Stark Contrast.....Redux

          If you haven't read Mark Levin's newest book Plunder And Deceit what's keeping you? I read the book first and then listened to the CDs. For the investment of about $18 and a few hours of your time you can at least come to the point where you understand the seriousness of some of the problems that we face as a nation. I have a review of the book a few posts back.
         The following is a short description of what these posts have been all about, and then a little story that is most likely going to be played out again in the near future, only with even more serious consequences than even World War II.


         As I look over five and a half years (now almost seven years) of posts, most of them remain as relevant as if written today. Some indeed are topical but the central themes are the same.....America, prepare to meet thy God....America is in the midst of a coup.....social media dumbs down an already reality intolerant American mind.....the American Christian church believes itself to be healthy but it is mistaken.....and then to Europe and other nations of this world, if we lose this fight, you lose also.....and concerning politics and government.... there is little difference between the establishment wing, or the the elites of the Republican Party and the Democrat Party, both of which truly serve only the secular ruling class of this world.
         As for the Christian posts and message, they can be summarized as.....they don't come any weaker or more unworthy than me.....today is the day for your salvation, not tomorrow......there is no more precious object on this earth, no more valuable possession, than that book gathering dust on the second shelf of your bookcase next to Tom Clancy, Stephen King, Danielle Steel or any one of such authors who you can read forty-five minutes every night before bed.....and.... the majesty, the power and the glory of Jesus Christ is such that the closer you get, the more you know your need of Him as both Lord and Savior, the more you see His righteous judgement, the more thankful you are for His mercy, and the more fleeting this world and its baubles appear!
        Stark Contrast.....May, 2014

         Surely somewhere in America on that bleak or snowy Saturday in early December 1941 a young man sat looking out of a restaurant window, or maybe a coffee shop, with a young lady at his side who was his new bride. They had the world at their fingertips as he was just awarded that treasured college diploma he worked so long and hard for, and she wore the wedding band she had dreamed about since they first met in grade school. They looked into each other's eyes with hardly a care in the world. Oh, the plans they had so much fun making.....a small cottage with a white picket fence that someday would keep little ones and maybe a puppy dog from straying as they play.
          And then the morning came and as they walked into church the somber faces took their joy away for they had not heard the news from that group of islands where the sun shown year round and warm surf slapped the white beaches. America was in the war against evil that they had only given themselves minutes a day to reflect upon. The young bride knew immediately that their dreams would now be put on hold if they would ever come true. Surely the prayers of all present in that worship service were salted with tears.
          Not every generation has its hopes interrupted as that generation did on December 7th, 1941 but our younger generation today may indeed be another one. Colleges and universities are having their commencement right about now and the hopes and dreams of many wearing mortar boards and gowns are exactly the same as the young couple that I described.
          I'm a news junky and the daily pain from the news of this world has made it such that I could never lose myself in plans or even hopes and dreams. Love is disappearing in the world....no.... worse than that, it has been hijacked by greed, tortured by pride and what is left is directed to ourselves and we in America are paying dearly for our dalliances.
          The 1943 Academy Award for Best Picture went to the 1942 American film Mrs. Miniver in which Greer Garson also won for Best Actress. It portrays the upper middle class Miniver family who live outside of London in a very nice home on the River Thames. I list this film as one of my favorites in my Profile for this blog.
          Life could not be sweeter for Mrs. Miniver and her family as she is smitten over an expensive new hat and her husband (Walter Pidgeon) outdoes her by purchasing a sporty new vehicle. Their eldest son has taken up the pipe at university and spouts his political views with heartfelt sincerity but naive certainty much like our youth today and very much like myself at that age. War looms on the horizon but is not taken seriously until England declares war on Germany. Life then changes for the family as their son goes off to war and as their own home is damaged by bombs.
          There is a church scene at the beginning of the film and another at the end and the stark contrast of the two is the essence of the film. Americans would already have experienced the realities of war when the movie came out and the intended purpose of the motion picture was to rally the American public by showing them the courage and stamina of the British homefront in a war they had already been in for three years. Winston Churchill commented on the book and the film in that they did more for the war effort than a flotilla of battleships.
          I highly recommend the film for we are in need of a reality check on what lies before us in America, and our congregations are in need of soberness in our worship services that would eliminate distractions and focus us solely on who we are there to worship.

Who Is Jim Webb

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          In the beginning of the English Civil War the Earl of Manchester was Oliver Cromwell's superior. Cromwell considered him slow, indecisive and lacking enthusiasm in opposing the tyranny and incompetence of the king. Manchester, for his part, was more concerned with Oliver Cromwell recruiting men of 'low birth' for his army....uh, that would be men like me. Cromwell's philosophy was different as shown here in a quote from a letter to others in the Parliamentary forces, "I beseech you be careful what Captains of Horse you choose....a few honest men are better than numbers....If you choose godly honest men to be Captains of Horse, honest men will follow them."
          The 1970 film Cromwell starred Richard Harris as Oliver Cromwell and it depicted a confrontation between these two men. The Earl of Manchester was delaying in his charge against the king's Cavaliers. Incensed, Cromwell rode up to him and promised something like this "Manchester, I am going defeat this king's army, even if I have to go through you first!"

          The previous paragraph is from a post last published on June 25th that is titled The Republican Party And Its Discontents. The Earl of Manchester represents the Republican Party as it functions today. Men like Jim DeMint, Ted Cruz and Mark Levin are the Oliver Cromwells of today.      

