In soccer, only the goalie can touch a ball in play. Everyone else has to kick it. This is not to say that the ball never gets touched illegally. It does. Most of the time unintentionally, but sometimes not.
One of the most controversial incidents involved the hotly contested playoff match between Argentina and England during the 1986 FIFA World Cup. Both nations had come to blows four years earlier in the Falklands War, and tensions were running high. The game was scoreless at the half, when Argentina’s flamboyant halfback Diego Maradona decided to try to break things open. He took the ball as far as he could through the stalwart wall of the British defense, passed it off to another teammate, and kept running toward the goal.
The pass glanced off the foot of an English defender, and arced slowly into the air, descending in front of Maradona, who punched the ball over the goalie’s outstretched hands into the net. Everybody saw the infraction—except the Tunisian referee, who let the goal stand. The Argentine team went on to win the match and the World Cup, Maradona to win MVP, and England to seeth in frustration. Even Maradona knew he should have been called for a penalty. In the postgame interview, he coyly credited the goal not to his own doing but to “the hand of God.”
When the hand of God is with you, you win in spite of yourself. And when it is not, you lose… in spite of yourself.
Last summer, the consensus in Republican circles was that there was no way they could not win the presidency In 2012. This was not arrogance or overconfidence. This was numbers. Obama had turned into Jimmy Carter’s second term— everything he touched was turning to ashes. Wherever you looked—economy, unemployment, deficit, stimulus, social policy, environmental regulation, foreign policy, it was disaster. All you had to do was let Obama continue to be Obama and he would hand the White House to Romney, who was systematically eliminating his opponents for the nomination. At the same time, we had documentaries like Obama’s America 2016, and the gay marriage declaration, and the birth certificate forgery that fed the growing awareness that this Obama guy may be cool and smile a lot, but he is not American, he is not for America, and he is definitely evil.
So people began to pray– in groups, over the web, in vigils, in prayer chains—for our country. They prayed for godly leaders, and prayed for the people to be able to make a wise choice that would keep the country righteous and allow Christians to live in peace. As the election drew near, the calls to prayer and for the selection of godly leaders from the nation’s spiritual leaders became more pronounced. Every major evangelist—including Billy Graham— weighed in. They outlined what they believed to be the attributes of godly leadership, leaving the very distinct impression that godly leadership is what America does not have, and will get with a Mormon guy in the Oval Office.
Sure enough, some funny things happened. First, the Romney campaign that methodically eliminated its opponents in the primary essentially ground to a halt while the White House and its surrogates in the press leveled devastating round after round of accusation on the candidate-elect, characterizing him as a rich, insensitive Thurston Howell III before he could officially grab the Republican Party mouthpiece. By the time Romney got to the nomination and to the debates, he had half a year’s worth of mud to peel off of him.
Then, the Republican campaign theme, which should have been “Save Our Country!” was inexplicably “Believe in America.” I don’t think the Democrats would have disagreed. They believe in America– one that worships at the altar of death and self-destruction, that boos the very mention of Yahweh off the stage at its convention, and believes in Romans 1: 18-32 as their party platform. The Republicans were supposed to believe in an America that worships the God of Israel, but they were too afraid to articulate that because it might have been seen as in intolerant and not inclusive. “Everybody likes sex, drugs, and free stuff. Nobody likes God,” the reasoning went. “So let’s leave Him unstated and just talk ‘family values.’” Which of course the Democrats are all for— and even more—by allowing you to be able to marry the person you love.
So things stayed neck and neck right up to the debates. And then another funny thing happened: Romney completely mopped the floor with Obama— and then failed to put him away! After all the nasty charges leveled by Obama and his celebrity millionaire friends against Romney and his business millionaire friends, both candidates were finally in the arena for a one-on-one bare knuckled executive fistfight for the future of the country. And all that was left for Romney to do to win the election was look into the camera, jerk his thumb over at Obama and say, “You’ve heard this guy and his media cheerleaders saying a lot of bad things about me over the last few months. I think tonight’s debate has shown you that boogie-man does not exist, and that the real horror story is that this country is in deep trouble. This guy does not have a plan to save it. I do. I have done this before, and with your support I can do it again.” Obama would have been buried, the election would have been over.
