When an alien spaceship destroyed the White House in the 1993 science fiction film Independence Day, I'm told that pre-9/11 moviegoers were not horrified at the possibility and that some even cheered (perhaps because they were a bit cynical about the current occupant of the Oval Office). As the world's lone superpower, we believe there is no nation on earth that would dare invade our nation and occupy our territory. While terrorists may do great damage and cause huge loss of life (as they have done), from a strategic point of view, a terrorist strike is of little consequence when it comes to challenging the military and economic might of the United States. At this point in our history, the fall of the American Republic to a foreign adversary (space aliens aside) is unthinkable.
If you have a current subscription or current on-line account please log-in here to read the rest of this article.
1 [ Back ] Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (New York: Penguin, 1967), 125.
2 [ Back ] Jerome, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Volume VI: St. Jerome, Letters and Select Works, eds. Philip and Henry Wace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 500.
3 [ Back ] Jerome, The Christian Church in the Epistles of St. Jerome (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1923), 123.
4 [ Back ] Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 190.
5 [ Back ] Brown, 425.
6 [ Back ] Augustine, Sermon 103, Sermons (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2000), 11.
7 [ Back ] Henry Chadwick, Augustine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 100.
8 [ Back ] Augustine, City of God (New York: Image, 1958), XIX.17.
Kim Riddlebarger is pastor of Christ United Reformed Church (Anaheim, California) and co-host of The White Horse Inn radio broadcast. He is author of A Case for Amillennialism: Understanding the End Times and Man of Sin: Uncovering the Truth about the Antichrist (Baker, 2006). Kim blogs at www.kimriddlebarger.squarespace.com.
Issue: "Zion" Nov./Dec. 2009 Vol. 18 No. 6 Page number(s): 25-28
You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you do not make more than 500 physical copies. We do not allow reposting an article in its entirety on the Internet. We request that you link to this article from your website. Any exceptions to the above must be explicitly approved by Modern Reformation (webmaster@modernreformation.org).
Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: This article originally appeared in the [insert current issue date] edition of Modern Reformation and is reprinted with permission. For more information about Modern Reformation, visit www.modernreformation.org or call (800) 890-7556. All rights reserved.