The Reality of Courage

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(Horatius Bonar, "Follow the Lamb" 1861)
"They are more desirable than gold--yes, than much fine gold!Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.Moreover, by them Your servant is warned. In keeping them there is great reward!" Psalm 19:10-11 

The Christian has discovered one book truer and more precious than all the rest together. Let the Bible be to us the book of books--the one book in all the world whose every verse is wisdom. In studying it, be sure to take it for what it really is--the revelation of the thoughts of God, given us in the words of God. Knowing that we have divine thoughts embodied in divine words--we sit down to the study of the heavenly volume, assured that we shall find the perfection of wisdom in all of its teachings. 

Let us read and re-read the Scriptures--meditating on them day and night. 
They never grow old, they never lose their sap, they never run dry. 

Though it is right and profitable to read other books, if they are true and good--yet beware of reading too many. Do not let man's book thrust God's book into a corner! Do not let commentaries smother the text--nor let the good, shut out the best. 
          Especially beware of light reading! Shun novels--they are the literary curse of the age! If you are a parent--keep novels out of the way of your children. Neither read them yourself, nor set an example of novel-reading to others. Do not let novels lie on your table, or be seen in your hand. The reading of the light novels of the day, has done deep injury to many:
  vitiating their taste,
  enervating their minds,
  unfitting them for life's plain work,
  eating out their love for the Bible,
  teaching them a false morality, and  
  creating in the soul an unreal standard of truth, and beauty, and love. 
Do not be too fond of the newspaper. Extract matter for thought and prayer out of all that you read. 
Let your reading be always select--and whatever you read, begin with seeking God's blessing on it. 
But see that your relish for the Bible is above every other enjoyment. The moment you begin to feel greater relish for any other book--lay it down until you have sought deliverance from such a snare, and obtained from the Holy Spirit a more intense relish, and a keener appetite for the Word of God!

"Your words were found, and I ate them. And Your Word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart!" Jeremiah 15:16

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Addition, Dr. Morris,

          We live with the reality everyday of our lives, that there is nothing new facing us that others have not encountered before us. 90% of the Christian life is just a matter of courage. 90% of the fake news and pretentions of those around us is just deceit. We live in a world of "meism" (if it doesn't effect me, I'm not interested).

          I was in the church house my whole life, and never heard a preacher, not once, speak about the 70 miles that Mary walked; pregnant...before the birth of our precious lord... to be with her cousin Elizabeth. I never heard a theologian talk about the 700 mile journey that the Jewish slaves from Chosun, along with most of the Egyptian army, at Pharaohs orders...walked in a funeral procession to carry the body of Jacob to be buried next to his wife in the promised land. Heads of nations, even his brother Esau, met and watched that great procession as it went toward Hebron. Can we even imagine how such history as this is never discussed? Where did Mary or these people sleep? Where did they find food during these long journeys? The bible is silent about many things that human beings must endure during their lives...pain was same then as it is now, so was hunger/elimination/climatic changes.

          We know that Paul, Aquila and Priscilla, were tent makers. What other buildings or shelter did these people have? I so remember how happy my own father was to have power tools...after he had built so many building with hand tools. I doubt that they even had adequate hand tools then, even though we know that Jesus and his earthly father were carpenters. What facilities did these early saints posses to farm their land, and produce food? Mana stopped when they crossed the Jordan. I often ask today's "know-it-all" young adults, "how were the great mounds built upon which train tracks are laid?" In my lifetime, I still remember the first tractor belonging to my grandparents...those spiked wheels. It was a long time before there were tires made just for tractors. I still remember oxen dragging great logs out of the woodlands...straining at their yokes, men beating them with big sticks. The difference in winning and losing between the Russians and Germans at the battle of Leningrad (where this writer has visited), was the size of horses pulling great cannons through the snow. We so easily forget not only what human beings in our history have endured, but what work-animals have gone through as well.

            This writer plowed mules as a farm-boy. I still remember their sweat, the fact that they could survive on the bare necessities of dry hay and corn. How many of you have ever thought about animal life during a time of drought...wells drying up (it takes many gallons of water for a cow or a member of the equine species to survive just one day). But often in times of drought, cow/horses/etc. do go without water. Camels can go without water for many days, because they drink so much when they get the chance and are able to store it. I wish I would hear one preacher mention the muscles of Rebecca, who became Isaacs wife; she drew water from a well for all those camels when Abraham's servant, Eliezer , selected her for this place in history (as the wife of the son of the first Jew).

            My mind goes into an epileptic seizure when my employees or tenants fuss about a little heat. They did not see my mother cook over a wood burning stove, with no A.C. or fan. They never had their mother walk into the bedroom and feel of their feet in a cold house, to make sure they were warm under the cover...so many quilts layered on top of you, you could barely turn over. It never occurs to these spoiled "remnants of  humanity" that nothing is worse for you than to sleep under an electric blanket; or, for that matter, needing electricity in general...radio's, clocks, phone...all near you while sleeping. And to think that some young people literally sleep with a telephone under their pillow. There are ambitious people who would burn down a city in order to rule the ashes. There are manufacturers of drugs and instruments who do not mind killing you in order to make a profit...and do. 

