IS IT TIME FOR NIEMOLLERESQUE REDUX?
Martin Niemöller, a prominent Protestant pastor who opposed the Nazi regime. He spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. Germany, 1937. I am privileged to present this article by Pastor Dr Mark Spaulding of Calvary Chapel, Lima, OHIO USA. Yesterday Kelleigh Nelson compared todays situation with the communist Mandela era. Today Pastor Mark sees parralels with Niemoller’s view of Nazi Germany. Either way, both writers agree, your world teeters on a perilous precipice not seen since 1939. Luke 21:28 And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. Gibber! Gibber! Chugley Is It Time For A Niemolleresque Redux? Dr Mark Spaulding Poetry often succinctly captures a moment of time, sometimes an era. The words of a poet can move the heart in ways other literature cannot. Great poets are remembered, and their writing spoken of and written about for long years, decades and centuries afterward. Sometimes poetry is a commentary on culture, pointing out deficiencies and moral failures. Are we at that place where moral failures are dismissed, and the courage of our convictions have withered before the heat of adversity? Philosopher George Santayana famously said, “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” It is nearly universally understood today that Santayana’s statement was meant to be a warning to all freedom loving people that we must never allow the moral failures and outrageous behaviors of treasonous, treacherous, evil people to be repeated in our time. Since we lived through atrocities of the past, it is our duty to not allow the same atrocities to overtake us again. Yet that is exactly where we find ourselves today. Let me explain. Martin Niemoller was an influential German pastor during the rise and reign…