Who Is Jim Webb 

        Who is Jim Webb? Well, he appears to be a good ole' Southern boy who traveled extensively as his father had a distinguished career in the United States Air Force. He was an accomplished amateur boxer, a lefty, who, unless I dreamed this, I saw him box on television many, many years ago. If I ever meet him, I'll ask him if my memory could be correct. He was a genuine decorated hero in Vietnam. He served as an Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs and United States Secretary of the Navy... both under Ronald Reagan. He's an author of many best selling books, a number of which I read, including his latest I Heard My Country Calling, a memoir centering on his father which I highly recommend.
        Quite some time ago I had hoped that he would seek political office on a national stage and he did....and I was then disappointed...for he ran as a Democrat against George Allen for the Senate seat from Virginia. I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning that election night and watched Allen's lead disappear. Jim Webb was to be Virginia's new Senator and I got two hours of sleep before going to work.
         How he managed to serve as a Senator in the same party of Barack Obama as president...I'll probably never know. He served only one term of six years in the Senate before announcing that he would not seek a second term and I had hoped that it was because he could not take it anymore. Maybe someone will ask him that question for he recently announced that he was throwing his hat into the ring for President of the United States.
       Under normal circumstances I could never support him because of a couple of his political stances. But these are not normal times. Does he even have a chance to get that nomination? Well, I think that there's more of a chance of him getting the nomination than there is of America surviving as a nation to even get to a convention and election.
       Here is my assessment of his possibilities....should God give us more time. This is not the Democrat Party that either he or I grew up in. Rather it is now nothing but a consortium of special interest groups... each passionate and each caring only of their own issues. Jim Webb is one of the very very few Democrats from the past......so it would be unlikely that he could win the nomination......unless......conservatives determined that the fix is in once again on the Republican side and supported him, and that enough Democrats suddenly realized that this is no longer a Democrat Party but a Marxist cabal. Does that mean that they would also have to like the Republican Party? I don't even like the Republican Party as it now is!
        One doesn't hear Jim Webb's candidacy mentioned much in the news and there is good reason for this....the media knows that he is not really one of them. Yes they needed an additional Senator from the Party at the time but they know very well that an administration led by him could very well take the Party back to the days of John, Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Scoop Jackson and Zell Miller. It might prove to be retrogressive, unprogressive and possibly even American! Perish the thought!
       I am a Christian and a Conservative and a member of a political party, the Republican Party, that once relied on both but now has need of neither....or more accurately 'thinks' it has no need of either. This Republican Party will increasingly lie to us, condescend to us, threaten us and then attempt to scare us with Hillary. They admit that we would not be passionate for the Dauphin prince Jeb Bush, or any of the other stand-ins but are confident that we will at least show up. This is a big.....big.....mistake! They have lied to us so often and delivered so rarely that we would not 'show up,' or at least show up in such low numbers that they would be hard pressed to beat even Joe Biden. And it gets worse, and that is where Jim Webb comes in.
       So just who is Jim Webb and what would we want from him? The courage that he had in Vietnam, translated to the political sphere, would be one thing, for then he surely would rather lose and even be humiliated than cave in to who are essentially America's enemies. An originalist on the Supreme Court would be another. That would be someone who actually would interpret according to what the authors of the Constitution wrote, and not according to their own biases.
        If Jim Webb is anything like what I once knew him to be, the Republican Party should start shaking in their boots; and as for the Democrats, if Jim Webb challenges the 'special interest' make-up of his party and does not compromise, and conservatives indicate that they would rather have him than an 'establishment' Republican, then the Babylonian Captivity of the Democratic Party may be over.
         Oliver North is another genuine hero from Vietnam who has a lot of experience in the higher echelons of government. He and Jim Webb know each other very well. The heavily favored midshipman Jim Webb lost the 147 pound boxing championship in 1967 to Oliver North. North was asked a year ago what he thought of Jim Webb running for president. Now he hem-hawed a bit to make it known that he wanted a Republican president but did then say...."Jim Webb would make a great president..."
        Ted Cruz is extraordinary in both intellect and courage. I wouldn't be voting for Jim Webb in such a match-up but in either outcome we would have a president once again!

America Unravelling

         I hesitate to admit this for you might think me trite. Years ago I would write a post warning that America was at the precipice and then give examples of the mayhem of the day. A Year after that I might pen another warning saying things had even gotten much worse in America. Maybe nine months later I would write yet another warning with a similar downgrade. Then six months after that I would write another, followed by another four months later, each time America slides even further into chaos and possibly into anarchy. Well, It's down to writing warnings almost every week.
         The murders in Virginia today, because of the alarming precedence set with the filming of it, are yet another step down into the inferno. The event itself and the video will shock.....and then be almost forgotten as the media blames it on guns. This....our blindness.... is God's work. He has departed from our nation as a whole, and there is no more glaring example of this than this treaty with Iran that will be voted on in our Congress. Nothing could explain how we could even come to consider such an insanely suicidal pact other than a complete absence of wisdom! The following preface is from this past January. The post itself, America Unravelling, is from 2009, and yes.....things are exponentially worse today than they were back then!

          A New York Times op-ed piece a few months ago by journalist and author Roger Cohen titled The Great Unravelling: A Necessary Look at Reality was plastered all over the Drudge Report. Cohen's piece begins "It was a time of unravelling. Long afterward, in the ruins, people asked: How could it happen?"
          The author then gave his own take on the collapsing societies of the world, bringing up beheadings, wars, power grabs, bored revolutionaries, weak leaders, more wars, Fascism, hatreds, anti-Semitism, Facebook, frayed fabrics of society, dystopia, plagues, disorientation and more, and ends his commentary with "Until it was too late and people could see the Great Unravelling for what is was and what it had wrought."
           You can access this article on a number of web sites or by Googling "The Great Unravelling." Make sure you don't mistakenly put in "America Unravelling" or you might just get my post from 2011, for this unravelling process, this chaos, this mind-numbing obscurantism that we as a people have subjected ourselves and everyone around us to is not only evident to many but calls out to us to wake up, for our nation is not merely ill, it is expiring!
           I would change this one thought of Mister Cohen's. whereas he wrote concerning the 'Great Unravelling'..."and what it had wrought," I would chose the words from Samuel F. B. Morse...."What has God wrought," which he had taken from the Old Testament book Numbers, Chapter 23 and verse 23 "What hath God wrought?"'
           And of that picture accompanying the article in the New York Times with one single thread holding together an unravelling rope..... I've had a similar picture hanging on my locker at work for a few years now, for we as a nation are indeed unravelling! Our spiraling downward cannot go on much longer without impact. How we will handle that impact is the more pertinent question for today.

