DVD cover to Vision Forum Ministry’s new film to be released late October.

Sixty years ago today the most horrible, tragic, beautiful and inspiring epoch war saga of the modern world came to an end.

It was the last officially declared war in which the American people were united in the proposition that fighting is the job of men on behalf of women and children. It was the last officially declared war in which our national leaders boldly declared that the cause of American freedom and Christianity were inextricably linked. It was the last officially declared war in which our military leaders explicitly called for missionaries to come and transform a nation in bondage to false religion by spreading the glorious Gospel of Christ to those we conquered. It was the last officially declared war in which moral perversion was kept in the closet, deemed anathema in the military, and punishable at law.

In fact, the Second World War was the last war in which the boys who defended our nation were born to a generation of parents who themselves were part of the pre-modern world. With Modernity came a rejection of the biblical family, fathers as providers, and men as protectors. But those parents from the pre-modern world who raised the boys of World War II still embraced the historic principles of Christendom regarding fathers as leaders in the home, men as defenders of women and children, and honor between the generations as essential to the well-being of a people.

Thus, despite the many inconsistencies and sins of our World War II fathers, the above facts not only prove the World War II generation to be our moral, spiritual and cultural superiors, but they explain why America had greater reason for confidence in the providential protection of the Lord God of Battles than does our present creature-worshipping, Christ-denying, perversion-legitimizing, pluralistic generation.

Nations that fear God, need fear no man; no earthly catastrophe.

America has just been hit with the most devastating “act of God” in our nation’s history. But hurricane Katrina has done more that wipe out cities and lives—-she has exposed the underlying depravity of unrestrained sin in a nation of absentee fathers and broken families. At the time of this article, the looting, shootings and general lawlessness has already reached unprecedented levels for our nation. Decades of fatherless families and frenetic feminism have taken its toll. Whether it is the streets of New Orleans or the prisons of Abu Griab, when push came to shove, a fatherless America is a savage America.

The truth is this: Boys who have fathers to love, spank and pray over them do not as a general proposition become thieves, rapists, torturers and murderers when crisis hits. There simply is no substitute for biblical fatherhood. There will be patriarchy or there will absolute chaos.

(Not too long ago I entertained at my home a former Nazi tank commander turned evangelical Christian, and now in his eighties. He explained that when the time came for Berlin to surrender there were three check points around the city: The Russian; the British and the American. My friend, along with his family, did everything they could to get to the American checkpoint. The reason?—They knew that the Americans would behave like Christian men and treat their prisoners with dignity and respect. That was the reputation of our men and our nation.)

On this day of honor and rememberance for the American people, let us give thanks to God for the fathers and mothers who prepared the boys of the Second World War. Let us thank God that they spanked their children, that mothers kept home, and that fathers still “wore the pants in the family.”

Let us remember that Jesus Christ himself reminded us that honoring our mothers and fathers is the first command given by God with a generational promise: When we honor our parents and their legacy, it will be well with us and we will live long in the land which the Lord our God has given to us.