Apologia

The frailties of mankind never cease to amaze me, the sins of pride, envy, greed. The world, the flesh, the devil, have shrunk to the size of your pocketbook. The stores already decorated for Christmas before Halloween, everyone searching for an escape.

I was never a sportsman, never an athlete. Still I'd prefer to be in any type of game, rather than the sidelines or the bleachers. Because of total blindness at such an early age, I never watch such games. In College, 1949, I first came into a realization of big money sports, until then, I thought people were just playing games, not big business. From then, 1949, until 1989, 40 years, World Series games did not always result in a full seven-game series. But, with increased television revenues, increase money at every level, you seldom have a 5 or 6 game series, remarkable, always seven. It's the same with all athletics, advertising revenues in proportion to everything else involved in the game. Our games, races, gambling, elections, all fixed. Isn't it strange that polling and election results can be so accurately predicted ahead of time, that gambling defies mathematics. That the great Las Vegas hotels are built by losers.

The word apologia was not widely known or used by the ancients, they apologized for very little, because they had the common sense to do what was right. Nor was the word apologetics recognized, they knew what they believed, the Grecian warrior, so convinced in his beliefs, either came back a victor, or carried on his shield. Today's religionist, not refined in the fire of personal conviction, just dilly-dally along the fringes of their belief, easily tainted and demoralized by defense, not self-equipped to give a good offense. As the disciple Peter said, your offense has got to be “the hope within you.” (1 Peter 3:15)

It is not love, certainly not love as taught by God when we support anything outside the truth. Pilate asked Christ, “what is truth?” (John 18:38) Christ is truth (John 14:6), and the truth is the truth whether anyone believes it or not. God does not care what we think, he only cares about belief in the faith of His Son. The honor of His Son is important to God, one cannot profess belief in Christ and not be changed, to keep on doing what they were doing before repentance. We are new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17); transformed, not conformed. (Romans 12:2) The unbeliever, the atheist, the backslider, always identifies Christians in their image of hypocrisy; don't compare anyone with another Christian, make your comparison with the scripture.

A business never advertises sales at a 20% increase, always a 20% discount. The world looks for cheapness, there is nothing cheap about God's workmanship (Ephesian 2:10): God's gift to the world in the form of his only begotten Son (John 3:16), or the price one must pay as a follower (Matthew 16:24).

Converted, convinced, the mind and heart working together...the soul in the blood; blood, the essence of life. The light-bulb in the lamp, the filament in the bulb, all just dead molecules until connected to power with the infusion of electrical impulses, called electricity, into the filament in the bulb, we then have life, light, heat. Such is what happens when God breathes eternal life into us, as he did with the first human being, Adam. It is a relationship between spirit and matter. The manufacturer's handbook, the Bible, tells us we are his when we are spirit-filled.

There is almost no limit to the stories of lives that have been changed by the infusion of God's power through Jesus Christ. Some so convinced, so inspired, willing to suffer anything to reach the lost. Early missionaries never expected to return home, I saw this twice in Africa. At Kenya, at the airport in Nairobi, a young man leaving to go to America and prepare for the mission field. His family were there, weeping because they never expected to see him again. Landing in the Cameroons, an old man left the plane, got on his knees and kissed the ground having told me it was the first time he had been home in 50 years. He had come home to die. He too was weeping as he went inside the terminal, family there to meet him, neither had ever seen one another before, but as he told me, he was coming home.

Acts of God will make nuclear warfare look small. In apologetics, we try to defend our faith; our faith does not need defense! Without God, you cannot know God. To know him, the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His suffering (Philippians 3:10), is sufficient. Present the Word, and God will do the rest.

Ms. Ida's Church

Unbelievers, backsliders always hold out hypocrites, pretenders, counterfeits, when they criticize God's work or God's workmanship (Ephesians 2:10). The apostle Paul, who gave us 14 books of the New Testament, God's Holy Word, is one to whom you can always point as a real Christian. In Acts 22-26, six times before a hostile audience, he proclaimed the riches of God's mercy and grace. They knew his testimony was real because of what he had lived, you can always tell a personal experience.

An atheist reporter, a not very attractive young woman, wearing minus lenses about ½ inch thick, came to interview me about my life and my Christian faith. She started off very antagonistic, but left more humble. I gave her the following illustration and asked her to come back when she had a better scientific explanation to explain such a change in human behavior.

In the community in which I was reared, there were so many respected older people, as my still-alive cousin and I often discuss, respected because they knew forgiveness, mercy, grace. They had been through the refining fire of trust, and trust was precious to them, the trust they had received and the trust they gave.

One of the wealthier families in the area, in the entire eastern part of the state, land owners, merchants, had sent their two sons to Chapel Hill (even in 19th century). Ms Ida had married one of the sons, a UNC graduate in Law. He had become a drunkard, and never practiced Law, just lived on the large farm which his father had given him. This outstanding family were Quakers, Ms. Ida, devout Christian, had been raised Baptist.

She was never satisfied in the Quaker church, so her affluent husband built a Baptist church on some nearby property. Like many rural, early 20th century churches: four walls, windows on each side in rear, the wood structure with double doors in front. She took mail-order piano lessons, and played the piano for the church. The congregation was mostly very poor, white, tenant-farmer's children from the area.

Back in the woods, one very poor family lived, the young father was known in the community to be an early castaway in his family, abuser of his wife and children, just surviving. He did some tenant farming and odd jobs; to supplement his income he decided to operate a moonshine liquor still (moonshine is an illegal production of liquor). Someway, the still was discovered and he was arrested, the sheriff learned that much of the corn mash (corn used in the production of liquor) had been stolen from one of Ms. Ida's corn cribs on her farm (her husband had died, her brother, Mr. Lee, was living with her). He had also installed the illegal still in a swamp land which she owned, near a running stream, a source of water. The sheriff talked with Ms. Ida about the pending case, everyone, everywhere, had nothing but respect for this great lady, including all law enforcement.

She told the sheriff that it would no do anybody any good to put this man in jail, he had a wife and children who needed to be fed. She said, “I want his punishment as follows: he is to attend every Sunday service at my Baptist church for one year. In that way, he is at home with his family, and only good will come from this punishment.” I was never in this church but a few times, mostly funerals, I understand he was very sullen in the church, but his wife and children attended with him.

There was a large snowstorm over a weekend in January, at that time in the 20s and 30s, few cars, no snow removal equipment particularly on rural dirt roads. Ms. Ida and Mr. Lee walked to the church, fighting drifts, and when they arrived, Jasper and his children were sitting on the front steps of the church. Jasper, his four children and wife, were the only people at church that day, they built a fire in the big wood stove, Mr. Lee took the children aside and taught the Sunday school lesson to them, and Ms. Ida had her chance to talk with Jasper about his soul: the blackness of his past, compared to the whiteness of the snow and what God could do with him. All this came to me via my grandmother, Ms. Ida's best friend.

As the year went by, Jasper's attitude changed, perhaps because he saw the affection shown to his children, families in the church sharing clothing and food. When the year was over, Jasper and his family continued in the church, slowly but surely, he became a changed man in every way. He put a fresh coat of white paint on the church, plus at a nearby pond, real cleansing, Christian baptism. Discipleship with any of us, is not just an event, it is a process. The most precious gift of a human life is your ability to trust, often it takes time. The greatest sermon he ever saw was the one that lived before him.

Ms. Ida never saw the inside of a beauty shop, never owned a store-bought dress, she made her own clothing, and most of the clothing for the children of the community. She probably never ate in a restaurant, went to a concert of any type, but she always provided the funds for the pastor of the church, and the funds for the upkeep of the church. Her reward, on this earth, came in helping those who she taught and encouraged to help themselves. When you have government, you have what government can do. When you have prisons, you have what prisons can do. But, when you have Christian people in a Christian church doing what Christian people and Christian churches are supposed to do, then you have what God can do. If there is anything needed in the world today, it is what God can do.

I was away in the military, but my mother told me that at Ms. Ida's funeral, the little church was full of poor people who had become rich because of the marvelous grace taught them by her example, in providing a church in which they were taught about a savior, who although rich, became poor. That through his poverty, they would always remain rich.

Bags of Cash

God only had to say it once, “the love of money is the root of all evil.” (1 Timothy 6:10) History, and every problem of man tells us that nothing has changed...the almighty dollar, the peso, the yuan, the rand, the pound, whatever your currency.

This week we learned that bags of cash are taken to Hamid Kazai, disreputable President of Afghanistan, from Iran, as well as from America. Why not, what is new? Billions of dollars, bags of cash, spent in present elections. As our finest young men and women give their lives, and others forever nursing the wounds of war, the industrial/political producers of war get richer. As this blind, disabled veteran has stumbled through the exploitation at veterans facilities, I have heard many ask the question, “why does God allow this?”