Memorial Day 2019

Memorial Day, 2017

             The hammer's of hell cannot break the chains of patriotism. The finest men, this old, totally blind, 100% disabled, medical officer Veteran, has ever known in life...were Veterans of the warfare struggles of my lifetime. The 126,000 buried in the soil of foreign lands, were even greater. I stood at Normandy on the 25th anniversary of that conflict, that cemetery where so many are buried. I stood at the cemetery in the Phillipines were 18,000 are buried. They all died believing that America was worth defending and giving the last measure of their devotion. To the disabled, we learn to glory in infirmities. God showed this blind Veteran long ago that faith is better than sight.

            This very morning, Memorial Day 2017, most of the working people taking a holiday, my driver escorted me to my office building complex. At 87, I am still on the job...putting out the trash carts for my office tenants, my assistant was thrilled to see live, energetic foxes playing on the grounds of this midtown office complex. For many Veterans, there is a despondency from which you may never recover. I want EVERY disabled Veteran to know, lameness is no barrier to anything, even a joint heir of a King. Please remember, the gospel is opposed to all sinfulness, all wickedness. Jesus took all sin to the grave so that we, mere mortals, could be restored with righteousness. As perfect as Jesus' righteousness is, so much is his hatred of sin. There is little goodness in a man who does not have hatred toward sin. GOOD NEWS, the gospel message: Veteran/politician/pastor/parent, salvation and righteousness is a free gift available to everyone...just for the asking.

            This great land, between two great oceans, is an island which God provided for the freedom that is in him. It should not be hidden from the world. When my ancestors landed on these shores, on the good ship "KENT" in 1666...on that small boat, bringing so few things to survive... I cringe when I think of their troubles. I have here sitting next to me, an iron, fire place "cooking pot." They first built a chimney so they could use this pot, and using their sparse tools, built out from it shelters, to protect them from the weather. So many died, so many buried at sea. All they had was there faith.

            They were called "Puritans;" A name of derision...because like present-day committed Christians, they refused to live under the liberality of Government: "anything goes," "the end justifies the means." In the 500 years since the reformation, the deaths of John Husk, John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, and others who had the audacity to bring the word of God to the ears of the common man (Wycliffe and Husk burned at the stake for translating God's word from the Latin Vulgate into English). We memorialize our ancestors, just as we memorialize all those heroes who have made our American way of life possible.

Will-o'-the-wisp And Rush Week

           

"For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him."

            You would think that I am smarter than that, but there are days when I am so overwhelmed with the "the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful" (Mark 4:19). Even this commited, convinced, concerned, real Christian man falls into the paroxysm that effects so many men...earth travelers. We want God to fit into our world, rather than staying in God's world. We live in a world of "likeness," just floating...letting Satan fill our souls with doubts and fears.

            Anyone who has ever had an answer to prayer knows that his life is never the same again. Perhaps my first real answer to prayer, it was not a matter of extreme anything, such as a near death experience; I was a freshman student fighting the battle of conjured fears at the University (UNCCH), who had come from poverty in impoverished Eastern North Carolina. I was unprepared for any college experience, in having to compete with young men from wealthy homes with superior preparation in large prep schools. Yet, in order for me to remain a student, I had to work and pay my own expenses. I could take you to the spot, a stone fence at the rear of the Wilson library, just across from the Bell tower; I had not eaten for two days, I know what it is like to be hungry and penniless. I asked God to arrange for me to go home where I knew there was food on the table of my poor country house, or arrange for me to have things a little better. He said to me, almost audible, "In that medical school where you work, those large leather chairs in the library, money falls out of men's pockets." That night, on the job working in this library, I searched those chairs and found so many coins...quarters and fifty cent pieces. I was able to eat until payday, when I got my check for working at the University. This same thing has happened over and over throughout my life...even in this world of blackness I live in after losing my eyesight. Why don't we believe him when he tells us (those who believe in him) "[Let your] conversation [be] without covetousness; [and be] content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee" (Hebrews 13:5).

        Just think, the one who created the world and everything in it, who threw the stars into space, he actually cares about my welfare....cares about my every thought on this earth; and then, almost beyond comprehension, desires a relationship with me forever. There are those in this world who would burn a city down in order to rule it, who believe in killing even the most innocent babies as population control or as a matter of convenience; even ravaging innocent, developing children whose lives are measured by greed...and think they are successful.

            It seems almost incomprehensible that God, in his mercy, would choose a country boy from "nowhere" to travel EVERYWHERE. He wanted me to sense this great Earth, and be willing to tell you all about it. He knew that in my life experience, I had known so many children who had never enjoyed a nice piece of cake, had seen so many adults who had never worn a proper fitting pair of shoes. I still remember old men in the poor community where I was raised wearing shoes that were sliced in many places to accommodate growing feet and bunions acquired by the ill-fitting shoes. He wanted me to tell you about children in Africa and Asia whose parents had chopped off their limbs in order to make them "professional beggars" (their methods of survival).

