The Basket Never Empties

The following is from November of last year and is my Lord's Day post:

        You have been in a Barnes & Noble and walked past the Bibles section I'm sure. And you have probably been in a hotel or motel room and opened the table drawer under the clock radio and lamp and saw a Bible placed there by the Gideons. More than likely you have a Bible somewhere in your home. It's incomprehensible to me, and breathtakingly stupefying, for if there were a table of gold bullion with a sign reading...free....only one to a customer....a madhouse would ensue. And yet here in a typical bookstore is the single most valuable physical item of any possible type in this entire world, for sale at a price one could buy a roast beef dinner at Applebee's, and it goes unnoticed. I visit bookstores with the regularity that most people attend to a gasoline pump. I know that there is very seldom anyone even browsing the Bibles...Christian bookstores excluded here of course.
         Well I haven't yet impressed you too much with this post have I? Blah, blah, blah....the Bible. Book lovers can lose themselves in a good mystery. Believe me, I'm married to one. I can pick up a non-fiction book and sit down with it until I've finished it, highlighting and notes included. Mark Levin's Liberty And Tyranny was like that. This is something different. It's oxygen in the form of words...the blood of life pumped throughout one's being by God Himself.
         How many neurons function throughout the brain? I could look it up but its billions. God designed this organ and yet it's merely a tool to discern the glories of its creator, the inglorious condition man has brought upon himself, and the redemption of those who believe and trust in what is the very Word of God which we so nonchalantly call...a  bible. In this neglected gift of gifts is all of creation explained in sixty-six books. It would be more accurate to say that it's all that we as humans can handle of creation explained in sixty-six books. Still, for the sake of argument you say that sixty-six small books is not a lot of information. Obama's new Pacific Rim Trade Pact has sixty times as many words! Let me try to explain. One sentence from God's Word can change not only a life but an eternal destiny. One phrase can debilitate the strongest person. One word can explain the mystery of your own life.
         What's more it is like the five loaves and two fish that Jesus fed the five-thousand with. The basket never empties! One can read through the Bible and go from death to life, from peasant to a king, and from rags to the riches of an inheritance in heaven as a child of God! Paradoxically and wonderfully it becomes more complex and yet more clear as time passes and veils are lifted. I vividly remember the testimony, some thirty years ago, of a ninety-five year old Christian man who spoke of the ever increasing wonder of the Bible over his life.
          It's an odd treasure also in that people want to give it away. Some live only to give it away, and one may give it away a thousand times and still possess it. The very most that my testimony can do is to pique your interest. If you think me a fool....wonderful....should it lead you to research it yourself to find the method to the perceived madness.

"Run In Such A Way To Win The Prize"

         Olympic champion and co-focus of the Academy Award winning 1981 film Chariots Of Fire Eric Liddell... was born both in China as the son of missionaries and later schooled in England. He pursued athletics in the form of rugby and running and did both with excellence. You're familiar with his Olympic story I'm sure....He refused to run the 100 meters because the trial heats were on the Lord's Day. Instead he ran the 400 meters and set a world's record in winning the gold. With the Olympics over he resumed what he believed to be God's calling him as a missionary to China.
         He married Florence MacKenzie in China in1934 and they had three daughters. I'm hesitant in even trying to write about him for his life was so exemplary that I feel that I'm trespassing rather than visiting. What I want to point out here in this post is that Eric Liddell had the world and its riches at his fingertips but he chose the hardship of a missionary's life in China. At first, as China and Japan were at war with each other, he was constantly accosted and threatened by bandits but after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, Japanese soldiers became his biggest threat. He along with other foreigners were rounded up and herded into a camp. Eric Liddell died in that camp of an inoperable brain tumor in 1945, never seeing his third daughter, and was translated from an earthly tent to..."a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
         God was in control of every minute of Eric Liddell's life, from the cinder track in Paris to the rocky landscapes of rural China. God is also in control of every minute and hour of the days ahead. Am I saying with certainty that the Tribulation is upon us? No....I am saying that the single most trying time that this world has ever experienced, the only exception being the days of Noah, is nigh upon us. Only a human mind constricted by either the baubles of this world or even in many cases the blessings of this world could but come to a similar conclusion. Only the mind that has failed to meditate upon Old Testament passages of rebellion and then judgment, and only that same mind that has somehow failed to identify the twentieth century as horror upon horror as to violence in volume that the world had never seen, and mortification upon mortification as to how a civilized society can so quickly reject its Benefactor and become barbaric....only that mind can ignore the hard realities today of America's imminent judgment. Only a mind so untuned to the narrative of the Bible can so nonchalantly say that America can be great again....or even....God bless America.
        God may not call us to a foreign mission field but we can implore of Him our own mission field over living in Vanity Fair, and we can determine to be alert rather than sleeping through the sounds of the approaching hoofbeats.