God knows what He is doing. You can be sure that any person at judgment will never have a word of defense, all will know guilt, all will know that God has the goods on them. I could not worship a God which I could understand, His ways, His means; trust Him, that is all He asks. Bags of money is nothing new, in politics, in commerce, in warfare. We had two governors in North Carolina, father and son, the Scotts, you did not go to their office unless you took a paper sack filled with money. One of the North Carolina's most powerful politicians, Dr. Black, went to prison for bags of money passed in men's bathrooms. Every illegal drug seller, has a bag of money.

The one question young parents have asked me, “why are my children so defiant?” Ask any child what he wants in life, the answer always, “money”. The golden years in your child's life, the most important years for your assisting the formation of character: the ages 7-12. If you fail in those years, it is generally too late. Once a child gets on the treadmill of things, envying what others have, thinking that the most important things in life can be bought at a store, character becomes less defined. Convictions are stabilized by repetition, 26 times in the 136th Psalm: “the mercies of the Lord endure forever”.

The greatest shame of the Christian church, the Christian school, many Christian homes. Young people raised “supposedly” Christian doctrines forsake them, many never to return. This is nothing new, cradled Catholics leave the catholic church; Jews, the most family-oriented race forsake their faith. Only by the instilling of ancestral values, God's honor, encouragement to live a life of homage to family or ancestry, can you expect children to honor their name. Emphasize to your children, that if Christian, they carry in their body the name of Christ, His honor, as well as the fact that the honor of their family name is all-important. As I heard my mother say, every time before we left the house for anything, “remember who you are.”

There are some things our children will never forget about your home, I will give you something for the father of the home to read at the table, every day, or at least once a week. The great editor Horace Greeley said, “a bible-reading people can never be enslaved.” A praying family can never been enslaved by sin.

Father, we thank thee for this day,

We thank thee for this family, that before the foundation of the world, you chose these parents to have these children, who have in their genes the ancestry of two great families.

Thank You for your love. Thank You for work, for school, for home, for church, for friends, for every blessing of life.

Help us to always remember the honor of our family name, and the honor of Your Blessed Name.

Amen

In 1986, two Russian ships, one carrying 1,800 passengers, the other carrying a cargo of grain, collided in the Baltic sea. There was no storm, the weather was good, the radar was working, the reason for the collision, neither captain would change course. Both were coming towards each other on the same course.

As Christians, as family members, esteem one another. Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. (Philippians 2:3) Discouragement is Satan's most effective weapon. It is so important to encourage one another, particularly family members. A young groom said to his bride, “when will you learn to make biscuits like my mother?” The bride said, with great affection and encouragement, “when you learn to make dough like my father.”

Snake In The Grass

The phrase “snake in the grass” was first used by the poet Virgil referring to a deceitful person. I have always had a morbid fear of snakes (ophidiophobia), on one of the worst days of my life, in the bush in Africa, I almost stepped on one of Africa's most poisonous snakes. Already that day, our camp had been threatened by a rogue elephant.

Living on the farm, I always enjoyed going barefoot, I never could understand why my father always put his shoes on, and kept them on, regardless of where he was, relaxing or working. Even when working on my aunt's home at White Lake, I noted that he never removed his shoes.

Then, his oldest sister told me the story, on the large farm (400 acres) where I was reared and where he was reared before me, a farm completely isolated from most of the civilized community, there were three large tobacco curing barns, both when he was a boy and when I was a boy. During the tobacco curing season, these barns were hanging with green tobacco which was cured, the large furnaces in the barn were stoked with wood night and day, to keep the heat at a curing temperature.

When I was young, the procedure had been changed to oil, but when he was a boy, the fires were kept going with wood. He was 15, his turn during the night to go to the barns and put in more wood, he went running down the path barefoot, stepped on a large rattlesnake, which, after biting him, slithered off into the dark night.

He returned to the house, my grandmother, knowing the certain results of such a large rattlesnake's venom, made incisions at the snake's perforation and began to suck out the blood and poison. Of course, in the first years of the 20th century, there were no telephones, few vehicles. His oldest brother, Patrick, hitched the horse to the buggy and raced to the nearest town for the doctor. The doctor had a car, one of the few in the county, and before long he was chugging into the yard. There was not much that he could do that my grandmother and grandfather had not already done, the same treatment I have used on many patients, wood ashes in hot water, compresses, trying to draw out the poison. They worked on his limbs incessantly, night and day, such a snake bite usually kills, but he survived.

The psychological fright of stepping on that large snake with bare feet was etched on his brain forever. I noticed afterwords, his entire life, working in the woods, on the land, anywhere, he always had a gun. He probably shot more snakes than any other man. One day, he and I were moving some timbers. I almost put my hand on a large rattlesnake, I'll never forget how he beat that snake with an iron rod. If only we could eliminate the snakes from our lives. Even our Blessed Lord showed scorn for serpents and scorpions, crawling, deceitful creatures (Luke 10:19).

It is the serpents and scorpions who walk upright that we must fear the most. In their greed, both for power and for money have they deceived as they slither around in their own debauchery.

When I was young, on the farm, we plowed to rid the fields of grass and weeds, we used blades to kill weeds, exposing their roots to the cleansing and killing heat of the sun. For the past 40 years, chemical sprays have been used to control weeds on the farmlands. Allelopathy is the academic study of chemicals in agriculture. Monsanto is the company which has produced the zillions of gallons of this poison used in cropland, pasture land, along highways and railroads, and even in deforestation. Nearly 50 years ago, my cousin was using his plane to spray this type poison over large agriculture areas growing soybeans, cotton, tobacco, etc. I told him then, wear a mask to keep as much of this poison as possible from your lungs, he thought he was indestructible and died of throat cancer at a very early age. We are just learning how toxic these chemicals are, not only to those who use them in farming, but to those who eat the animals that have eaten the grass and grains where such weed control was used.

When I was a young doctor, there were very few cases of cancer, diabetes very rare, today both are epidemic. At the same time, 1 out of 10,000 children were diagnosed with autism; today 1 out of 100 students have autism, ADHD, or one of the other problems from which they will never escape, and which costs them, their families, their nation, untold misery and millions in treatment and money. Are we so stupid as a people, as a nation with some scientific knowledge, that we think we can escape by poisoning our own country with toxins: fluoride and chloride in our drinking water, spraying agriculture with poisons such as Round-Up, and poisoning other countries with depleted uranium? (DU is waste from nuclear plants, and is used in defensive armor plating, weaponry for increased piercing ability, this radiation is left to poison everything: ground, water, aircraft)

There is almost no limit to the snakes in our lives, deceitfulness that has taken over our education system, our banking and housing economy, the posers in our political parties, the pretenders in our churches.

Search all literature, you will never find a greater story than the story God gave us about the Prodigal Son. The Prodigal Son, like selfish mankind, selfish nations, wanted a life of ease from the work/sweat of someone else. It was only after he lost all, it was only after this Jewish boy found himself feeding hogs that he came to his senses (Luke 15:17)...starving, looking at the “slop” he was feeding to hogs, garbage, that only stupid hogs would eat, he came to his senses. If he had been hungry enough, he would have eaten the hog slop, but he did not have a taste for slop, for garbage. In his home, in his rearing foundations, he had a taste for better.

When did we as a people, as a nation, lose our taste for the best? When did we lose our taste for good music, a good education, decency in government, controls of poisons whether in our food, or warfare toward our enemies? When did we as a people, as a nation, cease to be afraid of, cease to learn that we can walk around snakes without getting hurt? When did we cease to have a taste for the physical and spiritual ideals of God, in whose image we are made? I could not worship a God which I understand, but God understands, and as was the case with those before the flood and many times afterward, He will allow us to self-destruct.

Halloween, 2010

It was Halloween a few years ago, my driver said, “Doctor, I think it is good that you are blind, because you would die if you could see what I am looking at. A mother is pushing her child down the street in a stroller, the mother has on a witch's costume, a black hat, and an awful mask, the baby in the stroller has on a mask and a costume of a skeleton. The dog with them has on a mask of the devil with red pajamas, it is a frightening sight, because I am sure it is a beautiful mother, a beautiful child and a beautiful dog.” Why do people choose evil over beauty?

The only holiday of the year in which people spend more money, Christmas, a holy day for Christians, celebrating the greatest event in the history of the world, has became a holiday for the pagans. More money is spent on the Christmas holiday than any other, next to Christmas in expenditure is Halloween, the day when the pagans and the Christians of the world come together in celebrating Satan. Sad to say, Christians have joined Satan's hordes in celebrating All Hallows, since 1556, celebrating the festival of the dead.

I was one of the first Americans into the Central African Republic nation after the reign of the infamous Bokassa. Such an embarrassment to the world, the French went in and occupied the country. Much like Robert Mugabe, this black mental patient declared himself emperor of the country, would ride up and down the main street of Bangui, the capital, in his horse-drawn chariot dressed as a Roman emperor, Roman columns and arches had been installed up and down the streets of the city (I was there, I saw this).

