My brother and sister-in-law recently spent some time in Gettysburg exploring the historic battlefield. We were talking about their experience last night at dinner with my wife and son. We talked about how it is difficult to imagine that Americans turned on one another in a civil war; that neighbors fought neighbors, brothers were against brothers and the deep emotional, physical, and spiritual toll that war exacted on the country, the effects still lingering after 150 years.

The death toll of Americans in the US Civil War is estimated at approximately 700,000. We asked ourselves if there wasn’t some way to have avoided that, to have worked it out. Then the conversation turned to the hostile environment of today.

The rhetoric today is visceral.

The radical left is relentless in trying to undermine and render ineffective a duly elected president. They are using foul and vulgar language, hiding behind “art” to depict beheading and assassination of the president. They are using words that fan the flames of hate, painting the image that if anyone disagrees with their dark view of the world that those people are hate mongers, racists, bigots, and worse.

They have driven the narrative of the nation to an extreme level. The news media is part and parcel to amplifying the message of hate and rebellion. The politicians are pointing fingers and elevating accusations. The comedians and entertainers are joining the chorus with their star power.

Then we have a guy from the most gun-controlled state—Illinois, who hops in a van to another most gun-controlled area in Washington, DC, who somehow buys a semi-automatic weapon and manages to find an obscure baseball field where Republican Congressmen are practicing, and opens fire on them.

Come to find out, he had a hit list of conservatives to kill. The question that remains is this: Did he act alone or is he part of a larger movement? Certainly, with all the rhetoric that has hatefully hit the news media since the shooting, it begs the question of what is really going on in this country.

Many experienced with observing government overthrows believe we are witnessing a coup in the making.
Many others believe we are on the verge of another civil war. The violence associated with the leftist groups against those who rally in support of the president is their confirmation. Folks, we do not need Americans killing Americans as what happened in the 1860s. We do not need to become a third world nation with communists and anarchists trying to overthrow our form of government. We need to pray for peace. We need to stand for righteousness and accountability.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:9, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”

We need peacemakers to speak into this charged atmosphere. Let’s use our conversations to calm down the rhetoric.

Have a blessed and powerful day!

Bill Wilson

www.dailyjot.com

A colleague yesterday said he was working from home because the FBI asked his company to shut down during the investigation of the baseball field where James Hodgkinson attempted to assassinate Republican members of Congress. I knew there was a ball field across from my friend’s office, but I hadn’t put two and two together.

This field is really tricky to find as even GPS gets confused and “recalculating” occurs. Then an email arrived from a ministry partner William Agbeti in Ghana, who has survived six coups, with a blockbuster question: “How did gunman James Hodgkinson, who lives in Chicago, know when and where Steve Scalise and company would be practicing for a baseball game in Alexandria?”

When I told Agbeti about how difficult it is to find the field, he replied, “Third world kinda contract killing at work.” This is an excellent point. While the narrative is that Hodgkinson was a lone wolf who went off the deep end because of all the hate rhetoric, how did he just randomly show up with an assault rifle at an obscure location where Republican Congressmen were practicing for a baseball game of all things?

No, there is more to this story. It’s too bad that Hodgkinson was killed as he took his secret to his grave, although we do know that he was influenced by the hate speech atmosphere created by Democratic politicians and their celebrity supporters as amplified by a biased and complicit media.

The conciliatory chorus crooned by Democrats turned quickly to blaming President Donald Trump for the shooter’s actions. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was all gushy on the day the shooting occurred, but the day after said in a speech:

When you have a president that says I can shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and nobody would care, when you have people saying beat them up and I’ll pay their legal fees, when you have all the assaults that are made on Hillary Clinton, for them to be so sanctimonious is something.

In her column “The Resistance goes live-fire,” Ann Coulter concluded: “The fake news insists that Trump’s White House is in “chaos.” No, the country is in chaos. But just like Kathy Griffin and her Trump decapitation performance art—the perpetrators turn around in doe-eyed innocence and blame Trump.”

Agbeti sees this from an experiential lens:

Being an African who has survived six coups d’etat in Ghana, I see so many similarities associated with the development of coups d’etat at play in the U.S. This development has kept me thinking: What could be happening here?…Indisputably, there is a coup in the offing…the good people of America may not know about the coup in the offing. But clearly, those engineering the coup d’etat know what they are doing; and admittedly they seem to be pros about what they are doing.

These are people with blood on their hands and in their minds and hearts. As The Lord said to Cain in Genesis 4:10, “The voice of your brother’s blood cries unto me from the ground.”

We need to recognize this and pray for our nation and the courage to honor God, calling for civility and standing against tyranny.

Have a blessed and powerful day!

Bill Wilson

www.dailyjot.com