Letters to the Editor

Attacks on Civil War
Monuments “Ignorant”

American Civil War history is being rewritten. Although most couldn’t guess within a decade when the Civil War began and ended (much less on the details of the conflict), many influential people want society to believe the war between the states was a “right vs. wrong” fight over slavery, (not Northern aggression)! Abraham Lincoln wasn’t the “Moses” for slaves many want to make him. He advocated for slaves to be shipped back to Africa! Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was a calculated risk advanced to win the war more than to free a people. Lincoln unleashed Sherman’s army to make war on southern women and children. That chapter of history always gets skipped over in class!

Had the South freed the slaves before firing on Ft. Sumter, their fight for independence would have been more assured! Freeing the slaves wasn’t first and foremost for Lincoln. Nor was keeping slaves first and foremost for the south! The Confederate states wanted freedom from an overbearing northern government ever ramping up taxes and influence. The southern states finally rebelled and were labeled, “Rebels”!

The Confederate flag became a symbol of rebellion during and after the war. Anytime any racist group wanted an instant emblem of rebellion, they adopted the Confederate battle flag perverting the true meaning of the “stars and bars” for which hundreds of thousands of southerners gave their lives. Since hate mongers have (successfully) besmirched the Confederate flag, sullied it for causes that were not part of the Confederate fight for independence, spineless officials have caved in to the rantings of the “historically challenged” masses and begun a crusade to remove southern Civil War monuments.

Confederate history has now been reduced to national shame and rebuke! A frenzy of historical revisionists are blindly lashing out at Civil War monuments! These people are as historically inept as those who use the Confederate flag to promote their racist convictions. Now we have the historically ignorant influencing the historically ignorant to inaccurately indoctrinate future generations on what the Civil war was all about!

Karl Schmidt

Farmville, Va.

A Hope and a Prayer

I hope and pray that the Community Revival to be held in our tiny village of Prospect, Virginia, at Sulphur Spring Baptist Church each night at 7 p.m., beginning June 4th through June 9th, 2017  will sweep this land from village to village, town to town, state to state and finally engulf our nation. I want to see this nation truly “pray, turn from our wicked ways, and seek God’s face, so that God will hear from heaven, forgive us of our sins and heal our land”.

I want to see the houses of God overflowing with the old and the young, all faiths and denominations, all races, creeds, and colors. I want to see them seeking God’s face and begging Him to forgive their sins and heal our land.

I want to see them rejecting the sins and abominations to God that are currently being accepted as “normal”. This acceptance is sweeping our land, state after state, community after community and church after church. Our rejection of these practices must take the same paths. I’m getting old and may not see all of this come to fruition, but I believe in my God with all my heart and I know that eventually all of this will come to pass.

Our God is a God of Wisdom, Love, Forgiveness and Patience but I don’t believe that His patience is infinite. I believe that God is giving us chance after chance after chance to get our act together and follow His commandments and I believe that if, or when, He is finally convinced that we are truly REVIVED and have turned from our wicked ways, then He will heal our land. I am also convinced that if we do not follow His direction that His wrath will be upon us!

I pray that everyone that this message reaches, will stand up and defend our faith daily, turn from our wicked ways, seek God’s face, and ask Him to heal our land. Then, and only then, can we expect our wonderful Savior to heal our land and save His people.

 I HAVE A HOPE AND A PRAYER!

Rev. Furman Joye

Prospect, Va.