What would Jesus think?

This Rockwell painting recently sold for 46 million dollars.

Romans 8:16-17

King James Version (KJV)

¹⁶ The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:

¹⁷ And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.

~  ~  ~  ~  ~

No Christian is where he ought to be spiritually

(A.W. Tozer)

No Christian is where he ought to be spiritually, until the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ is being reproduced in his daily life!

Yet even though a person has become like Christ, he will not know it--because humility and meekness are also a part of the transformation of true godliness!

"Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did!" 1 John 2:6

~  ~  ~  ~  ~

                 We all read the book, "In His Steps," by Charles Shelton.  We have all heard the phrase, "What would Jesus do?"  It is far, far, more important to consider, "What would Jesus think of me?" 

                 We are very concerned about, "What will people think?"  Whether a politician, pastor, poet, everyone is concerned about what people think of them.  Many of us spend our entire lives working, sweating to have letters after our name (MD, DO, JD, AIA, etc.) I have known men and women who spent their entire lives working hard, living frugally to amass a large estate.  I certainly admire men and women who achieve an education and wealth, much more than those who just throw their lives away, never achieving or acquiring anything.  In this day of the welfare mentality full of entitlements and subsidies too many children are raised in homes with a carefree (it feels good do it) attitude.  There is real honor in hard work, real satisfaction in accomplishment.  I do believe my mother, grandmothers, women whose real accomplishment was the raising of children, providing a good example of the wife and mother in the community, were given, by God, a look far down the road, happenings after they were gone, to know the blessing of THEIR achievements. 

                 I so remember, the Sunday afternoon, when I took my parents in my car to the home of my sister.  My mother had been diagnosed with cancer.  In her wisdom, she knew she did not have long to live.  My sister had just given birth to the only female grandchild.  I remember my sister laying this beautiful baby in my mother's lap and my mother looking at the baby with such love. I believe she realized she would never see this child grow up, become a beautiful girl, graduate from Salem College, become a beautiful bride with a beautiful wedding, have own home and children, but I believe God, in his love-grace-mercy, gave her a look down the road.  It is essential that human beings, particularly those of use who are joint heirs with Christ know that our efforts in attainment, whether education, finances, or otherwise are not in vain and certainly, for those who live the simple, blessed lives, the real heroes of the world, parents, professors, pastors, who give encouragement and who make it all possible, surely must have a very special inheritance.      

Hyperbolic 197

If the crust of the earth were gold (atomic weight 197), men would lie, cheat and steal for a handful of dirt. The value of gold is greatly exaggerated compared to the immortal soul of a human being, God's greatest Creation.

On an expedition ship to the Antarctic (South Pole), I shared a cabin in the ship with a Fleet Street banker from London. He was perhaps the classiest, wittiest, most captivating man I have ever met...educated at Oxford, knighted by the Queen. He had a tremendous knowledge of world finance. He would have been the first to tell you that the United Kingdom (the British Empire), captured/colonized the world in an effort to channel most of the world's wealth to the British Isles. Until this very day, the United Kingdom controls most of the world's wealth (measured in gold, art treasures, classic political power).

From the time that Nebuchadnezzar hauled away all the gold and treasures of Judaism to Babylon. From the time Greco-Roman wars etched the lines of European civilization, it has not been a matter of land or water rights but who has the most wealth stored up in gold, silver, and precious stones.

The conquistadors landing in South America, were not interested in human slaves or the poor, undeveloped land to conquer, but rather the accrued wealth of the Mayans and Incas. Just as the gold, silver, sculptured frescoes from the Parthenon went back to England, so the wealth from South America found its way back to Spain and France.

“Follow the money” is a historical principle and prophecy which has never failed. Of course, paper fiat money, notes, bonds are relatively new, but the time came when it was burdensome to travel with heavy gold, silver coins or items of bartering value such as porcelain. Early European city-states such as Venice, Florence, Rome started what has become the modern day banking business, such families as the Medici, Doge, Rothschild. Fortunes then, and still to this day, were made and are made by the money handlers. The money handlers are involved with everything, nations, industry, even the church. Christ himself chased the money-changers out of the temple (John 2:14-16). Those of us who have explored Vatican City, St. Peter's, are well-aware of the gold there...the Catholic Church, the richest entity in today's world.

