Home Before Dark

There was not a youngster alive when I was growing up before the time of promiscuous parents, who did not hear the words from an anxious mother, “get home before dark”. Whether a short distance away or many miles away, our mothers wanted us in the house before dark. Later in life, there was a curfew. At my grandparents' house, my aunts and uncles said the curfew was 10:00. One of my aunts, now in her 92nd year, said when she was 18 there was a evening when her boyfriend had a flat tire and they walked the rest of the way home. Her parents were sitting on the front porch watching and waiting. My mother had a curfew of 11:00 o'clock. She did not go to sleep until we were in the house and she could tell us, to the second, what time our two large collie dogs barked, hearing the car many miles away. They knew the sound of each vehicle. These dogs and my mother had a line in the sand which we crossed if we dared. Another aunt, now deceased, said she never went to bed until her son was in the house. As an outstanding athlete, he had many night games. He would say, “why aren't you in bed?” She said, “Some day you will understand.”

In a culture of lying and deceit, snakes and vipers (Matthew 23:33), when Harry Potter is more important than George Washington, when we have a president in the White House whose lies have caught up with him (There is now a Presidential Enemies List.), when government agencies such as OSHA gives out erroneous information (deaths in the workplace), when Cap and Trade is just picking the pockets of the tax payer, when proposed health care legislation is socialized medicine from which other nations are seeking to escape, when we are involved in winless, useless wars, we find that Col. Kadafe and President Chavez seem sane and serene.

Added to our national and international problems at a time when spiritual comfort is sought, both Christians and non-Christians see little stability in the churches. The Episcopalians and Lutherans have decided to put homosexual pastors in pulpits. Senator Edward Kennedy's funeral in Boston was highlighted by Catholic hierarchy. How the Catholic church can give such a resounding send off to a man who left a young woman to die in a swamp at Chappaquiddick when he escaped from the car, and walked by three houses and a fire station, without seeking any help for the poor girl, went back to his inland hotel and tried to establish his alibi at his hotel and with the Kennedy PR and lawyering firms before ever admitting he knew the woman. His non-Christian lifestyle, in my humble opinion, was a distraction to the congress and to everyone who knew him. But, as with most “Big D” democrats, even President Obama (who has some religious problems of his own) hand carried a letter from the “sinful Senator” to the Pope at the Vatican. Obviously, Senator Kennedy wanted to get home before dark.

Amber Alert: Iredell County is looking for two missing children, Keara Hess, 12 years old and 9 months pregnant, skin color black, and her sister, Sierra Hess, 11 years old, skin color black along with their adoptive father, Matthew Hess who is white. This was on the news on September 30th, 2009. The above Amber Alert is not rare anymore. As Gen. Colin Powell, said in a speech some years ago, shame is a lost word. Parents and children no longer experience the psychosis of shame. Anything goes.

A mother said to me, not long ago, could I imagine how many hours she spends in prayer for her daughters. When a young man sees a young girl, tattooed and unkempt he can readily surmise that this is not a future mother for his children. Defaced money is taken out of circulation. Too often, abused boys and girls become popular. “It is 10:00. Do you know where your children are?”

Hiding Place

Corrie Ten Boom, the larger than life, young woman who from her Dutch home, helped so many Jews to escape Germany's Holocaust, and before her death at age 91, had traveled America proclaiming the good news of Christ's redemption. Her book The Hiding Place, tells of her experiences during WW II. One can experience the museum in her honor in her home town of Haarlem, Holland. She said in her post war experience with other victims of Nazi brutality, “it was those who were able to forgive who were best able to rebuild their lives.”

We have all heard the expression, “you must walk in another Indian's moccasins in order to forgive and to understand another person's opinion and actions.” It has never ceased to amaze me how much baggage some people carry around. Most of the time, unnecessary intolerance, judgmental equations, promiscuous pessimism, will lead to fear which is a soul killer. Solomon tells us “that without vision people perish.” Proverbs 29:18 I can tell you as a totally blind person for most of my life, that you can walk without vision on a smooth, firm surface that you can trust, a firm foundation. But a shaky, rough surface will lead to a certain fall.

Recently, a group of older men came to the table where I was eating. One said, this is my friend, an Agnostic. The man said, “Don't try to scare me.” If I were faithless in these troubling times, I would be very scared. As Ms. Ten Boom said, forgiveness, not only of me by God, but by me of others is the most vital foundation I know anything about. It will keep you going when nothing else will.

Much is said in these days of political correctness about fairness. In his 10 rules for business success, the #1 Rule of Bill Gates, is “There is no such thing as fairness.” No one ever said life was fair. Life is a hectic interlude in an otherwise peaceful, nonexistence. On radio talk shows and many other times, I have heard ne'er do wells talk at length about one man making so much more money than other men. Many think it is unfair for one nation to have nuclear weapons and another nation not to have them. In this time of health care debates, why should the congress and the billionaires get better health care than the poorest citizen? Christ himself said, the poor, you will have with you always. Matthew 26:11

As long as there is a difference in DNA, as long as there is a difference in human behavior, there will be inequality. The one verse of scripture which should scare all of us is Psalm 98:9.Before the LORD; for he cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the people with equity.

For both the saved and the unsaved, faith is a verb; and faith is action based on belief sustained by confidence. If I am in my house, and believe I am having a heart attack, I must act on my belief and call for help, having the confidence that help will come and probably save my life. But, I must act. I have the confidence to believe that those of addictive behavior whether drug addiction, food addiction, sex addiction, things addiction, would all come into submission, if we really found the hiding place for our souls' recluse and aspiration that God has provided in His answer book. When you turn your life over to God, when Christ who is your life, regulates and resolves your very existence, you have a hiding place.

The rebellious preacher of old, Jonah, believed he could escape God's place for his life. There are 66 books in the Bible, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament, 1189 Chapters and 788,252 words in God's word. Five hundred and forty times we find the word love. Five hundred and sixty times we find the word grace. And four times in the book of Jonah we find the word appointed. God appointed a big fish to swallow Jonah. He appointed a fast growing plant to shade Jonah. He appointed a worm to kill the plant. He appointed a hot wind, sweeping across present day Iraq, where ancient Nineveh was located, to really punish Jonah in his doubts and rebellion. I truly believe that God will appoint a solution for the culture of death to eugenics, euthanasia and most of all abortion which is now gripping our nation.

For many years, I visited the great 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. When Princeton University was a small, struggling college, this church would give a new suit of clothes to each graduating preacher. Would those ancient people of this church ever believe that today's prestigious Princeton University would have a bioethicist, Dr. Peter Singer, who advocates the post birth abortion of any disabled child. Here is a direct quote from him; "killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living.”

Cling to the promise that God is in control. It was no accident that on a clear day, a clear sky a tornado moved down the highway in Minneapolis, Minnesota, bothering nothing else, but went directly to the convention center where the Lutherans were to take a vote on homosexual preachers. The tornado tore up the roof of the convention center, the tents in the yard of the Lutheran church across the highway, took off the steeple of the Lutheran church and then disappeared. The stupid Lutherans went right on with their vote, never thinking God had a message for them and voted to put homosexual preachers in the pulpit. It is no accident that Dr. Tiller who had killed 60,000 babies in his abortion mill-clinic, the holocaust of Kansas, was killed. It is no accident that 87 year old, Dr. Noah Hutchins, President of Southwest Radio Ministry, author of 100 books, very ill, was miraculously delivered from his illness.

The truth is the truth whether anyone believes it or not. It is no accident that you know the truth, that you will read a commentary such as this. We cannot understand the doubts and fears of most young people. Living gives us an ability to face life. We become more tolerant. That is why grandparents get along so well with their grandchildren.

A young preacher, early twenties, fresh out of the seminary, filled with knowledge and worries of today's problems, told me he recently preached a “barn burner” in a local church. After the service, an old man approached him, with tears streaming down his face and said, “I thought you would tell us how much Jesus loves us.” Remember, Jesus loves us more than we love Him. In Him we have our hiding place.

