The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Wednesday, September 18, 2024

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.Part I (00:13 - 07:19)Israel Sends a Deadly Message: Nearly 3,000 Pagers Connected to Hezbollah Detonate in Calculated AttackWhat we know about the Hezbollah pagers attack by The Washington Post (Gerrit De Vynck, Sammy Westfall and Elizabeth Dwoskin)Part II (07:19 - 17:46)The Limits of Military Distance: The U.S. Faces Huge Decision About Use of Long Range Missiles by Ukraine in War Against RussiaPart III (17:46 - 22:14)Dying Soldiers and a Crashing Birth Rate: Ukraine Faces Complex Situation in Its Fight for SurvivalOne Million Are Now Dead or Injured in the Russia-Ukraine War by The Wall Street Journal (Bojan Pancevski)Part IV (22:14 - 24:41)Identity Politics on the Ballot in California: Will Californians Elect First Transgender Woman to Office?In tight Inland Empire race, first transgender candidate could oust first Republican Latina by The LA Times (Mackenzie Mays)Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Wednesday, September 18, 2024. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction, and sometimes in a political extremity or in a military move, things happen, and it seems like there has to be more here than meets the eye. And that's exactly what is the case in the headline news coming about Israel's presumed role in the explosion of almost 3,000 pagers that were in use by the terrorist group, Hezbollah, largely in Lebanon. And you look at this and you recognize, we're talking about exploding pagers. Now, behind all of this are some massive issues that many in the mainstream media aren't even going to explain. First of all, why pagers? You know, these days, some of us are old enough to remember when professionals in the

United States carried pagers. Most of them just began as a numerical pager. And then, of course, the text also became a possibility. And yet you're just talking about very crudely illuminated numbers and letters coming across a very tight screen, just a matter of about an inch or two inches wide. And it just told you that someone's trying to get a hold of you so you could call them. You're being paged. Medical personnel use these at first and then other professionals. but this is something way in the past in terms of American culture, except for the fact that some people are using pagers here now. But why? You have to ask the question why?

Why in a smartphone era? Why in the age of the iPhone do you use a pager? Well, there are some people who say they use them simply for simplicity, but the fact is that there is a more nefarious purpose behind much of the use of pagers. If you are carrying a smartphone, guess what? There's a good likelihood that someone can trace you to your location. And by the way, you say, well, I have location turned off.

Well, nonetheless, those cell towers that are so key to the system, they do not have their location turned off. And this is why, if you're up to something and you don't want the police to be able to find you, you better not have a smartphone in your pocket. That's the bottom line. And this is also true of terrorist organizations around the world, particularly if you have a foe like Israel. Because Israel has a specialization in digital means of locating people.

and then doing things very unpleasant to the terrorist enemies of Israel. But what we're talking about here is something that wouldn't be quite believable in something like a James Bond movie. And yet, this is headline news yesterday. The story is something like 2,800 pagers exploding in the pockets of men who were involved with Hezbollah, the terrorist organization. And they went off. And they killed at least nine people, as of what we know right now. others are likely also to be reported as casualties. It is also reported that there were something like 3,000 injuries.

Some news reports are saying even more. And then you start to look at this and you say, wait just a minute. Are you telling me that someone deliberately exploded pagers? Well, the answer is that pages don't explode by themselves. So, yes, there was some, let's just say this, there was some intervention with these pagers. These pagers were turned into deadly devices. And everyone is assuming that Israel is behind this, for numerous reasons. Number one, Hezbollah is a declared enemy of Israel,

and the headlines the day before this happened were about Israel declaring that it was going to have to take more serious military action against Hezbollah. By the way, the American White House was very much trying to lean against Israel in expanding that military action, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have been very clear that they're going to defend the nation. And that includes addressing the threat of Hezbollah. And I guess that's what explains the headlines coming yesterday.

But let's just look at him for just a moment. It's also sending a very clear message. It's sending a very clear message that, number one, Israel can intervene. Presumably, it's Israel. That's what the world's assuming. That Israel can intervene in the supply chain for pagers being used by terrorist organizations in a different country. That tells you something. It is also very interesting that when you have a terrorist organization,

trying to use pagers as a way of not being located. Well, guess what? You pass out the pagers. In one sense, they don't have to locate you. The pager just located you. And there's more to it even than this. There's symbolism. This is coming from the Middle East. It is coming laden with messaging that many in the Middle East are now recognizing. And that comes down to the fact that these particular pagers were often carried in the pocket by men, which means that there was a particular intent here to cause maximum damage to the male body. Enough said. The Washington Post reported it this way, quote, at 3.30 p.m. on Tuesday in Lebanon, thousands of pages used by the militant group, Hezbollah, exploded across the country, wounding at least 2,800 people, and killing at least nine,

according to health officials. Now, again, I go back to the fact that truth is stranger than fiction. If you were told that this was the plot of some kind of movie, you'd say, it's pretty far-fetched, but it's actually now headline news all across the country. And the point is, that this is sending a signal. It's sending a very clear signal. Not only was this a direct attack upon Hezbollah by, we presume Israel, you also look at the fact that it is sending multiple messages. And, you know, there's the irony too. A pager is supposed to receive a message. Well, those pagers received a message. In worldview terms, there's another aspect of this we need to look at, and that is that there is this very strange but explainable confluence now between Shia and Sunni

