Oh, ye foolish Evangelatians! who has bewitched you?
In our own churches and gatherings, Jesus Christ has for so long been declared as Crucified and Risen!
And yet, we need to get this one current confusion cleared up.
Did we obtain the armor of God from any strong man of this world? Or did we come under our Lord’s protection by receiving and believing the Faith in His Gospel?
Are we so foolish? Having been guided by the Holy Spirit, are we now herded into dependence on the powers of this world to assure our so-called religious freedom?
Let us not forget, y’all, what Christ himself taught:
“Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.”
Lately, some of the good ole boys got waylaid and diverted from the straight and narrow. The straight and narrow Way says we’re only made righteous by the blood of the Lamb who was slain for us on Calvary’s hill.
But some of us got the notion that our peace and safety was somehow depending on some high and mighty principalities and powers in high places.
It reminded me of what ole Paul wrote to the believers in Galatia, way back in the day, when he posed the question of who had bewitched them!
Boys, we gotta remember that the shield of faith protects us from the schemes and the wiles of the devil. It ain’t no AR-15 that’s gonna be our security, even in these perilous days. And there ain’t gonna be no saving grace flowing from the latest joker who thought he was in charge of things. No sirree.
I mean, its sure enough pretty obvious that times are bad and all hell’s a-break-in’ loose and maybe even the seven seals breaking loose and all that.
But this ain’t the first time that times got so bad that God had to bring judgement.
Remember Noah, way back in the early days. I mean, as bad as people had gotten, God counted Noah as righteous. And he didn’t have no AR-15, didn’t have no connections to the prood hooligans nor the qanon crowd nor the racist rabble nor even the Republican Party.
All Noah had was his own two hands, a few tools, and some young’uns that he and his wife had raised, and enough faith to believe what God was a-tellin’, and then the faith and the courage to act on what God said to do.
I mean, Noah knew things was goin downhill but he didn’t let it waylay him from doing what he had to do
He just stayed busy, his nose to the Arkstone, doing what the Lord told him to do and sure ’nuff when the Big One came, he and family and all them animals rose above all the destruction.
I heard this song from Tom Pittman on WNCW. It’s about Noah, a man who found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Some of the good ole boys got it right in this rendition . . .
And while that’s all well and good, I thought I’d toss in my two cents worth, because since the days of Noah, we’ve gone high tech and now we have trains!
So here’s my version of an update on how we believers today are a little bit like Noah and we can find grace in the eyes of the Lord
In Search for Blue, my current novel project, here’s a recently composed passage from chapter ?. The time period is 1935; the place is Blue Ridge Parkway under construction in North Carolina:
Meanwhile up in Washington Secretary of Interior Ickes was organizing work crews with picks and shovels a-flailing all across the nation, to get all the public lands whipped into shape: trees and shrubs and grasses gettin’ planted to stabilize dirt banks, which are, these days, likely more stable the banks on Main Street. But wait a minute, shut my mouth, those money banks have come a long way toward stabilizin’ since Mr. Roosevelt slapped a nationwide bank holiday on ’em back in ‘thirty-three, to stop the run on the banks, which had caused a whole slew of ’em to run out of money. I mean, what good is a bank if it ain’t got no money in it! Hard times ever’where back then, boys; I’m a-tellin’ you. Even the Town of Boone went broke back in ‘thirty-one, on account of folks not payin’ taxes on account of not havin’ enough business and income and money a-circulatin’ to keep the wheels of progress a’rollin’.
