An Examination of Biblical Precepts Involved in Issues at Hand |
1 Corinthians 10:14 Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry. 15 ¶ I speak as to wise men; judge ye what I say. 16 The cup of blessing [or thanksgiving, "eucharist" - Greek for thanksgiving] which we bless, is it not the communion [or union with Christ through his shed blood] of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? 17 For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. 18 Behold Israel after the flesh: are not they which eat of the sacrifices partakers of the altar? 19 What say I then? that the idol is any thing, or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is any thing? 20 But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. 21 Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of devils.
I have found that v. 16 is the favored communion verse used by the Paedo-baptists who give communion to infants, for it has no requirement for self-examination nor remembrance of Christ's work on the cross. But the following is not a tome about such practices.
I am sure many have either heard this passage taught or even have taught it themselves. Nevertheless, there is a commonly overlooked implication contained herein. Though the paragraph break is given at v. 15, the passage is actually vv. 14-22. Paul is dealing with a problem at Corinth; that is, the new Christians were still taking part in the pagan festival-meals.
He will tell them that though it is permissible to eat such sacrificial food based upon the conditions of vv. 23-33, they should abstain for the sake of their weaker brethren. He also gives another reason for abstaining – it might lead into idolatry.
When we walk on the edge of what is allowable, it is so easy to be drawn into the sinful. The problem was that the Corinthians, convinced that an idol was nothing and the sacrificial food was permissible, were joining in the sacrificial feasts within the area of the pagan temples. The danger was even greater when the religious feasts were held in a private home in honor of their pagan gods. The feasts lost their religious character, permitting the Christians to attend without a guilty conscience. (In today's terms, they were probably justifying their participation with exercising their "Christian Liberty.")
Paul explains to the Corinthian Christians that though a pagan god is no god at all, participating in a pagan feast was an act of idolatry.
Paul uses a comparison between the Lord's Supper and a pagan feast for his argument. Partaking of the Lord's Supper is an act of communion with Christ. He alone is the object of Christian worship, and the Lord's table represents a common unity with all who worship him. Its very nature brings all who partake of the bread and wine into fellowship with Christ, and with one another. Vv. 14-17.
V. 18, Paul reminds them of Jewish worship. The act of eating the sacrifice made them partakers of the altar. The conclusion is clear, and could not be denied: The Christians realized the pagan gods were not gods, so assumed it was OK to eat things sacrificed to those gods. Paul tells them that when they participated in the pagan idol-feasts, they were worshiping the pagan idol just as sure as if they were worshiping Christ through taking his communion. Paul's argument was that as partaking the Lord's Supper is an act of Christian worship, partaking of an idol-feast must be an act of pagan worship.
V. 20. The heathens worshiped demons; thus, they sacrificed to demons. So when the Christians would partake of the sacrificial food under circumstances that gave a religious significance to the act, they were brought into communion with demons, whether that act was inside or outside of the pagan temple.
V. 21. Paul is dogmatic—the two are incompatible. One cannot be in communion with Christ, and in communion with demons, no matter how innocent the motives of joining in the pagan festival-meal. Going to the Lord's table renounces demons. Participating in the pagan activity renounces Christ.
We will pick up Paul's instruction with v. 14, Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry.
Wherefore refers back to vv. 1-13. "Because such severe judgment came upon Israel because of their idolatry, be warned. You are in serious danger of being involved in the same sin by walking so close to the line."
Flee from idiolatry... Get away from it by avoiding questionable activities; that is, everything that lies on the border of what is permissible to Christians. Also, avoid the occasion and the temptations of sin by keeping safe distance from those things that tend to ensnare the soul.
V. 15, the question being addressed here is whether a certain action comes within the scriptural definition of idolatry. Paul tells them they are wise, and should be able to put 2 & 2 together, and see that participating in the pagan festivals is idolatry. However, he is still going to present his argument.
V. 16. Paul assumes that they realize that partaking of the table of the Lord brings them into communion with Christ.
If this is so, then partaking of the table of demons brings them into communion with demons, even though the gods are not gods.
Paul will now move on to prove that Christians, by partaking of the Lord's Supper, are solemnly set apart to the service of the Lord Jesus; that they acknowledge him as their Lord, and dedicate themselves to him; and that they cannot be devoted to idols and to the Lord Jesus at the same time. Accordingly, they must not participate in the feasts or celebrations that honour their false gods, v. 21. (Hodge on 1 Corinthians. Online Bible.)
Cup of blessing, evidently refers to the wine used in the celebration of the Lord's Supper. It is called "the cup of blessing" the cup is blessed, as the Lord blessed the cup in Matthew 26:27.
Which we bless. In Luke 9:16, "the Lord took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed THEM." Neither the bread nor wine have undergone any transformation or physical change. By prayer, it simply has been solemnly set apart to the service of religion, and by prayer and praise designated to be used for the purpose of commemorating the Saviour's love as seen in his death.
Is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?
1. Is it not the emblem by which the blood of Christ is exhibited, and the means by which our union through that blood is exhibited?
2. Is it not the means by which we express our attachment to him as Christians; showing our union to him and to each other; and showing that we partake in common of the benefits of his blood?
3. In addition, is it not a call for the redeemed to remember the price for their redemption? (Luke 22:19, 1 Corinthians 11:24, 25.)
Paul tells them that by partaking of this cup, they show that they were united to Christ and to each other; and that they should regard themselves as set apart to him. The cup and the bread, show our unity with one another and with Christ when we partake together.
The common bread we share shows the common communion we have one with another in Christ. We share alike in the responsibilities and benefit of the broken body of the Redeemer. By sharing together in the Lord's table, we recognize that we have an equal right in Christ. We all share the same benefits as well as the same obligations in Christ.
Certainly, pastors are expected to be faithful, but in partaking of the Lord's table, we recognize that God expects all his people to be faithful to their profession. The pastor's standard is no higher than the people's, though his responsibility is greater. God is no respecter of persons. And we will all answer for our faithfulness in the areas God has given us. 1 Corinthians 4:2.
Paul's application is that in like manner, if Christians should partake with idolaters in the feasts offered in honour of idols, they are regarded by God and the world as partaking or uniting with them in the services of idols. Therefore such participation was improper.
Today, this would apply to pagan feasts such as Mardi Gras.
One of our men was given a pair of tickets to a NFL Football game. Against his better judgment, he and his wife attended. He said he was very uncomfortable, for the entire event was clearly a religious event–the people were worshiping the god of sports. I have found that an excuse for not home educating one's children is that the young people will not be able to worship the god of sports. (see "The Pain Game," in this issue.)
I knew a young couple who had home educated their 5 children. But when the son got old enough to play football, he convinced his parents that he needed to go to the public high school so he could be "salt and light" there. Of course, the principle of the school welcomed him with open arms, telling him they needed Christians there. When I saw his high school picture some time ago, he had his football jersey on at the school dance. So much for being "salt and light."
Interesting thought: Matthew 5:13-16 speaks of salt and light. However, Christ immediately follows that statement with vv. 17-20, saying that his law will not pass away. Those who use vv. 13-16 to justify sending their children to the anti-Christ system for training in anti-Christian ways have done away with the law, Deuteronomy 6. Christ is firmer yet: Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven, v. 19. Thus, parents who put their children in the anti-Christ school system, as well as the teachers in that pagan system shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. They are idolaters as they sacrifice their children to the state.
Being from Indiana, I can confirm what the man said. Basketball is a religion there. The only topic people will talk about is the "Indiana vs. Purdue" basketball game season.
(As every Bible believing pastor knows, people will find a Bible passage to justify whatever they want to do, or to justify not doing what they do not want to do. Note Matthew 5:15, the city is set on an hill—it is separate from other cities, as Christians are to be separate from the pagans in the government school system. I heard a speaker point out that the only thing 90% of Christians agree on is turning their children over to the anti-Christ for training, and without one Scripture to support their decision. However, on any other issue, e.g., what version of Scripture or what denomination, they will fight one another to the "death.")
As many have said – If Christians were as committed to Christ as they are to "sports," the world would be won for Christ.
Clearly, participating in a sports event, more often than not, is worshiping the gods of the pagans.
1 Corinthians 10:17. He is not saying that there are numerous Christians. He is saying that all Christians are united into one body, and considered one nation or society. This unity is signified by taking of the communion bread. We are united as one family, and should treat one another as such.
The reference here is to the fact that a loaf is made up of many separate grains of wheat, or portions of flour united in one. That as that one loaf is broken and taken by all, the "all" are one in Christ.
We are all one society; united as one, and united for the same cause. Our partaking of the same bread is an emblem of the fact that we are one. In almost all nations the act of eating together has been regarded as a symbol of unity or friendship.
Certainly, it was lawful to eat the foods offered to those idols, but he tells them that eating those foods expose them to public perception that they are part of that pagan society. When Christians act and look like pagans, the world has the right to assume those Christians are pagans.
V. 18. Paul uses the Old Testament law to explain what he is talking of — the ordinances required of Old Testament Israel. He reminds them that those who partook of the same sacrifices were regarded as being one people, and as worshiping Israel's one God. So, if the Corinthians take part in the pagan events, in this case, their idol-feast, they would be regarded by both the pagans and God as idolaters, fellow-worshipers of idols.
In the Old Testament, a portion of the sacrifices offered to God was eaten by the one who made the offering, and a portion was eaten by the priests. Some portions of the animal, such as the fat, were burnt; and the remainder, unless it was a whole burnt-offering, was then the property of the priests who had officiated, or it was the property of the persons who had brought it The right shoulder and the breast was the part which was assigned to the priests; the remainder belonged to the one offering the sacrifice.
All who partook of the offering showed that they worshiped the same God. The law regarded them as united in their worship. He tells them that in like manner, if you partake of the Lord's table, you are united with him and with other believers.
On the other hand, if you partake of sacrifices offered to idols, and join with their worshipers in their temples, you will be justly regarded as united with them in their worship. You will be partakers with them in their abominations.
V. 19. Paul had told them back in 1 Corinthians 8:4 that an idol was nothing in the world, nor did the sacrifice to those idols have any value. Now it sounds as though Paul is saying that an idol is something, and the offerings to those idols have merit.
Now he asks, "Am I now saying that the idol is something, and the meat offered to those idols is different from other meat?"
Paul tells them, "No! You know that is not what I am saying. The idol itself is only a block of wood or stone, and is nothing, yet the offerings to those idols are really made to devils. As a Christian, you have no business being engaged in such a service." Vv. 20, 21.
V. 20. "No, I do not say that the idols are something. However, there are certainly reasons why you should not partake of those sacrifices, and one of those reasons is because they have really been offered to devils."
And not to God... The Gentiles, or the heathens, thought they were sacrificing to God, but their good intentions did not change the fact that they were sacrificing to devils.
One of the things that stood out to me while I was on deployment with Navy Mobile Construction Battalion (MCB) 7 in Spain—whenever we would go off base, we would commonly see statues of a woman they called Mary. In front of these statues would be baskets of fruit and flowers. There could be no doubt that these were offerings to this pagan deity that had been named Mary. Though the Romans are sincere, and feel they are sacrificing to God through the idol Mary, Paul is clear here. They are sacrificing to devils.
If you watch closely, it is not uncommon to see such idols in back yards in the States, and those idols may have some kind of fresh sacrifice in front of them, e.g., flowers.
Romanism has dressed up the open idolatry that is so ingrained in the fallen nature, and has given it respectability, but it is still as much the worship of devils as Hinduism, Buddhism, and any other religion you can name that worships something other than Christ.
Paul tells them that he would not that they should have fellowship nor communion with devils. In the situation Paul is addressing, joining with the worshipers as they ate the sacrificial meat meant fellowship with devils.
Which raises a question: Who do people worship in religious services that do not present the God of Scripture through our Lord Jesus Christ. If the only way one can worship God is through the finished work of Christ, and they are not coming to the Father through the Son, then who or what are they worshiping? By "proper way," one must include through his finished work on the cross with the true plan of salvation. Where does this passage leave true Christians who join in the pagan worship of a god who is not approached through the sacrifice of Christ? Paul called him "another Jesus" in 2 Corinthians 11:4.
John 12:44 Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me.
Those who fail to worship Christ as commanded by Scripture, have denied the Father. They are idolaters who worship a god after their own heart's imagination.
Galatians 1:4, Paul gives the two reasons why Christ gave himself: First, for our sins - He paid our sin debt in our place. Second, to deliver us from this present evil world. He gave Himself that we might have the power not to walk after the lusts of the flesh as listed in Galatians chapter five. (See also, 1 Pet. 1:17-19, 2:24.)
Paul points out that neither Abraham nor any other person can be saved by anything except the grace of God through faith. Paul points out that though the false teachers appeared as very sincere and zealous ministers of Christ, they were messengers of Satan because they perverted the gospel of Christ.
2 Corinthians 11:13 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. 14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. 15 Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.
No matter how sincere a preacher is, how nice a preacher sounds, and how reasonable his words, if he corrupts the gospel, Paul tells us that he, or she, is a messenger of Satan. There are multitudes of people sitting under Satan's messengers today, believing they are hearing form God. But if the gospel is corrupted, they are hearing from Satan. Why would we think that the perverters of the gospel of our day are any less sincere and convinced they are right than the Judaizers of Paul's day, against whom he wrote Galatians?
Any supposed gospel message that does not clearly present faith alone in Christ alone is not the Jesus Christ as prophesied in the Old Testament. The perverted Jesus that is being presented today is another Jesus and the false gospel, another gospel. 2 Corinthians 11:14. Paul's was amazed that the people among whom he had worked so hard departed so quickly from the truth of the gospel. He rebuked them 5 times: 1:6, 3:1, 4:10, 11, 4:20, 5:7.