            At the time, this same University, running/walking fast to get from one class to another while keeping up with my job, I would ponder what went on at the fancy fraternity houses where young men of my age were always having a party/enjoying life. One great writer once said, the purpose of college is to "network," to meet people, people who will/can help you. He failed to say that 90% of all the forces that effect your life are deceptive...that most of your friends are just pretenders. Perhaps I felt I was left out by the "technocrats" of rush week when the élites' sons of politicians and wealth chose their fraternity brothers for initiation. I now realize that so much of the selective/prestigious life is just will-o'-the-wisp...alluring/misleading, gratuitous...deceptive.

            This world is a matter of electricity. From the gravity of the two poles at either end of the Earth's surface (and I have traveled to both the North and South poles). Everything is a matter of gravitational forces, from the chemical equation to the power current that "lights up" the city, or the electricity of your body. When the electricity of your body dies, you are clinically dead. Life is more of a will-o'-the-wisp, an alluring fantasy. Chosen for life, every hair on your head is numbered, there is not a maverick molecule in your universe. 

Ramblings of An Old Mind

Subject: Fwd: Ramblings of an Old Mind

    

    

I found this timely, because today I was in a store that sells sunglasses, and only sunglasses. A young lady walks over to me and asks, "What brings you in today?"   I looked at her, and said, "I'm interested in buying a refrigerator.”  She didn't quite know how to respond.

 Am I getting to be that age?

 I was thinking about how a status symbol of today is those cell phones that everyone has clipped onto their belt or purse. I can't afford one. So I'm wearing my garage door opener.

 I was thinking about old age and decided that old age is when you still have something on the ball, but you are just too tired to bounce it.

 I thought about making a fitness movie for folks my age and calling it 'Pumping Rust.'

  When people see a cat's litter box they always say, “Oh, have you got a cat?” Just once I want to say, “No, it's for company!”

 Employment application blanks always ask who is to be called in case of an emergency.   I think you should write,‘An ambulance.' 

The older you get the tougher it is to lose weight because by then your body and your fat have  gotten to be really good friends.

 The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a replacement.

 Did you ever notice: The Roman Numerals for forty (40) are XL.

 The sole purpose of a child's middle name is so he can tell when he's really in trouble..

 Did you ever notice: When you put the 2 words ' The'   and ' IRS ' together it spells   'Theirs...'

 Aging: Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.

 Some people try to turn back their "odometers." Not me. I want people to know 'why' I look this way. I've traveled a long way and some of the roads weren't paved.

 You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks.

 Ah! Being young is beautiful but being old is comfortable.

 Lord, keep your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth.

 May you always have Love to Share, Cash to Spare, And Friends who Care.

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"Is this all?" by John MacDuff--6 minute challenging and insightful video!
Watch Video  Download Video

   

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Death--to the righteous and the wicked

(George Lawson, "A Practical Exposition of the Book of Proverbs" 1821)

"The wicked will be cut off from the land--and the unfaithful will be torn from it." Proverbs 2:22 

Must not the righteous leave the earth too? 
Yes! But the earth is a very different thing to the righteous, and to the wicked. 

To the righteous--this world is a place of preparation or Heaven. 
To the wicked--this world is all the Heaven they will ever have. 

Death is a kind messenger sent to the righteous by their heavenly Father--calling them to the possession of their eternal inheritance!
To the wicked, death is a messenger of wrath--summoning them to the abodes of misery! 

Death is the beginning of happiness to God's people.
Death is the final conclusion of all that the wicked counted their happiness. 

To the righteous--death is a translation to a glorious eternity! 
To the wicked--death is everlasting destruction and woe! 

"If only they were wise and would understand this--and discern what their end will be!" Deuteronomy 32:29 

"So teach us to number our days--that we may gain a heart of wisdom!" Psalm 90:12

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#1968

 

Perishing or Permanent

"I have lived in sight of the ocean

Where the water runs into land

I have walked on the beach in the morning

And left my tracks in the sand

But musical waves have been calling

And the ocean is so wide and vast

That I've struck for the silver horizon

And put out to sea at last."

            Most people think we live in a real world of virtual reality. About the time you are ready to relax, a "robo-call," a marketing scheme rivals in our daily news digestion only by fake news. What a world my great-granddaughter will inherit. The internet is the backbone of the world's economy. The great writer, C.S. Lewis, said that "prosperity knits a person to the world."

            This blind Veteran, in his 87th year, having lived the struggle of poverty and every other challenge, which I believe has made me a better man. Now, living in a world of blackness for over 50 years, can state without any reluctance that it has been persistence in the face of darkness that has proven to me every day of my life faith is better than sight.