Midnight Madness

In 1980, I attended the opening performance for “Children of a Lesser God” a Broadway play bringing out the captivity and enlightenment of deaf citizens. As a totally blind person, I was interested in knowing how deaf actors approached their roles in a Broadway setting. The largest minority of citizens are the handicapped. The largest group of disabled citizens are those who are deaf, numbering somewhere around 20 million. I have often had people ask me if I would choose blindness or deafness. The problem with deaf citizens is that they never have the intelligence potential of others because so many of the intricacies of life depend on sound.

Gallaudet University is the first all deaf university in the world, was founded in 1864 and has an enrollment of around 1,500 students each semester. Sign language is a universal language and is not specific enough to bring out the highest intelligence quotients in most deaf students. Many deaf students do not graduate from high school. There is a debatable rational of success in dealing with deaf students. There is a fear connected with deafness that most “normal people” cannot understand. As in blindness, the fear of an unknown and unexpected limits one's ability to perform tasks which the normal person considers simple. Just thinking of what could happen, very much as a race car driver usually has his problem at a turn where he and he alone encounters the fear of what could go wrong. I often think, it is very much like Christ standing outside the church looking in. I believe our blessed Lord, standing outside, where he has been placed too many times thinks, “what is wrong with those people?”

In this day, where there are so many factories all over the country, standing silent and idle, full of machinery and the tools to do many things if active and working, like the church, nothing is produced, nothing accomplished. Let us remember that the light from the stars or even light from the sun, is not strong and bright enough to penetrate a black heart. A power which many do not have but is easily assessable is the power that raised Lazarus from the dead, is the power of God, that can overturn this midnight darkness of our lives.

After Christ, on that first Easter morning, left his tomb and walked on the road with Cleopas and another unnamed disciple, he talked with them about everything that had happened in the Christian walk since the foundation of the world. They did not recognize him until the breaking of bread when he was eating with them. Would you not like to have been one of those walking with Him and hearing His words? But would you, like most of today's followers, say I would like to walk with you but I am so busy, I have another appointment? This is the midnight madness of the world in which we live, with insane actions bombarding us from all over the world every day. We do not take the time to walk and talk with Jesus, to study His word, to seek His answers for our problems but rather like the deaf, the blind, the crippled, we seek answers everywhere except the right place. We do not worship a Savior who cannot be approached in our time of midnight madness. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Isaiah 53:3

No where in scripture do we find that Christ spent any time in acts of enjoyment. It is hard to imagine Christ on the golf course or at an athletic event, when then as now, there was and is so much madness all around us. (Christ's entire ministry was at a time of horrific Roman occupation.) Our enemy now as then, is the world, the flesh and the devil. We have no record of Paul and the disciples debating with unbelievers. They lived their faith in front of them and in spite of them.

Recently, in a public building, I was going up some stair steps and a young woman came rushing down the steps, knocked me down, broke my white cane (White canes are very tough, not easily broken.) Then I heard her tell another man, coming up an adjoining hallway, to tell the old blind man she knocked down the steps that she was sorry, but she was late for a church meeting. Such is today's Christians in a world of midnight madness showing their faith at a time when Christian witness is more important than ever.

We know that no one can love like Jesus loved. We know that no one can be as Christ-like as was Christ. In a time when the state-controlled media dominates our interpretation of life and world activities, when a fear of Iran is as great as the fear of “Niger Yellow Cake” just a few years ago, we must not allow the madness of the world to bring on a midnight of doubts and unbelief affecting our faith.

The vast majority of Americans do not want financial bailouts. The vast majority of Americans do not want abortion and euthanasia. The vast majority of Americans do not want socialized health care. The vast majority of Americans do not want same-sex marriage. When the Episcopalians, Lutherans, and other religious groups ordain gay priests, this is not the madness desired by most Christians and most church goers. I refuse to believe that descent hardworking, taxpaying Americans have given up every evidence of good sense to satisfy the politically correct.

You Don't Understand

There were not many movie stars as poignant and impressive as Barbara Stanwyck. Today's so-called movie stars would do well to take lessons from her. In her memorable movie of 1949, “The Lady Gambles” in which she played the role of a gambling addict, one never forgets the obsessive-compulsive behavior and one better understands the culture of drug addiction which has totally crippled our nation.

Most prisons in our country, (and we have the highest prison population of any industrial country), are there because of the culture of drugs, due to either drug use and possession or illegal sales and the thievery in order to buy drugs. Most people do not realize this; but alcohol is a drug. One person out of 10 who takes the first drink, ends up as an alcoholic, with all the resulting heartache.

Parents: Let your children grow up seeing beer in your refrigerator, seeing a liquor cabinet full of liquor in your home, seeing you and your friends, drinking “highballs” around them, seeing you spend most of your time around the world's greatest idol, a TV, seeing the mother in the family wasting her time at the bridge table or drooling over soap operas, seeing the father trot off to the golf course to senselessly hit a small ball, seeing the general waste of time, talent and treasury, with which God has blessed your home, and you will have adult children who, like mother, like daughter – like father like son, will waste their time and spend their senses in useless behaviors.

Barbara Stanwyck, playing Joan in the movie, when asked by her husband and even the pawn shop operator where she would try to pawn her possessions, would only say to them, “YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND”. Thousands of times, in my career, smokers, alcohol drinkers, gluttons, illegal drug addicts, homosexuals, gamblers and other addicts of senseless, debilitating, useless behavior have said to me, “YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND.”

The great German chemical conglomerate, I. G. Farben, who won 17 Nobel Prizes for Chemistry, who provided Hitler with synthetic fuels to keep his war machine going for 5 years, who manufactured the poison gas which exterminated 6 million Jews after they had worked as slaves in the Farben factories, passed on the formula for the RU486 abortion pill, to American pharmacists, as well as their formulas to their synthetic fuels to the Rockefeller foundation. We are well aware of the Standard Oil participation on both sides in World War II. (Standard Oil was owned by the Rockefellers.) Most Americans do not realize that it is the Rockefeller Foundation that founded Planned Parenthood.

Such celebrities as Ted Turner, Jacques Cousteau and David Rockefeller have been very interested in eugenics and the depopulation of the earth. The worst addiction I can even imagine which must be a stench in the nostrils of our blessed Lord, is the culture of death surrounding the activities and money of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Obama Administration. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, chief medical bioethicist and brother of Rahm Emanuel, the Chief of Staff to President Obama in the “Journal of the American Medical Association”, June 18^th, 2008, said in speaking about the Hippocratic Oath, “we now do what we can,” whatever that means. The American Society of Eugenics is associated with the Rockefeller Foundation, Planned Parenthood, and the Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute, all located together in New York.

Dr. Alfred Kinsey, another product of Hitler's eugenics crowd, one of the dregs on humanity, author of the book Sexual Behavior of the Human Male (1947), got his start at the Indiana University, where the Kinsey Institute is still located. However, in 2004, after some digging by Dr. Judith Reisman, it was found that long-time Nazi party member, Dr. Fritz von Balluseck, was mailing his on-going child abuse crimes to Kinsey. Von Balluseck's diaries appear to date from 1936 to1956, revealing Balluseck's regular correspondence with Kinsey. In fact, Kinsey sent his simpatico Nazi aide books about child sexuality--books that would have supported and encouraged the serial child predator's incestuous and pedophile crimes. In the mid 1950s Interpol contacted the Kinsey team for help in locating a child sex killer the team had interviewed. The Kinsey Institute protected their WWII Gestapo agent (as they have always protected all their pedophiles and pederasts). They refused to give his name to Interpol under cover of shielding a possible child murderer from investigation based on "scientific" ethics. The truth about Kinsey has always been stranger than the fictions created to cover up reality.

