[Darris McNeely] We've recently been marking 40th anniversaries here on BT Daily. I did a Daily a few days ago about the 40th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. There's another anniversary, the 40th anniversary of the takeover in Iran of the American embassy, the United States embassy by students there. On November 4th, 1979, students stormed the embassy taking captive marines and all the personnel holding them for more than a year. In fact, they were not released until January 20th, 1981, when President Ronald Reagan was sworn into office that day. It was quite a diplomatic problem for the United States resulting in a military disaster, a failed rescue attempt of those hostages and a black eye upon America, and perhaps most importantly, just 40 years of bad relationships between Iran and the United States. Out of that time, they began to refer to America as the Great Satan. And we have had nothing but conflict and animosity between America and Iran since then. We stood their desire to secure nuclear weapons and there has just been a constant amount of turmoil and still a lack of diplomatic relations there and no peace. And Iran has continued its march of influence in the Middle East and today actually stands on the verge of an all-out war with the state of Israel which no doubt will drag the United States and should that happen into a full-scale conflagration.

There's a proverb that I thought about in regard to this in terms of just the relations between nations, relations between people, but it's an object lesson for us to think about an end to realize that has developed here. It's in Proverbs 18:19. It says, "A brother offended is harder to win than a strong city." Now some would say, well, Iran may not be our brother but at one time we did have very good relationships with the people and the government of Iran but that's another part of the story. There's been an offense. Now the remainder of this proverb says, "and contentions are like the bars of a castle." Contentions are like the bars of a castle between offended parties.

And that pretty well I think sums up what has happened in the relationship between the United States and Iran in these 40 plus years now that in a sense, the signified by this takeover of what is supposed to be sovereign American soil in the nation of Iran, the embassy at that time taking people hostage.

It's a lesson for us all, probably at the personal level and certainly showing the difficulty that happens at the international level when relationships break down between people and the problems that arise and the evil that is done and the wars that are fought and the suffering that takes place. Better to seek to not do that and to seek better relationships, whether we could do that all the way across the board in our relationships at the international level and certainly at the personal level, a lesson for us to consider 40 years after the takeover of the U.S. embassy.

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