And at the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the most High, and I praised and honoured him that liveth for ever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation: And all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?(Daniel 4:34-35)
I believe that the God of the Bible rules in the affairs of men and of nations. History, is indeed “His Story” . Therefore I believe also that there are Kairos *moments for nations as well as people.There is no doubt in my mind that there are special times ordained of God, for good or evil, watershed moments set for people and nations as well as individuals.
The horrifying events of November 22-24, 1963 haunt most of us Americans because we instinctively sense that they represented such a Kairos moment. America has never been the same since these events and their fallout as this American Thinker article illustrates,
“Three Minutes Which Transformed America”
What a contrast between the America before the Kennedy Assassination, (and the shocking slaying of the accused assassin on the live news report on television), and the America afterwards. Our nation almost immediately headed down the tracks like a runaway mine cart, veering sharply left, descending into the abyss of Viet Nam, the cultural and sexual revolution, race riots, and other violent assassinations.
We even subsequently witnessed the demon possession of the formerly moderately liberal Democratic party by far left revolutionaries, sexual deviant pressure groups, identity politics, and Marxist disciples of Saul Alinsky, leading us 50 years later to the most radical, American hating, racially polarizing president in American history!
It is instructive to see news reports of the time leading up to the assassination of the President. An excellent documentary showing this is Three Shots That changed America . Starting with the morning of November 22, and using only films and news reports from the time, we follow the events of the fateful two days.
We see in the film glimpses of the old America in the respectfully dressed, well scrubbed crowds lining the Texas streets to get a glimpse of the President. One gets a sense of confident optimism in the clear air that November morning.
Sure there were warning tremors of trouble to come, such as an assassination attempt at a retired General, known for his right-wing leanings. Also the American UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was harangued in Dallas by an unruly crowd.
In what would be his last speech, at the Fort Worth Chamber of commerce, JFK reasserted America’s global committment to be a defender and beacon of freedom and liberty throughout the world. It was with good humor and respect that the President and first lady were received, and the breakfast ended with the MC asking everyone to bow their heads in the Spirit of prayer, and offered a heartfelt, Biblical prayer for the President and the nation.
The documentary is heartbreaking, as we follow the President to the fatal motorcade, the scene shifting from happy crowds, to sheer terror and panic, as the shots ring out and the motorcade rushes to the Parkland hospital. Americans are deeply marked by the tragic, iconic imagery which ensued. The badly frightened first lady, cradling her husbands wounded head, the Priests rushing to the hospital to administer last rites,the swearing-in of the new President Johnson, his wife Ladybird on one side, and Jackie in a bloodstained dress on the other, as a witness.
I believe that it was a political calculation immediately afterwards that helped set the nation on such a self-destructive course, that we have never recovered from it.
How was the deceased President to be regarded? For what cause was he martyred?
The real truth of history is that JFK was a cold warrior, and a staunch anti-communist. He may have been a Democrat and a liberal, but in the older classic sense. That Kennedy died at the hands of a communist, was a fact many on the left at that time found to be hard to bear.
The narrative being cultivated by the left, leading up to the assassination was that right-wing, conservative groups such as the John Birch society, were dangerous, violent seditionists, but not well-meaning leftists. But Kennedy was killed by a man of the far left, an avowed Marxist!
The grieving Jackie Kennedy was quoted as lamenting,
“He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights. It’s — it had to be some silly little Communist.”
George Will explained that the Kennedy media machine then kicked into revision mode, in order to elevate the assassination by erasing the “silly little communist” , and penciling in traditional America as the culprit
She thought it robbed his death of any meaning. But a meaning would be quickly manufactured to serve a new politics. First, however, an inconvenient fact — Oswald — had to be expunged from the story. So, just 24 months after the assassination, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the Kennedys’ kept historian, published a 1,000-page history of the 1,000-day presidency without mentioning the assassin.
The transformation of a murder by a marginal man into a killing by a sick culture began instantly — before Kennedy was buried. The afternoon of the assassination, Chief Justice Earl Warren ascribed Kennedy’s “martyrdom” to “the hatred and bitterness that has been injected into the life of our nation by bigots.” The next day, James Reston, the New York Times luminary, wrote in a front-page story that JFK was a victim of a “streak of violence in the American character,” especially of “the violence of the extremists on the right.”
Never mind that adjacent to Reston’s article was a Times report on Oswald’s communist convictions and associations.
Three days after the assassination, a Times editorial, “Spiral of Hate,” identified JFK’s killer as a “spirit”: The Times deplored “the shame all America must bear for the spirit of madness and hate that struck down” Kennedy. The editorialists were, presumably, immune to this spirit. The new liberalism-as-paternalism would be about correcting other people’s defects.(George Will, Expunging Oswald,October 9, 2013)
Thus it began, the relentless false witness against the American people, the right and American values. Perpetrated by the press, the power elites, the educators and of course Hollywood, these lies have seriously damaged America, by turning the nation over to the supposedly morally superior left, putting traditional American values on the defensive, accusing Patriots of what the left itself is, hateful, violent and misogynistic. Lies are powerful. Look at how they treat the perfectly peaceful Tea Party and compare it to the coddling they have given to the violent, lawless Occupy movement.
My only comfort in all of this is that God is in control of history, and will have the last word concerning nations.
Our nation has gone mad, it has gone crazy, and seems to have lost its mind. Perhaps God will have mercy on us once again, and restore to us our minds, if we would just “look up to heaven again” in humility as Nebuchadnezzar once did, we too can be forgiven, restored and reclothed with the dignity God once afforded us in former times.
* Kairos is one of two greek words for time, the other being Chronos. Chronos, from which we get our word Chronology, Chronicle, and Chronometer (clock,) refers to linear time, measurable by clock, and calendar. Kairos means a set time, or a season of destiny or of special meaning.
Pastor Bill Randles Blog 