Islam in these two deadly terrorist enemies of Israel. By the way, also enemies of the West, that comes down to Hezbollah, which is Shiite. That is to say it identifies with the Shia version of Islam. That is largely centered right now in Iran. And Hamas is Sunni. That's the majority of Muslims around the world. And in many ways, you'd be looking to Mecca or Saudi Arabia as the center of gravity for Sunni Islam. the fact that they're working together. Now, just remember that the Shia nation of Iran had declared war on other Arab nations that were populated by Sunni Muslims. But now you see that the common enemy of Israel has led to a coalescence, indeed a coalition, when it comes to these Islamic terrorist groups. By the way, just another footnote, did you notice that the Washington Post

calls it a militant group? It's not that that's wrong. It's just that I think in moral terms, that's not enough. This also, just in worldview terms, leads to something else. We have to recognize that is behind this kind of headline. And that's this. When you are sending this signal, you need, let's just say if you're a nation, let's just say, for example, you could be Israel. You need a sense of plausible deniability that you have anything to do with this. And yet at the same time, you want your enemies to know, we did this and we can do it again tomorrow. We live in a dangerous world, this headline yesterday just reminds us of a form of danger, many did not anticipate. But next, as we're looking at trouble spots around the world, we need to go to the headlines

that have to do right now with the Russia-Ukraine war. And remember that war came about because Russia invaded Ukraine, claiming that it would seize its territory and make it a part of Mother Russia. And by the way, the pledge, at least, the ambitions of Vladimir Putin and the Russian regime are for the entirety of Ukraine. but Russia has been unable to press that case to a clear military victory, and Ukraine's even been able to invade Russia. But it's also clear that Russia, just given the size of its army, the size of its population, and frankly, the weight of Russian history is anticipating that the West will tire of this entire affair and Ukraine will simply fall into his lap. If not all of Ukraine,

then some kind of negotiated settlement. And yet on both sides, and this is becoming increasingly clear, even from authorities within the Biden administration, which has been stating over and over again that Ukraine has a right to defend itself and all of its territory prior to the invasion. The fact is that the White House really doesn't believe that the settlement of this armed struggle is going to be a return to say something like 2021. That's not going to happen. And so the very best that can be hoped for most people would consider would be some kind of settlement, some kind of negotiation between Ukraine, which has been invaded by Russia and Russia, and the limitation of how much damage is done to Ukraine should be the Western goal here. And the continuation of Ukraine as a sovereign nation

with definable and defendable borders and with very clear allies led by the United States and European allies, that's something that most people think is the best that can be hoped for here. But Ukraine, we can understand this, hopes for some kind of game changer. And in one sense, the Ukrainian invasion of ground forces into Russia was a game changer, but you know, it seems to have more interest in the West than it does in Russia. And that's because Russia has a very long history of simply allowing invaders to invade, knowing that the easy thing when it comes to Russia is invading the Russian motherland. The hard thing is getting out. And here's where Russian history would say, just ask Napoleon, or just ask Adolf

Hitler. Invading Russia is easy. Succeeding and getting out of Russia turns out to be deadly. But the key issue right now, and it's coming down to decisions to be made in capitals such as London and Washington, D.C., is whether or not Ukraine is going to be armed with and allowed to use inside Russian territory long or longer range attack missiles. In the case of Great Britain, this is the missile known as the Storm Shadow. Ukraine is even more interested. in gaining access to and the ability to use attackums. That's an American missile. The attackum is A-T-A-C-M-S as a system. It is known as the Army Tactical Missile Systems, Attackums. And even as the White House has been talking with Ukraine and its president about the use of that missile, it is not allowing at

this point the use of any kind of missile of this sort, not to mention of this power, Russia except as a clear defensive effort by Ukraine given an aggression by Russian forces. But there's a bigger story here. And this is the kind of thing we need to look at because the bigger story becomes instantly clear when Russian President Vladimir Putin responds by warning London and Washington and anyone else hearing that if the Western allies allow Ukraine to use those weapons inside Russia, it will be tantamount to a war between Russia and NATO. the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, the Mutual Defense Pact, and that would be horrifying news. Quite honestly, it's not clear that Vladimir Putin means it. On the other hand, it is not clear that he doesn't mean it.