America Unravelling.....2011

          Charles Spurgeon wrote these words over a century ago, The yoke of affliction, disappointment, and excessive labor is by no means to be sought; but when the Lord lays it upon us in our youth it frequently develops a character which glorifies God and blesses the church. Come, my soul, bow thy neck; take up thy cross. It was good for thee when young, it will not harm thee now. 
          America is heading at breakneck speed in acquiring such a yoke. We are but a shell of what we were. Where the aroma of our freedom and liberty once wafted throughout the world it is now the stench of our culture that permeates much of the globe. There should be no surprise here for when a civilization becomes so prosperous that its economy is totally dependent on what its malls can sell, its influence for good becomes depleted in proportion to the disgust that is generated. We have become a seller to the world of that which makes it vomit. Given time, all these nations would have generated their own pollution, we just accelerated the situation. It's the nature of man without God. They don't hate us because we are good, they hate us, many of them, because we once gave the appearance of it and have since, in their eyes, let them down.
        Where did it begin? Hugh Hefner is as good a guess as any but what difference does it make? Our television screens rage against God! Our streets are violent and we as a people have become desensitized to it. Our pulpits preach peace when there is no peace; thinking they are building faith in God, they are concealing His righteous anger. Gone almost, is the statesman, replaced by the pure politician. Government runs our lives, obsessed and drunken with power. I see no way that God will have mercy upon us as we exist today without a radical reformation. It would be ludicrous as evidenced from many examples in Scripture, that God would give us, as a nation, more time to sell our wares while profaning His name, refusing to let our children come to Him (those that we do not abort,) destroying His creation of the family and demanding that we are masters of our own fate.
         It doesn't matter what I, or anyone so inclined as I, might say. For they are just words. God has blinded us to a world hastening to destruction. We read the news as much as to say "Things are dangerous....over there!" We have become insulated by our entertainments. Our motto has become Red Solo Cup...Let's Have A Party. We cannot see a day past the Super Bowl and when that is over everything will be put on hold until the end of March Madness, and so on. We are to be pitied, but pitied only by those who do not know the majesty of God and His omnipotent power, for His mercy is as abundant as His judgments are strict, but only in response to repentance! There may very well be a yoke of affliction coming upon us for we have made it abundantly clear that only such a yoke can awaken us and even then, will our response be one of rending our garments and seeking God's mercy, to grow once again as a nation and church, or will we then blame God and those who did warn us?   
         Do we really want to hear peace and safety when we are at the edge of the abyss? The same Scripture that recorded God's judgments upon nations recorded his mercies. It would behoove all of us in America to look into that Word to be informed of our creator, our benefactor, our sustainer up until now, our shepherd and the ruler of all the nations.

Difficult Days Ahead

        The following is very personal in opinion and didactic only in so far as what would we have if not a mind, a desire to know God and proclaim His glory.

         Should the problems in America build into catastrophes they should have one of two effects on its citizens, some people will humble themselves before God.....and others will become even more hardened. If the return of Jesus Christ is indeed near, the latter will far exceed the former for that is the picture that is painted in Scripture. The Christian church itself will become divided into the haves and the have-nots....'have' Jesus Christ as their Savior and 'have only a name,' misused and abused, and not Jesus as their Redeemer.
         This is a difficult scene to envision. I cannot put into words the turmoil of the mind, at least initially, that will accompany a time like this. I bring it up because I think that we have to know what would be ahead...and we have to prepare for it. Believe it or not it is hard for me to write this. I chose a while ago to look into these things and cannot turn back now. I don't regret it but in the same vein I don't smile at the thought of those first days because I knew and understood so little.
         We have the Rapture theory with us in the church today, more accurately the Pre-Tribulation Rapture theory. I'm sure that the intent was good when it was seized upon and proclaimed as Biblical truth but it is not in fact Biblical. Oh yes, there will be a Rapture and the glory of it can hardly be imagined, but it will come very near the actual Second Coming of our Lord. How do I know this? Well, I don't know with any more certainty than what you believe for we are Christians doing our best to understand God's Word to us. I may sound like I know with certainty but that is because all we can do is study God's Word and proclaim what we are confident of and hope and pray that the Holy Spirit is the source. We have the history and the evolution of the church itself to study and consider and we have the mind that God gave us. That must be good enough, for that is what God planned.
         There is a large percentage of the church today that spends a lot of time studying prophesy in the Bible. You would have only to turn on Christian television or go into a Christian bookstore to see this. Their desire to learn of the return of Jesus is good but not so good the further study that is done for the 'experts' today are often misguided and in error the more popular they are, while the better ones struggle to sell books. In fact that's the same with just about all Christian literature.
         As for 'preparations,' they are no more than preparations throughout the past two-thousand years for we are pilgrims here and have always been pilgrims. This world may be more evil than it ever has been but the same temptations exist...only packaged much prettier and easier to access. There were times of peace and times of war, times of persecution and times of great fellowship, and times of great preaching and times of......well times much like today. If indeed the Lord has not already mounted His horse and summoned His angels, then He has further plans and more souls to save, but our task remains the same as it had for every generation....to look with hope for His return.....and to keep watch.
        

Trump Would Be The Only Candidate To Demand It

       The following was written at the beginning of the year as Barack Obama was giving his latest State Of The Union Address. I had published posts for the last few years imploring the reader to demand of Republicans in Congress not to attend this annual farce, and this year not to even invite this man to give a speech, for our Constitution does not require it. It all fell on deaf ears of course. What is not certain is that we even make it to another speech but what is certain, in my mind anyway, is that Donald Trump would be the only candidate to demand an end to what Thomas Jefferson referred to as the Speech From The Throne from the tradition of European monarchies, he himself refusing to even give one while president.

"...Your Shepherds Are Asleep, Your Nobles Slumber."
     