But after Mr. Roosevelt and his New Dealers got the banking system near’bouts shut down, after a while they got it cranked up again; it was pretty much from the bottom up, as much as I can tell. The Feds rolled out a whole slew of work programs; they all had alphabet names. The main ones ’round these parts were CCC and WPA. Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s man in charge of the WPA, said North C’lina would get its share of funds for puttin’ people to work, and sure ’nuff it happened. After a while they had local boys out there a-cuttin’ a trail all along the Blue Ridge. They started up at the Virginia line. The Virginia crews started there near Cumberland Knob–not Cumberland Gap, mind you–that’s way over at Kentucky, where Dan’l’s first trail took him to. Anyway, the plan was for the Virginia crews to work northward while the North C’lina crews got things a-goin’ and worked to the south. After a while the CCC and the WPA had the Scenic project pret’well cranked up and hummin’ along blazin’ a trail, kinda like Ole Dan’l did back in the day . . .seventeen-hundreds . . . with workers from the unemployment and relief rolls. After the State got the right-of-way and the land acquisitions prett’much squared away, they turned it over to the Feds, which meant Secretary of Interior Ickes handed it off to the new National Parks Service, headed by a fella named Demaray, with Roosevelt’s man Harry Hopkins headin’ up the WPA to get the workers lined up and swingin’ their axes and shovels and whatnot to blaze a trail, kinda like Ole Dan’l Boone did back in the day, you know, seventeen hundreds.
If any Citizens are wondering why Congressional Democrats still strive to impeach Trump after his authority has already been deleted by the American people, it’s because we Americans need to know and comprehend how he tried to destroy our Republic during the closing days of his presidency.
Today, Congressional Democrats are re-presenting the story of January 6, 2021.
Their arguments are presented under the official proceedings of impeachment, but really they’re just trying to make sure American citizens understand how close we came to disaster on January 6.
Because of Donald Trump’s treasonous incitement to riot.
So now, a month later, the Trumpian rump of the Republican party are trying their damnedest to ignore the impeachment.
But for those Americans who still care about the rule of Law and Justice and preservation of domestic tranquility, the criminality of Trump’s treasonous call for January6 insurrection is being laid out for all the nation to see and understand.
It looked to me like the Day of broken glass.
It was a fatefully destructive day not unlike the riotous assault that the upsurging Nazis inflicted on Germany during the night of November 9-10, 1938: Kristallnacht.
My prayer for the peace and safety and justice of America is that our January 6 Day of Broken Glass is not a bad omen like Kristallnacht turned out to be for the German Republic in 1938.
Accordingly, I urge my fellow Americans to pay attention to the impeachment proceedings. Not because Congress will succeed in impeaching Trump (it won’t happen), but because we need to see the handwriting on the wall.
Mene, mene, Trump’ll incite ‘em.
Don’t let happen to America what happened to Germany in the 1930’s.
Here’s a fragment of ancient writing; it was recovered from a cave in Israel:
The document is part of a treasured trove of historical and prophetic writings which is often referred to as the Prophetic works of the Bible. Long before we Christians began calling it “Bible”, Jewish readers called it Nebi’im, which means Prophets.
Pictured above is a fragment from the writings of the prophet Isaiah, who lived and wrote in Jerusalem about 2700 years ago. He prophesied, among other things, of the ordeal that Jesus endured before his death and resurrection.
This fragment is on display at the Museum of Israel in Jerusalem.
About a century later, another prophet, Ezekiel, wrote on his scrolls for posterity. His prophetic legacy, which was written while he was in exile in Babylon, consisted of writings that must have resembled the ancient Isaiah fragment pictured above.
In the portion of Ezekiel’s writing that we call chapter 37, the prophet describes a terrible vision, which he described in this way:
“The hand of the Lord was upon me, and He brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; and it was full of bones.
He caused me to pass among them round about, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley; and lo, they were very dry.
He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “Oh Lord God, You know.”
Again He said to me, “Prophecy over these bones and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.’
“Thus says the Lord God to these bones, ‘Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, that may come to life.”
About a year ago when Pat and I were visiting Israel, we toured the Yad Vashem, Holocaust Museum, where we saw the monument pictured above. After viewing this memorial, we went inside and were guided through a tour by a very knowledgable British fellow name Harry Orenstein.
