“Give to them according to their work and according to the evil of their deeds; give to them according to the work of their hands; render them their due reward.” —Psalm 28:4

The Okinawa Campaign
April 1 – June 22, 1945

kinawa holds first place as the most difficult and costly military undertaking in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. Twenty-three Medals of Honor were awarded to American soldiers, which speaks of the ferocious and unrelenting nature of the battle. A recent award-winning film about Desmond Doss—an Army medic and a Christian, who was wounded four times and saved the lives of many men of the 77th Division at Okinawa—showed in graphic scenes the horror of the battle.

The Japanese considered the island part of their homeland, though the 300,000 Okinawans still preserved some cultural differences. The battle was the last before the nuclear age began at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where about 200,000 died. More people died at Okinawa than the atomic-bombed cities—at least 150,000 of them civilians, 39,000 American Army and Marines, and at least 110,000 Japanese soldiers.

The landing was unopposed, for the Japanese had dug into the volcanic rock, lived in caves and on mountains, and had decided to let the Americans put as many men in the killing zones as possible. It turned out to be an effective strategy. For eighty-two days, the Americans pounded the Japanese positions from air and sea and land, and the foot soldiers captured the island a foot at a time, roasting the enemy in their caves and expending unprecedented amounts of blood and treasure. Some civilians leaped to their deaths from the cliffs to the rocks below, clutching their babies, because they had been told by the Japanese that the Americans would eat their children. Entire villages ceased to exist with living persons.

An American Naval Task Force supporting the troops and defending themselves against relentless air attack lost twenty ships and had one hundred fifty seven damaged, many of them by suicide “kamikaze” attacks. More than 1,100 Japanese planes were shot down. The Japanese battleship Yamato was sunk with the loss of 3,700 sailors. Judging from this first battle for the enemy homeland, American strategists realized that a landing closer to Tokyo would be costly beyond measure. The American bombing campaign of the Japanese mainland continued without letup, burning entire cities to the ground and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians until the decision came down from President Truman to unleash the atomic bombs.

All the horrors of war coalesced at Okinawa, the decisive and final land battle of a war that took an estimated 60 million lives. Rightly did James say that wars come from the fact that you “lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain.” What is true for the individual, when multiplied exponentially by civil governments in their foreign policy, resulted in the Battle of Okinawa seventy-two years ago.

For more information on the battle, I recommend:
1. Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb, by George Feifer
2. Typhoon of Steel: The Battle for Okinawa, by Belote and Belote

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Image Credits: 1 Okinawa Cliff (Wikipedia.org); 2 Desmond Doss (Wikipedia.org); 3 Kamikaze Attack (Wikipedia.org); 4 Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Cloud (Wikipedia.org); 5 Yellow Beach, Okinawa (Wikipedia.org); 6 Japanese POWs (Wikipedia.org)

“Listen, for I will speak noble things, and the opening of my lips will reveal right things; for my mouth will utter truth.” —Proverbs 8:7,8a

“Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!”
March 23, 1775

red-headed eleven-year-old boy sat in the front row of the church, next to his mother. His father had come to America from Aberdeenshire, Scotland, sixteen years before the boy was born and was likely at worship in another assembly in the county, pastored by his brother. The family argument concerning where the boy would attend worship was apparently won by his mother. The success of the creation of the United States would, arguably, have been much more difficult, if not improbable, without that small victory by Mrs. John Henry of Hanover County, Virginia in 1747.

Samuel Davies was the pastor of the church—a man considered by some to be the most powerful and persuasive preacher in the colonies, though sickly and diminutive in stature. Mrs. Henry had made a profession of faith in Christ after sitting under the ministry of Davies. Her son, Patrick Henry, sat before the master orator for several years and witnessed the power of words, expression, and truth. He remembered those convicting and convincing sermons and honed his own skills as he matured. “Young Pahtrick” eventually acquired a law license in the Capitol at Williamsburg without any formal teaching, and opened his frontier practice among the Scottish community in Hanover. The power of his logic, his dramatic rhetoric, and winning personality scored victory after victory in the courtrooms of Virginia. His popularity led to election as a member of the Colonial Legislature—the House of Burgesses. Leaving his seventeen children to the care of his wife, or at least the ones still at home, Henry became a champion of the people of the back-country.