We will never understand sex addiction, the heathen behavior of priests who molest children, behind the confessional booth of the church, the heathen practice of psychologists and sociologists and mental institutions behind the stethoscope, who sexually abuse their patients, or the prison guard, in uniform behind the shield of control. Even sexually abusive young people have an unhealthy addiction to sex with the mistaken impression that lust is love. One newly married man recently told me that he had a regular affair with a prostitute before his marriage, during the week of his wedding and after his wedding. Another young man told me that he had impregnated three young women in one year. Even animals fornicating in ally ways have a greater system of morality. Kinsey and other sex therapists gently pass on the mantra, “If it feels good, do it” without any regard for the psychological abuse affecting everyone involved.

On the Mount of Olive, Jesus wept for Jerusalem. Our blessed Lord would surely weep at the total decadence, which has swept our nation. When the North Vietnamese moved into Saigon after we had lost the war, the prime minister of North Vietnam said as he looked over the opulent degradation (porno shops, bars and strip joints) which had taken over the city, “Get rid of this Western decadence.”

There is no addiction like the addiction that is brought on by sin and Satan's minions. Mercilessly, the unbelievers cast aspersions on real Christians who try to affect holiness in the world around them. You never hear them attack their fellow unbelievers for the addictive Satanic practices which lower the expectations of the human spirit.

Don't ask me to understand why and how God's greatest creation, man, actually created in His image, can so defy all mental comprehension and understanding.

Earth Shattering Events

Earth Shattering Events

Immanuel Velikovsky's World In Collision was a matter of scandal in scientific circles for many years, censored in Europe, and a matter of laughter in American universities because he attempted to combine Biblical miracles with facts of geology. We know now that much of his theory was accurate and is used by many anthropology, geology and astronomy students today. For instance, in our interest in Mars, it was observed by the ancients as a blue planet, as is the earth, but today is referred to as a red planet because of the action of a heated Venus, the water of Mars evaporated.

It is up to you, who follow NASA and space exploration, to excite yourselves with astronomy, history projections such as is popular with the study of the Mayan civilization. (The Mayan calendar ends in 2012. This is year 5770 on the Jewish Calendar.) We do know this: the exploration has become a matter of great interest and the spending of billions by the world's scientific community and particularly the billions of dollars wasted by NASA sending vehicles into space, when we know full well that whatever they find will do very little to help the common man on earth.

The supposed earth warming idea has made a billionaire of Al Gore.

The ancients studied the heavens. Today's children seldom look at the stars in the sky. Most media personnel pay no attention at all to the fact that we have experienced very unusual weather (coldest summer in many years, such as that from 1635 to 1700 there was much starvation on the earth because of drastic climatic changes.)

Occasionally, some news report will speak of the unusual sunspots or flooded areas of the world. It has been reported that the Euphrates River is drying up. The sociology of climate change determines the lifestyle of most of the earth's population. The largest part of the earth's population lives within 20 miles of oceans. This accounts for the many deaths at a time of a tsunami.

At the time of Noah's great flood the population of the earth was approximately what it is today, 6 - 7 billion; and we find records of this upheaval in every civilization of that time. Mountain ranges changed. Sea levels rose; and entire cities on the continental shelf sunk into the deep.

The world's plight for oil is just beginning. It is reported that China, needing tremendous oil reserves for the world's largest population, is not only drilling around South America and Cuba, but by some strange quirk of state department stupidity, beyond the imagination of billions spent there, is drilling in Iraq.

In visiting China 3 times I have been amazed to find a complete lack of religion and tradition. All cemetery tombstones were beaten up to build roads. You never see vacant land anywhere, certainly not landscaping for highways. Every parcel of land is used to grow something. As in Cuba, completely revolutionized to eliminate all tangential enjoyment, these communist countries, in this time of American health care interest, have no obscene drug producer prices. All citizens can go to a dentist when necessary at least once a year. In Cuba, there is an excess of 2000 medical doctors graduated each year. And in China, each commune maintains a health care facility.

It has always horrified me, as a health care practitioner and one who has studied American health care from the time I first entered the university and worked at a medical school, that organized medicine has kept such a close reign on medical schools only turning out a precise number so that the monopoly and care could be strictly controlled. The same goes on in dentistry (most of us sit around with “toxic pockets” of dental needs but are unable to pay the insidious prices at a dentist office) and other areas. Drug companies have become the world's prize “cash cow”, sending out their highly paid pharmaceutical representatives to educate the prescribers of their drugs, on the run, and enticing the prescriber's medical, dental, veterinarian, optometric, osteopathic, public health, etc., by wining and dining them, taking them on plush conference vacations. These health care practitioners who desire to live in the finest homes on “pill hill” must have at least two Mercedes parked in the driveway. While it is true that we risk all, to go to school for a very long time, and do expect to make a good living, the insidious closed circuit monopolistic system has not lent itself to the Christian principles of loving your neighbor. There are four drug company lobbyists in Washington for each legislator writing the legislation to suit their price fixing, drug pushing policies. They, wine and dine them with meals in the national capital's most expensive restaurants or with the most expensive whores, buying if not with actual cash which is more easily traced, with the health care billions, of tax payer dollars, which has made needed sufferers in this country, more sick and enslaved than the enslaved masses under communism. Michael Moore is not all wrong in his evaluation of American health care, nor is he wrong in his evaluation of American capitalism, which he calls “acceptable greed”.

It was determined long ago that 45 billion dollars would wipe out most of the poverty of the world. Put wells in African communities where there is no clean drinking water. Eliminate hunger in a world where many foodstuffs spoil. Reduce the senseless deaths of the 3000 children who die from malaria each day. Yet, in this useless, winless, Afghanistan conflict because of the corruption there between the fraud government, suspicious CIA drug activity, and even more suspicious oil pipeline, 33 billion is reported to have just disappeared.

The 2000 mile porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the nearly 1000 mile porous Iran-Afghanistan border, the most unconquerable mountain range in the world (Hindu Kush) should be reason enough for America and her allies to say as did Russia and Britain, just let the tribal leaders have the place, as was done throughout history. When Kipling was there, he called the place, indescribably heathen. I was there 3 times and I can justify his comments. Why send America's most precious possessions, young men and women, to battle in such an untenable situation? These children may mean nothing to you, the elitest hierarchy, in corrupted palaces of leadership throughout the world; but you, Mr. Obama, and consorts, as you eat off your gold plates, these young people mean something to the mothers and fathers who made them worthy American citizens. Isaiah 10:1. And for the many who have come back from the senseless wars, and from this veteran who has weathered many VA hospital facilities, I can say with all sincerity, to the uninitiated, everything is obscure.

Proverbs 3:5 – 6 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.

Affirming Others

Those of us with any responsibilities in life at all, those of who own businesses have all gone through the processes of hiring people. Only a family operated business does not have the need for others. I do not mind paying people to do things that I cannot do for myself. The trouble comes in finding an employee capable of work, one with work ethic, one who needs the job and needs to get paid, not someone who just wants to get paid for nothing.

I could write a book about my experiences with employees, over the years through the ups and downs of many businesses. But, if I wrote one book it would turn into a library. Such has been the problems with hired help. If you go to the largest business in a city, if you go to the smallest business in a city, you will find that they all have the same business problem, employees. I have found that money, money paid for a job, has little to do with performance because, if you hire an employee with so little intelligence that they do not realize the importance of performance, they will never realize the importance of pay.

Give little attention to resumes, with these computer concocted resumes which anyone who can type can extract, anyone can turn in a good resume. All one of my assistants must do is just start reading a resume to me. When I hear such words as “people person,” “multitasker,” hard worker, etc., we know we have an employee in masquerade costume. I always say, I will know in a few days, and like a wife (I have been divorced twice), if you see it is not going to work out, you are far far better off to bring things to an amicable end. It will save you much time, money and stress.

