Dr. TR Morris, Lt Col Retired USA

Penelolpe

2012-02-17T13:43:00.001-05:00

Penelolpe

Near the end of the 8^th century, Homer wrote The Odyssey. In his many exploits of the imagination, he told of a young and beautiful girl, Penelope. The territorial Greek, Gallic wars of that time lasted many years. Penelope's boyfriend, Laertes, went to war, and after many years, family and friends insisted that Penelope marry. This love-torn girl kept giving excuses such as weaving (she would tear out at night what she would weave during the day) but finally married Telegonus just before her true love returned.

In another article, I have written about finding the grave of Francis Thompson, St. Mary's cemetery, London, author of the famous words, Love is a many splendored thing.

One of the many mysteries of my life, how cheaply and carelessly people use the word “Love”. For instance, I love ice cream, classical music, old hymns of the faith, but these loves do not compare to the love involving my faith. Perhaps this is the reason, In the Greek, there are several degrees of love. The Septuagint, translated from the Greek by 70 scholars, knew the difference. Early scholars always used the Septuagint. When our resurrected blessed Lord on the seashore, questioned the denying Peter three times “if He loved Him” used the correct vernacular of love.

I am often confounded by the so-called love between individuals. My parents, grand parents, never expressed affection outwardly but, the oneness was always there. One man told me the best test to tell if a boy loves a girl, father loves a mother, in a group, the loved one is the first one to which one looks.

Marital love can be the most disappointing. “Talk is cheap.” It is truly amazing how love can turn to hatred at the divorce court.

Those of us who have visited the Taj Mahal, Agra, India, still considered the world's most munificent architectural marvel even if it is a burial mausoleum. Significant that it was built for the maharajas third wife.

In the community which I was raised, seldom mentioned but some older men and women never married. Every case, a true love affair with someone who either disappointed or died.

It is not rare for older men and women to marry a boy or girl friend of their youth after their mate, as survivors of the first marriage.

An older couple in a Switzerland hotel invited me to their table at dinner. She said, “Dr., I bet you think we have been married for a long time.” “We are newlyweds, his wonderful wife died and so did my wonderful husband.” The living, wonderful husband, at the table, said, “I was taught in the bible that there was only one perfect man. But the the bible was wrong, her first husband was a perfect man.

In the recent bitter disparity between the most anti-family president in history and his minions, contraception, abortion, homosexuality, nothing is ever said about love. Is love involved or is it like to dogs fornicating in an ally. Outside a military base, NC, a public whore house. The house was staffed by wives of servicemen... men, in uniform, giving their service and even their life to their country. Now all dependents of service-people get allotments for housing and other frills. Just think, women selling themselves, much as the temple prostitutes thinking they were contributing to the family income. How can people that treat love so cheaply face their children, their family-friends so and a Savior whose name means love.

Lackadaisical

2012-02-17T10:40:00.003-05:00

The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. (John 10:13)

The old testament is one continuous record of human failure. In the arena of human action, God redeemed mankind by Himself, putting on a tent of human flesh, dwelling among us. God in man, showing us how to live and finally atonement for the sin and sickness of the world. One cannot believe in the Sovereignty of God, without believing in the resurrection. Without the resurrection, our faith is in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:17) A lackadaisical, languid, indifferent, half hearted, language of belief, is useless. Jesus Himself used very blunt words, words that cannot be misunderstood. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? (Matthew 23:33) God in His greatness is referred to as “Lord of Hosts” He will not share His glory with anyone... knows that the sacrifice of His son, putting on Him the wrath for the sin and sickness of the world, was sufficient. His word is “forever settled in heaven” (Psalm 119:89)

Under Naziism, the Christian cross was replaced by a photograph of Hitler. In predominantly Catholic Italy, influx of Muslims from Africa, crucifixes always found in Italy's school rooms, removed because Muslim children were offended. At Georgetown University, Catholic, all religious symbolism covered when President Obama visited. The genuflecting President Jenkins at Notre Dame, so anxious to bestow an honorary doctorate on anti-Christ, anti-Life, anti-sacrament-marriage, Obama. All should have known that Obama was a hireling. A hireling is always a thief-mercenary-imposter, who has no love for the sheep. Jesus knew how to distinguish the hireling from the shepherd. Catholics, Baptists, evangelicals, even real Christians of all faiths are “slow learners”. In his books, every action, certainly the people with whom he associated, you knew his true colors-true identity. (a hireling) Anglican, Episcopalian, Unitarian, and others essentially believe in nothing. So, like the atheists, Marxists, the “battlefield” of Christians means nothing. Total commitment to Christian faith is considered a nursery rhyme-fairy tale illusion.

I am truly sickened, that during my life, the Christian faith has become so cheapened... pretenders. The average church, back when I was able to attend church and speak in churches, “air-conditioned, comfortable fox-holes”. Our resurrected-acending Lord's instructions to us, “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel.” (Matthew 28:19) The world would not be in the mess that it is in, would have belonged to Christ long ago, if Christians just “lived” their Christianity before the unsaved of the world, as well as one another. We do not have time to convert unbelievers, warfare with the devil, because we are too busy impressing one another. Just think, a highly paid-comfortable pastor with his equally comforted staff shepherding sophisticated powdered and perfumed pretenders PERHAPS demonstrating some faith, one hour each week. The rest of the time, dancing to the tune of the world, flesh, devil, just as everyone else, saved or unsaved. The church people are dancing-drinking at the country club, local bar, gawking and golfing with the rest. Then comes a matter of TRUTH, requiring faithfulness. Eighty one percent of religious institutions, filled by volunteers doing service. Until 1920, all birth control, illegal. Now, any birth control method is as easily obtained as a breath mint.

The next popular statistic hatched in hell, the overpopulation of the world. God has always shown His generosity in taking care of people or animals, regardless of the population. The earth’s seven billion population of today, more blessed with food and drink, than the smaller number of any previous century. The mystery of the ages, school teachers, (hirelings) supposedly loving children, depending on a teaching job, voting for and supporting a political party, (democrat) who KILL those on the way to their class. The same applies to trade unions, colleges, military... disciplines whose jobs depend on population growth. (democrats-abortion-supporters)

A greater mystery, why Obama and his ilk, monopolizing and terrorizing the religious church, Catholic or otherwise, self sustaining with actual heart felt conviction from the righteousness of the Holy Spirit of an All Powerful living God in their lives. IF Obama, his fellow charlatans-terrorists, of the true Christian faith possessed any fear-belief in God at all, they would be quaking at what God can do. We know what hurricanes can do, earthquakes can do, terrorists-weapons can do, but God can use microbiology (virus) or many other things to establish His Lordship, and show what God can do. Our Lord is enlarging hell to take care of those who so despise Him and His people.

One professor owned a large pickle jar. He filled the jar with golf balls and said, “Is it full?” Then, he poured in a large bucket of pebbles again, “Is it full?” Then he poured in a large bucket of sand again, “Is it full?” More beautiful than anything else in creation, male and female... their ability to procreate. We do not worship a lackadaisical God, before the world was formed, He already knew the end of the story.

ORGANICISM

2012-02-16T12:15:00.004-05:00

In ORGANICISM, particularly the science relating to healthcare, we know that each organ has it's specific function but it is essential that all work together. Once, Sri Lanka, I saw a beautiful tapestry destroyed because, in a very primitive setting where entire families work for months, weaving and knotting one work of art, a thread became entangled in, of all things, a bicycle, was decimated, something that had taken months, in just a few minutes. Scientists have always known that the human race is only one generation away from extinction, particularly in “Frankenstein” times of super microbes, biological warfare. Cambodia, 1975, all Christians killed by 1978.

Only demon-possessed people take joy in destruction-morbidity. People rejoiced last week at the Westminster Dog Show. Some of these same people should love perfection in God's chief creation, a baby, even in the mother's womb. The mission of the church is to strengthen God's work. We are living in an age of spoiled, indulged, children, who develop into weak, insecure, often sickly, adults. The church, (Romans – Philemon) was built, under the leadership of the greatest preacher next to Christ, Apostle Paul, a devout organism. Today's church groups (41,000 denominations) function on feeling not faith. Most congregations are “drying up” using man's “purpose-driven”, technology-haunted, instead of the proven record established for 2000 years. In most Baptist churches you seldom see a cross. Most non-Catholic churches are just assembly halls, easily mistaken for a civic club. Two minutes in any church well demonstrate that you are in a social not a worship group. The best example you will ever find, here on the coast, many hurricanes. Several years ago, It was one of those names Fran, Bertha, etc., a very great group, Baptist men of NC brought their well-equipped cooking and food trucks. They operated from the Winter Park church grounds.

My electric power had been off for days, of course this old soldier has learned to survive. But, a black couple, Isaac and Mary, several counties away, other side of Riegelwood, NC came by my house to get paid for some work they had done on my rental property, some weeks previously. (Power-Washing) I asked if they had damage from the hurricane? No, we were not bothered by the hurricane but we come into town each day to get food from the “Baptist place” Almost everyone in our community comes in each day... so much in the trunk of the car that you would think they are bootleggers. Our dogs and hogs particularly love the chicken stew. Now this couple, paid money by me, did not ask if I needed anything.

Technology has changed the world, everything except human nature. It bothers me, that Christian, hard-working, Baptist people on North Carolina, and particularly the volunteers who come to assist those in need, are “bamboozled” by greed not deed. We have developed, slow evolution, such a culture, spiritually as well as politically.

My telephone was working, I called the local Southern Baptist Association. I know how to talk on the telephone, polite-concise. Some “prissy” seminary graduate with a reverend in front of his name, answered the phone. I gave him the sordid details of a black community taking advantage of a situation. Like most social problems, government or otherwise, it is not necessity but laziness which prevails... so simple to ask a few questions such as where do you live?, was your house damaged?, do you have electric power? The preacher said to me, “Well we just hope we helped some”, the same thing that the social engineers say about every welfare program when they know full well that investigating would end much government financial largess, when the word gets around, it might cost some liberal votes.

Here, too, the Baptist preacher made no inquiry at all about me, my health , my needs. I'm sure I told him that I was totally blind, living alone, without electricity, in fact, one would think that some would be by to help. My secretary called each day but a tree was on her car. More significant, as far as Southern Baptists at that time, my only child, my son, his family, foreign Southern Baptist missionaries.

Spoiled, indulged, indifferent children usually become “troubled” adults. Life is a matter of preparation, preparation for adulthood, preparation for living as a family, preparation for your eventual promotion (IF chosen of God and a believer in His son, Jesus Christ) to eternal life without problems. More important than ever before in history, your preparation to withstand disaster. I recommend the storing of food, water, and a method to protect you and your family from those who do not prepare. More important, and you know the worship of atonement at the communion table for not only the forgiveness of your sin (past, present, future) but all sickness and infirmity. Jesus healed all who came to Him for anything... leprosy, palsy, fever (Matthew 8:17, Isaiah 53, 1 Peter 2:24) The atonement of our Blessed Lord assures forgiveness of sin and healing. (bread as well as wine)

Satan twists the truth, enjoys having his pretenders push his truth, but you can know the truth and the truth will keep you free. (John 8:32) No one ever had a nervous breakdown from today's problems. God will give you in the light what He promised in the darkness.

Only One Life

2012-02-16T09:56:00.001-05:00

Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. (Jeremiah 17:7-9)

Every word in God's book is settled in heaven. (Psalms 119:89) I don't care how decadent, demonic, atheistic your academic historian may be, if he studies history, has spent more than 20 hours in God's Book, time and seasons are a matter of cycles... everything predictable, religion, culture, values. Arnold Toynbee, historian, said, “Those who do not remember the last war-last desperate depression, will move the world right into another one.”

Today's teenagers will “hate” their parents, grandparents, and the previous generations, who did not prepare them for today's animose of deceitful living. Reared, spoiled, vitiated, botched lives... full of hypocrisy-deception, college degree in worthlessness, tagged with multi-thousands of debt, forced to return home, to live with parents, in order to survive. The dream of your own home, your own things, your own family, a hellish Madison Avenue promoted nightmare, fewer homes sold this year than any year since 1963.

Usually, when a maniac is at the door, feuding brothers reconcile. In the political chaos-climate brought on by Obama and his ilk, spineless elected politicians, (local, state, national) lying, cheating, stealing to get there, interested ONLY in building up their stash of wealth while there and then coasting through other times (lobbying, board and trustee memberships, influence peddling) even the dumbest “early Americans” would have figured out the entire picture-process. Early American political-Mafia, political gangsters, would have been hunted down and hanged. Just think, 50% of the population, paying all tax, the other 50%, living off the productive work of the rest. Just think, 57% living from or expecting “entitlements”. Just think, government regulations, controls, license, permits, resolving all your individual freedoms. Just think, scanned, fondled, molested, before getting on public transportation, entering a public forum. Just think, a precious mother sending a lunch to school with her precious child, just to be inspected by government gestapo. More important, “Who Cares?” Where are the spineless fathers of America who attended church with their musket, as well as their Bible?... more important, fathers who use a musket to civilize a young man who would dare violate his precious daughter. Just think, parents who love their children enough to educate them at home, rather than expose them to the ravages, indifference, decadence, of the public schools. At the same time, paying taxes to support the schools intent on entertainment rather than education. Just think, young men and women, the best, health-education-morality, fighting for a country sent by leadership, intent on filling their pockets, because young folks were brave enough to go. AND, Just think, those who return, treated like dirt by that very country and it's leadership of cowardice. Your writer, totally blind veteran, never afforded even a white cane or talking watch from the government. I buy my own!... still working... still paying taxes so you “normal” people can enjoy the parks, libraries, public facilities, which I have never seen. Don't think of me as a victim, I am victor over your inability to understand what is going on in your life.

Depressing, despairing, WACKOS who call themselves Christians, Episcopalians, Church of Christ, Mormons, Methodists, etc. who in a “philosophy” of feeling not faith, wanting to be politically-correct, goes right along with the Satanic movements of legalized abortion, homosexuals in pulpits, same-sex marriage, even destroying our greatest national strength, “ask don't tell”, females on the front lines in our military services. Are we actually attempting to bring on God's wrath, destroying sin, as He has certainly done before?

In Babylonia, Tower of Babel, through religion, culture, values, as well as other times in history, anyone capable of understanding, knows that God is in charge. The beautiful, ancient city of Athens, Greece, slowly destroyed. MF Global, one and one half Billion dollars, no one knows where it went. If we are going to have riots and revolution, it would help to know who the enemy is.

The most dangerous place on earth, now, the hospital. Coveting government money, workers are paid, whether the hospital is clean or not. Science researchers are paid, whether developments or not. Our rendezvous with destiny depends on our returning to basics. Young people witnessing the crisis of this generation must awaken those asleep at the wheel. We “oldsters” are concerned about the “sweet bye and bye” but “youngsters” must get awakened to what is happening in the here and now.

In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.

Hymn: “Sweet bye and bye”

My TEMPLE, inter court, holy of holies, of a Pro-Lifer

2012-02-15T12:34:00.001-05:00

Gary Lee, MBA

President/CEO

Free Will Baptist Children's Home

P.O. Box 249

Middlesex, NC 27557-0249

February 15, 2012

Re: your letter on February 13, 2012, Mrs. Hunt

Dear Mr. Lee:

Thank you for your letter. So often, when I send memorial gifts, just a matter of someone going through the motions.

Thank you for the information, which gives me an opportunity to say something to you which I have wanted to say to someone for at least 50 years. I never understood WHY someone from the institution had not contacted me. I have a paper trail of my family, ship on which they came over, founding of Morristown, NJ, the poor side of the family, coming to Eastern NC, involvement with FWB. Since my family was so directly associated with the orphanage, I well knew Mr. Evans, Tyson, Johnson, my mother’s sister, Helen Pittman Tyson, Mr. Evans, secretary, my aunt, Louetta Sullivan Morris, boys matron (Aunt of Mrs. Dwayne Eakes) I well remember C.G. Pope and others. My aunt, Lutoria Lucas Barnes, daughter of elder P.T. Lucas, Post-mistress in Middlesex. I understand that my cousin, Donna, had served on the board as did my father’s second wife, Mabel.

As a child, I remember the large main building, the boys building. My father and some of his cousins went to help build, giving their time, the dining facility as well as the chapel. I am probably one of the few people left who heard J.H. Worley preach. I well remember my mother, during the great depression, going door to door... jars of canned goods, fertilizer sacks of corn. I remember students, from the singing group, staying in our home.

After I went to school at Chapel Hill, etc., became active in Southern Baptist work, except for the home church, Union Grove, which I continued to support in honor of parents, grandparents, great grandparents, I gave the first $100,000 for the new activity building, many thousands for other things, and, I might add, None of it appreciated, I was not even invited to the dedication of the activity building. Same as with MOC, where I gave much more but, they have gone the way of Sodom, bowing to the alter of Baal-government money, forgetting that it was church suppers, small gifts from small people, God-fearing, hard-working. Among the memorial awards given by me, there was one for M.L. Johnson and my cousin, Louise Edgerton, and good friend, Dr. Raper. Along with many other awards-money, I have discontinued all contributions-contacts with MOC. I told Dr s. Raper and Byrd, long ago, that if the time came that the precious Gospel of Jesus was usurped by government money, I would leave them alone. Everyone knows what has happened with the new liberal-agnostic administration.

In this age of political correctness,the mantra of who needs God when you have endless Government money, the “coveting” of government money puts you under an umbrella of indifference toward the saints of the past, who forsook all to face the deceit of Satan equipped by the armor of God. (Ephesians 6: 14-17) I may be the last man left standing and at 82, it might not be long, but here, on my faith, I stand.

Now that is history, now let me preach. The editor of The News & Observer told me that I probably had as good a grasp on the history of Eastern North Carolina as anyone he had met. I certainly remember much about the FWB church. My only child, son, Dr. John M. Morris, PhD, professor, Southwestern Seminary, my two grandsons, Andrew and Paul, graduates in law and engineering , both now studying for PhDs, raised on SBC foreign mission field, where parents were missionaries. I will tell you the same thing I have told them. Nothing has ever sickened me like Baptist, particularly FWB who danced to the tune played by the corrupt democrat party of North Carolina... voting in every liberal-satanic piece of garbage coughed up form hell. Preachers in pulpits voting for abortion, simply because it is a democrat-demon. I, a conservative in every way, most of all in my Christian conviction, sin's ruin and Christ's redemption. MOC has made it clear that they do not need me, my gifts now or my estate. I am continuing to work with Ayden, the P.T. Lucas and Sunday School awards. Southern Baptists seem to be heading downward. If there has ever been a time in the history of the world, and these things do go in cycles, that individuals, denominations, need to take a “Stand”, it is now.

I am a totally blind, 100% disabled, service-connected, medical officer veteran, of the Korean War Era. I believe one of the best “tests” of a Christian involves giving... time and treasure. You can do either by pretending but the genuine spirit cannot be hidden.

Living in Goldsboro, many years ago, I learned of the sexual exploitation of some boys at the Odd-fellows children's home there; reported my knowledge to the Sheriff, a Baptist, who just shrugged it off. I often eat breakfast with a man who worked at Oxford, another who was at Kennedy. The burden of my life, constant prayer, children in North Korea. If you study my BIO, you will find that I have traveled the world many times. Every time I go outside, particularly to my rental office complex, the birds, probably knowing who owns the trees, give a symphony. Having seen the horror story of children throughout the world, particularly Thailand, I believe that God is as interested in his chief creation as these wonderful birds, who so thrill me.

Knowing my feelings, perhaps you can understand why I would like to help in your work there.

God Bless

copies to all interested

Dr. Thomas R. Morris
Lt. Col USA Retired
Blind/Dictated
Visit my blog at http://pockets1940.blogspot.com/
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BELLHOP

2012-02-14T13:17:00.002-05:00

Probably, the great pyramid at Giza, Egypt, survived Noah's flood. 250 million tons of stone, each block weighing about 60 tons, each joined together so mathematically correct that you cannot get a human hair between the blocks. Supposedly, the same area-base as Solomon's temple, 13 acres. The capstone, very top, never installed, the great north star looks down into the interior, large enough to house both St. Paul’s and Notre Dame cathedrals. This blind writer has been there several times. The government wanted me to stay in the Penthouse of the Mena House hotel built for the visit of the Queen of Rumania. Although closed to visitors, they wanted me and my guide to go inside the pyramid. It was the only time in my life that I ever experienced claustrophobia. I thought I would die if I could not get out of the place. Perhaps, studies in the pyramid, hieroglyphics (writings) on other stone tablets, are our first books. A friend of mine, CIA officer, so fascinated visiting me, a blind man with thousands of books. (5000 first editions) You are what you read. If Sighted, be thankful that you can still read. There was a time when I gave every visitor to my home, a book. But, I know that most people, even intelligent people who visit me, are too lazy to read. As I told the CIA official, I want these shelves of books for me just to feel of them, to know there is so much knowledge in the world. Of, course I am an antiquarian book dealer, selling books every day.

A book is useless unless reliable. The most reliable book known to mankind, God's book, the Holy Bible. Just any old book will not do, just any old book of mathematical tables and equations will not do, just any old book of Chemistry and Physics laws will not do, just any old book of Anatomy and Physiology will not do, just any old book of Astronomy, Geology, Geography will not do. We need reliability, consistency, accuracy, absolutism, in everything. Just striking a close key on the piano will not do... an approximate tone. The surgeon just cutting in “about” the right place will not do. And so it continues... we know that absolutes are important. The world, flesh, devil would have you believe that proximity-juxtaposition will do... in morals, business practices, relationships, your spiritual life. There are 20 million Watch Tower magazines published each month. I have known personally some Jehovah’s Witnesses, some as patients, some worked for me, but I believe God wants me to stay away from false religions and those who promote them.

God tells us to love one another. I might have some love for a scam artist-businessman but would be a fool to do more business with him. I have some love-relationship with family members, relatives, associates who have treated me like dirt, but I believe God wants me to stay away from them.

… having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

Ephesians 6: 14-17)

This old soldier has his marching orders and so do you. It is foolish to go into battle without the right armor-equipment. David, already anointed King of Israel, delivering food for his brothers on the front line, had learned to use battle equipment before the valley of Elah... facing a 9 1/2 foot giant, Goliath. Saul, first King of Israel simply because of his height, offered his armor to David. Learn to use your own God-inspired armor.

90% of Christian faith is just raw courage. With courage and God's armor, you are ready for life's challenges. His word is forever settled in heaven (Psalm 119:89)

In warfare against disease, you must have the right books for battle. With government intervention, the abomination of Obama, you must read and study about your own healthcare.