If you’re ever in Israel, you should visit the Holocaust Museum. It’s a real eyeopener for those who are attentive to the warning signs of history.
During the moment of Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones, he receives this prophecy:
“Behold, O will take the sons of Israel from among the nations where they have gone, and I will gather them from every side and bring them into their own land; and I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel.”
Now, regardless of how you think about God, or the prophets, or Israel, or people such as I who believe in supernatural interventions, it is an historical fact that the Jewish people were removed from their ancient homeland by the powers that be in the ancient empires of Babylon and Rome.
And it is an historical fact that: the Jewish people managed, in the middle of the 20th-century, to return in great numbers, to their ancient homeland and re-establish a nation called Israel.
And it is an historical fact that: the very Holocaust by which Nazis sought to extinguish the Jewish people—that murderous “final solution”— ultimately became the terrible, tragic prime motivating crucible from which the Jews escaped, and mounted up the resolve to repopulate their ancient homeland.
So history indicates that the “final solution” inflicted by Nazis on Jews . . . turned out to be, instead, a final solution for the Jewish problem of securing a home in this world of sorrow and woe.
Pretty amazing, I thought. I’m hoping they can continue working it out with the Palestinians.
Several years ago, while I was researching Europe as it existed in 1937, I wrote a novel, Smoke, that weaves an historical tale around events and circumstances in Europe that preceded—and eventually led up to– that Holocaust.
If you would like to learn more about the tragedy of Holocaust, but are unable to go to Jerusalem to see Vad Yashem, check out the U.S Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, which is a part of the story in my first novel, Glass half-Full.
Hitch a ride on the mystic chords of memory, the baseline of Time, presented through my novelic story . . . King of Soul . . . Picture it . . . all ye boomer guys . . . picture the scene in your mind:
Spring of 1963, Jackson Mississippi neighborhood . . . time for baseball, improvised on the corner lot with the neighborhood boys, guided imaginatively with Mickey and Roger and Yogi and Jackie and Willie and Hank Aaron . . .
. . . Hank Aaron, baseball legend and Negro trailblazer, who passed away today, January 22, 2021. . . from this life, and whose baseball heroics fired the imagination of millions of young American Little League players, back in the day . . . in the mystic chords of time . . . whether black or white . . . trotting out every step in between first base and home after a home-run hit . . . Picture the sandlot scene in 1963:
The next morning, on the other side of town, three sixth-grade cowboys were running through a big grassy back yard, aiming at each other with toy pistols, whoopin’ and hollerin’ at each other, imagining themselves to be like their heroes in the movies. On this twelfth day of June, summer vacation was still new enough to be a wild pleasure. The boys paused from their make-believe gunfight to sample the plum trees in Donnie’s back yard, but the plums were not yet ripe.
A few minutes later those holstered playthings were dropped on the lawn when Troy and his buddies from down the street showed up.
“Y’all come down to the lot for a game,” Troy yelled from the next yard over. Donnie, Mike and Joe watched Troy and three others as they traipsed through the neighbor’s yard along the backside of the chain-link fence. When they got into Donnie’s yard, Troy voiced his challenge again. “Us against you. Come on.”
“Four against three?” asked Donnie, as if it made any difference.
The point was—it’s time to play ball, y’all. The numbers didn’t matter, especially to Troy, because the score always somehow ended in his favor anyway. “There’ll be some other guys showing up, you know.” Troy responded, with confidence, as if he could make it happen. “You can have the next one who comes. Just like last week, we’ll have a bunch more guys before long, since school is out.” Troy had a fielder’s glove on his left hand. He was tossing the baseball into it, then retrieving the ball with his right and tossing it into the glove again, with an easy fluidity of motion that demonstrated, in the midst of his friendly provocation, his baseball agility. He was doing this little perpetual motion between hand and glove while keeping his eyes trained steadily on Donnie.
