This
is a video of a broadcast that was done a few years ago. The overthrow
of President Trump was in the works even before he was sworn in as
President. All the riots, looting, the stolen election of Nov 2020 and
impeachments was not an accident. It was carefully planned and
strategically executed to make President Trump look bad and unfit to be
President by hook or by crook. Whether you choose to agree with me or
not, we have witnessed a coup d’etat happen before our very eyes. This
ultimately has led to the events of Jan 6, 2021. President Trump’s
presidency was taken from him because he was a threat to the status quo
of the corrupt political establishment in Washington DC. Particularly to
the Democratic Socialist Party of Nancy Pelosi. When President Trump
was sworn in as President in 2017, he told the American people he was
going to clean up Washington from all political corruption and give the
government back to the people where it rightfully belongs. These Regime
changes is what happens when communists overthrow a head of state i.e.
Russia under Stalin, Cuba under Castro, China under Chairman Mao, and
Venezuela under Yugo Chavez. Folks wake up! What does all this tell
us? America is not a democracy like we have been mislead to believe. WE
ARE A BANANA REPUBLIC !
By now it should be obvious - even to conservatives - that we are in
a war. It is a conflict that began nearly fifty years ago when the
street revolutionaries of the Sixties joined the Democrat Party. Their
immediate goal was to help the Communist enemy win the war in Vietnam,
but they stayed to expand their influence in the Democrat Party and
create the radical force that confronts us today. The war that today’s
Democrats are engaged in reflects the values and methods of those
radicals. It is a war against us - against individual freedom, against
America’s constitutional order, and against the capitalist engine of our
prosperity.
Democrat radicals know what they want and where they are going. As a
result, they are tactically and organizationally years ahead of
patriotic Americans who are only beginning to realize they are in a war.
The Democrats’ plan to steal the 2020 election was hatched many years
ago when Democrats launched their first attacks on Voter I.D.s, and then
every effort to secure the integrity of the electoral system. Those
attacks metastasized into an all-out assault on Election Day itself with
early- and late-voting grace periods, and a flood of 92 million mail-in
ballots, hundreds of thousands of which were delivered in the middle of
the night to be counted behind the backs of Republican observers after
Election Day had passed.
The result of these efforts is that Election Day no longer really
exists as a day when the votes are cast and counted. This is a fact that
offers generous opportunities for the election saboteurs to do their
work. Those saboteurs’ opportunities were greatly enhanced this year
with the installation in battle ground states of voting machines
specifically designed to calculate how many votes were required to steal
an election and then to switch ballots already cast and deliver them to
the chosen party. Mail-in ballots were indispensable to the realization
of this plan.
I will not dwell at length on the years it took the Republican
Party, and American patriots, to recognize what the Democrat Party had
become or the threat it posed to our country as an enemy within. Suffice
it to say that Republicans can still be heard referring to Democrats as
“liberals” when it is obvious even to them that there is nothing
liberal about their principles or methods. They are vindictive bigots
who are actively destroying the First Amendment in our universities, on
the Internet and in our once but no longer free press. Suffice it to
note that while Democrats accuse Republicans including the President of
being racists and traitors, the response of Republican leaders is this:
“Oh, the Democrats are just playing politics.”
This is not “playing” people. It is war. They are trying to kill us
politically, and we need to respond accordingly, to fight fire with
fire. Today’s Democrat Party is a party of character assassins and
racists. Republicans know this but are reluctant to say it. That is how a
pathological liar and corrupt political whore like Joe Biden can accuse
the choice of 73 million Americans of being a white supremacist and
also murdering 220,000 corona virus patients. That’s why Biden and his
gunslingers can do so with no consequences – without so much as a wrist
slap – from “moderates” and independents, who know better. The
Democrats’ ability to intimidate well-meaning Americans is that great.
Is this too blanket a condemnation? Where, then, is the Democrat who
was outraged by the four-year Russia collusion hoax and the failed coup
and impeachment attempts – all of which accused the president, without a
shred of evidence, of treason? Where was the Democrat who dissented
from the public lynching of an exemplary public servant, Justice Brett
Kavanaugh, over an incident that never happened 37 years ago at a time
when he was a high school kid? Where is the Democrat who has condemned
the violent street criminals of Antifa and Black Lives Matter who got
away with conducting the most destructive civic insurrection in American
history, orchestrating mayhem and disrespect for the law that led to
the murders of scores of people who happen to have been mainly black?
What follows is a basic vocabulary for understanding the political
war that has engulfed us. When it is used by enough Americans who love
their country, it will cancel the surreal universe that Democrats’ lies
have imposed on us, and the war will be on its way to being won.
Democrats are not democrats; they are totalitarians. They have
declared war on the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the Electoral
College, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the election system, and the
idea of civil order. They have called for the Republican President of
the United States to be de-platformed and jailed. Their obvious goal is a
one-party state that criminalizes dissent. To them, support for such
basic necessities as borders and law enforcement are racist. If
you oppose their efforts to legalize infanticide, they will condemn you
as enemies of women, and if you make videos of their confessions to
selling body parts of murdered infants, they will - like Kamala Harris -
throw you in jail.
Progressives are not progressive; they are reactionaries. They are
out to abolish liberal value systems and create a status hierarchy where
race, gender, and sexual orientation define and confine you to an
unalterable place in their new social order. If you are white or male or
heterosexual or religious – Justice Kavanaugh was all four - you are
guilty before the fact.
But if you are a member of a designated (but increasingly imaginary)
“victim” group you are innocent even when the facts show you are guilty
- like the reprehensible female who lied to Congress in a calculated
attempt to destroy Kavanaugh’s life and career. If you are a member of a
“victim” group you have an unlimited license to persecute others. Thus,
the LGBTQ lobby is currently behind a nation-wide crusade to strip
Christians of their First Amendment rights and criminalize their
religion. They use their victim status to leverage their hate of people
who don’t embrace their agendas, and deploy it to crush them – and only
Republicans seem to care.
Identity politics is a pure form of racism, yet Trump is the only
Republican I’m aware of who has had the political spine to call a
Democrat a racist. Identity “wokism” is a totalitarian politics because
it encompasses every aspect of life, down to the pronouns one is ordered
to use. The progressive police state will leave no space free.
Racists and aspiring totalitarians are what Democrats have become.
The only moral principle they are guided by is the old Bolshevik saw,
“the ends justify the means.” They will say anything however false and
condone anything, however criminal, which advances their goal of maximum
power.
Since race is the principal weapon wielded by Democrats, this is
most evident in their claim that there is “systemic racism” in America,
which needs to be rooted out even if it means destroying the very
foundations of law and order. When two Republican canvassers refused to
certify the election result in Detroit – a city once the richest in
America but now mainly black and poor thanks to fifty-nine years of
misrule by Democrats – they were accused of “systemic racism.” This
charge and the accompanying threats by the Democrat mob were so
intimidating the two withdrew their objections. But if there was in fact
election fraud in Detroit, to object to it is not by any stretch of the
imagination “systemic racism.” To believe otherwise is to believe that
black people, due to their skin color, are incapable of committing
election fraud. How racist is that?
“Systemic racism” is an assertion made reflexively by Democrats that
is never accompanied by evidence. For good reason. Systemic racism has
been outlawed in America since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. If there
were actual instances of systemic racism in 2020, there would be
lawsuits – plenty of them. Even making the racist assumption, which the
Identity Politics crowd does make, that all white people are white
supremacists by dint of their skin color, there are tens of thousands of
black lawyers, prosecutors, district attorneys, attorneys general, and
elected officials who would be filing lawsuits over a practice that is
illegal. You never hear of massive lawsuits over systemic racism,
because “systemic racism” is a myth. The myth lives because it is an
indispensable weapon wielded by Democrats to advance their
anti-democratic agendas and quests for power.