Patrick Henry’s outspokenness offended the Tidewater grandees who controlled the General Assembly, but the lanky country lawyer shrugged off intimidation and became known for his fiery principled stands, regardless of odds against him. As the resistance to Parliamentary taxation grew across the colonies and communications between the disparate groups of American “patriots” increased, Henry remained in the thick of the protest.

Violations of colonial charters, common law, and local custom by British authorities motivated Henry and others to resist the tyranny. Letters of protest, boycotts, and sometimes violence occurred in every colony. The Royal Governor suspended the Legislature. They continued to meet secretly at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia to continue debate on how they should respond to current events. The stage was set at the Second Virginia Convention on March 23rd, 1775. Henry proposed a bill to establish and supply local militias across the colony. His opponents claimed it would be an unnecessary provocation to the crown. After all the debating had proven inconclusive, Henry rose to his feet, was given the floor and delivered what would prove to be his most famous oration defending the militia bill. In the end of the dramatic monologue he uttered those words carved in the minds of every American who heard them — “Give me liberty or give me death!” He carried the vote.

“Give me liberty, or give me death!” — Patrick Henry addresses the Second Virginia Convention

Image Credits: 1 Samuel Davies (Wikipedia.org); 2 Parson’s Cause (Wikipedia.org)

“Unto the Church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place that call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours…” —I Corinthians 1:2

Saint Patrick (Allegedly) Died on this Day,
March 17, A.D. 461

efore the light of the Protestant Reformation dawned in the 16th century, many in the Christian Church believed that only a certain few Christians in history should be designated as “saints”, though the Bible explicitly teaches that every true believer possesses that title. That being said, in the pre-Reformation times, certain important historical men and women in the church were commonly only known by the “Sainthood” designations given them by the Church, such as St. Patrick, St. Augustine of Hippo, or St. Chrysostom. The best known in America, by far, is Patrick, primary patron saint of Ireland. But the reality is that few actually know his story, other than myths that accrued to his name after his death.

The Letters of Patrick

The phrases “cannot be fixed with certainty” and “there is no reliable documentation for” and other such expressions lie on almost every page concerning “super-saints” of pre-medieval times. The man who called himself Patricius, however, left two known documents for future generations to ponder: Confessio (Declaration) and Epistola (Letters to the soldiers of Caroticus). From these two sources — generally recognized by historians as authentic — we can glean a few useful details of Patrick’s life.

A Briton Slave to Irish Pirates

Christians brought the Gospel to Britain, probably in the apostolic or immediate post-apostolic era, during Roman occupation. Patrick lived in the fifth century, i.e. 450 years after Jesus Christ’s ascension. It seems he was born into a Briton Christian family but was not a believer himself till sometime after his capture by Irish pirates and being taken to Ireland as a slave. His grandfather was a priest and his father a deacon. He spent his time as a slave herding sheep and used his time wisely in contemplation and prayer. He claims that he became a true believer sometime in those six years. Patrick recorded that he heard a voice telling him to return home, so he ran away, got passage on a vessel, and returned home, age about twenty-one.

Bringing the Gospel Back Home to Ireland

Patrick received some type of theological training, perhaps on the continent, and returned to Ireland as a missionary. The stories of his peripatetic ministry have grown with the telling. Shrines to his work are found in many places in Ireland. He apparently founded a number of churches, one of the most important being in Armagh where two cathedrals there today bear testimony to his effectiveness — one Roman Catholic, and one Protestant.* It is probable that he was not the first Christian in Ireland but the extreme success of his promoters, ancient and modern, claim that he was. He faced down the Druidic cults that dominated Celtic society, and, so widespread was his ministry, that some claim all Ireland became Christian, or very nearly so.