I believe I was the first American to be taken to his home in the country. To keep out inquisitive press, they had put electrified wire all around the area, but they wanted me to see the despicable conditions. His home has a moat around it, filled with water and crocodiles. For his relaxation, they fed his enemies to the crocodiles while he watched and cheered, I understand that if there were no fresh enemies, they fed the crocodiles with chickens. My guide told me, “you have never seen so many feathers, but it was nothing like the screams of people.” I was taken into a interior cold-storage room in the house, where female enemies were hung naked like sides of beef. Would such sights as this be ugly enough for those who celebrate Halloween?

In New Guinea, Baining dancers, naked male dancers wearing masks danced in live fire. I knew the fire was real because they put me at the front of the group, I could feel the heat and saw them throwing brush on the fire. In India, I saw grown men, barefoot, wearing masks, walk through red-hot, glowing coals. Is this activity ugly enough for the Halloween-ers. Would we expect those of who know the beauty and love of God, to be attracted to such decadent paganism?

In an night club building which I owned, one young women told me she was a Wiccan witch, she also taught in the public schools. She belonged to the church of Satan, a small group who get together on “Sabbats” usually 8 annually. It is closely aligned with Celtic European rituals of the Druids (the Druids have been recognized in England on the same level as Christians). She told me, that in between their seasonal “sabbats”, when they demonstrate their devotion to Satan, often with sacrifices of animals (we still believe missing children are used in these sacrifices), that she visits local churches. She said, “I know how to perform in any situation. My main objective in going to local churches to take away something from the church, anything I can steal; and if nothing else, a hymn book or program.” Then, she said, “we cast spells and sorcery on that church.”

Do you really believe that in Christian America, on Halloween, pastor and churches actually participate in this satanic holiday? Do you really believe that in Christian America, schools, public, private, parochial, places of truth and stability, would seek such a low form of entertainment. Parents, pastors, principals have confused weakness for meekness...afraid to stand against evil, even on this scale. If it is a matter of being scared, think of what the last two years of the Presidency of George W. Bush and the first two years of President Obama have done to your country, this is more scary than going into any graveyard, any old hospital, any decorated haunted house, commuting with the dead.

Our Blessed Lord came into the world as light, and we know that many prefer darkness to light (John 3:19). The diamond is the standard for hardness, the rose is the standard for beauty, all designed by the omnipotent, omniscient hand of our Blessed Lord. The agriculturalist, the artist, the dreamer has never been able to create anything as beautiful as anything already done by our creator: flowers, gemstones, birds, the smile of a precious child.

Surrounded by beauty, Satan has nothing to offer but ugliness, why would anyone celebrate ugliness, the sadness of death. Why would any beautiful women desire tattooing, piercing? When we see such, we know the attractiveness of decadence to the pagans of the world. Witchcraft is the fastest growing religion. Why should the book on Harry Potter, wizards, sorcery, fantasy, replace the reality of beauty, love, faith, in a world which so needs truth. Children should learn early in life to separate good from evil, the mask of pretension from the honor and beauty of truth.

A Ride On The Bus

Only bus riders know real humanity, these are the folks who cannot afford to travel any other way. My bus-ridership was limited until I took the long bus ride to Memphis and graduate school. My first car was a 1941 Plymouth for which I had paid $85, it simply would not have made the 1000 miles. So, with my possessions I traveled by bus, along with frail humanity, their smells and sounds.

Later, in school there, I traveled by bus to work, learned what it was like to see old black people hobble toward the back of the bus, when there were seats in the front. Learned what it was like to see the sick and dying trying to get from point A to point B.

Years later, in New York City, by that time blind, I never felt safe to use a subway. Once, I said to a bus driver, “please let me know when we get to 34th street, I am blind, cannot see.” He said gruffly, “get yourself a dog.” I suppose he thought the dog could read street signs. After that, I learned to count bus stops, and could usually get to where I was going with some accuracy. Riding on the bus in foreign cities is an intriguing affair, those who cannot pay, on the top and hanging on to the sides. Once, in Bucharest, Romania, I was thrown off the bus because I did not have the correct fare.

Now, Americans are on a bus, riding somewhere, I feel we are riding through a chasm, hard to look out the window on either side to see where we are going. Many on the bus are just anxious to get off, very concerned with the mental health, experience, crazed attitude of the driver, speed of trip and the uncertain destination of the bus.

I was on a trip to the Galapagos Islands, the islands off the coast of Ecuador where Charles Darwin did his study for the book Origin of Species. Two ladies assigned to my table at the ship's dining room, were former school teachers in one of Hollywood's prestigious public schools (John Marshall High School), the school where several Hollywood star's children attended. The retired English teacher was one of those remarkable people you can never forget. I loved her because she sewed up my pants which had ripped when I fell. The other teacher had retired early, because, as she told me, the third time she was hit by a student, she said, “I have had enough!”

Both told me that American public education, even in such a well-funded school, was the tragedy of the 20th century. Both said you no longer taught anything, just entertained. The most recent dropout rates across America: 5% of white students drop out of school before they graduate, 10% black, and 20% Hispanic; in North Carolina the rates are much higher, 1/3 of all students drop out of school before graduation. It is difficult enough for a high school graduate, a college graduate to have any measure of success in the 21st Century economy. What possible survival skills can a non-high school graduate expect?

The most difficult thing to realize in this cauldron of humanity, riding a bus, a mixture of every type customs and belief system. Each carrying baggage of every sort, those who are enemies of God, resent you. This has been the greatest change of the last 100 years, even supposed “Christians” blame God when things go wrong. As with religion in Europe, where Christianity is disappearing, more mosques than churches, Europe named for Europa, of Greek mythology, as most other European geography, even Alexander the Great knew his chance of victory was greater on a day of religious observance.

In the throes of depression, all Europe seeking relief, trade unions in France taken over by Communists, calling out demonstrators to attack the banking and retirement systems. With 50% of American mortgages under water, American taxpayer saddled with 46 trillions in useless home loans, those buying repossessions can never get a clear title, true joblessness around 22%. The most optimistic predictors, even in financial institutions saying it will take 10 years for recovery, bewilderment is a mild description of these busriders.

My friends and relatives do not read what I write, they, like most people, they want to believe that by looking through rose-colored glasses everything will look beautiful. Most people refuse to face the reality of today's world. That the globalists are instrumental in promoting one debacle after another.

In the Great Depression, and I lived through it, one never recovers. Like the elitists, who are taking over real estate (residential and commercial), securities, a Nazi control of everything. They took over the farms, put those in jail who objected to the cutting down of their crops, the killing of their livestock, in order for FDR to “stabilize agriculture” and start the welfare plan of putting on parity. At least, most of the country's population was rural, could grow food, today's urbanized, spoiled, entitlement mentality, citizens do not know how to plant a seed, prepare a chicken or fish for cooking.

The architects of the New World Order know how to play the game, only by their rules...control. Most Americans do not realize that everything they do is now controlled, a license, a permit, all regulated.

A young man told me recently, “really, I own nothing. The government permits me to use my meager resources to keep everything up, and as long as I pay the taxes, they let me think that I own it.”

The greatest shift in history, at least for the past 2000 years, the sexual revolution. The homosexual agenda, same-sex marriage, lesbian and gay preachers and bishops, pedophilia, abortion, eugenics and stem-cell research. In my medical studies, just 60 years ago, we were embarrassed to even discuss the killing of babies, sex between individuals of the same sex. Pornography and witchcraft, almost unknown.

Those on the bus who recognize this slide, who know we are heading toward the cliff, can take refuge in the knowledge that the victory over paganism has already been won. The battle is the Lord's (1 Samuel 17:47). Nothing is a surprise to Him, we are required to “trust” on the bus and everywhere, his promise, I will never leave thee or forsake thee. (Hebrews 13:5)

Upside Down, Inside Out "Turkey World"

When deciding on the national bird, Dr. Benjamin Franklin wanted to use the wild turkey, because he considering the eagle a very immoral bird since the eagle many times would take food right out of another bird's mouth.

Peter Schmuck, a Baltimore sports writer commenting on the indictment of Roger Clements said, “Isn't it great to live in a society where the penalty for lying to a congressman can be up to 30 years in jail, but the penalty for a congressman lying to you is another two years in office".

Combining these two thoughts I want to relate my recent experience with the Veteran's administration just trying to obtain a talking watch...a totally blind, 100% disabled, service-connected officer of the Korean conflict era...who had been issued such a watch several times previously.



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Monday, October 25, 2010
Honorable Eric K. Shinseki, Secretary of VA.
Senator Richard Burr, Senate Veteran's committee
Representative Mike McIntyre, House Armed Services

RE: Commentary on one veteran attempting to get talking watch.

Sirs,

Your records will verify my eligibility, records that VA Durham and other places will furnish, I am an 80 year old, mostly housebound, veteran with health problems. Living alone, I desperately need a talking watch, several have been issued to me over the years, I wrote the Chief of Staff, VA Durham, requesting a new watch to replace one that has since worn out. Never any reply from Dr. Shellborn, Dr. Daniels made requests. Copy of enclosed letter is indicative.