But the only reason Democrats are able to do this so successfully –
even going so far as to justify the arson, looting and general
destruction in more than 600 American cities this summer – is because
Republicans, and conservatives generally, are too cowardly to confront
them. This war will continue until patriotic Americans summon the
courage to call Democrats the racists, liars, character assassins and
aspiring totalitarians that they actually are. And to do so in so many
words. Blowback works.
David Horowitz is the author of The Enemy Within: How A Totalitarian Movement is Destroying America, which will be published by Regnery on April 6, 2021.
(Written shortly after his assassination) By Evangelist John R. Rice 1964, Sword of the Lord Publishers
1. Why Did God Allow the Assassination? 2. Why Did Lee Harvey Oswald Do It? 3. Why Do Silly, Wicked Men Blame Loyal Americans, Fundamental Christians and Anti-Communists for It?
“The
king spake, and said, Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for
the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honor of
my majesty? While the word was in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice
from heaven, saying, O kind Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken; The
kingdom is departed from thee. And they shall drive thee from men, and
thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field: they shall make thee
to eat grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass over thee, until thou
know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to
whomsoever he will.”—Dan. 4:30–32. Shortly
after noon November 22, 1963, as President John Fitzgerald Kennedy rode
with Governor Connally through downtown Dallas in the triumphant
procession and cheered by thousands, he was killed by an assassin’s
bullet. Harvey
Oswald fired a high-powered rifle with telescopic sight from the sixth
floor of a building overlooking the parade route. President Kennedy,
shot though the head, was rushed to Parkland Hospital and if not dead on
arrival, died in a few minutes. Governor John Connally of Texas was
badly wounded. That night Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, fifty-five years old, was sworn in as the 36thpresident
in the presidential plane, and at once flew back to Washington along
with the body of the dead President, the president’s wife and immediate
party. Oswald
got away from the scene, but when police stopped to question him, he
shot and killed Patrolman J.D. Tippit. He was then arrested in an Oak
Cliff theater. Oswald,
twenty-four years old, openly professed to be a disciple of Karl Marx,
went to Russia and in 1959 announced that he had applied to denounce his
American citizenship and become a Russian. He married a Russian girl
and came back to the United States. Two days after the President’s
assassination Harvey Oswald, when being transferred from the city jail
to the county jail, was shot and killed by Jack Ruby, operator of a
strip-tease joint. The
murder of the energetic and popular young President shocked the whole
world. Those who did not vote for him and did not believe in his
political philosophy, yet respected him. Many Protestants, who did not
vote for this Catholic man from honest conviction, yet respected him as
their President and mourned over the crime and grieved for the widow and
the fatherless children. Dignitaries
from big governments of the world came to Washington for the funeral
and to pay respects to America and the memory of the late President.
Republicans called for a month’s moratorium on political debate out of
respect for the late Democratic President. Prominent American leaders
who had been, we think properly, greatly concerned about the wasteful
spending, the vastly increasing public debts, and the socialistic
program of Mr. Kennedy’s New Frontier, felt that a period of mourning
for all America was proper and thus called a truce for a few days to the
fight on the things about the Kennedy administration which they felt
honor-bound to oppose. So it was with Senator Goldwater, with Dr. Carl
McIntyre, and others. President
Lyndon B. Johnson soon got a solid hold on American affairs and proved
himself an efficient and powerful President. Proper respect was done to
Kennedy’s memory. Now it is right for Christian leaders to speak out on
the moral and spiritual issues in the assassination of President
Kennedy. The
senseless and wicked murder of President Kennedy was an unspeakable
tragedy. We believe he was an honest and gifted American. He served in
World War II with honor. Although he was a Catholic, we believe he
honestly supported the separation of church and state and tried not to
be partial to Catholics. We did not vote for him and would not have
voted for him again, but we were shocked at his tragic death and feel
that the murderer should have been tried by a court of law and should
have been given the death penalty. We do not regret that the murderer,
Lee Harvey Oswald, died; we only regret that he died illegally. But now there are serious spiritual questions about President Kennedy’s tragic assassination. 1. Why did God allow it? 2. And why did Oswald commit the crime? 3. Why the silly and wicked charges blaming loyal, anti-communist Americans for the President’s death? We prayerfully suggest the truth as we see it.
I. WHY DID GOD ALLOW THE ASSASSINATION?
Why
did God allow the man chosen by American people as President to be
slain before his first term was finished? Why the shock to millions who
loved him? Why was Jacqueline Kennedy suddenly made a widow and the two
children left fatherless? Why did God allow a wicked man to commit a
wicked crime to bring pain and hurt to multitudes? These are good questions. We do not know all the answers; perhaps we can answer some of them.
1. For Good Reasons God Allowed the Assassination of President Kennedy
Many
Scriptures show that God has His hands on the affairs of men. The
affairs of history do not take God by surprise, do not defeat His
purposes. If I had known about it and could have done so, I would have
prevented his murder. God did know about it and He could have prevented
it but did not. God
send a warning dream to proud Nebuchadnezzar, builder of the first
world empire at Babylon. But because he did not humble himself, God
said: “…they
shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of
the field, and they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and they
shall wet thee with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over
thee, till thou know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men,
and giveth it to whomsoever he will.”—Dan. 4:25. And
then we are told that it happened just as God had promised.
Nebuchadnezzar lost his mind, lived like a wild beast for seven years,
then was restored that he might “know that the most High ruleth in the
kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.” We
may be sure, then, that presidents and kings do not take office without
His permission and that they are not cut down contrary to God’s plans. But one may ask,Was wicked Lee Harvey Oswald a fit instrument of God’s will?The answer is that “surely the wrath of man shall praise thee: the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain” (Ps. 76:10). God
again and again punished Israel by the hand of heathen people about
them, as we read in the book of Judges. Israel was carried into
captivity by king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. The kings of Judah and
Israel—Azariah and Jehoram—were slain by Jehu. Even Judas, who betrayed
the Lord Jesus with a traitor’s kiss for money; and the time-serving
governor Pilate, who consented to His death; and the wicked Jewish
Sanhedrin which clamored for the crucifixion of the Son of God—these
were used to bring about the will of God and the death of His Son to pay
for the sins of the whole world. Yes, God does use wicked men to bring
about His will. Many
Scriptures also teach that what we regard as “acts of God” in law are
really just that. when lightning kills a man, or when a tree falls upon
him, or when an automobile accident takes his life, it is in some sense
really “an act of God.” In
Luke 13:1–5 Jesus takes the responsibility for God, for the death of
the Galileans whom Pilate killed for their sins; and again, “Or those
eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye
that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell
you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall likewise perish.” The tower of
Siloam falling on eighteen people was the will of God. So
in some very real sense the assassin’s bullet which cut down President
Kennedy did the will of God. God knew about the impending tragedy; He
could have prevented it but did not. He is not powerless; it was a
matter of His choice. He had reasons for permitting the tragedy and He
will bring good out of it for the people who love and trust Him. Romans
8:28 gives the solemn and eternal promise, “And we know that all things
work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called
according to his purpose.” We
must honestly face it, that as God allowed Satan to bring trouble on
Job; as He allowed John the Baptist to be beheaded; as He allowed Paul
to spend years in prison and then die; so he allows trouble to come to
good people. And as God brought Pharaoh to doom in the Red Sea; as He
put proud Nebuchadnezzar off his throne for seven years; as God used
heathen nations to chastise Israel; so God took President Kennedy,
although He used the bullet of a wicked man to do it. Either God has all
power and controls this universe, or He does not: and if He controls
the universe, then He allowed and had reasons for the death of President
Kennedy.
2. We Believe Kennedy Had Upon Him the Curse of a Liquor-Selling Father
Now
we must say a thing which grieves us to say, as it will grieve others
to read. To interpret the dealings of God, we must go to the Bible.
