18-Years and a Day
18-Years and a Day
By Pete Garcia
Most of you remember where you were on that fateful morning. I was in my senior year of college, living in a crummy old apartment that didn’t central air or heat, heck, we didn’t even have television. I had been sleeping in that morning since I didn’t have any early class that day; and also, I was sleeping off the previous night’s outings. But I remember my roommate (who was a bartender at the time) come running into my room yelling that we were under attack. At first, I thought people were trying to break into the apartment, but it was daylight and it seemed an odd time for a home invasion. But he was seriously panicked and all he could say was that terrorists were attacking America.
Not much for hyperbole, I got up and dressed and we drove over to another friend’s house who actually had a working TV, and we watched the news, for what seemed like hours. It seemed so surreal, like we were watching a movie or something. However, I think the only movie at the time that could even compare was the Sci-Fi Independence Day. I was set to commission in the Army that next May, but all I could think about was this is not going to go over well…or soon.
The world had changed in a day. I mean, the world was one way on September the 10th, 2001; and then it completely changed forever the next. And despite the carnage and senseless loss of life, I was proud of my country for how we came together. Blacks, whites, straights, gays, atheists, Christians, everyone set their differences aside for the briefest of moments, and realized their collective humanity. What the enemy had done was so senseless, and with such a violent violation of our trust, that it angered us all equally. As a nation, we rallied and quickly found where the attack had initiated from and then unleashed hell upon a country bent on staying in the 13th-century.
Or did we?
How many of the 9/11 attackers were Afghani?
How many were Saudi?
Why didn’t we launch an attack on Saudi Arabia instead of Afghanistan?
Too many questions and who was I to ask. I simply did what everyone else did, and went to school. I listened to the news, tried to make sense of what all had just transpired, and grieved with the rest of America.
Until the Patriot Act passed unanimously. But more questions arose. I thought, how could a security bill this comprehensive pass both houses and get signed into law in less than two months? That had to be the first and only time a bill of that magnitude had passed in a bipartisan unison that quickly.
Again, who was I to ask such things? I was just some dumb college kid.
Within the year, many conspiracies began to surface about how the buildings (Towers I and II) came down so quickly. More questions surfaced regarding the attack at the Pentagon. What happened to the plane wreckage? Where is the video footage from the camera’s facing that part of the building? How did the plane create the hole that it did in the side of the Pentagon? Again, I pushed those troubling issues to the back of my mind and focused on finishing school.
To this day I don’t know. I would say that time should have settled these questions with valid explanations, yet, events keep happening that seem to defy logical explanation. These events never seem to get answered. They just keep adding to the growing list of odd coincidences that we are just supposed to accept as normal life here in the 21st-century. For example, why are there so many unanswered questions about the following:
The Oklahoma City Bombing
The Las Vegas shooting
Jeffrey Epstein’s “suicide”
The Clinton’s body-count
Where all the billions of dollars from TARP I and II went
Pizzagate, NXIVM, and Science Connections
I think at the end of the day, these things (some which predate 9/11) add to the mystique of America in its final days. In reality, all these things remind us of dark schemes and mankind’s plans behind closed doors in smoke-filled rooms. I doubt seriously that any of us will ever know the truth about the above in our lifetime.
But we worship a God who does.
He sees everything. He’s seen everything. There is nothing hidden from His view, nor is there any scheming that somehow escapes His understanding.
Why do the nations rage,
And the people plot a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying,
“Let us break Their bonds in pieces
And cast away Their cords from us.”
He who sits in the heavens shall laugh;
The Lord shall hold them in derision.
Then He shall speak to them in His wrath,
And distress them in His deep displeasure:
“Yet I have set My King
On My holy hill of Zion.” Psalm 2:1-6
Assessment
As we approach the 18th anniversary of 9/11, I want you to reflect back on how much (and how fast) things have changed since then. And my, how things have changed in America in the last 18-years. We are now more divided (politically and ideologically) than we have been since the Civil War. It has moved beyond just Republican vs. Democrat, but also between Capitalist and Socialist. Between a nationalist and globalist. Between those who demand our demise, and those trying to preserve it. Were another 9/11-like event happen, I do not think we could come together again as we did 18-years ago. We even have elected politicians now who refer to 9/11 as simply “some people who did some things.”
