Few things are so deadly as a misguided sense of compassion.

Today's widespread relegation of religion to merely something people do only in the privacy of their homes or churches would have been unimaginable to the founders of the republic - even those who personally repudiated orthodox Christian faith.

The church has been brought into the same value system as the world: fame, success, materialism and celebrity. We watch the leading churches and the leading Christians for our cues. We want to emulate the best known preachers with the biggest sanctuaries and the grandest edifices. Preoccupation with these values has perverted the church's message.

God doesn't want our success; He wants us. He doesn't demand our achievements; He demands our obedience.

God uses prisons to train people for future roles of leadership or martyrdom.

But all at once I realized that it was not my success God had used to enable me to help those in this prison, or in hundreds of others just like it. My life of success was not what made this morning so glorious -- all my achievements meant nothing in God's economy. "No, the real legacy of my life was my biggest failure -- that I was an ex-convict. My greatest humiliation -- being sent to prison -- was the beginning of God's greatest use of my life; He chose the one thing in which I could not glory for His glory.

Lenin, Stalin, and Rakosi recognized that a renewed and purified Christianity was the only force that could move the masses as powerfully as the Marxist ideal could. They attacked it as the enemy that it was and is.