An employee's personal life is none of my business except as it affects my business. Certainly, anyone with two pekingese brain cells still functioning, knows that a blind man must have employees he can trust, trust not only in taking dictation, typing a document to which he must affix his signature, but trustworthy of driving his car, even helping him with money. Often taking money out of pocket, I will say , “is this a five?” Now, if it is a twenty and the person says, “it is a five” (the employee will have made a bonus for the day), the employee does not know that often I have marked my money. Just as often I will put a five dollar bill down in a walkway, as if I had dropped it out of my pocket to see if the employee will ask, “did you drop this money?.” In one of my businesses, with seven cash registers, with a new employee, my bookkeeper would always add an additional ten dollars to the register money for the day. Each one responsible for the register had to sign a receipt verifying amount of money. If the employee did not bring the extra ten back, we knew we had a problem and we released the employee immediately. It cost me money but I hired “spectators” to view all business activity. Believe me, some employees never realize that every transaction was timed. Most American businesses could charge much less if there were not so much thievery.

When you have responsible employees, you learn much about their lifestyle just through conversation. Martha was a very attractive young lady (I am totally blind, but that is what I was told). She was a real estate broker, knew how to meet and greet people, could certainly do my work for me but, in the area of common sense there was much to be desired. For instance, she was a single mother, several children, not one of the same father, a struggle for survival, but she told me her children would not eat leftovers. She told me that her boys would only wear clothes with designer labels which came out of special shops. For a man, whose entire wardrobe is from a thrift store (I don't have one shirt that cost over 25 cents, a man who has never thrown away one spoonful of food in his life), (traveling through 157 countries, I have seen too many starving people). I have little patience with spoiled children, pampering mothers, people who do not value a dollar... NONCONSERVATIVES.

Conservatism is more than politics. It is a mindset. I do not believe any business or life can be successful without the employment of conservative principles.

God hates idolatry and unbelief more than anything else. Working people do not need many of the”toys” of the elite, the idols of this world. Working for me is the equivalent of a college education, I have been told so by many educators and by students. As in church, there is a difference in teaching and preaching. Working for me is a learning experience. But many people just want to survive in life. They will be as much a blank sheet of paper when they die as when they were born. The difference in a workplace is a matter of thinking and performing. You can teach a dog to do tricks, a parrot to talk. Most employees are a culmination of parental and school education, and we all know that parents and schools do very little educating, particularly, when it comes to reasoning and common sense.

The most glaring example showing a total lack of common sense, a woman reared in England came to me for a part-time job, online, she had fallen for a man here in NC. He persuaded her to leave England, move here and marry him. Much to her family's dismay, she sold her home and “charged across the ocean.” He did marry her, took her money, laid down the rules of her servitude, and then told her to go out and get a job. She did not even have a green card and did not have funds to return to England.

The state Employment Security Commission knows little about employees or employers, like most government agencies, the people who work there are just glad to have a good paying job and they care little for your trauma as an employer. Staffing services are interested in their position. Generally speaking, the employer sinks or swims by his decisions. The three “A's” of employment, the employee's attitude, the employee's amplitude, will certainly determine the employee's altitude.

Guard Duty

Known only to God, the most prestigious guard duty in American military service is that of the Tomb Guards at Arlington National Cemetery, guards at the Tomb of The Unknown Soldier.

The soldiers who stand guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier are hand-picked and rigorously trained. They have come from every state in the union, every walk of life. There are men and women who, for some this is their first unit in the Army, others are veterans of many years. Over the years there have been Regular Army and Draftees, the duty is not for everyone. Over 80% of the soldiers who tryout for this duty do not make it.

Each soldier must have strong military bearing, discipline, stamina and present an outstanding soldierly appearance. Each Sentinel must be able to flawlessly perform seven different types of walks, honors and ceremonies. They must retain vast amounts of knowledge concerning the Tomb, Arlington National Cemetery, the United States Army and their unit. In conflict, the most important duty assigned to any soldier is that of guard. Guarding the perimeter, in time of battle is essential to the safety of comrades. To not be alert, to sleep on duty, to be the reason that the enemy penetrates is sufficient for imprisonment. To be known for negligence on guard duty, much like a child molester is in civilian prison, is a disgrace in military prison. I am one of the very few relatives if any, who knows about a distant cousin who was imprisoned for sleeping on guard duty. As far as I know, I am the only one alive who still knows about this family disgrace.

We all should know about the essentials of guard duty. We have all been exposed to the deception of the enemy, the deceivers among us, the demons, ever present, attacking the very core of our existence as individuals and as a nation. Satan has infiltrated while our guards were asleep. The diabolical enemy is in control, but our defender, God of the universe, is greater. Satan is no match for God. God will guard you with His omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence, the sovereign of the universe.

God is guardian of your sight against all the corruption which will surely come your way, pornography, incestuous addictions, attractive heathen delights. God is guardian of your hearing against the senseless lyrics and music polluting the air around you. He will guard you from the cursings and vain speech of the uninformed. Remember, those who use profanity, have not acquired a sufficient vocabulary. The babblings and hurtful words from an unbridled tongue cut like a two-edged sword. God will guard your own mouth from sputtering which many times it is necessary to retrieve. Words mean something, and as Winston Churchill said, “Words are bullets. Use them carefully.”

Pray for God to guard your soul, to keep you out of the eternal cauldron of darkness, screams of the damned and the molested babblings of sin-cursed minds.

Keep up your guard. Only you can do it. Self control, self discipline, self-honor the character characteristics which will determine your destination.

You have surely thrown a rock into a lake and seen the waves rippling out from it. The air is full of man-made signals, somewhere out in the ether, still rippling from its source, words which you have spoken, sounds which you have made. Not one can ever be recaptured. Oh, how I wish I could take back some of things I have said. I have a very caustic tongue, of all my many weaknesses, this is the greatest.

Once, in one of my businesses, an employee, an army retired master sergeant, who went into the business every morning to clean, repair, do whatever necessary for the opening of the business. He called me, he said, “the night manager forgot to lock the safe. It appears that everything is there, all the cash register drawers, but the safe is unlocked.” I said, “I'll be right there as soon as my assistant-driver gets here, in the meantime, call the manager and tell him to come to the office, don't tell him what is wrong.”

I arrived before the night manager, the building had been broken in previously. Several boy scouts could have done a better job finding the robbers than the local police, so I wanted to make sure that the building had not been broken into. When the manager arrived, he never denied not checking the safe twice to make sure it was was locked. In fact, he seemed unconcerned, which really provoked me. The retired sergeant said later, I have seen a colonel chew out an enlisted man before, but you win all the awards. I'm sure that boy would have rather taken a whipping than the chewing you gave him. Guard duty extends in many directions.

Always lock your car, always lock your house, never open an entrance door to anyone unless you are sure who is on the other side of the door. Believe me, if you are depending on law enforcement for your protection, you are out of luck. It took ten minutes for the police to arrive when the congresswoman and others were shot in Arizona. Twice in one year, the telephone lines to my house were cut. I'm sure someone was trying to get in, and cut the phone-line because the security system is connected to law enforcement, as if that would do any good. The deputy from the Sheriff's department and a lieutenant from the police department, both told me they could not do anything until “I was either robbed or killed.”

In every action involving money, coming out of the bank, making night deposits, when I was young, most banks had revolving doors in the front, a method of keeping the temperature inside stable. Thieves learned to snatch purses in revolving doors. In an age of technology, with online deposits and withdrawals, etc. There are not enough firewalls on your computer to give you protection. As a banker told me, we had rather replace your money, than to run down the thief. Guard everything about your life, more identities are stolen than anything else, your good name, your reputation, your health, your eternal salvation.

You only go around once, make the most of it, guard your ambitions, your dreams, you will never go any higher than your dreams. So blessed if you have talent, with talent you are so much further ahead than the rest of us. My oldest grandson has a marvelous voice, he has university degrees in theater and law, but is doing the sensible thing and going into a course of study involving his talent. The talented people are the great ones of the world. Charles Hayden Spurgeon, prince of preachers, said, “if you are called to preach, don't lower yourself to become King of England.”