I have already spent over $100 for a driver to drive my car to Raleigh in an effort to solve this problem. Several years ago, I was knocked down on a stairway by a women who injured me as well as breaking my cane. I called Dr. Beauchamp, my primary care physician (now retired), and expressed to him my need for a new cane. He said, “you do not want to have to go through what it takes to get a white cane.” One of my assistants had seen one in a junk store in town, and the junk store manager sent it to me without charge, I am still using that white cane to this day. The attached picture shows me wearing my new talking watch which I ordered online, at my expense. I want you to see that the watch and cane, minimal expenses for a blind veteran, were not furnished by VA.

Now, as you can see, VA expects me to undergo further examination in order to get this type of assistance. For years, at my expense, I went to every specialist in this country trying to regain just a shadow of vision in my eyes (Massachusetts Eye Infirmary, Duke Hospital, Lighthouse for Blind NYC, etc.). Let me assure you that the retinas are gone, in spite of my efforts and unceasing prayers.

I am told that many welfare recipient get thousands of dollars for assistance with scooters, etc. I put cement blocks by my exit doors for 30 years, for security, before I ever obtained a security system. There is nothing more frightful for a blind person than a break-in or fire. In this upside-down, inside-out, phoney-boloney world of mixed up values, I refuse to get alarmed or insulted about anything anymore, but it should embarrass someone that a disabled veteran must go through this gauntlet of abuse.

Thank you,

Dr. T.R. Morris
Lt. Col USA Retired
Blind/Dictated

Maturity

This week, I had an appointment at the Veteran's hospital (Durham, NC), any time I am at a veteran's hospital, I am humbled by the men and women who are there. The veterans, who have given so much and asked so little. Things have improved in recent years, but generally speaking, the abrasive, callous attitude of the employees in government facilities, never ceases to amaze me. Most of these people have jobs because of political party, skin color, or cronyism. The greatest shame of this nation, next to slavery, is it's treatment of disabled veterans and handicapped citizens.

On returning to my city, my driver stopped to fill my car with gas, a car drove up, blocking our exit. Four young black males, and one young white female got out of the car to get something from the store, leaving their blasting radio on. Every other word in the music was profane, the f-word over and over. My driver said, “I don't want you to be forced to listen to this, I am going to say something.” I said, “don't say a word, people with this little sense and rage, had just as soon hit you as look at you.”

I ask you, as I ask myself, what has happened to our world? Was that just a sign of immaturity, or was it an indication of the senseless lack of education, and proper rearing? But, every veteran at that hospital, every warrior in every war, including the present. Has fought for the right of these young people to destroy themselves. I believe this slide into decadence began around the end of WWII. Mothers had left the home to work, fathers had become less family-oriented, educators and society had become politically correct, afraid to offend anyone (if it feels good, do it). Most striking, the loss of the influence of the church, it seems to me that believers become more concerned with what people thought of them, than what God knew about them. Believers became more attached to personalities than to the Person. Then until now, more emphasis on preachers in the pulpit, organization of the church, than the Reason for the church.

I remember the funeral of Aimee Semple McPherson, founder of the Foursquare church, now headquartered in California, now 8 million members worldwide, started small. When she died, there was an outpouring of grief from her members, many cars loaded with flowers, escorting the hearse to the cemetery. Her expensive casket was so heavy that rest stops had to be taken. Often, with these church and cult leaders, it was all about them.

Recently, the funeral of Senator Kennedy in Boston. A man who supported abortion, same-sex marriage, every Democrat corrupter and corruption, the one who left a young women to drown in his car as he rushed back to his hotel to initiate his defense for his drunk driving. Yet, at his funeral, Catholic hierarchy, praising him.

I was in New York City, Madison Square Garden, for the first Billy Graham crusade. Another doctor friend and I stayed at the Sloan house, YMCA, because there were no hotel rooms available in the entire city. I thought, how economical, just preaching the Gospel, giving an invitation, and people signing a card. The economy of simplicity, little talk of repentance or redemption, just go on your merry way, the security of heaven.

Church membership has become the Goliath facing God's warriors today, not unlike the Valley of Elah, where David slew him. Smiling, unchanged, people just walk the aisle and sign a card think that church membership is a one-way ticket, most do not understand the initial ordinance of the New Testament church, baptism. It is surprising how many people have never participated in the second ordinance of the New Testament church, the Lord's Supper.

I have one friend who asks everyone he meets, a question most important to him, “which church do you belong to?” The church is just a building, a meeting house, the real church is not an organization but an organism, and until a human organism has a one-to-one, heart-to-heart experience with almighty God, leading to repentance, leading to a filling of the Holy Spirit, leading to baptism by immersion. Leading to showing a complete change, new creation...wanting to study, grow in discipleship, willing to give tithes and offerings, I have doubts about salvation. Soul winning is a serious business, Christ told them to occupy until I come. (Luke 19:13) He was not talking to cowards, the world, and, I am sorry to say, many church-people do not respect anyone. And they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn unto them: they shall deride every strong hold; for they shall heap dust, and take it. (Habakkuk 1:10)

Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil, deceivers, pretenders; children of the devil have largely taken over the churches. Just as only one thing can destroy the New World Order, only one thing will preserve the Christian church: Christian faith.

It was not until Barry Goldwater's In Your Heart You Know He's Right, and John Stormer's None Dare Call It Treason, that I got a real understanding of what is happening in America. I was a speaker for Dr. Fred Schwarz's Anti-Communism Crusades. As Communism weakened in other parts of the world, it had strengthened here. As Christianity has strengthened in Communist countries, it has weakened here. When will Americans mature enough to realize what has happened to their country.

Oasis

Into each life some rain must fall
But too much is falling in mine
Into each heart some tears must fall
But some day the sun will shine
(Sung by Ella Fitzgerald)

Those of us in the sunset years can still hear Ella Fitzgerald singing this marvelous song. There has always been such a disparity in life. For instance, one-half block from my house, taxpayers have spent millions for a river walk, I have never been on it. It is the sighted folks who enjoy river walks, bicycle trails, parks, libraries, concert halls. The country's largest minority, the disabled, are just expected to keep working and pay taxes.

If anything could affect my relationship with God, it would be the uneven “playing field” of life. Because, through the eyes of the world, not through God's eyes, things seem so unfair, the word fairness is not found in the scripture, rather “God is Boss”. He expects us to thrive because of His sovereignty.

The true oasis is found in desert areas of the world, you can ride for many miles, just sand, and then, all of a sudden you find a small area of arid land, trees, flowers, a watering hole. Can one even imagine the splendor of this place to people living in the hot sand of a desert.

Reared in poverty stricken eastern North Carolina (if eastern North Carolina from Highway 95 to the ocean were a state, it would be the poorest state in the union), farm people who worked hard the entire week, on a Saturday afternoon, would find an oasis at the country crossroads, where usually was located a country store where ice was available, cold drinks, snacks, this was usually the location of the country school. Always, without exception, the location of large ball-fields, this was the gathering place, on Saturday, of farm families, where younger men could play baseball, the old men could watch, the women could visit. There was usually areas where children could play games, this was the oasis of the poor people, both rural and urban. You could always hear one say to the other, I'll see you in church tomorrow, another oasis/escape for the hard-working people of the world. The wealthy have their country clubs, their golf courses, their swimming pools, and I suppose you could call this an oasis for the elitists.

In the world of the jet-set, I have had the privilege of sticking my nose into a few jet-set extravaganzas. I am not one of these people, just an observer, just passing through. On the Island of Majorca, in the Mediterranean, an island which you can always identify by their many windmills. A beautiful resort island of mountain retreats, and coastal, lavish hotels. One older man at one of these hotels, plainspoken, “nouveau riche” (newly rich), took a liking to me because I was someone who could never identify him (I have been totally blind since the Korean war). He had developed and owned the manufacturing company for a milk container, he had sold the engineering patent, the company, to a large conglomerate. This multimillionaire and his wife, just spent their time traveling from one wealthy “watering hole” to another. Occupying the most expensive rooms, eating the most expensive food, playing tennis in the morning, golf in the afternoon, if a casino were available, he spent his evenings in the casino. He and his wife's lives were devoted to self-indulgence. He said, “I have already given my two children all the money they will ever need. It is up to them to do the rest.”

You find this type Americans and Europeans all over the world, I found that the Asians just enjoyed life at home, rich or poor. In Greece, I met a couple from St. Louis, two married lawyers, I later visited them in their home. He had been left a tremendous trust fund, and they spent their entire lives traveling and visiting wealthy friends. They ate out every meal, in fact, I do not believe there was a cook stove in their house.

On a ship to the Arctic, I made the acquaintance of a woman lawyer from Maryland, she told me that she spent her entire life traveling the world. I said, “you must have had a very successful practice.” She said, “no, I never practiced law. My father left me well off...he was extremely successful, made more money than any man I have ever known, he was a connector. Connected politicians at Washington and elsewhere with people of wealth. The people in Washington who think they are lobbyists, know nothing, they should have known my father.“

60 years ago, when I was in college, few graduates hankered for government jobs. Firstly, in North Carolina, you had to be a Democrat to get a government job, whether working on the highway or even teaching school. Not much has changed during the last one hundred years, you still have to have the Democrat county chairman's approval to even drive a school bus. But, salaries and job benefits cannot be surpassed by the private sector. As bad as the corrupt situation appears in North Carolina and most other states, perhaps the zenith in political corruption has taken place in the poor California town of Bell.