And in the arsenal of options that Russia has, it's not just an open declaration of war upon the entire West, Western Europe, the United States, Canada, you get on the list. It is also the potential of carrying out limited military action. in the name of saving, say, Russian dignity or Russian prestige or Russian defense in making a point. And this is where things get very, very dangerous. As you look at the lessons of the 19th and the 20th centuries, but particularly in the 20th centuries, one of the saddest things is how many wars were apparently started virtually by accident. How many wars that became so horrifyingly deadly were started with some kind of miscue or misunderstanding. The classic example of this is World War I, where quite honestly, you had mutual

defense packs that were very badly timed, and you had leaders who misread each other's intentions. Now, there's no doubt that imperial Germany had imperialistic ambitions. No doubt about that under Kaiser Wilhelm II. But exactly what was intended in this context became very unclear, and the next thing you knew, the entirety of the continent of Europe was at war. A war so horrifying that it was called at the time the war to end all wars, which of course it did not do. But in the Christian worldview, there's something else behind this we need to think about. First of all, the morality of the war. In this case, Ukraine has every right to fight back against an invader, every right to fight back against an aggressor. But that does not mean

that every nation that fights back against an aggressor is successful or is victorious. It also doesn't mean that you can just simply say anything. necessary to defend this nation on its terms at this time is legitimate. And here's the issue from the Christian worldview understanding. Christians have tried to come to terms with the situation under which war is a just cause. This is called in Christian ethical theory, just war theory. You can say, well, it is unjust to invade a nation. It is just to defend your own nation against an attack. There are other conditions that are necessary. Just war theory is actually divided into two major categories. What is necessary for a war to be justly declared? And then secondly, how a just

war is justly to be fought. Now, in the question of these missiles, it really turns out to invoke both of these arenas of just war theory. So in other words, Christians have been thinking about this for a very long time. So one aspect of just war theory says that it is just to help a nation that has been wronged to defend itself, a nation that has been invaded to defend itself. So the involvement of European allies, the involvement of the United States in arming Ukraine and encouraging Ukraine, training Ukrainian troops, giving financial aid and other forms of support to Ukraine, that's all legitimate. Just war theory makes that very clear. If the war is just, then it is a just cause to assist a beleaguered nation or a beleaguered party in the case of such an attack. So that much is

clear. But what do you say about these longer range missiles? Well, this is where Christian war theory gets a little more complicated. And where, at least in the history of how Christians have thought this thing through, you can very quickly find yourself moving from support for a beleaguered or an attack nation into involvement in what's known as a proxy war, in which case you would have allies, Vladimir Putin would claim, who are simply setting up Ukraine as a convenient tool whereby the other nations can carry out their own nefarious plans against Russia. That would be the case made by Vladimir Putin, that would be the case that Putin would be making, of course, at the United Nations is the case he might make in terms of some kind of military action or some kind

of action that would aid his military effort in terms of hostile action towards the United States and its Western allies, who are the friends of Ukraine. So this gets really complicated. But the point is it is also complicated when you have a series of decisions made incrementally. This is one of the lessons of war. It's one of the big lessons of war. We see it mostly in retrospect. You have too many wars that became a protracted struggle when in retrospect a fast action sending a clear signal would have perhaps prevented the war, certainly prevented its massive expansion and enlargement over time, its casualty rate, and frankly, its place in history. But you also have a situation in which making these decisions incrementally is seen backwards as hurting rather than, you

than helping the war aim or the war effort. And in this case, here's the thing. President Biden has said over and over again that the United States will stand behind Ukraine. It has stood behind Ukraine. Massive amounts of money, massive amounts of military armament, weaponry, massive amounts of military advice, massive amounts of diplomatic effort, all of that expended on behalf of Ukraine. Frankly, the American president has made extravagant promises about Ukraine that he's not going to be able to back up with reality. And that's not just because he's going to be out of office in four months. It's because he shouldn't have said those things in the first place. But when you look at this decision, you understand that if the United States and Great Britain and other allies had said in the

beginning, look, Putin, you've invaded Ukraine. If you don't stop this, then we're going to bring the full weight of every support we can give to Ukraine pretty much without limitation. Then Putin would have been faced with a choice. But when you do it now, when frankly, Putin's in a pretty strong position, you are doing it in such a way that makes it morally, politically, and militarily far more dangerous that it would have been at the very beginning. And I think this is the reason why you had the American president and the British Prime Minister meeting together just a matter of days ago to discuss this. And guess what has been announced? What has been announced thus far is nothing, because what we're looking at is a very difficult situation that is more

likely to result in a stalemate, even in terms of this decision. Or, you know, or, you're looking at, It could be a decision in which the British go forward and the Americans do not. And that comes back to the fact that the American missile is actually more threatening to Russia than the British missile system. But this is an unfolding story. And like so many of these stories, we're simply going to have to watch. But we understand the stakes in this situation are very high. But before leaving our consideration of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, we also need to recognize that war is one of the deadliest activities undertaken by human beings. And so yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran an article with this headline.

