The
Prophet Samuel and President Eisenhower
Excerpts from 1 Samuel 8 intertwined
with excerpts from President Eisenhower’s speech, “A Chance for Peace, April 16, 1953”
http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/ike_chance_for_peace.html
Reader
1: “These
will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons
and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his
chariots.
Reader 2: Every gun that is made, every warship
launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those
who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
Reader
1:
And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of
fifties, and some to plough his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his
implements of war and the equipment of his chariots.
Reader 2: This world in arms is not spending money
alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists,
the hopes of its children.
Reader
1:
He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take
the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his
courtiers.
Reader
2:
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than
30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000
population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of
concrete pavement.
Reader
1:
He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his
officers and his courtiers.
Reader 2: We pay for a single fighter plane with
a half million bushels of wheat.
Reader
1:
He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and
donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and
you shall be his slaves.
Reader 2: This is not a way of life at all, in
any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from
a cross of iron.
Reader
1:
And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for
yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”