        How did we come to this point? It was only twenty-six years ago that one of America's greatest presidents, upon looking over the Oval Office for the last time as president, reached into his desk drawer and grabbed a handful of peanuts and walked over as was his daily custom and threw them on the patio for the squirrels, only this time he left a hand written note....."Beware, the new guy has a dog!" We could trust this man. I think that we loved him. We would stand behind him in any situation for we knew that he loved this country and its traditions, and honored its heritage. The country was as religious as it had been in quite some time, full of this new, albeit theologically frail, breed of evangelical. How did we squander it all in less than three decades?
         The first verse that came to my mind in answering my own question was Judges 17:6... "In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did whatever he wanted." Scottish Presbyterian minister Samuel Rutherford wrote Lex, Rex in the mid-seventeenth century and his meaning in this title was that the King was not supreme but rather the law, specifically God's law. Here is where we failed.....God's law is ignored in America and therefore we have no 'king.' Indeed...today...everyone does whatever they want.
       May God have mercy upon us and see us as Nineveh in Jonah's time where He asked of Jonah "Should I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than 120,000 people who cannot distinguish between their right hand and their left....." and may it not be the Nineveh of Nahum's day with the proclamation in chapter 3 verses 18 and 19....."Your shepherd's are asleep, O King of Assyria, your nobles slumber. Your people are scattered on the mountains with none to gather them. There is no easing your hurt; your wound is grievous. All who hear the news about you clap their hands over you...." (ESV)
    
Note: the anecdote about Ronald Reagan came from a former Secret Service agent guarding President Reagan... Joseph Petro, and the book was Standing Next To History: An Agent's Life Inside the Secret Service.

It Is All A Charade

         The following post was written only two months ago but it seems as if every single day since has brought new evidence that God has taken away His hedge of protection. We are unravelling as rapidly as the rubber bands in a golf ball that as a child I would cut open just to see what was inside, and our core has been exposed in Planned Parenthood videos. 

It Is All A Charade

         It wasn't signed on July 4th, 1776 as most may have presumed. It was adopted by the Continental Congress on that day but actually signed a month or so later. It's assumed that John Hancock was the first signature on the document, our Declaration of Independence, so one might argue that Hancock's signature began the United States of America. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's signature on the decision designating same-sex marriage a "fundamental right" ended that great American Experiment almost 239 years later, for everything is a charade from now on.
         President Reagan nominated what may have been the greatest legal mind in the nation, Robert Bork, to the Supreme Court in 1987 but he was 'borked' as the word came to be known by Edward Kennedy in his speech on the Senate floor..."Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizen's doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens." Robert Bork was rejected and two nominees later Anthony Kennedy's nomination was approved. Society did totally collapse, only ironically it was under Kennedy's tutelage!
         This decision announced today federalizes the war on Christianity, it officially rejects Jesus Christ and annuls the relationship of benefactee and benefactor, and takes aim at the children in this once great country for they will be brutalized by the educational system on this.
         The silver lining in this is that surely the Second Coming of Jesus Christ must be near. We have been in chaos for many years now but that mere chaos has devolved into orgiastic mayhem. No sane observer can be anything but shaken by the amount of violence in so many places in the world at one time. In all of Scripture only the Prophet Jeremiah weeps as violently as we should be weeping today, although Daniel's vision of the "latter time" did have this chilling effect on him..."And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for several days." The angel Gabriel had just expounded on that vision in..."And at the latter end of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their limit, a king of bold face, one who understands riddles, shall arise. His power shall be great-but not by his own power; and he shall cause fearful destruction and shall succeed in what he does, and destroy mighty men and the people who are the saints. By his cunning he shall make deceit prosper under his hand, and in his own mind he shall become great. Without warning he shall destroy many. And he shall even rise up against the Prince of Princes, and he shall be broken-but by no human hand. (Daniel chapter 8, ESV)
           We have all, in one way or another, brought this catastrophe upon ourselves. The fact that many today see clearly what is happening does not absolve us. I spent decades in a narcissistic stupor and even my efforts of late fall grossly short of what would be expected from someone who has come to see the glory and majesty, though dimly, of the risen Jesus Christ.
           We as a nation have taken our rebellion against God to a new low. We sold our birthright for a mess of pottage. And we shall reap the whirlwind that we have sown.
      

Munich And Vienna

     

         George W. Bush contemplated bombing Iran, going so far as to have plans drawn up, this according to his memoirs. It was my feeling at the time that the upcoming election for Bush's successor was the reason it was delayed. John McCain could do it! So this issue of Iran was front and center when Barack Obama met Benjamin Netanyahu in May of 2009, four months after Obama assumed the office. In that meeting Obama told the Israeli Prime Minister to give Iran until December to see if they respond to ultimatums.
          It was reported in 2013 that some Israeli government officials believed that Iran already had at least one bomb. There were other analysts that agreed with this. I had written a few years ago that I also believed that. The Soviet Union exploded their first atomic bomb only four years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that was with the technology of over sixty years ago. The back and forth dialogue in the press over the last few years on when Iran would get the bomb borders on the absurd. But, if you choose to believe that Iran is only slowly getting there.....well, that's politics today, not common sense.
        Folks, this is the stuff that world wars are made of. This 'deal' is akin to the naivete of believing that Hitler wanted peace at Munich and this is off of the same drawing board that gave Stalin Eastern Europe....only the stakes are higher and we do not have the hegemony in military, economic or world affairs that we once had, nor is our president even on our side, for he favors Islamic nations over Israel and everybody over us!
        Why bring this up and why write so much in these posts about our own culpability and rejection of God if there is going to be calamity anyway? I, and so many others, bring it up because God can extend His mercy to a humbled and repentant people. It won't stop these coming hostilities but the warnings may be recalled later. Certainly many will come to see that our calamities came because 'we had forgotten God.' Others will only harden their hearts further. How much we pray today may determine how many recall these warnings later.
         

I'm Just Not Much For Card Tricks!