There is an indescribable value of trust. God is not your bellhop, is not impressed or ”tickled” when you go to church or put some change in the offering or show some allegiance toward Him. You are to please Him, not Him please you. He gave the best heaven had. Putting on his own son, His wrath for the sin and sickness of the world, which He considered sufficient, just so HE can be there when YOU need Him. God is jealous of your idols, detests your luke-warmness. God has been sold very cheap by a Namby Pamby, social, political, psychological world. He wants you to call on Him but not just at your convenience-desperation.

Traveling the world, always five cameras in my camera bag, if you look on my blog and facebook page , you will see photographs all over the world. Someone said, “Why would a blind person want photographs or be seen in a photograph?” Why not? There was always someone who wanted to capture a scene for me with one of my cameras, wanted others to know that I was there. These concerned fellow travelers-friends were not bellhops. They had a GENUINENESS of spirit, which at one time existed in the Christian world, a world of concern for one another. When I think of poverty, I think of the poverty of the mind. When the mind is right, the man is right. When the man is right, money spent on destruction will be spent digging wells to give pure water to most of the world, who has never had a drink of pure water, total commitment to the life of the unborn.

Stellar Dwellers

2012-02-13T12:44:00.001-05:00

For those of us, just ordinary mortals, insignificant ancestral background, DNA, looks, mental ability, those blessed with talent are so far ahead of us. One of the deadly sins is envy and I suppose it is almost normal to be envious of “exceptionalism”. We envy those who never consider cost on a menu, clothing price tags, who have only known applause, appreciation of any type. There are those of us who guard our health, our habits, knowing that God, in His infinite grace and mercy, is in control of everything.

Talented people know what both legal and illegal substances will do to the body. They know that drugs are a method to slow suicide... famous or infamous.

We watched the deterioration of Michael Jackson, read about Amy Winehouse... the exploits of the Browns, Whitney and Bobby. But when Whitney Houston (Brown) died this weekend, only the most ignorant-judgmental would not think of the loss and cost. But, for Stevie Wonder, and many others, who should know better, (none of us know what is in another person’s heart) at a tribute ceremony to say "To Whitney up in heaven, we all love you.” From what we know about heaven, would Whitney, Amy, Michael, really be happy there... surrounded by the saints in glory, there because of their “action” based on belief, sustained by confidence.... definition of Christian faith?, faith is a verb, action. God will not allow any sin in heaven, only those covered by the righteousness of Jesus Christ, on whom God placed His wrath against sin and disease.

Modernists, sociologists, have almost convinced the world that everyone will go to heaven when they die. Even our Blessed Lord said, Will there be any faith on earth when He returns? (John 18:8) Will there be anyone left, such as we oldsters, who remember worship in holiness, the blessing of Baptism, the Lord's communion table? Will there be anyone left who loved God's book, God's hymns, God's small children... even those unborn?

There are no surprises with God, He knows the end as well as the beginning.

History, over and over, eg., His chosen, 650,000 Jews into Babylonian captivity. 50,000 were allowed to return to rebuild Jerusalem, the temple and city, left as a trash heap. It took several months for them to cross the desert and begin the almost impossible task of rebuilding the temple, the walls of the city. They worked hard, when the foundation was finished, such joy that one could not tell the crying from the laughter But, almost immediately, those who remembered the splendor of Solomon's temple, the greatest building to date ever built, much discouragement. So, for 15 years they did nothing until the profits Haggai and Ezra renewed there commitment. (Haggai, over 80 years of age) So it was earlier, so few remembering Joshua, crossing the Jordan on dry land, commanding the sun to stand still (Joshua 10:13) How easy it is to forget His sovereignty, not only in other's lives but in our own lives... most often those having been given so much... talent, opportunity, health.

It has always bothered me, perhaps it should not, BUT, I am a totally blind disabled veteran. Remembering the millions who had only one life too. Giving that life so others can have a life of opportunity-happiness. My ancestors left a record of their sickness and the deaths of many crossing the Atlantic, seeking freedom. There are records of the enslaved crossing the Atlantic. So it is with records of the enslaved from Africa. Both, in time, “free at last”.

Relatives have often said to me, don't remind us of the hardships, eating from fireplaces, well-water buckets, out-houses, hard-work in the fields and factories. Under a mantra (tent) of forgetfulness-immorality-comfort, will we forget the sweat and tears that brought all of us this far?

Most of the world’s population were not winners of life's lottery... content to stand on the bi-ways crying and sometimes laughing as stardom passed us by. The stellar dwellers will know that their achievement is a gift, that the redemption by Jesus Christ is sufficient.

Defiance

2012-02-10T10:46:00.002-05:00

Blind Ray Charles, singing, playing the piano demanded perfection in his performance. Every note, every word, perfect. Perhaps he is best known for his famous rendition, Rainy Night in Georgia. One line said, “Lord, I believe it is raining all over the world” Weather predictors, all over the world, are baffled. Ancient sailors, who depended so much on weather signals would be ship-wrecked. A few buffoons, trying to capitalize on such idiocy as global warming but most weather, climate experts are just “confused”.

When the luxury liner, “Concordia” wrecked on rock and almost capsized near Italy, the ship's address system was playing the theme song from the movie Titanic. The Concordia, larger than the Titanic means “Union”. Each deck was named for a European country and we all know the shipwreck of the European Union.

President George Washigton in his first inaugural address said, “so His divine blessing may be equally conspicuous in the enlarged views, the temperate consultations, and the wise measures on which the success of this Government must depend.”

The greatest mystery of my life, a totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected, medical officer, veteran of the Korean conflict, bemused-why people of the world, particularly believers in God are so defiant. God's Book gives us every answer, every problem. I was told recently of a university classroom, students nor the professor could list the ten commandments. Most High School students know nothing of America’s history. Only one of every three Christians are registered to vote. If the Catholic church is right about anything, and it is Christian about most things, their stance in the abortion, pro-life Battle against liberals... Obama and his ilk. Yet, Catholics voted 54% for Obama. Baptists, particularly black baptist voted 75% for Obama, THE most anti--life, anti-free enterprise, anti-Israel president in history.

And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ (Ephesians 3:9)

The thread of power, perfect knowledge through Jesus Christ, extends through God's Book. Why are we so defiant to “trust and obey”? God does not ask us to abandon life, rather that we have an abundant life (John 10:10) God does not require that you spend your life on your knees at church nor does He want all your wealth. He has established parameters... the tithe is the Lord's whether you give it or not. The old Swiss bank Wegelin, survived both Napoleon and Hitler, but not Obama and his IRS tentacles. The IRS has jurisdiction over your money in the bank. The FDA has jurisdiction over your body because you are considered a drug. Governments, around the world, churches are in turmoil.

For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else. (Isaiah 45:18)

God is “BOSS”. He demands trust. Humans have tried, scientists have tried, none have found Him wrong in telling us how to live, eat, treat one another.

“And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.” (Genesis 1:29)

With the grass, seed, trees, elements on the earth, the world has been fed. Now, bio tech international Monsanto-Obama and their ilk, adding insult to injury “Monsanto's Agent Orange killed and disabled millions during the Vietnam War.” Now arrive at Vietnam with their GMO seeds, which have already poisoned honey bees, insects, animals, human beings, all over the world. If you think defying God's provisions for you, try feeding GMO and MSG foods to your pets and see how long they will live, Frankenstein food.

God knows where to find His man, Abraham in the Chaldees, Moses in the desert, Paul on the road to Damascus, Gideon threshing wheat. (Judges 6:11) God can get along without us. Could have proceeded without them. They were fearful, 90% of faith is raw courage. Like these, every person yielded to God, overcomes fear. God knows that the one He chooses will put Him first, will choose God instead of self.

Elisha was plowing oxen when Elijah's mantle fell on him. (2 Kings) Elisha left the field, his family, worked with Elijah eleven years... after Elijah’s departure, more miracles from Elisha than Elijah.

God is selecting those for His Kingdom who will put Him first. Why do we continue to defy God at the statehouse, schoolhouse, courthouse, even the church house? Even unbelievers should know that the world is in such a mess that only the Creator of the universe can save it. Unbelievers must be amazed that those who believe in, depend on God are so defiant.

Amnion Confusion

2012-02-09T10:12:00.001-05:00

A Japanese theorem states that a nail sticking up is the one that should get hammered. All mysteries of science, invention, exploration, were there all the time. In God's good time, He gave someone the intelligence to reveal them. The intelligentsia of technology, even literary achievement, seems simple compared to man's interpretation and evaluation of spiritual revelation.

There are 41,000 “so-called” Christian denominations listed in religious nomenclature. Of course, the largest Christian denomination is Catholicism. Christian churches have always multiplied by dividing, just as there are many appendages in Catholicism, (Greek Orthodox, Coptic, etc.) so it is with Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, and most certainly, Baptists.

Sharpened swords, fencing matches for presidential nomination, some are studying religious denotations and connotations of the personalities involved. Democrat Obama, like many other religiosity-hypocrisy democrats (Kennedys, Clintons, Carters, Pelosis, Revs. Jackson-Sharpton) just flaunt their derelictions. Obama, Biden, used religion as a political contrivance-convenience. Obama flirted with the sorcery of Jeremiah Wright, Chicago. What's new?, pews are full of pretenders “just going through the motions”.

Dr. Paul has never said much about his religious beliefs. Both Gingrich and Santorum, Catholic. Romney, as far as I know, is the first Mormon to seek the presidency. There are Mormons in high office, for instance, Senators Reid and Hatch of the Senate. Radio personality , Glenn Beck is an active Mormon.

In the community, in which I was reared, there was a small nest of Mormons, mostly one extended family. In my High School graduating class (13 students) there were four Mormons. You will look far and wide to find people more desirable and decent than these. This world would be a wonderful place if every individual were as “purified” as members of the Mormon faith... clean living, hard-working, dedicated to God, family, country. Perhaps this was an unusual community. The Baptist church, built by my family, was the largest but in the community there was a Quaker, Pentecostal, Methodist, as well as the small Mormon church. Even though worship differences, I never knew any animosity.

However, the Jesus Christ LDS members worship, is the Christ of Joseph Smith. Mormons do not use the Nicene creed. Their church allows abortion for incest and rape. There is an eternal progression belief, beyond comprehension, that man can become everything that God is, that each Mormon male will inherit his own planet, and, of course, they baptize for the dead. Jesus married to Mary and Martha.

We would like to think that an American president's religious faith, economic knowledge, personal integrity, would measure up to the greatest among us but, who are they?, must be hard to find, or we would have superior character in places of leadership. Character determines destination. We find at the highest destinations afforded by government, academia, banking, industry, even denominations, people of questionable character. How did they get there... superior intellect OR superior charm and charisma?

Those who fall, and there are many, not from a high dive... It is usually incrementally, as one falls, there are signs along the way. Satan wants every one of us and the tempter knows every weakness, knows how to festoon every temptation. (as far as presidents, L. Johnson, JFK, Clinton, women and sex: with Bushes 41,43, Gingrich, power, and money)

Ancient Sodom, a lesson for all of us... every sin, degradation, that God hates. GOD ALWAYS GIVES WARNING SIGNALS. Lot and his family were told to leave, the city would be destroyed. The husband's of his daughters thought he was joking. But, God led Lot, his wife, and daughters out of the city before total annihilation. Thousands of years later, one short verse, unrelated to context, Remember Lot's wife. (Luke 17:32) She, like so many, enthralled by the sin-enticement of Sodom. Evil-doing is addictive, especially when it pays off big. Who needs God when you have all the money in the world, the extravagance of Air Force 1, the most expensive mansion in the world, power, prestige, pomp, which makes King Solomon look like a piker?

You are living in an insolent-profane world. Corruption has taken over, rottenness everywhere, even Royal families, when traveling, carry their own food. Wealthy people have yachts and planes for escape. There are underground tunnels, well supplied, around every capitol, every nation.

Jesus said, “I pray that your faith fail not.” (Luke 22:30) Begin each new day determined to give the best version of yourself that day.

Homogenized Culture

2012-02-08T13:55:00.002-05:00

An older man was a candidate for public office. His opponent hired a woman to appear at every speaking engagement of the candidate. She would just stand on the fringe of the crowd and whisper “He is an octogenarian”. The whispers would caress the crowd that the older man was an octogenarian... the majority, not realizing the the word simply meant 80 years of age. “Light has come into the world, but men prefer darkness to light.” (John 3:19) We love to discuss evil, predatory Catholic priests. Young girls sold into slavery in Africa. Young boys becoming sex slaves in India. Without our realizing it, a homogenized world. Every one, everything seeking the lowest common denominator. What happened to honesty, integrity?

One of the first times, and I remember it well, I witnessed honesty in business. A friend owned a restaurant. I went to visit him as he was eating his lunch at the counter. He said, “Tom, have some lunch with me.” I said, “I would like a ham sandwich like the one you are eating and a cup of coffee” When we had finished eating, he called the cashier and said, “Give me a check for our lunches.” Now you would expect that most business owners would not expect to pay for his or a guests lunch, but he pulled out the money and paid for both. In so doing, he showed his employees the world, the flesh, the devil, his guest, that his honesty was pervasive, even in his own business. Many employees have seen employers cut corners-compromise, then it is easier for the employee to do the same. Do not expect your employees to be honest if they see dishonesty in you, do not expect your children to be a model of virtue if they have witnessed hypocrisy in you.

This octogenarian has found that most lives, the science and art of living, “just going through the motions” I long for the day that I can see genuineness and spirit again. I have been in hospital rooms where, the visiting pastor or minister “just went through the motions.” There because he was paid to be there... repeating some well-worn phrases because it was expected.

One of my friends died recently. Barry had given up on the church... the insincerity of the preacher, people in the HABIT of pretending. But, he was very kind to a janitor at a local McDonald's. Who should walk into his hospital room but the janitor... showing real concern, real compassion? It has been many years since I saw real concern, real compassion in a doctor's office. Usually, someone spends more time getting information from you about your ability to pay than the doctor or staff spend trying to find out your reason for being there.

There are enough Catholics in this nation to control an election... almost 70% of voters are Catholics. Fifty-four percent of these Catholics voted for the most anti-life, anti-Christian president in history. Like the Jews, who too are so broad-minded, so liberal, the Catholics even invited him to speak at Notre Dame. When he spoke at Catholic Georgetown, all religious symbolism was covered. Like Baptists, evangelicals, even some republicans, Catholics are slow learners. Now, February 2, “like spitting in the face of God”, presidential edict that all Catholic institutions must pay for birth control, abortions, etc. in their various health insurance programs. Obama and his ilk have proved that they do not mind facing religious battles head on. His view of the world, “The end justifies the means”, into a cauldron-blender this presidential imposter is scooping financial equity, sexual animus, educational indoctrination with spiritual valuelessness... the historical American culture blended into nothingness from a long narrative of somethingness.

God's directives... historical foundation found in His book, differ from any man's directives. Does it bother anyone that recklessness has led to a $75 Trillion national debt, divided out to $250,000 for every man, woman, and child in this nation? Technically, financially, bankrupt. Spiritually, biblically, a people dedicated to destruction.

Inspiration of Leadership

2012-02-08T12:24:00.002-05:00

God always called a man, not a committee. After the flood of Noah, when all human-kind except the family of Noah were destroyed, God found one man in UR of the Chaldees, a great grandson of Noah with whom God made a new start. Abraham, first Jew, married, wife Sarah, childless. God instructed him to travel to a place with no “forwarding address”. He told him not to bring any family but his father Terah came along and died near Damascus. Terah was a worshiper of idols, and God wanted all idol worship out of Abram's life. His brother's son, Lot, tagged along, always a problem. They went 600 miles north. He became the richest man of his day... the story of Abraham-Sarah-Isaac-Ismail. The history of this chosen people, the “ups and downs” (Down to Egypt, Up to the Promised Land) history, prophesy, promises until this very day. One is not informed in an area of leadership without knowledge of this history. If one ever wants to know about the future of the world, what has happened, is happening, will happen, just three letters, “JEW”. How tragic, so many in pulpits and pews, “Just playing church”.

Once, this world traveler went to Hebron, (older than Jerusalem) the mosque there in which the tomb of Abraham and Sarah are located. Always, my mind renewed in faith, my spirit renewed in joy, thinking of the history, encouragement, leadership, given us by God in places as well as in people. Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed. (Acts 3:25)

Always remember, God is in charge, in His mind before creation. He is not surprised at anything, not shocked, knew about their sins, my sins. As fresh as this morning's news broadcast, this morning's newspaper headlines, a world perishing-starving for leadership. Is there a mind, so depraved of neurons that one would actually consider an B. Obama, G. Soros, B. Gates, V. Putin, H. Chavez or even B. Clinton or his communist wife, Hillary, as leaders. Would you be proud to claim any of today's “supposed” leaders as family? I do not know one of today's “supposed” leaders with enough integrity, honesty, to employ as a cashier in a fast food restaurant. If you believe anything present day leaders say, if you trust any of them, you have no one to blame but yourself for the downfall of your country. IF God allows and continues to tolerate such depravity of this country, then HE will apologize to Sodom... the perverts and prisoner's of sin who died there.

It starts in the home. If your children mature seeing beer in your refrigerator, liquor and illegal drugs in your house, know for a fact that your children will be addicted to something. If your children see dishonesty, hypocrisy in your church and business activity, you can expect the same from them and perhaps should prepare yourself to bail them out of trouble. The saddest picture known to man, overindulging parents following the casket of a spoiled child to an open grave.

Have voters lost their minds? All are not illiterate, able to read and write, comprehend simple messages. Why put such decadent, dishonest, degenerate, “so-called” leaders as the Kenndys, Bushs, Clintons, L. Johnsons in public office? Why not just pick Mafia heads, Mafioso, better trained. Lyndon Johnson was probably one of the most cheap, despicable men to ever live. Reportedly, he would walk around the White House naked, before his wife, daughters, staff. He would invite a diplomat into the bathroom with him as he sat on the toilet. Most decent people are embarrassed to even speak of the sexual, financial exploits of these men from “supposed” America’s best families of leadership. I thought of the indecency of Lyndon Johnson as Leonotyne Price (Metropolitan Opera) and Billy Graham performed at his death. Like Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson went to Washington broke, both left multimillionaires. Of course we know where the Bush family got it's fortune (grandpa dealing with Hitler during WWII). Kennedys, Joseph Kennedy, womanizing bootlegger. Old Joe was so despicable that Eleanor Roosevelt that she would not attend JFK's funeral, refusing to sit in the platform with JFK's father

Local and State politicians know how I have watched their corruption as a totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected, medical oficer veteran of thew Korean conflict, I am insulted (and I fully realize that no one cares) and North Carolinians should be embarrassed that for 140 years the very worst in deceitful, decadent, political leadership has ruled this “tarheel state” under just one political party, democrats. Worse that the Mafioso, the democrats could depend on the votes of all government workers, (local, state, federal) the blacks, organized workers, such as teachers, unions, gays. The most evil man I have ever known, Roland Register, county tax collector said to me, “You republicans can holler and yell and even vote someone in once in a while, remember this, democrats control everything, you will not find a government worker voting anyway except democrat.

Light has come into the world, but people prefer darkness to light. (John 3:19) From 1799 – 1892, even the Supreme Court declared this a Christian nation and, there was a Christian Judiciary. God-fearing men in public office. Men of faith, leadership of the military. Because of leadership with shoestrings instead of backbones behind podiums and pulpits, we have legalized murder by abortion, legalized insanity of same-sex marriage, the perversion and pollution of the military. The nation has replaced faith with fear... fear of what the secular-humanist-academic media and pagans think, rather than what God knows.

Namby Pamby World

2012-02-07T12:10:00.001-05:00

Politicians and preachers have used many adjectives to describe 21^st century America. Perhaps best, a Namby Pamby World, spoiled, lazy, indifferent. Fifty percent of the population, depending on the work of other other fifty percent.

It is a great consolation, very rewarding to know that it was not always so, that there was a time when real men lived real lives. Such was George Washington Carver, scientist, educator, inventor, born into slavery, the exact date of his birth is not known but he died in 1943, having, along with Booker T. Washington and others, put Tuskegee institute on the map.

Famed for his agricultural advancements, particularly with peanuts, when any student from anywhere, reportedly, came for an interview with him, he would tell his secretary “to tell the applicant that he was involved in an meeting for one hour, that the student was to clean the reception and adjoining rooms during that hour.” The secretary was to show them the closet where all cleaning supplies were kept. The student did not realize that this test was more important to Dr. Carver than any number of questions that could be answered on paper. This was the initial test to determine if the student would be accepted at the institution.

I have used similar tests for young people who worked for me. My hard work, careful investing, so.... many rental buildings. One morning, I told my driver to take me to a certain place in town for a meeting. We had been joined by a new employee who was riding in the back seat. “Now you two go over and vacuum and clean an office in a certain building and then come back for me.” When my driver returned the other young man was absent. I asked about him. My driver said, “he told me to take him back to his car, that he was a college graduate, that he would not clean anything for me or anyone else.” This blind doctor’s hands are not to too good to do anything, for anyone. These hands have been in more books, cleaned more toilets than most people have ever seen. I still live independently, do my own cleaning-laundry, take care of myself. This very day, 82, sightless, I helped clean a building. In the White House, President Lincoln was seen polishing his shoes. He said, ”why not, I wear them.” His salary as president 25,000, FDR's salary 50,000, revealed last week, Michelle Obama spent 50,000 in lingerie. (Drudge, Blaze)

Doldrums in real estate, a young women realtor applied to do office work for me. Supposedly, she had three children from different fathers. In the course of my interview, she told me in front of other assistants, that her children would not eat leftovers, that she had to get home each day in time to cook. That, her boys would only wear name brand clothes purchased in a surf shop. I gave her some good, free advice “Tell your children the same thing this old blind man's mother told him. “When you get hungry you will eat.” “Tell your boys that this old blind millionaire, started out at zero, does not own one article of clothing not purchased second hand... that every stick of furniture in my house is second hand, that there is no schooling, no education like that found at the school of hard knocks. Your boys need to have live with my dead father for about two weeks.”

