When I was growing up, Fascism was a political term in common use. I was seven years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the years ahead saw us occupied with the defeat of fascism. I can’t say I knew what it meant. I just knew it was bad. I have this uncanny feeling that, as fascism rears its ugly head again in our world, that a lot of people still don’t know what it means.

I had a strange sense of déjà vu watching Oliver North’s War Stories production dealing with the death march in Bataan and the use of slave labor in Burma. The Japanese treatment of prisoners was, excuse the term, inhuman. And the same inhuman spirit—a spirit of fascism—seems to possess some parts of Islam to this day. And I sometimes wonder if the term inhuman may say more than we realize. The way the Japanese overlords treated their own soldiers as less than human gave them license to act inhuman. And, of course, the Germans, while slightly more civilized, were still possessed of an inhuman spirit. It has been common over the years to to attribute demon possession to Adolf Hitler.

What is the rest of the world to do when they come up against the absolute embodiment of evil in a man, a nation, or a movement—especially a Christian world that follows the prince of peace, and believes in turning the other cheek? Is it just possible that we don’t fully understand how a godly man might respond to the presence of evil? On one occasion, Jesus talked with his disciples about facing this spirit of hatred. We’ll find it in the Gospel of John, chapter 15.

Christian people have often failed in their responsibilities to their fellow man. This is not terribly surprising. After all, we are human. Jesus, in a couple of his parables suggested that as many as half of us who call ourselves by his name will fail. And, in the end, none of us can escape the judgment that will fall on us for how we live and act in this miserable world.

A date that few remember is April 1, 1933. In Germany, it was a beginning. On this day a boycott of Jewish-owned shops began. Members of the Brownshirts picketed the shops to see to it that the boycott was successful. The hostility toward Jews grew day by day. Many shops and restaurants began to refuse service to Jews. In some parts of Germany, Jews were banned from public parks, swimming pools, and public transportation. Germans were encouraged not to use Jewish doctors and lawyers. Jewish civil servants and teachers were fired.

As troubling as all that was to me, what was far worse was coming to realize that throughout this period, leaders of the Protestant and Catholic churches remained silent. Only a handful of young pastors resisted. You may ask yourself how the German Christians could allow this sort of thing to happen to them? I will give you two things to think about. One: Most of those young pastors who resisted ended up arrested and executed. Two: How much evidence is there that American Christians have any more backbone than the German Christians of that day?

The German people are, in every sense of the word, a great people—intelligent, innovative, accomplished. But for me, the question about the Germans is always colored by the dark shades of Adolf Hitler, and the question of what happened to them…and to the Jews of Europe.

Not long ago, I presented a program titled How Freedom is Lost. I turned back the pages to an episode in the history of Israel–you can read it for yourself in 1 Samuel, chapter eight. It came at the end of what may have been a period of unparalleled freedom, that has never been before or since. And the story of why they laid that freedom down, and of what followed after, is an object lesson we must never forget. I am not going to retell that story today. (I will tell you how to get a free CD of that program a little later.) What I want to do today is to draw another lesson from much more recent history, and to consider the implications for Christians living right now.

I knew that Germany was a great nation in European history. Christianity was strong there, and the Protestant Reformation was born there. I have heard people puzzle over how a people like the Germans of that era could possibly allow such a lowbrow, corruptible little man like Adolf Hitler to come to such absolute power. Strange as it may seem, it may have been for some of the same reasons I discussed in How Freedom is Lost.

I knew of the great intellectual and artistic accomplishments of the Germans, and their great universities. It was in 1517 that Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of a great cathedral. In the early 1700s, Bach was turning out some of the greatest music ever heard. In the late 1700s, Beethoven was at his peak. While America was just figuring out who she was, the great German universities were more than 300 years old. So how could a nation like Germany produce an Adolf Hitler?

Would you make a treaty with the Devil? It is a silly question, isn’t it? You would never do anything like that. And yet, nations do it all the time.

We could argue that no one would knowingly make a deal with the Devil, because he is a known liar and a sworn adversary. You wouldn’t believe him. You know he is your enemy. There is no way. The only reason he would make a deal with you is to do you harm. It would be to gain an advantage, to lull you into making a mistake, and eventually to do you in.

In reading Winston Churchill’s The Gathering Storm I was struck by how much the nations risked on the treaties they trusted to prevent another terrible world war. I think it is fair to say that we sometimes find ourselves worn down by the world. And so, while we would never make an outright deal with the Devil, we are all too willing to make compromises with him, and for the same reasons nations made deals with Hitler.