         I've wanted to tell this little story but needed a old post to go along with it and partially explain it. I found that old post and it follows the story. A couple of Saturdays ago we had a family get together which mostly consisted of playing cards. During a break, my brother-in-law wanted to show me a card trick. I usually use the breaks to brush up in my mind on something like our national debt or China's problematic economic growth rate but OK, let's see it.
         He shuffled the deck and then laid out the trick by dealing three vertical rows of thirteen cards. "Pick a card. Don't tell me what it is but what row is it in." "First row." He picked the rows up in a certain order and laid down three more rows. "OK, what row is it in now?" "Uh.........I forgot the card." He half rolled his eyes and said "OK, let's do it again." So again he shuffled and laid down three rows of thirteen cards. "So, pick a card and tell me what row it's in." "OK...middle row." He once again picked up the rows in a certain order and laid down another three rows of thirteen cards. "OK, what row is the card in?"
         Now, true, I'm 65 years old and memory lapses should be expected but.......I once again forgot what card I had picked! What to do? If I admit this, the card trick will be forgotten and everyone will be worried about me. I had to think fast! "Uh...third row." He picked up the cards in order once again and laid down three more rows. "Middle Row!" And a third and last time....."First row this time." He then just mixed the cards all together on the card table.....maybe this would have been a good card trick. He picked them up and shuffled them and then started laying one card face up at a time for about 15 or so cards. "OK...the next card I turn over will be your card!" He turned over one more....I can't remember what it was......"Is this it?"  Have you ever tried to make your eyes light up when there really was no reason to? Well, I lit my eyes up and said...."Yeah, that's it all right!" I prefer to focus on the lightning-quick mental agility and cognitive control that got me out of that mess than forgetting the card twice!
         Now for an attempt at an explanation:

Focused

         While weed wacking in the yard yesterday, in a somewhat somber mood, I called for my wife to come over and said "If something were to happen to me, I should give directions on a few things that you're not familiar with..." and I proceeded to tell her how to use the electric weed wacker. She seemed interested and responded....."Come inside a little later and in case something would ever happen to me I'll show you how to load the dishwasher."
         She likes little knick-knacks and often orders from those catalogs we all get in the mail. I was looking for my keys earlier today and she pointed to them hanging on the wall. I thanked her, grabbed the keys and began to walk away. She folded here arms with that look. "What?" She pointed. I looked to see a black wrought iron mouse on the wall whose tail I grabbed the keys from. "Oh that's nice!"
         It's not easy living with Special Dog. We might be on a drive in the country where she is admiring the hills and the foliage while I'm reviewing in my mind the difference between a Menshevik and a Bolshevik......"Oh, look at that cute farmhouse over there!" "Uh-huh." Pause....."There's an elephant dancing on the roof."......."Uh-huh."
         My mind is often focused on what is transpiring in America today and in the Christian church. Working in the electric power generating industry, I often find myself in awe at what I see that engineers can accomplish. I give them all the credit in the world for the hard work, studying and perseverance they employed to get where they are. The same can be said for medicine and many other sciences and crafts but there's a fly in the ointment of genius, for one cannot simply apply calculus to government or a PHD to saving faith, but that's what is often attempted, for the groundwork is not done in these areas, nor the studying, and perseverance to even contemplate them likely ends when the game.....any game.....begins. The intellect is there, it's just not being used beyond its service to our material or prideful desires. Politics and religion are the two subjects where one is automatically an expert!
        In God's eyes the janitor is as honorable as the surgeon, the dirt farmer as the college professor, the 99 IQ as the member of Mensa, for He and He alone gave us our station in life and our abilities. To admire others with great abilities in the sciences is a reflection of God's grace to us as it is for the great lawyer to admire the physical toil of the hard working mechanic.
        If our minds revolve around and take unspeakable joy in not only the designer of this universe and everything in it but in His very words to us in our Bibles, in His unimaginable love and undeserving longsuffering, and in His omniscience to know our thoughts even before we have them.....and if we therefore see that we truly are fallen creatures, fully deserving of condemnation but offered forgiveness in Jesus Christ, then love for one another will be there, it cannot help but be there, and respect for one another will bring more joy than pride in our own accomplishments; but we sit ignorantly and blissfully detached from so great a salvation and such a fullness of joy, and thus we exist in this culture of our own making, and thus... for me personally... my mind is so often focused on what is transpiring in America and in the Christian church, and on my own transgressions against a Holy God.... but also on the cross where 'mercy and truth are met together,

"By The Book..."

        The following was posted last year and is slightly amended. I'll keep it here for only a few hours and hope that no one reads it......other than you of course.

        The jacket blurb puts it this way : "For the reader, By The Book is a way to invite sixty-five of the most interesting guests into your world. It's a book party not to be missed." By The Book , Writers On Literature and the Literary Life is the title of a new book edited by Pamela Paul. It is a compilation of sixty-five interviews with various authors and literary figures. They are simple questions, often the questions are repeated, and if you happen to recognize some of the interviewees then you might be interested in their answers.
         It was only missing one thing........me......an interview with Special Dog. I'm sure it was just an oversight. I mean if you interview E. L. Doctorow, then Special Dog would be the obvious next choice wouldn't it? It couldn't be the weird name.....Special Dog.....because Sting is in there. I mean.....Sting.....what the heck kind of name is that? So, what I'll do here is write down questions to me and the answers and then put the piece of paper in the book, probably between the interviews of Amy Tan and Arnold Schwarzenegger (I think Pamela Paul should replace him with me) and return it to the library. Maybe it will catch on. So here we go:

What book is on your nightstand right now?
         The Boys In The Boat by Daniel James Brown, but my wife's reading that. I never read in bed. I mean when my head hits that pillow then I'm out! How about the end table next to my Lazy Boy? Will that do? OK, the book is Rebel Yell, the Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson by S. C. Gwynne. I never thought I'd say it but a new book took the place of Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend by James L. Robertson as the definitive work on the Confederate general and America's most aggressive military leader. Can I say that I read about Confederate generals?

Which of the books you've written is your favorite?
          That's easy, I only wrote one book. It doesn't have a name though, I kind of just refer to it as Isaac Crockett. Its never been published. I couldn't figure out the directions for sending in a manuscript, but there's a link to it on my website. I'm at work on a sequel though and have one chapter finished..

What was the last book that made you cry?
         Plunder And Deceit by Mark Levin.

What was the last book that made you laugh?
         The Wisdom Of Barack Obama....It's about 100 pages.....all blank! It took me about an hour to read it.

What book do you find yourself reading again and again and again?
          It doesn't have a name. I just refer to it as Isaac Crockett

If you could meet any writer, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you want to know?
         Well my answer is.....any writer that is dead and can answer questions is who I would want to meet! What kind of question is that? Or, are you asking me what writer I would want to meet if I were dead or alive? If I were dead I don't care who I would....'meet.' Well actually I would. I wouldn't want to meet Hillary Clinton because I have an idea where she will be. Now If I were alive, as in fact I am alive, I would like to meet Pamela Paul and I'd want to know why she did not include me in her book?