Note: I could not more highly recommend Duncan Hamilton's recent biography of Eric Liddell...For The Glory. It's a beautifully written book about an extraordinary person who displayed his Christian character during the 'best of times' and 'the worst of times.' The last quarter of the book describes life in the internment camp... Weishien. Hardship is detailed here in an unusual way. I don't quite know how to describe it other than... in other books about such camps one might read a day to day account of other people's difficulties whereas in Hamilton's For The Glory it's as if the reader is the one moving in for an indefinite sentence and given a tour of their bleak future and the duties expected of them. 
   

In Whom Do We Trust?

         The best thing about Ann Coulter's new book In Trump We Trust...E Pluribus Awesome! is that it is a small size hardback and only about 180 pages. This isn't a sarcastic remark. As a former bookstore owner, I know that on current affairs topics...the easier the read-the easier the sell, and I hope that people do take notice of the book...but for more than one reason.
          Ann Coulter is smart. She talks in a such a rapid-fire fashion that her books are easier to digest than her words when she is interviewed. And she is funny, I mean if you were in a submerged submarine with no power and no hope to be saved....she would be able to make you laugh. The stories and the facts that she gives are not new to us but her take on them is often profound. She takes these zingers and fires them like fast balls whose pop in the catcher's mitt gets the whole stadium's attention.
           No matter what issues have endeared Donald Trump to Americans over the course of this election, and there have been many, Coulter brings them back in a very concise fashion that refreshes the reader, if the reader even needs refreshed, on why they went hog-wild on Donald Trump to begin with. It's the type of book that makes you want to take notes, and reread them on a daily basis in preparation for conversation with liberals. I think that I may know why Ann Coulter has never married... she must spend all of her time categorizing and filing news stories, ridiculous quotes and absurd comments by both liberals and Republican elites. (but somehow she missed Mitt Romney's?)
        There, I've written a lot of nice things about Ann Coulter's In Trump We Trust. As election cycle political books go it is powerful, but I didn't purchase this book to be reminded of why so many people liked what they were hearing from Donald Trump. I drove for 45 minutes to buy it and sat right down with a cup of HerbaGreen tea to read through it because I had to know if Ann Coulter had any idea how those four words of the title might resonate with anyone who knows the history and meaning of the phrase In God We Trust!
         The closest the author came to even touching on the concept of God came in three pages under the heading of Evangelical Voters? Simple! Just Ask President Huckabee. There are not many issues that Ann Coulter is clueless on but this is one of them. She is so conservative-Tea Party hip, so devastatingly today, and so passionately polemic, in this book anyway, that she is deaf to God's thunderous warnings to a nation that seeks redemption from anyone but Him!
         This title may have been given the author just as were the spoken words given to Balaam's donkey in the Old Testament Book of Numbers, or as the sudden summoning prowess to the Witch of Endor. Ann Coulter might as well buy the granite stone to be placed over America's heritage, a heritage she thinks that she is protecting, and order her book title etched in an arc across the top, for placing our trust in ourselves while forsaking the God of our beginnings and our multitudinous blessings is what brought us to where we are today.
         Francis Scott Key gave America that phrase in the full lyrics to what would become our national anthem... the verse near the end reading...."And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust'," this sung to the same notes and in place of the words we are more familiar with...  "Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there."
        We will have to wait and see if this paraphrasing becomes the single most alarming message in Ann Coulter's newest book. Will Christians see the ominous unintended inference? Will Pastors weep from the pulpits over what we have come to place our trust in? Will God have mercy upon us as He did with the repentant Ninevites upon the arrival of a foul-smelling, muck-stained, wide-eyed prophet?
       

