Kill Them All

 

DLK pic 2

 

The King of Assyria deported Israel to Assyria and settled them in Halah, in Gozan on the Habor River and in towns of the Medes. This happened because they had not obeyed the Lord their God, but had violated his covenant—all that Moses the servant of the Lord commanded. They neither listened to the commands nor carried them out. II Kings 18:11-12 NIV

Thomas Jonathan Jackson, famously known as Stonewall, is among the superior of America’s military champions. His stellar rise to prominence in the Confederate States of America placed him second only to the ennobling Robert E. Lee.

Prior to the commencement of the Civil War Jackson taught both the Natural and Experimental Philosophy class at the Virginia Military Institute, and Artillery. His students considered him distant and dry and unapproachable, demanding and a non-conversationalist. They dubbed him Old Jack, Tom Fool, Old Hickory, and Square Box which was in reference to his sizable feet. Though he was a faithful teacher reliably performing his job without the War no one outside of the VMI community would ever have heard of Thomas Jackson. Many of those same students would serve as skilled artillerists under Jackson himself.

Stonewall Jackson, considered a strategic genius on the battlefield, presented a paradox. A devout Presbyterian who lived a truly devoted Christian life believed the way to defeat the Northern Armies was to “Kill them all!”

Like most Virginians, Stonewall Jackson believed slavery, irrevocably threaded into the southern culture, was a just institution. He had a black servant, Jim Lewis, who was with him to the end of his life and led Jackson’s horse, Little Sorrel, in the funeral procession. Thomas Jackson even started and taught a Sunday school class for slave children when such action was against Virginia law. How could a pious Believer who seriously read the Bible, prayed, and reached out to those outside the Church support a cause that protected and maintained the institution of human slavery?

Stonewall Jackson, like so many Southern soldiers, chose to stand with their home States and oppose the Northern assailants thus supporting the Confederate constitution which protected and sustained the awful practice of slave holding.

In the words of Lincoln at his second Inaugural, “Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”

Perchance, as God used other nations to turn Israel back to Him, He used righteous men in both the North and the South to bring America to permanently deal, once and for all, with the terrible curse of slavery.

May 2, 1863, while conducting his own reconnaissance after the first day at Chancellorsville, Jackson was wounded by his own men who fired upon him. Losing his left arm and developing pneumonia he would die, Sunday, May 10. Many hymns, Bible reading and prayers took place for those eight days along with numerous heart-felt and friendly conversations. At 3:15 pm the last day waking from delirium calling for A. P. Hill and Major Hawks, he refused strong drink and then a sweet smile came over his face and he said, “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.” With his wife, Anna, and infant daughter present Dr. McGuire wrote, “his spirit passed from the earth to the God who gave it.”

PRAYER

This world is full of sin, O Lord, and men are drawn to wander from you. May your righteous hand wave us away from evil and direct us to do good assisting the work of peace.

LEADERSHIP THOUGHT

Leaders live as they are divinely led making choices and moving forward and will find, from-time-to-time, paths that present struggles, but will remain faithful to the call and press on trusting God as their hope and stay.
-Dennis L. Kutzner