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Time is running out to save stolen Napoleonic jewelry · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good day and welcome to Denison Forum's daily article podcast for Tuesday, October 21, 2025.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Chris Elkins, narrator, voicing today's daily article written by friend and cultural theologian, Dr. Jim Denison.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Louvre Museum in Paris was closed again yesterday after four thieves broke into a gallery containing the French crown jewels on Sunday morning stealing eight pieces of Napoleonic jewelry.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Disguised as museum workers, they rode a truck-mounted basket lift up the famed museums exterior and forcibly entered through a window 30 minutes after the Louvre had opened for the day.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: After smashing display cases, they fled the scene on motorbikes.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: One of the stolen pieces was an emerald necklace containing 1,138 diamonds gifted by Napoleon to his second wife.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to Art Detective Arthur Brand, the authorities have a week before the thieves will likely melt the silver and gold down and dismantle the diamonds, causing the priceless item to disappear forever.
• 1:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: So far, no suspects have been identified publicly, a man hunt for them is continuing
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I remember standing in line some years ago to see the British crown jewels at the Tower of London.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I finally made it into the jewel house and onto a moving sidewalk that carried me past the St. Edward's crown, warned when the monarchist crowned the Imperial State crown, warned by the monarch at the end of the coronation and a variety of other regalia.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was permitted only a momentary look at them through bombproof glass, while surrounded by armed guards.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have never felt more like a commoner and less like royalty.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: If life has you feeling the same way today, I have some very good news for you.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: In John 11, Lazarus' sisters sent word in verse 3 to Jesus, regarding their sick brother, Lord, He whom you love is ill.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as John makes clear in verse 5, Jesus loved Martha and her sister as well.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's what's amazing.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: He loves you and me as much as he loved them because God is love verified by 1 John 4 verse 8.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, as St. Augustine noted, he loves each of us as if there were only one of us.
• 2:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: This astounding fact underlies our nation's democratic republic.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: As we noted yesterday, historian Elaine Pegels has shown that the founders believe that all men are created equal was virtually unprecedented in human history.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Their belief in human equality drove their declaration of independence and its commitment to build a nation that would secure our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the problem.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: The equality of humans is, in the Declaration's view, a self-evident right, and what is evident to you may not be evident to me.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: If the pursuit of happiness means that a mother chooses an elective abortion, what about the life of the unborn child?
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: If someone transitions their gender, marry someone of the same sex, or seeks youth in Asia, what about religious liberty of those who disagree?
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: How are we to manage much less secure our equality when our post-truth culture no longer embraces the consensual morality presumed by the founders?
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: The right way to interpret the fact that we are equal is to focus on the word in the declaration that precedes it.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: created, not by evolutionary chance or chaotic coincidence.
• 3:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: As Thomas Jefferson wrote, we are created by our creator.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Note the present tense.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: He wrote not that we were created at the beginning of history, but that we are created still today.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: What does the creator say about his
• 4:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: He created us to need a helper of the opposite sex with whom we are to be married in a lifelong covenant noted in Genesis 2 verses 18 and 24 and in Matthew 19 verses 4 through 6.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: We know from Psalm 139 verses 13 through 16 that he created us at the moment of our conception endowing us with the sanctity of life until natural death according to Job 14 verse 5.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: As Jefferson noted, we are created within alienable rights to life, which God intends to be physical, relational, spiritual, and eternal referencing Luke 2 vs 52 and John 10 vs 10.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: to liberty, which God intends to include freedom from sin and death through salvation in Christ, found in Galatians 5 verse 1 and John 8 verse 36, and to the pursuit of happiness, which God intends to lead to the blessedness that transcends circumstances declared in Jeremiah 17 verse 7 and
• 5:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: All of this is what we were designed and intended by God to experience, but none of it is possible apart from the transforming work of Christ in our hearts and lives.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why is this?
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: The good news is also the bad news part of being created in God's image is being endowed with the freedom our democratic republic is intended to defend, rejecting our racial equality
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: led to 4 million enslaved people in the U.S. around 700,000 deaths in the Civil War and the plague of systematic racism today.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Rejecting our equality at conception has led to more than 63 million deaths in the womb.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Rejecting our equality in governance has led to nearly 2 billion people oppressed under communism.
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: But when Jesus is our Lord, His Spirit manifests the fruit of His unconditional love in our hearts, and we love all people as He loved us listed in Galatians 5 verse 22.
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Such love turned the early church into the mightiest spiritual movement the world had ever seen, referencing Acts 10 verse 34, breaking down barriers of race, gender,
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Culture and religion.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Such loves so impress the pagans that, according to the second century apologists or Tulian, they marveled, see how they love one another.
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Such love turned the world upside down, stated in Acts 17 verse 6, then, and still does so today.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: To this end, let's consider an observation from St. Paul of the Cross, the Italian preacher and theologian who died 250 years ago last Sunday, I invite you to slowly reflect on his words.
• 7:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Love is a unifying virtue which takes upon itself the torments of its beloved Lord.
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: it is a fire reaching through to the inmost soul.
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It transforms the lover into the one loved.
• 7:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: More deeply love intermingles with grief and grief with love and a certain blending of love and grief occurs.
• 7:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: They become so united that we can no longer distinguish love from grief
• 7:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thus, the loving heart rejoices in the sorrow and exults in the grieving love.
• 7:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Therefore, be constant in practicing every virtue, but especially in imitating the patience of our dear Jesus, for this is the summit of Pure Love.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: In quote, the finale of the marvelous musical lamissarab claims to love another person is to see the face of God.
• 8:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Italian Saint Paul would amend this famous line to say, to love another person is to show the face of God.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Who will see your father's face in yours today?