This writer well remembers the splash of the Beetles, Ed Sullivan show, etc, on their first visit to America. Charles Dickens, 30 years of age, world's most famous writer, 5 famous books in six years, came to America, the first time, in 1842. New York's splash-finest, 3000, silks and jewels welcomed him at a gala reception. Later, a presidential reception in Washington. At that time, Dickens did not receive one royalty from his writings, printed in America. The rich and famous tried to capitalize on this famous guest. Dickens wrote of America’s decadent behavior towards money and inequality, particularly towards the poor whites and black slaves. He considered Americans uncouth, poor manners, barbarians. It was not until a return trip, many years later that there was an attitude readjustment on both sides.

Dwight Lyman Moody, born in poverty in northern Massachusetts, his father's early death, he working to support his mother and family, third grade education. He went on to preach before more people than anyone else in the world before his death, always studying, a great educational institution bearing his name. (Moody Bible Institute – Chicago, Ill)

Traveling the world, I have seen what communism does to human beings. Raised in eastern North Carolina, I have seen how political decadence enslaves... cotton mill workers, tenant farmers, black people scratching a living from the soil, battered, working in the homes and businesses of the privileged. People trying to survive, “tethered” to chains of discrimination, all the while, Caucasians, behind stained glass windows proclaiming, “Oh how I love Jesus.”

For 140 years, the democrat political party enabled by the very blacks which republicans had emancipated, Baptists and Catholics, who Jesus died to save, like the priest and Levite, (Luke 1), just namby pamby, pretending not to see, piously “repeating”, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Do we actually think that a Sovereign God of servitude, healing, and forgiveness is deaf, blind, and does not know what is going on... does not know what is in the heart?

Bamboozled

2012-02-06T12:25:00.001-05:00

For many years, Fridays, I take my assistants for lunch to McDonald's, the end of a week of antiquarian book selling. From there we go to the post office or other mailing facility, there we ship all of the business for the week. All my days are routine, schedules pertaining to the business or my other business interests, real estate, etc.

The blind writer-editor, Henry Belk, told me that his “seeing eye wife” told him how “normal” people watched him. I suppose it is a curiosity to watch a blind person eat. Like Pavlov's dogs, most disabled have become “conditioned” to everything that goes on around them. It is essential for survival around “normal” people.

I listened to a woman sitting near me talking to her mother. She had, evidently, brought the aged woman on an outing from a nursing home. She kept instructing her how to eat, that she should have ordered something less “messy”. The mother said she had been waiting for weeks to have what she was eating. The mother kept asking, “where is the crowd, where are the children?” The daughter kept saying “we don't need a crowd, we don't need children running around, making a noise.”

The happiest sound for most older people are the sounds of children, not only bringing back memories of their own children, but the fact that in spite of their sunset years, life goes on, as shown by the voices and energy of children. I do not go to church anymore (I have certainly learned that disabled people are not wanted in church) but, perhaps 20 years ago, one of the last times I was in the old family church, I told the person who drove me there that I enjoyed the old hymns but the most wonderful sound was that of crying babies. (since the court decision of 1973, 54 million babies aborted, 3000 each day, 1352 black babies. 52% of all black babies, aborted.)

There is so much corruption in the world it is hard to put it all under one umbrella. There are no records to tell us what life was like in5000 BC, before Noah's flood. But, we know that men were so corrupt-sinful that God repented for creating man and, with water, destroyed all except Noah and his family and the animals on earth he wished to save. You must put flesh and blood on ancient people, always looking backward. We know what happened but, just as now, do not know what will happen. There had never been rain but Noah, like so many saints, is remembered in Bible history for his faith. Amid the scoffing of his fellow man, spent 120 years building a ship, (according to God's specifications, still used by ship builders) about the size of the Queen Mary. And, we know, that as the rains came, Noah stood in the opening of the ship, begging to people to seek salvation. We are told that at the end-times of this present world men would act just as bamboozled, (Matthew 24) just as deceived, just as ensnared-enslaved by Satin and his co-conspirators.

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

(Psalm 1:1-3)

In my lifetime, satanic forces of evil have taken over, politically, economically, spiritually, in education, and scientific advancement. World-wide, but specifically in America, God's chosen-blessed, bulwark of freedom, voters are bamboozled by the world, the flesh, the devil. At the NEA convention in 1968, teachers were told that they would control voting by 1980. The gay agenda, ACLU, NAACP, AAAS, American Council of Churches, have brought on decadence, a valueless-profane culture.

Perhaps nothing shows this more than the pseudo-science involving “taste.” A company in San Diego, Semonyx, using fetal human tissue to enhance taste on products for such corporations as Coca Cola, Pepsico, Nestle, Cadbury, even Campbell Soup. Products from some of these companies are already on shelves. (Coffee creamers)

This writer is a totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected, veteran of the Korean war era. Around 58,000 fine young men and women died during each the Korean and Vietnam wars. Americans at home, other nations, have been told that THERE IS a substitute for victory. (a mistress of President Kennedy said that JFK said that : ”he would rather for his children to be read than dead”

Abraham Lincoln said that “no enemy should be allowed to take a drink of water from the Ohio river”. When will it occur to politicians, pastors, parents, that America has built a beautiful house, every technology, every convenience. Do we realize that it is being destroyed by termites, that there are those who wish to burn the house down in order to save it. When you look in the mirror, those who vote democrat, those in the air conditioned foxholes in the church, those who claim to love their children, and allow their children's minds to be completely polluted and corrupted. Are you able to say “I have done my best for my country and ALL children?”

Hophni and Phinehas

2012-02-03T10:47:00.001-05:00

free from all cares that on earth can annoy us

Sions sweet anthems shall holy employ us

grateful at last for those infinite graces

time nor eternity never effaces

-Bernard de Morlaix

Few people could read or write during early Christian history... limited mostly to Monks. The Monk, Bernard, 1156, wrote this poem which was translated from Latin to English in 1856. Other parts of these words of devotion from this Monk have become a great hymn.

Ten centuries from first writing, seven centuries until it's translation into English, and now 2012, our lives are vandalized every day by the insanity of civilization... technology, social, economic, political, military unrest, warfare and chaos. There is as great a need now as in the twelfth century to hang on to the faith (once delivered to the saints, (Jude 1:3)), a faith which has been OUR dwelling place, a faith believed and defended by saints of old, (of whom the earth was not worthy, (Hebrews 11:38)) Always, wanting what God provides, and God is everything that anyone could want, we have had pretenders, those not knowing grace through faith.

This writer has never known anyone who just believes that there is finality in death... all believe there is life after death. Individuals and denominations are insecure, unreliable, in their information. Most want to hang on to God with one hand, Satan-world with the other. A born again, new creation in Christ, the Holy Spirit of God-righteousness of Christ, indwelling knows that Christianity is a precious relationship with Christ. That God looks at you and sees the righteousness of Christ. My family, friends, associates, do not believe this. If so, they would live differently... let go of the world, the flesh, the devil. Those of us, who have a daily, minute by minute walk and talk with the Savior, are considered “nuts”, a fanatic. Many of those living from God's storehouse, (pastors, preachers, etc.) the TV personalities certainly are not compared with the saints of past centuries.

The Levite priesthood, who lived from the tithes of the children of Israel possessed a priest named Eli (1 Samuel 2) Eli had two sons that were priests, Hophni & Phineas living well, actions evil, from the storehouse of God. In a long history, which I will not go into now, involving the Philistines, the capture of The Ark of the Covenant, the “true nature” of these two priests became known. It is believed that Eli and his two evil, corrupt, pretending sons died on the same day.

This part of biblical history becomes colorful-factual as we learn of God's power involving the Ark of the Covenant which He designed... a box of acacia wood covered with gold, on top, pure gold mercy seat... a thread, type, shadow, leading to Christ. The Ark, indwelled by God, holy of holies area, tabernacle, temple of the Jewish people, everything, pertaining to a box.

Our lives amenable-compliant to boxes. We live in boxes, travel, go to school, worship, engage in lifestyles conforming to boxes. Our religious beliefs in one of three boxes, belief, unbelief, half-way house. The Christian desire, the great commission, stepping outside these boxes and, the Christian is only effective outside the box. You cannot lift a box of any type by standing in it.

The average home has more TV sets than people, we have our idols, just as did the Philistines. Redemption is totally of God (Hebrews 1) We must shed our filthy garments to realize basic Christianity, sin's ruin and Christ's redemption. Jesus took our place, God considered His son's life sufficient. I am shooting with a rifle instead of a shotgun, to all who have exploitation, doubts, beaten down by the world, “Jesus paid it all”.

Like the insignificant woman who pushed through the crowd, “just to touch”. “Be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole ”, (Luke 8:48)

Now as then, a TRUE determination of sincerity not intimidation by Satan. Insincerity-hypocrisy has wrecked enough lives, from the church house to the statehouse. There must be separation, try breathing out three times without breathing in once. You have the assurance of knowing that God will never leave you nor forsake you. (Hebrews 13:5)

Angelo Dundee

2012-02-02T12:30:00.002-05:00

Two overnight developments, Angelo Dundee, world's best known boxing trainer, died at age 90. He trained such fighters as Mohammed Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, George Foreman. He had just returned from the celebration of Ali's 70^th birthday. He was known as a man of honesty and integrity.

This writer has traveled the world, every continent. Perhaps the most remote areas, New Guinea. In most island nations, ferrys are used to transport people. Last night a ferry, carrying over 300, sank near Papula, New Guinea, a place I well remember. News broadcasts said they were using all their equipment to get as many from the water as possible before darkness, last count, 225. Safe in a warm bed, I could not help but think of the fright and despair of human beings in darkness, in a raging sea. It brought to my mind the fright I have experienced as a totally blind person living and contemplating a world of dishonest, non-integrity people. This involves a disabled person's efforts to get around, public transportation, particularly in a foreign county, a world of taxi cabs.

Eight trips around the world, traveled the streets of most world cities, books could be written. I give you just a few experiences.

It is bad enough in a city which you know, and one in which you are known. Each city gives a special license to a taxi. A taxi medallion in New York City now costs nearly $1 million dollars. The taxi driver not only gets a set amount for mileage, but expects a tip... regardless of service. In this town, special license. The disabled, especially those who are blind and crippled, living alone, with all the logistics involved (unable to get to a bus stop, accessing buildings, etc.) must depend on the empathy of cabs and their drivers. I endure the cost (insurance, taxes, expenses) of an automobile, paying a driver to escape the harassment of taxes: HERE IN THIS CITY.

There are exceptions. One visiting London never forgets the quality of the black, English cab, the polite, well-dressed driver. I found, in the Falkland islands, the governor used, for himself, a black London taxi.

Possibly, my worst taxi experience, I was in Italy, Genoa, attempting to get to the airport. The hotel concierge had assisted me to a taxi-van at the front, (I do not speak Italian) helping me with my fee for the trip, told the driver exactly where I was to go. Two American ladies were going to the airport, a mother and daughter. The daughter worked in the famous Filene's basement in Boston. Their ancestors were form Genoa and they had saved for years for the trip. Of course our luggage was in the trunk. We waited and waited, the driver was trying too get one more fare and all airports are far from the city. Obviously, God gave planners a prophesy to isolate airports.

Travelers know you cannot miss flights, everything is prearranged. The daughter spoke Italian, she threatened the driver about getting us to the airport. There was warfare in the taxi and, adding to the missing flight dilemma, the mother needed a pit stop... the driver refused. The daughter put her hands around his neck. The sobbing, embarrassed, mother made her stop by the car, side of the road.

When we arrived at the airport, he was expecting a tip, we had already paid for the trip. We had our bags, I was to follow mother and daughter, their voices, to the airline counter. When the driver mentioned tip to the daughter she slapped him so hard, so loud, that I believe it shook to he airline building. I am sure she used Italian that he understood. Of course we missed our flight but, the officials at the counter (sometimes an American passport helps) got us on another flight.

Money is difficult enough to a blind person, best of circumstances, almost impossible in a foreign country. I have ridden on Rickshaws, scooters, donkey carts, even elephants. In Muslim countries the drivers pester you continuously for a tip. In the Sahara, on a camel, in Jordan, trying to get through the small opening trail to Petra, horseback, the drivers never stopped begging for more money. Just imagine, having little or no sight, strange animals, strange people... much like being in strange water in a strange sea.

Positively, the world's worst cab drivers, New York City. I had prepaid the fare, afraid to take more money out of my pocket. The cab driver told me he hoped my plane would crash. I made it a point to walk to the East Side Terminal to avoid riding in a New York City taxi. One cold day, I had ridden the bus, necessary to count the stops, to 34^th street for a meeting, decided to walk back to my home on E 56^th street (corner of Park Avenue) At the corner of Broadway and 47^th, thrown on the street and robbed, shaken. Suspecting a broken hip, I asked a cab driver to take me to my house, that the doorman would pay him. He refused, I had been robbed, did not have money. I wrote to then mayor, Ed Koch, and as usual, with politicians, no response. The doorman at my building called the police... they would only say over and over, how lucky I was that I was not killed.

A lawyer at the “Lighthouse for the Blind” (59^th street, NYC) a place to which I walked, staff duties, knew everyone, told me that when she got out of a cab, nasty driver, not only did he not get a tip but she left the door open so he would have to get out of the cab and close the door. When did the people of the world start closing doors of empathy-integrity on one another?

Circular Firing Squad

2012-02-02T10:52:00.002-05:00

A political year unlike any year in world history, the entire world in recession, several active military wars, protestors in the streets of world cities, such as occupiers in America, controlled news media, “weekly leaks”, minds of those concerned, shattered-crippled, little reason for anyone to be joyful. Even billionaire, George Soros, promoting as well as financing street chaos, (got his financial start “picking” the holocaust remains of his fellow Jews) tells us that the world is set for a bloody revolution, as he raises money for the reelection of President Obama.

Often, better to wait than to work. Often, better to just stand still until you have clear direction. (such as Paul, about to travel to Tarsus, God stopped him, he received the Macedonian call, the world, the church, changed.) Make room for timelessness-prayer.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran preacher, hanged during holocaust said, “Flee temptation”. It started with Eve in the garden, even Christ, immediately after His Baptism, wilderness, TEMPTATION by Satan. This year, more so than any year, a constant-continuous prayer life. It is bad enough to watch politicians, such as the recent republican excesses in a presidential candidacy, firing at one another, but we should not lose contact with the reality of our dilemma.

The Great Depression, 1929-1940, few actual government records. Unemployment and almost everything else, just approximations. We know that 90% of the population lived in rural areas, the city populations, 25% unemployed. Today, just the reverse, 90% in urban areas and probably the same unemployment numbers. The great difference, 49% of the population receives a government check of some type (social security, military or civil retirement, welfare, student loans, etc.) Fifty percent of the population do not pay income tax, live off the taxes paid by the other half. The 50%, receiving government largess-non taxpayers, the very ones who determine elections. So much government control, “picking of the pockets”, mandates beyond anyone’s control. (eg. 10 cents of every gallon of gas, entangled by a regulation pertaining to air pollution.) The government tells us that January, 2012 was the best month in the stock market since 1994. It is like telling one he is losing weight, simply because he has tinkered with the scale, he is drinking healthy water, although the poison of chloride has been added, that his bank deposits are protected by the government, even though the government is bankrupt. (FDIC) We are adding $5 trillion a year to the national debt, CPI, inflation, interest rates, a product of government manipulation. Until 1970, a father could support a family with one job, mother, homemaker, raising children. By 1983, both parents working and, now often the father, with an second job.

The news-types, and don't believe anything the “talking heads” say, painting rosy pictures when when they know the truth.

A dose of reality, present depression, your country's own making. When will you learn that there are those that hate this country, thinking they can rebuild it after destroying it? (Marxists, Globalists, Racists) They will not tell you that if every dime of salary income, every dime of investment income, were taken by the government, that money would only pay social security and medicare, the deficit would not change. If we stopped all spending except for those two items, nothing would change.They will not tell you that if you confiscated every dime of the 5%, the richest, who pay most of the tax, you could not pay off the debt. The commentators as well as the congress know the truth but conceal the truth. A politician cannot get elected by telling you the truth, because we all want to hear a lie. A woman, so ugly, she breaks a mirror, wants to be told that she is pretty. The world financial system has already collapsed, it is an ugly mess. No building suddenly falls without reason... either controlled demolition or neglected deterioration.

A loaf of bread in Mugabe, Zimbabwe now cost $300 billion. They have just issued a new $100 trillion dollar bill worth roughly $300 US dollars. One American financial adviser-broker wallpapered the bathroom in his office with Zimbabwe money. He said, “All the wallpaper in the bathroom will not buy lunch.” I am so JOYFUL I saw Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) when it was a sane, beautiful country. (The bread basket of Africa) I am JOYFUL, a totally blind, medical officer, veteran of the Korean conflict, that I remember my country when it was sane and beautiful. But, this circular firing squad, this firing at one another, this protracted envy-jealousy, the haves toward the have-nots, the lazy toward the productive, (spreading of the wealth) will most certainly lead to more rapid destruction.

When the 640,000 Jews from Judah were herded to Babylon (70 year captivity) they told the prophets with them that they could not worship-sing in a foreign land. The prophets told them to raise children, plant and harvest, to worship until their return. (Isaiah 51:11) Anyone who says he trusts the government should not be allowed to vote because the American people are victims, enslaved by themselves, their own cowardice, ineptness. Just as the church world has become too wrapped up in doing it's own thing... forgetting worship, this nation has become too wrapped up, entangled by sociology. We have forgotten the spirituality of liberty, responsibility, opportunity.

Suicide Culture

2012-02-01T13:48:00.001-05:00

Animals and even plants, in their DNA, a dynamic instinct for life... living. It is difficult to kill any type plant, even a weed. In times of drought, the root will go deep, seeking moisture. I have known animals, caught in traps, to chew off a limb seeking freedom. This is the reason, with all the challenges of living, that human beings will commit suicide. There is more suicide among young people, college students, even in the military services, than ever before in history. Elie Wiesel, holocaust survivor, in his book about survivors said, “Totally depressed, one knew that all he had to do was start running for the fence, and he would be shot, it all would be over.”

Once, a cousin with HIV/AIDS begged me to assist him with suicide. One college friend, walked into his apartment to find his roommate, head blown off with a gun. As horrific as suicide with individuals, one actually reaching that point when there is no challenge to go further, the suicide of a nation, a culture of people... such waste, such loss.

I was in Jerusalem when the city was separated, the Islamic from the Jewish. Outside the dome of the rock, Muslim-Jordan, an Islamic cleric told me, “A short distance away, Jews putting prayers into a wailing wall, once Solomon's temple. Muslims can wait, over one billion believers, we will use capitalism, communism, whatever, to achieve our goal then, we will eliminate them also.” We know that Muslims do not mind killing one another. (1988 Iran-Iraq war – one million killed: this writer heard Kissinger himself say, “Too bad they both cannot lose.”)

Next to Islam, over one billion followers, Catholicism, over one billion believers yet, Catholics voted 54% for Obama. Recently, January 20, three days before the March for Life, Obama “ruled” that Catholic universities-hospitals-charities must pay for health insurance that covers sterilization, contraceptives and abortifacients. At a time of “ask don't tell”, same-sex marriage, unisex bathrooms, toy stores are taking down signs separating boy and girl toys. There will no longer be gender specific toys. Liberals-democrats now tell us that gender is a choice, even some girls are too feminine, others not feminine enough... even parents unconcerned about effeminate sons. A builder told me recently that it is difficult for him to find a young man to work for him willing to climb a ladder. In this town, only Mexicans will “roof” a building. From the beginning of biblical history, life was never easy. Our first parents determined that... original sin. But, with His chosen people, Jews, leaving bondage, healthy (not a sickly one among them, Psalm 105, even their clothing never to wear out, song of Asher, “Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be.” (Deuteronomy 33:25)) God then, as now, supplying every need for the trip, long or short. God did not “shoe” them with flip-flops, bedroom slippers, even combat boots. OUR TRIP IS TOUGH, WE NEED SHOES OF IRON.

Abraham, first Jew, “father of a multitude”, twin grandsons, Esau and Jacob, teaches us about election, seed and the sower. Jacob, “mamas boy”, cheater, God chose. (Romans 9:13)... a marvelous story of two cheaters, uncle Laban, nephew Jacob. But, at Bethel, Jacob wrestled with God until he was reborn with a new name... new creation... new character, Israel. From Leah, ten sons, Rachel, two sons... the unending story of Joseph, enslaved children of Israel, history until this very day.

The Hebrew word for eternal, VanGuard. Everything in our lives is relevant, except to God. Einstein blew our objectivity of time and space, but God, is not surprised at anything. We will not shock Him... our successes or failures. He is the beginning and the end, Alpha and Omega, everything has already happened in His mind. When God says something once, you should take notice. Four times, God said, “Be strong and of good courage.” (Psalm 46) God is not surprised at anything, even the stupidity of a culture intent on suicide.

Justice at Leisure

2012-01-31T12:58:00.002-05:00

From an article online, Gaston Gazette dated 12/23/2012 we have the following lines from the convicted, sentenced, murderer of the 17 year old daughter of Mr. & Mrs. Catterton of Gaston County, NC. The letter from the convicted murderer sentenced to die reads, in part, as follows:

“Is the public aware that the chances of my lawful murder taking place in the next 20 years if ever are very slim?” Hembree asked. “Is the public aware that I am a gentleman of leisure, watching color TV in the a/c, reading, taking naps at will, eating three well-balanced meals a day?”.

This writer, a totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected, medical officer, veteran of the Korean Era, who, at age 82, living alone, still taking care of myself. I have often said to my accountant, what I have given to my country and still paying the tax I pay, I would be much better off in prison, prepared food, good living accommodations. There is only just so much an old blind man could do. My accountant always said the same thing, “I sign these papers too and I don't want to go to prison.”

In the grand design of things, God wanted me to experience the world, and I have traveled every continent despite my disability. In Shenyang, Manchuria, I asked my Chinese guide, “Are many people in prison?” You see, I knew the history of China, the Mao regime, (when 100 million Chinese were killed) a great statue of him in the center of the city. The guide said, “News gets around about treatment of prisoners, we do not have many in prison.” I understood this when I was a guest in a large Chinese hospital, described to me, prisoners taped to tables, eyes-mouths taped, dead or dying, opened, their vital organs being removed, transplanted to a patients on other tables.

In this North Carolina city where I live, before heathenism took over the local YMCA, one day, steam room, a man whose voice was not familiar, asked me about my blindness. He told me he was filling in from Central Prison, Raleigh at the local youth center prison. I said, “I understand that they have it real easy out there.” He said, “The old people in nursing homes would be better off in that prison.” These young prisoners are spoiled to good food, recreation and every weekend, a variety of movies.