After 18-years, we have arrived to a point in our nation, were to say publically who actually carried out the attacks (19 Islamists), is considered offensive. We have arrived at a time in our nation where the original flag of the 13 colonies (the Betsy Ross flag) is considered offensive. In fact, anything that does not align itself with the ever-shifting leftist progressive narrative is deemed offensive and racist. Truth is now offensive speech is quickly labeled “hate speech.” It is then targeted through silencing, economic boycotts, social media blackouts, and physical violence (Antifa). All of which, are considered perfectly acceptable tactics that are championed with zealous, almost religious vigor by the technocrats in Silicon Valley, the liberals in Hollywood, and establishment politicians (Swamp creatures) in Washington D.C. We here in 2019, have finally arrived in George Orwell’s 1984.
Make no mistake about it, American is under a far greater attack today, then it ever was on 9/11/01. They (leftist, progressives, globalists) are attacking the very fabric of what makes America exceptional in the first place, primarily that being our Declaration of Independence and our Bill of Rights. What starts out as revisionist history perpetrated by progressives in our education system over a period of decades, results in the physical destruction to actual monuments.
They first go after the Confederate statues, because hey, those are easy targets. But then they go after anyone who had ever owned a slave, such as Thomas Jefferson and a few of the other founding fathers. But that is not the end game for them. It was never about statues nor even slavery, but about the Constitution itself. [The Democrats were the party of slavery, so if they truly cared about that as an issue, they would have disowned their own party a long time ago.] However, if they can link slavery and racism to men like Jefferson and Washington, they can then impugn the documents they helped author (i.e., the Constitution). This, even though those very documents (Bill of Rights, Dec. of Ind.) were the foundation and the system by which we destroyed the practice of slavery in the US.
In summary: tear down statues of confederate heroes- no one complains because the south represented slavery and oppression. Next they want to tear down statues of our national forefathers because they once owned slaves. Next, they’ll go after our founding documents, because they were written by men who owned slaves, even though the documents speak to the greatest freedoms the world has ever known. Never forget that all of this is about fundamentally deconstructing the United States and remaking it into a socialist, globalist, borderless, country.
The leftist-progressives have become brazen in their attempts to dismantle the Bill of Rights bit by bit. They’re using political correctness (i.e., cultural Marxism) to attack the First Amendment rights. They’re currently using mass shootings to attack the Second Amendment rights. [They never seem to mention the fact that the democratically controlled cities with the strictest gun laws, also have the highest murder rates in the US.] However, this article does not even begin to touch on the numerous other issues which threaten to dismantle our nation at its core: open borders, sanctuary cities, removal of the LGBTQ anti-religious agenda (destruction of the family unit), transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and forced globalization.
Multi-Domain Operations
It is doubtful that the 9/11 Islamist attackers could have known or planned all of the second and third-order effects which would begin on that fateful day. They simply wanted to destroy the “great Satan” and spread their brutal, demonic religion. But their master Satan did. We, finite humans, look at these problems at the micro-physical level and try to attack the symptoms rather than acknowledge the source of the problem. Satan is real, and is the driving force for all that is wrong in the world. He focuses on the macro-view and the long game. He needs the United States, as it is currently constructed, out of the way so that he can raise up his final world kingdom headed by his man, the Antichrist.
“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” – Ephesians 6:12
The Antichrist will be a man, whom Satan will throw all of his enormous power, knowledge, wealth, might, and resources (both physical and spiritual) behind to bring in this final, world system. Satan originally offered this to Jesus Christ in His forty-day temptation in the desert (Luke 4:5-7), but Christ rebuked Satan with Scripture. Notice that Christ did not tell Satan the kingdoms of this world were not his to give, but rather, His rebuked focused on Satan’s attempt to get Him to commit apostasy and blasphemy.
Make no mistake, all that ails the world and the United States, is not simply ideological or political, but it is spiritual. As Don Koenig rightfully noted, the US is currently being used a “restrainer of empires” in our day and age. But that time for that role, is quickly coming to an end.
Conclusion
Let 9/11 forever burn hot in our collective memories. Let us commit to ourselves, and our children, to never forget what evil men in this world are capable of doing. Let us not forget that our nation was designed in the purposes of God to serve as a restrainer of geopolitical evil. Yet, at some point, that restraint by God is going to be removed.
Sir Alexander Fraser Tytler, a 19th-century Scottish philosopher, once noted the eight-stage cycle of a nation. It goes;
1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage.
I believe that we are either in stage 7, or stage 8, considering that we have academia, elected officials, and others all lobbying for socialism (as if the 20th century were not filled to the brim with reasons not too). Understanding that, let us as Christians use 9/11 as a mark on the wall, to note the rapidity by which we are racing toward the final week of years. Despite the socio-economic decay surrounding us, let us be hopeful because we know that our redemption comes first. That on that one day; that special day; the Day of Christ to be more specific, will be when Christ comes to take those who are His, to our real, forever home.
“Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.
Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming.” – 2 Thess. 2:1-8
Even so, Maranatha!