'But Whom Others Have Referred To As...'

The following post is from this past July 9th:

        I don't blame you. I would feel the same way. In fact I did feel the same way for many years. God was....well he was there....probably....I wasn't going to take a chance anyway on saying that I didn't believe in him. I went to church on most Sundays and if some serious problem came up in my life I went to him...for a little while. What alternative was there? I mean he gave us a book but I couldn't make hide nor hair of it. There was a lot of promises with the sacraments and I kinda took advantage of that occasionally, but really, there was nothing substantive, nothing that could grab my intellect and certainly nothing to make me cry out with joyful shouts of... 'life. life, eternal life!'
        So to the readers of this post who look at God with what they believe to be a full allegiance but an allegiance that, strong as it may appear, lacks a certain something....an overwhelming awe of a Holy God who could pardon even the chief of sinners...an overcoming security based only upon His faithfulness in spite of our weaknesses....and a sure hope that drives one to know more and more of this majestic God and His power and love and righteousness and mercy; to you I can only say there is more,  more than your heart can hold, and it is necessary, and He never turns anyone away who desires to know Him!
        Use your analytical skills. Do you think that the martyrdom, sacrifice and persecution of so many, all to put one more jot and one more tittle to paper, to protect the Word of God, and-at risk of burning at the stake-to disseminate it....does that not give you even a hint that there is more here than what we have come to believe? Does not centuries of missionary dedication, of serving in huts and jungles and rice fields, all the while rejoicing in that that book would be read anew in a new language...does all of this not make you wonder what the fuss was all about? Does it not stir in you even the slightest interest in picking up a Bible...you probably have one within a few feet of where you are reading this...and asking of God that if this is truly His infallible written Word, then would He display its power that has heretofore not been seen, have mercy on one who has ignored it for so long, and reveal that person who has been known only as Jesus, but whom others have referred to as a Kings of kings and Lord of lords, and Alpha and Omega, and Light of the World, and Word of Life, and Lord of All, and Bread of Life, and Rock, and Resurrection and Life, and Way the Truth and the Life, and the Author of Life?
     

Think Back....Way Back

The following are two prefaces to older posts that I added at the time to help explain this website to new visitors, and I bring them back from time to time: 

         As I look over five and a half years of posts (now seven and a half years), 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!

And this:

        A little explanation is needed for those readers who return to this website and see many older posts reappear. My intention was never to have 'followers' who would come back again and again to read my latest thoughts. I'm sure that I am not good enough for that. Rather I want to reach as many readers as possible and warn them that God's judgement upon America may indeed be near....if in fact it has not already begun.
       I emphasize in these posts the weakness of evangelical preaching today and the utter betrayal of much of the protestant church which has contributed to the decomposition of our society. One would have to study the past to see this and its not something that we like to do. We think we are fine.....we are not! In the arena of politics there are two things that I constantly return to; the first being that politics is not our answer and will never be our answer. It's simply a necessity that we have to pay attention to. The second is that there is very little difference between the Republican establishment and the Democrat Party, and that only within a general awakening across America, a humbling of ourselves before our Creator which would by definition include those in our Congress, could we even hope to continue in our freedoms and liberties. 
          I once described America in these posts as the unravelling of a rope but today we are in a freefall. We are eyewitnesses of history in the collapse of an empire. Some of us know it...most do not. God has explicitly warned us for over half a century, nothing has just been implied. He removed His hedge around us and enemies walked in as easily as walking from tee to green.

Come Everyone Who Is Thirsty.....