The same thing happened in the vice presidential debate. Ryan was handed the opportunity to play executive-in-command. All he had to do was say “Hold on a second,” turn to Biden and say something like, “Joe, we have 20 million people out of work, a $16 trillion deficit, a stimulus that has created no jobs, our embassies around the world under attack, our ambassador to Libya was tortured to death and sodomized on camera: what the hell are you laughing about?” Biden would have been buried, and the election would have been over.
But nothing of the sort ever happened. Things stayed neck and neck. People continued to pray for God to intervene mightily. And He did.
One week before the election, a rare, once-in-a-century, totally unpredicted “superstorm” smacked into the Northeast like the massive fist of God, knocking out the power grid from Boston to Philadelphia, burying Pennsylvania and West Virginia in two feet of wet snow, and destroying entire towns from Lindenhurst to Sea Bright. No one stopped to wonder where this might have come from. But not a real surprise as no one was prepared either for the anarchy that followed, as an entire region was reduced to a hunter-gatherer society on wheels, burning fuel to find fuel, heat, hot water, food, and basic comforts of life— and when that didn’t work, stand in line with gas cans. Hurricane Sandy exposed the worst in our people, the incompetence in our government, and the fragility in our infrastructure.
Not only that, it sealed the doom of the Republican ticket, knocking Romney and Ryan off the headlines for five days. When a politician finally did get back into the news, it was Obama, invited to tour disaster-struck New Jersey by none other than Romney’s star backer Governor Chris Christie, whose praise of the president for showing up in the Garden State for a press conference was trumpeted far and wide by the liberal media. Obama’s “handling” of the crisis became the deciding factor for as much as 42% of those whose vote was decided within five days of the election.
Little did it matter that the press conference accomplished nothing: no power came back, no gas was delivered, no shelters were built for those whose suffering was most acute. Obama walked away with the 3 million votes he needed to win. He celebrated by scheduling a trip to Asia while the US hurtled towards its fiscal cliff, and hundreds of thousands still shivered in the cold. Then he left town for a well-deserved round of golf.
When the hand— or fist— of God is with you, you win in spite of yourself. And when it is not, you lose… in spite of yourself.
Administration surrogates in the press thank God (whoever they mean by that) for Sandy as divine intervention on behalf of their Anointed One. Hurricane Sandy was divine intervention all right, but not for anything worth celebrating. The God of Israel keeps nations under judgment on a very short leash, particularly as the Tenth Harbinger is ready to be sounded. Would there be anybody that in America with the courage, the guts, the intestinal fortitude, the brass balls to stand up to Evil and call it evil? Ironically it came down to Mitt Romney, from a quasi-Christian sect to stand in the gap— God’s way of saying “Christianity in the USA today is so weak-kneed that I can no longer count on My Son’s Church to stand up against Satan.” And Romney failed the test. Maybe because he was too expert at doing what the rest of us do— disguising, dissembling, trying too hard to please too many people? He had no problem bullying his own in the primaries, but was too afraid to drive a stake through the vampire’s heart when the opportunity was handed to him.
Yes, Hurricane Sandy is God’s intervention. I absolutely believe that. No other way you could explain the timing and ironic after-effects of such a massive weather system. And God has said that He sends things like storms, droughts, pestilences… and delusions to get people’s attention. So is the hand of God with the Party of Death—those vociferous advocates for murder of the unborn, Islamic honor killings, homofascist pogroms against people of faith, and the elimination of all mention of His Name from society?
No.
With Hurricane Sandy, God has said, “Mitt, get out of the way. You had your chance and you did not step up. You do not have the heart to turn this country around in the way I need it turned around. I’m giving this people what they want—freedom from Me. I will give them an emperor to worship, and we shall see whose hand is mightier to save. Let them move forward, and sound the Tenth Harbinger. Let’s get this thing done!”
The Tenth Harbinger 