            Your writer has never known the thrill of holding a golf club...hitting a golf ball. Even when young, your writer was never good with any type ball...baseball/football/basketball. I was never one of the boys chosen for a team, I never wore a ball uniform, never a wearer of a school athletic letter. I never got a concussion from football, never excited any cheerleader, never shuffled any cards at a poker game; BUT, I was chosen. God chose me for life, chose me to live in a poor, but blessed home, a home anointed by God-fearing, hard-working, tax-paying parents. No matter how hard my parents worked in the field that day, if their children were involved in something in school that night, they put on their Sunday clothes and were there. These are precious memories, permanent memories, not perishing memories.

            The greatest of things that my parents taught me were priorities. Priorities are permanent. They guide your life. Show me a man's priorities, a man's habits/routine (and I will tell you much about the man). This is not a perfect man talking to you. Satan wanted me. I have two fine, straight-as-arrows, grandsons...one a lawyer, the other an engineer. I have told their seminary professor father that God alone knows how much Satan wanted MY father, me, him, and certainly my grandsons. It is so essential to put up a permanent, non-perishing "firewall" for Christ-centered belief when young. And, Satan does not leave you alone once you become old...he likes old people too. The greatest tragedy in my mind, was to meet an old-mannered woman, sunset of life...not yet prepared for death; and yet, when perishing, the thief on the right side of our precious Lord on the cross, so many on the death bed, God is always willing to make their salvation permanent...whether they have ever given one penny, or done one thing towards his works on Earth.

            With an abundance of food everywhere, we live in a world of starving people...starved for wholesome nutrition, starved for love (I am told that a baby will die if not loved); yet, our streets are filled with children of foster homes, children who are abused by their own parents or by foster parents. Electric power is in the line. You must plug into the source of power to get the benefits of electricity. Unless you plug into the source of power, you can stay in darkness forever. Unless you use available food, you can starve to death.

            This world traveler (Dr. Morris has been around the world 8 times, passport stamped in 157 countries) was in Thailand, in a village of desperately poor people; so many children. A concert pianist from San Francisco was in Bangkok, and asked if he could join my group on our excursion that day. He was an old man, overweight, but had never experienced the plight of anguished children, as had this writer, all over the world. In spite of everything, you learn not to give out anything. This man had some candy in his pocket, that he had the problem of munching on. All the beautiful, poor children who had never had a piece of candy until he began giving it out. In just a few minutes time, he was down on the ground having his clothing picked cleaned by children wanting his candy; we all had to rescue him.

            In the old family church, built by my great-grandparent in 1874, I often heard this old hymn "rescue the perishing, care for the dying." I do believe that God wanted me to sense the world. Though blind eyes could not see it, but I can sense it. I could smell the many scents from Markets. Is it not truly remarkable that a poor boy from impoverished Eastern, NC, graduate from a small country school (13 in grad class), work his way through eight years of university education to become a doctor with several advanced degrees, and then travel the world, even been asked to talk about it at some places, and then have the blessing to be able to write about it, AND I actually have the thrill of hearing some of my articles read on international short-wave radio. Truly, a perishing world needs the permanence of a divine savior. keep Satan from getting you. He and 30% of his cavorting angels were kicked out of heaven because he defrauded God. Don't let him defraud you.

            On the banks of the holy Ganges's, India, I was getting out of a boat. Something was clinging to my legs. I said to the boat-hand "what is wrong, something is holding on to me." They were begging children. Parents and others chop off their legs and they are left to beg...a perishing world.

#1967

"An Important Bridge"

When my sweet daughter Eliza was dying!

(John Newton's Letters)

My Dear Sir,
Our dear daughter Eliza never went out of doors after she returned home from visiting you. She had a succession and a variety of pains and maladies--and three weeks from her leaving your hospitable roof, the Lord delivered her from them all. For four days we expected her death every hour--and though she suffered much, we could not but be thankful that she continued so long. 

Her peace and confidence in God were abiding. Her mouth was filled with words of grace--comforting or exhorting all around her. Often she declared that she would not change conditions with any person upon earth, nor be willing to live longer here, even if restored to perfect health--for all that the world, or a thousand such worlds can afford! She smiled upon pain--and she smiled upon death. When she died, which seemed to be in a sort of slumber, she had reclined her cheek gently upon her hand, and there was almost a smile left upon her countenance. 

When my sweet daughter Eliza was dying, I almost wished it practical to have set my door open, and invited all who passed by to come in and see what it is to die in the Lord, and to hear what a child under fifteen could say of His goodness, and of the vanity of everything short of His favor!

Yes, the Lord has done great things for us since we came home. He sent achariot of love for our dear Eliza! We almost saw her mount to Heaven. Surely she was in Heaven, and Heaven in her--before she left the earth! 

I am constrained to confess that no one circumstance in my whole life called for a larger return of gratitude and praise--than the death of our dear girl. I knew that I loved her dearly--but how dearly I never knew, until about the last week of her life. Yet I am most perfectly satisfied, and have not had the most distant wish for a moment since she died--that the outcome had been otherwise. 