         I have never done this before but the following passage of Scripture is so.....so.....I don't know what adjective to use. Please read these thirteen verses which comprise the entire 55th chapter of Isaiah and you may see what I mean; for this, as is all of Scripture, is the very Word of God. Of which on some it will be passed over with no significance, but on others it may open even the gates of heaven.
       You will need help from a Bible commentary on portions of this chapter, for most everyone does, but many of the following verses are perspicuous in that they are clearly understood. Some will surely think this post inane....but others will just sit and meditate on Isaiah as I do with an overflowing joy in God's marvelous and wonderful design. If you are new to the Word of God, I have more wonderful news....one can go decades and decades....even a century if God should will it....and the same passage of His Word can render the very same delights...over and over again....and even more than at the very beginning!

"Come, everyone
    who is thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you without money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money
    and without cost!
Why do you spend money
     on what is not food,
and your wages on what
     does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to Me, and eat
     what is good,
and you will enjoy the choicest
     of foods.
Pay attention and come to Me;
listen, so that you will live.
I will make
     an everlasting covenant
     with you,
the promises assured to David.
Since I have made him a witness
     to the peoples,
a leader and commander
     for the peoples,
so you will summon a nation
     you do not know.
and nations who do not
     know you will run to you.
For the LORD your God,
even the Holy One of Israel,
has glorified you."

Seek the LORD
     while He may be found;
call to Him while He is near.
Let the wicked one abandon
     his way,
and the sinful one his thoughts;
let him return to the LORD,
so He may have compassion
    on him,
and to our God, for He will
       freely forgive."

"For My thoughts are not
     your thoughts,
and your ways are not
     My ways."

"For as heaven is higher
     than the earth,
so My ways are higher
     than your ways,
and My thoughts
     than your thoughts.
For just as rain and snow fall
    from heaven,
and do not return there
without saturating the earth,
and making it germinate
     and sprout,
and providing seed to sow
and food to eat,
so My word that comes
     from My mouth
will not return to Me empty,
but it will accomplish
     what I please,
and will prosper in what I send it
     to do."

You will indeed go out with joy
and be peacefully guided;
the mountains and the hills
     will break into singing
     before you,
and all the trees of the field
     will clap their hands.
Instead of the thornbush,
     a cypress will come up,
and instead of the Brier, a myrtle
     will come up;
It will make a name
     for the LORD
as an everlasting sign
     that will not be destroyed.

A Little Explanation

The following are two prefaces to older posts that I added at the time to help explain this website to new visitors, and I bring them back from time to time: 

         As I look over five and a half years of posts (now seven and a half years), 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!

And this:

        A little explanation is needed for those readers who return to this website and see many older posts reappear. My intention was never to have 'followers' who would come back again and again to read my latest thoughts. I'm sure that I am not good enough for that. Rather I want to reach as many readers as possible and warn them that God's judgement upon America may indeed be near....if in fact it has not already begun.
       I emphasize in these posts the weakness of evangelical preaching today and the utter betrayal of much of the protestant church which has contributed to the decomposition of our society. One would have to study the past to see this and its not something that we like to do. We think we are fine.....we are not! In the arena of politics there are two things that I constantly return to; the first being that politics is not our answer and will never be our answer. It's simply a necessity that we have to pay attention to. The second is that there is very little difference between the Republican establishment and the Democrat Party, and that only within a general awakening across America, a humbling of ourselves before our Creator which would by definition include those in our Congress, could we even hope to continue in our freedoms and liberties. 
          I once described America in these posts as the unravelling of a rope but today we are in a freefall. We are eyewitnesses of history in the collapse of an empire. Some of us know it...most do not. God has explicitly warned us for over half a century, nothing has just been implied. He removed His hedge around us and enemies walked in as easily as walking from tee to green.