There, certainly, we find the divine law of sowing and reaping. We
believe that President Kennedy suffered from the curse which God Himself
pronounces in Habakkuk 2:15, “Woe
unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to
his, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their
nakedness!” The
father of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy is Joseph P. Kennedy. After
the appeal of the Eighteenth Amendment (the prohibition amendment) in
1933, Kennedy got a favored position with the government, was issued a
license to import Scotch whiskey, and thus when saloons and bars were
opened again without American-made whiskey to fill the demand, Kennedy
made his millions. Then multimillionaire Kennedy was favored of the New
Deal administration, and in 1938 was sent to England as Ambassador. So
it was largely whiskey money that paid the tremendous expense of
campaigning, which made John Fitzgerald Kennedy able to be elected
President. It was largely whiskey money from which the elder Kennedy
gave a million dollars to each of his children, including John Kennedy. Now
we believe the curse of God rests on anybody who sells and serves
liquor and thus has part in the making of drunkards, paupers, and
harlots and in filling jails and premature graves, in breaking happy
homes, and multiplying the inhabitants of Hell. God says, “Woe unto him
that giveth his neighbor drink.” That is a part of the divine law. “Be
not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that
shall he also reap. For he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh
reap corruption….”—Gal. 6:7,8. The
Bible pronounces a woe on those who drink liquor. “Woe to the crown of
pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim….” (Isa. 28:1). And again, “Who
hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babblings?
who hath wounds without a cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that
tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine….At the last it
biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.”—Prov. 23:29,30;32. Does
anybody doubt that there is a curse on the drinking of liquor? Does
anybody doubt the pain, the poverty, the broken homes, the crime, the
slavery of the drink habit? Well, that curse is pronounced in the Bible.
And a similar curse is pronounced on those who give a neighbor drink,
those who sell and those who serve liquor! In
a tabernacle revival campaign at Petersburg, Illinois, I preached on
“The Double Cross of Booze.” I challenged people to follow carefully
what happened to the families and homes of bartenders and liquor
sellers. I stated my conviction, that in every case the curse of God
would in some way be manifested on those who are under this woe
pronounced in the Bible. A
liquor dealer was enraged at my sermon and cursed and blasphemed up and
down the streets saying that his business was legitimate, he was
licensed to sell liquor, that if people drank too much and were cursed
by booze, it was not his fault. I
closed the revival and returned home. I think in two weeks a pastor
wrote me that the same liquor dealer went down to his bar one morning
and as he put his key in the lock to open the door he fell over dead.
Trouble followed his children, too. I
am saying there is a woe, a curse, pronounced by God on those who sell
liquor. “Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy
bottle to him, and makest him drunken also…” (Hab. 2:15). Now
with compassion of heart and with sincere sympathy for those who
suffered, let us note the sad story of disaster that has followed the
Kennedy family. 1.
The multimillionaire Joseph Kennedy, Sr., suffered a paralytic stroke,
is incurable and probably mentally affected by the stroke. 2. One daughter, Rosemary Kennedy, is mentally retarded, has spent many years in a home for the mentally defective. 3. Joe Kennedy, Jr., was killed as a bomber pilot in World War II, in 1944. 4. Kathleen Kennedy married, then her husband died in the war. In 1948 she died tragically in an air crash. 5.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Jacqueline have lost two babies, one
stillborn and never named, the other born after the Kennedys came into
the White House. Both bodies have been moved now to lie beside the
President in Arlington Cemetery. 6.
Last of all, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, inheritor of whiskey
money, elected to the presidency largely with whiskey money, was shot
down by the assassin’s bullet, and America mourned. The Associated Press noted this woe on the Kennedy family and after the President’s death published the following:
KENNEDYS WALK WITH VIOLENCE
Washington
(AP)—Violent death is no stranger to the family of Joseph P. Kennedy.
Along with great wealth and political triumph many tragedies have come
to the Irish-American clan from Boston. Joseph
P. Kennedy, Jr., elder brother of the assassinated President, was lost
in action in World War II. A Navy pilot, Kennedy vanished on an air
mission from England to occupied France in 1944. This was the son who
originally had borne the political hopes of the family but who did not
live to enter this field. Only
a month later, a son-in-law, the Marques of Hartington, was killed in
action in France. And in 1948, Lady Harrington, the former Kathleen
Kennedy, perished with three others in a plane crash in France. For
many years, another sister, Mary, has been in an institution for the
mentally retarded. It was this misfortune that spurred the family’s
interest in programs for the prevention and treatment of mental
retardation.
* * * *
I
do not rejoice in these judgments of God; I simply repeat that there is
a divine law of sowing and reaping which no man, whether President or
common laborer, can evade. There is a woe, a curse, on all who sell,
distribute and serve intoxicating liquor as well as on those who drink
it. As certain as the Bible is true, this curse is part of God’s reason
for allowing the assassination of President Kennedy. I do not think this is the end of the curse, but it is the great public climax of it, evidently. But one may properly ask,Would this curse of a father descend to the children?Yes, that is the clear teaching of Scripture. Exodus 20, verses 5 and 6, say, “…For
I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them
that hate me; And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and
keep my commandments.” Note here that the words “love” and “hate”
refer to either keeping God’s commandments or not keeping them. God
shows “mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my
commandments.” But God is a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children of the third and fourth generation of those
that do not keep His commandments and, in that practical sense, are
against God. And
a jealous God visits the iniquity of the father “upon the children unto
the third and fourth generation,” says the Scripture! Is
God thus unjust? No, for in truth the father makes the child. If the
father drinks, then the son usually drinks. Both President Kennedy and
Jacqueline used liquor, served it in the White House and lived in luxury
on liquor money inherited from the elder whiskey importer Kennedy. David’s
children suffered from their father’s sin. First, the baby, born of his
sin with Bathsheba, died. Then his beautiful daughter Tamar was raped
by his son Amnon. Than Amnon was killed by an avenging brother, Absalom.
Then Absalom stole the kingdom, would have killed his father David and
was himself killed in the war. Children
do reap their father’s sowing. Children do suffer for their father’s
sins. The curse, “Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that
puttest thy bottle to him,” may descend from father to son, even to the
third and fourth generation, according to the Scriptures. What
else did God have in mind in permitting the death of President Kennedy?
It may well be He wanted to save America from wasteful bankruptcy. We
may be sure that this is part of the “all things” which Romans 8:28
promises work together for good to them that love the Lord. God still
makes the wrath of men to praise Him. He still brings right out of
wrong.
II. WHY DID OSWALD KILL THE PRESIDENT?
I
think the facts are so well-established that we may say Oswald killed
President Kennedy because he was a criminal-minded Marxist, a man of
socialist-communist principles and moral standards. Several facts show
that he was a Marxist.
1. Oswald as a Socialist-Communist
Consider the following facts about Oswald. The Associated Press says:
He
says he became interested in Marxism at the age of fifteen when a
communist pamphlet fell into his hands. Later he discovered Marx’sDas Kapital, the Bible of communism.
After
Oswald was released from the army he was in Moscow, Russia, and on
October 30, 1959, he appeared at the American embassy, “where he
announced his decision to renounce his American citizenship. He told
officials: ‘I am a Marxist.’ Again he said, ‘Capitalism has passed its
peak. I would like to spend the rest of my life here.’” According
to the American State department, on November 2, 1959, Oswald turned in
his American passport in Moscow and in an affidavit declared, “I affirm
that my allegiance is to the Soviet Socialistic Republic.” Oswald married a Russian girl, Marina Nicholaevna. He
did not obtain Soviet citizenship, so returned to America. In New
Orleans appearing on a radio program “he described himself as a Marxist
but not a communist.” The
House Committee on Un-American Activities lists Oswald in its records
as secretary of the New Orleans chapter of a group called “Fair Play for
Cuba.” This
it is an established fact that Oswald was a disciple of Karl Marx, that
he was for Russian communism, that he was for Fidel Castro in Cuba.
