|
The Doorpost · Issue 58 · Friday, June 26, 2026
What Power Does to the Soul
“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18)
Father, we close this week with three stories that each carry moral weight. This morning in a Maryland courtroom, John Bolton, former national security adviser to President Trump and one of the most powerful men in Washington, pleaded guilty to a felony for mishandling classified information, sharing the nation’s secrets while writing a book that served his own reputation and income. In Nigeria, Fulani terrorists attacked Kawel village in the middle of the night, killing Rev. Markus Nyam and 27 other Christians while cutting phone lines so no one could call for help. And a growing national debate over whether women who have abortions should face criminal prosecution is pressing the Church to think carefully about what consistency with the sanctity of life actually requires. Lord, give us the humility to hold power without being corrupted by it, the courage to speak for the dead in Nigeria, and the wisdom to engage difficult moral questions with both truth and compassion. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Today’s issue covers John Bolton’s guilty plea in federal court this morning, the overnight massacre of 28 Christians in Plateau State, Nigeria, and the national debate over whether women who obtain abortions should face criminal prosecution. Go well and have a good weekend.
|
|
Top Stories
Three Headlines to Watch
1) John Bolton Pleaded Guilty This Morning. A Man Who Held the Nation’s Secrets Left the Courtroom a Convicted Felon.
John Bolton, who served as President Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019 before becoming one of his most vocal critics, entered a guilty plea Friday morning in federal district court in Greenbelt, Maryland. He pleaded guilty to one count of illegal retention of national defense information, admitting that he shared more than 1,000 pages of classified material with his wife and daughter while writing his 2020 memoir, which was deeply critical of Trump and earned him significant public attention and income. When the judge asked if he was guilty, Bolton said: “I am, your honor, and I am sorry for it.” Under the plea agreement, he faces up to five years in federal prison and a fine of $2.25 million, half payable within five days of sentencing. He will also forfeit his government pension. Sentencing is scheduled for October 28.
Bolton was originally indicted on 18 counts, including both transmission and retention of national defense information, some classified at the Top Secret/SCI level. The single-count plea represents a significant reduction from the original charges. He had long claimed the prosecution was politically motivated, comparing it at one point to the abuses of Stalin’s secret police. Career prosecutors from the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s office maintained that the case had merit independent of any political consideration. Bolton’s path from adviser to the most powerful man in the world to convicted felon is worth sitting with. The classified information he mishandled did not belong to him. It belonged to the country. He used it to settle scores, advance his public profile, and make money. That is what power can do to a man who does not have the character to hold it. Read the full story at NBC News →
| |
Doorpost Reflection
Bolton was one of the most powerful men in America. He sat in the room where decisions were made that affected millions of lives. He had access to the most sensitive intelligence his country possessed. And when the relationship with his boss soured, he used that access to write a book, settle accounts, and collect royalties. Whether the prosecution was politically motivated is a legitimate question. What is not in question is what he admitted to this morning: he took what was not his and used it for himself. Proverbs 16:18 says pride goes before destruction. Bolton’s career is a case study in that verse. He was not brought low by his enemies. He was brought low by his own choices, made from a position of extraordinary privilege and trust.
The Church should note this not to pile on a man who has already pleaded guilty and expressed remorse, but to recognize the pattern. Power has a consistent effect on the human soul when it is not held in check by genuine accountability, genuine humility, and a genuine fear of God. Pray for John Bolton, that his expressed remorse would be real and that whatever comes next in his life would produce something better than what brought him to that courtroom.
|
Scripture: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” — Proverbs 16:18
2) Fulani Terrorists Killed Rev. Markus Nyam and 27 Other Christians in Nigeria While Cutting the Phone Lines So No One Could Call for Help
In the early hours of Monday, June 22, armed Fulani terrorists attacked Kawel village in Bokkos County, Plateau State, Nigeria, at approximately 2 a.m. Before striking, they cut telephone and telecom lines to prevent residents from calling security agencies. Rev. Markus Nyam, pastor of the Church of Christ in Nations congregation in Kawel, was killed along with 27 other Christians. Resident Jesse Peter Dukut told Christian Daily International that anyone who came out of their home was shot on sight, and that any sound from inside a house drew immediate gunfire. Godswill Nuhu, another resident, confirmed that Rev. Nyam was killed along with members of his own congregation. Church leaders in Bokkos issued a statement confirming the pastor’s death and extending condolences to his family. According to Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List, of the 4,849 Christians killed worldwide for their faith between October 2024 and September 2025, 3,490 were Nigerians, representing 72 percent of the global total.
The attack on Kawel is not an isolated incident. In the same county and surrounding areas, Fulani-linked militants have attacked 13 predominantly Christian villages since May, killing 80 people and destroying dozens of homes. Christians in Bokkos and throughout Plateau State have described a sustained campaign of targeted violence, with attackers systematically identifying church leaders and moving toward their homes during night raids. The Nigerian government has acknowledged the attacks and deployed military units to affected communities, but residents and pastors consistently report that security forces arrive after the attackers have already left. Rev. Nyam was leading his congregation on Sunday. By Monday morning he was dead. Read the full story at Premier Christian News →
| |
Doorpost Reflection
The people who killed Rev. Markus Nyam cut the phone lines first. That detail is not incidental. It tells you this was not a spontaneous act of violence. It was planned, coordinated, and executed with the specific intent to prevent anyone from getting help. The Nigerian government has known that this is happening. The international community has known. The United Nations issued a formal communication about the targeting of Christian women in the north just weeks ago. The killing continues. Rev. Nyam was a pastor leading a congregation in a village in Plateau State. He was not a combatant. He was not a political figure. He was a shepherd of a local church, and men came to his village in the night with guns to kill him specifically.
