America is in deep trouble! We keep hearing about the terrorist army called ISIS, and now we hear that several more similar terror groups have formed. As I write, ISIS is five miles from Baghdad, and possibly, by the time this is read, the city will have fallen to the brutality of ISIS. And the terror groups are not being stopped, and, in fact, barely slowed in their bloody conquest.  The U.S. and the rest of the world is standing by, doing virtually nothing to stop them.  It is incredible that we could sit by doing nothing while they behead, crucify, bury alive, and in other ways brutalize thousands of innocent people. Wasn’t the United Nations organized to stop this very thing from happening? Why do our leaders maintain their denials regarding the advances the terrorists are making throughout the mid-East? It is time they acknowledge that we don’t have the terrorist groups on the run, that they are not deluded “JV teams,” but present a real threat to the entire world.  And this plea is not “political.”  It is moral.  It is time the Church throughout the world also wake up and cry out against the brutality of the terrorists and the indifference of the rest of the world.  We are reminded of World War II when much of the European church was silent while Hitler murdered millions of Jews, Christians, and Gypsies.  We need more Martin Niemollers, Dietrich Bonhoeffers, and Karl Barths who had the courage to speak out against Hitler’s atrocities.  America, wake up!  Church, wake up! They’re here, too.

Rev. Dr. Richard L. Shaw, Pastor