Is God on Vacation?

The question which has torn at my very being, born in poverty, having such a tough life all through my years of university, and then the military and the fact that I have lived my life from then until now, as a totally blind person. Why me? Is God on Vacation?

I know God wanted me to see the world, to see the depravity of the world, so that I could better help you answer this question. Many books have been written pertaining to the injustice of God. Rabbi Harold Cushing wrote the great book, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. As a radio talk show regular for many years, my phone rings with people who want to discuss questions of importance to them. I learned much about other people, especially the disabled, since most restaurants churches, etc. dissuade disabled people from going in them. Even though the disabled community is the largest minority, you see very few disabled people in public. In the county in which I live, it took much doing but I finally found that there are 576 blind people living here. Yet, over and over, I am told by the public, that I am the only blind person they have ever encountered. A friend, Catherine, called me very often because she was lonely in her isolation, and her intelligent mind needed to discuss many things with me. Catherine had been blind her entire life. She had attended the school for the blind and then on to East Carolina University and the UNC-Ch. She spent her active years working as a transcriptionist in a local hospital. An only child, with no relatives, she cared for her parents until their death. Her mother had inherited a house from her family on Market St, prime business property, which Catherine sold and bought a townhouse where she lived until she died. She died alone. As she had already told me, since the public had completely ignored her during her life, the funeral home would bury her at the cemetery without any services, notices or anything else. She had made these preparations ahead of time and paid for them.

I once asked Catherine, during all the years she lived in this city as a totally blind person, had anyone, any church, any club, ever done anything for her. As is the case, with this writer, I have never had anything done for me by any club, any church, any agency supposed to be interested in blind persons. One time in all these years, the state Commission for the Blind contacted me. But, this is about Catherine. She said that when her mother died, one church brought by some food and she told me the name of the church. Catherine was Baptist and had attended a Baptist church when at the school for the blind, but never after that and not one had ever visited her. My driver and I did pick her up one day, and took her by the church of a radio minister; (and my driver described the church to her.) There are many sad things about Catherine's life; but I believe the worst and I believe you will agree with me is the following. She had a seeing eye dog, Alma, and one day Catherine and Alma were run over in the street. It banged up Catherine but killed Alma. The people in the car who ran over them, did not stop. Law enforcement did absolutely nothing for her. She never replaced the dog. Is God on vacation at these crucial times, when the disabled are treated in such a callous way?

I never cease to be amazed at the audacity of the rich. The Chairman of the County Commissioners here, that infamous, Davis family, Spofford Cotton Mills, sold their famous gardens to the county for an incredible amount of money, so they would no longer have to pay tax on that real estate. He has the gall to come on the radio (the radio station is his chief political supporter) every Monday and talks about the life of the “rich and famous” about his fishing, golfing, partying and seems to know very little about county business. The people here, as elsewhere, deserve the government they get. Is God on Vacation, that there is such a disparity among men?

I made the acquaintance of high school biology teacher in Goldsboro, NC while I was still at the university, (Geraldine Jones, long time biologist.) She asked me to speak at a biology seminar and invited several of her outstanding students. It was there I met two young men, orphans from the Odd Fellow's Children's Home in Goldsboro, both interested in health care professions, and two of the most intelligent men I have ever known. In visiting with them in subsequent communications, I learned of the abuse of boys at that facility. I learned early in life and I keep learning it every day, that you are just wasting your time in reporting illegalities to anyone. But every time I see photographs of formally dressed Odd Fellows and Rebeccas I think of how wonderful it is that they would support an orphanage but how unfortunate it is that they do not know what goes on behind the walls of the facility. I learned the same thing about the Catherine Kennedy Home where elderly people live, and the abuse many of them encounter. Is God on vacation or does He expect someone to expose and correct?

Two years ago, three times within a few months, the telephone lines to my house were cut, evidently because my security system is connected to the phone and to law enforcement. It was of considerable interest to several friends; because I fully realize I am an easy mark for robbery. When the lines were restored, I called law enforcement. Both the sheriff's department and the local police told me there was nothing they could do unless I was robbed and probably killed. Then the could work from evidence. (Deputy Owens, Sheriff's Dept.; Lt. May, Police Dept.)

Like everyone else, I need to get out for exercise and sunlight. I made it a practice to walk each day around the block where I live. The Chief of Police sent uniformed Sergeant Buster Yost, here to my house to inform me that I should stay in my house with the doors locked. In other words, someone who is totally blind, a 100% disabled veteran who has worn the uniform of his country for many years, is supposed to be locked up so the criminals can roam the streets. Is God on vacation in this unjustified practice?

Disabled people, particularly blind people, have great difficulty transacting business. You can be sure there is always someone ready to take advantage, someone ready to churn an account, someone looking for a loop hole, in any agreement. Stock brokers have worked me over, over the 50 years of my active securities investing. One of the first securities houses I used, was Merrill Lynch. A broker by the name of Henry, loaded me up with worthless “limited partnerships”. Of course, as you can imagine, the brokers received great commissions for these sales. I knew Thad Eure, NC Secretary of State for 50 years, (oldest rat in the democrat barn). But when Elaine Marshall took over, everything went south. As with the SCC, even though I scanned and sent copies of the certificates, as is the case this very day, with FDIC, (it makes no difference how much supporting evidence you send) nothing is ever done. The very officials who are supposed to exercise oversight over the financial and securities markets are evidently just paid to sleep. Is God on vacation when it comes to the ineptness of government officials, local, state and federal?

I think I became baptized with the inequality of citizens, not because I had seen the bigotry and segregation of our black brothers and sisters, but without question, the most flagrant example of the inequality towards citizens in this state, was at our state tax supported university. I was amazed, stupefied to find that the sons of legislators, judges and political leaders in this state were given special attention by university appointed delegates. In other words, the university wanted to make sure the sons and daughters of those who control the state purse strings were contented in the university regardless of their ability. I understand one UNC-Ch professor received his walking papers by not passing Señor Charlie Justice, in a Spanish class. Is God on vacation when discrimination and bigotry is so flagrantly apparent among His creation?

In college, working in a shoe store, a black person or poor person would come in the store asking to use the bathroom. They always got the same answer, “We don't have one.” I knew better than to say anything because I needed a job. In my youth, I found that even here in this town, the black people and poor people always tried to park close to the court house in order to have a bathroom to use. One day, speaking with the wealthy Jewish owner of one of eastern NC's largest department stores, a black mother came in with a child and asked if she could use the bathroom. In my presence, me knowing the hypocrisy of the Jewish people towards all races he said, “We do not have one.” Supposedly, the Jewish people were racially blind. Is it not significant, that the wealthy Jewish families of eastern NC, all had summer homes on a lily white segregated beach? Is God on vacation, when he allows people to be treated in such a way and yet allows some to so prosper?

In Washington, D.C., on one of my several trips, a New York Jewish friend, who had been brought from Communist Russia by the nation of Israel, was walking me by the Vietnam Memorial with the 58,000 names of the dead. A lady, her daughter and grandchild, came to me and asked me if I was a veteran. She said, “My husband's name is on that memorial, the father of this daughter and granddaughter whom he never saw. My husband, as a dead defender of our country and you as a blind veteran of our country... Where was God when these awful things happened?”

I was in Europe for the 25th Anniversary of the Normandy Invasion and stood in the cemetery where 9,000 are buried. I was in Manila where 18,000 are buried. There are 126,000 of our finest buried on foreign soil. They believed in this country. They gave their last measure of devotion to God, family and country with all the honor they had to bestow. God help us if we are on vacation when God expects us to defend.