Much to our sorrow, we have seen money so infiltrate God's church, God's work, that the real mission of the church is barely recognized. We know that missionaries, ministers of the Gospel, ministries blessed to teach and preach the Gospel (churches, colleges, hospitals, orphanages, media programs) must have funds, funds from Christian people given as unto God. We find that many preachers/evangelists are more interested in their pastoral package (salary, car, housing allowance, vacation) than they are in the church pulpit and God's program. Servitude is a matter of personal character, whether ministry, healthcare, academia, or even political service. It takes a certain amount of gold, or its equivalent, to live and support a family but we are assured that God knows our needs, and will supply our needs. We are assured that everyone, regardless of vocation will have troubles. That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:7)

A historical landmark marks the place in South Dakota, Wounded Knee, where hundreds of Native Americans were killed by the 7^th Cavalry Regiment. This is just one example of the slaughter that took place as early American settlers traveled westward claiming (what is now) American soil from the natives who possessed it. Not only did Americans claim the possessions and wealth of the Native Americans, but just as important as gold to them, their supply of food (it is estimated that 16 million bison were killed and just left to rot on the plains of this great nation) in somewhat successful the attempt to starve these men, women and children.

Like the Europeans who colonized Africa, the Middle East, South America and much of Asia, it was the greed and thievery of their wealth (gold, silver, minerals, art treasures) that will forever be a blight on Western civilization. Just think, England, colonizing/capturing most of the civilized world, to this day still holding on to most of it...Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, etc. (54 total members of the British Commonwealth). It is wealth, but it is not “commonwealth”. As my Fleet Street banker friend said to me, “there is probably not a calculator made that could total the wealth of the British Empire, controlled by just one family, a so-called royal family. In many of the 54 nations of the commonwealth, there are men, women and children who have never had a drink of clean water. Their drinking water, cooking water, laundry water, all coming from a polluted creek or river. Just one of the Queen's many castles, Buckingham Palace, has 775 rooms, 50 bathrooms...this much space for an 85 year old woman and her 89 year-old husband.

Everything pertaining to God's Church is found in New Testament books of Romans through Philemon. The first chapter of Romans tells the world, for time through eternity, about man's inhumanity to man, particularly the homosexual agenda. In spite of what the heathen such as Nietzsche has said, God is not dead, nor is He asleep. He knew about the cruelty of the Romans during the earthly life of Christ, from Sirius of Assyria, from Alexander the Great of Greece to the Caesars of Rome, for every power-grab, every idol worship, the slaughter of every innocent child, the trail of every stolen coin, He has an accounting system. The eraser on His pencil is seldom used. For nations, nationalities, individuals, He only had to say it one time: For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. (1 Timothy 6:10)

A Great Story (2009)

When my father was a young person, he knew a young man in the community who cared nothing about the church, or the school, or his family, or his neighbors, or anything else except himself. His selfishness got him into some real trouble and so he left the state and went down to Texas and became an oil field worker, really became a wildcatter (a person who drills oil wells in areas that are not in advance known to be oil fields), and by the time I was a child he had returned to the community for visits showing off his millionaire success riding in a large stretch limousine with a wife of questionable advantages.

I say this because one morning in the Quaker church, of all places, where as a child, I was with my parent who were visiting there, where Quaker women are conservative in every way. She evidently thought she was in a night club and pulled out her compact and lipstick and did her face while the sermon was going on. Anyway, he shared his wealth with his long estranged family by first going to the family cemetery and replacing all the tombstones with far more expensive ones, putting a nice fence around the cemetery, and building a roadway from the highway to the cemetery, buying all the land around the cemetery and much other land in the community, remodeling his relatives homes, and generally, “spreading his wealth” (a familiar term). Mr. Mitchell is long dead, but the stories of his largess to the church which he never attended in his youth, and to the relatives whom he hardly knew, persist.

Perhaps the greatest story in all of literature, is the so called “Prodigal Son.” It is a story of a young Jewish boy with a remarkable father and less remarkable older brother, who took an early inheritance and went far from home, probably Babylon-Vegas. Where he wasted his inheritance and when this Jewish boy had to resort to feeding pigs the scriptures says, “he came to himself” (Luke 15:17). How many days did his loving father stand looking in the distance thinking about his lost son. The scripture says he recognized him, probably by his walk or something and he ran to meet him. The remarkable part of this story is that the older brother resented the festivities of the homecoming. But, the remarkable father said to the resentful brother, entreated him and assured him that his remaining property was his.

