"a spiritual, but not religious Cross"

A 313 meter (1027 foot), mirror-finish stainless-steel Cross, is to be built at or near Mt. Jesus, in southwestern Kansas ranch country.  It will be 50 meters (164 feet) wide, 30 meters (98 feet) deep.  A root meaning of "America" is ever-powerful in battle.  This refers to the spirit of the God of the universe in the Book of Revelation.  It is called "American" because Americans need it the most.  Our country is not doing as well as it could: mired (bogged down) in materialism, plus a spiritual dearth (acute insufficiency).  David Saperstein and Oliver Thomas wrote about our roots: "Admittedly, the separation of church and state does not mean the separation of God and government...Lincoln spoke of 'the Almighty', Jefferson of 'the Creator' and Washington of 'Divine Providence'."  The name "American" implies America's historic version of hope to the world, as a first reason.  Immigrants came here because it is a place of hope.  People who were down on their luck, even losers, could be given a second chance.  It is a 21st century Cross for 21st century calamities (disastrous events marked by great loss) - a "message of hope" for those distressed by the 2011 tornadoes, the Japanese earthquake, the Tucson shooting, the Haitian earthquake, the Virginia Tech massacre, the Katrina hurricane, the Asian tsunami, the 9/11 attack and other troubles.  People think, can things turn out right.  With prayer and faith, things will turn out right in the end.  Love (action, patience and decision making) can replace hate (despair and self-pity).  People can have a restoration of the heart - not a physical heart, but that thing inside them that makes them care.  The "restoration" can apply as well to the approximately 695,000 children who are abused or neglected in this country this year alone.  Yet why do these awful things happen?  We just don't know, but to hate the Creator of the universe makes it worse.  It leads to a possible forfeiture of paradise forever, and instead, eternal prison.  As Rhianna says (paraphrase): "Are you just going to stand there and watch me burn?"  Thousands upon thousands of people wonder if someone even cares about their permanent destiny.  Who really does?  The second part of the message of hope is paradise at death.  The cause is no more outlandish (strikingly out of the ordinary) than the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.  Maybe "outlandish" methods are the order of the day.

Christopher Hitchens, the British-born American atheist who recently died, said: "To terrify children with the image of hell - is that good for the world?"  Maybe.  The idea is to let people know that if they "connect" to the spirit of the God of the universe, they can get paradise permanently.  There are millions of people who work and live in metropolitan areas of the world.  A skyscraper Cross is something to relate to if interested in any form of spirituality at all.  In corporate America, what's happening in the church isn't holding an interest for them.  They still want paradise after death, but these business executives aren't exactly sitting in the pews on Sunday.  The church system is broken.  "More say they haven't been to church in the past six months except for special occasions such as weddings or funerals.  In 1991, 24% were 'unchurched'.  Today, it's 37%...LifeWay Research reinforces those findings: a new survey of 900 U.S. Protestant pastors finds 62% predict the importance of being identified with a denomination will diminish over the next 10 years (U.S.A. Today, September 13, 2011)."  Two of the American Cross' concepts are to save those who are traumatized from a private hell, and to save seven billion people from the possibility of an eternal hell.  "The terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, delivered an unfathomable religious jolt.  Thousands were killed in a cruel, distorted vision of Islam.  A decade later, the response seems fleeting.  Statistically, the rush to the pews was a mere blip in a long-standing trend away from traditional religious practice, according to tracking studies by The Barna Group, a Christian research company.  What's lingering is the spiritual impact revealed when 9/11 stories are recounted through individual recollection of faith reborn, revitalized or reshaped (U.S.A. Today, August 22, 2011)."  The cause is for these.

USNS Comfort was sent to Haiti on January 13, 2010.  Six days there, more than 450 patients were on board - people who were crushed under rubble, who were sick with infections and nursing diseases made worse by neglect.  What about the long term?  How can these people pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and recover.  To do so, they should be inspired to better their condition.  Will giving money to them, alone, work?  While it helps, they could have more faith in themselves that good things can again happen.  When people lose their heart they may live off the government, friends, neighbors, family members.  In extreme cases, disillusioned people prey on caring people with whom they "sponge".  If a Cross can remind them that "life is still worth living", and "paradise is still there when you're dead", maybe they will get their heart back.  Some people have been broken, not suffering an aforementioned traumatic event, but something bad happened.  A beautiful woman is a newspaper reporter, traveling Europe.  She lives a party life in New York City and Chicago.  The roof caves in: she has a nervous breakdown, sits in a mental hospital for a year, becomes an alcoholic, having trouble getting up in the morning.  Circumstances broke her.  She was not suicidal, but lost hope that good things could happen.  She dies from smoking in bed, in middle age.  This scenario plays itself out in situations elsewhere.  Once broken, she, and others, cannot put the pieces back together.  They have not died, but wish they were dead.  An international monument is not going to solve everyone's problems, but if it helps just one person, then it is worth building.

Those tragedies are a "tip of the iceberg".  What about the 60,000,000 dead in World War II, millions of Russian peasants who starved to death under Stalin in the 1930s, millions of Africans who have starved to death over the past two thousand years, AIDS, the Black Plague in the Middle Ages, various forms of genocide and slavery down through the years such as Rwanda in the 1990s when almost one million perished, ancient epic battles where thousands died, potential thermonuclear holocaust and on and on.  Is God to blame, or something else?  To believe in a good God, the question should be answered.  The answer...Satan is the culprit, who reeks havoc all over the known world.  That given, why does God allow Satan to run amok on the planet.  Being Almighty God, does He sleep?  Or is He unaware of what is happening.  He is aware, but He is also a benevolent dictator and operates for reasons we are unaware of.  Satan is on a leash.  Certain people react with "FORGET GOD".  This only makes matters worse, because it lays them open to being locked up forever.  So where is the "message of hope" in all this.  That as Americans we have virtually nothing to worry about until the day when America chooses to establish some form of "empire".  That move will short circuit the whole country.  Good things will continue to happen for us, and we can continue to benefit the world, until then.  The monument is an Internet Cross in that its focus is online.  It is not really that important people come see it in person - the key is that they can log on anywhere in the world and get spiritual benefit from it.  A book, Horse Creek, on this web page explains what the project means.  There is enough information in the book to get anyone, who is interested, into paradise when they are dead.

In the 1960s there was a thought that "God is dead".  It was an age of Janice Joplin and Jimmie Hendrix - by some "God" was looked upon as a relic (a trace of some outmoded practice).  The gospel era of "a sower went forth to sow" seemed to be over.  People did not understand that the world was in a transitional period from the gospels to Revelation.  As it says concerning the not-too-distant future: "The angel poured out his vial upon the sea - and it became as the blood of a dead man, and every living thing in the sea died."  God is not dead, just marking time.  Revelation is a story of weapons of mass destruction, if an individual will study it carefully.  It is possible that new weapons of mass destruction will be developed in the 21st century that could make the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, sixty-six years ago, look like a glorified firecracker.  The "transition" has changed people's attitudes.  Young adults less devoted to faith: study shows steady drift from church life is the title of a front page article on April 27, 2010, U.S.A. Today.  "Most young adults today don't pray, don't worship and don't read the Bible, a major survey by a Christian research firm shows.  If the trends continue, 'the Millennial generation will see churches closing as quickly as GM dealerships,' says Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources.  It surveyed 1,200 members of the 18- to 29-year-old Millennial generation and found 72% say they're 'really more spiritual than religious' (persons of faith outside the church).  The survey has a margin of error of +/-2.8 percentage points.  Among the 65% who call themselves Christian, 'many are either mushy Christians or Christians in name only,' Rainer says.  'Most are just indifferent.  The more precisely you try to measure their Christianity, the fewer you find committed to the faith.'  Key overall findings in the survey, released today: 65% rarely or never pray with others, and 38% almost never pray by themselves either; 65% rarely or never attend worship services; 67% don't read the Bible or sacred texts."  A "message of hope" can provide an alternative to illegal hard drugs like crack and meth, this age group may get caught in.  Spiritually, the Millennial generation has been thrown to the dogs, especially those living in our big cities.

The chapter "The Second Death" from Horse Creek sheds some light.  "There are many near-death accounts that verify that there is 'something' beyond the grave.  From At Death's Window, by A.S. Genova: 'I looked up and saw an incredible light - crystal-clear and brighter than the sun, but you could look right into it without hurting your eyes.  Inside the light was the figure of a man with his hand held out to me, radiating so much love.  It was the most beautiful feeling I've ever experienced.  I never wanted to leave.'  From Heading Toward Omega, by Kenneth Ring: 'As I reached the source of the light I could see in.  I cannot begin to describe in human terms the feeling I had at what I saw.  It was a giant infinite world of calm, and love and energy and beauty.'  From Return from Death, by Margot Grey: 'I went forward towards the light and as I did so I had such a feeling of freedom and joy, it's beyond words to explain.  I had a boundless sense of expansion.'  From Do Suicide Survivors Report Death Experiences?, by Kenneth Ring and S. Franklin: 'Vision was clear, everything that was there stood out...The colors had brilliance, while this person had a brilliance or an aura about him...It was probably the happiest I've ever been.  And as for the skeptics: going through an experience like that, afterwards it just puts a belief into you that no matter what anybody says or whoever tries to disqualify these, it will never hold up with me because I believe I have seen something of where I'm eventually going...'  Are these people lying?  Some, maybe, but not all.  The Tibetan Book of the Dead, a 12th century Buddhist work, comments, 'Be not fond of the dull, smoke-colored light from hell.'  A lot of people say, 'I don't want to be in heaven with those church hypocrites.'  Unfortunately, those church hypocrites will be in hell, where they will torment and vex you forever. 

"From Reflections on Life After Life, by R.A. Moody: 'These bewildered people?  I don't know exactly where I saw them...But as I was going by, there was this area that was dull - this is in contrast to all the brilliant light...they had sad, depressed looks; they seemed to shuffle, as someone would on a chain gang...As I went by they didn't even raise their heads to see what was happening.  They seemed to be thinking:  Well, it's all over with.  What am I doing?  What's it all about?  Just this absolute crushed, hopeless demeanor - not knowing what to do or where to go or who they were or anything.'  From Beyond Death's Door, by Maurice Rawlings: 'The only thing I remember was passing out into blackness and then I saw these red snakes crawling all over me.  I couldn't get away from them.  I would throw one of them off and then another one would get on me.  It was horrible.  Finally, I was dragged down to the ground by something and then other crawling things started getting on me.  Some looked like red jelly.  I screamed and cried out, but no one paid any attention to me.  I had the impression there were many other people in the same fix all around me.  It sounded like human voices and some of them were screaming.  It was reddish black in there and hazy and hard to see.  Although my chest hurt real bad, I remember how glad I was to wake up and get out of that place.  I was sure glad to see my family.'"  Does anybody really want to shuffle on a chain gang, or deal with slimy red snakes forever?  A realm of brilliant light and energy is more pleasant.         

The present church system is wanting (not up to standards).  Newsweek, November 19, 2007, quoted from a Pew poll taken in August 2007 which stated that while 40% of Americans attend church, 84% believe in a Higher Power.  There is a higher percentage of persons of faith who don't go to church.  Too many money, sex and satanic scandals have had a corrosive effect on the reputation of the clergy, compounded by their judgmental manner.  Too many in the church are "neurotic flakes" who reject those whom they deem "undesirables".  They go on petty moral crusades against those who have done virtually nothing to them.  This is a good moment to remember that authentic belief in God is a personal matter, and almost half of Americans can't find God in church.  "Going to church this Sunday?  Look around.  The chances are that one in five of the people there find 'spiritual energy' in mountains or trees, and one in six believe in the 'evil eye', that certain people can cast curses with a look (U.S.A. Today, December 10, 2009)."  Certain church people will use you to get revenge for something someone else in their church did to them in their past.  Those who are socially isolated and impoverished are more prone for the "use".  It could be little gifts of food coupled with an emotional beating, among other things.  This can occur because some of the established ways of worship aren't working any longer.  According to Michael Medved, "There is a growing number of Americans who see themselves as disconnected, even disillusioned with traditional faith." 

It is named "American" Cross, as a second reason, because it embodies America's form of spirituality.  If it was called International Cross it would embody Russian Orthodoxy, Italian Catholicism, American Protestantism and etc.  If it was called Millennium Cross it would embody 2000 years of Christianity, to include the Crusades of the Middle Ages where hundreds of thousands of innocent people were slaughtered.  If it was called Our Lord's Cross it would embody the Biblical story, only.  Other countries can do their own cross, i.e. - the Russian Cross, the French Cross, the South African Cross and etc.  Wikipedia comments: "During the American Revolution, the legal separation of the American colonies from Great Britain occurred on July 2, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution of independence.  After voting for independence, Congress turned its attention to the Declaration of Independence, a statement explaining this decision, with Thomas Jefferson as its principal author.  Congress debated and revised the Declaration, finally approving it on July 4.  A day earlier, John Adams had written to his wife Abigail: 'The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America.  I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival.  It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.  It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of the continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.'  Adams' prediction was off by two days.  From the outset, Americans celebrated independence on July 4, the date shown on the much-publicized Declaration of Independence, rather than on July 2, the date of resolution of independence was approved in a closed session of Congress."  For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, the destiny of the United States seems to be inexplicably tied to Almighty God.  