Oct 22 (Reuters Legal) - California's attorney general asked a state court on Thursday to appoint a monitor to oversee the finances of the city of Bell, California, which has been embroiled in a scandal over the excessive compensation of some of its former top officials.

Attorney General Jerry Brown's move came as eight current and former Bell officials, including its former city manager, who was paid a salary of nearly $800,000, pleaded not guilty on Thursday to public corruption charges.

The eight defendants, arrested on September 21, are collectively accused of bilking taxpayers in the blue-collar city of 40,000 out of roughly $5.5 million through excessive salaries, benefits and illicit loans of public money.

They were charged in nearly two dozen counts of misappropriating public funds, including salaries they received for "phantom" meetings that never occurred. Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley has called the scandal in Bell "corruption on steroids."

LINK: (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69K3YU20101022)


In Bell, part-time city council members were earning $100,000 a year, City Manager Rizzo was arrested for conflict of interest and falsification of public records. It should not amaze anyone, included California attorney general Brown, now running for governor, again, ALL Democrats. Democrats have the art of corruption down to a science. But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. (1 Timothy 5:6) Money brings pleasure, money gives man measures of comforts, but it is just dead people walking.

Perhaps the world's great Oasis is Washington, DC. News reports tell us that the nation's capitol has been little affected by this great
recession/depression...that expensive restaurants are full. Housing prices have continued high. There are more federal workers now than ever before, now ~2.7 million. Senator Sessions (R- Alabama) “Over the time that President Obama has been in office, we have lost 2.5 million free enterprise system jobs, and, yet, 500,000 federal government jobs have been added."

When I analyzed the street on which I live, a small southern port city. Like most coastal states, prime retirement areas for government employees. I think of those living on my street, a retired state department official, a retired county official, a retired state judicial official, etc. and as is the case in most places, all drawing healthy government checks.

A retired New York state police official, and they draw the best retirement checks known to man, told me, “I make more in retirement than I ever made in working”. This is the oasis of life for most retired government officials and workers, including former presidents, former senators, former judiciary, former congress persons, former military personnel. Do we actually think we can provide an oasis for everyone, when we conclude that we have $202 trillion dollars in entitlements, and $46 trillion to which the government is responsible in the current foreclosure fiasco? Because of the government monetary policy's lack of regulation, everyone working for government, banking systems, healthcare systems and anything else involving government regulations are now government employees.

They are rioting in France, protesting in England, bitter across America, everyone wanting an oasis. The oasis is a place of refreshing and comfort after the daily trials of hard work and free will. Life on this earth is short at best, most of us are content to wait out time of eternal joy.

Hegemony

In my lifetime, I have seen one cataclysmic event after another, all with disastrous results. In this economy of dumbed-down pseudo-scientists, psuedo-intellectuals, pirating, parroting, pervert politicians, news reporters interested only in being politically correct, it is next to impossible to bring such events to the attention of the public. There is a hegemony involving every activity in human existence.

In 1945, fluoride was first introduced to the nation's water systems in an effort to combat tooth decay, over the strenuous objections of many real scientists. The health-treason has continued, look at any area where poisons are located and you find that fluoride and chloride are active ingredients in most. It is reported that Hitler introduced fluoride and chloride into the drinking water of the enslaved in Germany: dumbed-down, numb, people are easier to control.

Last year, 24,000 times, poison centers were called when children had swallowed fluoride-impacted toothpaste. These chemicals are used in the drinking water of most American cities in spite of the fact that little evidence has been provided of reduced tooth decay, or the fact that this is medication without consent. There is nothing more dangerous for a child under 1 year of age than fluoride and chloride in their drinking water, and particularly when used in a baby's formula. The FDA controls these chemicals in toothpaste, but no one regulates these chemicals in drinking water. I understand there is some indoctrination from sanitation officials, but it is well known from people who work in water-purification plants that these chemicals are used without much regard for accurate measurement.

Man can live for a long time without food, but water is a necessity, in lecturing to combat troops, I always told them that their canteen was more important than their weapon. I have spent my life trying to educate people about good eating habits, the importance of food in the diet. Most Americans dig their grave with a fork: overeating, eating the wrong foods.

As we age, food becomes a matter of comfort, not a matter of necessity. Most old people would do well to just eat from a saucer, very small servings. I know of nothing more important in the teaching and training of children than healthy eating.

Sugar is the most addictive substance known to man, every bacteria, every virus, every disease, thrives in a sweet medium. School provided lunch, and most of these are subsidized by government, should mirror the nutrition taught in school, which should also be found in the home. I understand that just the reverse is true, most school food is just thrown in the trash, “it don't taste good, it don't taste like home”. At the schoolhouse, if no where else, children should be taught the necessity for returning to the cells of the body nutrients expended in daily activity. Poisons in water, poisons in food, the human body was not created to be riddled with toxicity.

Speaking of health, (and there are many election speeches about the Obam-ination healthcare plan) the third largest employer (Chinese Army, Indian Railroads) in the world is the British national system. The NHS British socialized system is now using robots, robots to take vital information, robots to do all the laundry, food preparation, even the compounding of prescriptions. I understand that robots are better than pharmacists at counting pills!

To show the humanity of today's healthcare, and speaking of pharmacists, in New Jersey, a woman had an asthma attack in front of a pharmacist because she was a dollar short of the price of the inhaler, even after they had offered the pharmacist her cell phone and wallet. Doctors and pharmacists are well paid for deception. Healthcare, like “don't ask don't tell”, like corruption in home foreclosures, like many government activities has become a matter of “pro-agenda”, not just “propaganda“.

Britain, in the depths of a recession, has just laid off 550,000 workers in other areas of government. France is being wrecked by a unionized workers strike, garbage piled in the streets. France, another socialized country, 70-80% of their income goes into taxation, they expect to retire at 60, not 62, and live off their accrued entitlements. The entitlements in American now are estimated by CBO (Congressional Budget Office) to have reached $202 trillion. The hegemony of the western culture, living off the work ethic of others, betrayed by chemical processing, has caught up with us, a very young republic. Every past republic has fallen because of excesses.

Last night, Bob Guccione died at age 79, he was the grandfather, the grand photographer of America's most heinous shame, pornography. Owner of Penthouse magazine, the billionaire made a fortune from just one issue, the 6 million copies he sold of Vanessa Williams. It has never occurred to America yet, just how dangerous this one sin is. 90% of young people 8-19 years of age have seen pornography. There is nothing romantic about pornography, one third of all viewers of pornography are women. They want this to be a secret, their first words to their counselor, “don't tell anyone about it.” There was a time when men would go to the backstreets for the dirty book stores, to buy Guccione's trash. Today, the very worst dirty book store ever in existence is in your living room, available to anyone. Most men do not brag about this practice, He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it. (Psalm 10:11)

In my lifetime, largely because of television, religion has been exploited. Television evangelists as well as others, have used this medium to their own advantage. Yesterday, it was disclosed that the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, has gone into bankruptcy. The producer of their television program, Hour of Power, viewed around the world, has announced that the 10,000 member church, bringing in millions of dollars each year, has debts of $43 million, many vendors and workers not paid. Dr. Schuller started his ministry in a drive-in movie theatre, from a ministry involving servitude and souls, has evolved huge, extravagant performances at Easter and Christmas (using live animals, highly paid artists), exuberant extravagant family members. It seemed to me that the creature, not the Creator, was given most of the attention.

God has a way of knocking us all down to size. My son, Dr. John Morris, missionary for many years to South Korea, met the pilot of Benny Hinn, he described to me the lifestyle of this servant. It is an insult to God, and an embarrassment to every Christian, that God's atonement, redemption, his mission had been so commercialized. One early catholic missionary, a martyr of the faith, hands were so brutalized by torture, that he received special permission from the pope to serve communion bread. It is no coincidence that there were recent, well-publicized problems in the first class lounge of large commercial airliners involving problems with Dr. Robert Schuller Sr. and Victoria, the wife of Joel Osteen.

The greatest threat, more so than terrorism, is international taxation through the New World Order. As the world has become smaller, immigrants travel more rapidly than paying tourists, the internet in constant news cycles keeps everyone informed with everything. Nancy Pelosi uses the air force as her own private domain, $2.2 million spent last year on flights, $101,000 spent just on food and alcohol. Finance and industry has become a mainstream problem, Nigeria borrow $1 billion from the international monetary fund, has already paid $50 billion in interest, we are finding that everyone's problem becomes our problem. 400,000 killed in Darfur, 2.5 million displaced, most of the killed, dead from Chinese ammunition, depleted uranium used in most American exploits.

Time has proven that technology changes lives, but not human nature. The same type people who foreclosed on the family farm in the Great Depression, are now foreclosing on the family home in this depression. It is the sin of indifference, the attitude of complacency, the acceptance of the inevitable, which should concern everyone.