I have sympathy for both the son who wanted to get away from home (because I had a real strict father) and I have sympathy for the older brother who had stayed at home, worked hard, and did not have as much empathy for his younger brother. Our Lord gives us these parables such as the man who went and hired people to work in his vineyard and paid the ones who came to work first the same as the ones who came to work last. This helps us to better understand death bed conversions or even the repentant thief on the cross.

It helps me as a blind Christian (I am a totally blind 100% disabled service connected veteran) to show some benevolence toward healthy, wealthy men in this very community who went to Canada to escape military service ,but returned to become the leading politicians and some of the wealthiest party givers and party goers at the country clubs of the community. They are the “good time, good ole boys” of the community and they and their wives look down their noses, particularly at church, at those of us who were foolish enough to live committed lives directed by the holy will of God.

We can be sure that God will discipline his own. These good ole boys already belong to Satan and they will have their enjoyment, “here and now.” “That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1:7)

We who live in the darkness of blindness, who have given our best to our country, have values some will never understand outside of a spiritual conversion. 

Character determines destination, Our values are set by home and school. We cannot prevent birds flying over our heads, but we can prevent them from building nests in our hair. It is the anti-Christian home and the anti-Christian school system, that permits the building of the nest of socialism, admiration for political corruption, and disdain for nobility of human life that has brought down individuals and governments. Right now, the worlds largest democracy, Indonesia, a country of 5,000 islands, is making the decision of either continuing as a democracy or becoming the world's largest Muslim theocracy. We pray that the secular movement in this country that has permeated the home, government, school systems, universities, media, and even the largest corporations will not be over taken by this cancer.

The story of America, the success of America is based on free enterprise, capitalism, and constitutional rights that include everyone, even the minorities. A democratic republic established by a magnificent constitution, gives to every citizen the freedom to fail or to succeed. Bill Gates, a man of wealth and intelligence, in his rules for success in business, states in the first rule, there is no such thing as fairness. We are just given opportunity along with responsibility, whether at home, or wildcatting in a foreign place.

Abraham Lincoln, said he was not afraid of this country being conquered by another country. His fear was that it might implode from the corruption and the anti-American curse from within. 125,000 men who lie buried in foreign cemeteries attest to the fact that this country is worth defending. It is the greatest story of a successful nation in history. And the story is resplendent with men and women of faith who are responsible for the success. They had faith in the promise of America and faith in the decency of one another.

White Fright

Every night of my life, I listen to the news from BBC, especially since all American news media is state controlled. Traveling the world, I found that I could always get the BBC news anywhere in the world and their news was usually reliable with none of the political correctness we must tolerate if we listen to any of the alphabet news casts in this country and even the local news (radio, T.V. or print media).

The “white fright”, concern of being called a racist if anything pertaining to the black race is mentioned, is almost beyond comprehension. But, even BBC, after the almost successful downing of the plane over Detroit by a terrorist said, “The young black man appeared to be about 15 or 16, so sweet, such a sweet smile, and he was so pretty.” This is the best example you will ever see of how the entire world, and the best known radio news broadcast in the world, has been taken in by terrorism.

It takes an unusual father, from one of the wealthiest families in Africa's largest country (Nigeria), to go to the American Embassy and those in charge of terrorism, to express the idea that his son had become involved in Al-Qaeda. In another commentary, I talked about the world's worst airport in Lagos, Nigeria, where the young man boarded the plane for Europe. Of course, it has been 25 years since I was in Lagos, but only two other people boarded the plane the day I was there. One was the British Ambassador, with whom I had a long talk, and the other a Peace Corp worker from Liberia. I have discussed the treatment at the airport, as well as my involvement with these two individuals at length.

The Peace Corp worker had escaped from Liberia during the time Charles Taylor was still ruling the country. She was a psychological disaster and in later correspondence with her, she told me that if I had not been available she did not know what she would have done. She had been subjected to every conceivable abuse in Liberia. Just another example of what happens in these Muslim-infested, tyranny-ruled cauldrons of depravity. For instance, the problems in Somalia, the very idea that some rag tag pirates are allowed by foreign governments to capture their ships is beyond all comprehension. The fact that a civil war destroyed the country of Angola, a Portuguese protectorate, and nothing was done. Almost as bad as the 25 year civil war which I witnessed in Sri Lanka. When will we learn that Islamic extremists know no limitations?