What's the one book you wish someone else would write?
         Wow, that's a profound question. Did you ask anyone else this question? Gee, I don't know........this one would be interesting though.......'How I Screwed Up the United States of America and the World, Ruined Race Relations, Advanced Communism, Stabbed Israel in the Back, Established the American Record for Appointing the Most Incompetent Losers to Posts they had no Business Being In and Did it all Without Anyone Knowing the First Thing About Me Other Than Sound Bites Given Out by My Handlers, and Got in over 200 Rounds of 
Golf in the Process. by Barack Hussein Obama.'

What's the last book you read?
         Honest answer?   Deuteronomy

What's the greatest book that you have ever read, and why?
         The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. That's easy, a mender of pots and pans-a simple tinker, writes a book from jail where he was put for preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and that book goes on to be the greatest selling book in the English language next to the Bible. Yeah, it's the greatest book, God's inspired Word to us excluded of course, that I ever read, and Charles Spurgeon read it 100 times so he might have agreed.

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?
        Well, first of all no one requires this president to do anything, not the Constitution, not the law and not his own conscience. The closest to anyone who could require him to do anything would be Michele. But.....to go along with your question as if things were indeed normal......my answer would be....In Search Of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. It's in the Guinness Book for 'longest novel ever written' at 1.3 million words and should keep him busy until January 2017.

What books might we be surprised to find on your shelves?
         Why I Am Not A Christian by Bertrand Russell,The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (also interviewed in your book), the Catechism of the Catholic Church, God Is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens, Heaven Is For Real by Todd Burpo, Four Blood Moons by John Hagee, The Harbinger by Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, the Book Of Mormon by Joseph Smith and Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty. Actually I'm surprised by that book too. I don't know where it came from.

You can bring three books to a desert island, Which do you choose?
        How To Survive on a Deserted Island by Tim O'Shei, Coconut Cures by Bruce Fife and How To Sell Tropical Real Estate by Samsian Coedes.

What's the best love story that you've ever read?
        The Bible, It's also the best mystery book, the best poetry book, the best history book, the best biography (man), the best psychology book, the best philosophy book, the best economics book, the best health book and the best current events book.

One final question. What do you plan to read next?
         Probably tomorrow morning's newspaper. Or do you mean...what book....do I plan on reading next... after Isaac Crockett that is? Fifty Shades Of Venetian Blinds

Those Who Ignore History

 Those Who Ignore History.....January, 2012

         Erwin W. Lutzer is the long-time pastor of Moody Church in Chicago. He's the author of Hitler's Cross and is known for his studies into Hitler's Germany, its relation to the German Christian church and for warnings to America of a mass movement such as Nazism happening here. He followed up his award winning book with When A Nation Forgets God, 7 Lessens We must Learn From Nazi Germany. This book can be purchased from Amazon.com for under ten dollars and I encourage you to give it to your loved ones, to friends and to anyone concerned about the path that America has taken.

         What you'll find in this paperback are remarkable similarities of Hitler's methods in conquering a culture for illicit purposes to our own slide into oblivion in America. Lutzer focuses on the weakness of the human mind when in the hands of master villains. He reminds us that our allegiance is first to Almighty God, and that what happened in the church of Nazi Germany should prove to us that "Christ must always stand alone...worshipped as One who stands not alongside the government leaders of this world but as standing above them as King of Kings and Lord of Lords."

         In his first warning, When God is separated from government, Judgment Follows, Hitler first tried to make peace with the church on his terms, then took power away from the German Parliament and finally used that usurped power to "obliterate" the church... "transforming (it) so thoroughly that every vestige of Christianity would be smashed." The "Confessing Church" of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemoller that challenged Hitler was dealt with harshly. The state would take over from the church on all issues such as dedicating infants, marriage and holidays which would become paganized. God would be so separated from the state that He became an enemy of that state. Lutzer gives us German theologian Niemoller's warning in a sermon, "We have all of us-the whole church and the whole community-we've been thrown into the Tempters sieve, and he is shaking and the wind is blowing, and it must now become manifest whether we are wheat or chaff. Verily, a time of sifting has come upon us, and even the most indolent and peaceful person among us must see that the calm of meditative Christianity is at an end."

         His second warning emanating from the Nazi experience is It's Always The Economy. I had a friend tell me just last week that he voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 for one reason and one reason only...the economy. Lutzer reminds us that Hitler "could never have come to power if the German economy had remained strong after World War I." Hitler exploited the crisis and the result was National Socialism. The author writes (as if we here do not already know and have not seen evidence of it today) "an economic crisis is always a gift to a leader who wants to capture a nation."  Lutzer points out that "Hitler not only attracted the support of the middle class, but also of university students and professors." He created emergencies when needed and the Germans didn't care if they were losing their freedoms as long as the economy improved.         

         Even the "majority" of Lutheran churches sided with Hitler and when eventually "mandated to swear personal allegiance to Hitler," 800 pastors who refused to do so were "arrested and imprisoned." Hitler satisfied the people through monetary policies that would only later be shown as disastrous and on this Lutzer quotes Thomas Jefferson in "The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." He also quotes Abraham Lincoln in "We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor." He quotes Jesus in the feeding of the five thousand and consequent demand that Jesus be made king, "do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you." (John 6:27) 

         Lutzer's third warning is about the Law and is titled That Which Is Legal Might Also Be Evil. Hitler created his own laws to legitimate his crimes. The Jews were not persons, so the SS could "legally" kill them. In fact this was the defense given by many in the post-war trials. We suffer from this malady today for in the postmodern mind laws are tools to accomplish our desires, not statutes of eternal truths. Today, Czars create their own laws in the form of regulations. One need look no further that Roe v. Wade to see how we legalized murder and consequently one's conscience is clear simply because one is within the law. Same-sex marriage applies the same thinking. Under attack today are the thoughts of the Samuel Rutherfords and William Blackstones of yesteryear. Lutzer lays it out very clearly in, "A student of the history of law in the Untied States should have been able to predict that human life would soon be reclassified as unworthy of special protection. Abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, homosexual marriage- these are the inevitable result of secular humanism's (and evolution's) worldview. When God dies, so does man."

