With our Prophets Harassed & Bloodied will America Listen to a Chinese General?
Posted by Chuck Freeman | Filed under Religion & Culture
Back in February as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a speech at George Washington University condemning governments that arrest protestors and do not allow free expression, 71-year-old Ray McGovern was grabbed from the audience in plain view of her by police and an unidentified official in plain clothes, brutalized and left bleeding in jail. She never paused speaking.
The opening line of this piece was McGovern’s prophetic roar.
His crime? When Secretary Clinton began her speech, Mr. McGovern remained standing in the audience and turned his back in “silent witness.”
Why did Ray McGovern undertake this course of action?
Earlier this week Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited China. General Chen Bingde, chief of the General Staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, boldly held up this mirror to America.
“I know [the] U.S. is still recovering from financial crisis, still has some difficulties in its economy. Given such circumstances, you are still spending so much money on the military. Isn’t it placing too much pressure on the taxpayers? If [the] U.S. could reduce a bit military spending to spend more on the improvement of livelihood of American people and also do more good things for world people, wouldn’t it be a better scenario?”
As congregants shout in the African American church, “Make it plain!”
After Jesus returned from his 40-day ultra marathon temptation with the devil he preached his inaugural sermon. People were enthralled with his introduction and initial points. But, when he got to the conclusion they turned on him, like a tea partier at a universal health care summit. The climatic challenge of his homily was that God’s “chosen people” routinely failed to respond to the holy call but heathen foreigners did.
“Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown (miracles) what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”
“’Truly I tell you,’ he continued, ‘no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.’
All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff.”
Ray McGovern isn’t alone in being harassed by questioning the war industry. During our current wars for power and profit the FBI has infiltrated numerous peace groups.
Does America truly need to spend as much on military “defense” as the next 18 countries combined?
Do we need another bomb while granny eats dog food?
Has America lost it’s capacity to listen? Peace groups, Ray McGovern, General Chen Bingde are offering liberating words of truth.
Jesus recounted the warning and hope of his prophetic forebearer Isaiah.
“For this people’s heart has grown dull,
and their ears are hard of hearing,
and they have shut their eyes;
so that they might not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and understand with their heart and turn—
and I would heal them.”
July 15, 2011 at 12:51 pm
Good post, Chuck. Thank you.