The recent prospectus of the History Book Club recalls the tragic story of the United States presidency of Richard Nixon as told in Robert Dallek’s Partners in Power: Nixon and Kissinger. In the history there’s an illustration of the conflict with demons in the great controversy between Christ and Satan.
Dallek rightly says that Nixon’s “inner demons both lifted him up and brought him down.” That’s for the author probably an unconscious allusion to Psalm 102:10, “Thou hast lifted me up and cast me down,” the cry of the painfully troubled soul who pours out his heart to God in anguish. Nixon was the son of a devout Quaker mother in a humble home; gifted with keen discernment of right and wrong, he distinguished himself as a senator seeking to protect the nation from Communism, and rose to political prominence.
He naturally enjoyed his triumphant rise to fame and power, but he was deprived of a knowledge of how to endure success. Power corrupts the best of men; even King David of old fell victim. The demons who “lifted up” Nixon delighted in tormenting him when they “cast [him] down.” There are “shadowy labrynths” of the once-secret White House history now starkly exposed, illustrating Jesus’ warning, “There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known” (Matt. 10:26). That “labrynth” that Nixon hoped would be forever in shadow is now in open sunlight for the world to see.
The time comes when impeached Nixon kneels in the White House with Kissinger (the [unelected] “co-president”) in desperate prayer to the God whom he knew so slightly. Perhaps his own deprivation of a father in childhood made it difficult for him to address God as “our Father which art in heaven,” who could sustain him through his great and lonely presidential trials.
Nixon came to be despised and hated, and even now is reviled; but we pause to ask the question: can such a man hope to be saved at last?
Yes, even presidents of great nations can repent. The dear Lord granted him decades of quiet introspection and none of us should question what He as the world’s “great High Priest” may have accomplished for him in the end. Not only is the Savior busy trying to save presidents; He is infinite, and is working on you, too. Christ’s work as our High Priest is to re-build us from our childhood anew; no one else understands what influences were upon us when we were in the womb (cf. Psalm 139:13-16); learn to trust Him, let Him work, for He is only your Friend from your mother’s womb.
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