The thought of her helps me sometimes in prayer, often in preaching, and gives me such a confirmation of the great truths I speak of, as I would not be without.

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Addition, Dr. Morris:

            The greatest distance in the world, not the distance from the Earth to the sun, or the distance from any point A to point B; the fourteen inch distance from the heart to the brain. The believer must bridge that distance.

            Most believers and non-believers want to reduce God to their level of thinking. How often I have sat in a church house, strangers coming in to look around, perhaps visiting some church member. They tried to pretend like others, singing the gospel hyms, perhaps putting a "tip" in the offering plate, or even bowing in prayer. They had no idea about what was going on. We can understand why Jesus told us that there would be so few who find the narrow way.

            The house of worship should be a quiet, dignified, holy place. It is what the Old Testament described as the "inner court," where you find God. All other Christian activities, no matter how great they are, should take place in the "outer court." It was in the church yard that my ancestors met and greeted their friends. I cringe at the modern day church service, when the pastor invites everyone to shake hands with others, to greet others, both believers and non-believers. It has been a terrible drought on my existence... whether unbelievers should even be allowed to participate in a Christian worship service. How can they pray to a God that they do not know? How can they sing blessed hyms about a Jesus in whom they do not believe? Yet, perhaps, a miracle might happen...and they "bridged" that distance between their unbelieving heart and their unbelieving mind. After all, the thief on the cross had never done one thing in the support of Christ, or anything else good for that matter. All he had to do was to look at Christ, and believe in his mind.

            There are so many good works brought inside the church house...recognitions, ladders involving study, but, God's love is in the praise of his people. ("But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel.” (Psalm 22:3)) The true worship service does not magnify human beings, but rather, glorifies God. It is a time of prayer . No greater worship than the worship instructed, memorialized, at the Lords Table. No greater worship than the "giving-back" to God, for his blessings and his work.

            God must surely be sickened by pretenders who never opened or studied his book...the answer book for every human need. Most believers want to live like non-believers...chasing after popularity, financial security, personal gratification. Unbelievers are so entertaining...so much charisma/gravitas. It is essential that a child of God, a believer in his resurrection, know the joy of salvation and can rejoice in redemption. 

#1966

Shade and Shadows

    The Hollow Men

    We are the hollow men

    We are the stuffed men
    Leaning together
    Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
    Our dried voices, when
    We whisper together
    Are quiet and meaningless
    As wind in dry grass
    Or rats' feet over broken glass
    In our dry cellar
    
    Shape without form, shade without colour,
    Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
    
    Those who have crossed
    With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
    Remember us-if at all-not as lost
    Violent souls, but only
    As the hollow men
    The stuffed men.

-T.S.Eliot

            When you wear the amour of God (Ephesians 6:13), you have a testimony. You cannot retreat one inch. Satanic forces are so anxious to stab you in the back. Those of us with a testimony are not popular, even among associates/friends/neighbors, and especially family members. When you wear without apology/shame the whole amour of God, you must be prepared for the worst. It is going to get become more of a challenge for Christians. In a nation founded on Christian principles, the Int/over-paid bureaucrats/promising politicians actual believe that the Christian religion is just "superstition." They don't want to see Christianity outside of its place of worship. Since I was a child, I have always worn a Christian cross on my coat lapel. I want people to know whose side I'm on. I know (and real Christians know) that if unbelievers will actually kill the creator of the universe, the God-man Jesus (and there are thousands of martyrs who would give testimony of this fact) of whom the earth was not worthy (Hebrews 11:38), then we should not be greatly bothered if unbelievers (those who are not afraid of hell) despise us. The real Christian walks and talks under the blessings of the "all-seeing" eye of God. His protection is the mighty right hand of God (Isaiah 41:10).

            Your writer is 87 years of age, totally blind, but has wonderful memories of this present world. I still remember the comfort from shade trees. We had great oak trees around our house, where we retreated from the hot sun in the hot summertime. In my mind, I can still see our beautiful milk cows under the shade trees in the pasture, escaping the heat. In the horrors of today's highway traffic, pathologies for which we must take medication, in the warp and woof of every day living, it is so comfortable that we are provided with shade. For every persecution/trial/tribulation God always provides beauty/comfort/joy.

            This greatly blessed world-traveler, who has seen the bottomless ocean of technology birth and bloom during his lifetime, still feels the guilt/difference/exceptions from the shadows that bothered my ancestors. My mother and grandmothers made a fire in a wood stove before cooking any meal. They would think a microwave/toaster-oven/blender would be the greatest things in the world. Most of my ancestors never knew the thrill of having store-bought clothing...a sewing machine or type-writer/telephone... were technical miracles. In my boyhood, there were still spinning wheels, quilting frames, and everyone wore mended clothing. There were some rich people, even back then; but today, the poorest of the poor in this nation live better than kings and queens did 200 years ago. I still remember the shadows of death in every hospital room. My grandmother had breast cancer, and I can still hear her screams of pain in the hospital, the doctors of that time called it a carbuncle. So many small graves in the cemetery, because the shadow of death erased the lives of so many babies. This writers' first experience of death, in my memory is the image of a cheap casket in the hallway of a poor home. My parents never shielded me from anything. I remember my mother standing by that casket, looking at her dead friend who had died during child-birth. I remember my mother telling my father that the baby was wrapped in a blanket next to the mother.