Independence Day (2009)

Visiting the country of Ivory Coast, its capital Abidjan, my guide and I were walking on the beach early on a beautiful morning. A young, personable, handsome black man came up to us and wanted to make our acquaintance because he recognized us being tourists. As is so often the case, they want to exercise their language. He spoke very good English and was very excited that a blind man would be visiting his country, particularly a blind man who knew something of history and could talk with him about American history. He made a statement which I have been trying to answer and perhaps I will be able to answer before my demise. He said, “In President George Washington's farewell address, in the last sentence he said, 'America will cease to be great if America loses its religion and morality.'” He said, “From the American movies I see, from the American publications I read, it seems to me that America has lost most of its religion, which is the basis of its morality.”

The celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 was used as a day of celebration almost from the beginning with cannon firings in 1777 and even a double serving of rum by General Washington to his troops. President Washington, served this nation for 45 years as a general and as its first president. He was without dispute, the wealthiest man in America and probably the wealthiest president ever, but he once said, “I had rather be on my farm, than be emperor of the world.” Most presidents have been men of great character and tremendous wealth. Even though the third president, Thomas Jefferson, used the famous “Jefferson Bible” which he had cut out many things with which he did not agree, he still said, “I tremble about the thought of God's justice.”

The debate concerning the separation of Church and State, attributed to a letter sent by Jefferson to a Baptist group, centers only in the definite desire that this country never have a State Church, which our forefathers had escaped in England. Why bring back to the anvil time and time again things that have already been hammered? In patriotism, as in Christian giving, we can give without loving, but we can not love without giving. Our giving of our wealth to the church (God loves a cheerful giver) is the same as our willingness to support our government by our taxes, our talent, and even our lives.

Andrew Jackson, our seventh president said, “The Bible is the rock on which America rests.” It is significant that 39 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were Seminary graduates. President Truman was probably the last president of character and very much unlike the others; poor before the presidency and poor after the presidency. It is reported that he borrowed money to move back to Missouri from Washington and then had to sell his farm at Grand View, Missouri in order to live until the congress under Lyndon Johnson finally gave a $25,000 a year retirement to ex-presidents. Until then, the next president received no compensation at all and no secret service.

Truman, was a man of character which ALWAYS determines destiny. The diamond sets the standard for hardness. Truman, a Veteran of combat in WWI, like so many of my family, set the standard which I have tried to follow. Only love for God, Family and Country is the test for those who are willing to guard it. President Truman and his wife made a trip to the east for a speaking engagement in Philadelphia and he drove his car and they stayed at a hotel in New York without charge. I have said this, to point out, that there was a time when Americans, even presidents, served this nation for the patriotic duty and love of country and service. When Alexis de Tocqueville came to America from France in 1831 and traveled until 1835 returning to France to write his book Democracy in America he had many good things to say about this young, democratic republic. One thing we should never forget, he said, “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

Abraham Lincoln, our sixteenth president, and perhaps in most respects, our greatest president, once said, “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right.” This totally blind 100% disabled, service-connected, medical officer veteran can stipulate without apology, we have been a blessed nation, but God will judge us for accepting the perversions of homosexuality, pornography and abortion. We can be sure that God will judge this nation as a whole, we will all suffer because of the sins of many, but rejoice in the consolation that sins of the individual are judged for eternity.

Study the news, an arch is only as strong as the individual stones that support it. The supporting stones are being removed because of corruption and infidelity. Like putting holes into a ship, slowly the ship will sink. Before the Titanic left its berth in England, where it had been constructed, its engineer said, “Nothing will sink this ship.” On its maiden voyage, the ship is on the bottom of the ocean. We had thought we were too great to fail, many are changing their mind.

On this July fourth, as every July fourth, we honor the estimated 5 million Americans who have died defending this county. 126,000 Americans lie buried on foreign soil. I was at the 25th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion where 9,700 are buried and I have stood in that great military cemetery in the Philippines where nearly 18,000 are buried or Arlington where 256,000 are buried, including many of my relatives. You do not realize the sacrifice until you see all those white crosses in those cemeteries.

My mother never stopped talking about my grandfather's brother. Just a small time country boy reared in the same house in which my mother was born and raised, who rose in the Army to military officer's rank and served with President Theodore Roosevelt, as one of his assistants, in the Spanish-American War. He died soon after his return home. Though the Army spent little on officer's funerals at that time, he was brought to the country church which my parents, grandparents, and great grandparents had all attended, and my mother talked incessantly about the number of horses and buggies lined up and down the roads, the crowds, the guns firing to honor this one young man whose body was then put on a train and taken to Arlington. God, family, country was important to our ancestors.

The world's largest mass migration to the North American shores, a DESTINY from the religious tyranny and excessive taxation of Europe, was a Godsend to our founding forefathers who only wanted opportunity. They had risked everything in the revolution promise by freedom. One of my forebearers, Dr. Daniel Wiles of Northamptonshire, England, who arrived on the Good Ship Heist in 1677 and his first wife Elizabeth were the parents of my great, great, grandfather who later migrated to eastern North Carolina. (Attached, charcoal portraits of this great-grandfather and his wife) Until my parents died, they talked of two things which battered and thrilled their lives more than anything else. One, Hurricane Hazel which hit the coast in 1954 while I was away in the military; and the other, the annual Independence Day picnic which centered at the three-room school which both of my parents attended. This was the largest social occasion of the year for these country folks.

One of my uncles would take a wagon and team of mules to a nearby town, 10 miles away, and buy large blocks of ice which was used at the picnic for iced tea, milkshakes and even homemade ice cream. This was the only time in the entire year that these people had ice. There was a large athletic field behind the school, and there were ball games all day. The women of the community, under the great shade trees prepared large picnics as well as keeping up with all the family activities of the year. Often, the men were entertained by county and state politicians who would come making speeches and seeking votes.

The Independence Day picnic in this isolated country community was a time when even practices of segregation were forgotten. Various denominations (Baptist, Quaker, AME) and even those of different skin color would all come together for this celebration of patriotism. I can still remember, as a child, the divider down the middle of the church when the women would sit on one side, the men on the other and, each church, had a balcony in which the blacks would sit. Other than the Independence Day picnic, the only time all sat together was at a funeral. Perhaps from this we can learn much about church state relationships and how people can come together in times of sorrow as well as times of celebration.

In the Old Testament, as the shackled Joseph, sold to the Ishmaelites, on his way to Egypt, could look toward Hebron and see the lights of the city which was near his father Jacob's home. Many of us, have known the price of freedom. How well I remember, imagining the croaking of the frogs which always sang a symphony in the great cow pasture, the home where I was reared. In far away places, then, as all over the world, (I have traveled through 157 countries and been around the world 8 times) the lasting sounds and sights that mean most and that I still carry with me are my father's beautiful cows in the pasture, the sound of my father singing each morning as he did his chores around the farm before my mother got us up for breakfast, the always present Collie dogs barking as they thrilled to a new day. The price was paid by uncles, who had never been away from home, militarily sent to the far corners of the world, where they were so homesick and, on this Independence Day, think of the thousands who died thinking of home. I never knew one wounded, in a military hospital, who did not talk about home and mother. THIS IS THE PRICE OF FREEDOM.

The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me;
your love, O LORD, endures forever—
do not abandon the works of your hands.
Psalm 138:8

Please, dear God, do not abandon those who believe in your mercy.

Capitulation

With typical ambiguity, compromise, 'lukewarmness', and liberal distraction from their 'first love', the Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Louisville, KY, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the first seminary, danced around a resolution of both admiration for and variance against the 44th President of the United States; the most pro-abortion, anti-life, same sex marriage promoter, stem-cell, euthanasia, bailing out with hard working tax payer members dollars, corrupt and bankrupt agencies of every kind, government and domestic, president ever elected. The liberal totalitarian Godless ideology of this president must be a stench in the nostrils of Almighty God...and God himself must be thinking, “Have these followers of Truitt, Criswell and RG Lee gone crazy?” How can any Southern Baptists with eyesight read God's inerrant word, listen to the 'fakery' of this President and his pastor (Rev. Wright), his advisers (Emmanuel, Pelosi, Biden, Sebelius) and still believe the follower of “Rules for Radicals” should be mentioned, let alone honored, by a fundamentalist, evangelical denomination is beyond my comprehension.

In 1938, Bette Davis starred in the movie “Jezebel”, along with Henry Fonda. In the movie, Jezebel, in her red dress, proclaimed that she had deliciously evil hands. I firmly believe that Jehu, arriving in his chariot at the Louisville Center, would have thrown President Hunt (who happens to be originally from this city) and his fellow resolution-revolutionists in the street for daring to proffer such a despicable act in the face of God's people, laboring in the vineyards, giving as to God their time, talent and tithes, expecting better at this time in our country's history.