A root of the cause is the belief system of the Founding Fathers.  George Washington: "Although guided by our excellent Constitution in the discharge of official duties, and actuated through the whole course of my public life solely by a wish to promote the best interests of our country; yet, without the beneficial interposition of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, we could not have reached the distinguished situation which we have attained with such unprecedented rapidity.  To Him, therefore, should we bow with gratitude and reverence, and endeavor to merit a continuance of His special favors (letter to John Adams, 1797)."  Thomas Jefferson: "God who gave us life gave us liberty.  And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift from God?  That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?  Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever (Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia)."  James Madison: "A watchful eye must be kept on ourselves lest, while we are building ideal monuments of renown and bliss here, we neglect have our names enrolled in the Annals of Heaven (letter to William Bradford, November 9, 1772)."  Benjamin Franklin: "I have lived a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth - that God governs in the affairs of men (address at the Constitutional Convention, July 28, 1787)."  Patrick Henry: "The great pillars of all government...(are) virtue, morality and religion.  This is the armor, my friend, and this alone, that renders us invincible (letter to Archibald Blair, January 8, 1789)."  Thomas Paine: "The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.  Where say some, is the king of America?  I'll tell you, friend, He reigns above (Common Sense, 1776)." 

From Wikipedia: "In God We Trust was adopted as the official motto of the United States in 1956.  The phrase has appeared on U.S. coins since 1864 and on paper currency since 1957...The final stanza of The Star-Spangled Banner, written in 1814 by Francis Scott Key, contains an early reference to a variation of the phrase: 'And this be our motto: In God is our trust'...The United States Code - 36 U.S.C. 302 now states: 'In God We Trust is the national motto'...The motto was first challenged in Aronow v. United States in 1970, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled: 'It is quite obvious that the national motto and the slogan on coinage and currency In God We Trust has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion'...In Zorach v. Clauson, the Supreme Court has also held that the nation's 'institutions presuppose a Supreme Being' and that government recognition of God does not constitute a state church."  What does the national motto mean in this day.  Former President George W. Bush told his reaction to 9/11: "There were moments when I said I'd like to be alone and just thinking through the ramifications and making sure that my thoughts were clear.  I prayed for the victims; I prayed for our country.  I would see people jump off buildings, and it just was horrific, but I was also determined to lead the country."  Former New York police commissioner Bernard B. Kerik: "Before going to headquarters that night, I took one more walk past what had already become known as 'Ground Zero'.  For me, it was like looking into the gates of hell, the smoke and fires and the smell."  President Obama: "We were united (2001), as Americans.  This is the true spirit of America we must reclaim this anniversary (of the tenth year since 9/11) - the ordinary goodness and patriotism of the American people."  Michelle Obama: "What lasts from this anniversary is the true spirit of America that was laid bare that day and remains alive today: the courage of those who lost loved ones; the strength of those who survived; the bravery of those who ran not away from, but into, danger."  In God We Trust is reflected from a skyscraper Cross.

Abraham Lincoln stated in his Gettysburg Address given November 19, 1863 after the battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War: "...that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom..."  Dealing with the hate of the world toward the United States is a rough assignment.  It contributes to family breakups, student shootings, illegal drug usage.  We lashed out at that hate by invading other countries, but that can't stop the currents of malevolent spite.  Hate, like love, is something you can't see, can't feel, but it has its effect.  Americans, by and large, are good people.  These foreigners wish to destroy that.  In Iran there is hate because the poor died in a frigid winter, when here the Salvation Army gives a hot meal and a cot.  In Russia there is hate because the press is restricted, when ours is wide open.  In South America there is hate because of raw sewage in an alley, while we have dumpsters.  There was a day when two oceans isolated the United States from minds that hate.  But in the 21st century Internet, jet travel, telecommunications have removed the natural boundary.  "Winning hearts and minds" doesn't work with hard-core haters, and you can't bomb everybody.  A "message of hope" tells another side to America, that the country does have core values. 

The name "American" Cross means a mending of the soul of America, as a third reason.  That thing which makes America "tick".  That which causes Americans to move on after adversity, makes us not lose heart in time of war, motivates us to achieve great goals.  American Indians labeled the root of that "something", the Great Spirit.  Stephen Prothero, chairman of the Department of Religion at Boston University, said, "A survey released in 2006 by Baylor University found that almost two-thirds (63%) of Americans who claim no religious affiliation believe in God...The data tells us that Christians are increasingly likely to describe themselves as spiritual rather than religious, that they are increasingly wary of labels and institutions, and that they identify their faith less and less with 'organized religion'."  From Wikipedia: "In 1792, Pierre L'Enfant's 'Plan of the Federal City' set aside land for a 'great church for national purposes'...Construction began on September 29, 1907, when the foundation stone was laid in the presence of (former) President Theodore Roosevelt and a crowd of more than 20,000, and ended 83 years later when the last finial (a crowning ornament) was placed in the presence of (former) President George H.W. Bush in 1990...Congress has designated the Washington National Cathedral as the 'National House of Prayer'.  During World War II, monthly services were held there 'on behalf of a united people in a time of emergency'.  Before and since, the building has hosted other major events, both religious and secular, that have drawn the attention of the American people."  "The nation has a long and cherished history of prayer, from the first prayer in Congress in 1774 to the National [American] Day of Prayer [Cross] celebrated each year (Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice)."

The soul of America has been attacked since Vietnam.  Indirectly, the Chinese harmed it.  Directly, China did nothing, but America stomped around in its backyard.  In that war, America feared doing a 100% offence (occupying North Vietnam) so as to not antagonize the Chinese.  So, the young people's spirit was sapped fighting a defensive war that could never be won.  They went from being "gung-ho" to "hell no, we won't go" and "hey, hey, LBJ how many kids have you killed today".  Although China is America's trading partner today, damage was done then.  Russia, under communism, did attack with Marxism.  While today Russia and America are at peace, under the Cold War which went on for forty years, Russia attempted to sabotage the system.  In hindsight, if those who fought in Vietnam can understand that what they did scared Russia half to death - because they wouldn't quit fighting, maybe they could feel their sacrifice was not in vain.  Al-Qaeda continues it today with its chants of "Death to America" and "the Great Satan".  The idea is to cause people to become indifferent.  A purpose of the American Cross, then, is to restore the soul of America.  A century ago Americans were excited about being Americans.  As Theodore Roosevelt said in his speech The Right of the People to Rule given on March 20, 1912 at Carnegie Hall, New York City: "We, here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed."  Almost a century later Fareed Zakaria wrote in Newsweek (December 14, 2009): "By staying focused on the large objectives of peace and stability, by maintaining our vision of an open, free world, we help sustain positive trends in the world that are broad and deep and lasting.  In other words, our role as a strong and successful superpower is to make it possible for good things to happen - not just for Afghan schoolgirls, but for millions around the world."

Lincoln said in that Gettysburg Address: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."  Adam Smith, in 1776, described the natural force that guides free market capitalism through competition as the "invisible hand".  The soul of America is the combination of the political (liberty), the social (all men created equal) and the economic (free markets).  In other words, the system that the world, off and on, keeps trying to destroy.  The Cross breaks the power of evil - it's a weapon capable of destroying evil.  Evil commits suicide at the Cross.  The Cross becomes the instrument of light and life, a decisive blow to evil.  To say that evil is more powerful than the Cross is an insult to the Cross - Hell has no power.  The power of good that triumphed on the Cross is the power of good we can possess in these days when evil spawns war and terror.  So a Cross protects the system because it wards off "evil forces".  That is, the spirits of those few evil people around the world who plot the downfall of the United States.  Meaning, the forces that drive them can be stopped.  While it cannot offer 100% protection, it is similar to locking a house.  While that cannot offer 100% protection, it hinders a thief.  It defends the freedom and dignity of Americans from existential (serious enough to eventually destroy the whole entity) threats, which can in time wreck the system.   

"A former Arizona attorney general named Grant Woods said he'd recently visited Turkey.  He described 'a prevailing sense of melancholy,' which, he was told, was caused by the fact that Turkey 'once had been a great empire but no longer was, and probably wouldn't ever be again...In my lifetime, growing up in America, we were raised to believe that we were the best, No. 1, and always would be - and what I see happening now is that people are afraid our day may be passing (Time, October 18, 2010).  If America loses its soul, the nations of the world will have to deal with a cold, hard and dead country.  A "restoration" may have already begun - new charities are springing up in this country.  Midland, Texas Fire Chief Robert Isbell decided to help small volunteer fire departments.  He founded the Permian Basin Firemen's Fund, a non-profit group aimed at supporting these departments.  Stephen Tybor started a group, Eight Days of Hope, that sends thousands of volunteers to rebuild homes ravaged by disasters.  LPGA pros Cristie Kerr and Morgan Pressel learned early about breast cancer, through their moms, becoming passionate activists to provide detection, treatment and research.  Tina Pearson converted her Maryland home into a place where veterans can have a "welcome home" and reunite with family.  The Kentucky National Guard runs a program called Operation Military Cheer, aimed at providing military kids with gifts during the holidays.  The "message of hope" takes many forms and has many authors.  

"People have been coming to Shanksville (Pa.) - a hamlet in the middle of mining and farming country about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh - to pay tribute to Flight 93 since the day it crashed.  The permanent memorial, as planned by the Park Service, is expected eventually to encompass 2,200 acres, including the crash site, land for an access road and buffer areas to protect the view.  The cost to build the entire design is estimated at $58 million, of which $30 million is to come from private donations...'It used to be you visited memorials, you paid your respects, and you left,' says Flight 93 Memorial Superintendent Joanne Hanley.  That changed with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a spare, dramatic roster of names that was designed and built in less than three years and opened in Washington within a decade of the war's end (U.S.A. Today, September 11, 2009)."  Here, out in the middle of nowhere, over 130,000 people yearly come to pay their respects to timeless words: "Let's roll."  Joanne Hanley stated that "visitors expect to be transformed, to have a life-changing experience [when visiting a memorial]."  Ninety-eight percent of the people the Cross will benefit will never see it.  They may be in China, in Russia, in Europe, in South American, in India, in Africa, or in Australia.  They do not have the time, the money, or the energy to come into the middle of nowhere in southwestern Kansas where range cattle roam.  But they could use a symbol, so they know that when life ends on the planet, it will be paradise for good.  Given the marvels of modern technology, the monument can come right into the living room. 

A fourth reason for the name "American Cross" is that it is symbolic of America as being "God's Country".  The Star Spangled Banner: "Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven rescued land praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.  Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, and this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'"  America: "Our father's God to Thee, author of liberty, to Thee we sing.  Long may our land be bright with freedom's holy light; protect us by Thy might, great God, our King."  God Bless America: "Stand beside her and guide her, through the night with a light from above."  America the Beautiful: "America, America, God shed His grace on thee."  This raises a question: did our forefathers have a screw loose.  Or was it that they "connected" better to the spirit of the God of the universe, then.  These spiritual values incorporated into the state render the country somewhat invincible.  However the drawback is, if Americans become too wicked, we may be the first to be annihilated in the seals and plagues period of Revelation.  We have some troubles, as "U2" sings In God's Country: "She is liberty...Hope, faith, her vanity...We need new dreams...in God's country."

The size of the monument can be a problem.  Some may think it can be created as "megalomania", when the only thing "mega" is an attempt to put a mite (that is, a small contribution to the whole) into the treasury of a Higher Power.  It is a big Cross to address big problems.  With families breaking up at an unprecedented rate, we have problems hitherto unimagined.  Our high-tech world hides a decaying family structure.  A big Cross for a big world.  It is not just geared for the United States, but has global reach.  With seven billion people on the planet, it takes something this big to reach them all.  There are other big monuments - the Great Pyramid in Egypt, the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Crazy Horse Memorial in the Black Hills of South Dakota and the Maitreya Buddha in India.  The Great Pyramid was built around the year 2560 B.C., taking twenty years to complete - 139 meters (455 feet) high, 230 meters (696 feet) at the base.  It is a tomb for an Egyptian pharaoh, built for a world leader - a dead man.  The Statue of Liberty, 93 meters (305 feet) high, was finished in 1886.  It may have drawn its inspiration for the design from the Colossus of Rhodes.  The Eiffel Tower was constructed from 1887 to 1889 (twenty months) - 312 meters (1024 feet) high, 125 meters (410 feet) at the base.  It was built to glorify the Industrial Revolution - 200,000,000 visitors since 1889.  Like the Great Pyramid, which was the tallest structure in the world for 3800 years, the Eiffel Tower was a bold experiment in its day.  The Crazy Horse Memorial will be 172 meters (563 feet) high, 195 meters (641 feet) wide.  It is a monument to the American Indian, a mammoth unfinished mountain carving begun in 1948.  The Maitreya Project is an international organization operating since 1990, to build a 152 meter (500 foot) statue of the Maitreya Buddha in Kushinagar, India.  This is remarkable in its size and scope - the covering over the internal steel truss structure is proposed to be approximately 6000 aluminum-bronze panels cast from resin-bonded sand molds.  It is to honor the Buddha, a $250,000,000 project.  What is wrong with honoring the spirit of the God of the universe?  

In Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation built a $120,000,000 monument, including a 10 meter (28 foot) statue of King.  This is approximately half as much money as building a 313 meter (1027 foot) Cross.  While honoring the Civil Rights Movement is important, turning people's attention toward paradise is paramount.  Martin Luther King said: "I have a dream today, a dream deeply rooted in the American dream."  Jesus Christ said: "You shall you know the truth, and the truth will make you free."  Both men killed.  The reaction of people concerning contributing to the project: "We have to pay taxes," or "I just recently remarried," or "People are just trying to feed the kids (while building a $3500 ten-foot-tall privacy fence around the outdoor pool in the backyard)."  Why is it starvation to a "message of hope" for people traumatized by horrendous circumstances (the most recent being the 2011 tornadoes), while it is generosity to a "stone of hope".  People contribute to a monument honoring a dead man, but not to a Higher Power. 

