Letters

May/June 2003

U.S. Mentioned in Revelation!

As I read and reread your very thought-provoking article "Taking Liberty With Freedom," by Richard Moore, in your May/June 2002 issue. I couldn't help being reminded of the biblical prophecy of Revelation 13:11.
Various interpreters of Bible prophecy have seen in the two horns of the lamblike beast America's outstanding characteristics of civil and religious freedom. They note that Revelation 13 speaks of a dramatic change into "old world" intolerance and persecution.
John Wesley in his notes on Revelation 13:11, written in 1754, says of the two-horned beast: "He is not yet come, though he cannot be far off. For he is to appear at the end of the forty-two months of the first beast. The previous beast came up out of the sea, which indicates its rise among the peoples and nations of the world then in existence (Revelation 17:5). Whereas the latter power comes up out of the earth where there has not been peoples and multitudes. And nations and tongues before. In 1798 the United States was the only great power then coming into prominence in territory not previously occupied by peoples and multitudes and tongues."
The eminent preacher DeWitt Talmage based a sermon, "America for God," on the text of Revelation 13:11, interpreting the beast with two horns as referring to the United States. "Is it reasonable," he said, "to suppose that God would leave out from the prophecies of His book, the whole Western Hemisphere? No! No!"
Now, what of the future? If the Constitution guarantees our civil and religious freedoms, then we should be very careful about any proposed changes to it, no matter how well-meaning the proponents! Of course, if a majority in America really want constitutional changes, they can carry them out and possibly fulfill Bible prophecy concerning America.
B. L. DYCK
Blountville, Tennessee

Trust in God

The recent death of Mamie Mobley, the mother of Emmitt Till, is a reminder that while we have made great strides toward racial justice, we nevertheless should oppose with vigor those in our midst who view the 1950s as America's golden age. Emmitt Till, readers may recall, was the 14-year-old Black teen who on a visit to relatives in Mississippi was brutally murdered by White Southerners, an act that focused national attention on our Jim Crow mentality and that led to overdue legislation to address this injustice.
Only a few years ago the writer (a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant born during the Great Depression) attended a meeting at which the leader of our state's Christian Coalition extolled the 1950s as a time when we were at our Norman Rockwell best. Such nonsense! The 1950s were a period not only when segregation reigned but also when conformity, censorship, McCarthyism, corporate arrogance, hypocrisy, and double standards of justice were the norm.
It was also a time when opportunities for women were much less, when anti-Catholicism was much stronger, and when teenagers were expected to obey without question their parents and other persons of authority. It was the time of Orville Faubus. It was the time when, despite warnings, our troops in training were exposed to radiation from atomic bombs exploded immediately before them, and when DDT was used like talcum powder.
DONALD D. MEYER
Labadie, Missouri

The 1950s were good to me—I was born in that decade, and remember those times with nostalgia. But Donald Meyer is right: it was a time, like others, when Christian charity was lacking in many areas of national conflict—even as factions moved on the government to upgrade the Pledge of Allegiance with the very words that in 2002 created constitutional debate. Editor.

Enjoy Greeley

I enjoyed Winston Greeley's article about the Pierce v. Society of Sisters case. He compares the logic of saying that the government must fund private religious education to saying that because Roe protected the right to abortion, the government should fund the termination of pregnancies. The United States Supreme Court considered that very issue in Maher v. Roe in the late 1970s and held, as Mr. Greeley would have expected, that there was no constitutional right to have the government pay for citizens to exercise their abortion rights.
TOM RICHARDSON
Kalamazoo, Michigan

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