Monday Morning Music Ministry

2-22-21

Rush Limbaugh died this week. Death is an eventually that comes to us all, but Rush had the somewhat unique disadvantage of knowing several months ago that his time was nigh. “Disadvantage”? Something to ponder.

For his followers it was an “advantage” – that is, versus a sudden death – because we could listen day by day to his reflections on faith, acceptance, hope, gratitude, forgiveness, encouragement, and… faith. Oh, I said that already. So did he, many times over.

Over his career, Rush did not become a preacher; and not particularly so in his last days. But as is often said, you can share the Gospel – and sometimes even use words. No listener, of his millions across the Fruited Plain, doubted that he knew who his Savior was. The Radio Revolutionary surely inspired people in his last days in matters of faith as well as in politics.

“Rest in peace,” many said.

But many people did not; have not; will not let him rest in peace. A tsunami of invective and hate began at the moment his death was announced. In conversations, on web posts, in the media. Gratitude, too; but people grateful that he died. People wishing that he suffered. Curses upon his family and friends.

Unbridled hatred.

With almost demonic fury, these people – fewer in number than his friends, I believe – have wormed into places of prominence, and cloned more such disciples. They allege horrible things – the worst of them tearfully refuted by his producer of many decades, a black man – but as with President Trump, the firestorm of hate from the Secular Left is not for things done or said, but for who these men were.

More specifically, and this is a major point, Limbaugh did, and Trump does, “get it.” They looked over horizons and saw the broader landscape of ideas and challenges. What people call the 30,000-feet view. Their allies quibble over statistics, but Limbaugh and Trump knew that statistics don’t lie… but statisticians do. The Dark State – and what is at stake today – they recognized.

Few people cut through the fog, perhaps occasionally checking “civil discourse” at the door. In the church today there are few, too few, counterparts. Franklin Graham, even more than his father Billy, gets to the salvation message, the centrality of Christ, in the first minute. I don’t mean in sermons; I mean in conversations and interviews. As we all should.

So it was not enough to defeat Trump: he has to be destroyed. Rush Limbaugh could not and cannot be dismissed – he has to be demonized and degraded.

In my little sphere, I have had phone calls and a note in my mail box wishing that… well, that I would join Rush in hell; and similar sentiments. When I once posted a photo of myself with Jack Phillips, the baker who declined to decorate a cake for a homosexual wedding, and was sued all the way to the Supreme Court… a Facebook “friend” immediately posted a message calling me (not Phillips) an obscenity. And this was a guy who previously put out feelers about collaborating with me on something or other. (Notice what Facebook does not censor.)

So they dance on Rush’s grave. They danced quickly on Herman Cain’s grave too when he died an early COVID death. His great sin was being a black conservative, successful entrepreneur, and a presidential candidate with an economic plan.

Dancing on graves – that is, destroying and not merely defeating – is the new blood sport of liberals and secularists. And, like sharks, blood in the water attracts more of them, ever more bloodthirsty.

Sometimes it is not only people but symbols. This summer’s onslaught on statues across America is of a kind. The arson against shop-owners’ stores. The desecration of public buildings. The burning of churches. Few people decried the images of Jesus and Mary defaced and smashed; or the torched historic church in Washington DC. But how loud was the scabrous venom directed at the President when he made a statement, holding aloft a Bible at its shuttered door.

None of this is new – in human history, that is; in societies when they disintegrate.

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones,” Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caesar (note to Andrea Mitchell: that’s William Shakespeare, not William Faulkner). Which, in my thesis, is why the loosed demons inspire today’s “Unity” squads to hate and destroy. They can’t stand the truth.

One grave that we remember, however, could not be danced on. The memorials to Jesus suffered superficial effects, spray painting and sometimes sledge-hammer blows this summer. The church buildings dedicated to Him were vandalized. But his grave? No one could or can dance on that, even metaphorically.

Jesus walked out of His tomb. There was no grave that could hold Him down. He conquered sin, flesh, and the devil. He lives. After all, He had more work to do, through His children.

The living do not belong in graves.

And that goes for us, too. If you have Jesus in your heart, neither can you recognize a grave that can hold you down in this life. We too have work to do.

And certainly… do not let anybody start planning to dance on your grave.

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I hope you will watch this music video, perfect with this message:

Music Vid: “There Ain’t No Grave” (For readers with hand-held devices, click or copy and paste: ) https://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=jwr-sciUwFQ

Click: There Ain’t No Grave