World's Worst Affliction

When you analyze sin, and depravity you try to estimate which is worse, murder, greed covetousness, pride, gluttony, etc. I truly believe the worst affliction of mankind is the sin of selfishness. This is the first academic trauma you see in a small child. “Mine, mine, mine!” We all want to satisfy self. I have never known a wealthy person who had enough money. “More, more, more.” We are astounded everyday of our lives with news involving selfish acts. A man in California kidnapped a young girl from her school bus stop at the age of 10, keeping her couped up in the inter-courts of his back yard for 18 years, during which time she birthed two children which he fathered. Can you even imagine this horror story, the enslavement of one human being by another? Yet, it goes on in this world, someplace every day. And, some people are stupid enough to believe that an all sovereign God who flung the stars into space, who made man in His very image, is not capable of justice and the judgment of these defectors. You, if you have not submitted to His grace through faith, will spend eternity with such.

Such greed and selfishness is not just a matter of decadent individuals. It extends to entire nations and certainly to cities and countries who sit by and watch the enslavement of human beings. An example which has gnawed at my very inner being most of my life is that of the enslavement of hardworking, God fearing human beings in the slave mills and fields to the advantage of elitists. I speak of the cotton mills, in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the only source of employment, other than the farm for many people. Every town of any size, throughout the southland and most of the northern and western states had a cotton mill or some other comparable industry.

In this town, where I live, there was the Spofford Cotton Mill owned by the Davis family. The Davis family who owned a large gardens by the ocean which they sold to the county for a ridiculous price, had a home so large it had an interior tennis court. The local black population, who were not allowed to go to their gardens or even put their feet in the ocean nearby, walk in lockstep now to vote for this family when they run for political office. One hundred and seventy three houses, called “Mill Hill', surrounded the large cotton mill in the southeastern part of the city. The mill houses did not have inside plumbing. As in most mill towns, the employees were expected to buy their needs from the “company store”. The fathers, mothers and even children were workers in the mills, slaves to the elitist mill owners, such as the Davis family here in Wilmington, the Borden family in Goldsboro, the Cone family in Greensboro, and the Cannons in Kannapolis, etc. There are hundreds, too many to list, Bladenboro, Smithfield, Selma, Clayton, etc. all with the same story, poor struggling white people wearing rags, working on enormous looms, manufacturing cloth for clothing which they could never afford, working under conditions which would embarrass God Himself.

One of my aunts, suffering from severe headaches because of vision required in the mill, went to Mr. Davis, owner of the Spofford Cotton Mills and asked him to wash the windows so they would have more light to see their work. He told her, “If you don't like the windows as they are, you can go out and see if you can find another job somewhere else.” I think about this every time I hear his descendant, now Chairman of the County Commissioners talk about how much he loves the public.

Another one of these disreputable factories here in Wilmington, manufactured shirts, (Block Shirt Factory). When it became too expensive to manufacture the shirts locally, cheap shirts, manufactured by slaves in China, were brought in and the Block label was sewed into them. It is this type of obtrusive and obtuse business practice which gives American commerce such a bad name. After many years of investigation, and some correction, now the same inordinate manufacturers have moved their industries offshore to third world, more populated countries where they can pull their industrial conflagration on other slaves. How many politicians can look at themselves in the mirror, knowing they have participated in this type of debauchery or how spiritual leaders can look in the mirror and know that they have said nothing against this sin, is beyond my humble comprehension.

The sweat shop changes never reached the south. After the 1911, Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, off Washington Square in lower Manhattan killed 146 immigrant workers, most of which were from the workers jumping out of windows, the government cleaned up some of these disreputable practices particularly in employing children.

Next to the cotton mills in the south, particularly in Eastern NC, the very worst form of human slavery was that of the tenant farmer. Poor families lived in unbelievable housing conditions and worked for slave wages as tenant farmers on land holdings of wealthy “land hogs”. These elitist land hogs usually lived in the towns, owned the warehouses (auction markets) where the auctions were held for the tenants' products and treated the tenants like the “serfs” which they were. The “peasant” mentality extended from the tenant farm to the cotton mill and certainly to the court house and the church house.

The churches were strictly segregated. Poor cotton mill workers and tenant farmers would not go to the church where the elitest mill owners and farm owners worshiped. The black families, in town to buy some supplies, always had to park their cars or tie up their mules near the court house. This was the only place in town where blacks and poor people could use the toilets. The school houses were the only possible place that the poor and wealthy ever met. It was not just a matter of the segregation of the races in the south. Much more bigotry and segregation involved the economic strata of the community. Many books have been written about the strife existing not just in the minds but in the actual debilitating actions of the different levels of society and acceptance in these communities. The colleges and universities of the 19^th century were totally different from today's university system, where because of grants and scholarships, the poor and disenfranchised with better preparation now than then, can actually matriculate and expect some future measure of success. Whereas until recently, it was only the rare exception that poor whites and blacks and immigrants could excel.

Starting in 1970, poor whites, blacks and immigrants had a chance in the South. Until then, particularly the blacks always migrated north or west, to fulfill ambition. We cannot believe the ethical and racial inhumanity of the Third Reich, Hitler's great “solution”. Watch carefully! There is a revival of the dastardly, distraught doctrine of Nazism permeating our free enterprise, capitalistic democratic republic. Take a good look at Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel and his bioethics philosophy. Take a good look at the philosophies of the czars and academic suckers of the Obama administration.

The world's worst affliction is selfishness. We see this in eugenics. Every sin known to man begins with pride. In the pride of depopulation through eugenics we see Satan's crowing achievement.

Not Worth the Cost

I have lived a busy life. When I returned from the military and could no longer practice my profession because of blindness, I went into two areas of investments, the stock market and real estate. In real estate, before you build anything or even repair anything, you figure the cost. Just as important as figuring the cost of a physical building is figuring the cost of moral actions. For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have [sufficient] to finish [it]? (Luke 14:28)

Many times in my life, others have come to me wanting assistance because they had not figured the cost of their actions. Firstly, I want to discuss a 20 year old man who came to me from his life of homosexuality having spent much time in the “bath houses” with a diagnoses of HIV AIDS. This was in the days before there was any treatment at all for this very mysterious disease. When it was diagnosed you could almost depend on the death nail. Terrified, his only escape from the embarrassment to his family and his own ego was suicide. But he was afraid to go through the suicide experience alone. As is the case with assisted suicide, now legal in many states, or the infamous Dr. Kevorkian, he wanted someone with more knowledge than he, standing by. He messed up. Astounded and ridden with pathos and commiseration, I tried to find an escape for him other than death. I called some authorities at the university and made arrangements for him to see professionals there. He later died but not from suicide. He had not really counted the cost of his lifestyle, to himself, to his loving family, his friends, a country and Savior who needed his talent.

Another young man worked for me. His girlfriend was very interested in having sex with him. The first sexual penetration, she became pregnant. Then, she was not so interested in him anymore. His mother, a lawyer, persuaded the young girl to have the baby. Then his mother took the baby and reared the child as his brother. In the home and in the community, this young boy, as far as the world knew was the brother of the father. The mother had already elicited a promise from the older son that he would never tell the child that he was his father. Young people should count the cost before they engage in any type of sexual activity which can involve not only themselves but their families and the innocence of a child.

A young black man who did some work for me, mostly driving, was a victim of HIV AIDS. He had a very responsible job in the corporate world. As an attractive person, he was enticed to have one fling with a homosexual fellow worker and from that one experience in the gay world, he contracted AIDS. The medical authority who made the diagnosis told him that he must tell his wife; because there could be no more sexual activity between the two of them. He described to me how she screamed and went into convulsions before she was taken to the hospital, a complete physical and psychological victim with disappointment in her unfaithful husband. He failed to count the cost before he yielded to the temptation from the one person Satan sent his way.

A university student, later married to a very fine Christian girl told me about their inability to have children. He said however, my first year at the university I paid for two abortions for girls whom I had impregnated. He said, “I paid for the killing for two of my children and now with the wonderful woman whom I love very much, we have been unable to have children.” He asked, “Is God holding me responsible for the murder of my own two children?” He failed to count the cost and the knowledge was with him every day of his life.