U.S.A. Today did a story on the spirituality of 9/11: "When Marian Fontana saw the south tower collapse, 'My first impression was to drop to my knees and pray.'  Her husband, Dave, was a firefighter; he'd rushed to Lower Manhattan even though he was supposed to have had the day off to celebrate their eighth wedding anniversary.  She knelt before the television in her living room, said 'The Lord's Prayer' and tried to bargain with God for Dave's life - offering, she would recall, 'pacts, treaties, promises and vows.'  In the days that followed, with Dave missing, Marian walked around her Brooklyn neighborhood, going church to church, regardless of denomination, begging God to return Dave to her and their five-year-old son.  When she realized her husband was dead, Marian Fontana stopped talking to God. By the time of his funeral, she writes in her memoir, A Widow's Walk, she wanted to believe in God, but 'something has shifted, and even my limited spirituality seems to have been squashed among the debris.'  She describes feeling 'like a spurned friend' - her relationship with God another casualty of 9/11.  Now, at 41, Fontana says she probably has 'some buried religiosity that's been suppressed since 9/11.  But I'm not in a spiritual realm that is God- or Pope-related' (April 18, 2008)."  So why does God allow suffering in the world.  The truth is this isn't His playpen, it's our playpen.  Us inhabitants of earth are free to do anything we want, good or bad.  If we choose to slaughter each other, we choose to slaughter each other.  You can't really use a Higher Power as a scapegoat.  So why let God into your heart?  Because He guarantees you paradise at death.  This relieves the pressure of the worry of death.  As the scripture saith: "To rescue those who through fear of death were all their lifetimes subject to exasperation."  If people understand that family and friends can be with them forever, this changes things.  If this lady understood that she can be re-united with her husband at death, she would not feel lost.

A woman raises three kids with no husband, working two jobs.  She has a rough time keeping her children under control and paying the bills, at the same time.  Her kids rebel and refuse to co-operate.  This situation plays itself out in hundreds of cases all over the United States.  If she can be inspired by a "message of hope", and come up with creative solutions to problems, things might not be so bad.  Living "the way of the Cross" may let people down at times, but living "the way of the church" can be a nightmare, causing people to go on periodic rampages.  The Second Coming is the perfect "way" and is not here yet.  Problems such as AIDS, famine, war are still with us and are not be completely solved, but by the Second Coming.  God has dumped the mess on us, and while He has not walked away from everything, it is obvious He does not make a horrendous amount of effort to fix everything.  According to "Today's debate: 'Fragile families'" (U.S.A. Today, January 25, 2010) it says in the title that "Unwed births keep climbing and the kids are not all right": "In 2009, 41% of children born in the USA were born to unmarried mothers (up from 5% a half-century ago)."  The drift went from 5.3% in 1960, 10.4% in '70, 18.4% in '80, 28% in '90, 33.2% in 2000 and 41% in '09.  "Valerie realized that sex was wrecking her life right around time her second marriage disintegrated.  At 30, and employed as a human-resources administrator in Phoenix, she had serially cheated on both her husbands - often with their subordinates and co-workers - logging anonymous hookups in fast-food restaurant bathrooms, affairs with married men, and one-night stands too numerous to count.  Valerie couldn't stop (Newsweek, December 5, 2011)."  If the church is so "anointed", it would deal with situations like these. 

Sex outside of wedlock has its pitfalls.  "Fornicators will have their place in the lake of fire (quoted from Revelation)."  Fornication means having sex with someone you are not married to as a single person.  A "fornicator" is someone who does it habitually - a professional at fornication.  Adultery, extra-marital sex, is ten times worse.  Better to "slip" with a fornication or two, than to "fall" with an adultery.  The spirit of the God of the universe looks at each individual's case justly.  For example, a person abused by a church, then the church went on to "trash" the individual's life, making it difficult for them to marry, possibly could slip in the area of fornication, without ending up in eternal prison.  This would also apply to a person abused by a parent, step-parent or relative as a child.  Do not walk too close to the edge.  What about couples living together out of wedlock - are they "fornicators"?  Many states have what is called "common-law marriage", but it is like playing with matches.  Best solution is to get a marriage license and have a ring.  Do without the church wedding and the honeymoon.  Instead, work to make the marriage work.  It can be boring, try to be creative.  Make it into a "creative marriage".  "Those who lead immoral lives...adulterers or homosexuals - will have no share in His kingdom (quoted from I Corinthians)."  What about same-sex marriages?  According to the Book, God will lock them up forever.  Doesn't He like gay/lesbian people, we don't know.  Maybe it is like an extension cord.  It has a male end and a female end.  It does not have two male ends or two female ends.  "Who changed the truth into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.  For this cause God gave them to vile affections - for even their women changed the natural use (of the man) into that which is against mature (that is, another woman).  Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust - one [man] toward another [man] (quoted from Romans)."

The project will be done, in part, due to the neurotic (emotionally unbalanced) behavior of certain church people, due to a broken system.  A Baptist businessman hires a homeless man to hang sheetrock in a house.  He pays him $10.00/day plus a motel room.  The Baptist pays the homeless dirt.  So the homeless steals from the Baptist.  No mercy - the Baptist puts the homeless in jail.  A church woman hires a man to paint the trim on her house.  When he is one day late on completion, he is paid 50% of the amount owed (legalism).  Another church woman hires two men to fix valves in her sprinkler system.  The house has the luxury of an indoor pool.  When a mistake is made, after two new valves are installed, resulting in a water leak, the woman does not give the men a chance to fix it, instead fires them, unpaid, and hires somebody else (unforgiveness).  A woman lives on social security.  When a check is lost in the mail and must be re-sent, causing a delay in rent payment, her Baptist landlady evicts her (no mercy).  The hypocrisy threads its way up into church leadership.  A young church woman who had a church visitation ministry does not receive a kiss on a social first "date".  Her response: "I don't want to eat with him, I don't want to talk to him, I don't want him calling me on the phone (unforgiveness)."  A Pentecostal church leader visits a home.  When he sees a little girl put on some of mom's makeup, he says: "You'll go to hell for wearing that makeup."  An out-of-work construction worker drops in on a Pentecostal service.  At the end of the service, the preacher mingles with the audience, still seated, stands in front of the unemployed worker and says: "You'll burn in hell if you don't pay your tithe."  A minister excommunicates a parishioner for "calling former members of the church" while his church was falling apart (unforgiveness).  A minister in the Assembly of God: "Nothing wrong with pronouncing a curse upon a Jew, let them be accursed."  An obscure scripture is used to justify the anti-Semitism: "If any man love not our Lord Jesus Christ, let him be accursed."  Another Assembly of God minister falsely accuses a distraught parishioner of accusing him (the minister) of committing adultery with a female parishioner.  Her mother had divorced her father - the mother came to the church, the father didn't.  The daughter (female parishioner) was staying temporarily at the parsonage (minister's home).  In the Church of Christ, a lady bequeaths $100,000 to mission work (the Great Commission).  The money instead is used to pay on the church mortgage (misappropriation of funds).  Another church protects a minister who is a psychotic child molester.  Some think the Protestant church can just ride out the storm, avoiding scandal and preserving its good name.  But there are those who want a modern kind of accountability.

The Catholic Church.  The citadel of Christianity, that can trace its roots all the way back to St. Peter.  In "Today's debate: Abusive priests" April 5, 2010, U.S.A. Today: "The Catholic Church, again reeling from child sexual abuse scandals, has had more chances than most institutions to come clean, purge its problems and make amends.  Yet it has failed repeatedly to do so, leaving a scandal that might have ended in the 1980s to fester for a quarter century.  Priests who molested children and bishops who covered up the crimes - and, in doing so, enabled the abuse of more children - have betrayed victims and parishioners alike.  Now similar scandals are cascading across Europe - through Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the Pope's native Germany.  And in every country, the script has been the same: cover-ups and transfers of priests that enabled more abuse.  Details of the Irish scandal help expose the culture that fostered it.  In 1975, an up-and-coming Irish priest did not report to authorities charges by two boys that they had been molested.  He has since said that was the wish of his superiors.  Instead, the boys were forced to sign an oath that they would not tell anyone - not police, not even their families - about their accusations, which were handled by a secret church inquiry.  The accused priest stayed in the ministry and went on to become one of Ireland's most notorious abusers.  The younger priest became head of the church in Ireland.  In case after case, the church has faced choices between protecting children or protecting itself.  It has consistently chosen the latter, and in doing so has protected neither."  Pope Benedict XVI, at the end of the Roman Catholic Church's Year of the Priest celebrations, 2010: "We...insistently beg forgiveness from God and from the persons involved."  But fifty years of child abuse cannot be erased with some sweet words.  Actions speak louder.

Jesus Christ's opinion (to paraphrase): "The prostitutes and drug dealers will get into heaven before you, religious leader."  Jesus' words continue. "Woe to you, religious leaders.  You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces.  You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who attempt to."  He has respect for His cross.  It is an emblem of America's religious heritage - back to the Mayflower (Plymouth, 1620).  It is a Methodist circuit rider, a Baptist hell-fire sermon, the "holiness movement" of old.  The project is named "American" Cross, as a fifth reason - America's missionary Cross - because it bottles historical American Christianity, sending the best parts to the world in a 21st century context, through the book Horse Creek.  Some reject the Cross, as a "cult".  These people won't read and study the proposal to make a serious analysis.  The dictionary defines the word cult as, "A religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false."  The Cross is a symbol of Christianity, neither extremist or false.  Certain of the clergy have labeled this project an "ornament", a "decoration", a "Tower of Babel".  Other huge projects did receive their fair share of sarcasm.  As the Eiffel Tower in Paris was built some said it was a "monstrosity", a "skeleton", a "Cyclops".  The National Grand Theater, completed June 2007, a massive silvery dome in the heart of China's capital, has been called an "eggshell", a "tomb", a "Big Bubble" by the Chinese. 

"Before Him shall be gathered all nations - and He shall separate them as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats.  He shall set the sheep on the right, the goats on the left.  Then shall the King say to those on the right: 'Come you of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.  For when I was hungry you gave me food, when I was thirsty you gave me drink, when I was homeless you took me in, when I was sick you visited me, when I was in prison you came.'  Then will the righteous answer him, 'Lord when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink, or homeless and took you in, or sick or in prison and visited you?'  Then the King shall answer and say, 'Inasmuch as you have done it for one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it for me.'  Then will he say to them on the left, 'Depart from me you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For when I was hungry or thirsty or homeless or sick or in prison, you did nothing for me.'  Then will they answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or homeless or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'  He shall answer, 'Inasmuch as you did it not for one of the least of the brethren, you did it not for me.'  And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal (quoted from Matthew)."  A "goat" in, or out, of the church receives "everlasting punishment".  A "sheep" in, or out, of the church receives "life eternal".

The site will have a visitor center, built out of stone with commercial blue tin for a roof, consisting of: 1) a restaurant serving buffalo, beef, chicken, lamb, venison, fish; 2) a gift shop to include a) various crosses - rings, necklaces, wall hangers, statuettes, b) candles encased in glass with the words "love will triumph over hate" etched on them, c) angel figurines based on a Biblical description, d) plaques with prayers such as "may the grace of God's protection and His great love abide within your home", e) plaques with verses relating to the Second Coming, such as "God shall wipe away all tears" or "there shall be no more death" or "I make all things new", f) scripts of the screenplay I Corinthians 5:5 as well as copies of the book Horse Creek, g) portraits of Jesus based on the shroud of Turin, h) framed photographs of the Cross, and i) many more gifts of interest; 3) a book/video store with books by authors such as St. Augustine, Martin Luther, John Bunyan, John/Charles Wesley, D.L. Moody, Charles Spurgeon, Billy Sunday, and DVDs such as The Ten Commandments, Passion of the Christ, Jesus, Ben-Hur, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Holy Bible, Armageddon, King of Kings, Jesus of Nazareth, Barabbas. A second building will contain: 1) a library with Christian books stemming from 100 A.D. to the present, and 2) a museum displaying Christian artifacts from all over the known world.  Six other buildings will contain eight wedding chapels apiece.  These chapels will be fairly small, but will be set up so that the walls of four chapels can "open up" to produce a large chapel for bigger weddings.  This is a viable alternative to the Las Vegas wedding.  There will also be one hundred one room, Ponderosa Pine log, honeymooner/guest cabins on site.

An hotel and RV park, built by a major hotel chain, will be provided in a small town nearby.  In the honeymooner/guest cabins, as well as the hotel, DVD players will be provided, and people will be able to rent the movies, when they get their room key, that are sold at the video store.  Two fitness centers for the hotel, as well as walking trails around the Cross, will be available.  Bus service 24 hours per day seven days per week, from Dodge City, Kansas (40 miles from site location), through the small town (hotel location), to the Cross will be accessible.  The concept of having all these activities at the Cross site is so that people can have enough to spend, say, a weekend at the site.  In other words, an individual from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, Dallas, Denver, Washington D.C., Las Vegas, Phoenix, and etc. can fly in, hop the bus, drop travel bags at the hotel, and absorb what is on site.  But, people have to sit going to the airport, sit in the plane, sit in the bus.  An individual is not going to have any desire to absorb what is on site.  Physical exercise at one of the two fitness centers will crystallize the thoughts.  Someone can fly in, say, Friday night, workout, shower, get a good night's sleep, and be ready to study what is on site.  And the DVDs give an individual something to do in the evening.  The point is, there are all sorts of people with heavy problems that living in their own little world they cannot seem to resolve.  But, being able to get away from it for a weekend, or a couple of days during the week, perhaps they can gain inspiration on how to solve a family problem, career problem, financial problem, health problem, retirement problem, drug problem, relationship problem, landlord problem, neighbor problem, church problem, harassment problem, swindle problem, religious problem, and etc.  They have to be able to relax and unwind, or 80% of what is on site will go in one ear and out the other, they won't get much out of it, they will feel bored after four hours, their problem will not be resolved, and their trip will have been a waste.

