Having been absent for five months during which time our energies were rather intensely directed toward revising a manuscript, we are pleased to rejoin you in this endeavor.
In conversing recently with a couple we had not seen for some two or three years, the gentleman commented on our having remarked at an earlier time that the present military engagement represented an essentially futile endeavor in that the cultural mindset, mental processes and values sytems of the Islamic world at large were not those of ours - nor would such be militarily imposed upon them.
It has long been of interest to me that preceding the present conflict, Russia had reportedly sought to warn us of the consequences as based on their own earlier Afghanistan experience. (When in Russia quite some years ago we visited a hospital at which a number of younger men were resident with severe disabilities - missing limbs, etc. I assumed them to be casualties of the preceding Russian/Afghan war, but felt it prudent not to ask.) That our current dilemma is increasingly perceived the result of not only an unwillingness to listen but naivete and/or stubbornness as well, contributes more than a little to our nation's growing sense of uncertainty.
One might pontificate at length here. We shall nonetheless decline, other than to note present world conditions as also bearing influence on the community of faith. In addition to a seemingly unwinnable war, the realities of intensifying anti-Christian bias, societal disorder, political turmoil, terrorist violence, nuclear proliferation, pestilential havoc, climatological destabilization, radical Islamic expansionism and other like threats to faith and stability are, indeed, causing growing numbers of believers to reassess the "easy escapism" of an eschatology once little questioned in many religiously conservative circles.
Against this backdrop, might it be that, to at least some degree, the "prophetic impulse" of which the prophet spoke in Amos 3:7 ("Indeed, the Lord GOD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants, the prophets") is finding, a premonitory sense of resonance within the community of faith?
We would not discount the possibility.
Burl Ratzsch
