Monday Morning Music Ministry

6-29-20

After many statues have been yanked down, marble figures broken, bronze artwork twisted, heads of memorialized people broken off, bodies and pedestals spray-painted with obscene words and Communist slogans…

And after so many windows broken it looks like memorials to Kristallnacht; after streets and stores and buildings covered with obscenities and slogans; random cars laid waste by clubs and tire irons; mothers and children terrorized; fires set in stores and dumpsters…

And after sections of cities have been occupied, stores looted of TVs and apparel in the name of civil rights for a dead man, after grocery stores and toy stores, many started by black people struggling to make a living…

And after police are told not to counter the anarchy, after police are killed, and after officials from the White House down to local mayors talk tough – or don’t – and the jungle is thereby encouraged to spread its savagery…

WHAT IF –

What if the Theodore Roosevelt statue at the museum is the next to go?

What if the next target is the Lincoln Memorial, slogans spray-painted all around, paint splashed on the Great Emancipator?

What if the Washington Monument is next, obscenities around the base, and then, maybe by drones, the top of the monument felled?

What if Mount Rushmore is defaced from the top, paint and acid dribbling down over the “evil” faces?

What if the House and Senate are shot up, rushing guards; if the Library of Congress is set afire? What is that long-feared attack on Times Square finally happens? What if the Statue of Liberty is the target by planes or drones, and explosions and fires in its base? What if headstones and memorials are defaced at Arlington National Cemetery?

What if… the targets shift to your town, your city hall, your police station, your schools, the car in your driveway, your front windows…

What if the nihilists continue to deface and burn churches, from across the street from the White House to… your neighborhood?

Or…

WHAT IF –

Those in “authority” sweep the “zones” and arrest the vandals? What if they look at news footage and video tapes and know who to prosecute? What if people who destroy public property pay for their destruction? What if the Department of Justice files amicus briefs on behalf of shop owners, business people, small entrepreneurs, and average citizens, against mayors and governors who prevented law enforcement, and aided and abetted the destroyers?

Further, what if police were allowed to be police again? What if police funding were restored and increased? What if deluded citizens stopped defunding and started defending?

What if Christian “leaders” stopped making excuses for savagery in the streets, and in their basements? What if Christian worshipers started to find preachers who started reading the Bible instead of Marx, who would look for lost souls instead of hiding criminals?

What if God would (in effect) apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah, in any event I mean give America one more chance?

WHAT IF –

America doesn’t deserve it?

In fact, we don’t. We have, as God spoke in II Chronicles, turned away and forsaken My statutes and My commandments which I have set before you; and served other gods, and worshiped them… And God would uproot them from My land which I have given them… And as for this house [which we may see as America, once dedicated to Him] which is exalted, everyone who passes by it will be astonished and say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land and this house?’ Then they will answer, ‘Because they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who… embraced other gods, and worshiped them and served them; therefore He has brought all this calamity on them.

Many Christians know, and quote, over and over, an earlier passage in II Chronicles: If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

That is a very big if in there. What if God really wanted Solomon to beware – and for us to be warned – what calamity we may bring up ourselves?

How many ways we have strayed from Him!!!

What if He is a God of justice?

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Please view the music video this week. It is the instrumental version of achingly beautiful Erbarme Dich, Mein Gott (“Have mercy Lord, My God, for the sake of my tears”) by Johann Sebastian Bach. The violinist, Lisa Batiashvili, speaks before her performance about the street violence and downed airplanes, everything in between, in her homeland. The audience, Dutch people on their boats in Amsterdam Harbor, share the intensity of the sacred music.

The words in Bach’s full version ask God for mercy and plead for His forgiveness –
Have mercy, my God, for the sake of my tears!
See here, before you, heart and eyes weep bitterly.
Have mercy, my God.

Click: Have Mercy, For the Sake Of My Tears.