Naturally he did not like the strict government supervision in Russia as
he did not like to obey the laws in America, but he did take up the
principles of Karl Marx as a socialist and communist.
2. But Oswald Murdered the President Because He Was a Criminal, With Criminal Moral Standards
Why
should Lee Oswald want to kill President Kennedy? Not, we suppose, for
political reasons. Nothing he ever said indicated that he was against
the program of the Democratic party nor against President Kennedy’s
political program. He did not do it as an agent of Russia. He did not
kill President Kennedy, as far as anybody can learn after the strongest
possible investigation, as a part of his communist conspiracy. Communism
helped to make Lee Oswald what he was, and then murder grew out of what
he was. There
is some indication that he had planned spectacular crimes in order to
get notoriety. But much more evidence was that he was a rebel against
society, that he hated government and discipline. A Fort Worth policeman
said that he knew Oswald from the fifth grade until his entry into
Arlington Heights High School in Forth Worth and said:
He
was always opposed to any kind of discipline. He seemed to hold it
against people up there—any authority. In an altercation with the coach
of the school B football team, the policeman recalled Oswald shouting”
“It’s supposed to be a free country, a man’s supposed to be able to do
what he wants.”
In
the marines “his military career was not a success. Twice he faced
court martial for infractions of regulations.” He never rose above the
rank of private first class. It
is quite possible that primarily Oswald intended to kill Governor John
Connally of Texas, who was wounded at the same time. From the Associated
Press we read:
CONNALLY POSSIBLE PRINCIPAL TARGET
Washington
(AP)—A 1961 letter found in the Pentagon’s personnel files raises a
question whether Governor John Connally of Texas rather than President
Kennedy was the primary target of an assassin’s bullets in Dallas,
Texas, Friday. The
letter was addressed to Connally, the Secretary of the Navy, asking a
reversal of Oswald’s undesirable discharge from the Marine Corps.
Did
Oswald seek vengeance because of his undesirable discharge from the
marines, and because Connally did not reverse the discharge and make it
an honorable one? It is clear he was a rebel against discipline, against law, whether in the schoolroom, in the marines, or from the government. It
is only fair to say that this kind of character is developed by Marxist
principles and teaching. Karl Marx himself was lazy and immoral. He
would not work and he lived off the help of Engels and his other friends
while he criticized society, the Bible, Christianity and governments. Sometimes
the wicked and criminal-minded turn to communism because they already
hold the immoral standards and godless attitude of the communists. In
other cases communism makes immoral standards and lowers men’s
consciences and principles to the murder, dictatorship, the bloody
revolutions, and the crimes which are openly advocated by communists to
reach their aims. Either
communism made Lee Harvey Oswald, or he, a rebel against society and
God, found a kinship among communists. Most likely it was a combination
of the two that made him the criminal, rebel, the godless murderer that
he was. Oswald
felt perfectly free to advocate the overthrow of the American
government, and then to appeal to Senator John Tower of Texas to have
the government bring him home from Russia. So he was advanced a loan of
$435 to come back to the states. It is not know whether this was ever
repaid. In
New Orleans his landlady told how he and his wife slipped away at night
from their rented apartment without paying the overdue rent. Oswald
had accepted the principles of Karl Marx, “From each according to his
ability, to each according to his need,” which sounds fine, but really
means that the man who doesn’t earn a living should be supported by the
man who does, that the lazy should be supported by the men of character
and energy. If
you hear this teaching by a modernistic preacher or in Sunday school
quarterlies of modernistic denominations, you will know they got it from
Karl Marx. It is socialism and that is the foundation of communism. If a
Democratic platform advocates that you should “redistribute the
wealth,” as President Roosevelt expressed it, by taxing the workers to
support the nonworkers, soaking the rich to support the poor and gain
their votes, then you will know that is a part of Karl Marx’s recipe for
socialism. Lee
Harvey Oswald made no claim to being a Christian, and as a communist he
openly disavowed the plain Bible teaching that one should reap
according to his sowing, should be paid according to his earning (Gal.
6:7,8), and the teaching that “if any would not work, neither should he
eat” (II Thess. 3:10). This lawless, criminal attitude made Lee Harvey
Oswald a murderer.
III. LOYAL AMERICANS, FUNDAMENTAL CHRISTIANS AND ANTI-COMMUNISTS WERE FALSELY BLAMED FOR THE PRESIDENT’S DEATH
It
is a shocking aftermath of the President’s death that the radicals, the
socialists, the communists in America and abroad, joined in blaming the
murder of the President on the so-called “radical right.” They said
that the murder was a product of hatemongering by all who opposed the
left-wing activities of the “New Frontier.” They accused all who opposed
what they regarded as giving away American independence to the United
Nations, all who opposed what many of us honestly see as the waste and
wild spending and billions of increased debts of the Kennedy
administration. It
was already well-proved that Lee Harvey Oswald was himself a socialist,
a pro-communist, and that the assassination had no connection whatever
with and no encouragement from the loyal Americans, the fundamental
Christians, the old-line Republicans, the anti-communists. In
fact, Dallas authorities are now convinced that it was this same
communist—Lee Harvey Oswald—who shot at and nearly killed General Edwin
Walker, the ardent foe of communism, some time before the President’s
death. He would kill Walker for being against left-wing socialism and
communism. He would kill the President because he was a rebel.
I. Communists Lead in Accusing Loyal Americans
But
from Moscow the official communist paper blamed the death of the
President to “gangsters whose connections often lead to very high-placed
extreme right-wing quarters and their patrons.” The Associated Press dispatch from Moscow is as follows:
PRAVDA BLASTS U.S. RIGHTISTS
Moscow
(AP)—Pravda charged yesterday that American right-wingers are trying to
use the assassination of President Kennedy to stir up anti-Soviet and
anti-Cuban hysteria. The organ of the Communist party said Dallas police ‘for provocative purposes’ were trying to pin it on U.S. Communists. Pravda
was skeptical about the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald and said “the more
details are reported, the darker and more suspicious all this story
becomes.” The newspaper was echoing charges first made last night by Radio Moscow. It continued to paint Kennedy as the victim of opponents of efforts to improve East-West relations. “Definite
quarters,” Pravda said, “are now striving to cover up the traces of the
bloody crime and use the tragic death of the president for stirring up
anti-Soviet and anti-Cuban hysteria. “The
murder of the U.S. president is a monstrous crime which has shocked all
the world and the indignation of the Americans is perfectly
understandable. But the very method of this terroristic act is not new
for the United States. It is reminiscent of other much smaller acts of
gangsters whose connections often lead to very high-placed extreme
right-wing quarters and their patrons.” Pravda went on: “All
America knows that the most reactionary, the wildest elements—the
Birchists, the followers of Senator Goldwater, and the notorious rebel
general and fascist Walker have built their nests precisely in Texas. “U.S. Reds Denies Oswald a member.”
