Hi Friend,

There has always been widespread corruption in government—especially in big cities.  There’s the infamous Tammany Hall in New York—the notorious Boss Tweed.  Then there was Chicago—the Daly machine. Everyone knew of the corruption.  More recently it was Detroit and Mayor Kwame.  If those were the only three big cities that were corrupt, we would have little complaint.  If it stayed in their cities, we could ignore it.  But it’s almost every major city in the U.S.A.—and almost may be too generous a term.

Tammany Hall began in 1789, ironically, as a benevolent group focused on helping the poor, finding housing and work for immigrants flooding into America to escape poverty and oppression.  Grateful Irish immigrants existing as slaves in the new country seeing Tammany Hall as the savior, became generationally dependent.    It lasted for nearly two centuries.   Sometime during these years, changes occurred.  It became a political arm of the Democrat Party.  Graft and corruption set in.  Tolerated at first, it became accepted.  Greed inevitably knows no bounds, just as power, unchecked, becomes a monster.  Tammany Hall became as bad as it had been good and thus sowed the seeds for its own destruction.

At Bible Study we came to Genesis 18.  It was so bad in Sodom and Gomorrah that the Lord, the one who was later known as Jesus of Nazareth, came down from His throne in the 3rd Heaven to see how bad it was.  Were the reports really true?  If so, God would punish the city.

In an unprecedented act, Abraham challenged the Lord.

“Would you kill everyone in the city if there are fifty righteous?”

No, was the reply, not if there are fifty.

What about forty-five, or forty, or thirty?  What about twenty?  Or even ten?

God agreed to spare the city if He could find just ten righteous people in the entire city. Surely there would be ten upright people scattered in remote corners of Sodom.

But God, though infinite in mercy, could not find ten people worthy enough to save the city.  Genesis says that they were ALL corrupt.

One wonders if major cities in America have reached such a point.  Freedom itself is in the balance.  There can be no democracy if there are not honest elections.  But across America the corruption is so vast that it is doubtful we can get an honest count of votes.  Democracy depends on honesty.  As Ben Franklin said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.  As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”  It’s as simple as that.  If we can’t trust leaders to accurately count citizen’s votes, we can’t be free.

John Adams exclaimed, “Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.”    What would John Adams—or any of the Founding Fathers—say about the killing of 63 million babies in the United States?  Would they wonder about the nation they founded?

It did not need to come to this! We could have done something when the problem was small, but now it has overwhelmed us.  Like Shelly’s Frankenstein, we created a monster that has turned on us.

Are we the modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah?  There are Christians who support politicians that are radical abortionists.  And then there are those who won’t cast a vote to abolish it.  Why have we let this happen? Are we that passive about evil?  If so, we deserve what we get.  Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Christians know that we will ultimately stand before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ.  Can we stand there proclaiming His name with the blood of innocent babies on our hands?

Until next time,

Jim O’Brien