The gospel has been corrupted so badly today that it seems people can only hear those messages of Satan, even though they are presented with the truth. (It is like proof reading one's own work. We read what we meant rather than what we wrote on the page, so someone else must proof our work. The unsaved have heard from various people that they must "pray this prayer [Jesus in your heart]," "ask God to save you," "turn your life over to the Lord," &c., so many times that one of these Satanic messages will be what they hear when someone does present the truth of faith alone in the work of Christ on the cross. It is faith in Christ's work on the cross, not a prayer that saves the sinner. Colossians 1:20, &c.)
Preachers who offer no gospel or offer a corrupted gospel are not God's messengers, no matter how pleasing the message might be, nor how much of a following they might have.
1 Corinthians 15:3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
Anything other than that message of trusting in the substitutionary death of Christ, is a false gospel. First, The sinner must understand he is a sinner, and that the wages of sin is death. Second, He must then understand that Christ died for his sins according to the Old Testament, particularly Isaiah 53. Third, He must then, under the drawing of the Spirit of God, place his trust and faith in the payment of Christ for our sins. (Ephesians 1:7, 12, 3:12, Colossians 1:14.)
However, we also know that our sovereign God can and does use even corrupters of his word for his own glory. (Thank the Lord that he uses sinful men to do his work, or I would be "out in the cold.")
Galatians deals with the problem that as soon as the people got out from under Paul's influence, they followed another gospel. No matter how sincere or zealous the preachers were, if the message did not line up with the gospel as recorded in the Old Testament, justification by grace through faith in Christ, Paul prayed for a curse to be upon them, 1:7, 8. (See also, 1 Cor. 16:22, Jos. 7:15 - accursed thing.)
Just as Christ prayed for those yet to come, John 18:20, Paul prayed the continuing curse of God upon those who corrupt the gospel. There is certainly a lot of preaching today that Paul prayed a curse upon in vv. 7, 8. My experience has been that many times those offering the false gospel are lost themselves.
Any "formula" that does not emphasize the truth found in Ephesians 1:11-15 is not the gospel truth. Therefore, it must be the message of Satan, and the worship of devils. (Please see my small booklet, "The Other jesus, the Gospel Perverted." Order a post paid copy from us, or download it at http://www.biblicalexaminer.org/salvation.shtml)
"The gospel is that Jesus Christ suffered in the place of all sinners who trust Him as their Saviour; that He endured what they ought to have endured and made atonement to God for all the sins that they would ever commit; and if you thus trust Him, you are saved. The simple act of relying upon Jesus as your Substitute and Saviour puts away your guilt and sin forever." He continues, "...Pride must come down, self- righteousness must die, and the sinner must glorify the grace of God by knowing that he has no merit of his own, or he cannot be saved. ...Say, `Lord, I deserve to die; I deserve to perish; I deserve to be destroyed. I will have no cavils with Thee about my sentence, for how can a worm dispute with the Almighty? Who am I that I should reply against my Maker?'"
"When you have taken that position, rely upon the freeness of divine grace. Grasp, as with a death-clutch, this great fact and say, ‘Lord, Thou dost forgive sinners for Thine own name's sake. Thou canst not find anything in us that is good, anything that can move Thee to pity! But, oh, by Thy mercy and Thy love, let men see what a gracious God thou art! For Thy great name's sake have mercy upon us, and save us!'"
"You can plead that Jesus said, `Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out.' (Jn 6:37) And that he has bidden his servants say, `Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved;'"
"...Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God for He will abundantly on."
"I cast aside all my former confidences, and all my boastings, and come as the worst sinner must come, for I feel that, in some respects, I am the worst sinner who ever came to thee. I come as an utterly lost, undone, bankrupt sinner, and I look to the atoning sacrifice of Jesus for all I need." (Emph. added. Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Vol. 53, Sermon "Rule of Grace," pp 500-502, Pilgrim Publications, Pasadena TX)
Accordingly, though folks may be as serious as a "heart attack," in the vast majority of "religious" services, they are worshiping devils, for they certainly are not worshiping the Lord God of Scripture. (John 14:6.)
Paul's desire for them is that they would be wholly dedicated to Christ, and the reverence due to him must not be shared with an other being, real or imaginary.
V. 21. You cannot does not mean they had no physical ability nor that it was naturally impossible, for that is what they were doing. Rather, it is not fit, proper, nor decent to partake of the Lord's table and the devil's table. In fact, Paul identified it as idolatry, and worship of demons.
The problem was their "use of Christian liberty" to join with the Gentiles in their religious feasts that honoured their gods.
In studying out this passage, I found this very interesting statement by Charles Hodge:
And the cup of devils. Demons, #1Co 10:20. In the feasts in honour of the gods, wine was poured out as a libation, or drunk by the worshippers. ... The custom of drinking toasts at feasts and celebrations arose from this practice of pouring out wine, or drinking in honour of the heathen gods; and is a practice that partakes still of the nature of heathenism. It was one of the abominations of heathenism to suppose that their gods would be pleased with the intoxicating draught. Such a pouring out of a libation was usually accompanied with a prayer to the idol god, that he would accept the offering; that he would be propitious; and that he would grant the desire of the worshipper. From that custom the habit of expressing a sentiment, or proposing a toast, uttered in drinking wine, has been derived. The toast or sentiment which now usually accompanies the drinking of a glass in this manner, if it mean anything, is now also a prayer: but to whom? to the god of wine? to a heathen deity? Can it be supposed that it is a prayer offered to the true God—the God of purity? Has Jehovah directed that prayer should be offered to him in such a manner? Can it be acceptable to him? Either the sentiment is unmeaning, or it is a prayer offered to a heathen god, or it is mockery of JEHOVAH; and in either case it is improper and wicked. And it may as truly be said now of Christians as in the time of Paul, "Ye cannot consistently drink the cup of the Lord at the communion table, and the cup where a PRAYER, is offered to a false god, or to the dead, or to the air; or when, if it means anything, it is a mockery of JEHOVAH." Now, can a Christian with any more consistency or propriety join in such celebrations, and in such unmeaning or profane libations, than he could go into the temple of an idol, and partake of the idolatrous celebrations there?
This means that the Toast that is so common today came from a prayer to a pagan god, even prayers to devils, or to the god of wine.
V. 22. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? By joining in the worship of idols, we provoke or irritate God, exciting him to anger and judgment.
Exodus 20:5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
Paul tells the Corinthians here that to join in the observance of pagan feasts is to participate in what is to God the worship of idols, and it will bring abut his wrath.
Any direction of life that tends to turn our affections from God, and tends to fix them on other beings or objects, is a sin of the same kind as that referred to here. Any excessive love of friends, of property, of honour, has basically the same idolatrous nature, and will tend to provoke him to anger.
Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy by being unduly attached to family, a friend, or to wealth, and God in anger takes away that person by death, or that property by the flames?
How easy it is to become conformed to this world, and follow after its fashions and enjoy its scenes of fashion and fun, and forget God.
He threatens the Corinthian Christians with his displeasure, and to visit them with judgments, to humble them and recall them to himself.
Are we stronger than he? This is why we should not provoke his displeasure. We cannot contend successfully with him. So it is madness and folly to contend with God, or to expose ourselves to the effects of his jealousy.
In the rest of the chapter, Paul explains under what circumstances it was lawful to eat meat offered to idols.
I will only say this about that:
Paul proved that eating the sacrifices offered to idols under religious circumstances was idolatry. Now he explains under what circumstances those meats might and might not be eaten, which is a study for another time.
1. When we walk on the edge of what is allowable, it is so easy to be drawn into the sinful actions. Though things may be legal, when Christians look, act and respond like pagans, the world has the right to assume those Christians are pagans. Luke 6:43, 44.
2. Good intentions do not change facts. The Corinthians' good intentions did not change the fact that they were participating in sacrificing to devils. Accordingly, those involved in "religious services" that are not presenting the true gospel of Christ are idolaters; that is, worshiping devils.
3. The Lord's Table: Partaking of the Lord's Supper is an act of communion with Christ, and is done in remembrance of his work for his people, this do in remembrance of me. He alone is the object of Christian worship. Moreover, the Lord's table represents a common unity with all who worship him. Partaking of the cup and the bread together is to show our unity one with another, and with Christ. It shows our common unity in Christ. Taking part in the Lord's table declares to the world that we are set apart for the service of the Lord Jesus Christ; we acknowledge him as our Lord, and dedicate ourselves to him. The Lord's table is a reminder of not only our benefits in Christ, but of our responsibilities.
4. Sporting events appeal to human nature, and often offer a greater "religious" excitement than does serving God through the Lord Jesus—idolatry.
There are so many ways that we provoke the Lord to jealousy. It sure looks like his jealousy will result in his wrath that will appoint a wicked woman, or even a follower of Mohammed, as our ruler. We will certainly get a president who will continue Bush's efforts to destroy the Constitution and national sovereignty.
Isaiah 3:4 And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them. 11 Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him. 12 As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. 13 The LORD standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people. 14 The LORD will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. 15 What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord GOD of hosts.
Is there time to repent of our idolatry, and turn the Lord's hand of judgment?
ESPN anchorwoman: ‘F— Jesus'
TV host taken to task for outburst at public event
Dana Jacobson
A Catholic advocacy group charges the sports TV network ESPN has failed to respond properly to a graphic rant by anchorwoman Dana Jacobson in which she "attacked Jesus Christ."
Jacobson, reportedly intoxicated, was speaking at a celebrity roast in Atlantic City, N.J., when she unleashed a profane tirade, saying, "F— Notre Dame," "F— Touchdown Jesus" and finally "F— Jesus." ...
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59822
I cannot endure false doctrine, however neatly it may be put before me. Would you have me eat poisoned meat because the dish is of the choicest ware? It makes me indignant when I hear another gospel put before the people with enticing words by man who would fair make merchandise of souls; and I marvel at those who have soft words for such deceivers. "That is your bigotry," says one. Call it so if you like; but it is the BIGOTRY OF THE LOVING JOHN, who wrote, "If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him Godspeed; for he that biddeth him Godspeed is partaker of his evil deeds." I would to God we all had more of such decision, for the lack of it is depriving our religious life of its backbone and substituting for honest manliness a mass of tremulous jelly of mutual flattery.
HE WHO DOES NOT HATE THE FALSE DOES NOT LOVE THE TRUE; and he to whom it is all the same, whether it be God's word or man's, is himself unrenewed at heart. Oh, if some of you were like your fathers, you would not have tolerated in this age the wagon loads of trash under which the gospel has been of late buried by ministers of your own choosing. The apostle spake by inspiration when he said, "If we or an angel from heaven preach to you any other gospel than that ye have received, let him be accursed." According to modem effeminacy he ought to have said, "Let him be kindly spoken with in private, but pray make no stir. No doubt the good brother has his own original modes of thought and we must not question his liberty. Doubtless he believes the same as we do, only there is some little difference as to terms." This is treason to Christ and treachery to truth and cruelty to souls.
IF WE LOVE OUR LORD, WE SHALL KEEP HIS WORDS AND STAND FAST IN THE FAITH, coming out from among the false teachers. Nor is this inconsistent with charity; for the truest love to those who err is not to fraternize with them in their error, but to be faithful to Jesus Christ in all things.
C.H. Spurgeon (1834-1892)
Don Imus, as you know, got in trouble for saying some unkind things about the Rutgers women's basketball team, though he simply repeated lines from "Rap Songs." All the "Black" leaders jumped on him like a duck on a June bug. (However, the "Black" leaders, Al Sharpton especially, who "jumped on" the Duke Lacross players, ignored the fact that they were wrong in falsely accusing the white men. No doubt he went after Imus' job to get the focus off of his part in the Duke fiasco.)
Imus is back on the radio with a black woman as a side kick, "Karith Foster, a Harlem resident who grew up outside Dallas." (IMUS GAL A BLACK TEXAS NY ‘JEW': http://www.nypost.com/seven/12032007/news/regionalnews/imus_gal_a_black_texas_ny__jew__128392.htm)
What gets my attention is this statement by Foster:
Despite her Texas roots, "I'm really a Jewish girl from Long Island trapped in this body, which technically makes me a JA-AP [Jewish African-American Princess]," she jokes on her Web site.
This black woman is a Jew. My point is that those who think the modern Jew has any legitimate connection with the Old Testament Jew (Jacob-Israel) are out of their minds. They have been duped by liars and false prophets who are after their money. The deception has been effectively perpetrated by those wanting "tax-payer" money from gullible US Christians.
Foster is a daughter of Ham, so it is utterly impossible to claim she is a daughter of Shem, the line of the Jews.
People, wake up and smell the coffee.
Won the lottery, but got sued by everyone and finally went broke and died
William "Bud" Post won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania lottery in 1988 but now lives on his Social Security. "I wish it never happened. It was totally a nightmare," says Post.
A former girlfriend successfully sued him for a share of his winnings. It wasn't his only lawsuit. A brother was arrested for hiring a hit man to kill him, hoping to inherit a share of the winnings. Other siblings pestered him until he agreed to invest in a car business and a restaurant in Sarasota, Fla., - two ventures that brought no money back and further strained his relationship with his siblings. Post even spent time in jail for firing a gun over the head of a bill collector. Within a year, he was $1 million in debt.
