I write at my new desk, a welcoming gift from my nephew and his wife. Kyle has promised to mount the Long Knife above the fireplace. Angelina, ever sensitive to the Lord's timing, urges me to share with Kyle the story of this sword and the prophecy spoken thirty-five years prior to my birth.
     Since my confrontation with the spirit Rasah on the night Lincoln was assassinated, the bitter spring within my own life has not seemed so bitter. For the Scriptures teach, "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the Devil and he will flee from you."
     However, the cry of the blood is just as loud as it was at Gettysburg thirty years ago, for The War Between the States did not change the hearts of men nor did it hallow the ground. The dark root has never been purged from the heart of our nation and now, the Devil's servants sow a garden of madness, seeding a future far more tyrannical than that which divided our house and I fear, with consequences more dire.
     For the time, Rasah, the spirit of murder, is silent. When he speaks again, I fear he will be speak as legion. He will never stop shedding blood, until men resist him and give him no place in their hearts.
     Lord, when my time here on earth has passed, I hope to be buried in Manassas Battlefield, near the place of my birth, along the banks of the Bull Run near Sudley Church. I have asked that these old bones be placed in the soil that soaked up the blood of so many men, North and South. I wish to sleep in that soil where brother slew brother as Cain slew Abel, where blood was poured out that could not redeem, where sacrifices were made that could not cleanse.
     This I shall do as a memorial to all MacDonalds who follow, so they shall never forget the lessons that You, Lord, taught me. For as my faithful brother John Kline wrote, "The earth can cover the body, but it cannot cover hope."
     Amen.