Anagogic

The word anagogic is unfamiliar to most people, even academics, only the spiritual, the believer in the supernatural, the one who has a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit of God, can know the mystical, scriptural interpretation connecting the believer with God. Our redemption is personal, only the forgiven can understand forgiveness, until you have been forgiven, until you have a relationship with God through Christ, you cannot preach, teach, or even write about this soul-cleansing experience. Only then, can you understand anagogic.

I have found in a long life of knowing “baby Christians”, those who have been Bible students for many years, and even theologians, that when it comes to religion, most people are just playing games with God. They do not know what they believe, nor can they explain what they believe. We do what we do because we believe what we believe, whether pretending in comfort on a Sunday morning or becoming a martyr, knowing the reality of faith. 85% of all people questioned said they believe they will go to heaven when they die, most of these people who think they will go to heaven when they die, know nothing about heaven. It is just a romantic thought, against the otherwise awful alternative. No one thinks he is going to hell, and no one thinks anyone he knows is going to hell. In the greatest sermon ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5,6,7), Christ himself said, “broad is the way that leads to destruction, and narrow is the way that leads to live eternal.” Remember, of the billions on earth at the time of the Great Flood, only 8 survived, we do not know how many were in Sodom when the fire fell, when destruction came to the city. But only Lot and his wife survived, she looked back, there is a reason that God put in the scripture, almost isolated from anything else, “remember Lot's wife” (Luke 17:32).

The only book in the world dictated by god, a book that has every answer, that most who think that they are going to heaven, totally ignore, Paul's letter to the Hebrews reminds us to study God's word (Hebrews 4:12). We have for our instruction, revelation not speculation. The real Christian knows God, and God knows that Christian.

I thought of the above as I studied the 8 Christians killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan on August 5th. As most of you know, I am a trained, licensed eye doctor, army medical officer, and I was in school with an eye doctor by the name of Little. His father was also an eye doctor, practicing in Canada, and the one who was killed in Afghanistan, along with other doctors in his group were from New York. Dr. Tom Little, like Dr. Jim Elliot (killed in Ecuador), knew the real meaning of taking the healing arts to those who needed them most. Their healing hands came from healing hearts, evidently Dr. Little had been in Afghanistan for more than 40 years, providing eye care, along with other doctors providing other care. His wife, in America, making arrangements for the birth of their grandchild, said, “We had 40 wonderful years together — of serving together, all those years, doing what we thought we should do. And that’s enough for a life “

“He worked in an area that had terrible problems with glaucoma and was a help to thousands of people” said Rev. Lawrence Roff, of the First Presbyterian Church of Schenectady. Little moved to Afghanistan in the late 1970s and operated vision clinics and eye hospitals through one crisis after another. The Little family survived the Soviet invasion, the shelling of Kabul, endured a long civil war, and suffered through the rise of the Taliban regime. A Taliban spokesman told The Associated Press in Pakistan that his group killed the eight foreigners and two Afghan interpreters because they were spying for the US and preaching Christianity.

Tom’s wife made it clear that this was their ministry. It was their way of serving God by serving those in need, this was not a short-term, two-week trip that some make on occasion. This was a lifetime of serving others. It even included having their children with them and at times avoiding rocket attacks and worse. As Libby put it, “100 rockets was a good day.”

The God haters of the world, the pretenders and counterfeits, who play around with the church and God, “just in care there is something to it,” will never understand the anagogics involved in that 13 inch distance between the brain and the heart of man. Why should bright, beautiful people give their lives on the alter of sacrifice to others when they could have a comfortable existence otherwise? When the holy spirit of God transforms you, and you become a new creation, you will not care what others think, your joy comes from serving God...”wherever he leads, I'll go.” (Hymn, B.B. McKinney)

Rest In Peace, Dr. Tom Little and your fellow Christians.