We Are Failing Our Children

The following post is from March of last year:             

We Are Failing Our Children

          There are horrendous exceptions of course, there always were and always will be, but a parent's love and protection for a child is a foundation of human society. We cannot say that it is something that elevates us above the animals, for we have all seen heartwarming videos of animals protecting their offspring.
           Those who traveled to America in search of religious liberty and freedom sacrificed greatly for their children... beginning with the voyagers on those three ships...the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery... that weighed anchor at what would become Jamestown in 1607. American parents have not ceased sacrificing since. How many mothers and fathers have worked two and three jobs and gone without even the basic comforts of life in order for their children to survive and someday live in a land of opportunity, with liberties and freedoms, a land that reverenced and trusted in Almighty God... the giver of all that is good? How many gave up their own goals in life for a new goal, the happiness and safety of those children? We've worried about them and prayed for them and taught them everything we thought they needed to know. Need I go on? We did do these things and continue to do them but ultimately we have failed them miserably!
           I'm writing here about the collective whole of American parenting today, specifically as it concerns our children's future. It's an area that we neglected to protect. We didn't think there was a real danger here but America's enemies worked while we slept. They were patient while we sought instant gratification. They grabbed leadership in education while we were more concerned about facilities for the sports teams. They became professors while we became financial advisers. They taught in liberal seminaries and read Rules For Radicals while we golfed and read The Godfather.       They became activists while we watched television. They took over unions while we filled the stadiums and arenas. They allied themselves with every special interest group that voted while we worked on our abs. They cheated while we played by the rules. They lied while we told the truth. They studied the game of chess while we hopped around on a checkerboard shouting out 'King Me!'
           No, we have failed them! We let them take God out of everything. We'd sooner defend our enemies than the Bible. Our culture is toxic and our reasoning is warped. We believe anything told to us because that's what we have been programmed to do. We reach, as a child in a crib, for every mobile that Silicon Valley extends over us. We will provide our children with any piece of sports equipment they could ever want and chauffeur them anywhere to use it. Their clothing stores have overtaken ours. Then finally we send them off to college to be programmed to function as vassals of what is becoming a malevolent state, congratulating ourselves on a job well done.
          Oh, the love is still there, and we would still sacrifice everything, but it is too late even if we were aware of what has transpired, for our government has become an oppressor, our Constitution is ignored and our user-friendly churches are powerless. We have failed our children. We failed to protect their liberties, even their minds. We failed to protect our Christian heritage. We are undone and have but one hope left but there are no signs that we are anywhere near humbling ourselves before our Creator, and no evidence that we prostrate ourselves in reverence at the mere mention of the name Jesus.

"...While He May Be Found"

          Please allow me to paraphrase a well-known Benjamin Franklin quote....'I have lived sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proof I see of this truth....as great and breathtaking as the intellectual abilities of mankind are, and as determined as he is to achieve his goals... that stupidity ultimately governs in the affairs of men; and that man's inability to deduce at times what should be the simplest answers, and his seemingly inexplicable laziness at other times in even pursuing truth, is just as great and breathtaking!' What else can explain Hillary Clinton's rise to power... or soap operas... or 'safe spaces'?
          Ben Franklin was 81 years old when he wrote those words at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, His actual quote of course was that..."God governs in the affairs of men." They would be profound words of wisdom from any man but particularly from Franklin who never did meet this God. My thoughts are not profound, for I've erred and been lazy as the very dimmest of my fellow men, but I am convinced that these thoughts are nonetheless true, for I only have to look around... anywhere... at our government, our entertainments, our educational system and even many of our churches to see that we are a people described as those who "....will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions."
Carl Sagan was one of those teachers, for the word of man says... "The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be, but the Word of God had already informed that "...it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment."
          Friends...."Seek first the kingdom of God" for you will one day stand before Jesus Christ as judge... therefore, for your own benefit...."Seek the LORD while He may be found; Call upon Him while He is near," for we live in a time prophesied where "Lawlessness will be increased [and] the love of many will grow cold."

