The Nugget:
Jos 4:22 Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land.
My Comment:
As I was studying the book of Joshua yesterday and the day before, I came upon Joshua 4:22 and saw immediately that this verse declares a mighty and powerful solution to the affairs currently going on in Ferguson, Missouri.
While the death of so-called “unarmed” Michael Brown is surely a tragedy, the tragedy is not at all where the media focus suggests it is. This case is not about police brutality, it is about young people allowed to grow up with insufficient or no positive exposure to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I received an email the other day from the ACLU which reads in part:
You’ve probably already heard the news. The grand jury in Missouri failed to indict Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed an unarmed Black teenager, Michael Brown.
Events in Ferguson have brought the broader problems we face into painful relief, inspiring profound anger and frustration from communities around the country – I feel it too. We’ve all heard this story too many times, and it’s easy to feel like there’s nothing left to be done. But we can’t stop here.
This is exactly the right moment to stand together and push for police accountability and systemic change. We can’t lose another young Black person at the hands of the police. And we need to end racial profiling, excessive force, and unconstitutional policing practices.
Michael Brown’s death is a tragic loss to his family, community, and this nation. But because of this tragedy, and the protests that followed, national leaders are finally paying attention to racial profiling and discriminatory policing.
We must not allow the killing of Michael Brown and other unarmed individuals across this nation to be in vain. With enough widespread public pressure we can push our leaders to implement effective structural changes and transform policing across the country. It’s about time.
Like the rest of the “mainstream media,” little or no mention is made of the facts in this case.
Michael Brown was by no means innocent. Just before his death, Michael had stolen merchandize from a local store, where store video shows he returned and roughed up the store clerk on duty. He stole smoking materials which he intended to use to smoke “pot.” A toxicology report showed he had nine times the so-called legal limit (by Colorado standards, I understand) of a chemical substance in his blood which is a marker for the recent use of “pot.” Michael Brown and his friend were walking down the middle of the street, and the police officer asked the young men to use the sidewalk. Michael Brown responded with expletives unsuitable to repeat on this site. He was utterly disrespectful and contemptuous of the police officer. When the police officer attempted to get out of his scout car, Michael Brown slammed the car door back shut. Michael Brown then struck the officer through the open car window with several powerful blows to the head, and reached in through the car window and attempted to grab the officer’s gun. Is this the kind of thug behavior black young people are being raised to engage in? Is this the kind of thug behavior the community is aroused to defend? The grand jury after 100 days of examining the evidence determined that Police Officer Wilson had acted properly in self-defense against a very large black man literally charging at him full force after officer Wilson got out of his car.
The media nonsense that officer Wilson shot Michael Brown in the back has been fully disproven by forensic evidence and three independent autopsy reports which show Michael Brown was shot from the front in accordance with the officer’s testimony that Brown was rushing at him, not fleeing.
This event is not a racial matter. It is not a police brutality matter–in this case Michael Brown was the one brutalizing and attacking the police officer. Michael Brown well represents far too many in the black community who are spiritual derelicts, utterly crazy by civilized standards once observed here in America.
He represents a mission field for the Gospel of Christ that is largely untapped or unreached. Why send missionaries to Africa when we have a mission field needing our full attention right here at our doorstep?
Are there no Gospel preaching and teaching, soul-winning churches in Ferguson, Missouri? Where is their local evangelistic outreach to the neighborhood where Michael Brown lived?
At one time Christian teachers could have an impact on students in their classroom. Bible clubs were in many high schools. Child Evangelism Fellowship had a mission in the elementary schools.
This impact for good has been suppressed by the very group I quoted material from just above–the ACLU, not to mention the other atheistic group in the news these days, the so-called Freedom from Religion Foundation, that squelches every aspect of any effort to provide spiritual guidance or support by, in the latest case I noticed, football coaches praying with or for their athletes.
The results of atheistic suppression of religious liberty and freedom to express and practice our faith in the public square, the school house, and everywhere else have led very predictably to the uncivilized pandemonium in Ferguson and the widespread moral delinquency and depravity seen just about everywhere else. The fruit of atheism is barbarism. Failure to follow the morality of the Bible always brings very undesirable consequences (Numbers 32:23; Galatians 6:7).
The solution to these problems is stated clearly enough in today’s Bible Nugget from Joshua 4:22.
Be sure to carefully consider my newly-added cross references for this verse given immediately below.
For those who desire to DIG DEEPER into this subject:
(1) Consult the cross references given in Nelson’s Cross Reference Guide to the Bible on page 223 for Joshua 4:22.
(2) Consult the cross references given in The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge on page 242 or in Logos 5 or 6 Bible software for Joshua 4:22.
(3) Most people today do not have access to those two resources, so I have posted cross references for this passage as I have developed them even more completely for your study as given below:
Joshua 4:22. let your children know. +*Dt 4:9. +*Dt 6:7. 11:19-21. 31:13. *Ps 78:4, 5. 90:16. 111:4. +*Pr 22:6. Is 28:9. 38:19. Jl 1:3. Jn 21:15. +*Ep 6:4. saying. See on Jsh 3:17. *Ex 14:29. 15:19. Ps 66:5, 6. Is 11:15, 16. 44:27. *Is 51:10. Re 16:12.
amen!