            God made arrangements for me to travel the entire world (passport stamped in 157 countries, every continent). I saw the dead being cremated along the Ganges (India). I saw frozen bodies stacked like cordwood. Today's youth have no idea of the shadows that preceded their lives. Warfare has become so sanitized...it was difficult to kill a man with a sword or bayonet. Now, you just use a drone to drop a bomb and kill the innocent, without giving any consideration to the horrors left behind. I remember the first plastics. Plastic, now involved in everything we used, being a shade of comfort to mankind; but we now know that plastics are a shadow bringing death (chemicals leeched into food, exotic chemicals of plastic in contact with your skin, plastics as filler in food). The human body, nor the body of any animal, can digest synthetics.

            I feel nothing but sorrow for those who do not want salvation/regeneration/resurrection. They believe, after life (which is so short) that they will just become fertilizer...that there is no life beyond death. The evolutionist, Charles Darwin, who wanted to be a doctor, ran from the hospital the first time he heard the screams of pain from surgery (this was before anesthesia). He then thought he could convince the world that this life is all there is to it. Later, Carl Sagan (Cosmos), stated that this is all there is, nothing else. Most of your teachers/college professors, even your neighbors, have their unbelief/doubts/fears about life here and what follows. The creator of the universe actually dictated a book containing all the answers. Everything about his word, everything about the comfort of the shade he supplies us, everything about the shadows that have always been lurking, tells us that we should not approach the certain "end-of-life" with indifference.

#1965

Happiness or "Wantingness"

I always carry an oil can in my pocket!

(J.R. Miller, "Intimate Letters on Personal Problems" 1914)

There is a good illustration in one of Dr. Parkhurst's books. He tells of a workman who was in a trolley-car one day. As the door was opened and shut, it squeaked. The workman quietly got up and, taking a little can from his pocket, dropped some oil upon the offending spot, saying as he sat down, "I always carry an oil can in my pocket, for there are so many squeaky things in this world which a little oil will help."

Dr. Parkhurst applies this to life, saying that love is a lubricant with which we can soften or prevent a great many unpleasant frictions with others--if we always have love and will speak the gentle word, the soft word, the kindly word, at the right time. I used the illustration recently in my church in a sermon, and suggested to the people that they all carry oil cans, thus trying to make the world a little sweeter place to live in.

"I am not writing you a new command, but one we have had from the beginning--that we love one another." 2 John 1:5

"The entire law is summed up in a single command: Love your neighbor as yourself." Galatians 5:14

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you--so you must love one another." John 13:34

Addition, Dr. Morris

            Only in America, do you find so many active/memorialized cemeteries. Our farming ancestors, almost without exception, had a family grave-yard near the farm home. On islands in the Pacific, I saw burial plots with tombstones in the front yards of most homes. In our sanitized world, when death is involved, and some families don't even look at their dead, I often wonder what people think about when they visit a cemetery.

            For the Christian, those who believe in the resurrection of Jesus and the eventual resurrection of their own loved ones, the cemetery "grave-mounds" of their loved ones are only historical reminders of what has happened to a worn-out body. We rejoice in the fact that the soul is already enjoying eternity/eternal bliss with God. There will be a resurrection of the deceased body from that grave, but for those who buried their loved ones unregenerated/unsaved, it was truly the second death, and there is neither hope nor happiness; only bleak "wantingness."

            Even the friends and disciples of our blessed lord, those who walked and talked with him every day...those who saw his miracles, evidently did not believe that he would resurrect. I believe that if they had believed his words about rising again on the third day succeeding his death, that they would have been at the graveyard "when the stone was rolled away." But, his resurrection made an eclysmic change in their lives...none of his disciples were ever the same again, each of them (expect John, who lived to be the oldest, and was only 17 years of age when called), went to their deaths as martyrs; Peter crucified...tradition tells up upside down. Luke hanged from an olive tree in Greece, Mark dragged through the streets of Alexandria, Bartholomew skinned alive, Thomas, always a doubter/fearful...going all the way across the Himalayas to India (The most religious place in the world).

            This writer stood at Madras, India where Thomas was killed by a Brahma Hindu sword. The resurrection is the greatest part of your Christian life because, in the death of your family and friends, if they are saved, you know that they will live forever. Your soul, which has no mass/no identity. Your soul makes you what you are, your individuality; other parts of your body can be transplanted...heart, liver, cornea, etc, but the soul is in the blood...(Leviticus 17:11). Your soul leaves the body at your death; last breath here, first breath there. But, a cemetery will never look the same if you realize that is only a place to put the remains of a worn-out body...awaiting resurrection.