Some years ago, a female worked for me a few days, a deputy in the Sheriff's department, working at the local jail... new facility, pod style. She described to me the arrangements. The pod where she worked, she, enclosed in a secure room with glass around it, everything electronic. She said the prisoners were bored silly, gym activities, television, reading and eating. She said the gay ones would just put bed sheets over themselves for privacy. Another ex-prisoner doing some work for me in a rental building, as plumber, told me of his prison experience at the encampment, Burgaw, NC. He said, “I could get anything I wanted.” The guard knows where to look for the money. It is just essential that someone on the outside, send you money.

60 years ago, I was a student at UNC-CH hitchhiking home, UNC stickers on my suitcase, standing near, evidentally, a graveyard of Central Prison, Raleigh. A van, men digging a grave, began yelling to me about “Carolina” I walked over and found they were burying a prisoner, cheap cardboard type coffin. They asked me if *I wanted to look at him. I said, “No, Carolina students have enough images.” These engaging men told me about the dead prisoner, a lifer, he had killed several. “He will never kill again.” The thought occurred to me, young, knowing little of the world or it's tragedies. “The man in that coffin was once a baby, loved by a mother. He is being buried without one family member, one trace of religion around us.”

Have we lost our sanity? There are more people incarcerated in America than any country of western civilization. Have you noticed that most killers, particularly of families or of several people, usually, kill themselves? Has life become so cheap, so worthless? How about those of us who have behaved ourselves, accomplished what we could with what we have? I remember writing representative Charlie Rose (NC 7th) about the plight of veterans in particular, this veteran, who has never been able to get a white cane from the government. His main advice, for me to apply for food stamps. In a cauldron of twisted values, who are the prisoners? The great jurist, Daniel Webster said, “A nation without morals, enslaves itself.”

Apodictic

2012-01-30T13:35:00.002-05:00

If a spark of humanity is so great, what must a flame be like? God has invested in the human soul, a capacity for love which is beyond description.

In studying military men who have been awarded the nation's highest honor, the Congressional Medal of Honor, I came across the story of an Army officer, captured by the Japanese in WWII.

I do not believe you can find military might in all history as atrocious as that of the Japanese. In another article, I have described one of my friends, who survived the Bataan death march. In the account of this officer, and officers, were supposed to be treated better than enlisted men. The American officer, himself starving and sick, witnessed the decadent Japanese serpent-low life beating mercilessly a starving American enlisted man. He broke through those around the horrific scene, and attempted with gestures to tell their Japanese torturers, “beat me, beat me”. The Japanese were amazed because they were accustomed to their officers showing no empathy towards anyone, not even their own.

This writer thinks of this every time someone, particularly an associate or family member, discloses that he or she is still a voting democrat... a political party that has so insulted the very name of our Blessed Lord, Jesus Christ, or those of us who claim His name, Christians. A political party promoting abortion, (54 million babies killed since legalized in 1973) This old man wants to say, “kill me”. One who has already lived a long life instead of the most innocent never being given an opportunity to live outside the womb of the mother. Almost as disgraceful to democrats, actually believing in the marriage of two people of the same sex when, everything in scripture, everything in history, everything in the social structure of mankind, dictates the union of male and female.

It is an apodictic, absolute truth, which even the most decadent atheist cannot refute in spite of their liberal pretensions, wanting to put a veneer of acceptability-popularity on everything. There are absolutes of right and wrong. GOD IS BOSS!, the Creator of the universe, the earth and everything in it, is a God of love and wrath. God does not maintain a halfway house, or “monkeying around”. Three months, after he separated the waters of the Red Sea, so three million Jewish slaves could pass through on dry land, and then drown Pharaoh and his army with the water, Moses led this “stiff-necked”, rebellious people to Mount Sinai. (closer to the time of the event, King Solomon, installed pillars at the Red sea where the children of Israel exited. Biblical archaeologist, Mark Chigall located a chariot axle in the sea) God owned the mountain, smoke, thunder, lightning, proclaim His presence. He ordered that nothing, man or animal, should touch the mountain, anyone that did would be instantly killed. He gave the same instructions about the Ark of the Covenant. Built by His dimensions using acacia wood and gold. At one time, 50,070 Philistines killed for looking at the ark,. One man, Uzzah was killed for touching the Ark because of a stumbling Ox.

The first rules of behavior did not come from Mt. Sinai. God breathed into the first man a soul. Even those before Noah's flood, had a conscience (cir. 5000BC) They did not believe God: They all died except Noah and his family, and the animals God chose to save. God gave His chosen race, the Jews, commandments, laws by which to live. Foolishly, they disobeyed, and most died in the desert. We sink no lower in decadence than when we say “there are no absolutes”.

The absolutes of good and evil, the absolutes of the periodic table, mathematics, laws of physics-chemistry, tones of music, even animal nature, have never changed. Even though scientists, in their “wisdom” have messed around with their genomes. We are insane, if we think that the Sovereign God of the universe will continue to tolerate the killing of the most innocent of life (man, his chief creation) the decadence of sinful living God has invested in His chosen, the righteousness of His only son, Jesus Christ. He sees the righteousness of Christ in us... not our sins, not anything good about us. Sin's ruin and Christ's redemption is the message of the church, and God will most certainty, in my humble opinion, hold pulpit pimps responsible for not warning, both the saved and the unsaved concerning apodictic-absolutes.

A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps. (Proverbs 16:9)

Changes Made

2012-01-30T11:44:00.003-05:00

For there's a change in the weather

There's a change in the sea
So from now on there'll be a change in me
My walk will be diff'rent my talk and my name
Nothin' about me is goin' to be the same,
I'm goin' to change my way of livin' if that ain't enough,
Then I'll change the way that I strut my stuff,
'cause nobody wants you when you're old and gray
Ther'll be some change made.

Song: Bennie Goodman
1938

This week, I received a letter from ;the alumni office, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill inviting me to my 60^th class graduation anniversary. Just think, I graduated from undergraduate school 60 years ago and, the very day I received this notification, I had taken a representative from the university to lunch because I have been very generous... my efforts to give of my means, to disabled students. The largest minority in America are the handicapped and disabled, and the most neglected. This totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected, medical officer of the Korean war knows the truth. I have never been able too get a white cane from the government although, from poverty, working my way through eight years of professional training in order to serve my country. Like most veterans, I am insulted and Americans should be embarrassed at the treatment of veterans and the disabled. I do not expect any changes, some efforts would have been made by this time.

It was interesting that the letter was signed by two individuals who I well remember were BPOC (Big People on Campus) One disease from which you never recover is poverty. I will never recover from the “Big I, little u” mentality on that college campus when I was a student. Perhaps with the racial and gender integration, changes have occurred since my graduation. At least, unlike the black people of my time, sweating through the poor preparation from a small country school, (13 in my graduating class) I was allowed to matriculate.

I so remember the “frat houses”, “frat boys”, those who came from expensive preparatory schools and large well-heeled public high schools. The “pain” of poor education in this state never felt more intently by anyone else. It was the grace of God, the fact that I knew I was not stuck where I started, no encouragement from any one else, except my parents, the generous, Bible believing people of Eastern NC , who purchased the Bibles I sold in the summer, the generous employers who employed me at night, that got me through the eight years. And, after military service as an army field grade officer, never giving up, surviving to dictate this letter. I do not blame the elitist on campus (members of the golden fleece, order of Gimghoul Castle, Rameses Club, etc.), they were who they were. In most cases, they came from elitist, well-connected families... connected to the democrat-superior political-social controlling, privileged-blue blood ancestry of the state. For years, traveling the world, I had a shadow of vision in one eye. I will never forget a vice president of Chase Manhattan Bank, NYC, telling me, your college education should involve “contacts”. Your social contacts are more important than any knowledge gleaned on any campus. And, if one thing I have learned in a long, eventful life, it is “who you know, not what you know.” Because of my Christian commitment, because I was never with the country club, golf course, happy hour crowd, it has been a matter of depending entirely on the mercies of God to get me “through it all.”

I went to one reunion of my medical class in New Orleans, one time was enough. One of my friends pointed out the expensive suits with which my classmates were attired (decked out) Of course, then as well as now, I was wearing second hand clothes.

I have refused to be a victim, not sought any solace or sympathy. The best men I have ever known were buried, serving their country. But, I cannot help but think of that cripple, laying every day, outside the Gate Beautiful, of the temple at Jerusalem (referred to by Luke (Acts 3:2) temple destroyed by Romans 70AD.) This crippled man had laid outside the temple for 40 years, begging. Just think, only one life to live, all kinds of weather, normal body fluids like the rest of us. I'm sure all the disciples, like Peter and John, had passed him many times... just as those “concerned” people worshiping in the temple. But this day, and it was the poor-crippled-beggars day, Peter was brave enough to attempt his God-given gift of healing. The people in the temple were amazed that this man was jumping with joy, hanging on to Peter and John. You see, these “religious” people in the temple just as “religious” elitists on campus and elsewhere, people think that faith-grace-belief, is a perception, not a reality. God designed each of us, the poor, the ugly, the disabled, all in His image. This writer is glad to have known those on the college campus, those in fields, making a living through crops, those from cotton mills making a living through sweat... ALL who realized that when God created man, he breathed into him life with a soul... a soul that never dies.

Lethargy

2012-01-27T10:44:00.001-05:00

It was new and a real mystery to me, “Rush Week” at the university. Colleges and universities with fraternities, sororities, “so-called” Greek houses, elitist social fraternities where living arrangements, meals are served, for the elitist students... those from the “well-connected” families were Rushed into membership. I understand that the most exclusive collegiate fraternity in the world, the one to which the Bushes, (41 & 43) Kennedys, John Kerry were members, (skull and bones) requires a membership of several thousand dollars just to get in, very much like the famous Yellowstone Country Club, Montana, to which Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Ted Turner, are members, requires an initiation fee of several million to get in and then daily fees can run $650.00.

I remember walking by these fraternity houses, Chapel Hill, hearing all the partying, profanity, emanating from these buildings and I would wonder, Just what goes on there but, this “outsider” has had a curiosity about what goes on in many places, some rich homes-country clubs-golf clubs, even some “social” churches. Two Alabama state officials invited this veteran to a meeting at Tuscaloosa, Alabama on a football weekend. Of course, “Bear Bryant-Crimson Tide,etc.”, this was the social enlightenment, debutante-antebellum cloture scene of the old South. I thought, now I KNOW WHAT ELITISM IS ALL ABOUT. As these “frat” men were greeted by the butlers, who, too, like them, inherited the jobs of caring for these “upper-sets”. There were dining room buffets covered with food. My companions, outstanding men, the many there to whom I was introduced, all from a caste of privilege. I was there because of my degrees and military rank... I KNEW “MY PLACE”. But, I know how to handle myself in any situation, elitist or poor. I lived poor but know that I should not put my hands in my pockets around prestigious people such as a Governor or President.

One of my friends there, a professional-business man of privilege and connections, having matriculated many years previously said, “the parties never end in a fraternity house because you would be forced to clean up.” Very much like alcoholics who keep drinking because they do not want to face a hangover. In my lifetime, this is the essence-truth of what has happened to our country, your news every day, every problem in your life, your nation refusing to stop borrowing-spending... just increasing debt, now to the place that it can never be repaid. Most, when in a hole, stop digging. Not only does our government keep digging, but keeps raising the debt ceiling. In every business there are ups and downs, natural as breathing in and out. You learn to live through these times. But, with government, only ups, never downs because it would be “unpopular” with the electorate, particularly one half the population... entitled, to live off the work-tax of the others.

In my lifetime, from a time of “pay as you go”, lay away plans, debt and credit has taken over.

The question is asked me, what are Christians to do in a time like this, credit cards? “the Big I, little U mentality of idol worship... cell phones, plasma TVs, houses and businesses under water. The answer, the Christian does not get himself into this mess... credit, mortgages, loans for any and everything. Just as a new creation in Christ prepares for a realistic life on earth, an expected life after death, He prepares for the realities. Life is reality, not perception.

In Samaria (2 Kings 6), the Syrian army in camp nearby, the people in the fortressed city starving, even to the extent of cooking and eating their own babies, a donkey's head selling for $1200.00, even eating bird poop, the prophet Elisha told the starving people that they would soon have cheap flour and barley. The government-paid gatekeeper mocked Elisha.

However, outside the gate, 4 lepers, not permitted to enter the city, starving to death, one said to the others: Why sit we here until we die? If entering the city, where everyone was staving, they would die. The lepers decided to go to the encampment of the Syrian army, the enemy. There, they found that the Syrian army had fled, leaving behind food, silver, gold, clothing. The lepers filled themselves, hid part of the treasure, and then went back to the starving people of Samaria and told them what had they had found. The people trampled the government gate-keeper, as they rushed to the Syrian camp.

The poet said, “God moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform” hymn by William Cowper. God had put into the ears of the Syrian army sounds of rushing, mighty forces, and they had fled, leaving everything.

There are no surprises with God. He is in charge of everything... knows how to care for His own. When you have government, government officials with all their decadence and satanic behavior (President Obama, Congress, IMF, bankers), then you have what THEY can do. But, when you have God on your side, (His promises, prophesies) then you have what God can do. He does not have a calendar, does not wear a watch, never gets rushed, but will be there ahead of you... not lethargic

Metaphoric-Ballyhoo

2012-01-26T13:44:00.001-05:00

In literature, a metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase gives emphasis to an idea, best known, Jesus telling us that He is the Light of the World, the Bread of Life, water, door.

If you or I were writing the Bible, or many other books, these books would surely be lengthy because we would spend much time explaining, adding-on, leaving no room for one's own imagination. We usually get what we need to know certainly, God's Word, much is none of our business, He gives us what we need to know.

It has been thrown in my face many times, 1^st Chapter of Genesis, And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. God spoke before He created vocal cords-lungs. To the bantam Baptists, puny Pentecostals, effervescing Episcopalians, most of us worship an infinite God. He was there before the universe was created, can hold the oceans of the world in the palms of His hand, measure the Himalayas with His fingers, stick His foot into the Marianas trench of the Pacific ocean.

Just seven verses in the 10^th chapter of Luke gives us the parable of the Good Samaritan, a metaphorical story for time and eternity describing Jesus' idea of the way we should treat one another.

I have traveled the 16 miles from Jerusalem to Jericho, down hill all the way. This is where the man, on foot, fell among thieves, robbed, was left to die in a ditch. A priest and Levite came by and offered no assistance. They probably thought that the man had already been robbed and there was nothing for them or, IF already dead, Jews were not allowed to touch the dead, or knowing the reputation of that area, a man with money should not have been walking there. But, here comes a Samaritan, who “supposedly” had nothing to do with Jews. He did what he could for his fellow man in the ditch and took him to a nearby inn. The good Samaritan was evidentally of good reputation because, unlike today, credit cards, credit investigation, the inn-keeper was willing to care for the man simply because of the Samaritan’s word, the Samaritan’s good name.

This writer knows a stock-broker who told me, that after a dinner party at his home, the first thing he and his wife checked, their silver, to see if any guests left with silver flatware. The greatest business expense for most merchants, theft by employees. More families split from problems with inheritance than any other reason. You understand salvation when you understand the sower. Most miss out on the abundance and spirit of God because of “things.” And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. (Mark 4:19)

Just living, daily routine, easy maintenance, much easier than days of magnificence. They go by so fast, each day should be greeted with magnanimity, a display of noble generosity. You can give without loving but you cannot love without giving; treasurer, time, YOU with others and God.

In the ballyhoo of life's turbine ever turning and twisting, remember true discipleship: 1. Are we aware that God embolds us? He never makes an appointment. From His holy spirit within us, trusts us, as we trust Him, to do what is right. 2. Are we convinced that God is able to do anything?, can do anything, His way, whether we like it or not. .

Sportswriter, Grantland Rice said, “class is a hard thing to define but you know it when you see it.” Rich politicians such as Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, John Kerry. Financial giants such as Warren Buffet, Bill Gates believe that all of us should lift ourselves by our own boot straps. Many do not have boots. Most diseases are curable, but you never recover from poverty. Children who have stood in welfare, unemployment lines, with parents, or alone themselves, never recover, however, you never forget one who stoops to offer a helping hand. One does not aim for the peak of success, but rather a lofty plateau from which you can reach down and help others.

Primitive Extraterrestrials

2012-01-26T10:08:00.002-05:00

Billionaire George Soros, one of the world’s richest men, who got his start scavenging the estates of his fellow Jews in Germany who had died in the holocaust, the financier of Obama's rise to socialist power, “leap-frogging” every economic insurrection to make himself richer, America poorer, has said we are living in the worst days in history. He is expecting a revolution, led by the “occupiers” which he has financed... mostly young people despising the American republic and who, like the Russian proletariat of almost exactly 100 years ago, seek to equalize, spread the wealth, through bloody streets if necessary, destroying capitalism.

This writer has traveled-visited almost every nation in which communism has been tried. Without exception, always, it is the purveyor of dissatisfaction to disgruntled people willing to fight for an ideal who put such as Soros and Obama into power, insulating their increased wealth. It is a fable that comrades of communism are equal. Those at the top, however they get there, (Soros, Obama, Chavez) from lofty perches of riches, look down on those who put them there.

The dismantling of the constitution, defilement of religious decency, such as happened in Russia, China, Korea, even Cuba, almost took over in America during the FDR Great Depression. Books have been written about that time in American history, so easy to disown books. It is up to us who lived through it, to remind others about the horrors of that economic-sociological event. You are who you are because of your birth, your DNA, the marvels of your ancestry.

For years, I have talked and written about my memories of that time, starving people, starving farm animals. Human beings living like those I have seen in third world countries, shacks with dirt floors, entire towns closed with boarded up store buildings, even once prospering families riding in wagons pulled by mules.

I must have been four or five years of age. My parents-grandparents did not shelter me from anything. An old woman in the community died, A TOTALLY DESTITUTE FAMILY. Like her mother before her, these destitute families sent for my mother to prepare the woman for burial. (my grandmother-mother delivered the babies and laid out the dead) My own mother wore dresses, carefully made from hog-feed sacks, and so was this woman's shroud. I still remember the wood coffin put in the church on “saw-benches”. Cousin Floyd hauling the coffin to the graveyard on the back of his pickup truck.

Twenty-five miles south west of Chicago (Daily Mail Reporter), the dead are being buried in wood boxes, indigent mass burials, common graves. When this writer traveled India, several times, walked the streets of Calcutta where “death-wagons” still roamed the streets, early morning hours, picking up the dead. (street people born, living, dying on the streets) We think that it could never happen here. Europe is gone, the roots of western civilization (Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc.) where there was magnificence in religion, commerce, philosophy allowed decadence to take over and their nations overrun, not by terrestrials-aliens from another planet, but primitive nomads demanding acceptance of their foreign thoughts in religion, tearing down of their disciplines, seizing-sharing their wealth. Of course, there were the academics, liberals who thought that the actions of the foreign nomads was FAIR. Like retirement, vacations, entitlements, fairness is a new notion, certainly not found in Holy scriptures.

Even with the disparity between people, places, things in America, Europe, and over the world, as has always been the case. (some eat from gold plates as others eat from begging bowls)

The most expensive restaurant in the world is “Noma”, Copenhagen Denmark. Seating 40, 80 servers and workers, you wait months to get a reservation and your meal costs hundreds of dollars. The enticement of the place, to the rich and famous, new taste sensations... vinegar type residue from grass, bark, insects, marine life. Food served must be in season and local, but mostly a reinvention of Nordic cuisine.

World famous, Cleveland Clinic states that one-half American adults are obese, one-sixth of American children are obese. Nutritionists-neurologists, such as Russel Blaylock, MD tell us that Americans are obese eating wrong-cheap food while cells in the body are starving for nutrition. Like investing, healthcare pays well if you start early. The Kingdom of God is here and now, as well as eternal, in spite of circumstances, a rich inner life.

Christian poet, T.S. Eliot said, “In the good times, affluent men have left a legacy of Highways and golf balls.” The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing. (Psalm 34:10)

For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. (Psalm 84:11)

A Slap at New Hanover County Christians AND our Blessed Lord

2012-01-25T12:59:00.001-05:00

Mr. Ted Davis, Chairman

New Hanover County Commissioners

Re: Local News Coverage pertaining to your January 23^rd meeting... the concerns of this Christian.

Mr. Davis & Members of the Board of commissioners:

These are the times that try men's souls. Anyone, anywhere, unconcerned about the world, flesh, devil, taking over the Christian church, this democratic republic, are too naive to vote or care.

I refuse to forfeit my right to condemn your actions, removing Christian prayer from your meetings. We will find who, gospel, minister, or otherwise,will be spineless enough to bow to your wishes.

The Apostle Paul said, “I bear in my body the marks of our Lord Jesus.” I have the marks. I am a totally blind, 200 disabled, service connected, medical officer, veteran of the Korean Conflict. I believe that 90% of Christian faith is courage. I had the courage to give my eyes for YOUR country. In this age of “political-correctness”, I dare challenge your actions. I speak for the veterans, the disenfranchised, those who have not won any votes for election, left out of life's lottery. I have a filing cabinet filled with letters to agencies for the disabled. Particularly, Americans With Disabilities Act, FTC, FCC, SEC, VA (seeking help for fellow veterans), people who do not use your parks, libraries, jails, and many other things for which we pay taxes. Your county manager, before Mr. Shell, even while applying for a job in Durham, told me he had never read anything about the ADA. Your veteran’s representative, I just know the name Bob, would not respond to me about anything. The chairman of the BVA (Blind Veterans Association) said to me one time by phone, “If there has ever been a person who should be on Oprah, it is you... a man, though blind, traveled the world, from zero became a multimillionaire, from zero, though blind, self-sufficient, at 82 home and still in business.

I do not want to give you the pleasure of believing I am playing the victim’s card. “Jesus paid it all, all to Him, I owe”. Next to this insult to my Savior, my driver (Joe Rusch, who still works for me) and I finding two law enforcement officers, having broken into the back door of my house, leaving my house as we were entering. My driver said, “this man is a blind veteran” The officer said, “I know he is a veteran, there is a decorated uniform hanging in his closet.” You see, every time I complain about government things, government tries to find something to harass me about. (real estate, vehicle) I may not be right, but I want my church, government, law officers, both elected and hired, to be right. Twice, my telephone lines cut. Deputy Owens, of your department, told me I would be killed before anything was done. Until I put an alarm system on my house, I kept cement blocks at the doors. For a blind person, housebound, living alone, nothing's more threatening than a break-in or fire. Now, beyond comprehension to a once Christian Nation (Supreme Court 1799-1892) prayers to Sovereign God, our Creator, taken from the schools, civic clubs, the graduation at the local university, and now your meetings. I have met commissioners Barfield, Thompson, Berger. I cannot believe that they sat there, passive, and said nothing while this insult ensued.