Rain

         I'm sitting in the restaurant of a small but prosperous town. A floor to ceiling window separates me from the steady rain on the brick sidewalks only three or four feet away. Few things in nature, if any, soothe me more than rain. Even a pounding surf in front of one of the world's greatest ocean expanses cannot ease my mind as can simple raindrops pelting a street or soaking a field or rushing across window panes.  Enjoying a gentle rain coupled with watching the faces of everyday people as they walk briskly under their umbrellas is what to others might be their Lotus Position.
         As so often happens when I write a themed post like this, there is a radio playing and a song seems to address my very thoughts. So as I sit here taking in the summer rain right in front of me, the chorus of Fleetwood Mac's 1977 Dreams is barely discernible somewhere above my head, but I can make out each chorus which ends with the words...."when the rain washes you clean, you'll know, you'll know."
         Could that be it...the reason I love rain so much...that it washes me clean? No, that concept has never entered my mind. Only the blood of Christ can wash one clean, and even the refreshing of a gentle rain cannot compare to the exhilaration of knowing that One has taken my sins upon himself, washing me clean in the eyes of the Father, and securing an eternal inheritance in heaven!
        Somehow the rain frees me to meditate, as it does to multitudes of others I might add. As a younger man my meditation might have been on a young lady. In the Monsoons of Southeast Asia it might have been on my home back in Pittsburgh, and in my forties it might have been on raising our son to know Christ in a grossly secular world. Almost 37 years ago, on November 4th, 1979, the same day that Islamic radicals took American hostages in Tehran, I sat at my father's hospital bedside and watched as the heart monitor slowed and then stopped. I feel that same dread today as I sit by America's bedside and watch its pulse barely elicit a response. Therefore my meditation today, more often than not, is on the creeping demise of the constitutional republic of the United States of America...on our son's future...and your children's future.
         Why can't others see this? I know the answer to that question. They themselves are in that hospital bed, drugged by the vanities of life, only semi-aware of their deathly state because the doctors have not told them and the preachers have not come to help them make sure their call and election and prepare them for the judgment to come. They are in denial. Their Bibles either stay closed, or open only for a sedentary Sunday School class lesson preceding an even more lethargic sermon void of the majesties of Christ and permeated with the stale aroma of cheap grace.
         I don't like it when the rain stops. All that is left of my 'dreams' are puddles. The umbrellas close and I no longer have an excuse to just sit and watch. Some errand must be run or handyman job completed. Walking away I can no longer feel the cool rain on my skin verifying my existence, reassuring me of God's blessings on our crops, and offering me more time to meditate on the One who brings the rain. "
         "Shower, O heavens, from above,
           and let the clouds pour down righteousness;
            Let the earth open up and salvation bear fruit,
             And righteousness spring up with it.
              I, the LORD, have created it."   Isaiah 45:8

"Woe To Those..."

        One of the many pitfalls to an election year is that by the very nature of it people can either neglect or outright ignore the even weightier matters of this life as they concern America. This presidential election is not meaningless...but it is close to it. Now that statement would send many conservatives into orbit! That's because they can see no further than a President Hillary Rodham Clinton. From a purely temporal perspective, it can be called 'life or death,' but the temporal is the junior partner in our existence.
        My writing on America, from these posts...to letters-to-the-editor...to mimeographed newsletters sent out to anyone and everyone that I knew, go back well into the 1990s. I was Tea Party before there was a Tea Party. I can hardly be accused of ignoring politics and how it affects our nation but consider just this one verse from Isaiah....

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,
and put darkness for light and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter,
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and shrewd in their own sight....

         Friends....this is us! Politics is indeed part of our problem but God has been both warning and afflicting America for many years and we have not demonstrated the slightest inclination of turning to Him. Instead we look to Donald Trump...a man who has shown little to no concern for the things of God. Have our entertainments changed? Have our idols been put away? Have our pulpits even mentioned God's warnings beginning with...Woe to those...? Even the great and disastrous issues of abortion and same-sex marriage, if thwarted, would but dampen the fires of our wholesale rebellion against God.
         I have written and will continue to write on this election...Lord willing, but it cannot stay God's hand of judgment upon us! All it could possibly do, should God even have mercy upon us, is to put a government in place that may recognize our culpability in our distress. This would be valuable, and for this we should work, and Donald Trump is the only alternative, but as to.....making America great again.....this election is utterly meaningless!
       