Most people will not have the opportunity to see the monument.  They may simply be too busy with their personal lives, or lack the finances, to come see it in person.  They may be American nationals living overseas, or perhaps troops stationed on an aircraft carrier.  However, to repeat what has been said, it is an Internet Cross, available to almost two billion people who use the worldwide web.  They can look at it on their cell phone.  The American Cross tries to "bottle-up" historical American Christianity in a 21st century context and make it available to all who wish it, as an international monument.  Historical American Christianity isn't necessarily better than some other Christianity, it's just different.  Being initially a nation of immigrants, the United States has a diverse form of spirituality.  Near death experiences are noteworthy with who gets into paradise and who doesn't.  "It is noteworthy that the reports of near death experiencers who have wound up in heaven and hell do not follow the lines of belief and doctrine.  In this book we have accounts of Fundamentalist Christians and Unitarians in hell and of atheists, Hindus, and Jews in heaven.  Probably the best description of hell is that it is the absence of God.  When it comes to the message of who God is and what is required of us, there can be no doubt that the message universally is consistent.  The Being of Light has many names that fit the religious frame of reference of the beholder.  This makes sense and was alluded to in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.  How else would God be revealed to us?  All religious revelation filters through we finite beings who are products of our culture, our time, and our symbolic language.  Like the wisdom of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it would seem from the accounts of the near death experiencers that God is interested in what is in our heart and not what is in our creed.  It is the love for God and one another that is important.  To love others is to love God.  Many near death experiencers have come back disgusted with the religious dogma of their formal religion, but filled with the love for God and others.  They reject dogma, but not the teachings of Jesus and the other prophets.  They reject religion, but not spirituality (from Visions of God from the Near Death Experience, by Ken R. Vincent)."   

"Heritage USA", a now-defunct Christian theme park, water park and residential complex, was built at Forest Mill, South Carolina by PTL Club founders televangelist Jim Bakker and the late Tammy Faye (Bakker) Messner.  Facilities did include the 501-room Heritage Grand Hotel, Main Street USA, an indoor shopping complex, the Heritage Village Church, a 400-unit campground, the Jerusalem Amphitheater, conference facilities, a skating rink, prayer and counseling services, full cable TV network production studios, Bible and evangelism school, staff and volunteer housing, visitor retreat housing and the Heritage Island water park.  So what's the difference between that and this.  The big difference with this project is...it's a Cross.  A fundamental difference is Bakker was a member of a denomination which has certain leaders who use what could be classified as a "voodoo spell" - magic of the psychic arts.  The American Cross was started by someone who had it used on him by this denomination many years ago.  A truly powerful spell was cast because a pastor felt this person, who was a member of his church then, had done him wrong.  The glass shattered, so to speak.  The pastor wrecked vengeance on the individual, who felt the wrath of the pastor's anger and was very sorry he had ever questioned him.  It could be said this denomination is your number one source for all things magical.  The last difference is this cause is not luxurious.  It will be built in more of a Spartan tradition.  

From sbno.illicitohio.com: "The size of Heritage was impressive, but the quality of the park was equally noteworthy.  This wasn't a thrown together mess of false facades on cheap little buildings like many parks, but instead, a well built, well planned, well landscaped, and well thought out resort.  Right around 1987, Jim's (Bakker) world began to fall apart.  Various people from various directions became distracted by the money going through Heritage.  Jim was selling lifetime memberships for $1000 a pop.  This got you a three day stay every year at PTL.  Unfortunately, they sold more memberships than they built rooms...this was a red flag for some, coupled with the large numbers coming in, and people began to watch...namely, the IRS, FCC, etc.  That was the way Heritage died."  The Upper Room Chapel was one of the only "spiritual" aspects of Heritage U.S.A.  Russell James purchased and reopened it November 19, 2010.  If Bakker had stuck to the spiritual, he might not have had such a mess.  He didn't and it fell apart.  The project is being done to benefit people's lives strictly on a spiritual level.  Hopefully its fate will be a little better.  A "big iron" Cross is a nickname.  The "Iron Cross" the Germans awarded as a medal for bravery in battle was no more than a medallion.  The Nazi Iron Cross was not a true cross, having nothing to do with Christianity.  The Teutonic Knights first used the symbol in the 14th century.  The Knights aided in the spread of Christianity to eastern Europe, having originated in Acre, Israel as an independent entity.  They were not just Germanic, spreading to Poland, Austria and Italy as well.  Initially, it was formed to aid Christians on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to establish hospitals.  The Order has some vague similarities to the American Cross since its goal is to deliver a "message of hope" to all the world.  The spiritual aspects of the Teutonic Knights are almost identical, as the Cross is designed to help people on their pilgrimage (journey) to the Holy Land (paradise). 

The project is being done by the American Cross Foundation, a Registered Delaware Corporation with a F.A.A. permit.  The monument will have support cables from the end of each horizontal cross-member to the ground, similar to a television tower.  If the Cross is free-standing, it could become more of a target for Nature and Man.  Due to safety concerns, there will be nothing in the monument itself.  This is due to the problem of natural disasters (e.g. a tornado leveled the town of Greensburg, Kansas thirty miles away) and the problem of a terrorist attack (planes, attaché case bombs, a biological attack, cutting of support cables in a windstorm [see Utility Patent link, pages 5, 11{lines 12-21}], etc.).  The Cross has power to heal as the spirit of the God of the universe works through it.  The "power to heal" doesn't really mean physical healing - we have in America excellent doctors and hospitals that perform medical miracles routinely.  It does mean emotional healing - we have millions of people in the United States that have been through an emotional trauma and need some form of help.  That is, those who have been through a painful divorce, children growing up in one parent homes, a trip in an ambulance, people suffering a financial catastrophe, military personnel back from Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.  Headlines in a newspaper reiterate it - "Troops with PTSD straining resources": "Ten thousand combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder flooded into VA hospitals every three months this year, pushing the number of patients ill with the disorder above 200,000 and straining resources, Department of Veterans Affairs data to be released today show.  PTSD is often characterized by flashbacks in the form of nightmares, a state of hypervigilance or a feeling of emotional numbness to the world.  The rapid rise in PTSD could be linked to the nature of these wars, where a relatively small, volunteer force deployed multiple times over a decade, [press secretary Josh] Taylor said (U.S.A. Today, November 30, 2011)."                               

"Shooting survivors facing 'dark moments'": "Bill Badger, a retired Army colonel, had a flashback of dead and injured people on the ground a day after he was shot along with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 17 others Saturday (January 8).  Doctors say the physical wounds of the mass shooting, in which six people died and 13 were wounded, are healing, but many of the survivors face a long recovery from the emotional trauma.  'As far as putting things back together from a surgical point of view, that's all been done very well,' says Peter Rhee, trauma chief at University Medical Center.  'But we've got to bring them back as a whole human being.'...Most victims of physical trauma have nightmares in which they relive the experience, flashbacks and insomnia, says Beverly Dexter, a psychologist at Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton in California.  Many victims of the Tucson shooting may also develop fears of going out in public, crowds, shopping centers and any kind of loud noise, Dexter says.  Joe Boscarino, who has treated combat veterans and survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, says some of his toughest cases were veterans who feel responsible for lives lost.  'They're riddled with guilt,' says Boscarino, an expert on post traumatic stress at Geisinger Clinic in Danville, Pa.  'It becomes an existential crisis for them.'  Often they lose all belief and descend into a spiritual crisis that psychology alone cannot cure (U.S.A. Today, January 14, 2011)."  One year later, U.S.A. Today comments: "Even those who disarmed the suspect tell of suffering from depression, nightmares and frustration.  'It's not been going well,' said Roger Salzgeber, 63, a retired nursery wholesaler who evaded bullets with his wife, Faith, before jumping on top of Loughner.  'I can't get past the image of me and Faith on the ground surrounded by a sea of blood.'"  Why not put up a big Cross to help them out.

From "Gabrielle Giffords shooting: Emotional trauma next challenge (Arizona Republic, January 11, 2011)": "Near the (Mesa Verde Elementary) school, Renee Lustenbergen's 6-year-old son, Trey was looking at a photo of Christina (Green).  Trey had never met the girl but seemed to grasp the enormity of her loss, his mother said.  'She was in the third grade,' Trey said.  'She didn't even have a chance to live her life, Mom.'  Lustenbergen said, 'I told him that most people are inherently good.'  Then, she had to add that there are some bad people and that there isn't always an explanation about why bad things happen.  On Sunday night, she said, her son woke up screaming.  'He told me that he had a dream that I crossed over an invisible line and didn't come back,' she said."  And he wasn't even there.  "She (Giffords) is described as a dedicated member of the temple (Congregation Chaverim) whose work and compassion embody the best of Jewish practice (New York Times, January 10, 2011)."  Persons of any faith can be benefited by a "message of hope".  From Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope, by Mark Kelly: "Gabby had such a rich life before she was injured that one of her speech therapists, an aphasia expert, recently asked her: 'Given all the pain and sadness, are you glad you survived?'  'Yes, yes, yes,' Gabby said.  The therapist, Nancy Estabrooks, was struck by her lack of hesitation.  'If you consider how much she had going for her, and how it all stopped abruptly,' Dr. Estabrooks said, 'it's not hard to imagine someone in that situation feeling suicidal, or losing the will to live.'"  Everyone is not as strong as she.

A skyscraper Cross could, in a sense, be compared to Seabiscuit.  This was a racehorse in the 1930s who began his career losing races regularly.  A new owner retrained the horse.  He would come neck-and-neck with another horse in a race, look the horse in the eye, and be gone.  He raced the "invincible" War Admiral from the East (Seabiscuit being from the West) and won hands down.  In 1938, Seabiscuit was number one in the news, second FDR, and third Hitler.  He gave people hope they could come back on top.  A monument may inspire as a horse did.  It can be argued that the concept contained in the project won't work in real life, but no one will ever know if it isn't built.  If it doesn't live up to expectations, it can always be torn down.  In the maze of the 21st century, it does make sense.  The 20th century tradition of the "little church on the corner" is, sadly, almost gone.  An Internet Cross is no more bizarre than the Internet Egyptian revolution: "The initial protest was promoted on a Facebook page devoted to the memory of Khaled Said, a 28-year-old man who allegedly died at the hands of police in Alexandria.  The government had said he suffocated after swallowing a package of drugs he was trying to hide from police.  Photos of Said's corpse, showing his teeth broken and body badly bruised, circulated on the Internet, drawing widespread outrage (U.S.A. Today, February 7, 2011)."                  

Some people might say, "The money would be better spent feeding hungry children," than on a "dumb" Cross.  The American government will spend over two billion dollars on a "smart" bomb.  According to Global Security.org: "The Small Smart Bomb is a 250 pound weapon that has the same penetration capabilities as a 2000 lb. BLU-109, but with only 50 pounds of explosive.  The 250 pound-class warhead has demonstrated penetration of more than 6 feet of reinforced concrete...The Small Diameter Bomb range is extended to 60 nautical miles by pop-out wings and the speed and altitude of the aircraft using it...With military construction and support costs, the total value of the Phase I program is $2.59 billion if the Air Force procures the 24,000 Phase I weapons and 2,000 carriages planned for the next 16 years."  This engineering marvel will be used to destroy people effectively.  $2,590,000,000 would feed lots of kids.  Paris Las Vegas is a $785,000,000 investment which built a half-size replica of the Eiffel Tower and a hotel-casino on twenty-four acres, located on the Las Vegas Strip.  This costs over three times what it would to build a big iron Cross, promotes gambling and other activities.  Trump International Hotel and Tower located at Chicago was completed in 2009, a $847,000,000 project.  This contains restaurants, hotel and residential sections.  Was this an absolute necessity given the fact there are numerous restaurants, hotels and luxury residences already in Chicago.  Insurance giant AIG gave $165,000,000 in bonuses to some of the executives who drove the company into financial ruin before it was rescued by a government bailout.  Rick Perry received $17,000,000 in three months for his presidential campaign.  The money would have been better spent feeding hungry children.  A Cross is no worse than each of these.

A few in the church get mad because they think an international monument is an "image".  This comes out of Exodus: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven (carved) image."  But also in Exodus, Moses is instructed to make an "ark of the covenant" to include two gold Cherubim (angels): "And thou shalt make two Cherubim of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat."  So here is a situation in the Bible where images are condemned, and yet Moses is told to make two life-size gold angels.  If it is an "image" then are the Statue of Liberty, Mt. Rushmore, the Lincoln Memorial, Stone Mountain (a memorial to Confederate War heroes) and the Crazy Horse Memorial (a monument to the American Indian) images as well?  At Groom, Texas there stands what some might call an "image", a 58 meter (190 foot) Cross.  This Cross, constructed by Cross Ministries and finished in 1995, has had hundreds of thousands of visitors since then.  They have "Stations of the Cross" featuring various statues of Jesus on His way to the crucifixion and then being crucified by the religious leaders of His day, a replica of the Shroud of Turin, a replica of the Tomb, a gift shop, etc.  It has been very successful as far as a positive impact on people's lives, as various testimonials on their Web page state.  As they declare: "The marvelous story of what God is doing through this nineteen story Cross."  There are other crosses in the world.  The Great Cross, built near St. Augustine, Florida and completed in 1966, stands 63 meters (208 feet) tall.  This is to remember an event four hundred years earlier, in 1565, when Pedro Menedez de Aviles placed a small wooden cross in Florida's soil and founded the Mission of "Nombre de Dios".  The Millennium Cross is a 66 meter (217 foot) high cross situated in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia.  The cross was constructed to commemorate 2000 years of Christianity, finished in 2008.  The cross was built on the high point of the Vodno mountain at a place known since the time of the Ottoman Empire as "Krstovar", meaning "place of the cross".  There is another truly spectacular cross near Madrid, Spain.  The Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen) contains one of the world's largest basilicas (a Roman Catholic church given ceremonial privileges), which was hewn out of a granite ridge by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco - to honor the fallen during the Spanish Civil War.  Rising above the basilica is, at this present day, the tallest memorial cross in the world - a 152.4 meter (500 foot) high stone cross that took eighteen years to finish, completed in the 1950s.  The American Cross is "a monolith (suggestive of a huge block of stone, as in massiveness) on the prairie".