I have been on “talk-radio”, local, national shows, for years, not just by blog but a writer in many publications. I have never hesitated to discuss the bigotry-discrimination in this county where I have spent most of my life. Perhaps this is the reason that your local people ignore me. Supposedly, you have a representative for the blind. Once, only once, Rebecca Koziah came to my house , because I had called a local radio station asking about a machine that read the newspaper. Even though there have been hundreds of articles about this blind man, who has traveled the world, lived a productive life, pays more taxes that he ever thought he would make, she maintained she had never heard of me. Even though I knew well Judge Cathey (blind judge for whom one building in Raleigh is named, Governors such as Sanford, Moore, Hunt, & Easley... my largess at Mount Olive College, UNC-CH, etc.) I know about political appointments. Early on, even your county manager, Powell, came to my house to tell me I would not be appointed to anything (I had applied to the public health and library boards) because of my blindness and being a rabid republican. Just two weeks ago, a veteran’s meeting at the old USO building, just one block from my downtown home. (I have a beach house) Not once, all these years, has any veteran's group or politician offered to help me get to such meeting. You felt free to give away the old law enforcement building to the First Baptist church of which I was a long time member (back then, the church had $13 million in a reserve fund – Jay Phillips, assistant pastor) On local radio, I have offered $1000.00 cash to anyone who can show that any church, veteran's group, civic club... holidays or any day, has done anything for this totally blind citizen.

I knew Jocephus Daniels, editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, the present editor, Henry Belk, blind, editor from Goldsboro, and many other productive citizens, disabled or normal. Our Creator, somethingness from nothingness could take a boy from a poverty-stricken tobacco farm, Eastern North Carolina, pitiful country school (13 in my graduating class) without grants, loans, or anything, guide me through eight years of university education, working - nights, classes - day, field grade medical officer, eyes for YOUR country, over fifty years of blackness, JC, young man of North Carolina, speaker, writer, paying to your county, much tax, and still be embarrassed by your insulting my Savior... the One, past, present, future, sufficient, leading me all the way. I recommend Him to you.

Christian references removed from political organizations

Posted: Jan 23, 2012 4:25 PM EST Updated: Jan 23, 2012 4:25 PM EST

NEW HANOVER COUNTY, NC (WECT) – Commissioners in New Hanover County made it clear during their meeting Monday morning that the invocation cannot reference Jesus or Christ. Referencing a specific God is now against the law.

A group pressed charges in Forsyth County saying they favored Christianity, and the Fourth District Court of Appeals refused to hear an appeal to the case that says political organizations can't have prayer the names a specific God.

New Hanover County Commissioner Chair Ted Davis said the county usually has a local minister give the invocation at the beginning of meetings.

Since the appeal was denied and the ruling is law, Davis said New Hanover County would be breaking the law if they let someone include Christ in a prayer before the commissioners meeting.

"I think it's a sad day, but that's from a personal standpoint," said Davis. "But again, that is the law and we're going to abide by the law."

The words "non-sectarian invocation" was written at the top of Monday's agenda packet. Previous agendas just said "invocation" on them.

Importance of Remembering

2012-01-24T13:59:00.001-05:00

David Hockney, becoming, in his sunset years one of England's more famous artists. He has returned to his homeland, a place still filled with memories, after spending most of his life painting and photographing the light and colors of Southern California. His work, now selling at great prices punctuated by the swimming pools and bodies of the “beautiful people”. Memories of the past, he has exchanged the “jet-set” for the pastorals of homeland.

This writer becomes so depressed knowing that he is the only person on earth, from his own family, the community in which he was reared, who knows anything of their past. Most did not care, just thinking of today. Most think life 100, 150, 200 years ago, was the same as today, travel, commerce, communication. They think there were always paved roads, telephones, power lines, grocery stores. There were few roads, mostly paths in the country, each family was forced to be self-sufficient. I would talk about my family's community store, a barn-like structure, a few shelves for commodities available such as flour and sugar. The old cider mill, used by my great grandfather to produce vinegar. It should have been preserved, just as the old cotton gin building, put together with wooden pegs. So sturdy, I can still remember it's refusal to come down. You would grind your own coffee in a coffee mill, a spinning wheel for cloth. I remember the two surreys (horse-drawn two seat buggies) rotting with the arrival of vehicles.

In this day of plasticity, cheap transparent cellophane, some will not believe that glass was so expensive, expensive to have windows in your house. Glass in the front door, a sign of prosperity. Windows in barns and many homes were solid shutters, a sign of success was the pump organ, later the piano, and even later the Gramophone-Victrola in a home. I recently sold my collection of Edison cylinder recordings. Of course there were no canned goods, no cardboard boxes, glass canning jars, a real treasure.

I become even more depressed thinking of the antique furniture, thrown out or given away to bring in bright and shiny veneer. Chairs were valuable, people sat around the table on homemade benches. I recently sold a homemade fireplace chair and another homemade chair to a collector in Canada. Only a blind person can appreciate a chiming clock, and I do remember the large chiming clocks in the homes of my Grandparents, clocks which their decedents did not want, nor their furniture. They preferred to throw out the carefully made bed quilts for machine made blankets, iron skillets, real pottery for plasticized “dishes” which they had the audacity to call china.

I am disgusted to think that many relatives were much more interested in filling their bellies at family gatherings and other times than preserving the antiquarian collections and memories of those with whom they will never have further contact, much like a forgotten family cemetery, weeds and bushes, overturned tombstones.

Recently, I gave two ancient covered bowls, brought over from England with the arrival of my people on the New Jersey shores, founders of Morristown, to the heritage room of a local college, I did not get a thank you, faculty and students at this college think there has always been fast food restaurants.

In my ancestral church, I remember the cut glass pitcher, silver goblets in a time when many ”so-called” believing church members have never participated at the Lord's table. These like precious-expensive-photograophs of old saints, should have been preserved.

Christ told us to remember Him at His table, the Lord's table, not at Christmas, Easter, feast days, but at His table remembering His precious blood shed for all sin, past present, future. His body, stripes, all sickness-healing, past, present, future. (Isaiah 53) We show our love by this remembrance and if we love, we can hardly wait to remember him at His table. Don’t forget the pit from which you were dug. (Isaiah 51:1) No matter how humble, your home, your church, your school, and those who guided you, keep memories alive.

Evel Knievel Economics

2012-01-24T11:48:00.001-05:00

The Baltimore Sun's most famous writer H.L. Mencken who died in 1956 said, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." IF he had lived 51 years longer and seen real national stupidity, the dismantling of the US constitution, he, like this writer, would have more to say. Sufficient to say, you have lived to see an almost exact replication of what happened in Germany, Weimar Republic. Everything legal, everything immoral, just before Naziism and Hitler.

We remember Evel Knievel daredevil car and canyon jumper who died in 2007 (lung cancer) and who left his daredevil antics to his son Robbie, amazing, people who actually paid money to see him almost kill himself on a motorcycle, jumping 141 feet over cars or canyon. At one time or another he had broken every bone in his body. Showing again, what people are willing to do to make money and what people will spend to watch stupidity.

A nation, conceived in liberty, dedicated to the proposition that all me are free... free to be stupid or wise. We were wise enough to build the United States of America into the world's greatest industrial, educational, humanitarian, and military power. From America, men went to the moon as well as exploring every geographical and academic challenge. We had the courage to fight in many wars as well as send religious missionaries and agencies to relieve suffering around the world. Men and women risked death on the high seas as well as tunneling through the ground to get here... the opportunities awaiting. Nothing showed the American Spirit was more enticing than music and movies. This writer has traveled the world, every continent, passport stamped at least once in 157 different countries. I have been in many countries many times, always, young people wanting me to assist them in getting here. In communist countries, students begged me to send them books. They had heard of great writers (Faulkner, Hemingway, etc.) but were unable to read their books. Many had a hunger for the Bible, the courage to have faith, to dream about democracy, success.

IF, a blind-deaf robber had invaded your house, surely you would be aware of his stumbling-bumping while moving around, would know that you have been invaded. America, intelligence agencies, law enforcement, technology of every type, does not yet know she has been invaded. In twenty-four years, the world's greatest creditor nation has become the world's greatest debtor nation. Entitlements, derivatives, public and private debts which can never be repaid, 50% of the population do not pay tax, live off the other 50%, 47% of the population on food stamps, 57% of the population depending on subsidies. Lobbyists and Wall Street control... Martha Stewart was sent to prison for supposed insider trading but the halls of congress are crammed with securities brokers dealing with congress. Congressional democrats increased their net woth by 740% last year. Members of congress are not subject to the same SEC regulations as the rest of us. Senator-presidential candidate John Kerry, better known for marrying rich widows, made much money selling stock as the Obama healthcare process developed. Senator-Governor, John Corzine, MF Global thief hides the fact that the worst offenders in his scam were John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi. And so it goes in Washington, and the “unholy” prostitution with Wall Street. The Washington decadence-vulgarities usually have a money trail-Charlie Rangel,Jessie Jackson, Jr. etc. According to Judicial Watch, the ten most corrupt politicians are as follows:

S. Bachus, A. Hastings, E. Holder, J. Jackson, Jr., President B. Obama, M. Waters, D. Young, L. Richardson, D. Rivera Dishonorable Mention: J. Edwards, B. Frank, N. Gingrich, J. Napoloitano, N. Pelosi, C. Rangel, H. Rogers, K. Sebelius. (6 are Republican and 11 are democrat) I have never known a person elected to public office, local, state, or national who did not return from his time of “servitude”, rich... whether Lyndon Johnson who went back to Texas with $53 Million, the rich Kennedy clan who park their millions in a South Pacific Island Bank, or the rich Bushes... still wheeling and dealing as did the President's (41 & 43) father and grandfather, Senator Prescott Bush, who laundered German-Dutch money during WWII. This blind veteran (never able to get a white cane from the VA) speaks for all veterans, disenfranchised Americans. The money hungry despots of prosperity should be hunted down and hanged or at best, flogged. What has happened to the 5000 tons of gold, supposedly owned by the American people? When was an inventory done at Fort Knox, Federal Reserve?

On this 39^th year since the infamous Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, from which time, 54 million of the most innocent babies have been killed, 3000 a day, (1400 black, 52% of all black babies) young people are beginning to realize what lies ahead for them. Their parents-grandparents, quiet as tax payers killed, as in other countries where socialism-abortion took over, euthanasia of old people, ultimate solution.

Like Evel Knievel, a nation on a cycle, high in the air... BUT WAIT, this is crazy, how did I get here, maybe I'll die trying to land.

Aunt Jemima & Hazel

2012-01-23T11:29:00.002-05:00

From the beginning of time, there has been the attitude, “Big I, Little u.” It is only the child, black or white, who has witnessed elitists (bankers, academics, commercial enterprise owners, etc.) looking down at your less educated-less prosperous parents who have empathy-understanding, about that which I speak.

We remember the maid, Hazel, running around trying to satisfy her employer. We remember Aunt Jemima always as a servant. How well we remember Hattie McDaniel, first black actress to receive an academy award for her portrayal as “Mammy” in Gone With the Wind. How well I remember when she received the award, saying, ”I want to be an asset to my race.” Coming from the poverty of an Eastern North Carolina tobacco farm, small country school, everyone in the community, poor, I did not realize the “caste” system in America until I matriculated at the university. Since then, I have seen the caste system in India, witnessed the collectivist system in communist countries, every day, hear about the increasing welfare system in America.

The liberal-democrat politicians-academics-”do-gooders”, who so decry inequality-discrimination are in the forefront (underneath the artificial guise of concern) against there conservative, God-fearing, tax-paying, fellow men, who walk the walk and talk the talk of responsible living-integrity.

No better place to see this than the news media, the inequality toward republican party coverage, their hatred of Christianity, there disdain for fathers, particularly white fathers, in their “love-affair”-promotion of the gay agenda. After all, you build up evil by cutting down the good.

My father was the work-ingest man I have ever known, very successful land owner-farmer, (kept poor by the government) barber on weekends, builder-carpenter during the winter months, chairman of the local school board, and backbone of the church, built by he and my mother's grandparents. To my face, ne’er do well relatives and neighbors have said, “your daddy was a very peculiar man”. I understand they have said the same thing about me, especially family. Yes, like Peter, James, and John-peculiar-our citizenship not in this world. But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; (1 Peter 2:9) Only when you understand the sore, do you understand the Bible, WORD OF GOD, a book which so many do not want to understand. (Mark 4) Same sore, same seed. Some fell where nothing happens, some fell on rocks, thin soil. Little root, soon died, some fail in the bushes of cares, riches, lusts, and did not produce, but some fell on good ground... God knowing the ending as well as the beginning of everything, knew the soil would produce... knowing that some with sight would not perceive, some with hearing would not understand. HE IS BOSS. No surprises with God, He knows what He is doing. He chose Jacob instead of Esau, grandsons of Abraham and Sarah, while still in Rebecca's womb, having never sinned, works of any type, Jacob was chosen. Thank God, cling to Him, if you have the GIFT of being chosen, elected. (Romans 8, 9)

I am convinced, without the shadow of a doubt, that the soul elected, chosen of God, can achieve anything, even retrieved from the mire of sin's degradation. He enables you, through His redemption, because He wants you to shower off the grime no matter who you are, where you are, in spite if yourself, if you have trust in the “reset button”, eternal life is yours, a gift.

Like a slow motion train wreck, unbelievers, pretenders, protagonists on seats in the train, indifferent, half awake, everyone with just one life to live, paralyzed in a mantra of deception, most thinking there will be some “magical” escape. Not so, the sore is responsible. Those we disdain, may be of supreme IMPORTANCE-SELECTION to Him.

People in the world have learned to live in boxes, housing, vehicles, schools, churches, all box-like. They want to compartmentalize their lives, a compartment for survival (all will soon panic when their savings, anything else in the system is gone) Family, associates, vocation, spiritual life. If you are a child of God, saved, chosen, elected, you cannot compartmentalize. The Holy spirit of God, Peace, Comforter, Healer, righteousness within you, MUST always prevail.

Walking The Tightrope

2012-01-20T14:07:00.001-05:00

Twice in my life, while sighted, I have seen tightrope walking. Once, at the NC State Fair, Raleigh and then at the Bolshoi Circus, Moscow, Russia. Now for these daredevils, walking on a tight wire in the sky, knowing the danger involved, distance of a fall, their life skill is carefulness, as well as fitness.

The fastest growing part of the American population, those over 85 years of age. People are living longer but the quality of life, on the decline because, patches, band-aids from modern science are keeping us alive. Health clinicians do not live on “pill hill”, have two Mercedes' parked in the driveway, keep their younger children in expensive private schools-their older children in expensive universities, dance-riding-yoga lessons without wringing every dime possible from patients. You do not make money from dead people or well people.

Most can coast along, most of the way, eating what they want and as Sinatra sang, “Doing it my way.” Those who live until 90 learn to eat correctly, exercise. They do not poison their body, slow suicide, with the chemicals of prescription drugs. If smart, you take the holistic approach. Our blessed Lord put every herb, plant, mineral we need for health, right before our very eyes and, if you supplement an intelligent diet (fresh fruits, vegetables, meats, water) with real supplements of herbs, vitamins, and minerals, eliminate the toxins from your body, keep moving with exercise as well as sufficient rest, you will probably live to the age of 90. After the age of 90, IT IS A MATTER OF GENETICS. If your ancestors, living reasonable lives, got old, you will probably get real old.

I participated at the funeral of the first graduate of NC State, who lived to be 100, one of the finest men one could ever know, a life of honoring God, kindness to his fellow man, fasting and praying. With years of study, I firmly believe that more people dig their grave with a fork, than any other way. We want to blame much of life's difficulties on smoking cigarettes. We know that early tobacco was used as a curative. I was reared on a tobacco farm, pests, worms,insects of any type, loved tobacco. From the time the seed was put into the ground for plants that were transferred to the fields, poisons were used then, as the tobacco plant grew in the field, to about 6 feet tall, large luscious leaves, stomata (breathing pores on leaves), gummy, (sticky, viscid, residue on leaves) poisons were used to fight insects and disease. Until, the leaves were put in curing barns where, because of tremendous heat, the leaves were dried, including the poisons on the leaves, to make the degraded leaves for the cigarette product, smoking, chewing, snuff. Snuff and chewing tobacco were sedatives... calming effect on the nervous system. Tobacco farms in the South gave employment to a large part of the American population, cigarette factories, advertising. Great universities were built from these tobacco fortunes. (Duke, Wake Forest, Campbell, etc.)

Selling Bibles, door to door, throughout this section of the world, Eight years, summers, while a university student, I spent some time with my Aunt at their White Lake vacation home. Her son, my cousin, pilot, spent his summers ”crop dusting” the huge tobacco, corn, soy fields. I can still see him, his clothing covered with poison. I advised him to keep his mouth and nose covered with a surgeon's mask. Like many who neglect their health for looks. (he did not think he would look as pretty with a covering over his face) He died, early in life, from esophageal cancer. Often, in practice, I advised patients about health habits. Most just wanted a quick fix, a pill. It is only when you face death that you realize the value of life. The magnificent design of the human body. Don't get careless when you walk the tightrope.

Toxicity from planes or GMO plants cause birth defects. You have the same skeletal defects in children exposed to GMO's or other poisons that you have in chickens that have been exposed. Some grains have been more contaminated than others. Wheat and Barley not as contaminated as soy. But, as shown in liver biopsies, both human and animal, enough genetic modification, enough poison from water systems, chem trails, and all will be lost, if not direct death, starvation. Spraying RoundUp on the weeds in your yard or your crops, same result as antibiotics for every sickness. Before long, nature always compensates, super-germs, super-weeds. This year, 2012, London, Queen's Jubilee, the Olympics. Olympians have already been warned about eating certain foods, so contaminated, to keep one out of competition for drug use.

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. (Psalm 91 1-3)

Plato's Retreat

2012-01-20T10:19:00.001-05:00

I remember exactly where I was standing in Manhattan, corner of 51^st Street and 2^nd Avenue. I probably had a shadow of vision at that time, even though I walked with a white cane. A pickup truck with two girls stopped at the corner and one asked me this question, “can you tell me the location of Plato's Retreat?” Of course, as most informed people, I had heard of the place, knew that it was somewhere in the area. But I said, “you nice girls do not need to go there.”

New York City is an eclectic collection of decadence, gay bath houses, pornographic stores. In order to make vulgarity available to both sexes, denizens of iniquity, satanic forces produced Plato's Retreat, membership and guests limited to straights, not gays where sexual activity was permitted between straight couples and lesbians. There was an attempt to have a plurality of females with no alcohol or drugs allowed. So, it was not a night club, rather a sex club. The infamous sex club had a disco dance floor, sauna, swimming pool, for nudity, an assortment of “kinky” types, celebrities, suburbanites, swingers. Because of HIV/AIDS, attempts were made to shut down the gay bath houses and subsequently shut down the heterosexual “parlors.”

Strange that such a facility should be named for Plato, along with Socrates and Aristotle, scholars, first intelligentsia of Western Civilization. 400 years before the birth of Jesus, the sign above the door of Plato's academy (1^st academic institution) read, "Let no one unversed in geometry enter here". From the beginning, and even in the time of Jesus, discrimination and the courage of intelligence were observed. The only time we have record of Jesus writing anything was in discussing the heterosexual sins of the woman at the well and the humanity of things which caused people to come together... even a drink of cool water. Mankind was designed by God, told to procreate. Sex is a gift from God, designed, desired, by all animals and plants. Everything, reproduction, maturation, preservation, whether the physiology of cells, electrical impulses, or even your ability to speak certain languages, depends on the combination of masculine and feminine. Like GMO's (Genetically Modified Organisms), destroying the reproductive ability of crops, or saccadic chemicals, poisoning our water systems, slow suicide as medicines in the body, the time has come for us to face the facts of what we are doing to ourselves, our world, our food and water sources. Now, corporate agriculture operations just as in America and the Ukraine, are taking over central and south America, peasant farmers thrown off their land in Honduras. In many countries of the world, grain crops, such as corn, defined and resolved for centuries by those whose generations had known the land best... water, seasons, etc., replaced by GMO, chemical trauma (chemicals such as RoudUp as with antibiotics growing super germs, growing super weeds.) Decadent-irrational sexual practices and, stupidity beyond expression, food and water sources plus environment are leading to our own self-imposed plagues. We know of the frogs and flies, the Blood of the Nile. God help us that our children and grandchildren will be “passed over” in His wrath against those who have brought destruction to the “seed” (procreating genes) of animals as well as plants

A gold medalist in the 2008 Olympics in a 50 meter rifle target event, who was easily the gold winner, in the last firing, shot at the wrong target... having trained for 25 years. After 2000 years on this side to the cross of Jesus Christ, 4000 years preceding the cross of Jesus Christ, all given by God for our instruction and because He loves us, have we come this far to fall so fast?

The most important action for those who claim the name of Christ, 2012, fasting and praying. There is nothing better than fasting, to cleanse and heal the human body, vacuum cleaner-disposal, ridding the body of toxins. Prayer changes everything, the greatest power in the universe. Churches like nations, have lost the fear of the Lord. If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people; If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:13,14)

The good grain among the tares (tares have taken over the churches, nations), and even though it is our honor to suffer for Him, He has the power to separate us, through His Holy Spirit in our lives, giving us the dreams and plans for our survival. We must prepare through education, learning holistic health methods for care. We must prepare by storing food, essential medicines, water supply. Water has become, in some places, as important as oil. When I was in India, a drought-stricken country, people “harvested” water... rain barrels. We must prepare financially. All you need to do is listen to the news, stealing everywhere, economic strangulation by nations, banks, investment and pension funds. If not nailed down, it will probably be stolen. You are only SAFE security-investments are those you can hold on to. The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant. (Psalm 25:14)

American Airlines tells us that the favorite homosexual destination in the world is Tel Aviv, Israel. Gays are taking over the Holy Land. The most notorious city, New York City, police officers from police cars are body scanning people on the streets, supposedly searching for terrorists. 75% of the people say they do not care, willing to give up privacy for security. The priorities of most people are exactly backwards. The mystery of sin, that someone would choose evil instead of good. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me (Psalm 51:10)

Unglued

2012-01-19T12:38:00.002-05:00

As fresh in my mind now as over seventy years ago, the innocence of a small child thrown against the ignorance and thuggery of older boys from totally dysfunctional homes and, this was an all white rural school, in the 1930's The first child of very proud parents, I had been taught how to behave... everywhere. I wore clean clothes, exceptional, Mensa student. It was in the boys bathroom that I discovered the lives of young hoodlums. They took out their disdain for the bookworm... trying to “pee” on him. If I were to return to the school, though blind, I could probably still find the corner in the building where I sought refuge-escape. One can only imagine what goes on in bathrooms, public schools, mix of races, mix of sociology today.