So how could he not? Donnie knew it was time for baseball, because Troy said so. Troy was leader of everybody on Meadowbrook Lane. And he actually had a point there. This make-believe with cowboys and Injuns was going by the wayside anyway. Donnie knew it, he just didn’t have any direction about it yet, but he knew that because Troy had issued the challenge, now was the time for something more intense, more real than cowboys, more real even than cops and robbers—baseball. Troy knew. He was always ahead of everybody else, except in school. He was, however, king of the playground, the recess time. He was king of the hill too, although they had not played that one for awhile. Donnie’s mama had said it was too rough a game when Troy was involved. Now Donnie was watching Troy’s face, while the bigger boy moved slowly toward him. Troy smiled. His smile looked like the shark’s smile on some cartoon.
“You ready?” he asked. “You can use my glove.” He paused from his ball toss mantra, lifted the mitt up as if for Donnie’s inspection.
“I got one.” Donnie replied.
“Go get it. What’r you waitin’ for?”
I’m waiting for you to get outta my face.
Troy turned and began his next maneuver, which would be exit. The other three fellows followed dutifully. And so Roy Rodgers, the Lone Ranger and Tonto fell by the wayside, like ole Western clips on the cutting room floor of a Hollywood backlot. Now it was time for the real world. Now it was time for, as Donnie’s friend Chris called it, hardball. Maybe Chris would show up. He was a pretty good player—a better player than Donnie, and a better captain. Donnie would make sure to get Chris on his team, if he showed up.
Now it was time for Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra to step up to the plate. And Donnie and Mike and Joe, and Chris and whoever else would show up. Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron. Play ball, y’all.
Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as President of our nation on March 4, 1861.
With the dark cloud of civil war hanging ominously over our Union, the incoming President ended his inaugural message with these hopeful words:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained— it must not break— our bonds of affection.
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone—all over this broad land—will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
But those better angels did not prevail until four year later. His call for peace did not work out as he had hoped, until we escaped the deathly embrace of a bitter civil war.
Now, 160 years later, we again find our United States on the verge of being torn between two zealously ideological factions. A fierce heat of trumpish enmity was intensified two weeks ago when sore-loser rioteers attempted to undermine the Constitutional procedures by which we pass the torch of leadership from one administration to another.
But, in spite of that malevolence . . . we—in accordance with the hymnic anthem of our erstwhile 20th-century Civil Rights crusade—we have overcome those sore losers’ subversive attempt to obstruct a lawful transference of Executive authority.
Two weeks ago, as the Electoral process was unfolding in Congress. . . a courageous Vice President wielded the gavel of authority in the US Senate; he stood at the very pivot point of that Electoral encounter.
Mike Pence’s self-disciplined courage assured the integrity of our transition, even in the midst of a riotous assault on the US Capitol.
In defending our imperiled lawful transfer, Mike carried the the torch of other courageous Americans whose bold service is long remembered in the mystic chords of American memory.
“Profiles in Courage” is the title by which President Kennedy, in his book, commemorated the brave souls whose valor has, through the decades, assured the integrity of our fragile Republic.
Here’s another Profile–a poetic rendition– for Kennedy’s Hall of Courage. It is found in my versified saga of Mike and Joe:
’T’was just a simple twist of irony
in this, our passing Presidential authority:
Our Veep who in ’16 election wielded gavel in the Senate
has now the Oval prize, as he did win it.
So now Ole Joe accepts the Vote of victory
as our 2020 he has won for all to see.
Yes, he who last time swung that Veepy gavel
will now to Oval Office travel.
But now VP Mike wielded that Veepy gavel,
as our nation strove ‘tween Presidents to unravel.
When in the Senate, Electoral votes were counted,
Did Mike’s gavel seal decision honestly accounted?
While leading Christian believers as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Dr. Martin Luther King was lead by the Lord into his wider mission as a human rights Liberator.
As Moses was guided in ancient times by the Lord to deliver his people from slavery, so was Martin guided by God to liberate his people from post-slavery oppression.