Then these church people, if they can't accuse a 313 meter Cross of being an image, will say it is an idol - an object of worship.  A definition of idol is "a form or appearance visible but without substance".  This visible form/appearance is a message of hope.  Historically, the cross has been an exception to the rule.  In an edict in 730 A.D. Byzantine Emperor Leo III forbade the veneration of all religious images, which did not apply to symbols such as the cross.  He ordered the removal of an icon at the entrance to the Great Palace of Constantinople and replaced it with a cross.  He encouraged non-representational art (i.e. the cross).  "There arose a great controversy over icons in the 7th and 8th centuries.  People who defended the use of icons were known as 'iconophiles'.  Those against the icons were known as 'iconoclasts (those who destroy icons)'.  The worship of images was based on the belief that material objects can possess divine power, which might provide certain blessings to those who touch them.  The iconophiles supported the use of religious art as a means to convey Bible stories.  They believed that some might not understand a sermon, but everyone could understand a painting representing a story from the life of Jesus - and learn from it.  Iconophiles countered that King Solomon had made many objects to adorn the Temple.  They argued that the iconoclasts were mistaken to apply Biblical passages against pagan idols to Christian images, because the intent is completely opposite (James Watkins, Orthodox Icons)."  Sadly, there are still a few Christians who level the idolatry charge, but fortunately most understand that splitting doctrinal hairs is a theological and philosophical dead end.  To worship the Cross is to worship suffering...and who wants to worship that. 

It has also been suggested that this be done as a "virtual" Cross, meaning only an image on a web page, instead of building a physical Cross.  Yet there are those who want something tangible.  Lastly, is the cause the "cult of an icon"?  The word "cult" applies to groups seen as authoritarian, exploitative and possibly dangerous.  As can be seen with the other crosses aforementioned, it doesn't happen with a cross, which dignifies self-sacrifice.  Cults are seen as inimical to the public order due to their totalitarianism, violations of fundamental liberties, inordinate emphasis on finances, and/or disregard for appropriate medical care.  If a 313 meter Cross is a cult, then are the aforementioned crosses "cults".  How tall does a cross have to be before it becomes a cult?  An "icon" is usually a flat panel painting, generally of wood, depicting a holy being or object such as Jesus, Mary, saints, angels, etc.  It is a two, not three, dimensional rendering, and is common in Eastern Orthodox churches.  Certain people may attempt to twist a "message of hope" into the "cult of an icon".  But these people will also accuse family members, parishioners, neighbors, employers, tenants of things they haven't done. 

Was Jesus Christ crucified on a physical cross.  Wikipedia ran an article about a dispute concerning Jesus' "execution method": "Certain writers accept for the gibbet on which Jesus died only the meaning 'a pale, as strong stake, a wooden post'.  Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus Christ was executed on a stake and do not use the cross in their worship.  While the view that Jesus died on a stake has thus been advanced by writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, second century writers, such as Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, speak of Him only as dying on a two-beam cross.  In the same century, the author of the Epistle of Barnabas and Clement of Alexandria saw a two-beam shape of the cross of Jesus as foreshadowed in the Greek numerals corresponding to the present-day Arabic numerals 318, the same shape prefigured in Moses keeping his arms stretched out in prayer in the battle against Amalek.  At the end of the same century, Turtullian speaks of Christians as accustomed to mark themselves repeatedly with the sign of the cross, and the phrase 'the Lord's sign' was used with reference to a cross composed of an upright and a crossbeam.  Crosses of '+' or 'T' shape were in use, even in Palestine, at the time of Jesus...The Epistle of Barnabas, written earlier than 135, witnesses to the shape people of that time attributed to what Jesus died on.  Referring to what Barnabas saw as Old Testament intimations of Jesus and his cross, he likened the cross to the letter 'T', thus describing it as having a crossbeam.  Justin Martyr (100-165) explicitly says the cross of Christ was of two-beam shape: 'That lamb which was commanded to be wholly roasted was a symbol of the suffering of the cross which Christ would undergo.  For the lamb, which is roasted, is roasted and dressed up in the form of the cross.  For one spit is transfixed right through from the lower parts up to the head, and one across the back, to which are attached the legs of the lamb.'...Irenaeus, who died around the end of the second century, speaks of the cross as having 'five extremities, two in length, two in breadth, and one in the middle, on which the person rests who is fixed by the nails'.

 "Hippolytus of Rome (170-236), writing about the blessing Jacob obtained from his father Isaac, said: 'The skins which were put upon his arms are the sins of both peoples, which Christ, when His hands were stretched forth on the cross, fastened to it along with Himself.'  In his Octavius (written between 160-250), Minucius Felix, responding to the pagan jibe that Christians worship wooden crosses - an indication of how the cross symbol was already associated with Christians - denies the charge and then retorts that the cross shape (a crossbeam placed on an upright) is honored even by pagans in the form of their standards and trophies and is in any case found in nature: 'Crosses, moreover, we neither worship nor wish for.  You, indeed, who consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts of your gods,  For your very standards, as well as your banners; and flags of your camp, what else are they but crosses gilded and adorned?  Your victorious trophies not only imitate the appearance of a simple cross, but also that of a man affixed to it.  We assuredly see the sign of a cross, naturally, in the ship when it is carried along with swelling sails, when it glides forward with expanded oars; and when the military yoke is lifted up, it is the sign of a cross; and when a man adores God with a pure mind, with hands outstretched.  Thus the sign of the cross is sustained by a natural reason, or your own religion is formed with respect to it.'  In language very similar to that of Minucius Felix, Tertullian, too, who distinguished between stipes (stake) and crux (cross), noted that it was the cross that people associated with Christianity.  And he indicated that the shape of the cross is that of the letter 'T': 'The Greek letter Tau and our own letter T is the very form of the cross,' and compared it to the shape of a bird with outstretched wings."  Pretty fair chance Jesus Christ was crucified on a "T" (St. Antony's) cross, which later the church symbolized by a Latin cross - "+".   
 
Hypocrisy of the church, in the late 20th-early 21st centuries, leaves people in doubt.  A pastor desired a needy, male parishioner as his lady, trying to force a relationship with little gifts of food, while at the same time hammering the parishioner for "staring" at one of the cattle rancher's daughters in a rural, small town church.  Leaders in that denomination told the individual: "Touch not the Lord's anointed".  In another incident, a pastor accused a small farmer of coming to a small-town church in "dirty jeans".  This referred to a small amount of mud on the cuffs of near-new, washed jeans which occurred due to the parishioner walking three miles to the church on a muddy day, as his vehicle was broke down.  In yet another incident, a pastor pronounced a satanic curse on someone who was "stepping on toes".  Leaders in that denomination told the individual (victim) that if he did not forgive the pastor's unforgiveness (victimizer), his sins would not be forgiven.  Then these people butchered the parishioner for using profanity after the curse was pronounced.  The attitude - "You're the problem, you're the reason this is happening."  The trouble - the church from January 1, 1980 to January 1, 2020 is half black and half white (the color, not the race).  Once upon a time on a cattle ranch in western South Dakota there was a dog that was half black and half white.  This dog would chase the ranch pickup truck as it drove out into the field.  It would run behind the pickup for a while, then stop and run in circles chasing its tail.  Then, it would resume running after the pickup - and continue this pattern of chasing its tail then running after the pickup, endlessly.  So it is with the church today.  It will walk on a "righteous road" for a season, helping people, then stop and play all kinds of games, destroying people's lives.  And it will continue this cycle endlessly.  The hypocrisy of the church has created a whole new class of people - those who are without the church, "homeless" spiritually.

The spiritual homeless of America are not homeless physically - they choose not to have a church "home".  These people can make $500,000 per year, live in suburbia, drive a Corvette, but they are not involved with a church because they have been burned by and/or are disgusted with the church; or, they are simply too independently minded to come to church.  And, on the East and West coasts of the United States the influence of the church is seldom felt.  It's not that people living in these areas are all disgusted, burned or independently minded, they're plain not interested in coming to church.  On Sunday, other activities crowd out any church affiliation - sailing, skiing, a day at the beach and etc.  These people are "spiritually oriented", but do not have the time to come to church.  This group probably constitutes the bulk of the "spiritual homeless".  College students.  According to Stephen Prothero: "Study after study has shown that American college students are fleeing from organized religion to mix-and-match spirituality...My students' projects suggest that traditional religions are in trouble."  He labels the iPad/text messaging college crowd as part of the "spiritual but not religious" generation.  Christian leaders.  According to D. Michael Lindsay, a member of the sociology faculty at Rice University: "Many of the nation's most powerful believers - presidents, CEOs, entertainers and athletes - won't be found in the pews on Sundays...I spent the past five years interviewing some of the country's top leaders - two U.S. presidents, 100 CEOs and senior business executives, Hollywood icons, celebrated artists and world-class athletes.  All were chosen because of their widely known faith.  Yet I was shocked to find that more than half - 60% - had low levels of commitment of their denominations and congregations."  The rank-and-file is even worse.  Eighty-five percent of persons of faith are not seriously involved with organized religion (50% of the 85% do not even attend church), nationally and internationally.  

The book, Horse Creek, on this web page explains a concept.  The "Introduction" states, "This book is dedicated to answering the age old question: did God create Man, or did Man create God?  What is to be remembered, if there is a paradise, if there is an eternal prison, the individual who refuses to acknowledge that these things exist is simply out of luck...God has said, 'Behold, I stand at the door and knock - if any man hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and will eat with him, and he with me.'  He did this with the American Indian in 1300 A.D., with the cave man in pre-historic Europe, with the Russian in Siberia, with the Hindu in India, with the European during the height of European civilization, as examples.  Revelation 7:9 says, 'After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands.'  This is in heaven.  It says, '...a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations...'  All nations means all nations that have ever existed in history."  Everyone gets their chance - back to the first caveman that ever walked upon the face of the earth.  The chapter "Your Soul" states, "What does it mean to 'gain the whole world'?  To each individual person it means something different.  It can mean anything from a decent job, a house, a family, to owning and controlling a huge business conglomerate.  The 'whole world' means each individual's goals, dreams, aspirations, desires in life.  You can gain the 'whole world' of what you want, and wind up in eternal prison when you die...Coming to God is a form of blackmail.  Basically, God says, 'If you let me into your heart, I will let you into paradise.  If you don't let me into your heart, I will lock you up forever.'"   

There are things that go on in the church that bother people.  You have the Methodist lesbian minister, the Episcopal homosexual bishop, the Pentecostal satanist preacher and mega-churches sending mega-death - attacking and accusing.  The church leadership's attitude toward these lapses: "We shouldn't get upset over trivial matters."  "I know this isn't what you want to hear, but, you just need to forgive."  "No further action from our office is anticipated regarding these matters."  However, the scripture states: "And to the church write - 'I know your programs, that you are neither cold or hot.  So then because you are lukewarm, I (Jesus) will vomit you (the church) out my mouth'."  Next, an individual is told to "Give to God".  This causes confusion.  The money is being spent on the multi-million dollar church building.  Is this God?  And, the pastor's suburban home.  Is this God?  And, the church secretary's salary.  Is this God?  Last, they tell you that if you don't come to the church, you're not saved.  But while they're in the process of playing with you, they're doing other things...what really gets bad is when the church starts loosing Satan on you and you have all kinds of bad things happening to you on satanic feast days.  The documentary, I Corinthians 5:5, on this Web page, details an act committed by a minister who danced with dragons.  These are the first words of the play, on screen: "What you are about to see is one of the more unusual stories told.  If you have no prior belief in the supernatural, this may be dull - the use of satanic power to cause an individual to self-destruct.  This concerns a psychotic minister and a dumb parishioner, which occurred in a rural area of the Northern Plains during the Farm Crisis (1980-85).  This will be told, not so much through 'action', but through 'documentation'.  That is, the documentation of a fantasy through narration, a court deposition, legal arguments, letters and taped phone conversations concerning maleficia (occult activity) within the Pentecostal Movement.  They chose the darker path.  Not one thing has been altered - original, exact documentation has been used.  The Movement does not label it 'maleficia', but, the 'operation of spiritual forces invoked', and, the 'actions of Satan as applied'.  They label it a 'Job trial'.  The Movement has taken full credit, but has little remorse.  You, the audience, are the jury.  Is the minister innocent, or guilty, of the invocation of a destructive demonic force."  This is what happens when that happens: "The real dirty little secret of religiosity in America is that there are so many people for whom spiritual interest, thinking about ultimate questions, is minimal (Mark Silk, professor of religion and public life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.)."