Muslim terrorists do not mind killing one another either, as evidenced by the 900,000 killed in the Iran/Iraq war of 1989. A large part of Europe and Africa was terrorized by the same ideology from about 700 to 1500. The Islamic extremism on the Iberian peninsula has been hard to comprehend. Can we even imagine the discovery of America in 1492, at the very time that Spain was involved with Muslim conflict, if the Islamic hordes had not been controlled in Europe? Yet, because of the skin color of most Muslims in Africa and the Middle East, it has become a racial dilemma even to those of us who are not in the least racist.

The problem is heightened because of America's first black president. Reverend Louis Farrakhan said recently, “President Obama is the black Messiah, listen to him.” I know what I heard. It is almost unbelievable that such could be heard on a public radio, but I heard another black preacher say recently, “All whites are lepers.” I heard Reverend Jesse Jackson, in his program Keep Hope Alive say, “The greatest Americans of the last century were President Obama, Tiger Woods and Michael Jackson.”...a Muslim communist, an adulterer and an entertainer accused of pedophilia.

No news person will dare talk about these things or any of the other black power figures...Maxine Waters, Charlie Rangel, Oprah Winfrey...because of “white fright”. We got lucky, rather, we were blessed, that the nearly 300 people on the plane were not killed. There were real heroes on the plane who got things under control, unlike the enablers who allowed this person to go aboard without a passport simply because, according to eyewitness reports, a well dressed older man insisted that this boy was a refugee. All the red flags were flying! Many people, including Secretary Napolitano, should lose their jobs over this incident. Much of the drug war would have been won long ago if common sense had prevailed, if the buyers instead of the sellers had been arrested.

I have written about this before, the lackadaisical attitude in this country towards terrorism. I purchased twelve pearl handled steak knives at a shop in Manhattan (I have since sold them online). Several of my friends in New York during the many years I owned an apartment in NY, knowing my interest in antiques, would go with me to antique stores gleaning knowledge from me about foreign art and items of interest. Knowing that I was going to bring the steak knives back to my home in NC and that I only traveled between the two homes with a shoulder camera bag ( I kept clothes and everything I needed in both places), I put the knives in a plastic ziplock bag so they could be easily removed when my bag was searched at the airport.

The two girls at the x-ray machine were busy talking about other things and paid no attention whatsoever to my bag or anything in it. Think of the damage some terrorist could do on a plane with steak knives. This was in 1979 and I wrote Mayor Koch and told him about the incident. In the same letter, I also told him about my being mugged on the corner of 47^th Street and Broadway at 12 noon by some black men who threw me on the street (a blind man walking with a white cane), took my money and watch. This was right across from the area where the show tickets are sold and not one person came to my assistance. Injured, I hobbled back to the co-op apartment, on which I paid much tax, on the corner of 56^th and Park Avenue. The doorman, seeing my condition, immediately called the police. The only thing the police said, “You are lucky they did not kill you and if they had killed you, no one would have done anymore than they did.”

I talked about this incident, and another, on radio talk shows. If a mayor of New York, if the local sheriff, had any interest in airport security, they would have investigated to see who was on duty at these times. It is time to get serious about security on every level. Each scanning machine put in an airport will cost $100,000 each. It has already been proven that these scanning machines, in spite of their price, will not catch everything. The first time I flew El Al to Israel, I knew this airline was serious about security. When I was in the Cameroons, Africa, and was stripped naked in a private area by one person, I knew they were serious about airline security. In Entibbes, Uganda, when women came on the plane crying from their strip search, I knew they were serious about airline security.

Anyone who looks out an airplane window at 35,000 feet, wants security. In flying from South Africa to New York, the attendant would say, “Pull down the shades of the plane over small African countries.” I asked “Why?” She said, “These countries do not allow us to fly over them.” I said, “Do you actually think they can see our windows and do you think they have one plane to pursue us with, or one gun that can shoot at this plane?” She said, “These are the rules and we follow them.”

Not on the ground, not in the air, but the greatest distance in the world is the 8” from your brain to your heart. The entire goal of life is to become one with the Body of Christ...a soul experience. Terrorists know nothing of the soul, such ludicrous promises as naming your son Muhammad assures him of heaven, or so many virgins greeting a male terrorist in heaven. Get real, the terrorists are interested in eliminating non-Muslims...if not on a plane, on a train...if not on a train, on a bus...if not on a bus, in a car...if not in a shopping mall, in a stadium. You have only one life to live, the Islamic extremists, like the young black man on the plane who was willing to kill himself as well as 300 others, we must not be afraid to profile.