* * * *
From communist China, from Cuba, and from theDaily Worker,
the official communist paper of America, came like charges. All joined
in saying that Kennedy was killed as a result of a campaign of hate by
“right-wingers,” by which is meant those who oppose communism and
socialism and who would keep a free, independent and solvent America,
particularly opponents of communism. The
notorious columnist Drew Pearson joined in with communists and their
slanderous charges. He said that Dallas, Texas, was “the most violent
and crime-ridden city in America.” He said that Dr. Carl McIntyre, in
opposing the modernism and political activities of the National Council
of Churches, was “a hate monger” and that people like him made the
climate that caused the President’s murder. Socialist-minded
Democratic leaders hastened to try to cover up the fact that it was a
socialist, a Marxist, far to the left politically, who killed him and to
charge that to what they called “the extreme right.” (President Kennedy
and the New Frontier were also considerably “Left of Center” too, as
President Roosevelt plainly stated his own position to be.) Radical
columnists joined in to say all who ever criticized the wasteful
extravagance of the New Frontier, with its billions of dollars deficit
in the high days of prosperity, were “hate mongers.” All
who were against sending billions of aid to communist Yugoslavia and
Poland, or to wasteful black countries in Africa, or to riot-ridden
dictatorships in South America, or to “neutralist” but pro-communist
countries in Southeast Asia—all who complained of this waste were
accused of guilt in the President’s murder! If
one spoke up for states’ rights and for obeying the laws of the states,
he was a “hate monger.” Anybody who voted against President Kennedy
because he was a Catholic was a “hate monger.” Anybody who opposed
overrunning Southern cities by marshal law was a “hate monger.” Any
fundamental Christian who opposed the National Council of Churches or
opposed modernism in principal denominations was a “hate monger”! Active
friends of Senator Goldwater were put under suspicion. The House
Committee on Un-American Activities was slandered. All
of this was false. Most was deliberate slander. Most was for an evil
motive. Many took advantage of the situation to campaign politically for
the Democratic party. Now anyone who was against waste in government
was disloyal to President Kennedy! Anybody who opposed the United
Nations was an enemy of peace. Anyone who did not want to sell wheat to
Soviet Russia; anyone who did not want to vote that the government
should take on the socialist medical care of the aged; anyone who spoke
up for Free Enterprise in private business in matters of hiring workers
or serving customers—all were subject to slander.
2. To the Everlasting Credit of America and the Fundamental Americans and Fundamental Christians, the Silly Charges Are False
Let me quote here from theWall Street Journal. Here is most of the article:
NO TIME FOR COLLECTIVE GUILT
In
the shock of these past few days it is understandable that Americans
should find their grief mingled with some shame that these events should
happen in their country. We all stand a little less tall than we did
last Friday morning. Yet,
for our own part, we find past understanding the remarks of some
otherwise thoughtful men who, in their moment of shock, would indict a
whole nation with a collective guilt. It seems to us that they
themselves have yielded to the hysteria they would charge to others, and
in so doing show that their own country is past their understanding. Anyone
who has been reading the newspapers, listening to the radio or watching
television has heard these men; they include public commentators,
members of our Congress and men of God. And the substance of what they
charge is that the whole of the American people—and by inclusion, the
ways of the American society—are wrapped in a collective guilt for the
murder of a President and the murder of a murderer. A
Senator said that the responsibility lay on “the people of Dallas”
because this is where the events took place. A spokesman for one group
of our people said the nation was “reaping the whirlwind of hatred.” One
of our highest judges said the President’s murder was stimulated by the
“hatred and malevolence” that are “eating their way into the
bloodstream of American life.” A newspaper of great renown passed
judgment that “none of us can escape a share of the fault for the spiral
of violence.” And these were but a few among the many. SUCH
STATEMENTS can only come from men who have not been abroad in the land,
neither paused to reflect how the events came about nor observed in
what manner the whole American people have responded to a tragedy. A
President lies dead because he moved freely among the people. He did so
because he was beloved by many people, respected by all, and because
everywhere people turned out in great numbers to pay him honor. In a
society of tyranny the heads of state move in constant fear of murder,
cordoned behind an army of policemen. It is the fundamental orderliness
of the American society that leads Presidents to move exposed to all the
people, making possible the act of a madman.
* * * *
In
sum, there is in all of this—let there be no mistake—much to grieve, to
regret, to blame. We can’t escape remorse that there are madmen in our
midst, that a President is dead, that we have been denied the right to
show in open court the virtue of a free society. Now we pay the price of
all sorts of negligence. But
this is something different from the charge in the indictment. It is
more than nonsense to say that the good people of Dallas, crowding the
streets to honor a President, share a murderous guilt; or that the
tragic acts of madmen cast a shadow on the whole of America. Such an
indictment is vicious. Of reason for shame we have enough this day without adding to them a shameful injustice to a mourning people.
* * * *
It
would not have been altogether surprising if someone who had suffered
grievous wrong at the hands of the administration, mostly conservatives,
of course, had hated the President, but it was none of those who wished
the President harm, who broke the law, who murdered him. General
Edwin Walker, because he was an officer in charge of American troops in
Germany and indoctrinated his troops about the dangers of communism,
was removed from his command. Socialists in government wanted no fight
on communism, no warning of soldiers of left-wing tendencies in America.
So General Walker was humiliated and brought home. He resigned from the
army so he would be free to speak. He gave up all the insurance and
retirement pay to which he was entitled after a lifetime of
distinguished service to America, so he might freely speak as an
American citizen against communism and socialism. General
Edwin Walker was for states’ rights. He thought it was wrong for the
Federal government to intervene in Oxford, Mississippi, to override the
laws of Mississippi, to insult the governor elected by the people who
was trying to enforce the laws of his state as he was sworn to do.
General Walker said so, so he was arrested, was railroaded to an insane
asylum without trial, although he was obviously sane. One hundred
thousand dollars bail was demanded to have him released from prison. That
was a blot on all America. It smelled like a dictatorship. The Kennedy
administration was showing its teeth through the program by which it
would gain the black vote all over America by slandering and abusing
white Southerners by overriding the rights given to the states by the
Federal Constitution. General
Walker or one of his sons or close friends might have had bitterness in
his heart. It would not have been surprising to many if one so
grievously wronged should have hated the President. But the man who was
standing up for America against communism was not the murderer, the
criminal. Real Americanism does not make murderers. It was the
pro-communist and socialist young criminal Lee Harvey Oswald who killed
the President! Two
white men were killed when the Kennedy administration spent four
million dollars to compel the University of Mississippi to take as a
student a black selected by the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People. They were not rioting; no charges were brought
against them. The matter has never been explained but hushed up. It
would be understandable if some of the loved ones of those murdered
men, blamed on the unwise zeal of Bobby Kennedy and the administration’s
effort to garner black votes, should hold hate toward the
administration. Granted the Kennedys thought they were right in the
matter, and granted that the motives were probably good. But
before President Kennedy died he saw, and the Democratic leaders saw,
they were unwise. They overran the rights of many common people; they
flaunted the laws of certain Southern states; they had not taken time
and Christian charity to work out details with good people on the race
question. So they changed their tactics somewhat and removed some of the
pressure on the race issue. But
if it is now wrong, it was wrong them. And no matter—right or wrong—the
murdered men left families who loved them. It would not be surprising
if some such person had hated the President. But
it was none of these fighting for the laws of the states and for the
Federal government to respect good people everywhere, who murdered the
President. It was a pro-communist outlaw, a left-wing criminal, Lee
Harvey Oswald. It
was not one of the steel executives, though some of the steel companies
lost multiplied thousands of dollars because of the radical attack by
Federal forces on the steel industry when they raised prices. Thus the
administration usurped dictatorial power when they curbed free
enterprise, the free American way. These
businessmen, shamed, defrauded of their rights, did not attack
President Kennedy. No, those on “the right,” those for Americanism, are
not the ones who kill presidents. It was left-winger Lee Harvey Oswald. Modernists
who spit on the blood of Jesus and who mock at the authority of the
Bible may turn out to be lawless, because they are against the Bible and
its moral authority. Bible-believing fundamentalism does not make for
lawlessness. Those who join in with communists, who break down American
traditions and try to take over America for communism, are against God
and the Bible, morality and law. But old-time fundamental Americans,
those who are called “the extreme right,” are not usually lawless. They
are human and, like all humans, they do wrong. But fundamental
Americanism does not make criminals. Left-wing socialism and communism
and left-wing religion do. Oh,
there must be a guilty conscience among all the left-wingers who tried
so hard to cover up the fact that it was Oswald, an avowed communist,
who had been to Russia, married a Russian girl, learned the Russian
language, read the writings of Karl Marx, wanted to renounce his
American citizenship, took the part of Fidel Castro—that such a man
killed the President.
IV. SOME LESSONS FOR AMERICA TO REMEMBER
The
tragic death of President Kennedy and the period of mourning, the
readjustment and the new President, all left us with certain important
lessons which we need to take to heart and remember.
