Disaster Among the Heavens - Don E Peavy Sr (best books for students to read .TXT) 📗

pajamas and robe; he deemed the Oval Office too sacred of a space to violate dressed as he was. Two secret service agents accompanied him to the office. One sat in a chair outside while the other entered the room with The President.
“Go ahead General,” The President said into the telephone as he took a seat behind the Chief of Staff’s desk.
“Mr. President, we have a problem. There’s a private aircraft headed towards NORAD.”
“You have your orders. Shoot the goddamn thing out of the air!” shouted The President.
“Mr. President, it’s Icarus.”
“Icarus? Who the hell is Icarus?” asked The President. He scratched his head in search of an explanation as to why the Icarus might warrant special treatment and the waking up of a president who had just gotten to sleep.
“It’s the private plane of John Theodore Baronford. He’s the son of the industrialist czar.”
“Oh my, God! Have you tried talking to him?” The President was anxious.
“Yes, Mr. President. He thinks this is some kind of joke or something. He refused to acknowledge our transmission until I spoke to him personally.”
“How close is he?” asked The President.
“Too close, I’m afraid.”
The President held the telephone but did not speak. He directed the secret service agent to go to the Oval Office and bring him an 8-track tape from his middle desk drawer.
“General, is there anything you can do to turn him around?”
“No, Mr. President. I imagine by now they have seen the silos and the missiles.”
“General, we are trying to save a nation. If they take pictures of those silos and get them to the Press, it will throw this nation into a panic like we’ve not seen since the attack on Pearl Harbor. I can’t have that. We can’t have that. The country can’t have that. General, you know what to do.” The President’s voice was barely audible.
“Mr. President, we both know his father. It’s his only son. Can’t we survive this? We can get our press people on drafting a response that will appease the American people.”
“General, you ask too much of our people. I am so sorry a group of criminals have chosen to kill the only son of a great American. You have your orders. Now carry them out. May God give you strength and may God save America.”
“Mr. President, please!” The General was hysterical.
The secret service agent returned with the tape. The President pointed at the player on top the credenza and the agent walked over to it, turned it on and inserted the tape. The tape was a sermon by the great preacher Alexander Campbell. It had been made at a “reading” which The President had performed by the great spiritualist, Edgar Cayce, known affectionately as “the sleeping prophet.”
The President sought a word from beyond to comfort him when he had been sworn in as President and now he always listened to the tape whenever he had a difficult decision to make or when he faced a difficult and absorbing challenge. Usually, The President would enjoy the tape with his good friend, Jack Daniel – but not this morning when The President was so close to disaster.
Although he had no sons, just two daughters, he knew the value of a son – particularly an only son. He had led the fight in Congress to exempt from combat those sons who were the sole male heir of their families. Yet, he could not disregard the recklessness of John Theodore Baronford. This selfish, rebellious kid posed a serious threat to the security of the nation.
Thus, whether rich or poor, his actions could not be ignored. Ah, the pain inflicted by impetuous youth. Discipline was needed if The President was to remain an effective Commander in Chief. It was to that goal, that he now issued his final decision to The Air Force General.
“General, I am sorry. These are times that try men’s souls. You and I are where we are because we have what it takes to do what must be done. History will vindicate us. God will forgive us. There is nothing more to say. Go and do what you have been trained to do. May God have mercy on us. Remember, we can do this. We must do this.”
The President did not wait for a response. He hung up the telephone as Alexander Campbell began to speak.
“In today’s word, we explore what Jesus meant when he told us to pray that God’s kingdom would come to earth. What did Jesus Christ mean by those words? What do we mean today when we say that the manifest destiny of those who landed at Plymouth Rock was to erect the Kingdom of God on the soil of this place called America?
“I am reminded of a story with which you are all no doubt familiar. In the story, Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack’s mother throws away three beans which Jack has purchased with their last resources. Jack is told that the beans are magical and will transform their impoverished condition into a better life. Jack’s mother rejects the vision and throws the beans outside in anger. Thereafter, unknown to Jack and his mother, and without their assistance, the beans take root and grow into a giant beanstalk that reaches into the heavens.