Post admitted he was both careless and foolish, trying to please his family. He eventually declared bankruptcy. Now he lives quietly on $450 a month and food stamps. "I'm tired, I'm over 65 years old, and I just had a serious operation for a heart aneurysm. Lotteries don't mean (anything) to me," said Post. He died on Jan 15 of respiratory failure. (http://www.2spare.com/item_91685.aspx)
Won the lottery twice, now lives on a trailer
"Winning the lottery isn't always what it's cracked up to be," says Evelyn Adams, who won the New Jersey lottery not just once, but twice (1985, 1986), to the tune of $5.4 million. Today the money is all gone and Adams lives in a trailer. "I won the American dream but I lost it, too. It was a very hard fall. It's called rock bottom," says Adams.
"Everybody wanted my money. Everybody had their hand out. I never learned one simple word in the English language - ‘No.' I wish I had the chance to do it all over again. I'd be much smarter about it now," says Adams, who also lost money at the slot machines in Atlantic City. "I was a big-time gambler," admits Adams. "I didn't drop a million dollars, but it was a lot of money. I made mistakes, some I regret, some I don't. I'm human. I can't go back now so I just go forward, one step at a time."
Henry Ziegland thought he had dodged fate. In 1883, he broke off a relationship with his girlfriend who, out of distress, committed suicide. The girl's brother was so enraged that he hunted down Ziegland and shot him. The brother, believing he had killed Ziegland, then turned his gun on himself and took his own life. But Ziegland had not been killed. The bullet, in fact, had only grazed his face and then lodged in a tree. Ziegland surely thought himself a lucky man. Some years later, however, Ziegland decided to cut down the large tree, which still had the bullet in it. The task seemed so formidable that he decided to blow it up with a few sticks of dynamite. The explosion propelled the bullet into Ziegland's head, killing him.
"Back to the Future - A Study in the Book of Revelation" is a verse-by-verse commentary of Revelation from the point of view of victorious postmillennialism and partial preterism, which recognizes a future resurrection, judgment and Second Coming of Christ. The author sees chapters 4 through 19 of Revelation as having been fulfilled in the historical events leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD, at which time God set aside the Jews as His chosen people so that He could take a new Bride - the Israel of God, the Church.
This book is an excellent and persuasive introduction to the preterist interpretation of Revelation, and is must reading for any serious students of that prophecy.
The author examines, and rejects, the popular dispensationalist interpretation of Revelation, which claims to be literal, but Bass exposes the fact that the traditional dispensational interpretations of Revelation are not consistently literal at all, nor are they consistent with proper Biblical interpretation of this prophecy.
The key to the understanding of Revelation, as Bass explores in detail, is to realize that the Apostle John has "signified" or "sign-i-fied" the things that are to happen to Jerusalem and national Israel (Revelation 1:1), communicating those events by means of symbols that are not meant to be taken literally. Once we understand this interpretive principle, and realize that John is predicting things that will come to pass swiftly, not 2000 years later (Revelation 1:3), then we are ready to understand the message of Revelation.
With regard to the time of authorship, Bass rejects the theory that Revelation was not written until 96 AD, long after the fall of Jerusalem. This theory of late authorship is based entirely on an ambiguous statement by the Church Father Irenaeus, which does not really say what proponents of the late authorship have read into that statement. In reality, John wrote Revelation just prior to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
Bass treats the letters to the Seven Churches of Revelation 2 and 3 as having to do with actual churches of Asia Minor in the late First Century AD, not as mythical, imaginary "church ages." His exposition of Revelation 3:10 and 4:1 demonstrates clearly that there is no "pre-tribulational rapture" taught in these verses.
The temple of Revelation 11:1 is shown to be Herod's Temple in Jerusalem which was destroyed in 70 AD, not a future temple to be built on the site of the modern day Noble Sanctuary in Jerusalem. Based on an analysis of "666," the Beast of Revelation 13 is seen to be a reference to the current reigning Roman Emperor Nero, not some mysterious future Antichrist.
The author makes heavy use of the historical work of Josephus, to show how the various prophecies of tribulation and judgment in this book were fulfilled by the siege of Jerusalem under the Roman general Titus in 70 AD. He does a detailed analysis of "Babylon the Great" in Revelation 17-18, showing that this is a reference to ancient Jerusalem.
The binding of Satan in Revelation 20:2 is shown to have taken place already as a result of Christ's personal ministry, His death and resurrection. He sees the "first resurrection" as spiritual in nature, while the "second resurrection" is literal, bodily and still in the future. The author rejects the "full preterist" position which sees the resurrection and last judgment as having already taken place in 70 AD.
This book presents a challenge to the prevailing fanciful interpretations of modern pop dispensationalism, which sees all the events of Revelation in terms of modern events taking place in our time. As geopolitical realities change from decade to decade, the futurist interpreters of Revelation have to revise their speculations and prophecy charts, constantly reinterpreting the symbols of Revelation to fit what is happening in this week's newspaper, thus justifying their predictions of an imminent Rapture which is always just a few short years away, but which never materializes.
Bass has shown us a much better way - he has interpreted the symbols of Revelation based on established principles and symbols drawn from the Old Testament, by correlation with Christ's Olivet Discourse, and by making reference to the detailed account of Josephus as to what actually happened when Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD. Modern speculative prophecy authors have to revise their books every decade or so when their imaginative scenarios are made obsolete by constant political changes in the world, but Bass's exposition of Revelation will still be timely, relevant and scripturally accurate 100 or 1000 years from now - if the Lord tarries.
Ralph E. Bass, Jr. has an undergraduate degree, BA, in Bible from Bob Jones University, and graduate degrees: a M.A. in Counseling from Webster University, a M.Div. in divinity studies from Erskine Theological Seminary, a Th. M. in theological studies from Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and a Th. D. in theological studies from Reformation Theological Seminary.
Ralph E. Bass, Jr., 2004, Living Hope Press, 537 pages, hardbound, $35. The book is available from the author at 100 Iverson St., Greenville, South Carolina 29615, or from americanvision.com or amazon.com.
Review by Thomas Williamson
[Like me, Brother Bass came from a dispensational background. "Back to the Future..." is good, and includes a section on dating of the Revelation, with which I agree, e.g., "Unfortunately, many that [sic] think they are honoring God by repudiating the ‘law' miss the point. You do not repudiate the law of God and still honor God. As a result, much of modern day Christianity is lawless, repudiating God's law in a confused attempt to magnify grace. Such theology simply magnifies lawlessness." P. 117. This is the only "commentary" on the Revelation that I can recommend, though he does use the NASB95. If you are into "prophetic" study, you will find this book very informative as well as Scriptural. Also, be sure to check thomaswilliamson.net, for articles in Spanish. They are good articles, and can certainly be used for God's glory among the Spanish speaking community. His link is on the opening page of biblicalexaminer.org]
God was good in providing a good amount of "year end" giving, so this issue was able to get out in good time. Some of the giving was anonymous, to whom we were unable to send "thank you" letters. Thank you.
As we have mentioned several times, we mail after we have the funds, so if there is no mailing, there are no funds. You can keep up with us at the web site. It may be quite some time before we can mail again, but I will keep you posted at the web site.
Deer, Deer
Hunting up here in WV is almost a religion, with good reason. WV leads the nation in "deer-car" encounters – 1 in 57 insured cars, according to State Farm.
Gun season opens the Monday before Thanksgiving. School is dismissed that week, and a good many retail establishments close on the first day of deer season, for everyone has gone to the spot they have watched the previous year for deer signs, particularly that "big buck." Obviously, Wal-Mart did not close.
There is a very large woods behind us, and a large woods across the road beside us, so our property is a major deer crossing between the two woods. It is not uncommon at all to see up to 10 deer in our back yard, within an easy stone's throw, except during deer season.
A man in our group has 25 acres at the foot of a mountain. He has been begging our men to come hunt his land. It is almost unsafe to drive out his driveway because of the deer. It is not unusual for deer to run into the side of his car as he leaves his property. Another man in our group, Jerry, is an avid deer hunter. His yearly vacation time is deer season. He will get a good many during that time, and his family eats very little meat other than the deer he gets and dresses, and the hogs he butchers. He encouraged me to go with him to the first man's property, and I went primarily for the meat. I got my first deer the third time out, the Saturday after Thanksgiving. He got one the first day, and though I saw some, they did not offer good shots. He did not get one the second day, but I did have a very good shot. However, I was on the side of a steep slope in a blind, and my chair slipped, and I fell. I took the very good shot, but missed. The man I was with later checked the scope, and an adujustment had been changed when I fell out of the chair.
(Jerry took us dear counting before the season opened. In the hour or so before dark, we counted 93 does and fawns and 13 bucks, all within just a few miles of our house.)
We then went to Bettie's son's home for Thanksgiving, so I missed the next three days in the field, but went again Saturday. (Jerry got another one during that time.) I was able to get a good size doe that Saturday.
This was the first year I have been "hunting," and got my limit of 4. It should be enough meat to last us the year. With all the justified concern over our corrupted food supply, it is getting so wild and self-raised meat may be the only safe meat to eat.
(CBS/AP) There's no evidence that meat or milk derived from healthy cloned farm animals can harm people, the Food and Drug Administration says in its first attempt at assessing questions about the emerging technology. ... (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/31/health/main581135.shtml)
Though it may be some time yet, cloned farm animals, as well as other artificial food sources, will be in the food chain. The cloning industry says that because the FDA has approved artificial food, e.g., GMO, cloned, &c., for human consumption, they do not need to label it as cloned (nor GMO). There is a battle brewing between the industry, working hand in hand with the FDA, and consumer groups who are pressuring for labeling.
(Money speaks, and money from the drug and food industry speaks loudly. "Health Threat From EU and UN. An oddly named UN bureaucracy is the driving force behind a larger European and American effort to take away our liberty to use dietary supplements." "Use them or lose them: In the United states in 2004, 46.9 percent of men and 56.7 percent of women used some type of food supplement to boost their health — vitamins, minerals, herbs. In that year, Americans spent $20.3 billion on supplements. Yet entities such as the FDA and the UN are working diligently to take away our access." "British protestors: In 2005, the EU enacted a ban on many vitamins and supplements. If fully enacted, the ban would have knocked 5,000 vitamin and mineral products from store shelves in the UK alone. The ban seemed tailor-made for pharmaceutical companies, as it banned natural forms of supplements, such as vitamin E, calcium, and selenium, yet allowed manufactured forms of the same items." The New American, 2/4/08.)
God help us as we pollute the very food we must have to sustain life. The love of money is surely the root of all evil, both in industry, politics and in the supposed Christian pulpit. That "love" is killing us all and killing the following generations.
Law
I have been surprised at the efforts of the state to claim ownership of the deer. The game warden has unlimited power, even to enter homes without a search warrant. And if one has deer meat in the freezer that is unaccounted for, there is the "devil" to pay. I am confident that if as much effort went into enforcing the immigration laws, as well as other laws, illegal immigration would stop. The state treats its game laws as though the existence of the US depended upon obeying every jot and tittle of the many ins and outs of those laws.
It is certainly a case of straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.
The mountains are "alive" with gun fire up to Thanksgiving, including Thanksgiving day. Though dear season continues, the woods are empty after Thanksgiving weekend; the men go back to work.
A man in our fellowship, Jerry, butchers every year, as did his parents and grandparents. His family, brothers, sisters, in-laws, &c., live close by in an area called Arkansaw, where 10-15 years ago, every one butchered. Those desiring a hog to dressed tell him, and he picks them up, and they all get together to do the job on a particular day. He does it primarily for the family fellowship. They (we) did 4 hogs.
He invited Bettie and me to the butchering this year. That was a first for me, but Bettie remembers all of her neighbors butchering in Brazil. Jerry wants to make a video of butchering, from the killing through to the packaging and rendering of the lard. He feels it will be interesting, and I agree, particularly for home educators. (I found the hogs so fat, that I well understand why the Lord listed them as unclean.) Lord willing, we will try to make that video.
November 16, 2007 was our first good snow day; that is, enough to track a rabbit. Along with the bit of snow came winds 20-30 mph, which is not uncommon here. We are normally 5-8 degrees cooler than either Moorefield or Baker; Baker is 9 miles east down the mountain, and Moorefield is 4 miles west down the mountain, both of which are about 2,000 feet lower than our location. A neighbor about 2 miles from us, also on this mountaintop, has recorded wind gusts of 70 mph. Even a 30 mph wind with 10 degrees is cold. Very few do not use wood heat. (2/10/08, snow, 7 degrees, and 40 mph winds. One would think we were back in Indiana. I know, this is warm compared to those of you who live where it really does get cold.)
Though I made it through the rest of 2007 without a trip to the ER, I spent New Year's Day in the VA hospital in Martainsburg WV. Though I told my wife I would like to do something special for New Years Day, I do not consider the ER special. The Martinsburg VA is about 80-90 minutes North East of us. We are about 60 minutes from I 81 on the north side of Winchester, VA, and then about another 20 minutes to the VA hospital.
Since I have experienced a "heart attack" and two more events with plugged up stents in my heart, I am paranoid. It is extremely difficult to distinguish between stress related "feelings," and genuine stent problems. Both leave me out of breath, and only the nuclear stress test can tell the difference. Praise the Lord for the VA health care system that was promised to service men back in the 60s.
Ron Paul... What a nice hope! However, there are those Christians looking for a sinless candidate, which they will not find. Ron Paul is far and away better than the rest. They all promise "change," but none define that "change," so we will be getting a "pig in a poke" with anyone but Ron Paul. We had signed up as delegates for him in WV, but when we registered to vote, we failed to mark Republican, so we could not go as delegates. It sure seems like the "caucuses" are planned by the powers that be to keep out unwanted candidates. And they work well at that goal. Our prayer is that someday, God will thwart their wicked plans.
