Alan Keyes had a guest Monday evening on his "Making Sense" who has a bill before Congress to abolish the income tax. His name is Rep. John Linder, a Republican from Georgia. I had just seen a guest on Hannity & Colmbs who had written a book on how he avoids ever paying any every year. So if one guy can get by, then I'm for Linder's bill because we all should too. But I sure wouldn't try it just on that guy's book. My cousin did out in CA, but was finally in big trouble after years of past due taxes. So the guy on TV will probably end up in prison, because even Al Capone, Chicago's biggest criminal gangster in American history, was finally nailed on tax evasion when all other charges failed to get him convicted. While "nothing is as certain as death and taxes," (a dismal & uncertain saying) I do know that our Lord will deliver us from the former when He returns; and in the meantime we must render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's.
Seeing all the Palestinian infrastructure destroyed by Sharon's army has been a catastrophe, even though it was provoked by the terrorist suicide (now "homicide" bombings. The USA will no doubt have to foot the bill for reconstruction. But it compares in my mind to the present day post-modern philosophy (which serves only as a term for the rubble of all former ways of thinking). Formerly there had to be an infrastructure of the mind (philosophy) for any militant intelligence to continue in society. Each age had it's unique way of thinking i.e. Platonic(New Testament), Neo-Platonism (Augustinian medieval), Aristotelian (late Aquinas medieval), Cartesian (post reformation), Kant-Hume-Locke (enlightenment), Hobbes-Marx- Comte (Victorian and modern era), Kierkegaard/Sartre existential(20th century) and Ludwig Wittgenstein and Derrida(post-modern 21st century). In the collective mind of civilization, each of these marks a paradigm shift (like an end of the world intellectually). So this century seems strewn with the ruins of modernism, that great unifying tower of thought in the century now past. Such an awesome catastrophe is heard echoing through the pages of Revelation, "fallen, fallen is Babylon; that great city." Evidently the unfinished tower of Genesis eleven with it's attempt to reach heaven (via pride of human achievement) was still equated with the ancient metropolis of Babylon clear into New Testament times. Our world's "tower of Babel" (modernism) might have been symbolized in the WTC of NYC, which was briefly replaced by those huge light beams. When rubble was cleared away enough, the beacons were lit to shine out into space. Now they've been turned off because of high energy cost. But the true LIGHT coming on amid the rubble of modernism is "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever (Heb.13:8)." Not even Satan has enough force to turn off the Gospel light! (Jn.1:5)
Psalm 55 is king David's cry to the Lord after being betrayed by one he'd considered a friend. Of course, it typifies Judas at the Last Supper. But David's close counselor, Ahithophel, had sided with the king's own rebel son, Abimalec, who was about to take over Jerusalem. So all the royal household had to flee, leaving only David's ten concubines to "tend the store." Yet David was sly enough to send his friend Hushai back to Jerusalem as a spy in Absalom's inner circle, who could refute the excellent advice of betrayer Ahithophel. It all sounds so contemporary in our Mideast dealings. There is so much treachery abroad these days. Ahithophel finally went home and hung himself, a prelude to Judas. But we need to do as David did, turn to the LORD. The psalm ends "but I will trust in Thee." All Americans should do the same in this war on terrorism. I sure don't want our forces sent into that Mideast cauldron of conflict. Afghanistan's enough, in my opinion. We're a long way from finishing there. So heaven save us from military involvement between those six million Israelis and twenty million Arabs (22 nations). Providing Israel arms has been enough. Maybe too much. But American blood? No way Hosea, though I fear that's the direction things are heading now. You know what happens to good guy peacemakers. Both sides may turn against him. Let it be UN troops or NATO forces. But not our sons and daughters.
It's been seven years since the OKC bombing and seven months since NYC's. Double sevens surely have some sort of significance, though I can't say what. But survivors of each have a lot in common and have linked up with each other. I knew there was something I wanted to mention at Rotary today, and the double seven was it. But my mind was blank when the president said "anything else." I guess it's just a numeral way of linking the two disasters:8/19 and 9/11. Of course, they are linked in the war of terrorism that seemed to begin for us way back in the Waco stand-off of David Koresh and followers, 1993, that ended April 19 with the death of some 80 victims in that fire that burned up their compound. It so disturbed the OKC bomber to be (nameless to me) that he blew up the federal building in OKC on the same day in 1995, killing 168 innocent victims. Maybe the first terrorist attack on the WTC that same year as Waco was a sign of the beginning of a sequence of terrors to come.