The church's response might take this form: "We will not make any statements, orally, in writing or in any manner, to acknowledge, admit to or apologize for anything that may be evidence of or interpreted as a suggestion that the actions of any minister caused or contributed to any damages arising from intentional acts/abuse/misconduct."  So, persons of faith outside the church could use a symbol.  The monument will attempt to provide that.  The Catholic Church comes behind in no gift: "[Pope] Benedict [was] frozen and mute as a ferocious desperation spread through the Roman Catholic Church.  Each week reveals more cases of sexual abuse committed by European priests - several of whom were allowed by church authorities to continue working with children even after their transgressions became known.  Scores of priests have been implicated in Dublin alone; one admitted to abusing more than 100 children, while another said he did so every couple of weeks for 25 years.  What the Vatican views as punishment, the outside world can see as reward.  Cardinal Bernard Law, who covered up and ignored hundreds of abuse cases in Boston, was demoted, yet retains a cushy Vatican post (Newsweek, April 5, 2010)."  "We can't underestimate the power of the collapse of institutional religion in the first ten years of this century (church historian Diana Butler Bass)."  What are these priests going to do on Judgment Day?  According to the Book, you can burn over a cup of cold water. 

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.  He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul.  He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.  Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.  You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.  You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.  Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever (Psalm 23)."  If the 313 meter Cross is a message of hope, then why do some in the church put on an act like it is evil?  The National Constitutional Center did a poll on "What public institutions do you trust?"  The military: 43%.  Small business: 39%.  Scientific community: 30%.  Organized religion: 18%.  The church then loses trust.  They may say: "It's ten years ahead of its time."  Some don't want to see others helped, just left out in the cold.  The money is available now, it may not be available then.  It is important to do it while funding is available.  The attitude contributes to this: 44% told the 2011 Baylor University Religion Survey they spend no time seeking "eternal wisdom"; 19% said, "It's useless to search for meaning."  46% told a 2011 survey of LifeWay Research they never wonder whether they will go to heaven; 28% said, "It's not a major priority in my life to find a deeper purpose."  Cathy Lynn Grossman said: "For them, the Almighty is off the radar, like some tiny foreign country they know exists but never think about (U.S.A. Today, January 3, 2012)."

An international monument can symbolize the Second Coming for this entity: "...when I turned I saw seven gold sconces (candleholders) and near them a figure that was the Son of man, dressed in a robe with a gold belt tied at the waist.  His head and His hair were as white as snow.  His eyes burned like a flame.  His feet were like brass in a furnace, and His voice was as the sound of an ocean."  The project could possibly be construed as an "eviction notice".  Within four hundred years this might take place.  Four hundred years may seem like a long time, but as any evolutionist will tell you, Man has been in existence for millions of years, so this is a short period.  Some shun the following situation (the grapes of wrath) while pursing materialism in their everyday lives: "I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse, and He who sat upon that horse was called Faithful...His eyes were as a flame of fire.  He was clothed with a robe bathed in blood...and He treads the torchio (a machine that presses the grapes) of the wrath of Almighty God."  In other words, the church could become immersed in the concept of the Second Coming.  Until it does this will continue: "When it comes to religion, the U.S.A. is now a land of freelancers.  The percentage of people who call themselves some type of Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation.  The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: the Bible Belt is less Baptist.  The Rust Belt is less Catholic.  And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers - or falling off the faith map completely (U.S.A. Today, March 9, 2009)."

The Second Coming is a subject of profound interest.  But who on earth can get excited about the seals and the plagues in Revelation.  Isn't that a morbid tale?  Do people really get enthralled about one third of the planet being annihilated, or "men gnawing their tongues for pain".  The only people who could really get excited about such things are sado-masochistic human beings.  As Matthew puts it: "For then shall be great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be."  Yet this is what precedes the Second Coming.  Maybe the first question that can be asked is, why such a bloodbath?  The answer, and it is only a partial answer, is Sodom.  Sodom was an ancient gay/lesbian community in the Middle East.  Apparently, there were a few other things going on in the town that were abhorrent.  The result (divine judgment) was a firestorm that burned Sodom to the ground.  Apparently, when humanity becomes too wicked, the spirit of the God of the universe unloads.  The Second Coming is about a new heaven, and a new earth.  What exactly this means is unimaginable.  There is talk of a "New Jerusalem", but this causes more confusion than not.  But we do know that the new system will be a vast improvement over the old system, this present world.  "And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God...and on either side of the river was there the tree of life...and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations (quoted from Revelation)."

A sixth reason for the name "American" Cross is that it is an anti-arrogance tool to deflate American arrogance.  It needs a monument this big to fix it.  Americans could learn to be more thankful.  The story of the Cross is a story of a prince who became a pauper, and loved it.  "Pride goeth before a fall."  The arrogance, if left unchecked, will in time bring down the whole country.  The Iraq war is an example of when arrogance can cause our leaders to make mistakes.  Then, when some American soldiers went into battle in Iraq, they would hook a CD player to their tank's internal "Charlie box" so that when they put their helmet on, they could listen to Fire Water Burn in the helmet: "The roof is on fire.  We don't need no water, let the mother f----r burn.  Burn, mother f----r."  Another root of the arrogance is the debt load of America.  According to Newsweek (December 7, 2009): "This is how empires decline.  It begins with a debt explosion...If the United States doesn't come up with a credible plan to balance the budget, the danger is a major weakening of American power."  And the luxury.  From air conditioned dog houses to the Forbes Investment Guide to extravagant SUVs, the luxury only feeds the arrogance.  The site will let people know that there are things in America other than the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., the Strip in Las Vegas, Wall Street in New York City, smog in Los Angeles, "big oil" in Houston, or vehicle manufacturers in Detroit.  Since people cannot take their money with them when they die, then why be uppity.  "From the days of the Revolution to the moon landing two centuries later, the idea that the United States is different from and better than anyplace else on Earth has rallied its citizens and propelled its aspirations.  Eighty percent of Americans in a U.S.A. Today/Gallup Poll say they believe the country has a unique character and unrivaled standing (U.S.A. Today, December 21, 2010)."  In other words, American Exceptionalism, which may lead to American Arrogance.  If the Ruler of the universe can enjoy being homeless, why can't we? 

"If any person builds on the 'foundation' gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw - everyone's work will become clear.  For the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire - and fire will test everyone's work, of what sort it is.  If any person's work which he (she) has built endures, he (she) will receive a reward (quoted from I Corinthians)."  Many people regard the spirit of the God of the universe as a glorified babysitter or a sugar daddy.  "God, please take care of me and give me anything I want."  That is not what it is.  "For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard (quoted from Matthew)."  The "wood, hay, straw" crowd are those who wish "the kingdom" to do something for them.  The "gold, silver, precious stones" crowd are those who wish to do something for "the kingdom".  The spirit of the God of the universe looks for "laborers" who wish to work in His "vineyard" - the world system.  People who work for the kingdom of heaven get a fun eternity (in paradise, perhaps a nice place).  Those who believe but won't work get a boring eternity (in paradise, maybe sweeping the streets of gold). 

A school, called Horse Creek School, will be online.  The school will offer a thirteen week course through the Web that will teach on the principles contained in the book Horse Creek.  Each week one chapter of the book will be studied.  Week one: Introduction; week two: Rapture Myth; week three: Four Horsemen; week four: Your Soul; week five: Second Death; week six: Other Religions; week seven: The Trinity; week eight: The Messiah; week nine: Fall of Man; week ten: Church Today; week eleven: Church Tomorrow; week twelve: Mechanics of Salvation; week thirteen: Way of the Cross.  At the end of the thirteen weeks a Certificate of Completion will be e-mailed to the graduates.  The idea is to have four sets of students graduating per year, and, within ten years after opening, 100,000+ students per quarter.  Students can run through the course in the thirteen weeks, or thirteen days, or thirteen months.  Depending on how much free time they have to devote, they can go as fast, or as slow, as they wish.  The whole church, worldwide, needs a 21st century version of the 16th century Protestant Reformation.

  A large ranch in western South Dakota is to be purchased at or near the "center of the nation" - the geographical center of the United States located north of Belle Fourche, South Dakota.  A purpose of the ranch will be to host an "elite training camp".  This will be a more concentrated effort than the school to teach.  In this setting, out in the middle of nowhere, seventy+ students can be more real life monks and learn something, unfettered by some of the niceties of society for thirteen weeks.  There will be housing, classroom, gym, dining hall, nurse, handicapped facilities, fishing pond/ice skating rink, horseback riding/four wheeling, store with pen, paper, snacks and etc. on site.  On the weekend, within forty miles is the Black Hills for a diversion.  It has camping, fishing, hunting, old mines, Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial and etc.  There is not enough information in one book to justify a thirteen week course.  Other great books by authors such as St. Augustine, Martin Luther, John Bunyan, John/Charles Wesley, D.L. Moody, Charles Spurgeon, Billy Sunday will be used as textbooks as well.  The books used will be those that relate to the chapters in Horse Creek.  It can be imagined as to the form classroom discussion will take concerning St. Augustine's comments on the early church, the forces that caused Martin Luther to rebel against the established church of his day, Pilgrim's Progress - written by John Bunyan while sitting in a medieval prison, the Salem witchcraft delusion of 1692, what made the Wesleys start the Methodist Movement in the 18th century, and a rip-roaring sermon penned by Billy Sunday a century ago.  A Certificate of Completion will be issued, but instead of saying Horse Creek School it will say Horse Creek School - SD.  Hopefully this can produce some people in the loop.

There has been an explosion in the "persons of faith outside the church" category, over the last quarter century.  "According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65% of us believe that 'many religions can lead to eternal life' - including 37% of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone.  Also, the number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing.  Thirty percent of Americans call themselves 'spiritual, [but] not religious', according to a 2009 Newsweek poll, up from 24% in 2005 (Newsweek, August 24, 2009)."  Thirty percent of the population of the United States is approximately 90,000,000 people.  These are the people the monument is geared for.  This group, serviced by one lone Cross, is three quarters as big as the group (40%) who attend tens of thousands of churches in this country.  The monument gives the spiritual, but not religious segment of society some form of direction.  It doesn't tell them what to do.  They can figure that out for themselves.  All over the world, people eschew (shun) organized religion.  To them, services are vain (having no real value), sermons are corny (tiresomely simple and sentimental) - church bores them.  In Russia over half the population claim to be Orthodox Christians, yet just over half of these (34% of the total population) have been in a church.  In Western Europe church attendance is less than 10% in certain areas. 

"'Religion is an impediment to knowing God,' says Lotz (Anne Graham Lotz, the second of Billy and Ruth Graham's five children).  'Procedures, rituals, creeds: how in the world can they help you connect with God?'...Like so many other Christians, Lotz 61, had too many bad experiences in church to believe that God dwells there - and only there.  She was kicked out of one church, she says, for insisting on the inerrancy of Scripture.  She left another more recently in a fight concerning a new pastor.  She soon came to realize that she was a 'believer in exile' (Newsweek, September 21, 2009)."  This lady is a daughter of the famous evangelist Billy Graham, whose crusades have been around for most of the second half of the 20th century.  One would think that she would be loyal to the church, given that her father worked with God only knows how many churches.  Yet here is a woman, at least for a period in her life, who was spiritual but not religious.  In a small town southwest of Forth Worth, Texas in the mid-1970s a Southern Baptist preacher drank whiskey and beat his teenage daughter, the daughter becoming spiritual but not religious as well.  The preacher got away with it for years before someone finally turned him in.  One begins to understand why approximately 90,000,000 people fall in the "persons of faith outside the church" category in the United States. 

If some pretty bad things have been said about organized religion, it is because the church is attempting to live 20th century Christianity in the 21st century.  Look at the Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude, insult and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.  Celebrate in that day and jump for joy, because great is your reward in heaven.  For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.  But woe (bad things happen) to you when everyone speaks well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets (quoted from Luke)."  They want the soft and easy path.  There is a difference between the church itself and the present church system.  The church is eternal.  "Upon this rock I will build my church (quoted from Matthew)."  The system is broken.  "In my Name you have done many wonderful works (massive buildings, beautiful programs), depart (to hell), you who do iniquity (victimize people)...(quoted from Matthew)."  In a certain town the local Kmart does very little business.  So little, it is finally sold to Home Depot which tears everything to the ground and builds anew.  The concept of a multi-faceted store was not being torn down, just this one store that could not work.  The "Kmart" church system can be torn down to the ground and a "Home Depot" church system built anew.  Hopefully this "tearing down" will take place in the second decade of the 21st century.  Then in the third and fourth decades of this century a brand new system can be built.  For almost 2000 years, the church has been living "horse and buggy" religion, i.e. the First Coming as primary.  In the 21st century, we are living in an era of "horseless carriage" religion.  The seals and the plagues, coupled with a new heaven and a new earth, is to be primary.  Church leaders simply need to change their focal point.  The concept of a "multi-faceted" store, the church, is something that lasts forever.  If only organized religion could catch a glimpse of the brightness of His Coming.  Then it can become the "glorious church, without spot or wrinkle."  

