Seven Score And Ten Years Ago

        This post is only about a week old but I bring it to the front because of the 150th anniversary of President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. We have been to the Gettysburg battlefield more times than I can remember and I've written about that time period in America's history quite a few times in these posts. In my short novel titled Isaac Crockett that you can read at www.isaaccrockett.blogspot.com I had a whole chapter where the title character visits the battlefield to reflect on the courage of the men on both sides of that battle and apply that to his own life. There is more than a few things I put in that novella that came from my own life. One of my favorite possessions is a battlefield artifact that I bought. It's a small plain metal cross with a broken loop that once attached it to a chain. It was picked up on Pickett's Charge in the early 1900s. I sometimes hold it in my hand and think about another believer in Christ who probably wore that as he ascended that hill.
        The Gettysburg Address is not in the timeline below for it was not the subject of the post but it stands out as one of the great presidential moments of our history, a history that is attacked today along with our entire heritage.

Day Of Prayer......and Humiliation

         The following is taken from the definitive work on General Stonewall Jackson, Stonewall Jackson, The Man, The Soldier, The Legend by James L. Robertson:

         "One military site Jackson did visit was the great battlefield at Waterloo. Years later Jackson discussed the pivotal engagement with his army physician, Dr. Hunter asked whose troops dispositions were the wisest, Napoleon's or Wellington's, Jackson leaped up from his stool and replied with much enthusiasm, 'Napoleon's, by all odds!' McGuire then asked, 'Well, why was he whipped then?' Jackson answered without hesitation  'I can only explain it by telling you that I think God intended him to stop right there.' "

         The following is taken from Abrahamlincolnonline.org:

        

Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day Washington, D.C. March 30, 1863 Senator James Harlan of Iowa, whose daughter later married President Lincoln's son Robert, introduced this Resolution in the Senate on March 2, 1863. The Resolution asked President Lincoln to proclaim a national day of prayer and fasting. The Resolution was adopted on March 3, and signed by Lincoln on March 30, one month before the fast day was observed.

By the President of the United States of America. A Proclamation. Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation. And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness. Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th. day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion. All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh. By the President: Abraham Lincoln
William H. Seward, Secretary of State.

Timeline:

December of 1862.............The Union army suffered a major defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg.
March 2, 1863...................The U. S. Senate introduces a Resolution for a National Day of Prayer.
March 3, 1863...................The Senate adopts the Resolution.
March 30, 1863.................President Lincoln signs it.
April 30, 1863...................National Day of Prayer and Humiliation is observed.
April 30 to May 6, 1863...The Union suffers a crushing defeat at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
May 10, 1863....................Stonewall Jackson dies from injuries sustained at Chancellorsville.
July 1-3, 1863...................The Union army is victorious at Gettysburg, the tide of the war is turned.

         The above Resolution was a legitimate plea for mercy from God and not a political ploy. The humility is obvious and should be humbling to us today if we would permit it. God will raise nations and He will cause them to fall....all according to His purposes. Whether it was Napoleon or Jackson, or America in past wars, or America today, God's will shall be done and all to his glory, and that 'will' may not be what we might expect. Another defeat for the Union began on the very day of prayer and humiliation. Many may have expected a victory. Stonewall Jackson accepted his fate as God's will, for that is all he would ever want! Even if we as a people would humble ourselves before God over our own "presumptuous sins' our immediate future may be bleak but we would know this for sure.... that His will shall be done, it shall be to His glory, and we will forever praise Him for that.

Choosing A College

        This is my Lord's Day offering.


         My son is 27 years old now. He graduated from high school in 2004 and it was in his junior year that he, I should say we, started getting serious about choosing a college. I have had friends tell me that they gave their son or daughter complete freedom in choosing the school they would go to. I was a little bit different. To begin with I enrolled in a masters degree program in Higher Education in no small part to learn more about our colleges and universities and their history in order to have a more valuable input in helping our son choose a school. I was going to learn all that I could to give him the best advice that I could before he would make that very important decision.
         I had all the reference books and used them to research everything about the schools and then we started on the campus visits. I'll just write about one here. There is a prestigious college down south that is known to be very conservative. So we got in the car and travelled. My son wasn't exactly thrilled with this visit for it is an all all-boys school. So it wasn't a good start and then I got a speeding ticket about two miles from the campus. Reaching that campus after a long tedious drive, a young man took us on a tour and the first stop we made was the dormitories. I causally asked him what the policy was for girls in the room, fully expecting him to say something like...'Oh girls are not allowed in the rooms." He answered me with "Three days."  Three days...hmmm...what does that mean? He answered my thought..."Girls are only allowed to stay for three days....anything more than that would be considered a residence!" My son and I looked at each other. That was the end of that but we finished the tour anyway and came home visiting two other schools on the way. We were fortunate that at the end of this college search we both loved the same school. He matriculated there and graduated two years before his future wife.
         But this post isn't a trip down memory lane for there is a message that I'd like to give here, primarily to the parent, on searching for a college for their son or daughter.  What are the churches like near the college being considered? What good would it be to have four years at even a solid educational institution without a Christ preaching pulpit for your son or daughter to sit before every Lord's Day? Four years is a long time to go without a good church, particularly in what is often the radically secularized environment of higher education. Is it any wonder that statistics show that many young people fall away from faith in college? There will indeed be churches near every college and university but finding one that consistently preaches Christ therefore consistently preaches His cross is very hard and often impossible to do!
         And to the student reading this... the nearness of the church, the friendliness of the congregation, the music, the comfort....what good are any of these things if Christ and His cross are not preached? What good is the prestige of the diploma if you have lost even the discernment you came to college with? What good are friends next to you in the pew if all of you become spiritually malnourished due to a touchy-feely church where preaching our Savior's blood shed on Calvary is considered too morbid for church growth? The key to your education begins on the Lord's Day! Seek a pastor who consistently preaches Christ and run to that worship, then trust Christ to protect you and strengthen you on the other six days and provide you with the discernment necessary to navigate the shoals that are all around the college student of today and to keep faith while a tempest of monumental proportions is rocking our ship of state and wreaking havoc on a populace with little sailing experience and less desire to learn.
       
 

Purge Of The Generals........Redux

        
         I want to preface the following post that I bring back often titled America...Free.....Free Fallin' with a quote taken from an article on WorldNetDaily titled Obama 'Gutting' Military By Purging Generals. The quote is from retired Army General Paul E. Vallely....."Obama is intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged." Yes, General Vallely has been a critic of Barack Obama but he is a respected military analyst who co-authored with Air Force Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror. Quoting the article itself by F. Michael Maloof..."President Obama this year alone has fired some nine generals and flag officers, on top of at least four similar dismissals during his first term, suggesting that a purge may be the real reason behind the removals, which are being described as cases of personal misbehavior."
          I remember a few of those firings and this has concerned me for quite a while now as it obviously has others.  I'm not insinuating that the new generals and fleet officers are involved in any conspiracy, rather that stronger generals are problematic to Barack Obama's plans for our military and our foreign policy. It has been my contention that our White House is occupied by a Manchurian President, who was prepared by those with an ideology that seeks to fundamentally change America. Using Barack Obama's own words here five days prior to his first election victory..."We are five days away form fundamentally transforming the United States of America." Five days should have been enough for a legitimate media to question this statement. Earlier in that year of 2008 Michele Obama was quoted as saying..."We are going to have to change our conversation; we're going to have to change our traditions, our history; we're going to have to move into a different place as a nation." They told us what they intended to do but we, as a people, either misinterpreted their statements or totally ignored them.

To read the full article go to www.wnd.com

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         Events with mind-numbing potential consequences are happening so fast in this world that it is time, maybe long past time, that Americans at least consider that their lives may be about to change....abruptly! America, the long established leader of the free world, is four and a half years into a suicide attempt and three and a half years away from any hope of even partial recover if that suicide is not a fait accompli.  I bring the following post back often. America's descent into the abyss has continued since it was first written. May God open our eyes to that descent that we might call out to Him, for the forces arraigned against the United States at this time, along with the gross ineptitude of this government that was once was a nation to be reckoned with, and coinciding with denials of the Gospel and of God's judgment upon an unbelieving world by whole 'Christian' denominations and institutions, is more than enough reason to literally fall on our knees and cry out for His mercy.

America....Free....Free Fallin'

 Dawn breaks and pull by pull the flag rises until its stars and stripes blend into the red sky. The 21st century America cold front collides with the warm heritage of American liberty. Dark clouds form above the eagle perched atop the pole and the flag snaps as the winds begin another day of adding to the tatters and waiting for the rain that month by month fades the blue and red hues that Americans have savored as the taste of freedom for so long.
             An icy chill settles in the bones of the one raising the flag for he knows that its stars and stripes will be indiscernible before long. He looks down to see if the cracks in the foundation supporting the pole have widened from the tremors that increasingly shake America...they have. He steps back, standing as erect as he can under the burden of seeing his nation collapse, and salutes; a tear forming as he knows that he may be the last to perform this duty. His mind wanders from, first... the drum and piper escorting the newly created flag, to the inspiration for Francis Scott Key's poem, to the charging Union soldier picking up the banner dropped by a fallen comrade in arms, to the lifting of the flagpole on Mt. Suribachi, to the camo flag on the fatigues of the grunt in Vietnam, to the brilliant contrast of red, white and blue with the gray mountain of fallen steel, brick and mortar of the World Trade Center, to the lone flag now raised in the Green Zone of Baghdad.
          In only a few hours cheers and shouts will be heard off in the distance, not for returning heroes, not as a President passes by, not as a war ends in victory but for the beginning of a football game. The Star Spangled Banner will play and be sung by the latest celebrity seeking a national spotlight but not a word of its lyrics will resonate with the power it had since Fort McHenry. We are not as the Roman Empire falling, we are as the Roman Empire beginning whose gods are numerous, whose Caesars consolidate powers given by a populace that only wants another day at the Coliseum. God's hand is being lifted and the exhilaration of choosing our own destiny emboldens us to stare into the eyes of Caesar and say not, "Give me liberty or give me death" but "Give me liberty to choose my own death." All the while the remaining Christians gather in their catacombs wondering if God's mercies on America are over; imploring of Him one more time for America to be a beacon to the nations, a people that not only openly proclaim Jesus Christ as the Savior of mankind but evidence the beneficence, mercy, majesty, power and glory of Him who created the universe and without whom not one molecule would continue to exist.
         It was a marvel and a wonder while it existed in its original form....these United States of America, but now they are afflicted for lack of a shepherd (Zech 10:2.) They are a people once different as night and day in their habits and their speech that bonded together as a new entity...Americans, freed from the tyranny of kings, freed from serfdom and most importantly freed from the lie that man is the master of his fate, the captain of his soul, but that freedom, once defended, is now merely petted in the lap of luxury, "Free" as the famous rocker penned..."Free Fallin'." The American Creed, never spoken but always evident, is now but a liberal screed against God, against tradition, and against history itself.
          The sun, obscured throughout the day by clouds, sets in the West. The rain that would normally give life to the fields, runs off of the frozen, barren and lifeless ground. The flag is lowered and gently folded into the shape of a tri-cornered hat, one of the last vestiges that remain of the fight for independence. No Taps is heard, only the music of the night coming from wherever the revelers gather after the game. The winds die down, no longer needed, for the flag has been taken down, while angels sent by God prepare to blow their trumpets.

What Are Republicans To Do

         Barack Obama was elected, in part, because many people naively and self-aggrandizingly thought that electing an African-American as president would assuage the guilt of racial discrimination in America. These voters also believed the rhetoric of the campaign; that being that Barack Obama was a man of peace, a man who cared for the welfare of all Americans, a man who would bring hope for a secure future. All of these preconceptions have come crashing down. He is not what many perceived him to be and unfortunately is exactly what others knew him to be, but even I who opposed his ideology from the beginning could take heart at first in the faces of many Black Americans who had a special pride in their president and I still hope for the day when we can all do that.   
         Under any kind of normal conditions impeachment proceedings would have long ago started for Barack Hussein Obama. If a Republican were president it would have...and I would have supported it! But these are far from normal times. What is truly amazing is that our media has not been clamoring for impeachment. Even in this polar political climate I would think that many would have said enough is enough. I have written on this many times in these posts of almost five years. Whether it be the abuse of executive orders, or circumventing our Constitution through csars, or delinquency on foreign affairs bordering on outright treason, or insurmountable debt accrued through dubious bailouts and stimulus, or a backdoor strong-armed passing of Obamacare where the true motivation is total control of  our lives, or encroachment of government in corporations such as the global warming bunk attempting to bankrupt utilities where the true motivation is a redistribution of wealth from America to more enlightened nations, or the abuses of our Justice Department, or the attempted cover-up on the investigations into Benghazi, or the deception behind Fast and Furious..... there is more than enough evidence to support proceedings.
          In reality, actually impeaching this president would be more than difficult. Harry Reid holds enough power in this area to throw a monkey wrench in any Senate trial. A good read on this would be Catching Our Flag: Behind The Scenes of a Presidential Impeachment by James Rogan. He was one of 13 House Managers in the impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton and is now a Judge of the Superior Court of California. There are more problems with impeachment. Our enemies are already licking their lips and know that their window of opportunity with Barack Obama is now three years. Impeachment might exacerbate their decisions. Obama, should he realize that he might be impeached, conceivably could implement a doomsday scenario and claim to be temporarily taking full control of the government.....to preserve the government! Even with these scenarios informal impeachment proceedings should begin with intensity and patience so that they can formally begin when and if Barack Obama passes a line that...hopefully...even Democrats could no longer acquiesce to.
         As for the turmoil in the Republican Party, my advice has been and continues to be a stalwart defense of our Constitution by supporting candidates who are outraged as we are by the incompetent leadership, broken promises and now full-fledged attacks by Establishment Republicans upon those who actually see the carnage to our Constitution and immanent disasters that face us brought on by not only Progressives of the Clinton administration and Marxists in the current administration but what has proven to be hopelessly flawed strategies of a political class of Republicans who even if they would regain control of our Senate and Executive Branch would have compromised, as they are now very clearly proving, the principles that originally put most of them into office.
          Work for men and women of integrity in the Congress, work to put the political class out to pasture, nominate a true conservative who will be running against an Establishment candidate who will lie through his teeth as to conservative principles, support and win with a third Party candidate should we fail in the nomination process, and all the while hold in abeyance the current occupant of the White House, and trust that the American people will wholeheartedly agree. All of this is under the condition that God even permits us to continue as a Republic for we have gone beyond presumption that he will bless us and now find excuses to openly, egregiously and even pridefully thwart and even mock His law, all in the name of political pragmatism which is a fool's errand for it thinks that it can survive these imminent disasters that threaten us without God's enabling, sustenance in times of trouble and mercy for current and past abuses.