These four characterizations happened in a town of 120,000 people. You do not have to go to a large city or even a third world country to find examples of the cost involved in a stupid lifestyle. Several times in scripture, we have an account of God talking with someone, even with Satan. Satan told God that he was patrolling the earth seeking whom he could beguile. Job Chapter 1 Satan is always on the job. If he does not bother you, then you can be sure that you are already his.

Two great stars have died in recent years among many others, as a direct result of homicide. In each case, Anna Nicole Smith, Michael Jackson, their attending physicians have been accused of prescribing chemicals leading to their death. Of course, doctors over prescribe chemicals to millions which lead to their death. It just so happens that with famous people, death causes are revealed. Five hundred years before the birth of Christ, Hypocrites prescribed an oath, which states among other things “Do no harm.” Most medical schools have stopped using this Hippocratic oath but it still amazes me that the most courageous course of study in the world, leading to your ability to care for the disability of others, a doctor would get caught up in overprescribing or not using the intelligence that God has given to the dumbest among us. One does not have to be in practice one day before learning that he must exercise more self-control than his patients. His patients do not know how to control the sin of illegal sex. His patients do not know how to control the sin of overeating. His patients do not know how to control the sin of addiction. If there is one metaphoric absolute in the world controlling all human activity, it is the absolute of discipline. We live in a permissive society. Undisciplined, we think we can do anything without consequence. Character determines destination. The best determination of character is discipline.

Throughout Asia, particularly in Burma, the adept knowledge of the weaving of fine carpets and tapestries is handed down from one generation to another. I went into sheltered areas, saw entire families sitting on the ground in a disciplined way, having counted the cost of silk thread and accuracy, weaving expensive carpets knotting them on the back. (The back appears ugly with so many knots.) Hand making magnificence with entwined weaving of colored threads of beauty, God given patterns...ready to last for centuries... The older these carpets are, the more valuable they are. One does not buy them due to the evidence of work found in the knotting on the back. It is the work of making a thing of beauty that determines not only a carpet, but a life. The disciplined threads from years of struggle and learning will make a carpet or a life worth the cost.

Holy Hug

Etiquette in greeting is as much a mystery as it is a historical fact. I often wondered how the early cave men greeted one another, probably with a grunt and a slap by the head. More civilized and gentile methods of greeting punctuate recent history. The hand shake is the most popular generously practiced gesture today in the Western world. In the Muslim world, it is a matter of bowing with a slight genuflect. I have actually seen uniformed guards kiss one another on the lips. In some areas of the world, the practice of kissing on each cheek is observed. In America, the Quakers popularized the shaking of hands and were known as the Shakers. The Catholics use the Holy Kiss on the cheek, many Protestants use the embrace.

A widely publicized photograph in 1936, showing Eleanor Roosevelt rubbing noses with a leader of New Guinea caused much discussion throughout America. Would it have been better to have the New Guinea kowtow to her, kneeling down with his head at her feet? Of the thousands of societies and languages throughout the world, most have their own gestures of affection and recognition, formal and informal. In this country, starting with the blacks, we have people touching one another with fists at the knuckles, called “pound”. This might be readily acceptable these days when the necessity for not spreading germs is so important. It still bothers me to be eating in a restaurant, very much using my hands, and someone walks up to greet me with an outstretched hand for a hand shake.

I'm a hugger. Whether relatives and friends like it or not, I like to hug, which I feel is a sign of real affection. I found in my years of dealing with patients, so many women of every age, and so many elderly men really did appreciate a hug from their doctor. These days when there is such a phobia about showing affection to children, most adults are afraid that someone will accuse them of pedophilia. It is much easier and safer to pet an animal than to pet a child. Most children hunger for the act of affection. In dealing with older women, wives of busy husbands and mothers of busy children, I often felt that the mother was suffering from lack of affection. Oh, how they responded to a hug from their doctor.

The Holy Hug is the greatest salutation and the greatest goodbye one human being can give to another.

Babies will actually die without human touch and human affection. One hundred years ago, about 99% of babies in orphanages died before they were 7 months old. They died not from infectious diseases or malnutrition, but simply from marasmus, a lack of touch. When babies were removed from these large, clean but impersonal institutions where they received physical nurturing along with formula, the marasmus reversed. They gained weight and finally began to thrive.

Perhaps you have heard of the famous psychology experiment involving 1 year old babies. Five are laying on a bed all about the same weight. Five adults stand in front of them talking with them. One adult rubs a sweetened pacifier across the lips of each child. Then all five adults leave the room. Five minutes later the five adults return. Without exception every baby's eyes will go directly to the adult who had the sweetened pacifier.

At O'Berry Center, Goldsboro, NC, disabled babies are left in the care of the state, (My aunt who was a dietitian there told me that many parents who left their disabled child there never returned even once to check on the child.) These were macro cephalics and microcephalic, severely retarded and severely crippled, etc. Older couples in the community, who needed employment were hired to come to the facility as “grandparents” to show affection and attention to these children, which totally changed the development and health of these unfortunate human beings.

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. (John 13:35) When Christ spoke these words, he made no exceptions. He did not say, if you are cute, if you are healthy, if you are not disabled, if you are not saved... He told us to love one another.

God is love and 540 times we have the word love in the Bible. Love and kindness are never wasted. They always give back.

“If you aren't good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone,...” Barbara De Angelis:

In traveling the world (my passport has been stamped in 157 countries), regardless of poverty, skin color, intelligence, language skills, anything else, there was one thing to which every human being I ever met responded: acts of affection and kindness, accompanied by a smile. God knew what He was talking about it when he described the fruit of the spirit of God: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23) I can tell, without fear of failure, the heart attitude of every one I meet, I think is just one of the many things God gives those who have lost one sense (I am a totally blind, 100% disabled, service-connected, medical officer veteran of the Korean conflict). I cannot see their eyes, their body language, but I have a fool-proof detector within my being telling me the quality of anyone.

One of my aunts, a teacher of second grade students said she could tell if parents did not like her through the attitude of their child. Employees, family, tenants, people with whom I do business, I can tell you exactly what they are thinking about me from their voice, and God's revelation to me. You may think that you can hide your inner feelings toward those around you, even your pets, but the mystery of subliminal perception always comes out, usually a “holy hug” is genuine.

Who's Fooling Who?

Those who have sight have told me that many in the Washington demonstrations on September 12^th were carrying signs. Some of the signs read, “You work for us.” How ridiculous can you get? I have heard the same thing on radio talk shows, that the public actually thinks they hire and pay the politicians who represent them in Washington. The chief interest in elected politicians locally, statewide and nationally, getting re-elected. They get that Potomac virus whether Congressman, Senator or bureaucrat. When looking in a mirror, they see a future president of the United States. Regardless of future elections, they see a great retirement system. In 2006, the average annual pension for retired senators and retired representatives was $60,972.

One of my friends served one term as a US senator and this is the amount he has received ever since. They see a superior health care system. They see a future as a lobbyist or member of a conglomerate board which pays more in salary than they ever made in political life. They see memberships on university boards. They see great speaking engagements and fees. (The Clintons have made $109 million since they left office. Former President Clinton said recently, “"I never had a nickel to my name until I got out of the White House, and now I'm a millionaire.”)

To these people that think that Congress works for them and that they hired the Congress, it is like the Hebrew slaves saying to Pharaoh, “We hired you. You work for us.” It is like the thousands of black slaves before the Emancipation, saying to their slave master, “We hired you. You work for us.” It is like today's slaves in Africa, Asia, even the military forces of the US, saying to their commanders and political leaders, “We hired you. You work for us.” It is very much like the average citizen who thinks he owns his house, his vehicle, even his kitchen table. Try not paying your taxes. These political assessors will take your belongings because you are just a slave to their tax assessments.

Today's headlines refer to the overexposed President Obama on television almost constantly, after appearing on 5 television morning shows on Sunday. On last night's Letterman show, he reportedly gave a self-deprecating joke, “I was black before the election.” We all are aware of his skin color. For those of us who went through the civil rights struggle, his skin color is not important anymore than he is half white. He self-deprecates himself with his utility of the truth.

