Lightfoot's "Too Many Clues" and Reagan

[EarlyActs]

In 1976, poet/composer G Lightfoot wrote "Too Many Clues In This Room". The dread of nuclear war can be felt; the angst of war.

The space shuttle ends where the subway begins
There's a tear on the face of the moon
From dusk until dawn they have searched all day long
But there's too many clues in this room
At best it is said we've been locked deep inside
Of an old sea man's chest full of charts
Where maps are contained and what's left of his brains
When his crew threw his balls to the sharks

All around the looking glass
Dancing to a tune
Sweeping out the house with a fine tooth comb
Which history's shown
Leads to ruin

The last half of the verse may summarize what the average person of the time thought of the Bible and perhaps of eschatology. It was the time of the cold war heating up, and Reagan's doctrine of peace through strength was not yet understood.

The confusion of 'old maps' may simply refer to the attempts by many pop eschatology writers (Lindsey, Kirban) to figure out all upcoming events, but through amnesia, few seem to remember what was predicted when actual events took place.
What actually happened, in spite of Lightfoot's skepticism and its echo in P Collins, is depicted for us recently in REAGAN the movie. It was that the 2 superpowers needed to trust each other but verify the reduction of offensive weapons. And they did. But it was also time for the east-west wall to come down, and Reagan dared Gorbachev to do so.

Given his Christian basis for acting for his neighbor, Reagan presented a down-to-earth answer to the doubts of a generation and the wild predictions of so-called prophecy experts.

 

[Josheb]

In 1976, poet/composer G Lightfoot wrote "Too Many Clues In This Room". The dread of nuclear war can be felt; the angst of war.

The space shuttle ends where the subway begins
There's a tear on the face of the moon
From dusk until dawn they have searched all day long
But there's too many clues in this room
At best it is said we've been locked deep inside
Of an old sea man's chest full of charts
Where maps are contained and what's left of his brains
When his crew threw his balls to the sharks

All around the looking glass
Dancing to a tune
Sweeping out the house with a fine tooth comb
Which history's shown
Leads to ruin

The last half of the verse may summarize what the average person of the time thought of the Bible and perhaps of eschatology. It was the time of the cold war heating up, and Reagan's doctrine of peace through strength was not yet understood.

The confusion of 'old maps' may simply refer to the attempts by many pop eschatology writers (Lindsey, Kirban) to figure out all upcoming events, but through amnesia, few seem to remember what was predicted when actual events took place.
What actually happened, in spite of Lightfoot's skepticism and its echo in P Collins, is depicted for us recently in REAGAN the movie. It was that the 2 superpowers needed to trust each other but verify the reduction of offensive weapons. And they did. But it was also time for the east-west wall to come down, and Reagan dared Gorbachev to do so.

Given his Christian basis for acting for his neighbor, Reagan presented a down-to-earth answer to the doubts of a generation and the wild predictions of so-called prophecy experts.

If I may....

Three important conditions also inform Gordon Lightfoot's song. The first is his growing up as a child with the threat of nuclear war pervasively in mind, the second is the specter of Viet Nam and the ongoing battle between western democracy and Soviet and Chinese Communism, and the third is the prevalence of Dispensational Premillennialism.

Lightfoot was Canadian so his experience may have been somewhat different than that in America or Europe, but Canada built bomb shelters and had air raid drills. I remember drills in school where we had to "shelter" or "hide" under our desks or line up against the wall in the hallway (neither of which would have prevented death by bomb), and Lightfoot was 20 years older than me. He was a young child during WWII and his youth was spent during the early days of the Cold War, the Korean Conflict, and the escalation of nuclear weapon proliferation. Lightfoot came to California in the ''50s but returned in 1960 and shortly thereafter Canada conducted nationwide exercises, like Tocsin B, in which a mock bombing was conducted. A year after that the Cuban missile crisis happened. Ia Drang, the first US battle in Viet Nam was in '65. During all of this Billy Graham was the leading Protestant figure in Christianity and the US. He was Dispensationalist. As the sixties and seventies passed the rise of apocalypse occurred with people like Hal Lindsay and Chuck Smith writing books assuring everyone Satan was alive and well and living on earth and Jesus was coming any day now to take away all the Christians. Graham and Lindsay were representative, not Bruce, Ladd, Hoekema, Kung, etc.

Given his Christian basis for acting for his neighbor, Reagan presented a down-to-earth answer to the doubts of a generation and the wild predictions of so-called prophecy experts.

And that is particularly curious because Reagan had been raised in a Dispensationalist environment. His father was RCC but his mother raised Ronald in the Campbellite Disciples of Christ. Both Thomas and Alexander Campbel were Presbyterian (doctrinally Reformed) but both also anti-creedal. They were also apocalyptic. Although the latter changed with the dawn of the 20the century and America succeeding in WWI and WWII, there was a resurgence of apocalyptic thinking in Christianity in the '70s.

Though, apparently, not with Reagan.