Taking and Holding Ground
Today I am writing these words in the home of my uncle, C. F. Edwards, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Grandma Pope was delighted to take this trip with me and spend time with her remaining living sisters in North Little Rock. This evening my uncle and I will be traveling into town where I will be speaking with David Smith from England. David and his father have been collectors of rare Bibles that go back to the early Geneva Bible and first issues of The King James Bible from 1611. Some of you may remember that his father, Dr. Jewel Smith came to our church many years ago and gave us a walk through history of the five English Bibles. Now David has taken up the mantle and is doing the work that his father once did. I am looking forward to seeing David. About twenty-five years ago; I spoke for him when Barbara and I were in London. I am rather melancholy because tonight I speak for a ministry my father started.
Today my thoughts are focused on the continuation of ministry inspired and accomplished by others that went before us. Lester Roloff was a pioneer in the Lord’s service in establishing homes for orphans and wayward children in the state of Texas. When we built our first building at Christchurch, he was the speaker at our dedication service. Just sixty-two hours after he was with us, he re-entered his airplane to speak in Missouri, but near Waco he hit a tremendous storm and his last recorded message was, “I request higher altitude.” His small plane plummeted eighteen thousand feet and there were no survivors. We attended his funeral and three weeks later, I received a letter from him. When I opened it, you can imagine the shock I received when I saw that it was from Lester Roloff! At the bottom of the letter was the explanation by his personal secretary, Miss Ida Cavitt. She said, “Brother Johnny, Brother Roloff dictated this letter to you early on the morning before he left. The last thing he did was give me the tape that held your letter on it before stepping onto the plane.” You can imagine the weight and value of this letter to me. I read it, and re-read it. He thanked me for the good time we had and the hospitality. He praised the Lord for the direction of the church. He said some other nice things, and then added a postscript to his letter. It was the address of the Scripture that evidently meant a lot to him and he desired to use it to impact my life. I had just turned thirty years of age, and I was in the early days of the only pastorate I have ever held. So this final admonition that quite literally came from the other side of the grave meant so much to me. The closing word of his letter was, “P.S., II Samuel 23:12.” That was all, but it was enough! Those words read, “But he stood in the midst of the ground, and defended it, and slew the Philistines: and the LORD wrought a great victory.” These words describe the valiant effort of one of David’s mighty men by the name of Shammah. Shammah took ground and held it! What a challenge to all who read these words.
This morning I took a trip down memory lane. I asked my uncle if we could go to McArthur Park in downtown Little Rock because there was some information that I needed. Some information that would remind me that in the work of the Lord we, too, must take ground and hold it for the Lord. The inspiration came from a General, some soldiers, and a boy.
I. A General
General Douglas MacArthur was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1880, in what was then a western outpost for the Army. His father was a Captain in the Army, having served his country heroically in The War Between the States. After the war, one of the places the McArthurs were stationed was the Post at Little Rock. The park in the downtown district surrounds the old hospital where the famed general was born. The young McArthur attended West Point, fought in World War I, was appointed commander of Allied forces in the South Pacific during World War II and of the occupation forces in Japan at the end of the war, and assumed command of United Nations troops in South Korea when the North invaded in 1950. His aggressive prosecution of the war aroused fears of a wider conflict between the United States and China, possibly including the Soviet Union. On April 11, 1951, President Harry Truman abruptly relieved MacArthur, who returned to the United States and to a raging controversy over foreign policy. On April 19, he addressed a joint session of Congress.
While walking through the park today, I was reflecting over the final words of General McArthur to the joint session of Congress. He stood for what he believed was right, even though it meant his dismissal from his assignment. Please observe his closing words from 1951:
“Efforts have been made to distort my position. It has been said in effect that I was a warmonger. Nothing could be further from the truth. I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes ....
But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory.
There are some who for varying reasons would appease Red China. They are blind to history's clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier war. It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement had led to more than a sham peace.
Like blackmail, it lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only alternative. Why, my soldiers asked of me, surrender military advantages to an enemy in the field? I could not answer....
Of the nations of the world, Korea alone, up to now, is the sole one which has risked its all against communism. The magnificence of the courage and fortitude of the Korean people defies description. They have chosen to risk death rather than slavery. Their last words to me were: “Don't scuttle the Pacific.”
I have just left your fighting sons in Korea. They have met all tests there, and I can report to you without reservation that they are splendid in every way.
It was my constant effort to preserve them and end this savage conflict honorably and with the least loss of time and a minimum sacrifice of life. Its growing bloodshed has caused me the deepest anguish and anxiety. Those gallant men will remain often in my thoughts and in my prayers always.
I am closing my 52 years of military service. When I joined the army, even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all my boyish hopes and dreams.
The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barracks ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
The general wanted to take and hold ground for the sake of ensuring peace and liberty for other people. His decision that ultimately cost him position insured him not a place of fading, but of shining in American history. In my opinion, it was this hard rather than soft line against communism that eventually broke the iron curtain in the last decade. It pays to take and hold ground.
II. Some Soldiers
As a boy my father took me through a walk in McArthur’s Park. He pointed out the words of General William J. Hardee about General Patrick Cleburne’s Division. Today as I walked through the park, I retrieved from a statue in honor of “The Capital Guards,” 6th Arkansas Infantry, 1861-1865. these immortal words, “When his division defended, no odds could break its lines, when it attacked, no numbers resisted its onslaught.”
When we as soldiers of the cross are clothed with God’s whole armor, we will take ground and hold it!
III. A Boy
Inside the old barracks building there is a story of a young man by the name of David Owen Dodd. He was the son of a well-known family in Arkansas. He was on some business in Little Rock for his father and while there visited a young lady in whom he no doubt was “interested.” While there he obtained valuable information as to where the Union forces were encamped and found out about some strategic plans. He meticulously made a map and recorded valuable information. He was arrested by some Union troops while heading south with the information. He was on trial as a spy, even though only seventeen years of age. It was obvious that there were conspirators with him, one being an influential Southern general and many believe the young lady with whom he visited, for whom he affectionately cared. The Union judge promised him leniency if he would disclose his fellow conspirators. He did not and there on the capital grounds, he was hung as a spy, June 8, 1864. His final words were those of a hero and loyal friend, he said, “I can die, but I cannot betray the trust of a friend.”
So the words of a boy ring true with courage and character. He was presented a medal posthumously and left a mark. In the Confederate Museum in Richmond, Virginia his likeness is left in a stained glass with these words commemorating his bravery, “He did not belie his youth’s fair days. He would not take a length of days that had through dishonored ways. Better a grave than blighted days.”
In a world that is often commemorating expediency over bravery, it is good to be reminded of our past heroes and our present heroes in the recent Iraq War who remind us that there is a reward for taking and holding ground.
“Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier” (II Timothy 2:3,4.)
- Pastor Pope -