“Jack climbs this new growth and finds the riches he had hoped for. Later, however, Jack is forced to cut down the beanstalk to kill the giant whose treasure Jack has seized and the story ends.
“I believe this story offers a fitting analogy to the history of Christianity in this place called America. For those who left Europe and came to this land, came with not much more than their faith and hope in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They believed that if they could but worship this Trinity in freedom, they could transform their lives and their world. In their anger at their motherland which had imprisoned them, they planted their hopes in the soils of America and hoped that the Kingdom of God would emerge there from.
“The people believed in God. They all knew that it was God who had given them the three beans. It was God who guided them over the ocean of discontent to the present land. They called the active presence of God in their lives and history Providence and recognized that God had a plan for them and this vast land of opportunity.
“Yes, the people loved God and surrendered themselves to become God’s chosen ministers. For they hoped, no believed, that the kingdom was a stairway to Heaven which they could climb – a stairway rooted in earth but extending to the heavens.
“For a while, the kingdom grew and the people were happy. Without warning, a giant appeared in the form of the Native Americans. The people struggled to find a way to at first convert the giant, then avoid it, then finally to slay it without destroying the kingdom. While this struggle ensued other giants appeared such as slavery and the Enlightenment with its call to reason.
“Unfortunately, the struggle against the Native Americans and slavery would give rise to America’s original sin – racism. Some of the people worshipped slavery and some of them worshipped the Enlightenment and all of the people were changed. The giant of slavery persuaded some of the people to turn their ships of freedom into ships of bondage and so they went to Mother Africa and robbed her of her children and brought them to America and made them slaves.
“The giant of the Enlightenment persuaded many of the people that they should use their minds more than their hearts. He also taught them that they could govern themselves – that they needed neither kings nor ministers. Thus, the people began to discover differences among them and to form communities they called denominations so that like could be with like. Eventually, the people decided that to free themselves of the giants they had to chop down their kingdom and to replace it with democratic ideals so that they could live together under the sun of pluralism.
“Unknown to the people, there was a force that tended to the stump abandoned by them and caused it to grow again. One morning the people awoke to find that the kingdom was as alive as ever and once again it reached into the heavens. This Great Awakening caused a new hope to spread throughout the land as a new crop of stewards put wheels on the pulpit and carried it to the far reaches of the ever expanding landscape. It seemed that the story would be a happy one though the end was not yet upon them. The people believed that they could have all the riches of the new land and so they marched westwards towards their manifest destiny.
“When the people had cut down the kingdom before, the force of its falling to the ground caused a fissure in the earth. The people called this fissure individualism. Occasionally, this fissure would cause the earth to tremble and the people called these earthquakes wars. The first Great War came during which the people threw off their yoke to the motherland and decided that they could govern themselves and so they established their own government.
“Even though many of them decided that they no longer needed the kingdom, a compromise was reached and they agreed to erect a wall between the kingdom and their new government. This caused yet another fissure in the earth and when the people discovered it they called it secularism. This fissure, however, did not cause earthquakes, it caused storms.
“It wasn’t long before the giants of Enlightenment and slavery moved the people to split the nation which aggravated both fissures until a storm of controversy and acrimony enveloped the land and the people found that their differences were bigger than denominations and so they invented other names to call themselves – like liberals, evangelicals, fundamentalists; and then came an earthquake and the people found themselves at war with each other.
“Both giants were slain in the war – but they had spawned children. Some of these children were called prejudice and some racists but all discriminated. Nevertheless, the land was at peace and the people thought that was a good thing so they agreed to let the children of the giants remain so long as they were separated into their own communities for that’s the way God wanted it and again the people slept.
“Like before, they were awakened but this time it was by a call from across the ocean to come to the aid of a world at war. The people heeded the call and boarded their ships and went to war. Then God gave victory to the European nations and the people returned home and discovered a new giant had invaded their land – technology. This was a good giant who had come to make their land even better and to make their chores less taxing – or so the people told themselves.
“It wasn’t long before technology became like a God to the people and the people bowed down to it and threw out their ministers from their honoured places in academia and replaced them with business persons and technocrats.
“The people were happy and literally kicked up their heels as the Roaring 20's ushered in a new age and the liberals began to