty dwarfs any hardship that I faced for my views.

As I reflect back, I can see that we were in major moral trouble with our intervention in Vietnam. Marijuana usage was rampant in some units of our own military. Many of our military men engaged in indiscriminate sex when on R&R. Objectives were not so clear as they should have been. There were rare instances of uncontrolled killing by our own military, but not as policy as practiced by the Viet Cong