The "rapture" before the "meltdown" is a fairy tale.  Many evangelical Christians believe they will "disappear" into the clouds before things turn sour.  The chapter "The Rapture Myth" from the book Horse Creek explains this.  "The order of events is given to us in Matthew 24:21-42.  First, verse 21: 'For then shall be great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.'  This of course speaks of the seals and the plagues in Revelation.  Then, in verses 29 and 30: 'Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give its light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.  And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn - and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.'  So after the seals and the plagues spoken of in Revelation, the Son of man, i.e. the God of the Cross, will come to this world for the second time.  And now, verses 37 through 41: 'But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.  For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and given in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away - so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.  Then shall two be in the field, the one shall be taken and the other left.  Two women shall be grinding at the mill, the one shall be taken and the other left.'  Now, this concept of 'two in the field, one taken,' 'two women grinding at the mill, one taken and the other left,' is used by Pentecostal/evangelical people to show that the 'rapture' will occur.  While it is true that the rapture will occur, it will occur after 'the great tribulation', the seals and the plagues spoken of in Revelation.  Notice that after the great tribulation, the seals and the plagues spoken of in Revelation, our Lord comes back to earth.  Then, at that time, the 'rapture' takes place - 'two in the field, one taken'.  Some argue that 'eating and drinking, marrying and given in marriage' couldn't take place during the seals and plagues.  However, the 'Antichrist' sets up so people can 'buy and sell' during this period.  The coming of the Son of man, after the seals and plagues is the flood, THE END...Revelation 20:3-5 - 'And cast him (Satan) into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled, and after that he must be loosed a little season.  And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them, and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God and who had not worshipped the beast neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads or in their hands, and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.  But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished.  THIS IS THE FIRST RESURRECTION.'  The first resurrection - the dead in Christ shall rise first.  If the rapture were to occur before the seals and plagues Revelation 20:5 would say, 'This is the second resurrection.'  But it doesn't.

 "In the book The Rapture A Question of Timing, by William Kimball, he makes some interesting comments on I Thessalonians 4:16-17 - 'A final note on the word descend employed in I Thessalonians 4:16 is also helpful at this point.  The word is consistently employed to characterize an uninterrupted descent.  This is substantiated in those passages mentioning the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ at His baptism.  It is also borne out in passages which refer to Christ's first advent.  It is also employed numerous times in the New Testament in which its context clearly states or suggests an uninterrupted descent.  When a change of direction is stated, a specific statement is included to qualify it.  Pretribulationsts claim that since the saints will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air that his heavenward ascent lends support to their defense of a two-stage coming.  They naturally assume that our translation skyward is a clear indication of our heavenward destination immediately following our rendezvous in the air.  However, opponents of the two-stage concept argue just the opposite.  They maintain that Christ's descent to the earth will be uninterrupted at the rapture.  They claim that the scriptures say nothing about a change of direction in the Lord's descent after the saints have joined Him in the air.  Though pretribulationsist like Walvoord maintain that I Thessalonians 4 says nothing about continuing the journey to the earth, it should be pointed out that this verse says nothing about a return trip to heaven either.  On the basis of direct statements, neither postribulationists or pretribulationists can conclusively prove their position.  However, the internal evidence associated with the distinctive usage of the word meet lends strong support to the argument against the two stage theory.  Interpreting this meeting of the Lord in the air by both the resurrected, dead saints and the translated, living saints to mean that Christ will then book them on His return flight to heaven to wait seven years before coming back to earth again violates the precise meaning of the word met.  The word translated meet is derived from the Greek word apantesis.  It is a unique word used in reference to the coming of a king or magistrate to visit a city.  As Bruce noted: when a dignitary paid an official visit or parousia to a city in Hellenistic times, the action of the leading citizens in going out to meet him and escorting him on the final state of his journey was called the apantesis (F.F. Bruce New Bible commentary).'"  This doctrine these people have trusted in these years is divorced from reality.

An article in the August 11, 2005 edition of U.S.A. Today is entitled "Religion takes a back seat in Western Europe".  The article makes the point that "attendance is sliding, attitudes toward God and church authority are changing".  It also notes that "the (attendance) drop is most evident in France, Sweden and the Netherlands, where church attendance is less than 10% in some areas".  An article in the January 9, 2006 edition of U.S.A. Today is entitled "Is God Dead in Europe?" and comments, "In The Prague Post, an English-language weekly newspaper...an op-ed examines why only 19% of the people in this once-religious country believe that God exists."  Eastern Europe doesn't seem to be much farther behind Western Europe.  So, a purpose of the Cross is to give Europeans some form of direction by providing them with a book, Horse Creek, which deals with some life issues, as 415,000,000 use the Internet.  The magazine, Russian Life, has classified certain people in Russia: "58% of Russians classify themselves as Orthodox believers, while 42% of these have never been in an Orthodox Church and 31% said they go to church once a year.  Of those who called themselves 'believers', 60% had never read any of the Bible".  So, these people also need some form of direction.  The efforts to reach the Russian people could be placed on a human being's thumbnail.  According to the June 2005 issue of Russian Life, 41% of Russians have a home computer, 60,000,000 use the Internet.  Many are taught English in school, and later Horse Creek will be in Russian.  The Middle East is supposed to be some sort of a "mission field".  But, they already have a religion that works for them - Islam.  So, it is better to leave that area alone.  Pushing Christianity on the Middle East makes about as much sense as pushing Islam on the United States.  From the Koran: "As for those who are unbelievers, if they have everything that the earth contains, or twice as much, to offer as a ransom to redeem themselves from the punishment of the Day of Resurrection, it will not be accepted."  This is excellent, they don't need any help from us. 

In the 19th century, many were the missionaries to China.  But today in the 21st century, it is hard to conceive of a few thousand missionaries reaching 1.3 billion people.  According to Falun Gong and the Internet: Evangelism, Community, and Struggle for Survival: "Throughout history, technology has often facilitated the spread of religion.  Indeed, it is frequently stated that the most important difference between John Huss and Martin Luther was the availability of the printing press.  More recently, radio and television have assisted the spread of evangelical Christianity in the United States.  It is not unreasonable to posit, therefore, that the Internet may play an important role in the growth of religious movements that embrace it."  Falun Gong is a religious sect within China that has made skillful use of the Internet for information distribution, experience sharing and survival against the pressures of the Chinese government.  If Falun Gong can effectively use the Internet to reach people in China, surely, the Internet can be used to reach people with the "message of hope".  When you have 1.3 billion people across the sea to reach, you need a 313 meter Cross to do it, when 384,000,000 people in China use the Internet.  Many are taught English in school, and later Horse Creek will be in Chinese.  In Australia, India and Africa there are 17,000,000, 81,000,000 and 111,000,000 Internet users respectively.  Mexico is a nation where churches do a two week mission trip frequently.  It is a nation that is in need spiritually.  Unfortunately unlike the Chinese, the Mexicans are not very Internet savvy.  But there are still 17,000,000 people who use the Internet, and they can read Horse Creek, as it is in Spanish.  Central and South America are basically in the same situation - visited by churches, but they need a "message of hope" twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  Again, the problem is that not many are Internet savvy, but yet in Central America 20,000,000 people use the Internet, and in South America 55,000,000 people use the Internet.  So, if the Internet can be used to reach people across the sea, surely it can be used to reach people on the back doorstep.  Internet usage worldwide has risen from 360,000,000 December 31, 2000 to 1,966,000,000 June 30, 2010, according to Internet World Stats.  A 313 meter Cross gets their attention, the book tells them, the Africans, the Indians, the Australians, the Chinese, the Russians, the Europeans and whoever else, what it means.  A pygmy Cross, 150 meters tall, doesn't cut it.

Shanghai is located on the mainland coast of China.  According to the census, it has over 15,000,000 people, and is an economic, cultural and spiritual center for all of China.  The Shanghai World Financial Center is 492 meters (1614 feet) tall.  It is a mixed use skyscraper which consists of offices, hotels, conference rooms, observation decks and shopping malls on the ground floors.  Is it probable that a missionary, with a Bible tucked under his arm, could enter the building, go to a certain floor, talk to one of the elite Chinese businessmen that work there, uninvited, and ask him: "Do you know Jesus?"  The church does not worry about reaching these people in metro areas such as Shanghai.  It's too inconceivable.  Maybe people who work and stay at the Shanghai World Financial Center could get online and check out a 313 meter Cross.  The Shanghai World Financial Center has a unique appeal: the structural design called for a mega structure consisting of composite perimeter columns, one at each corner of the rectilinear base and six as the floor plan morphs into a six-sided form at high elevations.  Diagonal perimeter braces zigzag up the faces, connecting mega-columns vertically and connecting steel belt trusses horizontally.  The unique design of a mirror-finish, stainless-steel Cross could fascinate them - as well as the message.  In the 1930s, some 30,000 Jewish refugees from Europe arrived in the city, fleeing from Hitler - welcome in China.  Shanghai has seen massive development over the past fifteen years, catching up to the Western world.  It is also an important center of Christianity in China.  When the monument is done, they will not feel so isolated.  Shanghai is a fast-paced port city where many of the items Americans prize, that are stamped "Made in China", are sent from.  Where are the American missionaries to deal with this 21st century boom town? 

Moscow, Russia.  This is a city of almost 10,000,000 people, a Russian Orthodox town.  Approximately 50% of Russians claim to be Russian Orthodox, but only approximately 15% of Russians are actively involved in a church.  The Kremlin resides here.  Foreign missionaries are not too welcome.  A monument doesn't tell them what to do, just encourages them in their personal faith.  Russians don't like to be told what to do by the West.  Paris, France.  This city is located on the Seine River - a town of romance.  The "city of amour" is basically a Catholic town, although not too many go to the few Catholic churches in the city.  There is virtually no evangelical effort being done there.  Nobody ever stands on a street corner, say, on the Champs-Elysees and says to the thousands of sophisticated passersby: "Do you know Jesus?"  Just doesn't happen.  After the child molestation cases all over Europe, people could use some encouragement that a Cross can give them.  Sao Paulo, Brazil is the fourth largest city in the world, with a population bigger than New York City.  Churches in the United States frequently make a "missions trip" to rural areas of Mexico to talk to people.  They don't venture as far south as Sao Paulo, and would most probably feel "lost" in a city of almost 18,000,000 people.  They feel it is best to leave that situation alone.  Online, these people may access an international Cross, and receive some spiritual benefit.  In the United States, to belong to a church can cost ten percent of an individual's annual income.  The Cross is free - Jesus never charged. 

There could be peace in the Middle East.  Going after the Al-Qaeda network is like cutting branches off a tree.  The Jews need their Temple.  There will be no peace, without it.  Otherwise, Israel might be afraid that if they gave the Palestinians a state, they could be crushed.  Jews have been through enough oppression for almost two thousand years that they don't want to take that risk.  The Jews need the northern two-thirds of the Temple Mount, the Moslems retaining a southern third.  A wall, "The Jerusalem Wall" could be constructed to separate the Jewish and Moslem sections of the Mount.  The Temple gives them respect, in the Moslem mind.  Moslems have Mecca, Jews, presently, have nothing.  There is a problem of Israeli settlements in Palestine.  The Mexican solution could also work in this situation - Americans live in "gated communities" as American citizens in Mexico.  Israelis can do the same thing - live in Palestine as Israeli citizens.  Palestinian refugees living in camps need Jewish help.  A Temple could make the Jews more philanthropic.  Thousands have been "locked up", perhaps a far cry from Hitler, but there are some vague similarities.  Jews and Palestinians can work together to solve it.  Jerusalem has always been the hope of the Jew.  "Next year Jerusalem!" has been their cry for over a thousand years.  Dearborn, Michigan is a town inhabited by many Arab Americans.  They control much of the town - under the American flag.  Jerusalem is the Jews' dream.  Arabs living in the Arab section of Jerusalem can do so - under the Israeli flag.  As far as a "right to return", Jews return to Israel and Palestinians return to Palestine.  To prevent violence, America could provide peacekeepers in Jerusalem and around Israel in general.  Palestinians hopefully wouldn't fire on Americans who have already dumped millions of dollars into their country.  Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad tentatively have all the components of a functioning Palestinian state in place in the West Bank now.  So the idea is to exchange one Temple for one Palestinian State, one building for one sovereign nation.  According to Newsweek: "The Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' bid for full U.N. membership was dead on arrival in New York (October 3, 2011)."  Why not try a different method?

Secondly, abortion is a form of limited genocide.  But, people say abortion is "pro choice".  That is, it is a woman's "choice" to terminate her pregnancy and abort her fetus.  The question is whether the fetus is actually alive...even though it is not a human being, it could be construed as a "partial" human being.  The United States Supreme Court has said that the word "person" does not include the unborn.  It's not clear what the Supreme Court regards the unborn as - but definitely not as a person.  In Nazi Germany, Jews were regarded as "partial" human beings, and subsequently eliminated.  People in that time frame didn't have a problem with it.  And today, with killing fetuses, people really don't have a problem with it either.  The word genocide means the deliberate and systematic extermination of a cultural group, whether that cultural group is unborn children or whether that group is Jews.  Although the abortion clinics are not attempting to eliminate all unborn children, they are eliminating a limited amount of them.  If the abortion clinics are so proud of what they do, why do they not make posters of groups of aborted babies available to the public, so that people can hang them on their walls in their homes.  If the clinics aren't proud of what they do, why do they do it.  For the clinics to shut down, however, they first must come to the realization that what they do is a form of limited genocide.  There can be exceptions to the rule when an abortion is an absolute necessity, but the wholesale slaughter is not correct.  Thirdly, the doctrine of the separation of spiritual values and state is unconstitutional.  The First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."  In other words, if school district A, composed of parents, teachers, and students, chooses the "religion of atheism", that is to teach evolution, no prayer, nothing from the Bible, the church can do nothing about it.  However, if school district B, composed of parents, teachers, and students, chooses to teach creation, exercise prayer, with a moral lesson from the Bible, no civil liberties group should be able to touch it.  Even Newt Gingrich said: "A country which has been, since 1963, relentless in the courts driving God out of public life shouldn't be surprised at all the problems we have, because we've in fact attempted to create a secular country, which I think is frankly a nightmare."  In 1963 the Supreme Court banned prayer in school.

