People Who Put Their Trust In Human Power Delude Themselves (Death In Abeyance Alert)

Jewish World Review ^ | 12/19/2007 | Paul Johnson

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One thing history teaches is the transience and futility of power, and the ultimate impotence of those who exercise it. That is the lesson of the current King Tut exhibition. No group of sovereigns ever enjoyed the illusion of power more than the pharaohs of the New Kingdom, especially those of the 18th and 19th dynasties. Rameses II spent much of his 66 years on the throne having immense images of himself displayed everywhere from Luxor to Abu Simbel, and many remain, chipped and crumbling. Nothing else. The point is admirably made in Shelley's sonnet about him, 'Ozymandias'. I once wished to recite it on a TV books programme. The celebrity in charge, a Rameses of his day, tried to stop me. But the show was live, and I have a firm voice, so I had my way. Now he, like the pharaohs, is toppled from his studio throne, and I have forgotten his name.

Sometimes, when I wake in the middle of the night, I hear the endless tramp, tramp, tramp of humanity crossing the arches of the years, each rank enjoying the spotlight of prominence, then passing into oblivion. How pathetically incapable we are of keeping our brief candle alight one second beyond its term! How fragile is the grip on authority even the most ruthlessly successful contrive to assert, after so much striving! I often think of Bonaparte, in the summer of 1812, at the head of a million men, kings and princes at his feet, poised to conquer Russia; then the miserable fugitive, three years later, climbing stiffly up the side of HMS Bellerophon, and writing his futile letter to the Prince Regent, soliciting in vain an honourable asylum.

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A wonderfully reflective essay by the celebrated English historian Paul Johnson on human vanity and life and the ever present companion that dogs us faithfully to our last days, Death. No man escapes him. There is something about our mortal condition that reminds our time will come as it did for those who came before us. The only thing that endures forever is God and His eternal truth.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

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Vanity, Vanity, all is Vanity and striving after the wind - said King Solomon. When folks come before the Great White Throne of judgment, those who have not put their faith upon the Savior, their mouths will be stopped up seeing that all they did was vanity.

For those who have put their faith upon the Lord Jesus Christ, their atonement, will be full of joy as the fulfillment of all their longings will stand before them. The works He has done through them will attend them and they will rejoice.

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King Solomon put it this way:

“It is better to go to a house of mourning
than to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of every
man;
the living should take this to heart.”-Ecclesiastes 7:2

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OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

~Percy B. Shelley

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The links are down. Too bad, as I'd like to read this.

I've always thought "what is notoriety and fame after you are dead?" You're not around to enjoy them. I look at the old grave yards around Garland, TX. They are filled with what were once "indispensable" men and women. Now they are lonely markers surrounded by overgrown grass.

[RipSawyer]

It might be a good time to reflect on Saddam Hussein, a man who, only a few years ago had only to nod his head to send any of the citizens of Iraq to a hideous death and a short time later was dropped from a gallows.