One million are now dead or injured in the Russia-Ukraine war. That's one million. There are those who think this is a gross understatement. In both cases, the nations deny that they've had casualty rates at that level. But you go beyond the politics and you go beyond the claims made in war and you understand that the population of Ukraine is now down not by a million. And by the way, the million casualties is largely wrong. Russian, but also a horrifying death count in Ukraine. But you look at the population of Ukraine, and there are estimates that it is down by as much as four or five million since the beginning

of the war with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The vast majority of those millions have left Ukraine to go to other nations, but you are looking at an expanding death toll. And here's where things get really, really interesting in ways that are far beyond the headlines. And we're going to be talking in coming days about the situation in China. where in China you have an announcement about a falling birth rate, of course. It's a real dire threat to the continuation of China as a world power. And so they're tinkering with two things with the adoption policy for international adoptions and also with the retirement age. But we're going to talk about that later. But it's related to something that has to be dateline from

Ukraine. And in this case, the worldview significance is not just about Ukraine. It has application everywhere. So in Ukraine, you're looking at an army and you're looking at soldiers who are by, say, American experience, quite old. You are looking at soldiers, the majority of whom are in their 30s, some of them in their late 20s, and their 30s, their 40s, their 50s. And there is a specific exemption for younger men in Ukraine from this kind of military service. And you ask, why, why, why? In most situations, it'd be exactly the opposite. Why in Ukraine right now is there an exemption for younger men and is there conscription of older men? Well, the answer is many of these younger men are needed in order to father the babies that are absolutely necessary if Ukraine is going to have

a future. And that means a future, even just in terms of population. Ukraine's current birth rate is the lowest ever recorded in the modern era. In this past year, it is estimated that three times as many Ukrainians died as were born. And that's not just speculation. That's actually taken directly from government supplied data. And the 87,000 births in Ukraine during this period were 9% less than the same period of the previous year. And we are really looking at a desperate situation with the falling birth rate. You can understand why. All of a sudden, there be a reversal of the military logic. Now, it's not the younger men who are being put into battle.

It's the older men. The younger men are being told, go get men. married and have babies. It's absolutely necessary for the future of Ukraine as a civilization. And in worldview terms, this is really of massive importance. Just think about this. Just think about Genesis 1, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Think about how basic that is to God's plan for human flourishing, for human society, even in the beginning, even before the fall. And now we look at the catastrophic impact of the fall. We're even looking at Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and we're looking at a very, very strange picture here where all of a sudden you have older men being sent to war, younger men being told, in effect, we need your babies, and we need

them fast. The Wall Street Journal acknowledges this with a very powerful paragraph. Listen to this. One of the key reasons Zelensky refuses to mobilize the key cohort of men aged between 18 and 25, typically the bulk of any fighting force, is because most of these people haven't had children yet, according to former Ukrainian officials. Should the recruits of that age group die or become incapacitated, future demographic prospects would dim further, Ukrainian demographers say, end quote. So we are looking at an existential threat to Ukraine. In this case, it is not in this dimension coming from Russia. It's coming from a declining birth rate. And the worldview issues behind that, as you know, are massive. Finally, for today, it's interesting to look at a headline from the Los Angeles

times. It simply tells us that two women are now going to be facing off for one seat in the California Senate. And you say, well, why does that big news? It's not because they're women. It's because one of them was born a man. So the big headline here is that they're competing for the California Senate, but one of them is a transgender woman. And that's the Democrat in this case. I don't guess there's a big surprise there. But as you look at this, you recognize there's more going on here than a contested election for a seat in the California Senate. What's going on here, and this is what Christians need to note, is the fact that this is yet another indication of how the mainstream media and the LGBTQ revolution and those that lead it simply try to flood every arena of life

with a constant series of headlines saying, this is normal, this is normal, this is normal. This is a new achievement. This is a new hallmark. This is a new milestone. And it's simply saying that all of this, the progress as they would claim for the LGBTQ agenda and all the rest, the sexual revolution, the war on gender, the victory of the left is simply assumed here to be inevitable. And this is the kind of headline that comes with mixed messages, but they are all basically in the service of that revolution in order to say, here is something, this is new. You should find this a very happy development. You should see this as a sign of progress.

you should be on the side of the revolution and simply understand that once the inevitable happens and you have transgender persons in the California Senate, it just goes to show this is normal and this is right. And I don't think what I'm going to say in conclusion here is going to be a great shocker to many of you. But let's just state the obvious what might take place in the California Senate is not taken by most people as a sign of what is right or what is moral. or in this case even, what is real? Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmuller.com.

You can follow me on Twitter or X by going to Twitter.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbtsbtsk.org. For information on Voice College, just go to voicecollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.