Every liberal denomination that has stooped to women preachers, same-sex marriage, acceptance of homosexuality, and flirted with the theories of recapitulation, embryology and abortion, have lost church membership and influence even among antagonists of the church. Jesus was never ambiguous in dealing with deception and deceptors, “Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?” (Matthew 23:33) Why not honor Dr. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, Episcopal priest of a Boston Seminary who considers abortion as a 'blessing'? (President Episcopal Divinity School, NARAL member, Re: her recent speech in Birmingham, AL link: http://www.prochoicetexas.org/news/headlines/200708172.shtml )

For most of my life, hanging on by my very fingernails in a world of compromise and atheism, the spiritual foundations of the Southern Baptist Convention, the cooperative program, support for evangelical seminaries, support for both foreign and home missions, the knowledge that one denomination was left, true to the theology of God's inspired Word, kept me active and alive. I thrilled at attendance at SBCs, such as Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, etc Like the slow, deadly, encroachment of cancer, I saw liberalism besmirching and beguiling local churches, but I held on to the belief that the same faith that led a Christian lady in my community to leave the questionable practices of the Quaker church and with the help of her husband, build and start a small Baptist church in the community. Where, after taking mail-order lessons in playing the piano, and did all things in regard to the church until it grew and could afford a pastor. (this church is still around and alive and well; not infected yet by liberal thinking)

My family, who landed from England in New Jersey and founded Morristown, adept at the modern thinking of SBC. "Fines, confiscation of property, imprisonments, assaults by mobs, deprivation of civil rights and of educational opportunities" were a part of life for a dissenter in England. Many Baptists and Quakers were thrown into prison because they would not take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy. They "followed the clear imperative of Jesus (Matthew 5:34) and James (James 5:12) to 'swear not at all.'" The dissenters offered to declare their loyalty, but that was unacceptable to their persecutors. The first refusal meant prison. The second meant the penalties of praemunire, or confiscation of all property, suspension of all rights, and indefinite length of imprisonment. The Act of Toleration (1689) brought religious freedom for all except Catholics and Jews, but the Baptists "made no special gain in numbers during the decades of larger freedom which followed, and they actually declined in zeal and spirituality."

Part of the early family left Morristown and centered in eastern NC, not exactly immune from persecution (several baptist preachers were hanged by the Episcopalians who ruled and had been given much land by Anglican, England along the coast, check out Tryon Palace, New Bern). I doubt that John the Baptist would feel fellowship with the southern baptist of NC. This writer, active at Bellevue, Memphis, churches in Alabama and NC, was asked to leave a local liberal southern baptist church because after returning from a convention I made the statement that,”I feel sure it is strange to God that southern baptists are so concerned about black people across the ocean and yet they walk by the church doors here everyday and we show no concern at all.” Was Dr. James Baker Cauthen, SBC secretary, joking when I heard him say in Memphis at a mission conference, “The black population USA needs evangelizing.” I left First Baptist, Wilmington, where I had been very generous, and my only child was on the foreign mission field.

People, like denominations, do what they do because they believe what they believe. Do you really believe in honoring an abortionist? (Killer of babies) Since January 1973, the only denomination that has tried to stop this holocaust is the Catholic church. Does it bother this liberal SBC convention at all that most of your families send children off to college who forsake their church? (estimated 75%) Does it bother the SBC that 37% of all children born in this country are born to single mothers? Does it bother SBC, that many with talent, time and ties like this writer, has left your convention because like most young people, we can recognize hypocrisy. The truth is the truth whether anyone believes it or not. You need to learn again, if you ever knew, “Faith is the victory that overcomes the world.”

I am a totally blind, 100% disabled, service-connected veteran of the Korean Conflict, for over 40 years. I kept trying to teach, speak, give, whatever, for the work of God's Kingdom. On the tombstone of Fanny Crosby, (writer of 8,000 hymns) totally blind, are these words: “She hath done what she could.” (Mark 14:8)

Hallucinations

The hearts of believers were thrilled with the delivery of 33 coal miners from the depths of the earth in Chile. One miner said, “there was not 33 but 34, Christ was with us all the time.”

Thrown in my face many times, unbelievers, a man of my intelligence believing in fairy tales. The fact of the matter, those who do not know anything about anything else, those who are not smart in any other way, know all about religion. Most unbelievers have never spent 20 hours studying why they disbelieve, the most important matter conceivable to the mind: what happens after inevitable death? They have never looked at the evidence of God, care nothing for looking at the evidence of God, only want to believe in their own warped wisdom. So afraid to believe in a power greater than self, because they do not want to be responsible.

The Jewish disciples, those who knew Christ best, knew the resurrection was real. They talked with him, ate with him, saw the empty tomb. They left to take the message knowing that they would probably never see each other again. Traveling, believing as if they were the only ones to give the great commission, glad to proclaim their experience. If they thought it was a dream, their lives a hallucination, each could have disappeared into history, no one else would ever had known. An experience shaped their very mind, changed them totally. Thomas, the “hard head”, the doubter, walked across the Himalayas to India where he was martyred. Mark, earlier, would not accept his responsibility to Paul, killed in Alexandria. All Bartholomew had to do was deny, but he was skinned alive in Armenia. Luke hanged from an olive tree in Greece; Peter, crucified upside down in Rome; Paul, beheaded.

Just as today's agnostics, those playing church, the unbelievers just wanted a denial of the real, they wanted to believe that the disciples stole the body to preserve their testimony. That the Romans stole the body, that Christ was resuscitated (no one resuscitates a Roman-crucified body), that the women and others were hallucinating, weeping, lost in a cemetary. The truth, one on which 2000 years of Christian testimony relies, He came out of that tomb, and those of us who trust in God's Word, have no reason to be embarrassed by a Godless world who have never been touched by His glory. We know that without God you cannot know God, and God has mercy on those who live in chasm of unbelief.

Last week, I was told of a local pastor who told his congregation that the first books of Genesis were allegorical, that they could not rely on them. We have all heard this type academic gibberish before, don't these people know that Jewish and other scholars have explored every word in God's Word. That there have been have thousands of pages written about every doubt. No matter how many doubts, no matter how many “tares” have tried to “tear” God's Word, it stands forever.

Two things you must deal with: Christ is either who He said He was, or you must deal with the greatest fraud that ever lived...a “nutcase”. You atheists and agnostics are wasting your time, God did not give His Son to die such a despicable death in order for the snakes and scorpions of unbelief to enjoy any admiration or justification. God's justice is quick and sure, He told Adam and Eve not to touch one tree, the children of Israel were told not to touch the Ark of the Covenant, in transporting it, against the Laws of God (it was supposed to be transported by men with staff run through holders not by ox-cart). One of the oxen stumbled, Uzzah dedicated to the Ark of the Covenant, touched it against God's Law, and he was struck dead.

There is nothing ambiguous about the Bible, Peter would have tried to cover his weaknesses in denying Christ. Mark would have tried to have covered his weaknesses in leaving Paul. Weaknesses as well as strengths are recorded, records and traditions. The last apostle to die, John, who Christ told to take care of his mother, was a loud mouth, self-seeker, even asked his own mother, to intercede with Christ about the #1 seat in the kingdom, but wrote the epistle of love.

A lie will change things, but not for the better. The truth is the truth whether anyone believes it or not. God has given us truth and the truth will make us free. (John 8:32) Thomas Aquinas says that, “just as the disciples suffered martyrdom alone, even their denial would never have been known. Today's believers will endure their own martyrdom through unpopularity and self-denial.”

Today, it is easy to concoct a denial through threats of prisons or by financial “pay-off”. There is more evidence that men did not go to the moon than that men did go the moon. Cover ups are a matter of American history: Pearl Harbor, JFK assassination, Oklahoma City bombing, and even the 9/11 knock down of three buildings in NYC. There is much evidence that nuclear bombs denoted under the three buildings. But, just as the Gulf of Tonkin, just as the Wellstone, Bono, Waco assassinations, cover-ups will continue, because there are no such things as investigative reporters anymore, and most people with inquiring minds are immediately shut down as “nutcases”...conspiracy theorists. It is ludicrous to deny evidence, we might as well shut down the courthouses. Have you becomes so jaded, so Pollyanne-ish, so wanting to believe just in goodness, that you cannot face the real facts of the real world? Who is hallucinating?

Letter to Scott Saxton (WECT)

Two weeks from today, Americans will vote in what is predicted to be the most important election of my lifetime. It should be obvious to anyone with enough mind to think that the last presidential election has proven to be an cataclysmic disaster. We saw the black population voting 99%, the liberal academics voting 95%, the Jews voting 78%, and the Catholics voting 54% to put a liberal administration and Congress into Washington, on the very verge of absolute communism.

The politicians and bureaucrats in Washington do not know what is going on in the rest of the country. I understand that the economy is very good in Washington, DC...federal job opportunities, expensive restaurants doing good business, great sales in fashion, etc. The Obama bailout money is being well-spent among his own in the nation's capital. For the rest of us, the economic situation is bleak.

Added to the tumult of this election season, pre-election day voting, and already, signs of corruption at the voting booth. It has always been that way, with the intricacies of mathematical determinations by the computer. Every election officials knows what to expect, and how to determine the results.

