Jewells of Thought

History Class was pretty awesome in high school. Watching movies in class meant no homework right? Not always though, especially in my college classes. Movies actually meant taking notes for a discussion, papers or reports were coming. Mr. Benson had us watching movies to get the feel of the epic time periods in American or World History as we were all teenagers.

I remember watching and listening to his description of Carthage in ‘Gladiator’ not comprehending fully the differences in time of this movie and when Carthage faltered into the ashes of history.

Fast forward to the years of 2015 to 2017 I found the first book of the Carthage Series. To say I have been blown away by the complexity of emotions and poignantly worded chapters; is an understatement. However, the differences in time has not quite equaled a change of the human heart and our nature. There is one major difference within our nations. Immigrants, on the verge of referring to themselves as Americans, prayed to God to create a Nation under God alone.

One of our Presidents, Calvin Coolidge, referred to our Founding Fathers as having been ‘sifted of the nations’. Our forefathers were highly intelligent individuals and they understood the idea of needing a country identity and the ability to make reasonable decisions for oneself within one set of laws. Our experiment has lasted for two centuries; will we make it to 250 years. Not without prayers and bringing God back to the forefront of our decision making.

The word pious describes those living within the length and width of the 13 Colonies for the most part. Look at what God allowed the U. S. to do without a king and with a representative government. We are now experiencing a government that ignores our God. Carthage did have a Christian sect with Bishops at the helm of their group including Cyprianus and his mentor, Caecilianus. Carthage was a Roman City though, they believed in the gods and godesses. I don’t think they have nearly as many as the Egyptians have numbered, but the Proconsul of Carthage ruled as he set fit to. Anytime something was wrong the answer was always to appease the gods with sacrifice.

Another reason for the wrong in the city could be attributed to the Christians. After all, they are the ever-mischievous prominent evil doers. Why would a group of people put themselves at risk to help and live out the gospel to others. Spying on them was simply a necessity for the good of the entire city. It is so nice to know our government has learned from past mistakes from history, right!

During the last few years, I think we have all begun to see that’s far from the truth. Thanks to a Republican majority with subpoena power and power of the purse… we are learning intriguing facts. Why is our FBI working inside Catholic Churches specifically? Why is Merrick Garland okay with this besides the fact he’s a subpar government employee not fulfilling the duties of his title?

It is pretty much a fact. Everyone in this administration, from the top to bottom, is a criminal, deficient in executing their duties as the constitution requires. We are now no better than the Proconsul of Carthage Aspasius Paternus. He used a man named Felicimuss was also some kind of official for the Proconsul Aspasius. One of his duties was being in the slave trade; how else would Aspasius find the various slaves he so badly needed to serve him.

One blessing to this mess called our FBI, is the fact that the ‘rank and file’ officers are patriots. The sad piece is that their bosses are not they have sold out for the, America last, route. Yesterday three brave men came forth and testified to the Republicans. Democrats from what I watched only wanted to show disdain for them as they did the journalists not long ago that testified against government wrongdoing.

Sometimes I don’t understand, why do the Democrats seem to think they are on the side of righteousness? The audacity most of them had in that hearing to be-mean men who fought for our country, Veterans who have protected us. All they want now is accountability for the way they have been treated, by the FBI’s indifferent attitude, especially toward their families.

This is un-American!

Felicissimus within the Carthage Chronicles, was not exactly based on the real man. In the book, he gave me the idea of the term ‘infiltration from within’ an example of terrorism. As I mentioned we see this all too well in our country.

Division and chaos was the nod from the Proconsul in order to teach Cyprian and his Christians a lesson. So besides the government workers overreaching their duties an order or edict was to be enforced in this book series. Aspasius wanted the plague gone and believed it was due to the Christians and wanted all of Carthage to return to the Temple Worship and sacrifices. How did he know this group would have a problem with that?

The parallel I see with this would be our recent victory with Roe versus Wade. Sacrificing usually means one thing. There was a place outside of the city called the Tophet, archaeologist’s believed this burial ground firstly to be a site for the pagan rituals of infants. Why would they think that? Bones were found; sacrifices are burnt to ashes. Come to find out through research, which will be the next article in this series is the health crisis Carthage endured, the Tophet, where bodies from the two health threats were buried, outside of this African city and was devastated from this ordeal.

This is what an epidemic really looks like!

Did we recently see anything like that here in our country?

So again how did these archaelogists come to their conclusions? They found remains of infants within the ash. However, isn’t abortion the same equivalent to pagan sacrificing? What are the reasons for not wanting or loving a child? Aspasius thought this would turn his city around in his limited capacity of understanding without God in his life. The book series states sacrificing was done with animals though, if that can be fortunate, considering it was not going to the one God.

Children are like magic. They can make even the gritty old grandpa smile. Laughter makes the entire family light up and laughter is good for the soul. Babies have a purpose just as our God’s workmanship had with you or me in mind. Whether it was in the 3rd Century or the 18th Century when our nation was founded life was precious.

Our government was never meant to rule over such personal decisions as whether to have a pregnancy or an abortion. Ladies did you really want the Supreme Court justices, men, who didn’t know you and weren’t your other half making decisions like this for all American women? Now the states have made their cases and it is nearly split in half between the states. I have heard doctors specifically say that in the hospital the term abortion is not used. If something seriously happens and a termination saves the mother there is another term that is used instead of the horrifying word we know abortion to be.

In Carthage babies died from the plagues that absolutely ravaged this province. Medical care was so completely non-existent to what we now expect here. In the book Magdalena mentions she wished she had Kelly Forceps and needles can you imagine surgery in a Colosseum-like place with bacteria lurking who knows where. Those Mothers didn’t have the ability to be seen by a doctor or see pictures of their babies in their tummies. How would those moms think about the abortion clinics here in America? Infertility drugs this would probably blow their minds what doctors can do for babies. Yet our government was making the decisions we should have always had in our local states to do accordingly.

There are 17 hundred years between us and Carthage. The government had tentacles on the people through scare tactics and now the American people are seeing this being used on ourselves. We have history to show us a complete diagram of where this proceeds towards. What would our Founding Fathers think of us? Would they say we have not learned straight from the Bible like we should have not wavered from those principles. We are somewhat on the same footing as Carthage was under Aspasius Paternus someone else who fudged forward to the office of Proconsul.