Word For Word.....Word For Word

The following post from April of 2013 is my Lord's Day offering:   

       The prophet Jeremiah was unpopular with just about everyone,  particularly the elite establishment of Judah. They did not want to hear what he had to say for he prophesied that God would use Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon to bring judgment upon them. Eventually God told him (ch:36) to write it all down.....all of it... and distribute it to the leaders in Judah and all the people. Jeremiah needed a stenographer and chose Baruch to write down what he was about to dictate. He then used Baruch as a FedEx truck to deliver the materials, probably because he himself was already a persona non grata in such gatherings.
       Well, it must have been a little upsetting to those who first read the indictment but they forwarded the package on to the king. The king read a page and then burned it, read another and burned it also until the entire message from God was ashes in the fire made to keep the king warm.
       There is a scene at the beginning of the film God's And Generals where Professor Thomas Jonathan Jackson, later to become known as Stonewall Jackson, looks into the blank eyes of his Virginia Military Institute artillery class and says stone-faced that they did not get his message so the next day he will give it again...."word for word.....word for word!" Jackson had surely read these passages from the book of Jeremiah and the film script had the professor giving the same instructions as God had given to Jeremiah......write it all again...."the very words..." (SPOILER ALERT)....all the judgments came to pass!!!
        It is my opinion that all sixty-six books of God's Word to us should be read consistently....time and time and time again....throughout life....and the Old Testament prophetic books are no exception. God will remove veils in His own timing, and that is what He is doing today, and more particularly since Israel officially became a nation in 1948.
       Whether it has been through Billy Grahams or professors or faithful pastors or in our own individual readings......we have been warned! Tear up their words and throw them into the fire if you desire but they will come back! I was a slow learner who often went off on tangents but as I or anyone invest the time, God's message to America will become more discernible....not perfectly clear at this time....but enough so that we can say confidently that if we do not turn back to God as a people...we will be a people no more.
     

No Joy In Mudville

"....but there is no joy in Mudville - mighty Casey has struck out"

         Rumors swirled all day that Donald Trump would endorse Paul Ryan. I left the restaurant and tuned into the radio just in time to hear the most disgustingly feeble surrender and unconvincing patchwork of words that I personally had ever heard in almost fifty years of following American politics. Trump did endorse Paul Ryan (strike one) and threw in John McCain (strike two) and Kelly Ayotte (strike three) to boot. They (the Republican elites) played him as they would a Gibson Les Paul but the sound was like a three year old grabbing the strings of a cheap guitar and letting them go just before they break.
         The Ruling Class in successfully manipulating Donald Trump may very well get a two-fer. They may...may... keep Paul Ryan....and they may get Hillary Clinton for the front end of the donkey suit. They conned Trump and he bought it, told him that his campaign was collapsing and he panicked. He doesn't have a scintilla of wisdom and I've commented on this before. He was only a man to be prayed for....a man who might be able to keep the most predatory, soulless, guiltless liar that this nation has ever produced from getting anywhere near the Oval Office. Donald Trump's strength was never in himself but in his supporters, many of whom must tonight be shaken.
        I have written in these posts from the beginning, and continuously throughout them, that with either the Democrat Party or the Republican Establishment leading this nation that it would still go down. The Democrats partner with anyone and everyone who hates America but the Republicans just meet up with them in Red Light districts. That's the only difference.....same results.
        I have also written continuously that God will not be mocked, that our politicians can play all the games that they want, but that not one country on this planet will stay afloat and not one will sink to the bottom of the sea without either His hand extended for His purposes alone or His hand withdrawn, which is the burden that we as a nation carry as I write.
        If there is to be any mercy extended to us, it would be to a nation that rejects the lies, deception and false hopes of both parties, and dependence upon politics as if it can save us, in favor of repentance for what we have become, and how far we have strayed from the America that God established, sustained and continually warned as it rejected Him right up to this very day.
     