Vision

On or about the same time that the British reported they had lost over 200 soldiers in the Afghanistan fighting, it was reported that 12 times more opium leaves Afghanistan now than before the war started 8 years ago. The world's love for smack is probably the reason this bogus war is being fought. I have been in Afghanistan three times in my life, the Hindu Kush mountains are the most formidable terrain on earth. There is nothing in the entire country that would cause anyone to want it: Russians, British, US or anyone else. The only possible reason countries continue to fight over this poor, desolate unforgiving country, is the poppy crop which supplies the world with opium. Is it really worth the fight?

In the War of 1812, a headline came out in one paper, “Great Battle Won. Only One Man Killed.” Just one man was killed in this battle, but for the mother of that man, the wife of that man, the children of that man, it was the end of their world. A few years ago, in one Russia battle to gain a foothold in Afghanistan, a young Russian soldier was killed and his remains were sent home to his family in a casket which was sealed and which was accompanied by another solider. There was a time even in this country, when battle casualties were brought home in flag-draped caskets with an accompanying honor guard. (Now, pictures are not even made of caskets at Dover). The Russian mother of this dead solider thought she could see her dead son in the casket in uniform and she so begged the guards to open the casket. Someone should have prepared this family as all families about the condition of casualties in modern war. Anyway, she put some sleeping tablets in some tea, which she gave the guard and when he passed out, she got a crow bar and got the casket open. She, nor anyone else could be prepared for what she saw. Often, when explosives, even with suicide bombers do their damage, there is not much left that anyone would want to see.

Young men who have been reared in the sanity and sanitized life style of most Americans are not prepared for what they see in warfare, certainly not in modern warfare. At Fort Campbell, KY, the 101st “Screaming Eagles' ” commander, Brig. Gen. Townsend, who has lost an average of two men a week to suicide said, "Suicide is a permanent solution to what is only a temporary problem. Screaming Eagles don't quit. No matter how bad your problem seems today, trust me, it's not the end of the world. It will be better tomorrow. Don't take away your tomorrow."

Military investigators have found that most suicides result from drugs, financial problems and marital problems. But, I attribute many of the problems in the military to the anti-Christian attitude taken by the military in recent years. It is reported that Bibles are not considered important.

The U.S. military is confirming that it has destroyed some Bibles belonging to an American soldier serving in Afghanistan. Reuters News says the Bibles were confiscated and destroyed after Qatar-based Al Jazeera television showed soldiers at a Bible class on a base with a stack of Bibles translated into the local Pashto and Dari languages. The U.S. military forbids its members on active duty -- including those based in places like Afghanistan -- from trying to convert people to another religion.

Reuters quotes Maj. Jennifer Willis at the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, who said "I can now confirm that the Bibles shown on Al Jazeera's clip were, in fact, collected by the chaplains and later destroyed. They were never distributed."
According to the military officials, the Bibles were sent through private mail to an evangelical Christian soldier by his church back home. Reuters says the soldier brought them to the Bible study class where they were filmed.

It has been reliably reported to me that on some military bases, NCO's are confiscating personal bibles of soldiers. If there is ever a time in a young man or a young woman's life, when a personal relationship with God and the Bible is needed, it is a time of military service, especially in a combat zone. Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he. (Proverbs 29:18) It is a certainty, that all deaths reported as suicide are not suicides. Two of the most famous are Admiral Borta who reportedly committed suicide and NFL football's, Pat Tillman who was supposedly killed by friendly fire. Many feel that Tillman knew things about the bogus Afghan war to which some might listen because of his prominence. In 1978, at a military conference involving terrorism, the FBI is reported to have said that they could make any death appear to be suicide or natural.
It does not take dumbed-down, pleasure-seeking Americans long to tire of an unpopular war. After the planes supposedly destroyed the World Trade Center and one supposedly hit the Pentagon (small hole by big plane, the explanation for the Pentagon plane explosion - never understood) on September 11th, 2001 (9-11). There was an outburst of patriotism for about two weeks. Someone said to me, “I have never seen so many flags.” I said, “It will be over real quick. American patriotism and the flying of flags is short-lived.” It reminds me of an old man in the country church who went to the alter in repentance every time the church had a revival. His salvation did not last very long. His wife once said, “If it would only stick.”
Young men and women are never prepared for the horrors of warfare, the destruction, the dead, the mangled. Any disaster leaves an unforgettable impression. Traveling through India by train, the railroad built high, so the train could make it through a flooded area, I was not prepared to see the bloated animals in the flood waters. Nor was I prepared for the desperation of the people. Every time the train stopped, women and children were clambering and begging for drinking water. Of our senses, vision leaves the greatest impression. In a fraction of a second, what we see, travels through the cortex of the brain and is usually forever remembered. Young warriors never recover from war. Think of what it does to the children in the war-torn areas who are living with the Uranium-coated bullets polluting THEIR soil. Sounds of gunfire and helicopter blades will only be forgotten with the passage of time.

