Thou art the Man

David, youngest son of Jessie, was anointed as king of Israel by the Prophet Samuel, he is perhaps one of the most famous personalities in God’s word. A slayer of wild animals and even the giant Goliath, in spite of his heroism, his wives, his musical ability, (he wrote most of the Psalms) he had sex with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, a soldier in his army who was killed because of his directions, and was later brought to account by the Prophet Nathan, who told David about a rich man with many sheep who stole the only sheep of a poor man. David in his anger to avenge this injustice was told by the prophet Nathan, “thou art the man”.

Old testament Bible characters like New Testament Bible Characters find that nothing is hidden from God, that he is boss, that he makes perfect sense out of everything. The sheep never seek the shepherd, nor the gold coin the woman who lost it. All is in perfect order in his creation. All the elements we will ever need are here for our use. The first law of physics is that matter is not created nor destroyed.

I have a beach house right by the ocean. The waves, the tides, can be timed and they have never changed from the creation of the world. People do what they do because they believe what they believe. Even if I were not a believer in Jehovah God and his only son our Savior Jesus Christ, I believe even if I were a pagan it would be good to know that some things do not change, that even though there has been developments in technology that the human nature of love, the perfection of a flower, the absolutes of music, do not change.

Those of us who were in the Vietnam war remember such South Vietnamese personalities as Madame Nu, General Ky, and President Thieu. When the North Vietnamese generals came into Saigon, after the last Americans had left from the helicopters on the roofs of the buildings, it is reported they said “get rid of this western decadence.” It was reported to me by someone who knows, that the first North Vietnamese tanks to enter Saigon were driven by young boys who had never seen a paved street.

The difference in the war between the north and south can be summed up in one word “passion”. The North Vietnamese had a passion for their country and defending it that the South Vietnamese on which we hinged our hopes for “cleaning up” this part of the world at an unforeseen and irrational expense (58,000 dead 350,000 casualties) to say nothing of the American money spent. It is reported that many of the South Vietnamese government as well as the military elite are now living well in Hawaii and other Asian affluent cities.

As we seek extricate ourselves from another “cauldron” of political and financial mess”, a country with a 2,000 mile border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a 900 mile border between Afghanistan and Iran, Hindu Kush the worst of the Himalayas, and a country with a history of retreat by 2 of the worlds greatest powers, Britain and Russia. The first time I was in Afghanistan at the Khyber pass, I felt like Rudyard Kipling as I saw a camel train move through the pass just as in hundreds of years of history. The second time I was in Afghanistan I was there for Banyan to see the great standing Buddhist in the sides of the mountain, so large, you had to go completely across a valley for a photograph.

This land of goats and donkeys where life is cheap, religion solid, passionate love of country, and total hatred of westerners (I witnessed this in Kabul where I was almost killed). In my venture into the “so-called” no mans land between Afghanistan and Pakistan where the famous Khyber rifles are built. You easily detect the hatred in their dark eyes. Can one even imagine mans inhumanity to man when you consider how easily they behead or chop off a limb. And, we think, that we will bring some sort of stability to these people?

In the USA, we have the largest prison population in the world nearly 2 million. It is a certainty that at least one third of this prison population nearly 500.00 are converted Muslim, followers of Islam, still American citizens. One of my black employees told me that she would not be bothered by the Muslims because she was a black woman. I told her, “you should study what has happened to the black Muslim woman in the Sudan”. 900,000 Muslims killed one another in the Iraq, Iran war in the late 1980’s. When it starts over here, as those in Israel can attest, don’t expect kindness.

Sometimes, I feel like I have a life boat out by a sinking ship and I have a great desire to save as many as possible from drowning. Just as the Russians and the British Long before USA found in Afghanistan, Mujihadeen is a real concept. The followers of Islam are serious about jihad.

The most depressing matter we are facing in this country is not our bankruptcy, our economic downfall, our political corruption, the loss of one generation to illegal drugs, the invasion of our country by illegal citizens from other countries, but our failure to recognize that there are 1 billion Muslims who consider this nation their enemy just as they consider Israel their enemy and to almost the same extent. Even more critical is the fact that the Muslims do not abort their babies, they do not use illegal substances (drugs such as liquor, cocaine, etc.), they have a religious passion and zeal that are most fundamentalist religious leaders and so called Christians have forsaken. I was never in a mosque that did not require me to remove my shoes. Do people in our western civilization defend anything as “holy ground” anymore?