One of the bigger problems the United States faces is an out-of-control deficit.  The Federal government just doesn't know when to stop.  In the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s, the rich were in a 90% tax bracket.  The 1950s were some of the most prosperous times in American history.  Today, corporate greed is an issue, as the rich only face a 35% tax bracket.  How much is enough?  The rich can't take their hundreds of millions of dollars with them when they die.  To re-institute the 90% tax bracket for the rich in the second decade of the 21st century, and using the revenue strictly to pay off the debt, would greatly help to solve a very serious problem.  It is not really a matter of choice.  The folk in Washington act like a bunch of spoiled brats, whining like little babies when they can't have every little thing they want.  Driving down the deficit can cause prosperity, because then the government will not have to pay out so much money on the interest.  If it is let go, and China continues to float the debt, theoretically it could happen that China could occupy Taiwan and say to the U.S.: "If you don't like it, pay us all the money you owe us, now."

The war in Iraq was a real mess as far as pro and con.  Half the population of the United States was for the war and half the population was against it.  A justification is that for over twenty-five years certain areas of the Middle East, notably Iraq, would accuse America of being the "Great Satan".  While America is many things, that is one thing it is not.  At Pearl Harbor, 1941, approximately 3000 people were killed, causing the war with Japan.  To attempt to kill the soul of a nation is more serious than to actually kill a very small percentage of its population.  While the Middle East, notably Iraq, did not kill the soul of America, it did do quite a bit of damage.  So America, alone, was justified in dealing with Iraq.  The European Union was not accused of being the "Great Satan", Russia was not accused of being the "Great Satan", it is strictly an American problem.  The Democrat's way of solving the problem - diplomacy.  The Republican's way - war.  Perhaps a better way could have been to have used stepped-up Cold War tactics on Iraq to have caused that regime to implode within two to five years.  Was young people's sacrifice in vain?  Establishing a strong democracy in Iraq was contagious.  Other Arab nations caught the "bug" and began the Arab Spring.  While attempting to kill the soul of a nation is serious, having the threat of nuclear annihilation is even more serious.  The larger problem is Russia.  In other words, Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction - Russia has the WMD.  It might have been smarter to spend the billions of dollars nurturing democracy in Russia, overall, simply because Russia can do the damage.  So with America involved in Iraq, Russia rebuilt.  It's democracy, without active American support, is falling through the cracks.  In December 2007, Russia sent an aircraft carrier group to the Mediterranean.  Earlier that year Russia resumed long-range flight of strategic bombers and, in January 2008, test-fired tactical missiles off the coast of France and Spain.  According to Moscow News, November 27, 2008: "Twelve Venezuelan warships will take part in a joint exercise with a Russian naval group" on December 1.  "The task force, led by the Pyotr Veliky missile cruiser, is on a planned visit that follows a two-month tour of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, which saw Russian ships visiting Libya, Turkey and France.  The group includes the Udaloy class destroyer Admiral Chabanerko and two support vessels with a total of about 1,600 naval infantrymen onboard."  The Clinton and Bush administrations (1992-2008) did little to nurture democracy in Russia.  The Obama administration tries harder.  

We are living in an era, 1996-2036, that has been described by the 9/11 Commission: "[America should] offer an example of moral leadership in the world, [be] committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors."  Constantine, when he attacked Rome back in the 4th century, had a vision of a shining Cross in the sky and heard these words, "IN THIS, OVERCOME".  In 313 A.D. he signed the Edict of Milan, ending the oppression of the church by the tyranny of Rome.  This desire to liberate has been described by President Bush in the January 20, 2005 Inaugural Address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.  The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.  So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.  America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling.  Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way.  We do not accept the existence of permanent tyranny because we do not accept the possibility of permanent slavery.  When you stand for your liberty we will stand with you.  We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom.  Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability, it is human choices that move events.  Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation - God moves and chooses as He wills." 

There are three great periods of American history: 1886-1926 when America rose, 1941-1981 when America stood, and 1996-2036 when America moves.  This is the last great period of American history.  In the first period, the rich immigrant blood flowed into America.  The second period was characterized by World War II, the Cold War, the explosive growth of the country, etc.  The third period is when America encourages democracy all over the world, as an example.  It has its troops stationed in over 100 countries and its fleets scattered on the seven seas.  This period, 1996-2036, thus far has been an era when America goes "on assignment" against human rights violations, that is the horrifying spectacle of wholesale slaughter and ethnic cleansing in different parts of the world, perpetuated by such actors as Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.  As with Milosevic, over 7000 Muslims dead in the Srebrenica massacre.  Saddam's methods included electric shock treatments, amputating body parts with chainsaws, breaking of bones, ripping out of fingernails, gouging of eyes, and the use of acid baths.  Or Afghanistan, where a woman could be stoned for showing an ankle.  And the "War on Terror", once led by the late bin Laden who in January 2006 stated that he was actively planning another terrorist attack against America, but was willing to call a truce if American troops leave Iraq and Afghanistan.  But for al-Qaeda to chant "death to America" is to chant "death to the American Cross".  To the chant of "death to the Cross", the proper response is "God will rock your world".  As President Obama said in the January 20, 2009 Inaugural Address:  "For those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken.  You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."  This task is not to be confused with the Crusades of the Dark Ages.  Back then, as an example, when the Crusaders were "liberating" a Spanish city, a sergeant asked a captain, "How will I know the 'faithful' from the 'infidel'?"  The captain replied, "Slay them all, God will know his own."  President Bush said in the State of the Union, January 31, 2006:  "Our nation is committed to a historic, long-term goal - we seek the end of tyranny in our world."  This is a different than the Crusades of medieval Europe when the Church of the Dark Ages confused and demoralized.  This is a crusade for  freedom and dignity that should last until the year 2036.

The American Cross could possibly be regarded as a "military" Cross.  That is, the site will be as a tribute to the dead in America's wars, going all the way back to the Revolution of 1776.  Arlington West, located in Santa Barbara, California, has put 3000 wooden crosses on the beach in the sand on Sundays.  This was to honor American soldiers who have died in Iraq.  Recently, they have reduced the amount to less than 1500 wooden crosses on the beach, to honor soldiers who died in Afghanistan.  Whether Americans are for or against those wars, the memorial touches them.  The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer, France honors American soldiers who died in Europe during World War II for the cause of freedom.  It has over 9000 white marble crosses as markers.  On August 24, 2008 a "9/11 Cross" was erected at Shanksville, Pennsylvania where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed, to honor the over 3000 dead on September 11, 2001.  Hundreds of motorcyclists, many of them current or retired New York firefighters, made a trip from Brooklyn to be there for the dedication.  It is a "War on Terror" memorial cross fashioned out of steel from the World Trade Center North Tower, 4.3 meters (14 feet) high, with a concrete base shaped like the Pentagon.  It symbolizes the 21st century struggle of civilization vs. chaos.  The American Cross is a veteran's monument, in a restricted sense, to honor the sacrifice that our young people have made down through the years, that we may continue to enjoy our freedoms.  Some have come back without arms, or legs, or with traumatic brain injuries.  They can have an attitude of "who cares about anything, anymore".  If the monument can help inspire them to "live life" - i.e. pursue a career and have a family, it is an honorable mission.  In the field soldiers say, "The meat meets the metal."  These people risk their lives every day, while in cities such as a metropolis in the panhandle of Texas, people nit-pick others half to death over a few dollars.  Death is very much of a reality to servicemen and women overseas.  The greatest problem we all face is the fear of death.  Scripture says that one of its primary purposes is to deliver people who though fear of death were all their lifetimes subject to torment.  Once the Cross is done people can rest assured that no matter where they are, or how bad it is, beyond death is paradise.  "O death where is thy sting?  O grave where is thy victory (quoted from I Corinthians)?"  As long as an individual keeps his, or her, "connect" to the spirit of the God of the universe, he, or she, has nothing to worry about. 

But perhaps even more important, it is a "military" Cross because the Second Coming is, if you would, a military operation.  What precedes the Second Coming is heaven's concept of "shock and awe".  This is from the Book of Revelation. "The first angel sounded, and there came hail and fire mixed with blood which was dumped on the earth - one third of the trees and the green grass burnt."  This may refer to antimatter warfare.  In the book, Horse Creek, the chapter "The Fall of Man" states, "Antimatter is the exact counterpart of matter which has a charge and a spin that is the opposite of all matter.  When combined with any matter in our universe, antimatter reacts and completely converts to energy.  This is called a total annihilation reaction, the 100 percent conversion of matter to energy.  The bombs the United States detonated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki were called fission bombs.  The immediate area of destruction of such a bomb was 3 to 4 miles.  In this case only one percent of the nuclear material in this bomb actually reacts.  Since that time, a man named Dr. Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb, discovered that a fusion bomb was possible which would create a greater reaction using the same amount of nuclear material.  If such a bomb were dropped today on the same target, the immediate area of destruction would be approximately twenty miles.  This would be caused by a nuclear fusion reaction, in which again, less than one percent of the nuclear material actually converts to energy or explodes.  The other ninety-nine percent of the nuclear matter in this type of bomb is dispersed, but is not involved in the actual nuclear fusion reaction.  So if a bomb was made with the same amount of nuclear material as one of the bombs dropped on Japan, and that nuclear material was antimatter (or the total 100% conversion of matter to energy), when that bomb exploded in, say Baghdad for instance, the area of total devastation would include parts of Africa, Europe, and Asia, with the exact area of total devastation being very difficult to calculate (www.boblazar.com)."  What this dry dissertation means is that the first angel's "sounding" can be fulfilled to the letter with, say, twenty antimatter bombs.  "And the second angel sounded, and a mountain burning with fire was dropped into the sea - one third of the sea became blood red (this most probably refers to some sort of high-tech weaponry).  And the third angel sounded, and a star, burning like a torch, fell from the sky onto a part of the rivers (an asteroid striking the earth)...And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it, and shall desire to die and death shall flee from them."  Revelation may seem poetic, but there is nothing poetic about antimatter warfare, or an asteroid smashing into the earth. 

Things are different in the world, now.  Times have changed.  Different times call for different solutions.  This thirty-six page synopsis has been a laundry list of reasons as to the "why" of building a 313 meter mirror-finish, stainless-steel Cross out in the middle of nowhere in southwestern Kansas.  It is called "American Cross", as a seventh reason, so Americans can re-position.  Today in most American lives, materialism is first, and spirituality is second.  If a monument can help reverse the situation, so that spirituality is first and materialism is second, it has rendered a service.  Columbus, when he came to the New World in 1492, planted 7 meter (20 foot) wooden crosses on many of the islands he discovered.  At the first landing of the original Jamestown expedition (April 26, 1607), Captain Christopher Newport took it upon himself to erect the colony's first structure - a large cross at Cape Henry to mark their arrival.  The first Spanish and British expeditions to the New World chose to build a cross.  A newscaster said the Cross is a "heavenly skyscraper".  A lady in Amarillo, Texas: "I can't wait to see it built, take my daughters and go see it myself."  A girl compared a big iron Cross to the 192 meter (630 foot) stainless-steel Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Mo.: "I think that's a better purpose than an Arch, a Cross is better than an Arch."  Doing things differently leads to something extraordinary.  It is designed for persons of faith outside the church.  Overseas, unusual structures develop.  Dubai, United Arab Emirates completed a 828 meter (2717 foot - according to the World Records Academy), $1,500,000,000 skyscraper named Burj Dubai.  The amount of funds needed for this project is $250,000,000.  An international monument is cost efficient in comparison to Burj Dubai, as it is designed to help people get into the next life (post death) safely.  As the Book states: "Though an individual is dead, yet shall that person live (quoted from John)."  People spend a lot of time and money to make this life pleasant for themselves and those whom they love.  What about after death?  The organization is in the process of raising $250,000 through contributions to do complete design work on the American Cross site.  The rest of the funds for the project will come through creative financing. 

It has been said that this web page meanders, that is, follows a winding and intricate path.  The truth is that for a quarter of a billion dollar project, issues need to be discussed.  The web page goes into a lot of depth and detail, because the monument is big.  Something this large has to be explained.  And it cannot be explained other than a detailed account.  The cause is rescuing people from the possibility of eternal prison.  The concept stated here tries to do just that.  The idea to build a big iron Cross began due to a church's fetish (an object believed to have magical power) with Satan.  That church initiated a satanic attack against an harassed parishioner for refusing to submit to the minister's bi-sexual desires.  The technical terminology is "maleficia": meaning a malicious act designed to cause harm to an individual's health, marriage and/or finances.  It continues.  A church in Florida indirectly caused the death of twenty-four innocent people, in Afghanistan, due to burning the Koran.  They burned things like this: "It is utterly against reason and justice that the good and the bad, the obedient and the disobedient, the oppressor and the oppressed, should be made equal ultimately.  Just as you did not become living of your own accord, but became living by Our power, so you do not die of your own accord."  Former Senator John Edwards, a so-called "born again", has an affair with a former campaign aide, while his wife is stricken with cancer.  He fathers a daughter through the aide, asks another aide to get a doctor to "fake" the DNA results, and lies about the paternity for almost two years.  Sad.  It's hard to pick one word to capture the collapse.    

  
It's not the way it was
and it may look strange.
We've taken back control
of our precious land,
and we've repossessed our souls
from the devil's hand.
The winds of change
are blowing stronger,
the tables turned.

                                                          Winds of Change, Lee Greenwood

President Obama told the Nobel Committee in Oslo: "Make no mistake - evil does exist in the world."

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The e-mail address is christ@americancross.org if you have general questions to ask. 

American Cross Foundation
Jacob O. Berry, President
P.O. Box 9492
Amarillo, Texas 79105

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