8-29-11

As we write this, Hurricane Irene is bearing down on Washington, New York, and the Northeast. Some related news items have prompted thoughts, as did last week’s earthquake felt across the same territory, Irene’s path. No doubt we will all be reflecting on the events of 10 years ago whose flash points were in the same areas: airports in Maine and Boston, from which flew planes that crashed in New York City, Pennsylvania, and Washington DC.

A well-meaning post has been making internet rounds of late. It recounts how the Washington Monument sustained damage from the earthquake; how the aluminum capstone has a Latin phrase praising God; and how an exhibition a few years ago censored and obscured that fact. This much is true.

The post also claims that the Monument, by law, must be the tallest structure in the nation’s capital, which is not true. And that it is at the center of a perfect cross of malls and streets planned by the capital’s architect Pierre L’Enfant. It is not. And the post quotes a prayer by George Washington that proves he was a Christian. The prayer, however, is altered.

There is a lesson that is a good life lesson, whether it about history quizzes or the Gospel of Jesus Christ: you cannot improve on the truth. Exaggeration leads to suspicion. I hold nothing against well-meaning viral messages, but let us read them with discernment.

The U S Capitol, although shorter than the Washington Monument, stands higher because it is on a rise. The National Cathedral and the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception are also higher. The District’s regulation is that a building may be no higher than the width, plus 20 feet, of an adjoining street. L’Enfant designed the Mall years before the memorials to Washington and Lincoln; and the obelisk is off “center” anyway because of weak ground under the original site.

And I will skip Washington’s doctored prayer and present his original – which is a powerful enough statement of faith: I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow Citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the Field, and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.

Changes in the viral message have him addressing “Almighty God” and closing with “Through Jesus Christ Our Lord.” Those elements need not be snuck in to convince anyone that Washington believed in God and honored Christ.

I am not nit-picking. For believers and patriots to stretch the truth, to “gild the lily,” can obscure more important things we should very well notice… and be upset about. For instance, what the internet message also stated was that there is a capstone on the tip of the Washington Monument, and it contains an inscription in Latin, Laus Deo (Praise God), and that a few years ago an exhibition at the base of the Monument committed two offenses. A display case held a replica, but one side of the glass display case was tight against a wall, making it impossible for visitors to read one of the four inscriptions. Yes: the Laus Deo. The others commemorated the designer, the dedication ceremony, and the US president at the time, Chester Alan Arthur. Coincidence? Well, the captions in the display case likewise censored the Latin phrase and its meaning – no mention at all.

These things originally occurred in 2007, during George Bush’s term. Offenses to the Gospel and America’s Christian heritage continue today, of course – sadly, too many to mention. It is the world-system, not individuals alone, we need to discern. What I mean to say is that our government seems to think that “freedom of religion” really means “freedom from religion.” If you watch the musical video following, you can see what Founding Fathers and Christian patriots through Lincoln’s time thought on the subject.

But I want to highlight a larger offense, a larger issue; and it ties the three “natural disasters” together in another way. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has banned any religious aspects, spiritual observances, and all prayers from the city’s 9-11 events in a couple weeks. He violates the Constitution, of course, in proscribing freedoms of religion and assembly. In my opinion, on the anniversary of the attacks, he declares victory – he himself becomes the victor – in the war on America’s spiritual heritage, our biblical foundations, and our religious traditions. “The American way of life.” If he is not booed off the speaker’s stand I should wonder about Christian patriots’ ability any more to be outraged.

However, this is not Bloomberg (I should say the world-system that is engulfing us) at the worst. As Hurricane Irene aimed for New York City, the mayor issued a statement listing what measures the city would take… and that he expected “religious organizations” to do their duty also.

This becomes the week when “H” no longer stands for Hurricane, but hypocrisy. And the dictionary should change the term “Fair-Weather Friend” to either “Foul-Weather Friend” or “Fair-Weather Enemy.”

“Acts of God,” so-called, we can handle. May God save us from acts of men in these end times. Laus Deo!

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Click: Faith of Our Fathers