It looks like we are in for a wild ride with this election cycle. Only the Lord knows what he is up to. I sure pray we do not get what we deserve, Hillary. But either way, it looks like what we will get will be bad enough, Obama (raised a Muslim) or even McCain, who is a a super one-worlder and war hawk.
(However, McCain did intervene for Jeff Ethell. Jeff was looking in the National Archives for color pictures taken in WW II. Not finding them in that area of the NA, he found them misfiled under Korea. He duplicated a good number of the images, and after he duped them, the originals were stolen from the Smithsonian. The NA then came to Jeff to duplicate the ones he had duplicated from them. He let them copy his; then the NA refused to let him use the images for his books. [Thus, the NA's images are copies of ours.] He appealed to John McCain, who intervened for him, pointing out to the NA that they would not have the images if Jeff had not allowed him to duplicate his. Jeff's copies are now in a large fire-proof safe in our garage. Though I have many hundreds of them to scan yet, some of the contested images are posted at ww2color.com.)
Christians are so gullible. But Obama claims to be the messiah!!
Psalms 2:1 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? 2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, 3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. 4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. 5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. 6 Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
Hebrews 12:28 Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:
May God grant to us the grace to stand firm in our faith in these tumultuous times. However, our times are no worse than times past. Every generation has thought they were worse off than those before, but there is nothing new under the sun. Sin is sin. God is working his sovereign plan without advice from anyone:
Daniel 4:35 And all the inhabitants of the earth [are] reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and [among] the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou? (Romans 11:34-36, 1 Corinthians 2:16.)
We thank the Lord for the privilege of working for the advancement of his Kingdom, and for those who help in the effort.
There is no such thing as political salvation. Only a return to God's law-word, as this nation was founded, will result in national "salvation."
[120--number of men in their 20s for every 100 women of the same age. (Townhall, 2/08. P. 20) Where are all these men. Why don't they want to marry?]
Not Quitting The Race
I have just returned from a monster Ron Paul rally in Lake Jackson, Texas. The hall held about 1,000 people and was so full they had to close the doors. The crowd outside was almost as big, so Dr. Ron had to speak both inside and outside. He assured us that he is not – is not – is not quitting the national race. Of course the enemy is trying to persuade you that he is, trying to discourage you. If you discourage yourself, you are doing exactly what they want.......
http://www.newswithviews.com/Stang/alan32.htm
2/19/08
Last Friday, representatives of the Ron Paul 2008 campaign, along with our local legal counsel presented our case to the Louisiana GOP State Convention Credentials committee. Here is the memo we gave to each committee member. (http://www.ronpaul2008.com/uploads/pdf/229.pdf)
Essentially we argued that the LA GOP violated its own rules on several occasions during the caucus process, resulting in hundreds of Ron Paul supporters being disenfranchised. Had the LA GOP followed its own rules, Ron Paul would have won 5 of the 7 state congressional districts, giving the campaign a majority of the state convention delegates, resulting in at least 35 delegates elected to the national convention in St. Paul.
One of our complaints was that the deadline for registering as a delegate was extended contrary to the party rules. And during the credentials committee meeting, it was discovered that a majority of the committee members registered to be a delegate following the January 10th deadline. In other words, for the committee to find in our favor would have required that they expel most of their members from the convention. As you might expect, this didn't happen. After a three hour meeting, the committee unanimously rejected our case.
The following day, the GOP state convention was held in Baton Rouge. All elected Ron Paul delegates and most alternates attended the convention.
Additionally, many supporters - including those who would have been elected had the GOP followed its own rules — attended as well to show support for our candidate and cause.
When the Credentials Committee presented its report, Michele Gaudin, a Ron Paul delegate from District 1, introduced a substitute motion to reject the Credentials Committee report and replace it with a slate of delegates reflecting the results of the election had all votes been counted.
The Chairman of the convention ruled the motion out of order and Ms. Gaudin immediately moved to contest the ruling of the chair. Ron Paul delegate Benjamin Montgomery seconded the motion and discussion was allowed on the substitute motion. At this point, Ms. Gaudin informed all the delegates of the infractions of the rules by the LA GOP and the highly irregular and unethical conduct by the state party.
When the question was called, the ruling of the Chair was sustained and the original credentials report was adopted.
Even though the chances of the convention delegates agreeing with Ms. Gaudin's motion were slim, it was important that a contest of the credential committee's report be recorded in the minutes of the convention. This parliamentarian move allows the Ron Paul campaign to contest the Louisiana delegation to the Republican National Committee's Credentials Committee. So, the battle is not over yet.
The irony of the whole situation in Louisiana is that in its zeal to shut out Ron Paul supporters from the State Convention, the Louisiana GOP is jeoizing its delegation to the national convention! By appealing this case to the RNC, no Louisiana delegate may serve on any national committee. And it is possible that the entire delegation may be thrown out.
The Ron Paul 2008 campaign wishes to express its profound thanks to Michele Gaudin, Benjamin Montgomery, and the entire Ron Paul delegation to the Louisiana State Convention. It took a lot of courage for a small minority to face down a very unsympathetic crowd. But it was the right thing to do and the stand that was taken in Baton Rouge on Saturday will not be in vain.
Matthew Chancey, Southeastern Regional Coordinator, Ron Paul 2008 Presidential Campaign Committee
www.ronpaul2008.com/states/louisiana
Comment: Obviously, the establishment fears Ron Paul and his sound fiscal policies so much that they are willing to do whatever it takes to keep him out of the public's eyes. The establishment would rather lose an entire state's delegates than to let the public think that Ron Paul has any support. This was the week before "Super Tuesday," and it would have given Paul a boost in the eyes of the public. We and our children will pay a terrible price for the free hand that has been given to the Federal Government to produce Fiat money. Gold now $950 and silver over $18 an oz. No doubt, this is just the start of the inflation. Remember, 1964, sliver was $1 for 5 90% silver quarters.
Pastor Chuck Baldwin
What's with all these clueless Christians? How is it that people who have the benefit of the indwelling Holy Spirit, and the warning and insight of the Sacred Scriptures–not to mention a rich Christian heritage here in America–can be so ignorant, blind, and naïve? Yes, the majority of evangelical Christians seem to be all of the above. The problem has passed being serious: it is catastrophic!........
http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin427.htm
America
Russian Cash Pouring Into U.S.
Russia has cleared the way for $32 billion of its sovereign wealth fund money to be invested in Western companies, joining the lineup of Arab and Asian sovereign wealth funds investing here.
By comparison, that's as big as the largest U.S. hedge funds, and it's rapidly escalating. ...
MoneyNews.com
At the very least, indifferent and paganized Christians are moving our God to literally sell us to our enemies. No matter how much Antinomian Christians claim the New Testament church is not held accountable to the Old Testament law, we are living in a period of fulfillment of that law, Deuteronomy 28:15-48. Professed Christians refuse to serve the Lord God of the Scripture, so He is going to cause them (us) to serve Russia, China, &c., as they buy up the valuable assets our Christian fathers acquired.
Isaiah 3 tells us that an open mocker of Christianity or a female president is on the way. We will discuss it in the next issue.
Bro Need
Please send:
Book of Deuteronomy, Biblical Instructions to women, Men and Responsibility.
The enclosed check is to cover the above and our reproduction of 7 [copies of] Romans 13 studies. Please pray for our understanding as we are doing a weekly study, reading aloud to each other and discussing as we go. Ready to start Chapter 3 this week.
Our gratitude for your labors is sent as well.
The Houks, Lee's Summit, MO.
Brother Need:
I appreciate your publication, Biblical Examiner. May the Lord bless you in your work for his kingdom. And Go, Ron, Go. RonPaul2008.com. Joe Rogers, Enon OH
Dear Pastor Need
Thank you! As usual, the latest TBE is a blessing.
I have been also benefitting from some excellent Vision Forum material. Jennies Chancey's "Meet the Pilot" [actually, the title is "Jennie B and the Pilot," and is Jennie's account of her relationship with her dad, Jeff Ethell] CD was amazing, and now I see her in a book and a part of Botkin Sisters' DVD, "Return of the Daughters."
For the King, Kingdom, Larry Lewis, in very snowy Idaho, near Canada.
[The three "resources" listed above from Vision Forum is money well invested. Also, "Housewives Hungry for God," by Jennie Chancey and Stacie McDonald. Ed.]
Attached with a check:
Mr. and Mrs Need
May God continue to bless your family and your work.
Sincerely, The Twisdale Family
By Brigid Schulte. Washington Post, Sunday, January 20, 2008; W10
Figments of the Imagination?
"Thousands of people around the world say they have a disease that causes mysterious fibers to sprout painfully through the skin, and they've given it a name. The spread of ‘Morgellons disease' could be Internet hysteria, or it could be an emerging illness demanding our attention."
"Reports of a new disease – characterized by strange fibers creeping below the skin – are coming in from around the world. Mainstream doctors say it's all a delusion. So why is the U.S. Government investigating?
"Sue Laws's chest, neck, face, back and legs broke out in painful, red gelatinous lesions. One day, a pink worm came out through one of her eyeballs and she coughed up a springtail fly. "That's when I thought, ‘I'm really gong to kill myself.'"
"The lab analyzed Sue's samples and found them to be "fibers and debris." The overall impression: It was all in her head. She was suffering from what doctors call "delusions of parasitosis."
"Whatever it is — and most doctors believe it's purely delusional — Morgellons has become a grass-roots Web phenomenon. Google it, and nearly 162,000 references show up, many of them chock-full of vivid color photographs of what people claim are strange, colorful fibers growing under their skin. Several other sufferers have taken graphic videos of themselves poking with tweezers at what appear to be fiber-entangled lesions and then posted them on YouTube. Long online discussions ramble on about the latest conspiracy theories that cause the disease — poisonous chemicals produced by the government and spread by jet contrails, so-called chem trails; aliens; artificially intelligent nanotechnology; genetic engineering; or a government bioweapon gone awry. Others debate the latest expensive cure-alls — antibiotics, antifungal creams, vitamin supplements, liquid silver, food-grade diatomaceous earth, deworming medication meant for cattle." [GMOs included? Ed.]
"This isn't delusional," psychiatrist Robert Bransfeild says. "Delusions are quite variable... but the people who have Morgellons all describe it in the same way. It doesn't have the variability you would see in delusions."
NOTE: The Post only leaves articles for public view for a week. Thereafter, one must pay to see the articles. I downloaded the complete article, and will e-mail it to you upon your request. It is certainly a disquieting article, and worth your time to read. We should be concerned by the fact that the CDC as well as the medical establishment is refusing to address "The Morgellons Mystery." One would think that the "medical establishment" would jump on this like a duck on a June bug, for there are huge amounts of money given to research of all kinds, e.g., Cancer, AIDs, &c. Why will they not touch this issue?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/16/AR2008011603134.html?sid=ST2008011801924
On Mercola.com
After reproducing an article by Dr. Kent, here is Mercola's comment:
Dr. Christopher Kent, D.C., J.D, is one of the sharpest health commenters that I know of, and has written many masterful articles about the dangers and hypocrisy of conventional medicine, and the insidious pharmaceutical PR campaigns that create phony diseases to justify the use of even more unnecessary drugs.
Taking a Closer Look at Drug-Induced Mortality Statistics
According to available data, some 106,000 hospitalized patients die each year from drugs that are properly prescribed and properly administered, and side effects kill as many as 198,815 people.
Let me give you an idea of what the medical error and mortality rate of conventional medicine looks like:
* The recorded error rate of ICU's is like the post office losing more than 16,000 pieces of mail every hour of every day, or banks deducting 32,000 checks from the wrong bank account every hour, 24/7
* The recorded medical errors and deaths equate to six jumbo jets falling out of the sky each day, 365 days a year
* Since 2001, a recorded 490,000 people have died from properly prescribed drugs in the United States, while 2,996 people died on U.S. soil from terrorism, all in the 9/11 attacks; prescription drugs are therefore 16,400 percent more dangerous than terrorism. If deaths from over-the-counter drugs are also included, then drug consumption leaps to being 32,000 percent more dangerous than terrorism. And conventional medicine viewed as a whole is 104,700 percent deadlier than terrorism
However, sobering as this may sound, let's take a closer look at these statistics, to give you an even more shocking view of what your REAL risk of drug-induced death might be.
During sworn testimony before the U.S. Senate on November 18, 2004, whistle-blower David J. Graham, MD, MPH, stated that according to estimates derived from the Kaiser-FDA study, Vioxx caused upwards of 160,000 heart attacks and strokes. This data was published in The New England Journal of Medicine October 21, 2004; 351(17): 1707-1709.
Of these, an estimated 30-40 percent probably died. That would put us at an estimated 64,000 deaths from Vioxx alone between its release in 1999 until its removal in 2004. That makes just one drug responsible for about 6 percent of all recorded deaths from side effects in one year.
Or, based on the other statistic of 490,000 deaths from prescription drugs between 2001 and 2007, which comes out to be about 70,000 people per year, Vioxx alone would account for just under 19 percent of drug deaths per year.
What I'm driving at here is the fact that the number of properly recorded drug-induced deaths are MINUSCULE in relation to the REAL numbers. Reputable sources state the number of properly recorded deaths and side effects from drugs to be around 6 percent. Some state it's probably lower than one percent. I've never seen anyone go over 10 percent.
So, let's be generous and say it's actually as high as 10 percent. Then the recorded number of deaths attributable to side effects of pharmaceutical drugs, currently at 198,815 people per year, would look more like this: 1,988,150 people per year.
According to the 2007 CDC mortality report, just under 2.4 million people died in the U.S. in 2004 from any and all causes. Also note that these numbers are nearly four years old; you can bet that they are far higher today.