        

Consider Micah

         Would you be interested in partaking in a little biblical meditative exercise? Before I explain it let me give you a preface: I've written a number of posts over the years on two small books of the Old Testament....Jonah and Nahum...and always in this context....Jonah was told by God to go to the great city of Nineveh and give them a warning that would extend for 40 days....repent or be judged. Nineveh repented....and Jonah wasn't particularly happy about it. Possibly 150 years later another prophet addressed Nineveh....Nahum. God gave him no warning to give....only a declaration of impending judgment. My point is that this whole process of warnings and then prophesied judgment took well over a century as God was very patient. We need to understand this as it relates to the warnings God has been giving to America for a long time! This is not a sign of His failure or inability to keep His promises, it's a sign of His patience!
       The exercise, should you want to do it, is to read the book that is between Jonah and Nahum....the book written by the prophet Micah. Now these words from Micah, once again words of judgment...but also of hope, were to specific people-the people of Judah, but these books are to us also, certainly at least as examples for us to consider what happens when a nation blessed by God then rejects Him. The book is small but take an evening reading it and contemplating each verse, and possibly referencing different translations and a study Bible to help with the changing context. Put America in there as if....as if.... it were written also to us, just to see if our history of blessings and then rejection of our Benefactor is not strikingly similar. And if our rebelliousness is similar, would not the judgment be similar also, and would not the patience extended before judgment be similar...a patience that we may have used up!
        I'm confident that as you read through Micah you will see many instances where we followed the same path as rebellious Judah. You may even be astonished at times.

Have You Had A Taste?

The following post is from October of 2009:

         I'm an incurable pack rat. My wife came up to me yesterday with a gray disk, about the size of a silver dollar and wanted to know if I knew what it was. It was slightly bevelled and had little holes throughout. I had no idea what it was and she was about to throw it away. What! Wait a second. If we throw this out there will be a day when I need a disk about the size of a silver dollar, slightly bevelled with little holes throughout. She'll never learn. Just throw the thing out and don't ask me about it. I have in my hands, well actually I'm typing but I have here in front of me a book that I bought at the National Record Mart on the Pitt campus in the winter of 1973. Its title is Reach Out, The Living New Testament (illustrated.) It was published by Tyndale and I paid $2.95 for it.
         I had enrolled at Pitt that January, a few months after getting out of the army. It was a heady time. I read constantly, occasionally even textbooks from classes that I was supposed to be reading. I would take my latest book purchased at the National Record Mart into the college bar and my friends and I would discuss philosophy or some other subject that we were interested in until we could no longer pronounce our words. That's when my genius really came out. I remember one night particularly well. We were discussing The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda. Here was a UCLA anthropology grad student taking lessons from a Yaqui Indian shaman on how peyote was instrumental to understanding the mysteries of life. We were absorbed in this while unaware that a couple of quarts of Budweiser did the same thing. In between this nonsense I would occasionally show up at St. Paul's Cathedral. It would be almost a decade before God opened my eyes and I could see the marvel of the gospel and the majesty of His Son, but I had a taste in 1973.
          There have been times when I came across this paperback New Testament on my bookshelves, and I opened it up and pressed the pages to my face, smelling them and remembering how that word Jesus would thrill me before I even understood. I would then read a few verses from this paraphrased translation, for it not a true translation, and be transported back for only a moment, and only a moment is what I would want for I was then lost. I was in love with me and only the grace of God kept me from facing Him before a time would come when He would use that Bible as a mirror in which I would look into and see only corruption.
         There are so many mysteries that will be explained to us when this life is done but none to me as impenetrable now as why God opened my eyes! If you are firm in your decision to reject God, and you want a good excuse to bolster your case, just think of me, for if God would redeem me, then there is no fairness in the world. And don't listen to the voice on the other shoulder that says If God would forgive someone like me, then there is hope for you also. And whatever you do,...whatever you do...don't open His book!