That role acceptance came early in his life.
When he was nearing the end of life—when he knew that he had become the target of a racist murderer—Martin spoke gravely to his people and indicated to them how he would like to be remembered. He instructed them not to talk about all the accolades and honors that human society had laid upon him.
Inspired by the teachings of Jesus that had been long ago recorded in Scripture, Matthew chapter 25, Dr. King spoke this request:
“I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody.
I want you to say that day that I tried to be right and to walk with them. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe the naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. And I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.
Yes, if you want to, say that I was a drum major. Say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness.
And all of the other shallow things will not matter.”
Glass half-Fullis the title of my first novel, published in 2007. The story takes place in the Washington DC area.
In chapter 21, we find that two DC detectives have arrested a suspected rapist, Barney Bluntell. At police headquarters, they are questioning the suspect when they suddenly receive a lot more confession than they had thought possible.
In this scene, Barney the suspect is getting worked up as he answers a few more questions than detectives Trent and Nguyen have asked him:
“You’re damned right.” Barney was on the soap box now, showing his true colors, almost unaware of his prisoner status, lecturing the cops on what would have to be done to get society straightened out.
“And how did you know who these women are…the ones that need to be put in their place?”
“It’s the Jewish women. They started the whole thing. Now its infecting everybody. The men don’t know how to handle their women. They’ve fucked everything up. The Jews started communism. Marx and Lenin were Jews. You know that, don’t you?”
Now Nguyen thought he’d take a chance. “Is that why you bombed the Holocaust Memorial?”
Barney looked at Nguyen, surprised at the question. “That whole damned holocaust never happened. You know that don’t you? They made the whole thing up so they could get sympathy from everybody else…just like the niggers.”
“Oh yeah? What did they do?”
“They didn’t do a damn thing, except pick cotton. The Jews raised a bunch of hell until they got Lincoln and the rest of that nigger-lovin’ crowd worked up enough to fuck the whole country. It’s been a mess ever since then.”
Nguyen’s voice became calm, professorial. “The last time I checked a history book, Barney, it said that it was a bunch of Christian abolitionists who got that movement going.”
But the detective realized he was getting off track. He paused and thought for a moment. “What do you think it’s gonna take to get this country straightened out?”
“It’ll take a major rearrangement of power,” said Barney, now overconfident in his own psychopathic harangue. Having lost sight of the criminal implications of his actions, Barney was misinterpreting Nguyen’s interest in his activities. Barney was not an habitual criminal, but an idealogue who had gotten sucked into a criminal fringe of fascism. “These days, people don’t know what real power is.”
“What is it?” Nguyen inquired, now spreading the net of inquiry over Barney’s self-laid trap of fanatical egocentrism.
“Power is whatever is taken by those who are unafraid to be strong.” Barney smiled, lost now in his own self-incriminating screed, as if he were talking to himself. “Power is what you are going to see very soon, when the obstructions to it are taken out of the way.”
“What obstructions?”
“The weak and inferior elements. They’re dragging the whole evolution of the human race down. It’s just a matter of time before power will be put back where it belongs. The Jews were the ones who fucked it up to begin with, with their worship of weakness…then the niggers, spicks. Some people were born to be slaves. What we need is a caste system. The Hindus had a few things right, but they missed it on the animals thing, and the untouchables. It’s better to just extinguish them altogether.”
Nguyen looked over at Trent, amazed at the unbridled fanaticism that had just passed from the prisoner’s lips. They were at a loss for words for a minute or more. Derrick Trent stood, stretched, began pacing around at one end of the room. Then he asked, “So that’s why you moved on the Holocaust Museum?”
“That was only a wake-up call. The next time, it’ll be much more effective.”
“Says who?” Trent shot back.
“Says me…and about 100 other people,” declared Barney, not even thinking now of the legal implications of his diatribe.
