St. Patrick's Day

#525

Today is St. Patrick's Day, celebrated more in America than any other part of the world. St. Patrick, like St. Valentine or St. Nicholas are probably best known to non Catholics because all are occasions for celebration of a holiday, although St. Patrick was the patron saint of Ireland, 387 A.D.-461 A.D. You do not have the extremes in Ireland of green beer, green rivers, green cookies, green parades etc. that you have in America.

St. Patrick was taken as a slave from England to Ireland where he spent many years in hard work before escaping Ireland and returning to England. The Irish at that time were mostly barbarians and after his return to England, obtaining a Catholic education and ordained as a priest, he decided to return to Ireland as a Catholic missionary. There is lore about snakes and other things but from everything we can learn he was, in every respect, a real, tough, compassionate man. He said, because of the paganism in Ireland, he expected to be killed each day but this did not bother him because he knew he would be in heaven that much quicker.

Today, as never before, the Catholic church, as does all churches, need real men in leadership. God chose heroic men of character...Noah, Abraham, Moses etc. Just this week, we find that the Episcopal Church has now elected a woman as Bishop, having already disgraced this ancient denomination by electing a homosexual male as Bishop. Christ did not choose a woman for a disciple. Only two books in the Bible have women's names, Esther and Ruth, both in the Old Testament. God is not even mentioned in the book of Esther. It would take a shade tree theologian, unable to read, to be able to justify a woman preacher, woman priest, and certainly woman Bishop of any church in any denomination. Women have their place in God's work but, God called men for leadership in his church. We find a stadium full of so called “promise keepers”, gesticulating and singing in an effort to cleanse their vows to God, family and country...particularly vacating their roles of leadership in the church.

Most Catholic churches have mens groups named for St Joseph, earthly father of Christ. In America, Christian business mens groups and Gideons have been active in God's work for a long time. The Gideons, an organization placing and giving Bibles, was founded in 1899. This organization of Christian businessmen admitted it's first professional man at it's convention in San Francisco. I was the first professional man to have membership in the Gideons. The early churches of our nation were presided over by men, women had their mission but as in the home, women submitted to the men for leadership in the church...as was established by God, carried out by his prophets, Christ, his disciples, and the early church. It is only within my lifetime, that we have seen leadership in the church usurped by females. I can say without fear of contradiction, that any time there is confusion or division in a church, you will usually find the beginnings of such with a female. The black church, in particular, has been the victim of the liberated Christian female takeover.

My mother, grandmothers, and some of the finest women I have ever known were active in the church but they knew that preaching and speaking from the pulpit was within the parameters of the male. I am convinced that Moses problems, Joseph's problems, most of the problems found in the early church and even today's church have arisen because real men of God did not have the gravitas to establish themselves as the leader of the church. I am convinced that while Moses was on Mount Sinai, it was probably women who persuaded Aaron to let them throw their jewelry into a fire from which emerged a golden calf. It is like these evolutionists who think that from a big junk yard of old machinery including vehicles, a 747 airplane will emerge and, as always, in sinfulness they were all dancing around the golden calf naked when Moses came down from his meeting with God, bringing with him God's commandments for their lives. The two and a half million Jewish slaves who had been delivered from Egypt, who had even witnessed the parting of the Red Sea so they could walk over on dry ground, who had seen pharaohs Armys and chariots drown, like so many of this present day church history, could not and cannot understand plain language.

I [am] the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. (Ex 20:2) Thou shalt have no other gods before me. (Ex 20:3)

Could it be more plain? He tells these millions of people that he is the one that has redeemed them and that they are to have no other Gods before him. Why do human beings find obedience so difficult?

I heard Dr. Baker James Cauthen of the SBC missions department say many years ago, “the greatest area for Christian evangelism is among the black race in America”. Black preachers and black church leaders have told me that today's black churches are dominated by women...that the black male church members just sit aside and let females run things...even the preaching. Today's young black male should have direction from real Christian, black men...in the church, in the school, on the athletic field...everywhere.

Traveling the world, I have seen much of the world's beauty, the great cathedrals of ice sculpture at the Antarctic, the Grand Tetons in Western America, the majestic Alps or Europe, but the most beautiful vision I can remember, when I still had sight, as a child, was a large group of real Christian men in the humble Christian attitude of washing one another's feet. I love to hear the voices of men singing in a church. When young boys are reared observing the lives and living testimony of real Christian men we will see attitudes of Christian compassion in law enforcement (not bullies and thugs), Christian businessmen (not guided by greed), Christian politicians (not gilded by corruption), Christian professionals, doctors, lawyers, engineers (constitutionally correct opposed to politically correct).

It is no secret, it has been broadcast, written and forecast, the gay agenda is to make homosexual converts of your fathers, brothers and any other male or female they can so afflict. For a long time, the retarded in institutions, youth...even to children, were the sexual objectives of the gays and lesbians. Today, enabled by a state controlled, politically correct media, everyone is a target.

In the world wide effort of the eugenics and environmental coalition to limit population expansion through abortion and homosexuality, the Catholic church is willing to shut down it's Catholic hospitals, schools and social service facilities, rather than to submit to the dictates of homosexual government authority. When will the Protestant institutions and Baptist institutions do the same? When the Christian college is no longer different than secular college...just to get government funds, many will say “enough is enough”.

Just as St. Patrick was fearless as a Catholic missionary in the face of Ireland's pagan barbarians, so real men must stand up and defend our God given heritage of church purity and national liberty.