In my youth, I saw white male Democrat politicians who had access to the registration books, hauling people to the polls to vote for their candidates. Here in the south, if voting correctly, you got a tray of barbecue, if white; or if black, a candy bar. In more recent years, certain people walked around with walking money, paying for votes. This is how and why Democrats have ruled North Carolina for the past 100 years. This is how and why, with a large percentage of the voters, government workers (around 10%), and with the many who get government checks, those in charge can stay in charge. Eventually, young people will learn that older people have voted for their enslavement. I have been in every communist country, I always got the same answer from those who would talk, "we did not know what had happened before it was too late."


Scott Saxton, News Director, WECT

RE: Your appearance on the radio this morning with Chad Adams

Sir,

You stated on the radio that the problems with voting is not a conspiracy. Joesph Stalin said long ago, “it is all a matter of who counts the votes.”

The Governor's mansion controls members of each election board. Born and reared in eastern North Carolina, interested in and active in politics all of my life. (At one time, President of NC Young Democrats, until Terry Sanford and L.C. Fountain caused me to leave the Democrat Party) I know that there is much corruption involved...you might ask former representative Charlie Rose from this district.

My interests are in how disabled veterans and handicapped citizens are treated, not only in real life, but at the voting booth. The greatest shame of this nation is the treatment of these citizens, the largest minority.

I am a totally blind, 100% disabled, service-connected, medical officer veteran of the Korean conflict...For over 40 years. You would not believe my treatment at the voting booth over these years. I pay too much for your right to vote for your country, not to vote myself. At the old courthouse, conditions were unbelievable, I wrote both the county commissioners, the state Democrat and Republican organizations, as well as legislators, but as usual, all ignored...an insult to me, and should be an embarrassment to you.

At the last Presidential election, I voted at the facility on 3rd street. My driver, not too bright, did not see the off-street voting area, I stood in line for a long time, and then, believe it or not, my driver was not allowed to help me vote, instead, the one in charge yelled out, “are you blind!?” It is obvious to anyone with a room temperature IQ, that I am totally blind. He assigned a black girl to help me, she could not even pronounce the names of those on the ballot.

Another time, at the county complex, my driver took me in to vote. The elections board member yelled out, “get a witness to witness this blind man's mark.” I said, “I am able to sign my name.” (I probably pay more county tax than this man makes...home in historic district, home on the beach, office complex, etc.) It seems these election people take a sadistic pleasure in the embarrassment of we “underlings”.

Recently, I have been voting at the museum, drive-up. On Friday the 15th, I voted there. My driver said, “it is strange that they ask for no identification. Honestly, the woman who came to the car acted as if you were the first disabled person she had ever encountered”

When I was a child, my parents families were the only Republicans in the community, a rural, crossroads community. They voted at my cousin's country store, they paid my mother $2 a day as a poll-watcher for the Republicans, she would come home and weep about the corruption she saw at the voting precinct. If alive, she would weep even more, that after all these years, nothing has changed. Back then, the winner of the Democrat primary was the winner. Even when I was a student at Chapel Hill, there was not one Republican, one black, one woman in the legislature, certainly not a disabled person. The Democrats ruled, and, even today, even if a Republican is elected, the Democrats still rule because all the bureaucrats are Democrats.

I was at the Josephus Daniels home (editor of the News Observer), Wakestone, when Eleanor Roosevelt and Madame Chiang Kai-shek were there. Daniels said, “Democrats will always rule North Carolina.” You might refer to my blogs (http://pockets1940.blogspot.com/ http://www.drthomasmorris.com/ ) and get more details on my long experience on voting in eastern North Carolina.

Thank You,

Dr. T.R. Morris

Copies: Chad Adams

PS: This letter to you will appear on my blog which goes around the world.

Rest Area

A memory of my young life, one I have shared on many platforms, plowing in the field with a two horse plow, stopping to let the mules have a rest break, laying back on the newly plowed fresh soil, looking up into the sky full of clouds, and realizing you “are not stuck where you start.” Thank God, I knew there was space beyond the world in which I was reared. Laying in bed at night, I could hear the great East Coast Champion and other trains whistle as they covered the tracks from New York to Miami. One must have the desire to go further, with rest stops in between.

In traveling North, I have stopped at the rest stops on the New Jersey Turnpike and even on Highway 95. In recent years, these rest stops, once a haven for perverts, have become a “stock exchange” for drug addicts. On the great Motorway of the Sun from Paris to Nice, France, it was so pleasant to refresh with a cappuccino.

I come from a time when there were few vacations and few coffee breaks. My father, known for his singing, would sing “I'll Take my Vacation in Heaven.” Today's employees spend more time taking rest breaks, talking about rest breaks, than they do in actual work.

Have you ever considered holidays enjoyed by government workers? In a country of just over three hundred million, twenty million of that population are employed by government: local, state and federal. This is an astounding army, an army that does not need lobbyists, because every politician courts these workers. They can determine an election. As former N.C. Governor Terry Sanford told me in 1960, “Take care of government employees. They determine elections.” Recently, beyond belief, voters in this county voted to raise their sales tax because politicians told county workers to spread the “word” through their communities that real estate tax would go down IF there were an increase in sales tax because all, including the illegals, would pay sales tax. The very next day, after the electorate voted for this tax increase, these same commissioners voted to raise real estate tax.

These same politicians run on a platform of servitude. They all want to serve you. Like the bureaucrats they appoint, they all become civil masters. I have never known an elected politician who did not come back from his time of “supposed” servitude much richer than when he left. The infamous Bill Clinton said, “Until I went to the White House, I did not have a nickel. Now I am a millionaire.” Lyndon Johnson went to Washington almost penniless. He went back to Texas, after the presidency, with 53 million. Jim Hunt, sixteen years governor of North Carolina, now heading the Hunt Machine, as well as making a million dollars a year with the state's largest law firm, escaped a poor tobacco farm in Wilson county to become one of the state's richest politicians. Although, I understand, none of the money trickled down to his parents. Some of his father's friends bought him a color television - his father was still watching a black and white.

While most of us are working, trying to pay the ever increasing tax burden, the burden of taxes to pay the ever increasing government workers. These “pets” of the state take off every Holiday, every bad weather day, long vacations on in-between days. One of my civil service cousins said to me, “We spend Monday talking about what we did on the weekend. We usually take Tuesday for necessary private appointments with our doctors, dentists and veterinarians. We spend Thursday and Friday planning our weekend and talking with our co-workers about our planned weekend activities. Some of us have Wednesday afternoons off for golf or recreation. Or we might just get some government work done on Wednesday.” These government workers, graduate from college around age 23, if going to work with the government immediately, will have thirty years good service then, can retire with ¾ ,maximum pay at age 53, along with accumulated pay for sickness and vacation. Then will have many years for a second career or just comfortable play time.

One of my family graduated from college at 22. She immediately went to work teaching school. During the vacation summers, she obtained two masters degrees which pushed her pay scale. She retired as a school principal at age 54. She took on a part time job as a principal in a private school and earns 105,000 a year in retirement pay.

Recently obscene retirement schedules surfaced. In another commentary, I told about the retired police chief from West Point New York who lived next door to me. He laughed at my military service, my blindness, and told me he received 250,000 a year in retirement. This seemed unexplainable, but Bell, California could beat that. Robert Rizzo, Chief Administrative Officer, will received $600,000 a year in retirement. Not far behind would be Randy Adams, the man Rizzo brought in to be the city’s police chief last July. If Adams, 59, steps down, his pension would be worth an estimated $411,300.

This year, we will have officially the largest federal workforce in the country's history. It will reach 2.15 million – and that doesn't count nearly 650,000 postal workers, who, technically, work for a separate "corporation." This year we have added yet another 153,000 new federal employees. Of one thing you can be sure, the thousands of veterans who have returned from the war will not receive any better pensions or any better care. The greatest shame of this nation is its treatment of disabled veterans and handicapped citizens. This totally blind, 100% disabled, service connected veteran, waited thirty years after applying for housing adaptation, a security system. There is nothing more frightening for a blind person than a break in or a fire. For nearly thirty years, each night, I put cement blocks against my exterior doors to give me some additional time on the phone seeking police assistance. Finally, VA installed a security system which has never worked.

My advice to the workers of the world: rest, pray, and act. Spend rest time with your family. Ultimately, they are all you have. And for many of us, a disappointment. Pray, for the leadership of the holy spirit in every activity. Act, as if tomorrow depends on what you do today. In these uncertain times, there is nothing more important than preparations for a disaster. Buy some extra food each week , food easily and safely stored, freeze dried food will last many years. And so will most canned goods. An expiration date is put on most food as it is put on most prescription medicine, and we all know that this is just a sales gimmick. You could have stacks of money, bars of gold and silver, but you cannot eat either. It may not happen tomorrow, next month, or next year, but you can depend on a nuclear strike. You will not be able to go anywhere, will have plenty of time to rest. God help those with children, those with terminal illness in the home. Prepare your psyche now for these unexpected rest times. And if you have not already made those eternal preparations, your time of eternal rest.