1. Dangerous to Christianity and America’s Welfare to Have a Catholic President
In
running for office, President Kennedy said that he would put the
welfare of America first and should there be a conflict between what the
pope at Rome and the Catholic church required and what he felt was best
for America, he would still do what was best for America. I
think he meant it, that he honestly tried to live up to that promise. I
believe that he honestly accepted the American position of the
separation of church and state. I think that President Kennedy was a
dedicated American. He served his county in World War II. He did not die
for his country but Policeman Tippit in Dallas did, I believe.
President Kennedy was in Texas running for re-election, trying to carry
the state in the next campaign. So he was not a martyr. But
by American standards and disregarding spiritual questions for the
moment, he was a good American and in many respects a good President. I
mean no reflection on President Kennedy as a loyal Catholic when I say
that I am still opposed to a Catholic’s being President of the United
States. Again,
let me say very plainly that multitudes of Catholics are good American
citizens. They have the same right to vote, the same right to run for
office as Protestants or infidels, and we all want them to have that
right. Those who want to vote for a Catholic for President have that
right. But
I have an equal right to vote against a Catholic for President if I
feel I should. And I do feel that, other things being equal, it is best
not to have a Catholic President. Although the mighty power of the Roman
hierarchy did not openly control President Kennedy—and I think he would
never intentionally consent to that control—still that power is
dangerous. It has been used in nearly every nation in the world,
including America, and I do not want America endangered by a secret,
nationwide, worldwide machine loyal to a foreign potentate and bringing
pressure on American policies. I
believe that good Catholics, like other good Americans, would try to
vote right, would try to pass good laws, would try to keep their oaths
of office. But I think that a Catholic President has been harmful for
America, and here are some of the reasons why. The
death of the President brought into strong focus the fact that the
Catholic church has a plan of salvation utterly foreign to the Bible, a
salvation that depends on the Catholic church and the rites of the
church, a plan of salvation where “good” people, church people like
Kennedy, go to purgatory and are prayed out or paid out by having masses
said in churches. In theNashville Tennesseanfor Sunday, November 24, the religious news editor said:
In all Episcopal churches in Tennessee, prayers were offered yesterday for the repose of the soul of the late President.
The same article tells us:
At
Catholic Church of the Holy Name, a chain of prayers began at Kennedy’s
death and continued until the special mass at 8 a.m. yesterday. Various
parish organizations were in charge of the all-night vigil. Many of those at the vigil said this prayer: “Incline
thine ear, O Lord, to our prayers, with which we supplicate thy mercy
that thou set the soul of thy servant, John, which thou hast commanded
to pass from this world, into a region of peace and light, and order
that it be at the fellowship of the saints….”
That
is not Christianity. There is nothing in the Bible that indicates that
one may be saved after death, or that there is a purgatory from which
one could be released, or that offering of masses for the dead or for
anybody else, is ever effective. That is not Bible Christianity. It is
not the religion of Jesus Christ. It does violence to the blood
atonement and to the Gospel of Christ. There is nothing in all the Bible
like that. I
grant you that Catholics have a right to their religion, but for it to
be paraded on TV and radio and in the newspapers all over America for
fifteen or eighteen hours a day, day after day, as if it were
Christianity, does great harm to America. From Saturday through Monday,
TV programs over the nation were occupied with a portrayal of Catholic
“requiem masses for the soul of the President.” I
do not mind a Catholic President having a Catholic funeral. Even though
it became a national ceremony, he was a Catholic, his family were
Catholics, and he had a right to a Catholic funeral. I do not think that
all that unscriptural ritual, all the form and ceremony, with nothing
about the blood of Christ or salvation by faith in Christ, or the new
birth, properly represents America religiously. But
my concern is that now millions of Americans, impressionable people,
people who loved President Kennedy, have been taught that salvation is
by the church, through rites and ceremonies, through masses, through
prayers for the dead, etc.; and that is a great danger to America. All
over America, now, for one to expose the false doctrine of Romanism
means that he is branded as a “hate monger.” Did we not have a Catholic
President? Then that must be true Christianity! Yesterday
came a letter from a woman angry because THE SWORD OF THE LORD took
sides against false doctrine. Thousands of Bible-believing preachers and
churches have had their work made much more difficult by the Roman
Catholic influence on radio and TV and in the newspapers during those
last three and a half years. And millions of Americans are now less open
to the Gospel and more turned toward formalism in religion and toward
an idea of salvation by the church and by repeating prayers and by
masses for the dead instead of personally coming to trust Christ as
Savior. To make the Roman plan of salvation popular instead of the Bible
plan of conversion is bad for America. Remember,
I insist every Catholic has a right to run for office and to vote for
anyone he chooses. I have exactly the same right to vote for those I
feel would be better for America. Every Catholic has a right if he
wishes to try to teach people that a Catholic President would be better
for America than a Protestant. I have exactly the same right to insist
that a Catholic President will give great popularity to false doctrine
and a false religion which leads people away from the Bible and away
from Christ, to a form and ceremony that cannot save. I
think that economically, socially, politically, there are great dangers
for America in a Catholic President, too, though they are not
immediately apparent. In every nation where Roman Catholics have had the
pervading and controlling influence, there has been a lessening of the
liberty, the welfare of the people. Has
Catholicism in its very center in Italy made Italy great as the United
States is great? Has Catholicism in Latin-American countries made them
great as Canada and the United States settled about the same time, but
without Catholic control?
2. Still a Free Country, and American Citizens Have the Right of Free Speech, Free Assembly, Free Vote
There
are those in America who would count it a crime to criticize the party
and the administration in power. That is the way it was in General
Franco’s dictatorship in Spain. That is the way it was under Hitler in
Germany. That is the way it was under Khrushchev in Russia. Thank
God, it is not yet true in America! A man has a right to vote for the
man he thinks he should vote for, and he has a right to criticize the
man in office whom he thinks does not adequately fulfill his duties.
America is still a country of free speech. It is not a crime to speak
out against the United Nations, to speak out against the overwhelming
public debt, to speak out against the foreign aid program. Honest people
have honest convictions, and it is not only an American right, but the
American duty for people to express themselves and their convictions on
such matters. If
you believe the Federal government should arrogantly override the state
governments in speeding desegregation, you have the right to say so.
If, like thousands, you oppose that and feel patience and charity will
do it better, this is a free country: say so! Newspaper
columnists made much of the fact that Adlai Stevenson, the United
States delegate to the United Nations, was slapped with a cardboard
placard by a woman in Dallas! They would be much more justified in
objecting to the murder and the beatings of the labor unions in the
thirteen-year plumbing strike in Milwaukee when the hoodlums themselves
and labor union criminals were backed up by the Federal government. No
one is less a good American citizen because he thinks we should not
give up our rights to the United Nations. On the other hand, no one is
necessarily a poor citizen who is in favor of using the United Nations
as a method for communication between nations, and to try to maintain
peace. America is still a country of free opinion, free speech and free
assemblage. If
Senator Goldwater thought that the Tennessee Valley Authority was
socialistic, as I do, where the few are benefited at the cost of the
many, he had a right to say so. The safety of America and of our liberty
will be better furthered by free speech than by a gag rule on private
opinion. No
one has to agree with all the policies of the Democratic
administration—whether President Kennedy or President Lyndon B.
Johnson—in order to be a good American. In exactly the same way, no one
has to agree with Senator Barry Goldwater in order to be a good
American. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and free speech is
part of that vigilance.