I thought about this when pictures were made of Marines “peeing on their enemy.” The one who made the photograph should be court marshaled. In war, bad things happen. Near the Chosun reservoir in South Korea the frozen dead bodies of Americans, stacked like cord wood. My uncle, South Pacific WWII, never recovered from his best friend spattered, standing next to him. Until he died, though uninjured when his friend was struck, he had a tremor in his body, every muscle jumped for which no physiological or neurological reason could be found, all psychological. War is hell on earth, and there is no other way to describe it. The tragedy, politicians and industrialists get rich, while the sons and daughters of the poor, pay the price.

I have never known an appointee to a military academy from a poor family. Appointment to the military academies belonged to the well-heeled, those with connections, those who have contributed to a congress-person's campaign. Of course, Senator McCain went to an academy, but his father and grandfather “flag” officers.

Why should Americans become unglued when young boys, most having never been away from home, even imagined the realities of war, are exposed to the most horrific weapons known to warfare. The greatest weapon in the military is Esprit de corps, the common spirit existing between members of a battle group, their affection and protection of one another. Do you expect one not to become unglued when he sees his friends spattered like “roadkill” anywhere?

When men fought with swords, even rifles, war was very personal. More were killed in WWII with bayonets than any other way. Modern warfare, soldiers playing with video games, aiming drones at targets, never recognizing the destruction of property and lives like the state-controlled media, judgmental, politically incorrect. Do you actually think that elected politicians, selected news media who visit sanitized war fronts actually see the truth?

Jesus, the way, the truth, the life (John 14:6,17:17) standing before Pilate and Pilate, said, “What is truth?” (Pilate was probably more interested in his 15 year old wife than the truth.) Satin is the prince of this world, wants everyone, loves war. He knows that nations will enslave citizens with debt to fight wars. Credit and debt is addictive. Lucifer is mentioned only one time in God's Word, (Isaiah 14:12) but his shadow there, as in our lives, inescapable. The best lessons in economics are not taught in the classroom, but in the reality of business. (license, payroll, taxes, employees). We are engaged in the present economic struggle because politicians, government, academia, have never run a business with the risk involved. We are engaged, unglued, in this ten year war because politicians, military “experts” have never seen or suffered the horrors of war. As General Smedley Butler said, “War is a racket.”

We are in a global financial cycle. Just as it took WWII to drag America out of the Great Depression, we think that an unglued world financial debacle will drag us out of this depression. There was a time when people, the world over, if they could not pay with cash, did without. With credit cards, fiat currency backed by nothing except thin air, around the globe, international lying, cheating, stealing by bankers and nations. The destruction of war, the treatment of dead, wounded, (even veterans) seems trivial and of little consequence. Unglued, anything goes, even the Captain can leave his sinking ship, even a Superpower, commander-in-chief, GLUED only to his self preservation.

The Purpose of It All

2012-01-19T10:18:00.001-05:00

I was totally enthralled, my friend had taken his wife and university student children to the Rembrandt Exhibition in Raleigh, 47 Rembrandt canvasses, the largest Rembrandt Exhibition in America. Now he is not an art critic but he, with great enthusiasm, described to me the magnificence of the painter, almost 500 years ago... how one could possibly capture on canvass the most intricate detail, even sunlight and shadows. This blind writer SO appreciated his sharing his experience with me. Blessed to visit the great galleries of the world, (Louvre, Prado, Uffizi) everything was described to me. Like the prophets and saints of the Bible, you must put flesh and blood on artists to appreciate them, the fact that God chose and blessed some with such talent.

It is rare for anyone to describe anything to me. I told a taxi driver once, “you are the only one who has described the flowering dogwoods and azaleas to me.” My blind friend Katherine, born blind, school for the blind, guide-dog through many years of college, felt free to ask me to describe to her the texture of frogs, snakes, bark on trees because she knew I had seen when young. Strange that educators of the blind and disabled never put themselves in the shoes of those they pretend to help. If you have never sinned, you cannot call Christ Savior. If you have never sinned, you cannot teach or preach forgiveness.

At the church of San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, statue of Moses by Michelangelo, so real, that even the artist, after finishing, hit the statue wit his hammer and said, “Speak to me.” At the Galleria Borghese, Rome, my guide told me about the musculature, vessels in the hands of the statue of David as he was about to fling the sling with a rock to kill the giant Goliath.

The purpose of it all, whether art, politics, or just individual lifestyle, WITH JUST ONE LIFE TO LIVE, chosen by God with our own DNA-individuality, to glorify God and give the best version of ourselves.

In 1938, the Nobel prize in physics went to Enrico Fermi, Italian born, explorer of the universe-quantum theory-nuclear reactor. This brilliant scientist, so alone in his talent, looked around and said, “Where is everyone?”

We mere mortals should take comfort in the fact that God Himself, Creator of the universe, in a tent of human flesh-dwelling among us, chose 12 disciples who were very ordinary... mostly ignorant-classless fishermen, and yet changed the world.

The last days of Jesus' ministry, He had warned them that He would be betrayed and sacrificed for the sins of the world. He took three of them with Him to the Garden of Gethsemane and told them to wait, “enter not into temptation”, while He prayed. They went to sleep. Peter, the most human of all humans, an impulsive male enigma. Here comes the betrayer, Judas, with a mob. How did Peter cut off Malchus' ear with his sword, without hitting his head or shoulder? Peter had the temptation for action, before prayer... building tabernacles, following from afar. (Luke 22:54) As we fall, as with Peter, there are always signposts along the way but it is only the unsaved who does not get up and start over. If we could only learn, as the fall starts, to press closer, probably 99 of 100 Christians fail to pray each day not to fall into temptation. When our blessed Lord taught us to pray even He said, “Lead us not into temptation.” (Matthew 6:9-13) “This writer believed that he should have added a corollary for us not to put temptation in another's path. In prayer, God is available for every human need... the greatest Power the world can ever know.

Once, in a meeting of doctors at Duke University, difficult cases were being discussed. One old man, Dr. Henry Day, said, “When I have a difficult decision, I pray.” The smart, young, Jewish doctors sitting around me, began to snicker. I thought, how sad with all their knowledge, they do not have “real learning”.

It is easier to get out of God's will than to stay in it. Many jump into action instead of praying. My foreign missionary son told me, that with new believers, “they always pray before doing anything else.”

Prayer is better than sleeping tablets, reading, music, for those who have trouble sleeping. Dr. Russell Blaylock, brain surgeon, neurologist, tells us about the dangers of vaccines, fluorides in our water system. (russellblaylockmd.com) Women who rush to have an abortion, should stop and realize, in pregnancy, the entire metabolism of a female changes... preparing the body for birth. This is the reason that 50% of women who have abortions, because of the cell change during pregnancy, have breast cancer... the purpose of it all.

The great rule for Christians, when out of step, press in, pull in close to the Power of the universe, the One who gives purpose for it all. There is no such thing as incidental discipleship. With all the weaknesses of Peter, SEVEN WEEKS after Jesus searched his soul, on the Galilee shore, about loving Him three times after having denied Him three times: from his personal experience with the Savior, from the eclismic experience of the resurrection, he so preached that 3000 were saved in one service... the beginning of the church.

Powder-Puff Piety

2012-01-18T11:53:00.003-05:00

This, is a response, to the attached email from the president of the NFB-NC who received, as did many others, my criticism of NCDMV, their inspections program and their well-known attitude towards citizens of North Carolina WHO, because of a monopoly and government regulation, citizens have no choice but to deal with them. This involved two inspections of my vehicle, almost new – only 7000 miles, 2 1/2 months apart !

Mr. Gary Ray,

Thank you for responding to my letter, I write many letters to many government agencies, politicians, but in this age of “political-correctness”, most do not reply, just as most businesses do not reply because, in doing so, they acknowledge receipt and involvement. I have a filing cabinet filled with letters to agencies for the disabled. Particularly, Americans With Disabilities Act, FTC, FCC, SEC, VA, (seeking help for fellow veterans) baptist leaders, (encouraging involvement in moral-spiritual causes) politicians of every stripe, editors such as the editor of The News & Observer, the chairman of the BVA said to me one time by phone, “if there has ever been a person who should be on Oprah, it is you... a man, though blind, traveled the world, from zero became a multimillionaire, from zero, though blind, self-sufficient at home and still in business.

As I pointed out to you, most of my life, (and we only have one to live) has been spent in blackness, totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected, medical officer, veteran of the Korean War era .

My driver once told me about the big sign inside the VA hospital, Durham. “Our veterans come first” Most veterans do not believe this, certainly not those that have dealt with VA Facilities OR organizations such as yours, who are supposed to have compassion for the blind and disabled. Even the Blind Veterans Association BVA cares for nothing except membership dues. One time, one person from your group has come to my door (Rebecca Koziah. I had called about a radio that reads the newspaper). Even though there have been many news articles about me, some, an entire page, my world travels as a blind man, NCJC Young Man of the Year, one of the five most fascinating men, other accomplishments, as a blind person, she said, she had never heard of me, and even though I gave her a first edition of Thomas Braille’s book, I had to get information about the blind in this area from my Senator. I knew Judge Cathey, (blind judge form Asheville), my friends, governors Sanford and Moore told me I should be appointed to a board but, as was the case with New Hanover County Manager, Powell (who came to my house and told me that I would not be appointed to a county board because of my blindness) I was never appointed to anything because I am a rabid Republican.

I know about political appointments, democrats. Early on, I was president of the Young Democrats but, as Senator Helms and I discussed, the democrats left us. Even so, my ability should not have been compromised because of my blindness or politics. I know about government jobs, my two brothers, sister, their wives and husband are all retired state employees... not insignificant employees. I knew Jocephus Daniels, editor of The News and Observer, lived next door to Henry Belk, blind editor of the News Argus. I know about baptists and evangelicals, I know about hypocrisy. You, of all people, like other organizations promoting the blind, should take some pride in the facts of my productive life... easily found on my Facebook page-blogs. (This will be sent out as another blog, I hope you do not mind. I have an email list that goes around the world, everyone should know the attitude of bureaucrats towards the disenfranchised)

Long ago, full uniform, Washington, DC, Mr. Stancil official with the VA said to me, “Dr., you have done your part, you will never have anything to worry about”. Now, would I not have been a fool to have believed him... the VA , who has never so much as given me a white cane, a talking watch, I buy my own. The greatest fear of a blind person living alone, a break-in or fire. For years, I put cement blocks to my doors. At Duke hospital, surgery, a nurse spat on me and told me how much she despised veterans. Twice, one year, my telephone wires, cut, outside my house. May I gently, humbly, ask you and the others paid nice salaries, when will organizations interested in the blind, (AFB, NFB, ADA, VA, BVA, etc.) religious denominations and groups who proclaim compassion, actually get down to business, get into the fight, show interest in those who need help, show some interest in those who have lived productive lives, with disability. This old, retired, beaten but robust, crusader of the cross, has often felt very lonely. You can check at UNC-CH, Mt. Olive College, baptist denominations (SBC, FWB) and learn my gifts for the disabled. It is time for all of us to cease just “going through the motions.” I cannot speak for those who are deaf, mentally incapacitated, wheel chairs, but blindness is a very lonely-desperate existence. I refuse to play the victim card (the best men I ever knew, died in war), God has been too good to me, but I resent the pretensions (pastors, doctors, bureaucrats, of those paid to care)... empathy.

Backdoor Exuberance

2012-01-17T13:59:00.002-05:00

In the decade of robbery and deceit, prosperity with the .com bubble, housing bubble when on the stock market, we thought trees would grow as high as clouds, Alan Greenspan spoke of irrational exuberance. Universities with their great business schools, economists and economics journals, bankers, did not have the common sense to know that “what goes up, must come down.”

This returning military veteran, was invited, as a guest, to a huge statewide banquet for leaders of commerce. There, I heard the best speech I have ever heard, all in a clever production.

The president of the group announced that the speaker for the evening was delayed on a plane and would be rushed to the meeting by the highway patrol. One gentleman in the audience rose and said, “we are honored to have a guest with us who is an outstanding banker-economist. I think we would all like to hear a few words from him while we are waiting for our speaker. This rather disheveled man... very reluctant, protesting, shaking his head... pleading with excuses, was led to the lectern then, in irrational exuberance-dejection-rejection-flatulous collection of stories which only a speaker of renown could present to an audience hurting with laughter, he gave a symposium of pristine business advice. We knew we had heard the speaker, one of the world's best, presented with his vehicle of clever reluctance.

In my lifetime, the building of business empires: IBM, GM, GE, etc. The 21^st century begins, the world run by one big crime syndicate. The Mafioso has expanded. Billionaires lined up in competing factions. The luminaries of the world, seeking to control the wealth of the world, make politicians with their patchwork-band aid approach to economics, seem like amateurs. The average elected politician, such as Obama, who has never run a lemonade stand, give credibility to the Corzine's of the world, who like the other “hatchlings” of Goldman Sachs-US Treasury tie with bright ribbons, meticulous-fastidious bundles of debt, not traceable. Much like the gold and silver parade, advertised to the investor. Your gold, silver, shares of stock, are only safe when you possess them. Some still think there is gold in Fort Knox. Robbery, clever profiteering, Enrico racketeering, have achieved new levels of deceit. The robbers of everything not nailed down (pension funds, bank accounts) are leaving with great exuberance through the backdoor. Investors, the world over, are finding that they are left, raped without even a kiss. Even in Europe, France, (and France has never won a battle of any type, since Napoleon) markets gyrate, world markets. There is nothing safe in investments, the worst time in the world for investing. Is it possible and probable that the power-brokers of the world (puppeteers) have installed-instructed, worldwide puppets of totalitarianism, as in history when this develops, socialist control becomes so easy? It is much easier to conquer free people with migrant border crossing, capture without munitions. Watch the free people of Israel, overrun by millions of Muslims, mostly from Egypt. Like a large game board, the free world is being “check-mated”, engulfed.

Before the fall of the Roman Empire, all the world's wealth was controlled by 2000 people. The empire was “satisfied” with bread and the circus. The people were fat and dumb, too busy watching their sports teams (Super Bowls) to care about things going on around them. In Yugoslavia, a victim of Tito's communism told me, “when we realized what was happening, it was already too late.”

This totally blind, 100 disabled, medical officer, veteran of the Korean Conflict does not seek sympathy or victim status but, I am depressed beyond measure to what has happened to my country, a nation which gave me and my ancestors so much opportunity. Born in poverty, pitiful country school, 13 in my graduating class, I have not forgotten that school principle of the 12 grade school who said, one day, “you can do anything, you are Americans.”

This writer worked his way through 8 years of university education, working at night, classes during the day. Summer months, I sold Bibles door to door across Eastern North Carolina. Just one house, just one day, just one WWII widow, changed my life. She said, “we had just the baby when my husband went to war.” My baby boy and I lived in this house which he had built for me, down the road from his parents. Benji was everything a mother could want. Watching me carefully, started talking at six months. In the fenced-in backyard, the almost two year old toddler fell and hit his head (cyclopian frontal area) on a rock which killed him instantly. “I don't believe he even made a whimper.” I screamed and his grandfather finally heard me, came running, although frail with arthritis. Grandmother, who could drive, rushed to the crossroads store to call an ambulance. An ambulance came, a deputy came but, it was all too late. The grandparents insisted that we call the funeral home, I would not allow my baby to be embalmed. I took him in the bedroom, his crib, washed him, kissing him as I washed him, thinking all the time what a wonderful husband he would have been. The funeral home came and said they would go back to town and get a small casket. When I put his favorite clothes on him, his limbs were already stiff, but I laid him in the casket and stayed with him all night. A large crowd came to Fellowship Methodist Church for the service the next morning. There was not enough time to notify his father, fighting in France, or even members of my own family. My pastor and I wrote a letter to David, (child's father) to be delivered by the Army Chaplain. She told me that her husband never returned home from the war to she or his parents. The news of this child's death evidently destroyed his desire to return to America. Some Americans have exuberance during hard times and good times, games, movies, eating and drinking. To many, life is a “soap opera”, reality or game show with a happy ending. For many, freedom is not free.

You Are What You Eat

2012-01-13T13:40:00.002-05:00

This writer's first excursion into the world of eugenics (destruction of mankind) was my study involving Nazism’s elimination of the disabled (275,000). Just before the beginning of WWII and the Nazi holocaust, we usually think of the 6 million Jews killed in the gas chambers.

But, on my visit of the horrors at Auschwitz there were Christian Crosses as well as Stars of David in the cemetery. From the beginning, we have never been able to understand man's inhumanity to man. We know what was happening in the seven civilizations which the children of Israel conquered after entering the “promised land”... such as throwing their own babies in a fire, to appease a false god.

We know about the rituals on the crest of the pyramids in the Yucatan, genocides in Africa, ethnic cleansings in the Balkans, abortions in communist countries, and even the 53 million abortions in America since 1973, when abortion was legalized. As of November, 2011, there are 2,218 recognized and operating medical schools in 177 countries throughout the world. Add to this number, schools of osteopathy and other healthcare sciences, schools of nursing, nutrition, and science research facilities devoted to the study of nutrition and even holistic approaches to good health. I remember, so well, working in a university medical school library, shelf after shelf, of peer-reviewed healthcare journals. One would think that, time and treasury spent, billions given from “do-gooder” foundations and groups (cancer research, diet and exercise gurus) the world would be a very healthy place. Truth is, more disease-sickness, animal suffering, now than ever before, headed by the big three, heart attack, cancer, and stroke, 51% of the population, diabetic.

Of course we know that to take away doctor's fees, hospital bills, big pharma's opportunes, would cause a world financial disaster. Doctors do not get rich from well people or dead people. You can be sure that if one of these exotic chemicals from a cauldron of brew, concocted by big pharma, will do some good one place in the body, it will do some harm in another. Big pharma has already stipulated that they want every man, woman, child in the world, taking at least two prescription pills a day. And, enabled by welfare care, people being too lazy to inform themselves, to take care of themselves, the clinics-hospital rooms will continue to be occupied, doctor's offices running over, drug stores on every corner. Remember this, If your doctor believed in microbiology, bacteria, wellness, he would have someone wiping off the chairs, door handles, etc. in his reception area. He would not have a stack of well-worn, old magazines, which sick people with every type disease, hands in their noses-mouths, and then turning the pages.

You are what you eat, the trillions of cells in your body, depend on nutrition. GET REAL-THINK, junk in, junk out. Only God could have designed the human body, and anyone who has studied the body is too stupid to study the body without having the glowing appreciation of the magnificent design of God... putting food into the mouth, food filled with elements of nutrition, mastication, into the alimentary canal, a system of enzymes-acids-microorganisms of digestion. Then, waste separated from nutrition, nutrients, processed by other organs, taken by blood to every cellular structure of the body. You are not healthy by accident, it takes work. We are heading for a species implosion from scientific tinkering with food stuffs. (GMO's MSG's, the starvation of the species by such eugenic-prone genocidal cauldrons as Monsanto-Merck.)

The scientific journal, cell research, states that a cell must have nutrition to survive, especially neurons, brain cells. Has it occurred to anyone that an increase in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Multiple Sclerosis could be associated with starved nerve cells?

We did not believe Baghdad Bob, Saddam Hussein's “liar in chief”, whey would anyone believe the drivel that comes from FDA, liars from the government's scientific community. Ludicrous advertisements on television, radio, and everywhere you look or hear. “A sound heart is the life of the flesh : but envy the rottenness of the bones.” (Proverbs 14:30) Remember, Jesus Christ took your diseases-infirmities as well as your sin to the Cross. (Isaiah 53) Look to Him and His world for guidance in your health and everything else.

Whimpers From A Dying Carcass

2012-01-13T10:14:00.002-05:00

Returning from a trip to the Antarctic, exploration ship, unusually calm water around Cape Horn. The captain decided that we could make a landing at Cape Horn and explore the beaches there. My imagination intrigued me with the sights of Magellan and his crew as they went around the tip of South America in 1511, the first Europeans to do so. Magellan was 31 years of age when he went that along the Tierra del Fuego, west coast of South America, he could see campfires of the inhabitants. Others have described the Indian campfires in the Mohawks of North America.

There is so much to know, and no one can know it all but, it is important to remember that there were highly civilized cultures and people in the Americas before the arrival of Europeans and Africans, people with survival techniques, educated by and to the land. One writer described how an Indian brave, knowing nothing of clothing and saddles was so adept at riding a horse, that at full speed, the brave was very accurate with bow and arrows.

With the arrival of western civilization, new systems of morality, spirituality, and physical methods were introduced. At strategic waterways, (rivers, harbors) cities grew with their institutions. Christian churches built colleges, hospitals, introduced science into agriculture and industry.

Universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, built mostly for professional disciplines,(ministry, law, medicine) were the centers of intelligentsia. Ministers and physicians were the best informed and leaders in the communities. A majority of the 56 signers of the Constitution were theology graduates. Probably, about this time, “the good 'ole boy system started.” It became a matter of who you know, not what you know, a matter of ancestral property holdings. This writer had never encountered the “American caste system” until he matriculated at the state university. I had thought that the tax-supported state university and college systems were built to educate ALL deserving students in the state, just as the public education system was suppose to educate ALL of the state's children.

It did not take me long to discover that there are lines drawn even in a democratic republic. I knew there were private, parochial schools, preparatory schools, military schools, as well as religious-supported colleges and universities. But, because of the significance of the oldest state tax-supported university, the politics involved by elitists, (fraternities) nouveau riche, successful from their education there, loyalties there filtering by the colander of discrimination, eliminated the poor, the dis-enfranchised and certainly those with dark skin. In fact, when I was a student at UNC-Chapel Hill there were no black students-faculty members, few women-faculty members, and certainly those from the substandard public school system, were very unwelcome, even if they had been fortunate enough to have been accepted. The university system has greatly expanded in my lifetime, other than the three predominant campuses, UNC-CH, NCS, UNC-WC. Teacher's colleges have become universities. Even collleges in remote areas have become state universities.