#1964

Pilot Light

"I believe that God created the known universe, the earth and everything in it, including man. And I also believe that someday scientists will come to see that only the theory of intelligent design provides even a remotely rational explanation for the known universe." -Vice President Mike Pence

The pilot light is largely unknown by today's tech-savvy young people...the passion and purpose of a small flame becoming a very large fire. We force children to attend school. And yet, obviously, they learn nothing. The advertisement is right, "a mind is a terrible thing to waste." American children spend an average of eleven hours a day in front of a screen (computer/phone/TV). Anyone who can read has the ability to study his own health problems. You know more about your body than anyone else. Most diagnostic doctors spend a total of seven minutes with a patient. You are fortunate indeed if your doctor even touches you. The only thing he touches, the keyboard of a computer, attempting to determine your condition via certain tests. There are two things that determine all diseases, nutrition going in, and toxicity coming out. When nutrition goes down, toxicity goes up.

At the UNC-CH medical school, I so remember in the pathology dept, a room filled with caged rats...used in research and experimentation. If the researcher wants to establish cancer in the rat, the rat ingests plastics; Alzheimer's, drugs that control cholesterol (statins), Diabetes (corn-syrup). Most of these killers are approved by the FDA. Before you experiment with humans, you experiment with rats...the genomes are very close. The difference between life and death is the electricity flowing through the body.

When will Americans get tired and sick enough of the politics involving health care. One would think that only politicians know enough, or care enough for your health. It has become a political bouncing ball...the greatest expense and the greatest worry of most human beings.

When will hardworking, God-fearing, tax paying citizens get enough of the hoax of the big money involved in big Pharma and big medicine. It is all a matter of money. Can you even imagine the economic depression which would develop if a cure were found for cancer...so many people getting rich from cancer treatment? The politics of medicine no longer has a cure for anything, just treatment. When did your doctor last ask you about what you eat? Oh, the deceit and politics of health. Don't believe any of the advertisements you see, one after the other, involving drugs. Have you ever read all the papers attached to any prescription you get, warnings about side effects. Your doctor as not read them. You put these expensive poisons in your body at your own risk...slow suicide; the money involved in health care, you paying for your own death, and sometimes it takes a long time...drugs and devices, all very expensive.

Decide to live, read and study available material concerning your illness, concerning holistic methods, concerning supplements. Your health, your life, is your responsibility. It is not up to the politicians in Washington. If you made their money, if you had their lifestyle, if you could go to specialized treatment centers as do they, you would understand the difference in treatment for cancer and the treatment for renal or cardiac troubles; one has a better chance of surviving cancer than surviving heart attacks.

Every parent, every health care professional, is a pilot light. We all have the ability to start a big fire by disclosing the truth involving treatment. The drug industry wants every breathing human being to take several pills; and they use every means possible, every sales technique, to make sure that doctors are "peddling" their pills. Why do we refer to the section of town where doctors and such live as "pill hill?" Doctors must keep their reception areas crammed with patients in order to "cram" bank accounts with the money necessary to put Mercedes in the driveway, children in very expensive schools (every type of lesson; writing, fencing, music, etc.) Someone said "God loves poor people because there are so many of us." There are many poor people because the poor cannot afford to exterminate themselves with the high cost of health.

Your writer is a world traveler. In the poorest areas of India/China/Africa, the poor people were thin. You never saw a fat person in these parts of these countries. They ate the basics...just enough food to stay alive. I went to physician/dentist and other offices in these countries. All the dentist could do was pull a tooth. He knew nothing about so called "modern dentistry." I saw children who had never seen a piece of candy. We need educators with passion for a purpose. We need physicians, pastors, and parents who instill in young people a passion for life, that life is a challenge, that keeping fit and healthy is essential.

I believe there is no such thing as a maverick molecule. The all seeing eye of God is still in charge of everything.

"I am the God that
Healeth thee
I am the Lord
Your healer
I sent My word
And I healed your disease
I am the Lord
Your healer?"

-Don Moen

 

It is still beyond my comprehension; as a commited, convinced, concerned Christian, that many who believe in our blessed lord do not take him at his word, but at his table we take the bread for healing, a taste of wine in celebration of his forgiving.

Dr. T.R. Morris
Lt. Col USA Retired
Blind/Dictated
Visit my blog at http://carolinahedgehog.blogspot.com/

Facebook: http://www.DrThomasMorris.com
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#1963

Dissapointed Hopes...Scattered Dreams

 “Some have narrowed their minds, and so fettered them with the chains of antiquity that not only do they refuse to speak save as the ancients spake, but they refuse to think save as the ancients thought. God speaks to us, too, and the best thoughts are those now being vouchsafed to us. We will excel the ancients!” -- Girolamo Savonarola

 When we have the mind of Christ, we need nothing else. When the last page of the book of your life is read, others will know if it has been a comedy or a tragedy. Pride is the beginning of every sin. Pride must die in you if anything from Heaven is going to live in you. In another article, "The Good Earth," I related the Church of my childhood, built by ancestors of both my mother and father, and that denominations faith and practice of washing "Saints' feet." Can you even imagine today's "highfalutin" pompous, painted, powdered, puffed-up, pew-warming church members getting down and washing someone's feet. Very few "so-called" Christians have that type of humility any longer but, I saw this in the Church where I was raised...I participated in this part of that Church's Communion. We felt that this act of humility/contrition was just as important as taking the bread and wine at the Lord's Table. The first image I have in my brain, as a very small child, my own precious mother, on her knees washing the feet of another lady...perhaps my grandmother. Humility was real to the early Christians. I often wondered why my family members and ancestors were so humble. After all, both my mother and father's families were of the states first families, the fist settlers of this state. 

