The Prophets

“A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country.” Many of us have read these words of Jesus. We have many, many present day examples of this. And not just in church matters. It might even apply in dealing with Iran.
 
In 2008, Sean Hannity led a lonely crusade to publicize the rants of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Sean featured them over and over again on his radio and TV shows. Few in the mainstream media cared or paid much attention. As was said at the time, if any conservative candidate had consorted with any such controversial clergyman, the media pack would have been baying like hounds on a scent.
 
Then-Sen. Barack Obama gave a speech in Philadelphia in which he said he could no more disavow Rev. Wright than he could disavow his own grandmother or the black community. Then, of course, he speedily disavowed Rev. Wright. And he summarily quit the church where he had sat for twenty years.
 
In fact, Rev. Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ was to Barack Obama that institution that held the same place as the U.S. Navy held for his opponent, John McCain. Can anyone imagine McCain distancing himself from the Navy?
 
Why bring all this up now? It’s so 2008, they will say. But now is when it counts.
 
When everyone was focusing on Rev. Wright’s anti-American rants (“Not God bless America, God d—n America!”), too few looked at the reactions of the crowd that heard these vicious statements. Sen. Obama was able to get away with saying he wasn’t in church the particular Sunday when Rev. Wright went off. Really? And he never heard about it? Were such anti-American statements from the pulpit so matter-of-fact at that church that they didn’t gain attention? That crowd reacted rapturously to those vile statements.
 
Did Barack Obama sit in that den of iniquity for twenty years without figuring out that Wright's statements were anti-American? Do you think Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King would ever have said such a thing? You can be sure Dr. Ralph David Abernathy and Dr. Hosea Williams, and all the great leaders of the Civil Rights movement, would never have said such a thing.
 
Now, President Obama is supposed to figure out what the Iranians are up to. The ruling religious leaders have apparently decided to stage a “peace” offensive. They are now willing to talk about their nuclear weapons program. Perhaps they realize that even though the Obama administration may be paralyzed by doubt and indecision, the Israelis mean business when they say “No Nukes” to the Iranians.
 
Are the Iranian leaders sincere? Have the recently passed economic sanctions begun to bite enough to make them back down? Are they afraid they are going to get some “bunker buster” bombs in their hummus?
 
Or are they merely playing for time? Are they talking peace until they can hide their nuclear program in underground silos deep enough so that only a nuclear bomb could take them out?
 
We should remember that the Japanese militarists had sent a “peace” delegation to the U.S. to negotiate with Sec. of State Cordell Hull just days before they attacked us at Pearl Harbor. No small part of American rage at the Japanese in World War II stemmed from that “infamy.”
 
We must now rely on the judgment of President Barack Obama. He is the one who must determine if the Iranians are telling the truth, honestly willing to talk peace, or just leading us on. Based on what Sean Hannity warned us about in 2008, the prospects are not good.
 
The Israelis know something about the prophets. It’s not surprising that they are not willing to put their people’s lives and their nation’s survival in the hands of our prophet of hope and change.