Our Memorials

OUR MEMORIALS

TEXT: GENESIS 28:16-22

INTRODUCTION:

The background for this scripture is that Jacob had stolen his brother Esau’s blessing, and for fear of Esau, he fled to the land of Padanaram. He stopped for the night and went to sleep and had a dream where God revealed His glory to him. God promised to bless him and keep him and eventually bring him back to his homeland. When he awoke Jacob took the stone he had used for a pillow and, “set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it” (vs 18). He made a vow that if God would bring him back home again safely, that the stone which he set up as a pillar, and its place would be called God's house. The word, “Pillar” in the Hebrew is “mats-tse-bah’,” and means, “monument, a personal memorial. By setting up this stone Jacob erected a monument to memorialize this significant event in his life. He set up a memorial statue.

Did you know that on December 18, 2007, The House of Representatives passed a Resolution naming the first week of May as “American Religious History Week?” It is long with a lot of “whereas-es” for the appropriateness of the Resolution, such as: “Whereas some of the most important monuments, buildings, and landmarks in Washington, DC, include religious words, symbols, and imagery;” and, “Whereas religious artwork is found throughout the United States Capitol, including in the Rotunda where the prayer service of Christopher Columbus, the Baptism of Pocahontas, and the prayer and Bible study of the Pilgrims are all prominently displayed;” and, “Whereas the Lincoln Memorial contains numerous acknowledgments of God and citations of Bible verses, including the declarations that “we here highly resolve that … this nation under God … shall not perish from the earth”, etc., etc.

The Resolution ends with four statements of “therefore be it resolved,” the third of which is most important to my topic: It reads, “The United States House of Representatives… rejects, in the strongest possible terms, any effort to remove, obscure, or purposely omit such history from our Nation’s public buildings and educational resources.”

These Marxist-Communist, God, and America-haters, such as Black Lives Matter, Antifa and other anarchist revolutionaries and criminals who are behind destroying our statues and monuments, are doing it to take away our heritage. Abraham Lincoln and George Washington are our country’s two greatest Presidents. Last week, on June 19th, rioters in Portland, OR wrapped the American Flag around the head of a statue of Washington, lit it on fire, and pulled the statue down to the ground. A TV News crew found the statue face down and covered in graffiti. Another group has vowed to tear down the Emancipation Statue of Lincoln in Washington, DC. They don’t like the fact that the black man is below Lincoln, seemingly on his knees. But that is not the truth.

Michael Giorgino wrote about the statue in the Federalist Blog Post. He said, “Charlotte Scott was a former slave, freed by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. When she heard that President Lincoln had been assassinated, Scott stated, ‘The colored people have lost their best friend on earth! Mr. Lincoln was our best friend, and I will give five dollars of my wages towards erecting a monument to his memory.’ He went on: “Her contribution sparked a movement for freed slaves to raise money to erect a memorial to Lincoln. The monument drive came to the attention of the Western Sanitary Commission, which cared for the Civil War’s…wounded soldiers, widows, orphans, and freed slaves…and thousands of contributions poured in from former slaves…(that) totaled more than $12,000.”

Still quoting Girogino, “Sculptor Thomas Ball’s original marble version of the memorial represented the kneeling slave as passive, simply receiving the boon of freedom from the hand of the great liberator. James Yeatman, President of the Western Sanitary Commission, objected, so the artist changed…the presentation (to bring it) nearer to the historical fact, by making the emancipated slave an agent in his own deliverance. The former slave was…represented as exerting his own strength with strained muscles in breaking the chain which had bound him…the figure of a living man was also introduced — the last slave in Missouri taken up under the fugitive-slave law…who was…rescued from his captors…Archer Alexander.”

Giorgino goes on: “Marcia Cole, (is) a member of the Female Re-Enactors of Distinction of the African American Civil War Museum who portrays Charlotte Scott. She said, ‘I understand there’s a big campaign trying to raise money to either take it down or mend it, and I say ‘no’ on behalf of Ms. Charlotte,’ she told ABC7 News in Washington. ‘People tend to think of that figure as being servile, but on second look you will see something different…That man is not kneeling…with his head bowed. He is in the act of getting up. And his head is up, not bowed because he is looking forward to a future of freedom.’”