Preaching Christ in Great Peril

I’ll not rehearse the legends of St. Patrick, they are easily found. What is certain though, in the Providence of God, is that a young British slave saw a need for the Gospel among the pagan Celts of Ireland and returned there in peril of his life and preached the Grace of Christ, building churches and monasteries from which the faith would continue after his death. His demise on March 17 is mere unverifiable tradition to which has stuck all sorts of other aspects — leprechauns, the color green, and questionable behavior — that have obscured the reality of a historical Christian saint. By God’s Grace, one man can sometimes make an almost unbelievable impact on the Kingdom of God. Ask Martin Luther.

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Image Credits: 1 St. Patrick (Wikipedia.org); 2 St. Augustine (Wikipedia.org); 3 St. Patrick’s Church of Ireland Catholic (Wikipedia.org); 4 St. Patrick’s Church of Ireland Protestant (StPatricks-Cathedral.org)

John Chrysostom Becomes Bishop of Constantinople, 397

oday, he looks down on a congregation of tourists from a frieze in the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey (formerly Constantinople). Dressed in white livery and holding a copy of the Scripture under his arm, the archbishop John Chrysostom is probably preparing to speak, for his name literally means “golden mouthed” in Greek. His life began in the middle of the Fourth Century A.D. and ended in 407 but his influence, wisdom, popularity and reputation is second only to Augustine of Hippo, among the church fathers of the post-apostolic era; he was “the prince of preachers” of his time.

Raised in the ‘Nurture and Admonition of the Lord’

Chrysostom was born in Antioch, the second city of the Eastern Empire, Byzantium. When his father Secundus died, a Roman soldier in Syria, his twenty-year-old mother raised him in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord,” although all the heresies of the era were abundant in the city. He received the finest classical education available, especially in rhetoric, though most of it from pagan Greeks. The man who made the difference in his life, however, was the pastor and teacher Meletius, who preached the Word of God and taught him how to study the Scripture. About the year 370 (age c.23), John made profession of faith in Christ and was baptized. He was attracted to the ascetic life and became an anchorite, living in the caves of Antioch, praying and studying Scripture. His health ruined, he returned to the city to recover and picked up where he had left off as a lector (a reader in the church, preparatory to the diaconate).

Panoramic view of modern-day Istanbul with Hagia Sophia visible on the right

A Bold and Fearless Preacher

In 386 Chrysostom was ordained by the church and began a ministry of preaching that lasted for twelve years, in which time, his gift for preaching powerful and practical expository sermons benefited thousands and his written commentaries gained church-wide renown and are highly appreciated today. John Chrysostom finally became the Bishop of Constantinople, the most powerful position in the Eastern Church, where he preached plainly against corruption in the church and state. He raised money for the poor, founded hospitals, and rebuked the ungodly. His famous statement that “the road to hell is paved with the bones of the priests and monks, and the skulls of the bishops are the lampposts that light the way,” won him no friends among the clergy. His holding the civil authorities accountable to Christ, got him exiled by Empress Eudoxia. Chrysostom wrote about family life and children and, in a day when life was cheap and mercy a sign of weakness, he proclaimed that “to destroy the fetus is something worse than murder, the one who does this does not take away life that has already been born, but prevents it from being born.“ How is our age any better? We need the pulpits of our land to echo such belief.

Saint John Chrysostom and Empress Aelia Eudoxia, by Jean-Paul Laurens

A Heavenly Home

John Chrysostom was not as doctrinally pure as we would like. He believed that the Virgin Mary was instrumental in some way to a person’s salvation and he promoted the supposed escape from the world and the flesh practiced by monks and other ascetics. Nonetheless, he rightly proclaimed “I am a Christian. He who answers thus proclaims everything at once: his country, his profession, his family; the believer belongs to no city on earth, but to the heavenly Jerusalem.” He died in exile but the many lives he touched expanded Christ’s kingdom and showed the practical implications of biblical truth.

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Image Credits: 1 John Chrysostom (Wikipedia.org); 2 Hagia Sophia Chrysostom (Wikipedia.org); 3 Constantinople (Modern-Day Istanbul) (Wikipedia.org); 4 John Chrysostom and Empress Eudoxia (Wikipedia.org)