We can look at the world around us and see prophecies concerning the last days fulfilled right before our eyes. And, it would be easy to wring our hands, withdraw from the world and wilt before the challenges looming ahead. We realize that we could very well be living at that very time period prophesied throughout the scriptures…the period just before the so-called the Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord.
Is it Great AND Dreadful? Or is it the Great OR Dreadful Day of the Lord? And, doesn’t it depend on US?
It seems to me that our day and age is not so much different from days gone by, at least from the lens through which we view the world, especially as compared to how our forebears viewed theirs. Consider the British during the Battle of Britain from 1940 to 1941 when fire and death were being rained down upon them. Earlier this year, I finished reading The Splendid and the Vile, an excellent book covering that time period, written by Erik Larson who also wrote The Devil in the White City. His book tells how, on Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invades Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end. Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.”
It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. His book takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.
Trying times demand people of great courage and ability. Churchill was the man of his hour; some 164 years earlier, there was another man who, like Churchill and also, I would suggest—Donald Trump or Lt. General Michael Flynn in today’s troubled world—wasn’t given the respect he deserved because he didn’t fit the mold of a certain brand of political correctness popular at the time.
In 1776, it was the blunt-speaking John Adams who was derided for his “rotundity,” his plain dress, even his modest wealth. And, yet, like Winston Churchill, he too demonstrated “the art of being fearless.” Right on the heels of reading “The Splendid and the Vile,” I read an even longer book, the 2002 Pulitzer-Prize winning, 700-page biography written by David McCullough: John Adams.
In light of the vile, deceitful efforts by the promoters of the so-called 1619 Project and their “Woke” campaign to erase our history and culture and perpetrate a Leftist revolution, the John Adams biography stands out like a beacon of light amidst the darkness of the day.
One reason Adams was able to demonstrate such courage in the face of opposition was his wife and soul-mate, Abigail; their love and unity are an example for the ages. Some 5,000 letters written between them are a testament to their character and goodness. They understood the reality of the challenges facing them and the revolution, as Adams wrote in this letter to Abigail at the very beginning of the conflict: “We live, my dear, in an age of trial. What will be the consequence, I know not.”
Her response was not only encouraging, but revealing: “You cannot be, I know, nor do I wish to see you, an inactive spectator…We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.”
Reflecting on the political leanings of Congress at beginning of Revolution, Adams said that “We were about one-third Tories, one third timid and one third True Blue.” It’s apparent that he understood that he and his fellow revolutionaries stood on the precipice of history, noting that “It has been the will of heaven that we should be thrown into existence at a period when the greatest philosophers and law-givers of antiquity would have wished to live, a period when a coincidence of circumstances without example has afforded to thirteen colonies at once an opportunity of beginning government anew from the foundation and building as they choose. How few of the human race have ever had an opportunity of choosing a system of government for themselves and their children? How few have ever had anything more of a choice in government than in climate?”
His comment reveals to me, at least, that he clearly understood that they were making history, and that he kept an eye on posterity when he wrote what he did. And, he explained for all of us, whenever we read his story that the best form of government was the one that produced the greatest amount of happiness for the largest number of citizens possible. Then, he added that “… sober inquirers after truth agreed that happiness derived from future, that form of government with virtue as its foundation was more likely than any other to promote the general happiness.”
As I considered the conversation between John and Abigail Adams, … “that we live in age of trial; what will be the consequence, I know not,” and then her reply that … We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them,” I stumbled upon the website, AMERICA’S FUTURE, sponsored by Lt. General Michael T. Flynn.
His message is simple: HAVE COURAGE! In his new website, he is calling for “Champions for Freedom” and is soliciting memberships “of the willing.”
I suppose that Larson’s description of Churchill, how he demonstrated “The Art of Being Fearless,’ is what the general is calling for. He knows probably better than any other American what lovers of freedom are facing, and why courage is exactly what is called for. May we learn from history, from the likes of Churchill, Adams and today, Flynn, Trump and even the 17 year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, that being fearless is EXACTLY what is required of us today as we stare at 2022 coming right at us.
GM JARRARD
South Jordan, Utah
December 26th, 2021
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