Am I playing with estimated numbers? Sure. Could I be way off implying that drugs might actually be the underlying cause of about 80 percent of all deaths in the United States?
Possibly.
Then again, is it not possible that a vast majority of heart disease, cancer and stroke are misdiagnosed side effects of synthetic drug use? You decide — but based on the scientific findings, many of the drugs on the market do indeed increase your risk of everything from heart problems to diabetes, and millions of people are taking anywhere from five to 25 different medications at the same time!
Until accurate and unbiased reporting of side effects and deaths from drugs is implemented, we'll never know the true extent of the genocidal drug experiment you're experiencing. But there is absolutely no doubt that FAR more people die from pharmaceutical drug use than from illegal drugs.
As I stated in a previous article, we live in a strange paradox where society condemns street drugs like amphetamines, yet has no qualms about giving it in massive doses — under legalized brand names — to two-year-olds who are in their prime physical- and mental developmental years.
I just don't buy the idea that so many American children are in need of amphetamines to function "normally," and neither should you — considering the fact that death from prescribed psychotherapeutic drugs has doubled in five years.
You may also have noticed that more and more parents are now facing jail time for refusing to drug their children for invented diseases that — according to an ever more involved government — must be treated with pharmaceutical drugs, while overlooking all other alternatives. Even the American government is siding with Big Pharma, using legal action to perpetuate this bizarre forced-legal-drug-use scheme.
Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry is raking in massive profits — more than three times the average of other Fortune 500 industries — even after including all research and development costs. Let's face it. Pharmaceuticals are not about making you healthy and well.
Make no mistake, there is no such thing as a pharmaceutical drug that can offer true prevention, because synthetic chemicals cannot produce health. They do not belong in your body to begin with, and you should know that your body will always try to protect itself from foreign substances and "invaders," so how would these chemicals possibly create health?
I realize that asking you to Take Control of Your Health means battling a massive drug culture that has permeated the very core of American society. But there is no magic pill! You cannot cure your ailments with pharmaceutical drugs.
Rather than focusing more time and attention on your health as you age, or as you see degeneration setting in, many of you will settle for a "diagnosis" and the latest medications. Realize that the only winners here are the ones who profit financially.
Do not seek passive medical intervention for your physical and mental wellbeing – you have to actively participate in it.
When symptoms arrive as a result of how poorly you've neglected your body and mind, take personal responsibility for your own wellness (restoring wholeness) and trust in the God-given recuperative powers of your body, rather than seeking out those who are only too willing take on this role for you.
As a result of handing over the full authority of your life over to the industry of medicine, the pharmaceutical and medical establishments have become so bloated, profitable and powerful, we're now witnessing it getting completely out of control.
The harm that the present health care delivery system causes now outweighs the good. It's time that balance gets restored — taking the good of medicine and replacing the bad with new ways of thinking and more appropriate ways of taking care of your body.
Dr. Bruce Lipton offers encouraging and enlightening advice on how to do this, and reminds us that conventional medicine is in fact referred to as "the central dogma" in medical schools. And dogma literally means, "A belief based on religious persuasion and NOT scientific fact."
Whereas the current medical dogma states that you are ruled by your genes, and therefore you are at "risk," you are a victim of your genetic makeup. But the new biology has already dispelled this idea as a myth, a belief that is not based on scientific fact. In truth, your genes do not predispose you to any particular fate. Instead, your mind, which you have total control over, rules over both your genetic, and cellular expression.
What Dr. Lipton refers to as the "new biology" has proven that our current view of biology is just as incorrect as our pre-1925 view that we live in a material universe.
As Dr. Lipton said in my recent interview with him, "… the new biology is going to take us from a world today of crisis and ill health, and a failing environment and world, and take us to another level of masterful control, where we — in our consciousness and our experiences of life — will actually have power over our own lives and not be the victims that we were programmed to be."
Further, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) reports an impressive number of cases wherein the symptoms of major diseases improve rapidly by simply addressing the emotional and energetic causes of disease. Hundreds of these cases are written up on the EFT website and many are filmed so you can see the results right before your eyes. No drugs, radiation or surgeries necessary.
As you move into a brand new year, remember: You're in control.
Once enough people have had enough, and enough people become the change they desire, change will be inevitable.
Make this the year that you take control of your health and life. For even more inside information from the best health experts, consider joining my brand new Inner Circle Program.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/1/15/recreational-drugs-far-less-likely-to-kill-you-than-prescribed-drugs.aspx
[Let me urge you to get Dr. Mercola's news letter. <nercola.com>]
Daniel 7
by Thomas Williamson
I saw in the night visions, and, behold one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him.
And there was given him dominion, and glory, and kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed - Daniel 7:13-14
These verses predict that the Messiah will come and set up a Kingdom and a dominion that is everlasting, and will never be destroyed. It is very important for us to know just when this event takes place. If Christ set up His everlasting dominion and kingdom at His first advent, then we are in that kingdom now. if He failed to set up the kingdom the first time around, and we are waiting for Him to try again at His Second Coining, then we are not yet in the kingdom.
The Scofield note on Daniel 7:14 tells us that "Daniel 7:13-14 .. . antedates the fulfillment of Daniel 2:34-35." Okay, let's check out Daniel 2:34-35:
Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth.
Daniel 2:44-45 tells us when this stone will smite the image:
And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed.... Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut outof the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter.
This great kingdom, represented as a mountain that will fill the whole earth and never be destroyed, will be set up "in the days of these kings." Which kings? There is almost universal agreement that the image of Daniel 2 represents 4 great world empires and that the 4th great empire was that of Rome. Sometime during the time of the Roman Empire, God was going to set up a kingdom that would never be destroyed. If God did not keep that promise during the time of the Roman Empire, then it is too late for the prophecy to be fulfilled, because the Roman Empire is completely dead and gone.
Did God set up the kingdom promised in Daniel 2 while the Roman Empire was still in existence? The answer is yes: Christ said in Matthew 12:28, "If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you." In Luke 16:16 He said, "The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached and every man presseth into it." Paul, a Roman citizen, said that God "hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son," Colossians 1:13.
Did Christ set up an everlasting dominion at His first advent, thus fulfilling the promise of Daniel 7:13-14? The answer is yes: Christ said in Matthew 28:18, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth." It would be hard to imagine a more all-encompassing dominion than this all power and authority, in heaven and earth.
We are now in that kingdom which was promised in Daniel 2:34-35 and 7:13-14. This is a strong argument for church perpetuity - the conviction that there always have been true New Testament churches on earth, from the First Century until now. If the kingdom will never be destroyed, then the Lord's churches will always continue on earth, and Christ will receive glory through His Church throughout all ages, Ephesians 3:21.
Not only will there always be true Christians and true churches on earth, but there will also be a victorious growth of Christianity, which Daniel compares to a mountain filling the whole earth (see also Matthew 13:31-33, Galatians 4:27).
Some will object to the teaching that we are now in the Kingdom - they have been taught that the Kingdom is earthly in nature and does not begin until after Christ's Second Coming. But we have already seen ample teaching from the New Testament that we are already in the Kingdom and that it is not an earthly kingdom, since Christ told Pilate in John 18:36, "My kingdom is not of this world."
Also, we are told that the Kingdom set up in Daniel 2 and 7 is everlasting, and shall not be destroyed. That certainly would not apply to any temporal, earthly kingdom, which would come to an end when the Millennium is over. Clearly the Kingdom that was promised in Daniel 2 and 7 is spiritual in nature - we don't have to wait for it to be set up; we are in it now and it shall never be destroyed.
Somehow we have gotten the impression that Daniel 7:13-14 will not be fulfilled until Christ's Second Coming, but the text clearly states that the fulfillment takes place when the Son of man comes to the Ancient of days, and is brought near before Him. This took place at Christ's Ascension, after His resurrection. It could not possibly refer to Christ's Second Coming, since Christ at that time will depart from the immediate presence of the Ancient of Days, rather than being brought before Him.
Greg Bahnsen and Kenneth Gentry, in "House Divided," say concerning this passage, "Daniel sees the expansion of the kingdom to the point of dominion in the earth (Daniel 2:31-35, 44-45; cp. Isaiah 9:6-7). The Messiah's ascension and session will guarantee that `all people, nations and languages should serve Him' (Daniel 7:13-14). It must be noticed that Daniel 7:13-14 speaks of the Christ's ascension to the Ancient of Days, not His return to the earth. It is from this ascension to the right band of God that there will flow forth universal dominion."
Scofield is correct in stating that the events in Daniel 7:13-14 are identical with those of Revelation 5:1-7. But what we sometimes fail to realize is that the events of Revelation 5 are not in the future - they were fulfilled shortly after His resurrection, when Christ ascended to the Ancient of Days. As a result of Christ rising, ascending to the Father and being seated on David's throne at God's right hand (Acts 2:29-36), it is a present truth that Christ has redeemed us to God by His blood, Revelation 5:9, and that we have been made unto our God kings and priests, Revelation 1:6, 5:10, I Peter 2:9. The Apostle John speaks of all these things as being in the past tense - they are already fulfilled. We are not waiting for Christ to set up that kingdom in which we serve as kings and priests, nor are we working to bring the kingdom in - it was already a present reality at the time that John wrote, and it is a present reality today.
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown say concerning Daniel 7:13-14: "This investiture was at His ascension ‘with the clouds of heaven' (Acts 1:9; 2:33-34; Psalm 2:6-9; Matthew 28:18), which is a pledge of His return `in like manner' in the clouds (Acts 1:11; Matthew 26:64), and `with clouds' (Revelation 1:7). The kingdom then was given Him in title and invisible exercise; at His second coming it shall be in visible administration. . . . The words, `in the clouds,' and the universal power actually, though invisibly, given Him then (Ephesians 1:20-22), agree best with His investiture at the ascension."
Matthew Henry agrees that Daniel 7:13-14 refers to Christ's ascension: "When the cloud received Him out of the sight of His disciples, it is worth while to enquire whither it carried Him; and here we are told He ascended to `his Father and our Father, to his God and our God' (John 20:17). He was brought near, as our high priest, who for us enters within the veil, and as our forerunner. He is represented as having a mighty influence upon the earth, v. 14."
Concerning Daniel 7:14, Adam Clarke says, "This also is applied to our Lord Jesus by Himself, after His resurrection, Matthew 28:18. `His dominion is an everlasting dominion.' Christianity shall increase, and prevail, to the end of the world."
Matthew Poole says, "This relates to His ascension, Acts 1:9-11, at which time, though King before, Matthew 2:2, yet now, and not before, He seems to receive His royal investiture for the protection of His church and the curbing of their enemies, which He says He had before, Matthew 28:18, 1 Corinthians 15:25, Daniel 2:44."
Christ's dominion, as described in Daniel 7:13-14, is a present reality, and it has been for almost 2000 years. It is time for us to get with the program, and to have understanding of the times, to know what God's spiritual Israel ought to do, 1 Chronicles 12:32.
Thomas Williamson, 3131 S Archer Ave, Chicago IL 60608
March 2006 – PREDATORS: What's really behind today's epidemic of teacher-student sex?
The seemingly endless stream of reports of female school teachers having sex with their underage male students – a storyline titillating to some but profoundly disturbing to most – is one of today's most sensational news stories.
In fact, a recent, federally funded study concludes the problem of school teachers molesting students dwarfs in magnitude the clergy sex-abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church. ...
(Ed note. The courts throw the book at male teachers having sex with female students, as well they should. However, they are normally extremely lenient on female teachers who have the same problem.)
http://shop.wnd.com/store/item.asp?ITEM_ID=1825
Here is a note Franklin Sanders had in The Moneychanger:
In spite of failures which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge, or of the present aspect of affairs, do I despair the future? The truth is this, the march of Providence is so slow, our desires so impatient, the work of progress is so immense, and our means of aiding it so feeble, the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope." - Robert E. Lee
Worshiping the Sports' God
By Michael Leahy, 2/3/8
Long after winning his Super Bowl ring, Dave Pear says his life is now a ‘torture chamber' of pain. Can he and other injured retirees force the NFL to rethink its financial responsibilities to the generations that helped build the league?
"I can't get warm," Dave Pear says in the kitchen.
He is shuffling around his house in a heavy winter coat, the collar pulled snug to ward off the terrible chill he feels. Three decades ago, he played professional football for six seasons, made it to an all-star game, won a Super Bowl ring. Nowadays, his ravaged body is betraying him. "I'm so cold," he mutters, and shivers. "You cold?"
No, I say.
"I'm freezing," he says. ...
Last year, as Pear and a growing number of NFL retirees began coming out of shadows to tell their stories, a kind of critical mass was reached: For the first time, the retirees' woes caught the interest of a bloc of fans, media and politicians who, remembering the players in their glory, had difficulty believing what they were seeing. Onetime fleet young gods who ran for touchdowns now looked like old men. Powerful linemen of the '60s and '70s were visibly broken. Earl Campbell, the Hall of Fame Houston Oilers running back enfeebled by years of hits, needed a walker just to move. Former All-Pro offensive tackle Conrad Dobler, knees and hips ruined, shuffled with a cane at news conferences and talked of his medications and financial struggles. Thirty-five-year-old retired offensive guard Brian DeMarco, who suffered serious spinal and knee injuries while playing for two teams, was found in Texas, broke and unable to work or cope with his pain. Seventy-one-year-old Willie Wood, the legendary Packers defensive back whose interception was decisive in Super Bowl I, had taken residence in a Hyattsville assisted living facility, hobbled, suffering from Alzheimer's-like cognitive problems and unable to pay his bills on a $1,100 monthly NFL pension.