3. America Still a Stable Country, Ruled by Law
We
thank God that the transition from the presidency of the slain
President to the administration of Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson was a
smooth and orderly transition. America is made that way. We are a
country of well-established government, a good Constitution. When presidents have died in office in America, it has never been because of an insurrection, never acoupby
political rivals. In many countries a president or dictator may be
overthrown, armed men storm the place, throw out the legislative body,
and take over the government. That is never true in America. Thank God,
America is the best established, most solid government of the people in
the world, as far as we know. President
Lyndon B. Johnson was immediately the acting President when it became
known that President Kennedy was dead. A few minutes later he was the
sworn President and had assumed the office officially, with its
responsibilities, duties and privileges. In
Chicago the TV cameras presented many people on the streets who
expressed their sorrow and grief at the death of President Kennedy. That
was proper. One greatly distressed black man said, “I hope that the
United States government will survive.” He did not know, but I hope he
has since learned, that America is not John Fitzgerald Kennedy, it is
not Lyndon B. Johnson, it is no man or any small group of men. America
is the whole population represented by a Constitution, by-laws and
institutions which are stable, unshaken, self-perpetuating. We
can thank God that although there was great mourning, the business of
government went on as usual, and the transfer of the presidency from the
man slain to his successor was a matter of minutes and without a
political ripple.
NOTE:
I JUST WANT TO MAKE A COMMENT HERE BEFORE YOU READ POINT #4 BELOW. I
TOTALLY DISAGREE WITH THIS AUTHOR JOHN R. RICE COMMENT ABOUT LBJ. SINCE
THE PAST 57 YEARS OF JFK'S MURDER, EVIDENCE HAS SURFACED THAT IN FACT
LYNDON B. JOHNSON WAS THE MASTERMIND BEHIND THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION.
FOR PROOF OF THIS I STRONGLY URGE YOU TO BUY THE BOOK: BY AUTHOR
PHILLIP F. NELSON ON AMAZON.COM: "LBJ: THE MASTERMIND OF THE JFK ASSASSINATION"
4. America Has a Great President in Lyndon B. Johnson: We Should Pray for Him
America
seems unusually fortunate in that the presidency in a tragic hour fell
to a man well-equipped for the job, possibly the best-equipped man to
come to the presidency in many decades. He has spent many, many years in
Washington. He was for many years a leader in the Senate, the most
powerful man in getting legislation through the Senate. He is a
politician in the good sense of knowing how to work with other people to
bring things to agreement. We
trust that Lyndon B. Johnson is a Christian man. He is a member of a
Christian church. He said in his inauguration, “I need your help and
God’s.” And
I think it is fair to say that Lyndon B. Johnson is far nearer to the
common people of America, coming from a ranch in West Texas, than John
Kennedy, coming from a rich Catholic family and from Massachusetts.
Lyndon B. Johnson is fairly well-to-do, but he grew up in a modest home
and earned his own way. To come to the presidency with a million dollars
of inherited wealth which he did not earn, tended in the case of
Franklin D. Roosevelt and in the case of John Kennedy to profligate
spending of other people’s money. In the case of Lyndon B. Johnson, we
hope that he will more nearly represent the heartbeat of poor and
common, hard-working people. We do not hold it against a man that he has
earned money. But for a man to spend lavishly money that he never
earned, ill equips him for handling other people’s money. President
Lyndon B. Johnson was elected on the same platform with President
Kennedy. He has espoused the same general principles. He seems to have
made some earnest effort to reduce expenses. We think that is not nearly
enough, but at least that was greatly needed and will be to the
advantage of America. We do not expect to vote for Mr. Johnson, if some
capable man of more conservative standards and less socialistic and
left-wing leanings is available. But we believe he is a good man, will
make a good President, and we pray God to bless him and to bless the
great nation of which he is the President.
5. There Are Some Great Spiritual Principles Which Ought to Be Called to Our Mind as We Remember the Death of President Kennedy
First,
remember that God puts up kings and takes them down, that God exalts
whom He will. Those in places of leadership should remember that they
hold their leadership at the pleasure of a God who rules all things. Second,
I must point out to every reader that sin must be punished, that one
must reap what he sows, that a jealous God visits the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children. And particularly in the liquor business we
should remind every reader of God’s Word, “Woe unto him that giveth his
neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to him…” (Hab. 2:15). Liquor is a
curse to everyone who drinks it and a curse to every person who serves
it, a curse to every bartender who sells it, to every newspaper that
advertises it, a curse to every citizen who votes for it. It has brought
endless woe to America. Preachers had better preach this truth—that men
must reap what they sow. God is not mocked. Third, death is only a breath away. No one knows when he must die. Everyone should prepare to meet God. And
fourth, let me remind every reader that the only salvation for any of
us is by coming to Christ personally, trusting Him. No one is saved
because he is a Protestant or Catholic. No one is saved because he goes
to church, or because he says prayers, or because there are masses for
him in church. One is saved only if he comes personally to trust in
Jesus Christ and receives a new heart, relying on the atoning work of
Jesus to pay for our sins. Oh, make sure that you have trusted Him as Savior.
Additional Comments by Dr. Rice Abut Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s Death (Printed June 28, 1968)
1. Heed God’s Warning, Sin Cannot Escape Punishment. Liquor Money is Accursed 2. America Is Reaping the Lawlessness We Encourage in the Civil Rights, to Students, in Labor Circles.
This Wednesday morning, June 5, the morningMemphis Commercial Appealpaper
was brought to my bed in the hospital at 7:00 o’clock and then we heard
the report on television that Senator Robert Kennedy who campaigned in
California for the Democratic nomination for president had been shot at a
victory meeting. It was a shocking thing. This afternoon at 4:30 his
condition was still regarded as “extremely critical,” and it seems
doubtful if he will live. Or if he lives he might sustain brain damage
that would incapacitate him for public office. (Later: Senator Kennedy
died the following morning.) The
assassination was wicked and inexcusable. It is a sad commentary on a
lawless America growing a new generation with no respect for law and
authority. But God allowed it. Why?
An Amazing and Heartbreaking Record of Tragedy
We
ask why particularly because it is not one isolated and ordinary case.
It is the last of a dreadful series of tragedies that has befallen the
Kennedy family. Does not God know all things? Yes. We believe that He
controls men and events, and that, yes, even wicked men He uses to work
His plan. He used heathen nations to punish Israel and carry them into
captivity and war again and again. He used Judas and Pilate and the
Jewish Sanhedrin to crucify the Savior although Jesus was foreordained
of God to die. We must remember that there are no accidents from God’s
viewpoint. “He maketh even the wrath of men to praise him.” Of the sins
of Joseph’s brethren, he said, “Ye thought evil against me; but God
meant it unto good.” We are told that “the king’s heart is in the hand
of the Lord” (Prov. 21:1). The tragedy of Senator Robert Kennedy’s being
shot down in public cannot be disassociated from the series of
tragedies that preceded it in the Kennedy family.
God’s Curse on the Liquor Business and Liquor Money
There
is a scripture which I sincerely believe gives the key to God’s thought
in allowing this series of tragedies. In Habakkuk 2:15 God says, “Woe
unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to
him….” The
elder Kennedy, a special friend of President Roosevelt, was tipped off
ahead of time, we understand, that President Roosevelt would get the
Eighteenth Amendment (the prohibition amendment) repealed. And Kennedy
then got an inside track on shiploads of whiskey to be brought from
Scotland and thus he made millions of dollars out of the whiskey
business. And
it is said that money resulted in a million dollar gift to each of his
children and it was largely through Kennedy money that John F. Kennedy
was elected to the presidency and it is largely the same whiskey money
on which Senator Robert Kennedy was running for the presidency. But God
pronounced a woe, a curse, on those who give their neighbor drink, put
the bottle to others. Thus there is a curse on the Kennedy family. I
do not rejoice at it. I simply tell it. I did not do it and I would not
have done it. God seems to have allowed it for His own reasons. And
everybody should remember that you cannot get by with sin. There is a
curse on the liquor traffic, on those who drink it: “Woe to
the…drunkards of Ephraim…” (Isa. 28:1). And a curse on the seller and
the server: “Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest
thy bottle to him….” We
called attention to this truth when President John Kennedy was
assassinated. Later there followed the sad event of an airplane wreck,
Edward Kennedy’s broken back and six months in the hospital. Now there
comes this other tragedy in the series. There
is a curse on the Kennedy money because it is liquor money. According
to the Bible, there is a curse on everybody who sells liquor, every
hostess who serves it, every man who buys it for others, every man who
drinks it. Cities, states, and governments that license liquor sales for
the tax money will answer to God. Payday is coming for all who deal in
this business of making drunkards, paupers, harlots, and criminals by
the liquor traffic, so God’s Word declares. It
is now announced that the alleged gunman who shot Senator Kennedy is an
Arab, born in Jerusalem. Whatever motive he had, it was a wicked crime.