Pray for the family of Rev. Markus Nyam today. Pray for the surviving congregation of his Church of Christ in Nations church. Pray for the 27 others killed in Kawel village on June 22 and for their families. Pray that the Nigerian government would treat the systematic targeting of Christian communities as the national emergency it is. And pray that the Church worldwide would refuse to let these names disappear into statistics.
|
Scripture: “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.” — Hebrews 13:3
3) Should Women Who Have Abortions Face Criminal Prosecution? The Church Must Think Carefully Before Answering.
A growing number of state legislators, legal advocates, and church leaders are pushing the pro-life movement toward a position it has long resisted: that if life begins at conception, then a woman who ends that life through abortion must be held legally accountable for it just as she would be for any other homicide. Bills treating abortion as murder and subjecting women to criminal prosecution, including life sentences, have been introduced in at least six states in 2026. None has yet passed into law. The Southern Baptist Convention’s newly elected president, Clint Pressley, recently endorsed a Tennessee bill that would treat women who obtain abortions as murderers subject to criminal sentences including life in prison. In Georgia, a prosecutor charged 31-year-old Alexia Moore with malice murder after she gave birth to a severely premature baby who died two hours later, having taken misoprostol during pregnancy. A Georgia judge released her on a $1 bond, signaling deep skepticism that a jury would convict.
The major established pro-life organizations have consistently opposed prosecuting women, arguing that women are often the second victims of abortion, pressured by partners, family members, or a culture that gave them no real alternative. The New York Times published a lengthy examination of the issue this week, documenting the cases of women who have been charged or prosecuted under existing homicide and child endangerment laws in states without explicit abortion prosecution statutes. The legal and moral questions here are not simple, and the Church should resist the temptation to treat them as though they are. The question of what the law should say is not the same as the question of what justice and mercy together require, and the Church’s answer to this debate will say something significant about whether it understands the difference. Read the full story at The New York Times →
| |
Doorpost Reflection
The Doorpost holds without reservation that life begins at conception and that abortion ends a human life. That conviction does not change. And if we hold it consistently, then a woman who chooses to end her child’s life through abortion bears both moral and legal responsibility for that decision, just as she would for the taking of any other human life.
At the same time, the most important question is not what happens after the abortion. It is what the Church and the government should be doing before it. The same state that prosecutes a desperate woman for ending her pregnancy is often the same state that has thrown up legal roadblocks against the pregnancy centers and church ministries that would have walked alongside her before she ever reached that decision. That is a failure of moral coherence. You cannot block the people who are trying to help and then prosecute the woman they never got to reach.
The answer is not to abandon accountability. It is to build the kind of culture and infrastructure that makes abortion unthinkable, not merely unlikely. That means governments getting out of the way of pregnancy centers, churches opening their doors and their resources to women in crisis, and Christian families willing to adopt and foster the children that those women carry to term. The law should reflect the value of every life, born and unborn. And the Church should be so visibly and practically present for women in need that the abortion industry loses its grip on a generation of women who deserved better options all along.
|
Scripture: “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” — Micah 6:8
|
|
Daily Scripture
Verse of the Day
|
“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Proverbs 16:18
|
Proverbs 16:18 is not a verse about dramatic failures. It is a verse about ordinary human pride operating in ordinary human circumstances until the weight of it becomes too much to carry. John Bolton did not walk into the White House planning to become a convicted felon. He walked in as one of the most accomplished national security minds of his generation, trusted with the nation’s deepest secrets, and he walked out having used those secrets to serve himself. The haughtiness Proverbs describes is not usually loud. It is the quiet conviction that the rules that apply to other people do not quite apply to you, that your judgment is reliable enough to make exceptions, that what you know belongs to you because you were the one smart enough to be in the room.
That same pattern is present in every abuse of power the Church has had to reckon with in recent years. The pastors charged with abusing children did not think the rules applied to them. The denomination leaders who covered for them made the same calculation. The Fulani commanders ordering night raids on Christian villages have decided that the lives of people in Kawel are beneath the moral consideration that would otherwise constrain them. Pride, at its root, is the decision that something or someone matters less than it actually does, whether that is the nation’s security, a child’s innocence, or a pastor’s life. The verse tells us where that decision leads. The Church’s job is to take the warning seriously before the fall, not after.
Father, we pray for John Bolton, that his remorse would be genuine and that the years ahead would produce repentance that is visible in how he lives. We pray for the family of Rev. Markus Nyam, for his congregation in Kawel, and for the 27 others killed on June 22. We pray for the Nigerian government to act with the urgency this crisis demands. We pray for the women caught in the middle of the abortion prosecution debate, for the unborn children whose lives hang in the balance of how these laws are written, and for the Church to hold both truth and compassion without collapsing one into the other. And we pray for ourselves, that we would hold whatever influence or authority we have with the humility that keeps pride from doing its work. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
|