Back in 1843, President William McKinley was born...166 years ago to the day, thank you Frodo. So what's the big deal, you might ask? Well, "The Reverend Aaron D. Morton, who arrived in Poland [Ohio] in 1855 to serve the town's Methodist church, took advantage of the community's interest in religion by holding a series of camp meetings, at which a good number of people were converted. One of them was Will McKinley, a youth Morton found 'genial and pleasant, kind and obliging, his conversation was interesting, and interspersed with glows of unusual light.'" During the Civil War he wrote to some friends about his possible death as a member of the 23rd Ohio Infantry Volunteers,"'This record I want left behind, that I not only fell as a soldier for my Country, but also a Soldier of Jesus.'"Just so's ya knows...President McKinley was the fellow who got the USofA into the Spanish American War that led to Teddy Roosevelt's famous charge up San Juan Hill, but also put the USofA in the Pacific world when we annexed the Philippines and Hawaii as part of the victory over Spain. Part of McKinley's decision to declare war on Spain was to bring the Gospel to Filipinos. Part of God's plan was to get us Hawaii, so the Japanese could bomb us to get us into WWII, get Jacob DeShazer and Mitsuo Fuchida saved as a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and then to use Fuchida to evangelize Japan until his death in 1976...as well as bringing the Gospel to that region of the world through various Americans/Europeans.
Yesterday I pointed out that as long as a Christian is on earth, his job continues. William McKinley's was over on September 14, 1901...8 days after Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, shot him.
Abraham Lincoln's work was over on April 15, 1865 and Reconstruction was given to Andrew Johnson. Theodore Roosevelt was God's man for the first decade of the 20th century. "And it is He who changes the times and the epochs; He removes kings and establishes kings..."
History can be a fascinating subject if you have the Lord looking over your shoulder, giving you some light as to what He's got up His sleeve at any given point in history.
Got Twenty-first Century insights?
Source: Armstrong, William H. Major McKinley: William McKinley and the Civil War. Kent State University Press. Kent, Ohio, & London, 2000, pp. 7-8, 18.
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