Tom Clancy - The Bear and the Dragon

“When the government of that country found out about Reverend Yu, they took Skip’s job away. They hoped to starve him out, but the people who made that decision didn’t know Skip. They didn’t know Jesus, and they didn’t know about the faithful, did they?”

“Hell, no!” replied a white male voice from the pews, and that’s when Hosiah knew he had them.

“No, sir! That’s when your Pastor Gerry found out and that’s when you good people started sending help to Skip Yu, to support the man his godless government was trying to destroy, because they didn’t know that people of faith share a commitment to justice!”

Patterson’s arm shot out. “And Jesus pointed and said, see that woman there, she gives from her need, not from her riches. It takes more for a poor man or a poor woman to give than it does for a rich man to do it. That was when you good people began helping my congregation to support my friend Skip. And Jesus also said that which you do for the least of My brethren you do also unto Me. And so your church and my church helped this man, this lonely minister of the Gospel in the land of the pagans, those people who deny the Name and Word of God, those people who worship the corpse of a monster named Mao, who put his embalmed body on display as though it were the body of a saint! He was no saint. He was no man of God. He was hardly a man at all. He was a mass murderer worse than anything our country has ever seen. He was like the Hitler that our fathers fought to destroy sixty years ago. But to the people who run that country, that killer, that murderer, that destroyer of life and freedom is the new god. That ‘god’ is false,” Patterson told them, with passion entering his voice. “That ‘god’ is the voice of Satan. That ‘god’ is the mouthpiece for the fires of Hell. That ‘god’ was the incarnation of evil-and that ‘god’ is dead, and now he’s a stuffed animal, like the dead bird you might see over the bar in a saloon, or the deer head a lot of you have in your den-and they still worship him. They still honor his word, and they still revere his beliefs-the beliefs that killed millions of people just because their false god didn’t like them.” Patterson stood erect and brushed his hair back.

“There are those who say that what evil we see in the world is just the absence of good. But we know better than that. There is a devil in creation, and that devil has agents among us, and some of those agents run countries! Some of those agents start wars. Some of those agents take innocent people from their homes and put them in camps and murder them there like cattle in a slaughterhouse. Those are the agents of Satan! Those are the devotees of the Prince of Darkness. They are those among us who take the lives of the innocent, even the lives of innocent little babies …”

And so, those three men of God went to the hospital. One of them, our friend Skip, went to assist his parishioner in her time of need. The other two, the Catholics, went because they, too, were men of God, and they, too, stood for the same things that we do, because the Word of Jesus IS THE SAME FOR ALL OF US !” Hosiah Jackson’s voice boomed out.

“Yes, sir,” the same white voice agreed, and there were nods in the congregation.

“And so those three men of God went to the hospital to save the life of a little baby, a little baby that the government of that heathen land wanted to kill-and why? They wanted to kill it because its mother and father believe in God-and, oh, no, they couldn’t allow people like that to bring a child into the world! Oh, no, they couldn’t allow people of faith to bring a child into their country, because that was like inviting in a spy. That was a danger to their godless government. And why is it a danger?

“It’s a danger because they know that they are godless pagans! It’s a danger because they know that God’s Holy Word is the most powerful force in the world! And their only response to that kind of danger is to kill, to take the life that God Himself gives to each of us, because in denying God, they can also deny life, and you know, those pagans, those unbelievers, those killers love to have that kind of power. They love pretending that they are gods. They love their power, and they love using it in the service of Satan! They know they are destined to spend eternity in Hell, and they want to share their Hell with us here on earth, and they want to deny to us the only thing that can liberate us from the destiny they have chosen for themselves. That is why they condemned that innocent little baby to death.

“And when those three men went to the hospital to preserve the life of that innocent baby, they stood in God’s own place. They took God’s place, but they did so in humility and in the strength of their faith. They stood in God’s place to fulfill God’s will, not to get power for themselves, not to be false heroes. They went there to serve, not to rule. To serve, as the Lord Jesus Himself served. As his apostles served. They went there to protect an innocent life. They went there to do the Lord God’s work!”

You people probably don’t know this, but when I was first ordained I spent three years in the United States Navy, and I served as a chaplain to the Marines. I was assigned to the Second Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. When I was there, I got to know people we call heroes, and for sure a lot of Marines fall into that category. I was there to minister to the dead and dying after a terrible helicopter crash, and it was one of the great honors of my life to be there and to comfort dying young Marines-be-cause I knew they were going to see God. I remember one, a sergeant, the man had just gotten married a month before, and he died while he was saying a prayer to God for his wife. He was a veteran of Vietnam, that sergeant, and he had lots of decorations. He was what we call a tough guy,” Patterson told the black congregation, ”but the toughest thing about that Marine was that when he knew he was going to die, he prayed not for himself, but for his young wife, that God would comfort her. That Marine died as a Christian man, and he went from this world to stand proud before his God as a man who did his duty in every way he could.

“Well, so did Skip, and so did Renato. They sacrificed their lives to save a baby. God sent them. God gave those men their orders. And they heard the orders, and they followed them without flinching, without hesitating, without thinking except to be sure that they were doing the right thing.

“And today, eight thousand miles from here there is a new life, a new little baby, probably asleep now. That baby will never know all the hubbub that came just before she was born, but with parents like that, that baby will know the Word of God. And all that happened because three brave men of God went to that hospital, and two of them died there to do the Lord’s Work.

“Skip was a Baptist. Renato was a Catholic.

“Skip was yellow. I’m white. You people are black.

“But Jesus doesn’t care about any of that. We have all heard His words. We have all accepted Him as our Savior. So did Skip. So did Renato. Those two brave men sacrificed their lives for The Right. The Catholic’s last words-he asked if the baby was okay, and the other Catholic, the German priest, said ‘yes,’ and Renato said, ‘Bene.’ That’s Italian. It means, ‘That’s good, that’s all right.’ He died knowing that he did the right thing, And that’s not a bad thing, is it?”

“That’s right!” three voices called out.

There is so much to learn from their example,” Hosiah Jackson told his borrowed congregation.