One of my father's friends, state senator, would invite me to the Capitol, (the legislature met in the Capitol) all older white men, not one black, one woman, one Indian, or disabled, etc., just a system of dividing up the spoils, calling hogs to the trough, democrats, and it went on for 140 years, lying, cheating, stealing, enabled by the baptists and others, who just turned a blind eye.

One of my friends, and I did have a few, the son of a judge. I found that the university had special assistants whose jobs were to stay in contact with the sons of judges, legislators, large alumni contributors, power brokers of the state, to make sure the “student of promise” was having no problems academically or financially. The great football star, Charlie Justice, was in my class. He told of how one professor repented for giving him a low grade.

I knew some of the greatest men of my life, Dr. Frank Porter Graham, president, Chancellor House, Deans and Professors who were “Bell Towers of integrity.” In education, even higher education, as in religion, politics, commerce, civic clubs, country clubs, golf clubs, you learned to play the games. The tragedy of America, one goes up the ladder of success using the well-worn rungs of “political correctness” , cutting across corners instead of running the track, pushing and shoving out of the way those children of God (chosen, loved, and designed by God) who do not meet YOUR expectations. We think success and celebrity are the same thing, just to find that our ladder was placed on the wrong building.

Political appointees, governors, those with the money and prestige to get there, determine university fees. Having tried to get poor students into the university, I can tell you, without fear of contradiction, that the filter has not been changed. North Carolina residents, qualified students, in spite of skin color, background, poverty of home, should be admitted and coaxed through the university system by every means possible. There are private, denominational, elitist schools of higher learning, for those who want prestige. The yo yo of ambiguity, proffered by democrats for 140 years, should be over... lying, cheating, stealing from the hard-working, tax-paying, mostly God-fearing citizens of the state. We no longer believe you, politicians, when you tell us that you are interested in education for everyone.

Epicureanism of Defeat

2012-01-12T11:28:00.002-05:00

Aristotle wrote the classic book on ethics 350 years before Christ (The Nicomachean Ethics) Hippocrates, wrote his treatise on medical ethics 400 years before the birth of Christ, in which he taught that if you do not know what to do, to do no harm. Most of the philosophers in the cradle of early civilization, culture were known for their thoughts but little was written down because those who wrote such as Homer (Iliad and Odyssey) were considered anarchists, protestors, fanatics. The Christian world is blessed to have manuscripts preserved from old testament prophets. A young boy throwing rocks at a cave near the dead sea heard the rock make a sound “as if hitting something solid.” A miracle only God could provide, pottery containing dead sea scrolls. Even Jesus said, “If you had studied Mosses and the prophets, you would have known about me.” (Luke 16:29)

The most challenging intellectual feat of scholarly endeavor is tracing the gold thread of Jesus through God’s Word, such as the construction of the Ark of the Covenant found in the book of Exodus. Starting in the 24^th chapter, we find in exacting detail everything preceding the construction of the tabernacle and the Ark, the place where God desired to worship with His people AND LIVE WITH HIS CHOSEN, the Ark, built of Chittim wood and gold, a shadow of the coming of Christ to indwell AND LIVE WITH HIS CHOSEN.

We know that the tribes, even after 400 years of bondage, had left Egypt rich. We believe that Joseph, while ruling Egypt, had stored much of the Egypt’s wealth in various places, even toward the Euphrates.

Unbelievable, while Moses on Mt. Sinai talking with God, receiving God's laws, the probably 3.25 million people, constructed a gold calf and he found them dancing naked around the idol. God was so angry that He wanted to start over with Moses, just think the millions dead. Moses, loaded with wealth would necessarily be forced to escape the smell. But, Moses begged for God to spare the people. From the beginning, on the stage of the world, we are all actors IN SPITE OF OURSELVES.

IN SPITE OF OURSELVES, from the focal point in human history, the cross of Jesus Christ, we have survived until 2012 with an epicureanism of defeat. Epicurean’s have always been adapted to indulgence, sin, protesting in every way the will of God. Just think, Tel Aviv, Israel, a land called Holy, chief travel destination for world homosexuals.

God wanted this writer, born in poverty on an Eastern North Carolina tobacco farm, graduating from a small country school, with 13 in my graduating class, working through 8 years of university education, to become commissioned as a medical officer in the US Army. Returning, Korean Conflict, blind, God made provisions for me to experience the world. In my many activities of making a living, the many churches, clubs, politics, activities in which involved, I learned that spoiled, contented epicureans do not care about what goes on in the world. God has blessed me mightily, not only with money but experiences. Other self-centered-satisfied people do not care what has happened to their lives and to their country and to the world. I have thousands of photographs made by a blind man, my homes filled with world artifacts. It is rare for anyone to take note of anything.

Eight around the world trips, passport stamped in 157 countries, studying carefully all communist and Muslim areas of the world. This committed Christian cannot understand why the Christian community is not aroused by their fellow human beings in North Korea sent to concentration camps-hard work details, because they did not grieve appropriately at the death of the world's most vicious tyrant, Kim Jung-Il. But, I have talked and written about things in communist China, my 3 trips there... written and talked about communist Russia, (crossing on the Trans-Siberian railroad) Mongolia, Sudan, and other totalitarian countries.

Does it bother anyone that “the land of the free, home of the brave” is now heading in the direction of authoritarian socialism-communism. It starts before birth, communist China, abortion beyond comprehension, America, Planned Parenthood, GAO, $657 million tax dollars spent in abortions last year... 53 million abortions since the Supreme Court decision of 1973.

In the classroom, Columbia's Teachers College, John Dewy, who set up Russia's education program, “the end justifies the means”, government schools, lack of discipline, indifferent teachers, mostly interested in “pay”. Children want to learn, children can learn. Unlearned, “dumbed down” citizens, the targets of liberalism.

This field grade Army officer will tell you that the greatest source of military might is the Esprit de corps of the fighting men... their love for and ability to protect one another. Armys can be destroyed without munitions. Just as the destruction of the schools, so the military, invasion by “don't ask don't tell” perversion.

A nation is as strong as it's economy. When you are in a hole, you stop digging. In twenty four years, America has become the world's largest debtor nation, debts which can never be repaid, a debt in derivatives, entitlements, greater than the wealth of all the world.

While decent hard-working, God-fearing, tax-paying Americans were unconcerned, addicted not only to drugs but ease, the immoral deceptors of liberty have taken over. In the white house, at a recent “fairy tale” party, the Obamas, and their heathen democrat friends were drinking red drinks (pretension of blood) from test tubes. Much like hotel employees in London, describing how Lady Gaga bathes in blood, for life is in the blood (Leviticus 17:11) nourishment of the body's cells by pure blood, particularly the cells of the brain. (so important in the prevention of mental disease) but no blood as important, and precious, as the blood of Jesus Christ, God's own son, spilled for the sin of the world. The wrath of God, SUFFICIENT.

The Jig-Gig Is Up

2012-01-11T13:07:00.001-05:00

Over 4000 books have been written about the 16^th President of United States, Abraham Lincoln. First republican president, perhaps the most influential president, he was, in every way, an uncommon-common man. These days, lying, cheating, stealing, on every hand, government, news media, we must remember that he said: "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." In another world, when tentacles of honesty prevail throughout society as when “snake-oil” salesmen, hustlers, were run off stage and out of town, the “Jig Is Up”.

IN SPITE OF the “dumbing down” of America’s youth in government and other schools, the vexing propaganda from the hyperbole of Madison Avenue advertising, worldwide ambiguity in everything, human beings with a few purkinge cells (brain cells) still synapsing, are realizing that they have been lied to long enough. This writer has never understood how and why people are so gullible in just accepting anything propagated by the news media or academia. We have known for some time that only those in the media, academia industry, are the only ones the public considers credible... too lazy to read and study themselves. It is laziness, not necessity, that is the mother of invention and, I might add, reason for about everything else. We have lazy, lousy church members who claim the name of Christ, who would just “buy-believe” anything they hear form the pulpit or the electronic media. (slick, expensive haircuts, thousand dollar suited, televangelists: who in reality, in another world, just “snake-oil” salesmen. The mega-churches, in coastal casual (shorts-flip flops) drums and drama, bells and smells, disco lighting, never asked the repudiators, Hitchens, Dawkens, Hawkings, Osteen, and the other Darwin devotees, “how you get somethingness from nothingness.” I have great respect for Stephen Hawkings, totally paralyzed, a computer reading, just a twitch on his face. (It takes 10 minutes for his brilliant mind to produce one sentence.) Nothing is always nothing, the equations of physics, chemistry, motion, have never changed. I am kind to the evolutionists, they need kindness on this earth, knowing what they face later. With exponentialism, looking at the absolutes of science, engineering, literature. For one who has faith in the mythology of evolution, he would face an exponential of 10 with 123 zeroes. The scientists, ones with good sense, have stopped using the word impossible. Remember, just 150 years ago, those in the science of surgery, learned to wash their hands, in my life, we learned about DNA, nano technology yet, misguided parents still allow there children to be taught by teachers who are the carnival-barkers of evolution. When this writer walked the Galapagos Islands, I thought, how could one man, one theory, so hobble the science of the world. It is simply a matter of creatures wanting to deny creation... more concerned with what others (intelligentsia of the world) think of them than what God knows about them. A universe or multiverse, there must be a beginning. Matter is composed of electricity, the nature of the atom, everything mostly space, everything in a magnetic field. The Creator of it all dictated what we need to know, much is none of our business but, the deniers of the Creator, the post-modernists and agnostics who want to change His Word, most, have never spent 30 days in concentrated study, inquiry about that, which concerning and controlling their life, now and after. Of course, I have found that most academics and even the ignorant believe they will never die and, almost without exception, will go to a place called heaven. One honest man told me that he had enough sense, honesty, he knew he would go to hell when he died. He said, “I am not fooling myself or anyone else, I know that I am going to hell, and I will not be lonely there.” I tried to tell him of the starkness, blackness, horror-pit of hell. I can well understand why the healthy, wealthy, and wise, the power brokers of the world, can defy and deny as they enjoy what they consider paradise on this earth. One local, crooked, politician said to me, when I questioned him about increased taxation here on the NC coast, “It cost to live in paradise.” Financial depressions have a way of awakening people. Hunger sharpens the mind. The Christian church grows under persecution, more Christians in communist China (underground churches) than the population of the United States.

Like abandoning the Titanic, sinking because it has hit an iceberg, boarding the Lusitania which would then be sunk by a torpedo, Americans are learning the truth about politicians, priests, athletic promoters and pedophilia. In Greece, pedophilia is considered a disability with recipients of state checks just as for blindness, wheel chair bound, or other disabilities. As more is learned about pedophile activity in athletics (Penn State, Sandusky's Second Mile) orphan homes for boys (Omaha, Franklin Scandal) and even sexual perversion involving pedophilia, congress, and government officials.

The most dangerous place for a black baby in America, the body of a mother. (52% black babies,aborted.) We had the .com bubble, the real estate bubble, the bailout bubble now, with the bankruptcy of ancient western nations. (Greece, Italy, Spain, etc.) Such banking debacles as Corzine's MF Global, “underwater” mortgages, global debt. The working man has discovered that he is no longer free but enslaved. On the day of Pentecost, the Apostle Peter, speaking to Jews and Gentiles, people who had no knowledge of the Bible (the Bible did not appear until 90AD), profits or promises, only the eclismic experience of a resurrected Jesus Christ. This was enough for 3000 to believe that they had hope... still, to this day, redemption through God's only son, on whom, He put all His wrath so those who possess faith in the son's faith, would not experience God's wrath but possess hope.

Brown Paper Bag

2012-01-10T12:58:00.001-05:00

There is no single dynamic of Americana more telling of economic and ethnic purposes than the Brown Paper Bag. Believe it or not, there are some of us who remember our first exposure to plastic. It was in 1936 that European and American companies started the development of plastic, not until several years later that plastic became a recognized entity, mostly a utilitarian product, water repellant and biological coverings. (Wax paper, paper cups, rain apparel, were the first uses of plastic.) With every year, "polymethyl methacrylate" (PMMA), better known as "acrylic." penetrated and infiltrated everything. One my age could never have imagined that this organic-exotic chemical would take over the world, part and parcel, of everything we use, (clothing, furniture, vehicles) assimilating the most important molecule in our culture.

Probably, more marine life die because of plastic. More vertebrates have their lives compromised because of plastic, than all other chemicals combined. Landfills are full of these molecular structures which will not deteriorate. Communist China has stopped using plastic bags and many other plastic products.

The Brown Paper Bag was important in every respect. Families saved, ironed, these bags for use and reuse. One congressman told me that the most important letter he ever received in his Washington congressional office was written on a Brown Paper Bag. North Carolinians remember with contempt, governor Kerr Scott and his governor son, Bob Scott who required a Brown Paper Bag full of money, in their office, if anyone expected help from them. More recently, the daughter-granddaughter of these two (she was Sectary of Agriculture) tried the same politics and she went to prison..

It was the Brown Paper Bag, provided from the ABC Liquor stores to the politicians and preachers which enabled them to “Brown Bag” their liquor into the best restaurants. I remember very well, Blockade Runner Hotel, an associate telling me, “There is the local Methodist pastor going into the restaurant with his Brown Paper Bag.

On the staff of an army hospital, WAC (women's army corps) center of the army, a black assistant to the commander of the center asked this medical officer, with honesty and sincerity-wanting to know, if I had any advice on how to lighten the color of her skin? As in New Orleans (A city where fraternities, clubs use a Brown Paper Bag attached to a door, determining your admission), other American cities with large black populations, elitist black social groups determined your social acceptability by the use of the Brown Paper Bag. This Lt. Colonel, black army officer, wanted to join a elitist social club in Anniston. AL. God only knows why she wanted to join this club, which discriminated against whites and blacks. She was a shade darker than the Brown Paper Bag used for acceptance to the group.

Color discrimination among Americans may have begun between Caucasians and Negroids because, after the Civil war when 4 million slaves were emancipated, the color disparity began. I remember so well, as a university student selling Bibles door to door, during the summer, experiencing my first discovery of this type caste-class problem. In the Northeastern area of NC, one of the white slave owners had fathered children by many slaves, his offspring had much lighter skin, very different hair and eyes. His children had inherited his great wealth, lived totally apart from other blacks... their own church, schools, clubs, fraternities, a color code which exists not only there but in many other places.

On remote islands in the South Pacific, I found dark-skinned natives with blond hair, blue eyes. My guide told me that these south sea islanders, products of a Scandinavian wrecked ship, did not associate with the natives of other islands.

For many years, this writer owned an apartment on Manhattan’s Beekman Place, just south of the United Nations building. The South Korean Mission was on the corner across from my building, the famous composer, Irving Berlin's townhouse on another corner, national missions throughout the area. THERE IS PROBABLY NO PLACE ON EARTH WHERE MORE RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IS SHOWN THAN AT THE UNITED NATIONS. This world traveler was invited to many receptions, I noted the dark-skinned diplomats did not associate with the lighter skinned diplomats. The Brown Paper Bag rule was not used but a friend, a black Kenyan who lived around the corner from me, told me that skin color discrimination was very evident, among the diplomats, throughout the sectariat.

This writer is a Southern born and bred white man, worked in green tobacco, in the poverty of a tobacco farm, with people of every skin color. I do not have a cell of bigotry in my body but, I feel with righteous indignation when I hear Northerners speak of racial turmoil in the South, how southerners have treated the blacks. I call these people “Bifocal Yankees”. Looking south through the upper part of their spectacles, they judge southern whites but, when they decide to move south, no longer be declared a snow-bird, but take up residence here, looking through the bottom part of their spectacles (bifocals), they immediately jump into the box of antebellum discrimination, immediately joining one of the all-white country clubs, civic clubs and even the all-white churches.

The Brown Paper Bag was a prized utilitarian vehicle, you could transport just about anything with safety. It could serve as a lunch box, tool box, disposal. Paper is cheaper than food product. Look at the small amount of food you get int every container of paper. As the paper boxes get larger, less and less food inside. The Brown Paper Bag had a superior quality, called strength and honesty.

Placebo of The Soul

2012-01-09T13:53:00.001-05:00

In the cauldron if history, man's relationship with other men, and from the beginning, the need for a relationship and worship of a Higher Authority. There has been a ceaseless rebellion... it is nothing new... an attempt at a placebo or catholicon for the soul, a replacement for Almighty God. Of course, this writer well understands that there are those atheists, postmodernists, meta-narratives (story about a story) who in their own wisdom worship the creature not the Creator. There is no category or grouping for this type mentality. Academics, scientists, elitists are found in this demographic but so are the most ignorant among us. It is not necessary to sing like Sinatra to believe “I did it my way.” It is time to face the reality of what is happening to the soul of mankind.

It started with the first of us, Garden of Eden, when man could have lived forever, free of all human foibles... work, disease, etc. He could not keep one commandment, so tempted by the fallen morning star, prince of the air, who could not obey from creation. Lucifer is only mentioned one time in the Bible. (Isaiah 14:12) From our first parents until this moment, Satan and his cohorts have manipulated our lives limited only by God. Weak, erring, human beings, have not been controlled by conscience, laws and commandments of the Bible, prophesies or promises leading both to the cross, the central point of history, and away from the cross.

“God is love” (1 john 4:16) and because God wants goodness for us shows mercy toward us, the atheist cannot comprehend sin, evil, bad things happening to good people. He never questions why good things happen to bad people.

Those who are most angry with God, who consider God immoral because He allows suffering, disasters, do not want to see hypocrisy or even shortcuts. The rules of the game do not allow the Olympic runner to cut across the end zone. The least informed among us understands Hitler’s promise that he would deliver the world from the oppression of Mount Sinai. Even the pirates of the 17^th century and today's Somalian pirates have rules. Blackbeard did not allow his pirates to bring women aboard ship, they had strict routines, bedtime, wake up time. The early church knew absolutes, right and wrong. The Apostle Paul, chief of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15) to whom we owe most of church scripture, knew that the time would come that men would no longer believe in the atonement of Christ, no longer believe in the Gospel of the church, sin's ruin and Christ's redemption, would only want a tasty cocktail for itching ears. (2 Timothy 4:3) It is not just the new age agnostics, Oprah and her crowd, but mainline churches, particularly Episcopalians who tell us that the historical gospels no longer apply (Heterodoxia Jan. 28, 2007) and so, young people raised in the church. Those recent graduates in pulpits from Bible colleges and seminaries, those on pews entangled with the attractiveness of the world, now seek a placebo instead of the spirit of grace, faith, provided by God not only to die with but live by.

Even Christ said, “When I return will there be any faith on earth.?” I feel sure there are clones around us but, more important, in nations where Western Civilization has been blessed by the knowledge of the Sovereignty of God. Many are now involved in computer worship, having humanized the computer, in many places, robots, becoming humanized. There is a frightening attempt to minimize Christianity, to maximize sin (abortion, romanticism of homosexuality, same-sex marriage, etc.) We see the slaying of evangelical Christians in Nigeria and other Muslim countries, the disenfranchisement of the disabled, those who do not fit our ideal of acceptable.

I will never forget my aunt, genetic problem, obese her entire life. She cried as she told me how she had been treated by her fellow human beings, particularly her family. (people who play church) only the disabled, such as this writer, a 100% disabled veteran, knows the tumult of disability. Unless you have been called a “nut”, “fanatic” by your own family, you are not a real Christian.

No sane, inquisitive mind can doubt the historicity, reliability, of God's Word. The parents of King Cyrus of Persia, conqueror of the Middle East thought they had named their son but, years before, the prophet Isaiah had named and prophesied about their son, ruler of Persia. God named John the Baptist, spoke directly with Moses and Abraham. The son of God, Jesus Christ was prophesied 700 years before His birth. On the fringes of time, punctuated most by geography, there are many religions, people seeking to fill a “whole” in the human heart. For the last 50 years, heart disease has been the number 1 killer in the world. The only cure for heart disease, no placebo is needed for the soul, a relationship with the Creator of the universe.

Rasputin and The Informers

2012-01-05T13:21:00.001-05:00

This writer was crossing Russia on the trans-Siberia railroad. I was in the city of Irkutsk on the shore of lake Baikal (395 miles L x 49 miles W), one of the world's largest lakes, pearl of Siberia, frozen solid at the time. The thing I remember most about this area of Siberia, the destitution, depression and despair. It appeared that most of the buildings had been partially burned at one time. I figured that most wood buildings had caught fire by people trying to stay warm.

Just the day before, I had seen the Soviet railroad police drag a man from the train, beating him simply because he attempted to talk with me. So, It surprised me when an employee at the hotel there began talking with me. I thought he was practicing his English but their knowledge of the world was as limited as the authoritarian, totalitarian, communist system wanted it to be. He wanted to know about Rasputin, the Monk adviser to the Russian Royal Family, who, in the days before the revolution, had been assassinated. I told him, that Rasputin had died as a young man in 1916, defiling the attempt by government to take over the country. A mixture of politics and religion, mysticism and atheism had labeled him as a heretic-anti-Christ. The mysticism continued even about his death, not satisfied, death, burial, dug up and cremated. Improper cremation procedures, the dead body appeared to have sat up while on fire. Words have consequences!

McCarthyism is a loosely described time of involvement and investigation by government in Un-American activities, both House and Senate, based on blacklisting celebrity personalities for their involvement in communist activities, based mostly on Informers.

The famous blacklist contained such celebrities as Ring Lardner, Jr., Orson Bean, Howard Da Silva, Will Geer, Lee Grant, Judy Holliday, Burgess Meredith, and many of whom we never heard from again, but many, picked up the pieces and continued somewhere. This is what happens when the most powerful force of mankind, the tongue, is not bridled, the bit not in place. More lives have been ruined with the tongue than ruined with all the warfare arsenals of mankind. The Un-American activities committees did their damage from 1938 -1969, abolished in 1975.