But at least they were alive. The autopsy of Andre Waters, who played 12 NFL seasons in the 1980s and 1990s and committed suicide at 44, revealed a ravaged brain consistent with the advanced dementia of a man in his 80s. Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, who won four Super Bowl championships and died of a heart attack at 50 in 2002, was plagued from the moment he left football by dementia and other brain injuries caused by his play, according to his doctors. Homeless and unable to find a job during much of his retirement, Webster also suffered from chronic physical pain, contended his family, who successfully sued the NFL's retirement board for more than $1.5 million after being denied a disability claim.
Last year, the weight of the stories sparked two sets of congressional hearings. With a rapt Pear listening last September in a Senate hearing room, former Minnesota Vikings offensive guard Brent Boyd — whose doctors blame concussions suffered in his playing days for his severe memory loss, bouts of depression and joblessness — blasted the league and union as deceitful in their treatment of veterans with disability claims: "There is fraud, corruption and collusion by the NFL." ...
"I'll tell you what isn't right," Pear fumes later. "It's when rich people destroy hurting players and stop them from getting hundreds of thousands in their disability benefits — and then have the nerve to tell some of them they should be grateful for getting a few bucks in charity. They try to make you feel guilty . . . Their policy has always been: Deny, deny and hope we die. That's the part fans don't know about. My wife says most fans don't want to know. She says, ‘They don't want to hear about you guys being hurt, Dave.' She said they don't want you to kill Santa Claus for them. They just want to watch their games."
When Heidi Pear arrives home, she finds Dave in bed in his winter coat, curled up, with his old college blanket over him. "This is what we have in front of us for our future," she says. "All these years Dave has had this, and how long was football really? Six years? And only four really good years?" She laughs casually, a coping laugh. "All that for football? The good days were so long ago. They don't feel real anymore." ...
Pear loved the attention. After sacking a quarterback, he enjoyed standing over him and lifting his arms toward the crowd, in the way of a victorious Roman gladiator asking the mob to decide the fate of the prostrate foe. "It was like, ‘Do I let this guy up, or do I end it for him now?'" he remembers. "The crowd loved it. I loved it. Football was like battling in the Colosseum." ...
NFL players have commonly grown up hearing stories of the game's legends persevering through serious injuries. The homilies carry a powerful message: A high pain threshold is to be emulated. Turley, a veteran of nine seasons in the NFL trenches, recalls being deeply moved by a story he heard about Jack Youngblood, the Hall of Fame Los Angeles Rams defensive lineman who limped off during a playoff game in 1979 with a fractured fibula.
"He had a Rams trainer duct-tape a magazine or something around his broken leg and then he went back in," Turley remembers. "You believe that? The lesson is, ‘You do whatever it takes to play . . . You get hurt, you find a way.' There's no time for whirlpools or for healing up just right. You just suck it up and push through, and if you can't, you're out. There's a saying around locker rooms: ‘No one has ever made the club from the tub.'"
Since his youth, [Kyle] Turley has embraced the physical risks of his sport. "If you've made it to the NFL, you've seen talented teammates fall by the wayside in high school and college from injuries," he says. "It's sad. But that's kind of the beauty of the game. It's primitive — there's no other sport like it. You're the gladiators. And when you're kind of an elite gladiator, the injuries you suffer are badges of honor — until they really hurt you."
Turley, who decided to retire in December, has suffered numerous concussions and already worries about his sudden bouts of forgetfulness. "I'm a little concerned about what's down the road for me," he says. His 32-year-old body is hurting more than ever. ...
(From The Washington Post Magazine, "BROKEN GLORY. Chances are, the millions of fans who tune in the Super Bowl today are oblivious to the many former NFL players hurt, hobbled and nearly broke after years of punishment on the field." I have the complete article, if you want it.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/29/AR2008012904015.html?sub=AR&sid=ST2008013101655
My wife had to take physical therapy after her knee surgery. She goes to a local therapist in Moorefield, a Christian. He has told her many of the customers are youngsters who have sports injuries in the local small high school. There is big money in sports: for the medical profession, for the advertisers, for the leagues, and for a very few short years for the few who make it to pro-sports, for the players. But you can ask a majority of them after the gods have fallen, is the present pain worth the past glory? People are lunatics to sacrifice their children to the sports gods: there may be a few moments of glory, but a lifetime of pain.
Shall we all gather at the Altar After Church?
Now Officially the "lord's day."
Christians can now legally worship the sports god on the Lord's Day
SPORTSNETDAILY, WorldNetDaily
NFL to churches: Party away!
League changes rules to allow Super Bowl events
2/22/08
An advocacy law firm has announced the National Football League has changed its rules to allow churches to stage Super Bowl events and parties without fear of violating copyright laws.
WND has reported in the past on the NFL's attempts to shut down special events churches have staged around the televising of the annual football championship, and how it previously issued statements that the events were allowed only if the television screen was smaller than a certain size, or if other requirements were met.
But the Rutherford Institute today confirmed that the NFL "has finally acceded to demands that it change its policies in order to accommodate churches who wish to show the Super Bowl on big-screen televisions."...
By GINA KOLATA,
... Collin [11 year old injured playing pee-wee football] had an injury that doctors used to think almost never occurred in children. He had torn the anterior cruciate ligament, or A.C.L., in his left knee, the main ligament that stabilizes the joint.
The standard and effective treatment for such an injury in adults is surgery. But the operation poses a greater risk for children and adolescents who have not finished growing because it involves drilling into a growth plate, an area of still-developing tissue at the end of the leg bone.
Although there are no complete or official numbers, orthopedists at leading medical centers estimate that several thousand children and young adolescents are getting A.C.L. tears each year, with the number being diagnosed soaring recently. Some centers that used to see only a few such cases a year are now seeing several each week.
And contrary to the old belief that boys are more prone to the injury than girls, as many as eight times more girls than boys are suffering the tears, doctors report. ...
The other reason for the reported surge in A.C.L. tears, doctors speculate, is that the best athletes are more or less constantly at risk. They play year-round and on multiple teams with frequent games, in which the risk of injury is higher than in practice because of the intensity of play.
"The kids are playing at really highly competitive levels at earlier and earlier ages," said Dr. Mininder S. Kocher, the associate director of the division of sports medicine at Children's Hospital in Boston.
Whatever the reason, the increase in diagnoses has created a new problem: what to do about the injury. ...
The New York Times 2/18/08
Complete article on request.
On Point, February 25, 2008
Two Million Minutes' is the amount of time that most kids spend in high school. It's also the title of a new documentary that compares how China, India and America are preparing their students for the 21st century.
China's and India's education in math and science in high school is leaving the US in the dust.
Education for excellence in the sciences has been replaced by education for excellence in sports, among other things. Highly skilled education is being accomplished in China and India in very basic, concrete buildings that American students would not even enter. Clearly, the quality of education in core disciplines is not based in the amount of money "invested" in buildings, nor as invested in the students themselves. Our emphasis on sports will reduce (is reducing) us to third-world status.
(On Point is archived on any NPR station that carries it. The 60 minute program will be well worth hearing.)
Just as 2007 was the year to commemorate the 200th year of the birth of Robert E. Lee even so 2008 commemorates the 200th year of the birth of Jefferson Davis. [Martin Luther King's birthday, Jan 15, Robert E Lee's birthday, Jan 19. We don't have to celibrate MLK; rather, we can celibrate Robert E. Lee.] The month of February was an important month in the history of the South and in the life of Davis for on February 9th 1861 Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens were elected President and Vice President of the Confederate States of America. This was the last great experiment for freedom on this continent.
Compatriots, we must not forget President Davis, and we would do well to study him and emulate his uncompromising life and steadfastness to Biblical principles. This year would be a wonderful time to prepare presentations on the life of President Davis.
Also, lest we forget another February event, it was on February 11th 1812 that the Vice President of the Confederacy the Honorable Alexander H. Stephens was born. Yes, this is the birth month of Little Aleck Stephens a man small in size who was a giant as a man.
On February 27th 1861 President Davis named three commissioners and sent them to Washington to seek, in good faith, to negotiate with the Federals, which proved fruitless among the Federal warmongers. [For first-hand details on the South's negotiations, see "Discussions, Secular." Vol IV. By R. L. Dabney. Sprinkle Publications. Lincoln admitted that he was forced to go to war.]
Ron Rumburg, Chaplin, Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Note: Our WV county is very "Southern." Our house is only about 20 miles from the VA line. A cemetery in the last town before you go up the mountain into VA flies a Confederate flag a little lower than the American flag.
BTW, don't forget your wife's birthday.
Republican Party
by Alan Stang
From the beginning, the Republican Party has worked without deviation for bigger, more imperial government, for higher taxes, for more wars, for more totalitarianism. From the beginning, the Republican Party has been Red.
Many patriots these days lament that the Republican Party has "lost its way" and "gone wrong." It has "diverged" from the fiscally responsible, small government philosophy of Republican heroes like Robert Taft whom Eisenhower's handlers finagled out of the nomination for President in 1952. We are told that is why today's Republican Establishment hates Dr. Ron Paul with such a passion; that they hate him because, like Taft, he is the quintessential Republican. Patriots who say that are mistaken, of course. The reason the Republican Establishment hates Dr. Paul is precisely that he is not a traditional, mainstream Republican, that his platform of freedom is an aberration. The Republican Party didn't "go wrong," didn't "go left."
It has been wrong from the beginning, from the day it was founded. From the beginning, the Republican Party has worked without deviation for bigger, more imperial government, for higher taxes, for more wars, for more totalitarianism. From the beginning, the Republican Party has been Red.
Why? In 1848, Communists rose in revolution across Europe, united by a document prepared for the purpose, entitled Manifesto of the Communist Party. Its author was a degenerate parasite named Karl Marx, whom a small gang of wealthy Communists – the League of Just Men – hired for the purpose. The Manifesto told its adherents and its victims what the Communists would do.
But the Revolution of 1848 failed. The perpetrators escaped, just ahead of the police. And they went, of course, to the united States. In 1856, the Republican Party ran its first candidate for President. By that time, these Communists from Europe had thoroughly infiltrated this country, especially the North. Many became high ranking officers in the Union Army and top government officials.
Down through the decades, Americans have wondered about Yankee brutality in that war. Lee invaded the North, but that sublime Christian hero forbade any forays against civilians. Military genius Stonewall Jackson stood like a stone wall and routed the Yankees at Manassas, but when Barbara Frietchie insisted on flying the Yankee flag in Frederick, Maryland, rather than the Stars and Bars, that sublime Christian hero commanded, according to John Greenleaf Whittier, "‘Who touches a hair of yon gray head/Dies like a dog! March on!' he said."
But the Yankees, invading the South, were monsters, killing, raping and destroying civilian property. In one Georgia town, some 400 women were penned in the town square in the July heat for almost a week without access to female facilities. It got worse when the Yankee slime got into the liquor. Some two thousand Southern women and children were shipped north to labor as slaves. Didn't you learn that in school?
Sherman's scorched earth March to the Sea was a horror the later Nazis could not equal. Why? Because the Yankees hated Negro slavery so much? There can be no doubt that the already strong Communist influence in the North, combined with that of the maniacal abolitionists, was at least one of the main reasons. Slavery was a tardy excuse, an afterthought they introduced to gain propaganda traction.
In retrospect, it appears that because nothing like this had ever happened here, Lee and Jackson did not fully comprehend what they were fighting. Had this really been a "Civil" War, rather than a secession, they would and could easily have seized Washington after Manassas and hanged our first Communist President and the other war criminals. Instead they went home, in the mistaken belief that the defeated Yankees would leave them alone. Lee did come to understand – too late. He said after the war that had he known at the beginning what he had since found out, he would have fought to the last man.
What was the South fighting? Alexander Hamilton was the nation's first big government politician. Hamilton wanted a strong central government and a national bank. Vice President Aaron Burr killed Hamilton in a duel. The problem was that Burr didn't kill him soon enough. Henry Clay inherited and expanded Hamilton's ideas in something called the "American System," which advocated big government subsidies for favored industries and high, ruinous tariffs, what we today call "socialism for the rich." Clay inspired smooth talking railroad lawyer Abraham Lincoln, who inherited the Red escapees from the Revolution of 1848 and became our first Communist President.
All of this comes again to mind with the recent publication of Red Republicans: Marxism in the Civil War and Lincoln's Marxists (iUniverse, Lincoln, Nebraska, 2007) by Southern historians Walter D. Kennedy and Al Benson, Jr. You must read this book, because it irrefutably nails down everything I have said above and then some. Let's browse through Red Republicans, and, as we do so, remember that the reason most Americans have never heard of all this is that the winner writes the history.
For instance, August Willich was a member of the London Communist League with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Needless to say, Willich became a major general in the Union Army. Robert Rosa belonged to the New York Communist Club and was a major in the 45th New York Infantry. Brigadier general Louis Blenker of New York was a "convinced Marxist." His 10,000 man division looted people in Virginia, inspiring the term "Blenkered." Many of his men were fresh from European prisons. Our first Communist President knew this, but turned them loose on the people of the South.
In Red Republicans we learn of nine European revolutionaries convicted of treason and banished to Australia. They escaped to the united States and Canada. Three or four of them, with no military experience, became Union generals, joining at least three other Marx confidants who already held that rank. "Every man of the nine became a member of the Canadian Parliament, a governor of a territory or state in the Union, party leader, prime minister or attorney general."