Joseph Goebbels, was one of German dictator Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, eventually succeeding him as Chancellor of Germany, an office he held for only one day. He was well educated, with a Ph.D at Heidelberg University. He perfected the understanding "Big Lie" technique of propaganda, which is based on the principle that a lie, if audacious enough and repeated enough times, will be believed by the masses. We see this technique employed everyday, because it is the essence of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals which President Obama follows totally.

The Obama administration and the democrat followers are intent to enslave with the technique of the lie. It has taken 50 years of consumed, consecrated passion of liberal activists; but the conquering of the news media, the academic community and the commercial interests of the country is completed. We now have state controlled news both printed and electric, as well as the absolute control of all universities and colleges and the complete takeover of commerce. The general public does not pay any attention to ideas from anyone except news media, academics, or corporate executives. (Think of the corporate executives, their boards of trustees, even their union members who sat back and watched industry move offshore. Universities do have a disproportionate number of liberal instructors. A 2007-2008 study in the Chronicle of Higher Education found that 43 percent of full-time faculty classified themselves as “liberal,” and 8 percent called themselves “far-left.” When looking at only public universities, the number of liberal professors jumps to 59 percent. No one can watch the alphabet news sources, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC, and not realize that news and news talking heads are all absolute communists.)

Pray that God will give the American people the intelligence, the resourcefulness, the encouragement, not only to have sound minds ourselves, but to seek leaders and opinion molders with sound minds. Roy Masters, Jewish talk show host, once said, “The Christian should have no fear of Satan's control in the world. If I were a Christian, I could defend the Christian faith, better than most Christians.” For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)

David Livingstone, the great missionary to Africa was the first European to see the Victoria Falls, to which he gave the English name in honor of his monarch, Queen Victoria. He was found dead praying by his bed, May 1873. His heart was removed and buried in his beloved Africa. His followers walked for 1000 miles to take his body to a port, and his body is buried in the floor of Westminster Abbey (where I have stood many time) along with other greats of the world. The natives put a note on his body that said, "You can have his body, but his heart belongs in Africa!" Livingstone's heart was buried under a Mvula tree near the spot where he died, now the site of the Livingstone Memorial. Livingstone said, “The only thing you do in life that is worthwhile is what you do for the Kingdom of God.”

Where are today's martyrs of the faith? You will not find them in the seeker-friendly, those that preach soft gospel. Where are today's martyrs of patriotism? Like those 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, who risked everything, all their possessions, for this country. Compare the patriots of our ancestry with the cowards who run today's government. Think of the Pigford farm scandal... black farmers who supposedly were denied federal benefits, Mr. Obama pushed through legislation to give these black farmers, each $50,000 in compensation. One of the many contrived thieveries of the nation's capital. Black people, who never had a farm, barely had a backyard, some claiming to have flowerpots, all claiming to be black farmers, getting checks for $50,000, no questions asked. Look the situation in the face, online or material from your congressperson. Compare today's patriots and martyrs with those of yesteryear. Who's fooling who?

Overwhelmed

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by everything going on in the world today? You should not – it has all been prophesied, both in Holy Scripture and even by George Orwell in his book 1984. Everything which God told us would happen in the last days of this world - “perilous times” (2 Timothy 3:1) and Orwell's book in which he describes everything that is happening today. The first sentence on the first page says, “It was a cold day in April and the clock was striking thirteen.”

Polycarp was a second century bishop of Smyrna. According to the Martyrdom of Polycarp, he died a martyr when he was stabbed after an attempt to burn him at the stake failed at age 86. Polycarp is regarded as a saint in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran churches. He is identified as a disciple of the apostles, or in particular of John the Beloved (youngest disciple, only to not die a martyr). John, brother of James, son of Zebedee, was the youngest of the apostles – he was only a teenager when Christ called him a disciple. He wrote the book of Revelation on the island of Patmos, just off the coast of Turkey. The island is three miles wide, six miles long, and today, has three hundred sixty-five churches.

Polycarp's place in Biblical history will go down as a friend and associate of the Beloved John who tutored him and others who walked with Jesus. It was said that Polycarp was overwhelmed by his devotion to our Savior, shown in his willingness, even at his advanced age, to go to the stake for Him. Like William Tyndale, who translated the Bible into English, and was burned at the stake in London in 1536, the torturers so angry with him for his devotion that had overwhelmed his physical being, we should take solace that his very ashes were thrown into the Thames and from the river and oceans of the world, the Word of God has gone to every hamlet on every continent. Such was the overwhelming love of Christ by martyrs such as Polycarp, Stephen (stoned to death as Saul, later apostle Paul, watched) and Tyndale. How can one dare call himself Christ-like, knowing the tortured history of the preservation of God's sacred Word, and let it lay around unused and unshared – the only hope of the world?

Americans are overwhelmed by fear. Fear kills the soul. Three hundred sixty-five times in God's Word we are told not to fear. Christ told us, “Fear not...I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) God gave Moses the blessed assurance of “I AM”. Christ gave us the blessed assurance of “I AM.” Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.” (John 14:6)

54% of Americans are angry about present political conditions. Mr. Obama's mentor, Saul Alinsky, in his Rules for Radicals has used the organization of the Christian church to further the Obama agenda through ACORN. Alinsky was not religious but he had sense enough to go straight to the liberal pastors and churches in the black community, give the hundreds of tentacle groups religious names such as Joshua, Job, Esther, etc. and through the scam of religious organizations, even reaching to the Catholic, Episcopal, and even some black liberation churches are reaching for the political ideology - those who have a desire to participate in the fervor of religion. Using John Dewey's liberal, Columbia University, mantra “the end justifies the means” these hundreds of Acorn-sponsored political groups, gaining financial and definitive assistance of almost the missionary type are seeking to “change” the country with their idea of a living constitution. These church people want to do good, even in such a tainted sectarian way and what we are determines what we do.

Most of the people they solicit are busy. They want to do something for someone. Prayer, plus God's Word, plus time will keep anyone internally full. The thing I will never understand about the Obama and Acorn diabolical ideology is the culture of death. It is like getting on a plane, loaded with passengers and hearing the pilot come on the loud speaker, welcoming the travelers and then saying, “I believe in death. I love to crash.”

The longer I live, an observer of many religious activities, I become more and more convinced that the average church, particularly Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Pentecostals, have become just worldly assemblies...more like civic clubs than a sacred alter of worship to God of the universe and his precious Son, Jesus Christ, who came to save us from ourselves.

I have been blind for a very long time, but I can hear and ask questions, I understand that in many Protestant, and particularly Baptist churches, there is not a cross on display, the most sacred emblem of the Christian church. Modern denominations have tried to make church going, worship services, even prayer meetings, into social activities...lunches, suppers.

In the larger congregations, there is a minister of music (often with a paid, trained-voice choir), minister to the youth, minister to the elderly. At the very time that children, young people, need the satisfaction and sanctification of being with older Christians, division seems to get the supplication of the leadership. Children and young people are overwhelmed enough by what the world offers, they need the stability of saints.

Faith is 90% courage, young people are taught to be indifferent about life's values at the schoolhouse. At the church house, there should be no compromise. Those saints, with gnarled, scarred hands from hard work, aching callouses on their feet, from walking miles to the church, knew why they were there. They needed the resources which only come from God's word, God's hymns, God's preacher, God's people. Satan has overwhelmed the world with his promise of success and happiness if you dance to the tune that pagan's play and perform. Drums and drama, bells and smells, would not replace the happiness of walking in the steps of Christ.

Movies about Harry Potter grossed millions at the box office. USA Today has calculate the present US national debt at $55 trillion. This added to state and other debts puts everyone of your children in debt $250,000. Most Americans are living hand to mouth, no assets. You cannot be overwhelmed if you have a firm foundation. Wilt thou not revive us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee? (Psalm 85:6)