          Lutzer turns next in his warnings to Propaganda Can Change A Nation. We've all seen the positive audience response that Newt Gingrich has been given for comments in the debates. In my opinion it's not the former House Speaker that generated standing ovations but the fact that someone is finally shouting from a rooftop that the American media has long since become a Ministry of Propaganda. Anyone telling the truth to the American people in these debates would have been received with standing O's.

         Lutzer quotes Hitler from Mein Kampf, "The first task of propaganda is to win people for subsequent organization. The second task of propaganda is the disruption of the existing state of affairs and the permeation of this state of affairs with the new doctrine, while the second task of the organization must be the struggle for power, thus to achieve the final success of the doctrine." Just to be clear, that is Hitler writing...not Saul Alinsky.  Lutzer continues, "Of course as any skilled propagandist knows the masses should never be told the end-game, that is, where the leader actually intends to take the people." Hitler believed that in order for people to believe the obvious lie that they had to be part of a "cultural current"... that many people would never change their minds individually, but would do so if they were in a crowd of several thousand convinced followers. When a seeker steps into a crowd of thousands, wrote Hitler, that seeker is swept away into the mighty effect of suggestive intoxication and enthusiasm...confirm(ing) to him the rightness of the new doctrine." Hitler knew that "terms and slogans could be used for broader appeal."  Read, meditate and weep, if you will, on this quote from Mein Kampf ..."The magnitude of a lie always contains a certain factor of credibility, since the great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil, and that, therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, they more easily fall a victim to the big lie than to the little one, since they themselves lie in little things but would be ashamed of lies that are too big." And yet another Hitler quote, "By clever and persevering use of propaganda even heaven can be represented as hell to the people, and consequently the most wretched life as paradise." Lutzer writes of Albert Einstein's feelings on Nazi Germany in that the universities, the newspapers and the intellectuals gave in to Hitler...only the (Confessing) church "stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing the truth...I am (therefore) forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly."

          Lutzer turns next to Parents-Not The State, Are Responsible For A Child's Training. Hmmm...where have I heard that concept before? From Hitler again..."German youth... must be consciously shaped according to principles which are recognized as correct...according to the principles of the ideology of National Socialism." Private schooling was abolished and "all education was unified under the Nazi ideology....textbooks were rewritten." Children's natural desire to be independent of parents was "exploited." Attitudes were taught and "values" were "clarified" and "facts were deliberately distorted." Here is another quote, from many years ago, this time from Harvard University professor Chester Pierce...(are you sitting down?) "every child in America who enters school at the age of five is mentally ill, because he comes to school with allegiance toward our elected officials, toward our Founding Fathers, toward our institutions, toward the preservation of this form of government....the truly well individual is the one who has rejected all these things...the true international child of the future." Lutzer's final plea was..."take charge of your child's education."

           The author's last two lessons to be learned have to do with what our response should be to what is going on. Are we to take hold of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called, "cheap grace" or be inspired by "costly grace?" His last lesson is labeled We Must Exalt The Cross In The Gathering Darkness. From my perspective, and I have blogged upon it many times, the church today has found more powerful concepts to preach than the cross of Jesus Christ, and here is the rub as it pertains to this book; preachers will look you in the eye after preaching a sermon that is 100 percent application, void of the gospel, and tell you "well, the gospel is actually in the application." The overall church then is weakened, is susceptible to all forms of poor teaching, even to heresy, and is perfectly content to live in a dumbed-down doctrinal Christianity, all because the shepherd has configured his logic in such a way that the gospel is not spoken...but is there anyway! According to Lutzer, "Nazism did not rise out of a vacuum" and that "cultural streams" were more problematic than individuals. The cultural streams in America today are equally debilitating. American Christianity can learn a lot from the experiences of the German church. Very difficult days are likely ahead and Erwin Lutzer encourages us with a quote from Bonhoeffer, "it is before (the) cross and not before us that the world trembles." I offer here a Puritan prayer, in part, from Arthur Bennett's Valley Of Vision, which I highly recommended for daily devotions. It is also available at Amazon.com:

Lord God Almighty,

May I maintain a supreme regard to another
and better world,
and feel and confess myself a stranger
and a pilgrim here.
Afford me all the direction, defense, support,
and consolation my journey hence requires,
and grant me a mind stayed upon thee.
Give me large abundance of the supply of
the Spirit of Jesus,
that I may be prepared for every duty,
love thee in all my mercies,
submit to thee in every trial,
trust thee when walking in darkness,
have peace in thee amidst life's changes.
Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief
and uncertainties.

Son, I Failed To Try

       I hope to post a book review soon of Mark Levin's recently released Plunder And Deceit, Big Government's Exploitation Of Young People And The Future. I can already see after just a few chapters that we are on the same page.....for that it is our children's future that we are abandoning today. I won't say any more than that here. 
       I hold to the following thoughts written in 2012 even more than when I wrote them. How will we answer to our sons on whether or not we tried to protect America as it was being overrun? "Son....I failed to try" is one answer.

        There is a stratagem in play in this current administration that is often if not always used in tyrannies of all sorts......you put your people in positions of power and rule through threats and intimidations. Things go well for a while but all 'good' things must come to an end, and when they do everything collapses like a house of cards.
         Barack Obama has had control of all his cabinet ministers, czars, various and sometimes spurious law enforcement, and most of the mainstream media for over five years now but the cracks are now becoming fissures. Should God even give us more time as a republic, which admittedly at this time seems unlikely, the day will come when all of these nefarious machinations within the halls, board rooms and secretive meetings of powerful elites come to light. When the sources of threats and intimidations are gone we will see what has transpired in our government but we are not there yet, and rats... when cornered... are very dangerous.


Son.....I Failed To Try?