Many of these men, not all, were Germans, some four thousand of whom escaped to this country. Known as Forty-Eighters, they quickly added violent abolitionism and feminism to their Communist beliefs. In Missouri, Forty-Eighter Franz Sigel became a Union general and had uniforms made for his Third Infantry Regiment that closely resembled the uniforms worn by socialist revolutionaries in Germany in 1849.
Forty-Eighters who became high ranking Union commanders included Colonel Friedrich Salomon, Ninth Wisconsin, Colonel Fritz Anneke, Thirty Fourth Wisconsin and Colonel Konrad Krez, Twenty Seventh Wisconsin. Communist journalist Karl Heinzen wrote: "If you have to blow up half a continent and cause a bloodbath to destroy the party of barbarism, you should have no scruples of conscience. Anyone who would not joyously sacrifice his life for the satisfaction of exterminating a million barbarians is not a true republican." Heinzen came to this country and supported Lincoln.
Joseph Weydemeyer had to flee Germany when the Communist Revolution failed. In London he belonged to the Communist League and was a close friend of Marx and Engels. He came to this country in 1851, supported Lincoln, maintained his close friendship with Marx and became a Brigadier General in the Union Army.
Dedicated socialist Richard Hinton had to leave England. In this country he became a Union colonel, a Radical Republican and an associate of maniac John Brown's. So was Allan Pinkerton, who financed him. At one meeting with Brown, Pinkerton told his son: "Look well upon that man. He is greater than Napoleon and just as great as George Washington." Yes, Pinkerton was the great detective who founded the agency that bears his name. Why didn't you know that? In Kansas, mass murderer Brown enjoyed the support of wealthy Yankees (the Secret Six). August Bondi and Charles Kaiser, who worked with Brown there, were Forty Eighters.
What about Marx himself? Marx fled to England, where he is buried. He became the European correspondent for socialist Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, whose Managing Editor, Charles Dana, was a Communist. Dana hired Marx as a foreign correspondent. Marx wrote often of his kinship with the new Republican Party. Dana's generosity to Marx kept that scumbag alive.
Remember that Marx never worked a day to support his family, but did find time to impregnate their maid. Dana later became Assistant Secretary of War. All these people were in place when our first Communist President was elected on the Republican ticket in 1860 and provoked Lincoln's Communist War to Destroy the Union.
The GOP Convention of 1860 took place in Chicago, a flaming center of German Communism. Many such Reds were delegates, including Johann Bernhard Stallo and Frederick Hassaurek from Ohio and Heinrich Bornstein from Missouri, a friend of Marx. Socialist Carl Schurz was a delegate from Wisconsin. To guarantee German support in Illinois, Lincoln secretly bought the Illinois Staats Anzieger. After the election he awarded the editor a consular post.
Socialist Friedrich Kapp was editor of the New Yorker-Abendzeitung. He wrote propaganda for the new Republican Party and helped mightily to deliver the German-American vote to Lincoln. With other Forty-Eighters, he was an elector for Lincoln in 1860. Remember, these are just a few examples. You really need to read the book. Call, toll-free 1 (800) 288-4677 to order.
Remember that slavery, for these Communists, was just an afterthought, a tool. Before the War for Independence, it was the Southern colonies that petitioned the King to stop importing slaves into the South. Did you know that Jefferson tried to include in the Declaration of Independence a complaint against the King because his government had forbidden the colonies to end the slave trade? Jefferson's language was deleted to avoid giving offense to New England, which was making buckets of money trading slaves.
Indeed, did you also know that if slavery was what the South fought to defend, all it had to do was stay in the Union? Lincoln made clear that he would defend slavery and would not free slaves owned by a man in a state within the Union: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
Remember that the Emancipation Proclamation came well into the war. It was a propaganda stunt that freed only the slaves in areas controlled by the Confederacy; in other words, none. Meanwhile, prominent abolitionist Robert E. Lee, the first man Lincoln offered command of the Union Army, had freed his family's slaves long before the war. So, what were the Communists who came here after?
Republican Senator John Sherman, brother of the monster who Marched to the Sea, advised his fellow senators to "nationalize as much as possible [making] men love their country before their states. All private interests, all local interests, all banking interests, the interests of individuals, everything, should be subordinate now to the interests of the Government."
Germany was a decentralized collection of independent states. The goal of the Forty Eighters there was a "united, indivisible republic" in which those states would be dissolved. Land and private industry would be confiscated. The government would be transformed into a Socialist dictatorship. These are the ideas the Forty Eighters came to implement here. By the way, that is what Hitler did in the 1930s. That is what the fleeing Communists found so attractive in Lincoln.
So, again, the Republican Party did not "go wrong." It was rotten from the start. It has never been anything else but red. The characterization of Republican states as "red states" is quite appropriate. What do these revelations mean to us? Again, Dr. Paul is an aberration. He is not a "traditional Republican." A "traditional Republican" stands for high taxes, imperial government and perpetual war.
Dr. Paul is much more a traditional Democrat. I refer of course to the Democrat Party before the Communist takeover, which began with the election of Woodrow Federal Reserve-Income Tax-World War I Wilson and was consummated with the election of liar, swindler, thief, traitor and mass murderer Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I am talking about the Democrat Party of Thomas Jefferson.
So of course the Republican Party will do everything it can to sandbag Dr. Paul. Expect that. It rightly considers him an interloper who doesn't belong there. Yes, because of decades of perversion of popular opinion about the Republican Party, he must run as a Republican. But no patriot loyalty, and certainly no trust, should be forthcoming, because the Party is a sidewinder that will betray him in a Ghouliani minute.
Dr. No is on one side. The Republicrat Party is on the other.
News With Views, 2/1/08. Alan Stang, E-Mail: stangfeedback@gmail.com
Both parties are "Red" now.
By Cotton Mather
Parents, Oh how much ought you to be continually devising for the good of your children! Often devise how to make them "wise children"; how to give them a desirable education, an education that may render them desirable; how to render them lovely and polite, and serviceable in their generation. Often devise how to enrich their minds with valuable knowledge; how to instill generous, gracious, and heavenly principles into their minds; how to restrain and rescue them from the paths of the destroyer, and fortify them against their peculiar temptations. There is a world of good that you have to do for them. You are without the natural feelings of humanity if you are not in a continual agony to do for them all the good that ever you can. It was no mistake of an ancient writer to say, "Nature teaches us to love our children as ourselves."
Resolved —
At the birth of my children, I will resolve to do all I can that they may be the Lord's. I will now actually give them up by faith to God; entreating that each child may be a child of God the Father, a subject of God the Son, a temple of God the Spirit-and be rescued from the condition of a child of wrath, and be possessed and employed by the Lord as an everlasting instrument of His glory.
As soon as my children are capable of minding my admonitions, I will often, often admonish them, saying, "Child, God has sent His son to die, to save sinners from death and hell. You must not sin against Him. You must every day cry to God that He would be your Father, and your Saviour, and your Leader. You must renounce the service of Satan, you must not follow the vanities of this world, you must lead a life of serious religion.
Let me daily pray for my children with constancy, with fervency, with agony. Yea, by name let me mention each one of them every day before the Lord. I will importunately beg for all suitable blessings to be bestowed upon them: that God would give them grace, and give them glory, and withhold no good thing from them; that God would smile on their education, and give His good angels the charge over them, and keep them from evil, that it may not grieve them; that when their father and mother shall forsake them, the Lord may take them up. With importunity I will plead that promise on their behalf: "The Heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit unto them that ask Him." Oh! happy children, if by asking I may obtain the Holy Spirit for them!
I will early entertain the children with delightful stories out of the Bible. In the talk of the table, I will go through the Bible, when the olive-plants about my table are capable of being so watered. But I will always conclude the stories with some lessons of piety to be inferred from them.
I will single out some Scriptural sentences of the greatest importance; and some also that have special antidotes in them against the common errors and vices of children. They shall quickly get those golden sayings by heart, and be rewarded with silver or gold, or some good thing, when they do it. Such as,
Psalm 11:10 — "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."
Matthew 16:26 — "What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
1 Timothy 1:15 — "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief."
Matthew 6:6 — "When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret."
Ephesians 4:25 — "Putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour."
Romans 12:17, 19 — "Recompense to no man evil for evil… Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves."
Jewish treatise tells us that among the Jews, when a child began to speak, the father was bound to teach him Deuteronomy 33:4 — "Moses commanded us a law, even the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob." Oh! let me early make my children acquainted with the Law which our blessed Jesus has commanded us! ‘Tis the best inheritance I can give them.
I will cause my children to learn the Catechism. In catechizing them, I will break the answers into many lesser and proper questions; and by their answer to them, observe and quicken their understandings. I will bring every truth into some duty and practice, and expect them to confess it, and consent unto it, and resolve upon it. As we go on in our catechizing, they shall, when they are able, turn to the proofs and read them, and say to me what they prove and how. Then, I will take my times, to put nicer and harder questions to them; and improve the times of conversation with my family (which every man ordinarily has or may have) for conferences on matters of religion.
Restless will I be till I may be able to say of my children, "Behold, they pray!" I will therefore teach them to pray. But after they have learnt a form of prayer, I will press them to proceed unto points that are not in their form. I will charge them with all possible cogency to pray in secret; and often call upon them, "Child, I hope, you don't forget my charge to you, about secret prayer: your crime is very great if you do!"
I will do what I can very early to beget a temper of kindness in my children, both toward one another and toward all other people. I will instruct them how ready they should be to share with others a part of what they have; and they shall see my encouragements when they discover a loving, a courteous, an helpful disposition. I will give them now and then a piece of money, so that with their own little hands they may dispense unto the poor. Yea, if any one has hurt them, or vexed them, I will not only forbid them all revenge, but also oblige them to do a kindness as soon as may be to the vexatious person. All coarseness of language or carriage in them, I will discountenance.
I will be solicitous to have my children expert, not only at reading handsomely, but also at writing a fair hand. I will then assign them such books to read as I may judge most agreeable and profitable; obliging them to give me some account of what they read; but keep a strict eye upon them, that they don‘t stumble on the Devil's library, and poison themselves with foolish romances, or novels, or plays, or songs, or jests that are not convenient. I will set them also, to write out such things as may be of the greatest benefit unto them; and they shall have their blank books, neatly kept on purpose, to enter such passages as I advise them to. I will particularly require them now and then to write a prayer of their own composing, and bring it unto me; that so I may discern what sense they have of their own everlasting interests.
I wish that my children may as soon as may be, feel the principles of reason and honor working in them-and that I may carry on their education, very much upon those principles. Therefore, first, I will wholly avoid that harsh, fierce, crabbed usage of the children that would make them tremble and abhor to come into my presence. I will treat them so that they shall fear to offend me, and yet mightily love to see me, and be glad of my coming home if I have been abroad at any time. I will have it looked upon as a severe and awful punishment to be forbidden for awhile to come into my presence. I will raise in them an high opinion of their father's love to them, and of his being better able to judge what is good for them than they are for themselves. I will bring them to believe ‘tis best for them to be and do as I will have them. Hereupon I will continually magnify the matter to them, what a brave thing ‘tis to know the things that are excellent; and more brave to do the things that are virtuous. I will have them to propose it as a reward of their well-doing at any time, I will now go to my father, and he will teach me something that I was never taught before. I will have them afraid of doing any base thing, from an horror of the baseness in it. My first response to finding a lesser fault in them shall be a surprise, a wonder, vehemently expressed before them, that ever they should be guilty of doing so foolishly; a vehement belief that they will never do the like again; a weeping resolution in them, that they will not. I will never dispense a blow, except it be for an atrocious crime or for a lesser fault obstinately persisted in; either for an enormity, or for an obstinacy. I will always proportion the chastisements to the miscarriages; neither smiting bitterly for a very small piece of childishness nor frowning only a little for some real wickedness. Nor shall my chastisement ever be dispensed in a passion and a fury; but I will first show them the command of God, by transgressing whereof they have displeased me. The slavish, raving, fighting way of discipline is too commonly used. I look upon it as a considerable article in the wrath and curse of God upon a miserable world.
As soon as we can, we'll get up to yet higher principles. I will often tell the children what cause they have to love a glorious Christ, who has died for them. And how much He will be well-pleased with their well-doing. And what a noble thing ‘tis to follow His example; which example I will describe unto them. I will often tell them that the eye of God is upon them; the great God knows all they do and hears all they speak. I will often tell them that there will be a time when they must appear before the Judgment-Seat of the holy Lord; and they must now do nothing that may then be a grief and shame unto them. I will set before them the delights of that Heaven that is prepared for pious children; and the torments of that Hell that is prepared of old for naughty ones. I will inform them of the good things the good angels do for little ones that have the fear of God and are afraid of sin. And how the devils tempt them to do ill things; how they hearken to the devils, and are like them, when they do such things; and what mischiefs the devils may get leave to do them in this world, and what a sad thing ‘twill be, to be among the devils in the Place of Dragons. I will cry to God, that He will make them feel the power of these principles.
When the children are of a fit age for it, I will sometimes closet them; have them with me alone; talk with them about the state of their souls; their experiences, their proficiencies, their temptations; obtain their declared consent unto every jot and tittle of the gospel; and then pray with them, and weep unto the Lord for His grace, to be bestowed upon them, and make them witnesses of the agony with which I am travailing to see the image of Christ formed in them. Certainly, they'll never forget such actions!
I will be very watchful and cautious about the companions of my children. I will be very inquisitive what company they keep; if they are in hazard of being ensnared by any vicious company, I will earnestly pull them out of it, as brands out of the burning. I will find out, and procure, laudable companions for them.