It was not until I went to college that I realized the value many people place on "brands," names, and things. It was in college that I first learned that advanced education is more about networking, meeting the right people, making long-time connections, than actually getting an education. I had already realized that the "sorriest" among us had the largest funerals. My hard-working, God-fearing, tax paying parents and grandparents...known for their frugality and honorable lives, were never popular among the elitist because they were republican. In a state RULED by democrats for 140, the democratic party had tyrannical rule over NC, particularly the impoverished Eastern part of the state. Poor tenant farmers living in shacks, cotton mill workers shackled to the mill store, and political mail controlled as in slaves as the Jewish "brick-makers" to their Egyptian captors. You could not get a job working on a road, could not teach school, work in a hospital, even drive a public school bus...in the state of North Carolina, if you were not a registered democrat and a contributor to the party. If you work yourself to death, getting any type of advanced degree...medicine, PhD, etc. You could not get a job at a state institution of education if you were not a democrat. And, the same political party that kept blacks "in their place," were in charge of everything. My parents told me that IF I expected to get anywhere in this world, I would join the democrat party. This I did, I even became president of the State young democrats. But one day at the hotel Sir Walter in Raleigh, the temple of the democrat party, sitting at a table with Governor Sanford and US representative Fountain, I decided that every man (if he is going to call himself a man) must make real decisions. I had seen the fraud of democrats as a child...hauling black people to the poles to vote that they would not speak to otherwise. They would hand the black person a cheap piece of candy in order to mark THEIR ballot. Can one even imagine the fact that today's minority's march in lock-step to support this same democrat party?

 This doctor was the first doctor in his town not to have "Jim Crow" waiting rooms. I was NC young man of the year. Even though from pulpits and podiums across the state...especially to Baptists, I had talked about the hypocrisy which had invaded the Christian Church...total lack of humility. How can any Christian pretend to be a believer in God, salvation by grace through faith, and still discriminate against ones fellow man...regardless of the shade of skin color. Even the blacks themselves were bigots. There were organizations that would only admit fellow blacks if their skin was as brown as that of a paper bag, this was the test that they used at the entrance door of their group, holding said brown paper bag to judge their skin color. And, I was amazed/heart-sick that young men such as myself were despised because we were not sought after to pledge a fraternity. I have never recovered from the fight that money/looks/family DNA determined your desirability for certain civic clubs, all country clubs.

 I was there right after blacks could co-exist with whites, President Truman had a black secretary (I still remember her name, Tilly) she hated white people. Perhaps my best friend in the Army was a black doctor. He was raised in the Mississippi Delta. His entire community working hard to send him to Meharry medical school. It will take a long time for the black race to recover from their years of bigoted treatment.

 Today, there are about 16 million Jews in the world. A race to which our blessed Lord belonged. There are about as many Jews in New York city as in the Jewish state of Israel. They are a spectacular group of people. Most Nobel Prize winners are Jews. Most scientific achievements are traced directly to a Jew. Hitler tried to eliminate this race but failed. God told Abraham, the first Jew, that there would be as many followers of him as stars in the sky. As soon as we forget that every human being to whom God has given life is a very special person...his own set of fingerprints, one in 64 million chance of sharing identical prints with someone else...his own specs of Iris in the eye, his own manner of walking. There are never two voices alike. Just think, seven billion on the face of the earth today, and probably that many already deceased, never two alike. Even identical twins, sharing the same mothers' womb, same DNA, are never exactly alike.

 Over 100 times in the New Testament, we are told about the resurrection of Christ. Every book in the bible, except the book of Luke, was written by a Jew. Yet there are those discriminating against Jews because of their race; blacks because of the melanin in their skin, and most of us because we are WHO or WHAT we are.


 Dr. T.R. Morris MD Lt. Col USA Retired Blind/Dictated Visit my blog at http://carolinahedgehog.blogspot.com/ Facebook: http://www.DrThomasMorris.com * For release to Disability and religious publications* (910)-251-6218 (910)-762-9467 (Dr. Morris is a totally blind 100% disabled service connected veteran, 8 around the world trips, passport stamped in 157 countries) *If you would like to be removed from this mailing list, please reply to this email with the subject line "REMOVE" and the email address that you were sent this email at* CC: NCDJ, NHC, President Trump, Media