We feel the law must take its course and if he is proven guilty, he
should suffer for it.
But for America There Is Another Lesson!
The
lesson America had better learn and learn quickly is that if we condone
lawlessness on the one hand, we breed it on the other. If it is all
right for Martin Luther King to break the law in his “non-violent”
crime, then who shall say that someone else may not think his reason is
as good as Martin Luther King’s? If it is all right for blacks to loot
and burn and kill, why would it not be all right for an Arab to avenge
some imagined wrong? Actually Arabs have suffered far more in the last
25 years than blacks. Is
it really any worse for an Arab to shoot at Senator Kennedy, than for a
black in Chicago to shoot at a policeman? If it is all right for
students to break the law in Columbia University and in Berkeley,
California, and in other great centers of learning, then why is it not
all right for some other minority person, an ill-educated and
un-Americanized Arab, to take the law in his hands, too? The
socialist crowd, the welfare-state crowd, the political liberals, the
“Great Society” crowd have wept crocodile tears and tried to justify the
looters and rioters and criminals because of some past inequalities
which black people have suffered. But it is not poverty that makes
criminals. It is lack of discipline and character in the home, lack of
law enforcement in society, lack of earnest, godly rebuke of sin in the
pulpits, lack of forthright honesty in the news writers and commentators
that makes criminals. We are growing a crop. Every
great promise some politician made in order to get votes, promises he
could not fulfill, has helped foment this lawlessness. People have been
taught that they deserve all the comforts other people have whether they
work for them or not. They have been taught that a dropout from school
who wouldn’t study is supposed to get just as good salary as the man who
worked his way through and made good. They have been taught that all
they need the government ought to supply, and that it is wicked
discrimination if every man doesn’t have as much as his more godly and
more hard-working neighbor! In
America we must either come back to the old-fashioned American virtues
of discipline in the home, complete and quick enforcement of the laws,
patriotism taught in the schools, and statesmen in the government who
will not rush America into an abyss of debts and insolvency to gain the
favor of the voters and of the rest of the world with other people’s
money. Any
man who is willing to try, willing to be faithful, willing to learn,
can get a job in America. I know. I worked for as little as a dollar a
day. I worked my way through college, often on as little as 14¢ an hour
and never more than 30¢ an hour. I remember when eight of us lived in a
four-room house, no running water, no plumbing, no icebox, and, of
course, no electricity. Our principal articles of diet were cornbread or
biscuits (homemade), salt pork, blackeyed peas or dried beans, and
molasses. We
did not live in any ghetto, we did not regard ourselves as
underprivileged. We were first-class citizens because we were
hard-working, God-fearing, respectable and self-respecting and everybody
around us knew we were first-class citizens. Poverty does not make
criminals. It is a result of lack of discipline, lack of
law-enforcement, foolish encouragements of the criminals.
Now a Just Tribute to the Late Senator
Senator
Robert Kennedy was a dedicated, compassionate man, loved by many. He
was, I suppose, a devout Catholic. Perhaps he had no conscience about
his liquor drinking and serving and his liquor fortune. I believe he
loved America. He worked hard to stop racketeering in the Teamster’s
Union and elsewhere. I admired him greatly, admired his family, but I
feared him because of his socialism, his left-wing tendencies. Now
he is gone. May God some way teach the grieving family to turn away
from masses, from prayers to Mary, from confessions to a priest, to come
to know and trust Christ as personal Savior. But let us not forget the lesson: lawlessness allowed in some brings anarchy and murder.
Political and Unconverted Preachers Have Encouraged “Revolution” and Lawbreaking in the Civil Rights Movement
There
is no use of us getting excited about the murder of Senator Kennedy
unless we get excited about lawbreaking in general. As long as people
are encouraged to break any law that they do not believe is right or
that they do not like, then the result will be an increase in crime just
as it has been in America. Oh, America, with crime in our streets, with
racial strife stirred up deliberately to get black votes, with foolish
promises made that cannot be fulfilled, how America needs to turn back
to God and have that unity and peace in America for which the nation was
founded! At
Washington, D.C., April 15, before the Daughters of the American
Revolution, International Defense Luncheon at the Mayflower Hotel, Mr.
Thurman Sensing, executive vice-president of Southern States Industrial
Council, spoke with great concern on “A Call to Law and Order.” He said
the following:
The
second cause of riots is the false compassion that has been spewed out
by our leaders in government, by some of the clergy, and others in
position of responsibility during the past few years. It
was no less than President Johnson who used the civil rights marchers’
phrase, “We shall overcome,” several times in one of his speeches, and
lent them his encouragement. Didn’t he know that this was the title of a
song written for the civil rights marches by Pete Seeger, a person who
had been identified under oath as a Communist? When Seeger wrote “We
shall overcome,” it is not hard to imagine that what he meant was “We,
the Communists, shall overcome.” It
was no less than President Johnson who greeted an audience of students
in the summer of 1965 as “fellow revolutionaries. We want change…I hope
you will go out into the hinterland and arouse the masses, and blow the
bugles, and tell them the hour has arrived, and their day is here.”
Well, the bugles have sounded all right—in Newark, in Cambridge,
Maryland, in East Harlem, in Detroit, in Milwaukee, and dozens of other
cities—and the day is here. And
speaking of encouragement, I wonder if Vice President Humphrey cares to
recall his remarks in New Orleans in the summer of 1966 when he said
that if he had to live in the slums “I think you’d have more trouble
than you’ve had already, because I’ve got enough spark left in me to
lead a mighty good revolt.” Well, Mr. Humphrey’s services were not
needed—there were plenty of other volunteers. And
let me insert right here that it is not buildings that make slums, it
is people who make slums. You can take the same people out of the slums
and put them in well-built high-rise apartments and these apartments
will soon become more filthy and more dangerous than the slums they
left. That has been well demonstrated in New York City. And
how about the…Senator from New York—Senator Robert F. Kennedy—when he
said in the summer of 1965: “There is no point in telling Negroes to
obey the law. To many Negroes the law is the enemy.” And
back to President Johnson when he said in 1964: “We are going to try
and take all of the money that we think is being unnecessarily spent and
take it from the ‘haves’ and give it to the ‘have nots’ that need it so
much.” What kind of expectations did he think that was arousing? He can
look about him and find the answer. Behind
the criminal insurrection in Detroit and elsewhere are liberal counsels
of appalling irresponsibility. The rioters, looters and arsonists have
been encouraged in recent years to believe that they were above the law.
America Has Still the Best Opportunity for Poor People, for White and Negro, for Jobs, Education, for High Standard of Living
We
have foolishly left the impression that the blacks and poor whites and
other minority groups in America are so mistreated, that they have
little opportunities. That simply is not so. Black people in America,
for example, have more cars than everybody in the Soviet Union together!
The silly talk about a million people going to bed hungry at night is
simply not so. The idea that there has been under cover a burning
ferment of unrest and poverty and hopelessness—again that simply is not
true. There is an unrest, but it is a carefully developed and fomented
unrest, not brought about by misfortune or poverty but brought about by
deliberate incitement, false propaganda, communist influence and the
infidel preachers and socialistic politicians who look for votes.