Future McCarthyism has seen the establishment of the Patriot Act, Bush 43, 2001. Not satisfied, Bush 43 established Homeland Security, now ruled by the Czarina of tyranny, Janet Napolitano. On December 12, 2011 Napolitano started the "If You See Something, Say Something™" Campaign. Posters went up in stores and public buildings instructing citizens to “rat” or “squeal” on fellow citizens... another pitfall in a decadent, once land of the free, home of the brave, America. Beyond comprehension, everyone drunk, New Year's Eve, the democrat, imposter, President Obama, signed into law the NDA Act, taking away the freedom of anyone, JUST ON SUSPICION. A radio talk show hoist said recently, the same thing that a communist Chinese guide said to me 20 years ago, “We are slaves and just beginning to feel the pain of the slave master's whip.”

In communist China, government controls what you search-information... censorship is real. Tyrannical governments will find that censorship of printed material is easier than that coming in form the ether, there are no borders, many wireless procedures, however, in a nation of constitutional integrity, your secrets are only as good as your privacy. We have a right to our secrets, our privacy. It is not government's business what I have in my medicine cabinet, my refrigerator, my supplements. Because of our tax system, government knows more about your business than you do, your credit, your portfolio, your bank account.

My great grandfather was the last man in the county to sign up for FDR's agriculture stabilization program (ASP), acreage controls, crop inspections. Like scared, helpless, dumb, sheep, parents and patriots have been led up into the slaughter pit by the Judas goat of threats, threatened that their children cannot attend school without certain vaccinations, threatened that employment depends on certain tax information, threatened that the sale of real estate depends on certain building inspections. You can have your car, house ransacked by law enforcement simply from someone giving fake-false information. (Informers)

The laws of the Old Testament prophets, commandments of the New Testament were intended for the Gentiles as well as the Jews. Everyone should prepare for unprecedented changes coming into the world, GET REAL. America will never be the same again, it will be a matter of survival. Your family and many of your friends, with apathy, with unconcern, have voted for your enslavement. Remember, 30 million evangelicals did not vote in the last Presidential election. Forget this matter of church-state separation. Here are four things to consider when voting.

1. Is your candidate a Christian? Buy this I mean, not just a professor but a possessor. So many of your friends and family “play church”. Every politician wants to be associated with spirituality, does not mind lying about God OR government.

2. Does your candidate's faith impact his politics? In other words, does he consider the unborn, marriage between a man and woman, SACRED?

3. Does your candidate believe in Biblical absolutes? Is he a shallow Christian or Shadow politician? There are absolutes in this world. Even Richard Dawkins, atheist, 70 years of age, knows good from evil, sweet from sour.

4. Does your candidate hold fast to the integrity of the constitution? Like many “so-called” Christians, reading the Bible, does he have an ERASER in one hand, would neutralize, compromise, or change certain things?.

GET REAL, your future life, a faith not only to die with but live by. I believe that 90% of faith is just raw courage. Faith is a verb, action based on belief, sustained by confidence. If God still pulls at you, it is not too late for you, you are blessed, I have informed on you.

Ticking Time Bomb

2012-01-05T09:27:00.001-05:00

There are some of us left, people who lived through the Great Depression. I was born in 1930 but remember much more than most because my photographic mind, which kept a record of everything. A local university student came to my house and interviewed me about the Great Depression. I heard a great university medical school professor say once, “The body does not function the way it is described in books”. Books cannot describe pain. History books cannot describe the realism, stupor and shock of the Great Depression.

I truly believe the wantonness of the Great Depression prepared America for WWII, when unspoiled, tough citizens had to mobilize in the war effort. Perhaps, to some extent, the great depression going on now is preparing citizens for what lies ahead in WWIII, which began with the attack on the East Coast (911) just as WWII began with the attack on the West Coast (Pearl Harbor).

It has not sunk in yet, a profane society, a culture thriving on lies from government, steeped in greater lies from the secular media, America drowning in unpayable debt. Not just the $15 trillion admitted, but an iceberg of over $100 trillion. We see the tip of the iceberg but not the $17 trillion entitlement , social security payments, $15 trillion entitlement drug payments, $37 trillion entitlement medicare payments, $36 trillion entitlement Medicaid payments, etc. It certainly has not sunk in that $707 trillion in derivatives, mortgages bundled, sold all over the world to banks, this started with Goldman Sachs and now comes ex governor-senator, president of MF Global, Corzine, who does not know what happened to his $1.5 billion that just “disappeared”. He was robbed, probably by the government which he supports.

I well remember the”Hoover carts” (carts pulled by farm mules, when the few automobile owners could no longer by gas) the boarded up storefronts, starving farm animals, church yards, school yards, streets filled with buggies and wagons, my father resoling our shoes. At the beginning of the Great Depression over half of the population lived on farms where wildlife, fruits and berries, and garden crops were plentiful. I still remember my mother cooking hominy in a large black wash pot from corn which I had shelled with the hand sheller. This hominy was given to neighbors, particularly black people who suffered most, along with potatoes from the “potato hill”, even so, 9 million Americans starved to death.

My first “retching” memory were stories of aunt Catty, my grandfather's sister for whom my mother was named. She was the teacher in the three roomed school, preacher at the local Quaker church. All my family were Baptists except her, she having married a Quaker, who, conscientious objector, was killed as an ambulance driver during WWI.

She had $600 dollars, mostly the veteran's death benefit ,in the local bank, a fortune at that time, banks failed. She stood in line all day outside the bank, trying to get her money. She had come home very ill unable to go to a bathroom, laid down on the bed and died. Her family still believes that the banker used her money to scoff up one of her brother's farms. During that depression, or the present one, you either float or paddle. The elitists, such as bankers, like today's welfare recipients, were and are the floaters unconcerned with hard work, saving, just living off the toil of others. Like today's college students, indentured servants, borrowing money, no jobs then, it was the cotton mill workers, tenant farmers. My mother and grandmother talked about aunt Catty teaching and preaching, long dresses, aprons and shawls, which she would remove one at the time during the day.

You can read the history of what happened, migrant slave workers jumping from windows at a fire in NYC but in Eastern NC , and I will never forgive the Baptists and evangelicals who saw the human enslavement, brought on by the democrats, Jocephus Daniels, of the Raleigh-News & Observer, FDR cohort. Most have forgotten the communist agriculture stabilization programs, acreage control, healthy crops cut down in the fields, totalitarianism. I remember my mother and grandmother standing by the road as healthier corn and cotton crops were destroyed, pigs killed. At the school house, barrels of rotting apples, sorted and given to students. Cheese and other commodities along with a $2 parity check, given to poor farmers.

It may be the military, earthquakes, starvation, but God has a way of whipping people. Nothing has changed. Asian producers of Nike sport shoes working for $1 a day, living in horrendous conditions as the elitist in America spend $4.5 billion to market the shoes... much like the cotton mill barons, tobacco warehouse men, elitist bankers, who got rich during the Great Depression.

In spite of perishing men, morally and spiritually, Jesus died for sin... all sins. A retired full Colonel, veteran of WWII, Korea, injured neurologically, continuous jerking motion, owned a restaurant, heard me speak at a meeting held there. He said, “I want to talk with you.” Across a table, our cups of coffee, he said, “Can Jesus love someone like me?” The love of God got people through the Great Depression and every other of life's situations.

Circumlocution Trails

2012-01-03T13:19:00.001-05:00

I was traveling the dirt road, one of the main roads in the huge nation of the Congo, paralleling the 2,000 mile Congo river from Goma to Bukavu. My driver stopped the vehicle at a deserted, once beautiful, tea plantation home. The deserted plantation was now controlled by the government and two guards were on duty. This was after the reign of Joseph-Désiré Mobuto. One of the guards made a place for our lunch and opened the house to the bathroom. I remarked to him about the beautiful home and the fact that just 100 years before, English missionary, George Greenfield, had buried a wife and three children on the banks of the Congo river, to bring the gospel to that part of the world. In 1907, at his funeral in Goma, a choir of 10,000 natives sang: “All hail the Power of Jesus' name.” He said yes, and just a few years ago, the English settlers, owners of this plantation, were killed and their bodies piled one on the other, doused with gasoline, and burned.

Everything God is, is what people anywhere and everywhere are looking for, whether their religion is true or false. The poet has said, there is a hole within the soul of every human being, conscience of the heart, and they try to fill this hole by

worshipping something or someone greater than themselves. When traveling in Burma, Mandalay, there were 600 monasteries in this one city. In a world of 7 billion population, half live in the country and half in the city. In Burma, there are more Stupas in the countryside than people. (a Stupa is a dome-shaped mound, various sizes, usually containing the ashes and bones of a Buddhist.), a shrine of worship.

Western Civilization, Christianity teaches us that the Jews and Gentiles hated one another. It was the dead 33 year old son of God, Jesus Christ, beaten, crucified, taken from a cross, that in a mystical-mysterious miracle of grace translated in a supernatural way His words, love one another. (John 13:34) No one could ever have convinced Saul, persecutor of Christians, that he would become the Apostle Paul of the Christian church. The dead but resurrected body of a 33 year old man did more than all the prophets or saints of old. His disciples, his most devoted followers, following His resurrection had an eclismic experience and were never the same again. Each died a martyr.

Those who do not want religion in their life usually glorify something. Most of the time, I have found, science and, I have found that many unbelievers are just as moral or more moral than believers and, the atheist scientist contributes much to human knowledge. Such as the Natural History Museum in London, with it's great portrait of Charles Darwin looking down, great and rare earth science collections. (70,000 items) As my wonderful mother told me before I left for the university, your mind will be opened to many things, if you are not ready for that, you should stay home. The God-fearing believer does not park his “questioning” mind at the church house door when he goes in to worship. Many of the world's greatest scholars, scientists were believers in a Sovereign triune, God. Even Christopher Hitchens, who died recently of cancer believed in the Christian concept of life, that human life starts with conception, that he would never abort a child but, to the end, he said that if he showed any signs of believing in God, one would know that the cancer had eaten his brain. He wanted to be a hero to atheists. It is not necessary to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, hardening the heart.

When will the world realize that secularism cannot deal with the reality of wickedness and evil? With academic sophistication, the Nazis first put 275,000 of their fellow disabled citizens to death, using the well-worn mantra, “happiness and suffering were incompatible.” The academically superior, progressive German nation, then had no trouble seeing 6 million Jews killed. Without a noble foundation of decency under-girded by righteousness, even the sane lose their way. In America, on the edge of euthanasia, Indian massacre, the Dred Scott decision where human beings were lessened. Eugenics practices in mental hospitals and now, God help us, the holocaust of abortion. (53 million of the most innocent, killed since abortion on demand legalized by the Supreme Court in 1973) Where have the lousy Christians, pacifist preachers, pretenders of civil rights been during these times of atrocities? Some law schools are teaching liberal lawyers to protect the rights of animals, seals who eat too many Salmon, dogs and cats used in experimentation.

Christianity cannot be reduced to a group experience. God never called a committee to do His work or cover evil with the delusions of psychology. God knows the erratic heartbeat of every child and the mother of that child, hearing bombs dropped from electronic drones. God is aware of every vote, whether from an elected official or a citizen... votes that enable evil.... votes that have flattened every ambition because of $707 trillion in derivatives and entitlements... vote from Catholics, Baptists, that have shamed our blessed Lord.

Character determines destination and for many with character, the destination, goal posts, are too close for activity no matter how much we want to stay in the fight. Rather, it is left to the young, those with the energy to carry on the fight. “Wickedness in high places (Ephesians 6:12)

John Milton, one of the world's greatest poets was blind when he wrote Paradise Lost. In his verse, concerning his blindness, he wrote, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Who Cares in 2012?

2012-01-02T12:22:00.002-05:00

The most active movement-philosophy of the 20^th century was abdication of personal responsibility. I was born in 1930 but knew people from the 19^th century. In my lifetime, one value after another, abdicated: movement of goal posts... morality, spirituality, and most of all, political ideology.

One of my friends, military hero, political journalist, who died years ago, said to me in a conversation, “Tom, I have heard you say on the radio thousands of times, people just don't care, you are right, they don’t care.”

The first question in the Bible, God asked Adam and Eve, where are you? Of course, He knew where they were, He knows everything, even the number of hairs on your head. He knows the beginning and then ending of everything, that their would be some that would hate Him, if you still have a pull toward Him in your heart, you are the most fortunate person in the world. He knew the location of Abram in Ur, Moses in the desert, Paul, on that 150 mile road from Jerusalem to Damascus. GOD IS A SEEKER. Christ Himself said, “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:44)

The goal posts in the church have been moved so drastically that Christ, the Saints in glory, and even the Christians of the 19^th century would not believe the movement... lesbian and gay bishops, same-sex marriage, military chaplains unable to pray in the name of Christ, agnostics teaching in seminaries, and worst, pastors-shepherds in pulpits openly homosexual.

I was told just yesterday, large Baptist church, mostly card signers, infiltrated by gays, the gays wanting their photograph in the church directory as a couple, two males, two females. Bible colleges and seminaries unable to hire with contracts because of legal recourse from discovered gays. Denominational colleges unable to extend tenure to professors because of discovered homosexuality and law suits... even pastors.

There has never been any secret about how men come to God, chosen by Him, repentance and redemption. You cannot drag along your old life of sin and rejection, perversions and addictions. If homosexuality is right then nothing is wrong. If the liberals, promoting, abortion (killing of babies), promoting, same-sex marriage; promoting, agnosticism in the pulpit and the pews as proffered by democrats, liberal academia, secular news media, then the BASIC CRISTIANITY of one being a new creation, transformed (Romans 12) seeking to please God in everything we do. (2 Cor. 10:31) GOD IS BOSS! He demands trust and we are put here to glorify Him. Unsaved tares (weeds), playing church, do not and cannot glorify Him.

In the magnificent design of Creation, God made male and female to procreate, produce others to glorify Him, his chief creation. How anyone can study the human body, all the sciences of it's morphology (Anatomy, Physiology, Neurology, etc.) just to study the cellular structure, the electronics of mitochondria, and not trust God, is beyond comprehension. Just think, a city the size of metropolitan New York, millions of inhabitants, each with their individual pots and pans, the city dividing, exact reproduction, trillions of times, giving an organism of trillions of cells, each cell, filled with the Holy Spirit of God, the human body, the temple, the bride of Christ, and think, together, the Christian church made up of all these Saints, living and dead and, when we were His enemy, He died for us.

What we are called to as Christians is not easy. In the existentialism of the 20^th century, tricksters exponentially confounded us with their ideas of profane thought involving life, (decadence of politics, perversion of the financial world, pornography, self-destruction through addictions, doubts-fears about everything decent) even religious faith.

When I was there, hard work, hard times, I wanted to get away. Now, grateful-pleasant thoughts of the farm on which I and my ancestors were raised. Unforgettable, the hand pump at the pasture well, beautiful cows tuning to drink, from then trough, thirsty for the fresh water. So it is for the Christian, thirsty for the Word of God, always refreshing.

The only place we can live is NOW, yesterday history, tomorrow a mystery. The word in 2012 is to move forward. Promises of a new year, promises of each new day. A good way to start the good new year is as Bishop Sheen said, three words; kindness, kindness, kindness.

Rock Music and Smoke Machine

2011-12-30T11:28:00.003-05:00

Mark Twain said, India is the ultimate travel destination. Like so much of the world, I have traveled through India several times, beyond description. I was in Amristar, India, cradle of the Sikhs, location of the Gold Temple. Civilization has not caught up with this remote village. Because of political problems, few enter the temple but the officials wanted me to experience it. Located in a lake, you walk across a bridge to the temple, where Monks are exploring great stacks of manuscripts. Around the edges of the enclave, buildings where large vessels were preparing food for the many pilgrims, Sikhs from around the world, their turbans, sabers, bracelets, distinct apparel.

Two writers from a well known magazine were there, attempting to get into Afghanistan to photograph the standing Buddhas at Banyan. They had bribed a pilot and asked me to go with them, a free trip. Even then, political turmoil impossible to get into Afghanistan. The Hindu Kush mountains are beyond compare in the Himalayas. In the side of a large mountain, chiseled, standing Buddhas, which the Al Qaeda have now destroyed. So tall, to photograph them you must go completely across the valley. Little change since Rudyard Kipling described the Khyber pass. (and the first time I was there a camel train went through the pass just as it had 2000 years ago) you hear nothing but Muslim calls to worship, and see nothing but poverty-stricken people riding on donkeys. In viewing religious relics throughout the world, whether the Taj Mahal at Agra or the temple of Queen Hatshepsut in Egypt, one is confounded to think of the commitment of mortals in time and treasury to a false religion. Just think how long it took and how dangerous it was for artisans to chisel these over 400 foot tall standing Buddhas at Banyan. The Islamic terrorists are attempting to destroy the Christian church in all of the over 40 Muslim countries aided and abetted by the anti-Christian power brokers in America. The Coptic Christians are being killed and run out of Egypt, same in Iraq, same in Syria, same in Hamas-controlled West Bank. Christians in most Muslim countries are fleeing to Canada and Australia. When I was in Nigeria, I found Pentecostals frightened. I encountered Christians in China, underground church. Christianity has always grown when persecuted. Today, there are more Christians in China than the population of the United States, over 300 million in a country of that plus one billion people.

From daily news headlines, one thinks, how can America continue with such perversion-dishonesty-apathy on every hand. Throughout the world, Africa, Balkans, Asia, there are continuous efforts toward ethnic-cleansing. Are we on the fringes of such in America? The effort to secularize America started in my lifetime. (1963, prayer and Bibles removed from schools; 1973, abortion rights; 1993, new world order) The world, the flesh, the devil... the tares... have invaded the churches, the denominations. It is not just lesbian Bishops, ordained gay preachers in the pulpit, but comfortable-satisfied “so-called” Christians on the pews. Many, now, just get up and walk out of services when the pastor is just performing. The Christian has the need for “the meat” of God's Word, not just something to please the ears. (2 Tim 4:3, Heb., 5:12)

A local church member had moved to another city, now seeking a new church home. At one, the preacher so far astray, she got up and left the service, went to the activities building to get her child from ”children's church”. “Children's church” was set up like a night club, rock-religious music, smoke machine, twittering lights, and children sitting around tables drinking punch. Sean Varner, pollster states that 60% of all children reared in Christian homes, after going to college, leave the church. We note that most churches have become a sea of gray hair.

I cannot understand why, on most electronic programs of ministry (radio and television)(the speaker must confess that he has “been saved” from a life of addiction-drugs, alcohol, sexual perversion. Why does the preacher or anyone else hit bottom before looking up? Even the old, rural church, built by my ancestors, and where I was so committed, I never hear anything from them except when having pizza and pool parties. In most churches, the baptistry and communion tables are little used. The pastors trousers are worn at the seat not at the knees... congregation diabetic from excessive pulpit sugar. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. (Jer. 17:8)

Even in time of drought, those with roots near a river of the nourishing water from the fountain of God will continue to stay green-alive and producing fruit.

Blank Check

2011-12-30T09:35:00.001-05:00

North Carolina and Oklahoma were the last two states to allow open bars, liquor by the drink. North Carolina was the last state to allow a lottery, supposedly for education purposes. This writer was very active both in speaking and raising money to prevent this legislation. Too many lives have been ruined with alcohol and gambling, intemperate, excessive, addictive. It is not necessary to give examples of those who cannot control alcohol and gambling anymore than those who cannot control overeating, sexual perversion, or any other action that is or can become a sin.

As a scientist, probably a small amount of liquor is good for you and, as one who has made much money on the stock market, buying shares is always a gamble. It is impossible to take the risk out of living.

After much thought and prayer, and limiting the expense to four dollars a week, money which I would never miss, I buy four lottery tickets on the big payoffs. This past week someone won over $200 million, one number, one ticket, one person. My objective, just as with every other dollar I make, I would establish a foundation for the disabled because I well know, without a shadow of doubt, that the country's largest minority, the handicapped and disabled, are totally left out in most areas of life and living... school house, public expenses such as libraries, parks, restaurants, even the church house. “So-called” Christians and pastors have ignored this vital sector of the community. You will find most of us at home, even veterans are not appreciated at political and other events. I am a totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected, medical officer, veteran, of the Korean era. I could count on the fingers of one hand the times anyone has made anything available to me. I have offered $1000.00 to anyone who can show at any Holy day or holiday any church, veterans group, civic club, and I could say family member, has done anything for me. Even the Red Cross, Salvation Army, Government Social Services, when I was both a patient and staff member of A military hospital, nothing was ever done. God is my witness to these statements. This blind veteran has never been able to get a white cane from the VA, I find them at thrift stores, probably discarded by someone who has gone on to a place where such is not needed.

The writer C.S. Lewis, in his book, The Great Divorce said, ”At the end of this life, you either say to God, “Thy will be done or My will was done.”” This writer has already won life's lottery, born in America with the opportunities afforded American citizens, born in a home with the parents, with the ancestry, with the “raising” given me.

In the council chambers of eternity, God knew the beginnings and the endings of every individual life who, He chose, He foreknew to live on this earth. (Romans 8: 28, etc.) He put thorns on rose bushes, so loves you that He will allow you to hate Him, gave you freedom of choice. He knew that you would be so miserable around real Christians that you would not want heaven, where you would be with them for eternity. He put good and evil in the world so you could tell the difference and make your own decision about which you like best. Despite what Rabbi Harold Kushner said, Why bad things happen to good people. You will decide why good things happen to bad people.

God gave to the weak, the depressed, the disabled, a blank check. My blindness has been my greatest blessing. Two of the world's greatest Christians, theologians, Martin Luther and Charles Spurgeon, crippled by depression. The Apostle Paul, next to Christ, the world's greatest preacher “Thorn in the flesh.” (2 Cor. 12:7) In the international dog and pony show, political grandstanding, financial rewinding, making a few very rich through wars and military corruption. The “PAUSE THAT REFRESHES” (The most famous advertising statement by Coca Cola) is the time available to every child of God who knows, without a doubt, that he has available to him, the greatest power in the world the One who created the world, available to him or her as a blank check, fully-forever endorsed. Any problem, BE SPECIFIC.

Our greatest wealth, book beyond describing, The Bible, rich in the history of one chosen people, much about the eternal city. Sennacherib's Syrian Army had captured most fortressed cities, encamped outside the walls of Jerusalem. The people could see the thousands of campfires, could hear the cursing of the messengers to King Hezekiah. The King and the people knew the ravaging, killing, raping awaiting them. The King took the problems to God. In one night, one angel of the Lord, 185,000 dead Syrian soldiers. Sennacherib returned home and was later killed by one of his own sons.

In 2012, and I can still hear those old folks singing this hymn in the old church where I was reared, Take your burdens to the Lord and leave them there. Don't allow your circumstances to affect your faith but rather ALWAYS, allow your faith to determine your circumstances.