And in the course of that service performed deeds of heroism so compelling that Desmond Doss was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Not bad for a pacifist who refused to carry a weapon out of a profound respect for the word of God and human life.

Desmond T. Doss, Sr., the only conscientious objector to win the Congressional Medal of Honor during World War II, has died. He was 87 years old.

Mr. Doss never liked being called a conscientious objector. He preferred the term conscientious cooperator. Raised a Seventh-day Adventist, Mr. Doss did not believe in using a gun or killing because of the sixth commandment which states, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13). Doss was a patriot, however, and believed in serving his country.

During World War II, instead of accepting a deferment, Mr. Doss voluntarily joined the Army as a conscientious objector. Assigned to the 307th Infantry Division as a company medic he was harassed and ridiculed for his beliefs, yet he served with distinction and ultimately received the Congressional Medal of Honor on Oct. 12, 1945 for his fearless acts of bravery.

According to his Medal of Honor citation, time after time, Mr. DossÂ’ fellow soldiers witnessed how unafraid he was for his own safety. He was always willing to go after a wounded fellow, no matter how great the danger. On one occasion in Okinawa, he refused to take cover from enemy fire as he rescued approximately 75 wounded soldiers, carrying them one-by-one and lowering them over the edge of the 400-foot Maeda Escarpment. He did not stop until he had brought everyone to safety nearly 12 hours later.

When Mr. Doss received the Medal of Honor from President Truman, the President told him, “I’m proud of you, you really deserve this. I consider this a greater honor than being President.”

Mr. Doss’ exemplary devotion to God and his country has received nationwide attention. On July 4, 2004, a statue of Mr. Doss was placed in the National Museum of Patriotism in Atlanta, along with statues of Dr. Martin Luther King, President Jimmy Carter, and retired Marine Corps General Gray Davis, also a Medal of Honor recipient. Also in 2004, a feature-length documentary called “The Conscientious Objector,” telling Doss’ story of faith, heroism, and bravery was released. A feature movie describing Doss’ story is also being planned.

Mr. Doss died Thursday morning in Piedmont, Ala. He is survived by his wife, Frances; his son, Desmond T. Doss, Jr., and his brother, Harold Doss.

Visitation will be held from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, March 31, at Heritage Funeral Home, located at 3239 Battlefield Parkway, Fort Oglethorpe.

A memorial service will be held Saturday, April 1, at 3 p.m. at the Collegedale Seventh-day Adventist Church located at 4829 College Drive East in Collegedale.

Burial will take place on Monday, April 3, at 11 a.m. at the Chattanooga National Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, the Doss family requests that donations be sent to the Desmond Doss Museum Fund at the Georgia-Cumberland Conference office (P.O. Box 12000 Calhoun, Ga., 30703).

This man, ladies and gentlemen, was a true hero. We look at today's crop of "peace activists" and find a motley crew of ne'er-do-wells and whiners who have little respect for this country or its soldiers. Contrast the actions of Desmond Doss with the refusal of the recently rescued Christian Peacemaker team hostages to offer so much as a word of gratitude for the actions of military personnel who rescued them from terrorists who kidnapped them and murdered one of their number.

I have no doubt that Mr. Doss is this day in Paradise, in the company of the One True God.

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UPDATE: The Washington Post has this obituary, which is very good. It notes that Doss was not the only conscientious objector to receive thh Congressional Medal of Honor, merely the first. The other, Cpl. Thomas W. Bennett, a medical aidman who died while serving during the Vietnam War, also received the nation's highest military honor.

I urge you to click below to read the extended entry, where I have reproduced the full text of the citation that accompanied his Medal. You will be awe-struck by the degree of bravery exhibited by this man over the course of several days. Such Christ-like devotion to his fellow man in the face of his own possible death -- including while seriously wounded himself -- brought tears to my eyes. more...

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This just in from Crete, 500 BC.

A 2,500-year-old sarcophagus with vivid color illustrations from Homer's epics has been discovered in western Cyprus, archaeologists said Monday.

Construction workers found the limestone sarcophagus last week in a tomb near the village of Kouklia, in the coastal Paphos area. The tomb, which probably belonged to an ancient warrior, had been looted during antiquity.

"The style of the decoration is unique, not so much from an artistic point of view, but for the subject and the colors used," said Pavlos Flourentzos, director of the island's antiquities department.

Only two similar sarcophagi have ever been discovered in Cyprus before. One is housed in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the other in the British Museum in London, but their colors are more faded, Flourentzos said.

Flourentzos said the coffin -- painted in red, black and blue on a white background -- dated to 500 B.C., when Greek cultural influence was gaining a firm hold on the eastern Mediterranean island. Pottery discovered in the tomb is expected to provide a more precise date.

Experts believe the ornate decoration features the hero Ulysses in scenes from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey -- both hugely popular throughout the Greek world.
In one large painting, Ulysses and his comrades escape from the blind Cyclops Polyphemos' cave, hidden under a flock of sheep. Another depicts a battle between Greeks and Trojans from the Iliad.

Go look at the picture.

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This just in from Crete, 500 BC.

A 2,500-year-old sarcophagus with vivid color illustrations from Homer's epics has been discovered in western Cyprus, archaeologists said Monday.

Construction workers found the limestone sarcophagus last week in a tomb near the village of Kouklia, in the coastal Paphos area. The tomb, which probably belonged to an ancient warrior, had been looted during antiquity.

"The style of the decoration is unique, not so much from an artistic point of view, but for the subject and the colors used," said Pavlos Flourentzos, director of the island's antiquities department.

Only two similar sarcophagi have ever been discovered in Cyprus before. One is housed in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the other in the British Museum in London, but their colors are more faded, Flourentzos said.