When I lived in England some years ago, it seemed that every spring, one or another bishop of the Church of England would publish some new, outrageous doctrinal idea about God. I began to suspect that they drew straws every year to see whose turn it was to create a storm in the news before Easter.

One year, it seemed that N.T. Wright (Bishop of Durham) drew the short straw and published a book titled Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. To boil down his most provocative idea: Christians do not go to heaven when they die.

Reading the New Testament, I find there’s really is not much room for misunderstanding here about the fundamentals, and I assume that is what motivated the Bishop to write his book. Traditional Christian assumptions often don’t match Scripture, as comforting as they may seem to be. But if you take a second look, you’ll find that what lies ahead is much more exciting.

Do you believe there’s a spirit world out there? There is, you know, although it’s not exactly out there—it’s right here. It’s in the same room as you. You can’t see it, can’t taste it, can’t touch it. The science fiction writers might call it another dimension, and they may be the closest to explaining it in terms that modern man might understand. Once in a while, there’s a tear in the membrane that separates our world from the spirit world and we become aware of it—and, hopefully, not a part of it.

But the Bible doesn’t tell us much about that world; and what it does tell us is almost in throwaway lines. The Bible is more concerned with how we live our lives in the here-and-now than it is with the spirit world, and the advice from the Bible is—for the most part—Leave that world alone. It’s not your business. But it does make reference to it from time to time. There’s an incident with one of the prophets that illustrates what I’m talking about. It’s a prophet named Daniel.

Daniel was taken captive to Babylon among a number of people—prisoners from Jerusalem. He had made his way into the Babylonian government and was a high-ranking official, but he maintained his religious conviction. There was a time when Daniel, I think, became depressed because he came to believe that he would never return to his homeland again. He fasted and mourned for three full weeks, praying that God would show him where this situation was headed. How God responded to Daniel’s entreaties provides a rare bit of insight into the normally unseen workings of the spirit world. We find this encounter beginning in Daniel 10.

Would it be easier for you to believe in God if he showed you a sign? Maybe if he did some miracle for you? What would you like him to do? Cause you to speak in tongues, maybe, or while you’re in church sometime have you keel over backwards and lay immobile on the ground with your hands up in the air for three hours? Or maybe if God would do something a little more practical—if he would suddenly heal you or someone you love of some sickness or disability, would that help you believe in God? You know, I would have thought so, but an incident found in the New Testament leads me to doubt whether this would be the case.

In Matthew 12, Jesus heals a man with a withered hand. If you were standing there and saw that man extend his withered hand and watch it become whole like the other one, you would be impressed wouldn’t you? You can’t fake that or explain it away. If someone who was dying of cancer is healed, I might say, Well, maybe the doctors were wrong. But we could see that hand before and after.

Were the Pharisees impressed? Did this miracle cause them to believe and say, Surely this man is the son of God. God sent this man.? No, in the very next verse says they went out and held a council against him, how they might destroy him. So from this I cannot conclude that showing someone a miracle will cause them to believe, or even make it easier for them to believe. A few verses later we see how Jesus responds to those who ask for some visible sign of his power.

When people start speaking in unrecognizable languages, how do you know this is the spirit of God and not some other spirit? I don’t mean to put down anyone religious experience, but I think I am asking a fair question: How do you know? I know that the gift of tongues was given to the apostles when they were empowered. We talked about the example found in Acts 2, but found that they spoke recognizable languages and had a clear and understandable message to share. Members of the crowd, who hailed from across the Empire, were astonished that their dialects were being spoken by these simple Galileans.

Now, here is my problem. If the language people are speaking when they speak in tongues is a heavenly language, a prayer language, the language of angels: Why? What is the purpose? What is the point? Why would God do that? It surely is not because God does not understand English or French, is it? God does not need to give me his language in order for us to communicate. And it would be very strange, indeed, if God gave us a language to communicate with him which we don’t even understand when we are using.

I’m sure that it is very gratifying to the person who receives this miraculous gift of tongues, but is that why God does it? So we would feel good? So perhaps we would believe in him? But aren’t we supposed to believe in God through faith and without having to be shown a bunch of spectacular things? We know why the initial gift of tongues was given: so that the apostles could take the gospel into other lands and other languages. I have to ask one more time, Why would God have us speak in unknown tongues—languages that do not appear to be known to anyone else on the planet. There does appear to be an instance of this in the Bible, and it is worth a look. We’ll find it in Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth.