“Observations”©

Donald S. Conkey

 

Date: May 24, 2007 - # 621 - Memorial Day 2007 - 807

 

Memorial-Day 2007. Is it a day of celebration or a day of remembrance? This holiday was established to remember those who died preserving America’s freedoms - and to thank America’s God for those patriots who loved freedom enough to give their life to preserve it - and that their sacrifice was not in vain. We Americans need to pray that we have the “will” to preserve the freedoms God established here in America, a land that has become a “Standard and Beacon of Freedom” to enslaved people worldwide. We need to also remember in 1776 that 99 percent of the world’s populations were enslaved. It was the Revolutionary War that sowed the seeds of freedom to a world hungry for liberty. But the price of freedom, both then and now, is still spilt blood.

       Cherokee county is blessed with its own “veteran’s cemetery;” a cemetery where those who died, or were prepared to die to preserve America’s “Unalienable Rights” are buried, with honors. On Monday those Americans who died defending freedom will be honored here, and in hundreds of other cemeteries nationwide.

       On Saturday America celebrates the third anniversary of the opening of the World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington D.C., to remember those who gave their lives in this war, another war to end all wars, but didn’t. This war took 405,000 lives with another 671,000 wounded, many severely.

       Bill McPhee was a neighbor I grew up with. He died fighting in World War II and his name is inscribed on this memorial. Of the 16 million who fought in this war only a few million are still living, and they are dwindling fast – thus the need for another veteran’s cemetery. Following World War II was the Korean War (I served during this war), then the Vietnam war and the Desert Storm wars. And America is still at war today – the “World War on Terrorism.” Does man killing man ever end?

       I occasionally ask why war and will war ever end? And who perpetuates it? Revelation 12 helps me understand these questions. It tells about the “war in heaven” before this world was created, a war that Satan, along with a third of the “hosts of heaven” lost and were then cast down to earth. Verse 12 states: “Therefore rejoice, ye heavens and ye that dwell in them [Satan’s gone]. [but] Woe to the inhabiters of the earth, and of the sea, for the devil is come down into you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.” This story adds an eternal perspective to mortality.

       Satan’s wrath becomes real. I often fear for my posterity’s future. But when I realize every generation has its own challenges to deal with a feeling of assurance comes over me and my fears begin to fade.

       Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution stipulated no more slaves would be imported into the United States after 1808. In 1832, with slavery still a hot issue, one historian recorded: “And the time will [soon] come when war will be poured out on all nations, ...” Twenty-eight years later the Civil War began and war was “poured out on all nations.” And all nations continue to war, one with another, even today.

       War is horrible but slavery is worse. Once enslaved it takes mankind centuries to break that bondage. It took the Israelites 400 years of pleading before the Lord heard their prayers, and another 40 years of training to “self-govern themselves.” Following 256 years of self-government – Joshua to Saul – often with serious ethics issues (corruption) the people said to Samuel “now make us a king to judge us like all other nations.” (I Samuel 8:5.) The Israelites had rejected God as their source of light, as is America, along with much of the western world today. Israel’s kings, beginning with Saul, led the Israelites into idolatry, and finally into total dispersion. This history, well recorded, is a reminder of what happens to those nations who reject God’s laws.

       God led the Israelites out of bondage. Europe’s religiously persecuted were led to America beginning in 1620, men and women who eventually, following a war, created a new nation of liberty, a point history can not dispute.

       Those who would “sell-out” America and “make a king to judge over us (the United Nations)” ignore the reality of God’s wrath, or of the price required to regain a nation’s freedoms once lost. Ask the Germans, the Japanese, the Russians, even the Iraqis. The price is often death and total destruction.

       Memorial-Day 2007 is a day to remember those who were and are willing to pay the ultimate price to protect mankind’s freedoms, and to thank America’s God for restoring freedom to the world, via America. Also remember that harsh political rhetoric is still preferred over bullets for settling disputes, local or worldwide.