Flourentzos said the coffin -- painted in red, black and blue on a white background -- dated to 500 B.C., when Greek cultural influence was gaining a firm hold on the eastern Mediterranean island. Pottery discovered in the tomb is expected to provide a more precise date.

Experts believe the ornate decoration features the hero Ulysses in scenes from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey -- both hugely popular throughout the Greek world.
In one large painting, Ulysses and his comrades escape from the blind Cyclops Polyphemos' cave, hidden under a flock of sheep. Another depicts a battle between Greeks and Trojans from the Iliad.

Go look at the picture.

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I’m not a big fan of reparations, generations-late apologies, and ethnic guilt – but I do believe that historical wrongs need to be brought to light and remembered lest we repeat them. Thus I am very happy to hear about this program.

OYSTER BAY, N.Y. — A group of mostly white seventh and eighth graders sleepily sauntered into their school library on a recent morning, soon to get a surprise awakening about a part of their town's history they never knew existed.

"Did anybody in this room know there were 60 enslaved Africans, people, human beings, buried a mile from here?" Alan Singer, a professor at Hofstra University, asked them. "Those people have been erased from history. It is as if they never existed."

Singer and Mary Carter, a retired middle school social studies teacher, were in Oyster Bay to speak to the kids — part of a quest to develop a public school curriculum guide focusing on slavery's impact in the northern U.S., specifically New York.

Their efforts have been buoyed by state legislation enacted last year creating the Amistad Commission to examine whether the slave trade is being adequately taught in New York schools.

The commission, one of a number formed around the country in recent years, is named for the slave ship Amistad, which was commandeered by slaves who eventually won their freedom in the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Many people are surprised when you talk about slavery's existence in New York," Carter said. "They're surprised because it's taught as something that happened in the South."

Yeah, that is right – slavery was a Northern phenomenon as well as a Southern one. Let’s remember that in our discussions of race, culture, and region.

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That’s “Cana of Galilee” to those of us of the Christian faith – though this discovery dates to centuries before the time of Christ.

In a rare find, remnants of an ancient Israelite city that dates back three thousand years have been uncovered during excavations in the Israeli Arab village of Kfar Kana in the Lower Galilee, Israel's Antiquities Authority announced Monday.

The area, located north of Nazareth, is revered by Christians as the site where Jesus is said to have performed his first miracle.

The settlement being unearthed existed at the time of the United Kingdom of King Solomon and the Kingdom of Israel following the split between Israel and Judah, in the 10-9th centuries BCE.

A section of the ancient city wall and remains of buildings were exposed during recent excavations at the site, which began three months ago, the director of the excavation at the site, Yardenna Alexander said.

She added that evidence was found there indicating the place was destroyed during the 9th century BCE, probably by an enemy forces.

In addition to the wall, an assortment of pottery vessels, large quantities of animal bones, a scarab depicting a man surrounded by two crocodiles and a ceramic seal bearing the image of a lion were also discovered at the site.

Following the destruction the ancient Israelite city, the site was abandoned until its ruins were re-inhabited by Jewish settlers in the Early Roman period in the 1st century CE, Israel's top archaeological body said.

The identity of these residents as Galilean Jews is already known from previous excavations that were carried out at the site, and from historic information that identifies the settlement as "Kana of the Galilee" which is known from the New Testament as the site where Jesus performed his first miracle by turning water into wine at a Jewish wedding.

In the previous excavations at the site a few years ago, which identified the ancient Galilee settlement as Kana of the Galilee, archeologists discovered remnants of buildings, grinding stones, cooking ovens stone vessels and several Jewish ritual purification baths or mikvahs, one nearly 7 feet high with an arched roof.

Some of the ancient walls that were destroyed in the 9th century BCE were reused in the newer construction nearly one thousand years later in the 1st century CE and new floors were laid down.

The Jewish settlers built igloo-shaped pits on the ruins of the previous settlement, with the bedrock serving as the floor of the pit. A rock-hewn pit was discovered in one of the tunnels and in it were 11 complete storage jars characteristic of the second half of the 1st century CE.

Among the other antiquities discovered at the site include underground pits linked by short tunnels that were apparently built and hewn prior to the Great Revolt by the Jews against the Romans in 66 CE.

The pits are connected to each other by short tunnels which apparently were used as underground hiding places ahead of the revolt, Alexander noted.

Every day we learn more and more about the lives of the people whose day-to-day lives were inextricably tied to the historical events of Scripture.

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More neat Egyptian discoveries!

An Egyptian-German archaeological team has discovered 17 statues of Sekhmet, an ancient Egyptian goddess with the head of a lioness and the body of a woman.

The statues, estimated to be about 3,000 years old, were found during restoration work on the temple of Amenhotep III, in the southern city of Luxor, Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said in a statement Sunday.

Last week, the team discovered six similar black granite statues depicting Sekhmet seated on a throne and holding the "key of life" in her left hand. Two of those statues were broken, with only the lower parts found.

The condition of the 17 statues was not revealed, though the council's chief, Zahi Hawass, said in the statement that each figure will be removed from the site for maintenance. Hosni did not say when the figures were found.

Hawass said Amenhotep III's different names and titles were delicately engraved on both sides of the statues' thrones, reflecting the advanced stage of arts during the 18th dynasty rule.

Sekhmet was considered the goddess of war and recovery, which could explain why so many similar statues were found on the same site, according to Mansour Breik, the official supervising the Luxor antiquities.

These statues are from the reign immediately prior to that of Akenaten (AKA Amenhotep IV), and so were likely carved within 50 years of the reign of King Tut.

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