         It is my opinion that before this is all over, and by that I mean the Barack Obama era of either a four year or eight year period, he may flee this country. Whether indictments will be part of it or not I don't know but after Americans become aware of the full extent of what this President has done to our nation, to our national and domestic security, of his real intent as opposed to the fictitious constitutional scholar on the covers of Time and Newsweek throughout 2008, and without the media protection that is already starting to crack, he will eventually, more likely seek the approval of those outside this country who, although not totally in sync with his anti-colonial spirit of redistribution of wealth, appreciate his larger vision of a ...smaller America and his strong case for a weak America.
         If the media does not turn its concern towards its own nation and its own families, as opposed to its own liberal reputation in its own mind, then Barack Obama may indeed sneak into another term. He indeed has his strongholds that will continue to give support, those primarily being the special interest groups who have profited well from the liberal entitlement party. There is really no love, either way, between the man and these groups for it is a simple contract where one party promises a remuneration for the other party's support and the second party will essentially sue, by threatening to withhold that support, if the promises are not kept. The motivations are power...and greed. A second support group is more international and involves the many who have great wealth. These elites will support either a Democrat or Republican who permits them to remain the dominant party in setting coarse for the world's economies.
         These two forces alone cannot keep Barack Obama in power nor replace him with another choice without either significant support from mainstream America or a division in traditional America that would essentially destroy the power of their block, and that is where the media comes in. They are a secularist faction that does not necessarily receive any monetary remuneration nor does it hold passionately to any particular economic or political philosophy. The only threat to the world that they have created on the pages of their print media and screens of broadcast media is religion, and even there it is not Islam, liberal Christianity or Judaism but Biblical Christianity.
          Having said this ...having given these purely personal opinions, I need to reiterate as I have done consistently in this blog that any of our schemes and all of our schemes, whether they be noble or ignoble, sound or unsound, cleverly devised and painstakingly developed or simply mob induced, will indeed either fail or succeed but not without God's staying hand or lifted hand. We cannot go one way or the other apart from His permission which will ultimately lead to His glory and the benefit of those who trust in Him. We do have a cause, that being a future for us and our children in a nation that insures freedom and liberty, and acknowledges that God is not only the source of all blessings but the author of all truth. The hard reality is that that may not be what's in store for our children. they may look at us one day and inquire as to what we did in the final days of the constitutional republic of the United States of America. Our answer will have to be either we tried and failed to protect that heritage, or we failed to try. Returning to the first political block in this whole equation, mainstream America, it will either wake up, as there are signs of, or return to a deep sleep, either of which will be as God sees fit to permit, for his ultimate purposes and to His everlasting glory

Tailgate Theology

         My errands today put about 100 miles on my truck.  A bumper sticker for the web address of these posts is always on the tailgate as are new bumper stickers that I make up that have something to do with recent posts. For example I'll put on 'It's Communism...Folks' when the post is on Communism. Today's sticker read 'Who Is Jim Webb?', for the post of a few days ago.
         I read the bumper stickers on other cars as I hope that they read mine and a thought came to me today while driving and it's the topic of this post. Now, I have no idea of the percentages but they would be high on the number of Pittsburgh Steeler, Pirate and Penguins stickers that people put on their automobiles. Often there are four or five stickers on one car with each team represented and I saw a couple of those automobiles today. Pittsburgh, like many other cities but probably none more so than Pittsburgh, takes pride in its sports teams. Wherever in the world that you may be reading this, whether it be London, or Rome or maybe even in Japan, you may very well find Pittsburgh Steeler paraphernalia on sale at a kiosk or you may see a bar or restaurant themed with the Pittsburgh Steelers! Such is the passion the people of this city have for their teams.
       My thought today was this.....imagine......just imagine..... if instead of sports teams that these bumper stickers were about our Constitution, our founding fathers, our heritage and particularly the battle today to save this heritage! Yes there are  plenty of 'God Bless America' stickers and 'Support Our Troops' stickers and 'Don't Tread On Me' flag stickers but no where near....not even in the same ball park, excuse the pun, in numbers compared to the Steelers, Pirates and Penguins. If this were reversed the Communists would be on the run. (If you are new to these posts you may have to read back a little bit to understand that statement)
       We spent about an hour at a classic car cruise today. I let myself go back.... no.... I purposely went back in time to when we had an American Creed, to when we were one people....black, white, red and brown but one people, to when we had a Democrat party and not just war councils of tribes all hating only that American Creed.
        Imagine this.....that all of those Steeler bumper stickers actually read....'One Nation Under God!' Imagine walking through the mall and seeing every fourth or fifth person with shirts displaying a Bible verse. Just about every person has their driver's license in their wallet. Imagine if most everyone had a pocket Bible on them. A lot f us did at one time. Today it would be more likely a Bible app on their smart phone. I myself use one two or three times day.
       Imagine this.....tomorrow.... as tens of millions of people go to church, that the atmosphere was more like the waiting room at an Emergency Room at the hospital than an Evangelical church of today, that Christians sat in their pew nervous as one about to be in the presence of a king, joyful as one who is about to hear that their unpayable debt had been taken care of, full of hope at the mere thought of the return of Jesus Christ, humbled of heart and mind as they are reminded that other Christians are being killed for their faith, and saddened as they see their own country in the rebellious Judah and Israel of the Old Testament, or of Nineveh or even Sodom and Gomorrah.
       John Lennon may be more remembered for his own song Imagine than for any of his songs with the Beatles. You remember the lyrics... beginning with "Imagine there's no heaven, It's easy if you try, no hell below us, above us only sky." The refrain was....."You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one, and I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one."
      The 19th chapter of the book of 1st Kings gives us the description of the prophet Elijah hiding in a cave. God told him to come out but apparently he stayed. God then shook that mountain with great winds, an earthquake and then fire, and then as the NKJV puts it...."...and after the fire a still small voice." Elijah then came out.
       Surely amidst the turmoil of today there is that 'still small voice.' We should be listening for that voice even more intently than a mother listens for breathing on the baby monitor from their newborn's room. Hopefully it will be listened for in our churches tomorrow and in our prayer closets, for we are not alone in this turmoil as was not Elijah. And I hope that some day.....you the reader......if you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and your Saviour.....will join us..... for as Jesus prayed to the Father in the 17th chapter of John....."For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.....(and a few verses later).....that they all may be one...."