As in catechizing the children, so in the repetition of the public sermons, I will use this method. I will put every truth into a question to be answered with Yes or No. By this method I hope to awaken their attention as well as enlighten their understanding. And thus I shall have an opportunity to ask, "Do you desire such or such a grace of God?" and the like. Yea, I may have opportunity to demand, and perhaps to obtain their early and frequent (and why not sincere?) consent unto the glorious gospel. The Spirit of Grace may fall upon them in this action; and they may be seized by Him, and held as His temples, through eternal ages.
When a Day of Humiliation arrives, I will make them know the meaning of the day. And after time given them to consider of it, I will order them to tell me what special afflictions they have met with, and what good they hope to get by those afflictions. On a Day of Thanksgiving, they shall also be made to know the intent of the Day. And after consideration, they shall tell me what mercies of God unto them they take special notice of, and what duties to God they confess and resolve under such obligations. Indeed, for something of this importance, to be pursued in my conversation with the children, I will not confine myself unto the solemn days, which may occur too seldom for it. Very particularly, on the birthdays of the children, I will take them aside, and mind them of the age which (by God's grace) they are come unto; how thankful they should be for the mercies of God which they have hitherto lived upon; how fruitful they should be in all goodness, that so they may still enjoy their mercies. And I will inquire of them whether they have ever yet begun to mind the work which God sent them into the world upon; how far they understand the work; and what good strokes they have struck at it; and, how they design to spend the rest of their time, if God still continue them in the world.
When the children are in any trouble-if they be sick, or pained-I will take advantage therefrom, to set before them the evil of sin, which brings all our trouble; and how fearful a thing it will be to be cast among the damned, who are in ceaseless and endless trouble. I will set before them the benefit of an interest in a CHRIST, by which their trouble will be sanctified unto them, and they will be prepared for death, and for fullness of joy in a happy eternity after death.
Among all the points of education which I will endeavor for my children, I hope to see that each of them-the daughters as well as the sons-may gain insight into some skill that lies in the way of gain (however their own inclination may most carry them), so that they may be able to subsist themselves, and get something of a livelihood, in case the Providence of God should bring them into necessities. Why not they as well as Paul the Tent-Maker! The children of the best fashion, may have occasion to bless the parents that make such a provision for them! The Jews have a saying worth remembering: "Whoever doesn't teach his son some trade or business, teaches him to be a thief."
As soon as ever I can, I will make my children apprehensive of the main end for which they are to live; that so they may as soon as may be, begin to live; and their youth not be nothing but vanity. I will show them, that their main end must be, to, acknowledge the great God, and His glorious Christ; and bring others to acknowledge Him: and that they are never wise nor well, but when they are doing so. I will make them able to answer the grand question of why they live; and what is the end of the actions that fill their lives? I will teach them that their Creator and Redeemer is to be obeyed in everything, and everything is to be done in obedience to Him. I will teach them how even their diversions, and their ornaments, and the tasks of their education, must all be to fit them for the further service of Him to whom I have devoted them; and how in these also, His commandments must be the rule of all they do. I will sometimes therefore surprise them with an inquiry, "Child, what is this for? Give me a good account of why you do it?" How comfortably shall I see them walking in the light, if I may bring them wisely to answer this inquiry.
I will oblige the children to retire sometimes, and ponder on that question: "What shall I wish to have done, if I were now a-dying?"-and report unto me their own answer to the question; of which I will then take advantage, to inculcate the lessons of godliness upon them.
If I live to see the children marriageable, I will, before I consult with Heaven and earth for their best accommodation in the married state, endeavor the espousal of their souls unto their only Saviour. I will as plainly, and as fully as I can, propose unto them the terms on which the glorious Redeemer would espouse them to Himself, in righteousness, judgment, and favor and mercies forever; and solicit their consent unto His proposals and overtures. Then would I go on, to do what may be expected from a tender parent for them, in their temporal circumstances.
(From Doug Phillips. This e-mail was sent as a special service of The Vision Forum, Inc. If you would like to subscribe, send a blank e-mail to familyvision-subscribe@lists.visionforum.com.)
For those of you are new to the Examiner, let me give a short explanation concerning Brother Joel Saripallis.
I was speaking at a conference last year, and Bro. Joel Saripallis approached me. He was a native missionary in India, who, through studying Scripture, had departed from dispensationalism. When he told his supporting churches, they dropped him as though he had departed the faith and become a follower of Muhammad. To make matters worse, his own father, who was also a native missionary in India, considered him now a heretic. His father's mission then became to get all of Joel's supporting churches to drop him. His sending church in TX had continued to support him because of the good work he was doing, but his father pressured that church also to drop him. (I spoke with the pastor, and he highly regarded the Saripallis family) He lost $3500 a month support when he departed from dispensationalism. Much of that support went to helping support the many churches he has started in India.
Foreign missionaries are not permitted in India, but he is a native, so he has no problems with the government. But he sure does with the Muhammadans and Hindus. He primarily goes into mountain areas where the gospel has never been preached, including into areas with human sacrifices, and areas where missionaries have been killed.
He told me of his situation, and that he needed a sending church in the US. He asked us to be that church. We are a very small group (after 35 years in the ministry, I had sort of retired, but could not stay away from teaching) just starting here in WV. After meeting with him here with our very small group, we agreed to be his sending church. You can read about the situation at http://biblicalexaminer.org/w200707.html#anchor397125
Please consider having him present his ministry to your group, and also give us contact information of other groups that might be interested in supporting such a man? There are some dispensational churches who have continued to support him, for his message is sound Scripturally, and he is seeing many folks saved, and lives changed.
Read the letters I have posted from him. http://biblicalexaminer.org/Joel.html
Here are the last two letters I received. He is coming to the states in March to try to raise support. Can you help? January, 2008
NEW YEAR greetings to you all from the land of many gods and yet without GOD. It is only by the grace of God that we greet you in 2008. We are indeed thankful to the Lord for His great Salvation and for the wonderful opportunity that He has given us to serve Him, individually and as a family.
As we desire to press forward with the Gospel work, we are constantly reminded of the reality of the perilous conditions, which we encounter in t:e'hing our fellow countrymen. Over the past 2 weeks, nearly 200 believers and 4 preachers were killed in separate incidents in the states of Chattisgarh and Orissa.
Chattisgarh is the state where there was an attack made on the local church that we had started a couple of years ago. I had mentioned it as a matter of prayer in November 2007. There have been stringent restraints enforced by the local governments in crippling all religious activities, especially against Christians. There have also been threats made against Americans, due to which the U.S. High Commission has issued warnings against visiting certain parts of the country.
Orthodox Hindu groups still view Christianity as an American/Western influence on our culture and are thus opposed to it. They are more severe in their actions against those who have converted to Christianity from Hindu backgrounds. However, this aspect has a positive side to it. That is, that those who come to Christ from Hindu backgrounds in these areas, do so knowing the price they have to pay.
We are headed to the mountains again on February 10th. We will be venturing into new areas and also spending time with those whom we have previously reached. We covet your prayers in all of our endeavors. We are still in need of transportation and are presently depending on public transport facilities. Our thanks go out to you all this year for assisting us in our service to the LORD.
By His Grace and For His Glory,
The Saripallis (Joel, Gaynor, Conrad, Cameron, Christian, Carlton)
Sponsoring Church: Providence Baptist Church: Pastor Ovid Need, PO Box 786, Moorefield WV 26836 (or 2141 North River Rd, Baker WV 26901)
Field Address: Plot 99, Road 2, Mathuranagar Colony, Secunderabad 500056, Andhra Pradesh, India
E-mail: joelsaripalli@msn.com
NOTE: Please consider supporting them. You can make checks out to Providence Baptist Church, and we will see that all the funds get to them.
Also, if you feel led to help support our effort with a new church here in the Baker-Moorefield WV area, you can also make the check out to Providence Baptist Church. Upon request, we can send a financial report to show where the funds go.
2/17/08
Hello Bro. Need, family and church,
It's a beautiful Monday morning as I write to you and thank God for keeping us alive. All good and perfect gifts flow from our Heavenly Father.
We had a blessed Sunday with several visitors and the church we have started in the city is surely growing. I had been away in the mountains over the past several days. I have not been there in over 3 months now. But, we have visited new places and have seen the Lord at work in the lives of many. Unfortunately, we had to cut our trip short due to severe violence that broke out in the bordering state, Orissa where 16 policemen and 5 civilians were killed in clashes with a notorious terrorist group called "Naxals."
I had especially wanted to visit with our old congregations since I am planning on heading to the U.S. sometime in March. I may not be seeing them for a while. But God saw differently.
I am planning on coming to the U.S. around the middle of March. I will probably be landing in Dallas, Texas and then working my way up to West Virginia. I will give you more details as I purchase the ticket, etc. Do pray with us that God might raise other churches that would be willing to get behind our ministry here in India. I also appreciate the wonderful job that you have done in posting our ministry on your website, in trying to help us.
May God continue to draw us together and to Himself as we strive to proclaim His name among the heathen.
Yours in His Kingdom, Bro. Joel and family
How Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Alan Greenspan Created the Sub-Prime [loans]
Congressional Democrats have been pushing hard for government regulators to crack down on the home-lending industry. Obama wants to make predatory lending a federal crime and Hillary has tried repeatedly to change the law to permit borrowers to break their contracts with lenders. Rep. Barney Frank declared the sub-prime crisis "a failure of the free-market." Nothing could be further from the truth. The crisis is the result of a decade's long activist war against the mortgage industry, triggered by the arrogant dismissal of supply-side economics by the head of the central bank. The market is the victim, not the perpetrator.
The mortgage industry has been under assault from the Left for some time. In the 1970s, activist groups waged a campaign against what they called "redlining" by community banks. Because residents of predominately black neighborhoods had more difficulty getting home loans than residents of white neighborhoods, banks were accused of intentionally excluding blacks from "access to credit." On the surface, this made little sense; after all, banks make money on loans, and a loan application rejected for non-economic reasons was a missed opportunity for profit.
Bankers argued that many of the applicants had insufficient income, or a spotty credit history, or insufficient collateral for the loans. Perhaps they also noticed that entire neighborhoods had been destroyed in race riots and were hesitant to take houses in violence-prone communities as collateral. Not surprisingly, the activists won the propaganda war, and the bankers played quite well as villains straight out of central casting lost.
The result was the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. The premise of which is that because community banks made their profits based on money that they got from the community, they were morally required to "give something back." Ignoring the fact that the banks had already given something back—namely, interest payments on the deposited funds—the government decided to change the law. Now, banks would be given a score on their level of community reinvestment. Banks with high scores would find the regulators more willing to approve mergers, acquisitions and new office openings. Banks which had a low score would feel the Feds regulatory wrath. Jimmy Carter signed it into law and money started to flow into minority neighborhoods.
But much of the money went into"community development loans"—essentially below market rate credit to community groups dominated by the same activists who pushed for the regulation in the first place. Eventually, the Clinton administration took an interest and pushed for more regulation in this area. In 1995, they revamped the Community Reinvestment Act, raising the bar so that banks had no choice but to comply. More loans began to flow into minority housing. In order to get the riskier loans off the books, the industry began to bundle these mortgages together in 1997 and sell them on the open market in a process known as "securitization."
Of course, the banks charged higher interest rates for higher risk borrowers. And, of course, they were attacked for this. Thus, the concept of predatory lending was born. The idea is that these banks could not justify the higher interest that they were charging for these "sub-prime" loans, because in reality these loans were not as risky as the bankers claimed that they were. A virtual army of activists, trial lawyers and a coalition of the willing among the press corps waged war against these "predatory" lending institutions, who the activists told us were exaggerating the risks of lending in minority neighborhoods.
It is now clear, that the bankers were, if anything, overly optimistic about the abilities of the borrowers to repay. In short, the magnitude of the default rates in some of these lending categories show that the banks were not charging enough to cover for the fact that these lenders were far more prone to walk away from their loan obligations.
Alan Greenspan, of course, made it worse. When the Bush tax cuts kicked in, business analysts (including myself) predicted that the economy would boom. Many in the establishment press declared that the tax cuts would be ineffective and that the Fed should open the money spigot. Greenspan sided with the latter and the money gushed into the economy. Because the Fed money spigots empty into the banking sector, the banks found themselves flush with cash. Because they were already under the gun to make more high-risk minority loans, and because there was little growth in selling loans to the credit-worthy, who already owned houses, the money flowed into sub-prime loans.
This disaster was the fault of the government from beginning to end. The government forced the banks to make loans they didn't want to make. When they made the loans, the regulators tormented them for charging more than justified by the actual risk. Now that the borrowers are defaulting en masse, the same crowd is now blaming the lending market for underestimating the risk of these same loans. And once again, they're claiming that they have the solution. After 30 years of regulatory failure in this arena, we'd be nuts to believe them. •
Jerry Bowyer is the chief economist for BenchMark Financial and a frequent contributor to CNBC, Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. Read more of his columns at Townhall.com/columnists/JerryBower
Townhall, 2/08. Pp. 58, 59. (townhall.com)
Judges: ‘Gay' exposure OK for kindergarteners
Parents citing religious beliefs vow to take case to U.S. Supreme Court
WorldNetDaily.com 2/1/08
In a case that could wind up in the U.S. Supreme Court, an appeals panel upheld dismissal of a lawsuit by Massachusetts parents seeking to prevent discussion of homosexual families in their children's elementary school classrooms.
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday agreed with a judge's decision last year that a school can expose children to contrary ideas without violating their parents' rights to exercise religious beliefs.
"Public schools," wrote Judge Sandra L. Lynch, "are not obliged to shield individual students from ideas which potentially are religiously offensive, particularly when the school imposes no requirement that the student agree with or affirm those ideas, or even participate in discussions about them." ...
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