In the Bible, kings were only remembered as either good or evil. In America, presidents are supposed to leave some legacy. It is truly tragic that most leave a legacy of warfare involvement where young warriors are killed and countries are made desolate. Politicians are very charming. How else could they get elected? A governor said that Russia's Gorbachev and his wife were two of the most charming people one could imagine. A congressmen said that George. W. Bush and his wife were two of the most charming people one could imagine. One loses charm in combat boots and helmets. But you never lose the stench of death.

My father was the toughest man I have ever known in war or elsewhere. I never knew him to cry but 3 times, when my mother died, when a barn burned, and I understood he cried when he learned I had lost eyesight. Get the vision. FREEDOM IS NOT FREE.

Read My Lips

Next to his son, George W. Bush, the 43rd President, the most unpopular president in the past 100 years, was George H. W. Bush, 41st president. Twenty-one years ago today, the elder Bush spoke at the Republican National Convention on August 18th, 1988, when he made the famous statement “read my lips: no new taxes,” which haunted him his entire presidency and cost him the election when he ran against Bill Clinton. The other damning statement made by President Bush was to a session of congress, March 6th, 1991 in which for the first time this writer, like the rest of the world, heard this statement, “Now, we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the very real prospect of a new world order.“ Since that time, through the actions of the impeached President Clinton, and the most unpopular president ever, George W. Bush, we have seen and heard the insanity of a new world order.

Because of his liberal opposition, the conservatives came together to elect twice George W. Bush. He was supported not only by Christian conservatives, but the secular, conservative business community and the world. There are 1500 Christian radio stations in the US. The programs and talk shows supported President Bush but towards the end of his second term, his name was never mentioned anywhere. He was an embarrassment because of his ineptness, but particularly because the Republicans had certainly found that he was neither conservative nor Christian.

WE SERVE WHAT WE FEAR. It should be of concern to politicians that the citizenry so fear their government that the time of patriotism is long gone. Like his son, conservatives have never forgiven the first President Bush for the extra misery added to their lives through taxation. The American people are already slaves but have not realized it. You think you own your house, but try not paying your taxes on your house, your car, your furniture, etc. and see what happens. You think you own your chicken house full of chickens, but try not paying the taxes on your chicken house or your store building full of merchandise and see what happens. A license or permit is required for everything you do. Inspections have become just a way of life, whether trying to travel by plane, or vehicle ownership. If you are licensed to practice a certain profession, you must take post graduate courses, pay for privileged license and have all your records available for government inspection. Through the tax system, local, state, federal, the government knows more about your business than you do.

New farm legislation requires that all food products be inspected and controlled mostly at the farm level. Farm animals must be available for inspection by government at all times. Records involving inoculations, even feed quality must be available. Domestic animals cannot be allowed to come in contact with animals that are for sale, (dogs and cats).

The construction industry has become a nightmare of inspections, record-keeping and employee supervision. To every element of construction there is an inspection and a tax involving a permit of some sort. Anything electrical beyond a 6 foot extension cord, requires a permit and licensed electrician and inspection. Commander in Chief, Obama, who has probably never fired a BB gun, has taken over the automobile industry, the banking industry, the insurance industry, and now wishes to take over the health care of the American population. Choice has always been a favorite word with Democrats. We believe in choice involving the birth of a child, but we do not believe in choice when it comes to a voucher for attendance for a private school instead of the useless public school. They do not believe in choice when it comes to investing part of your Social Security tax. There is no choice involving the country's largest minority, (estimated 31.4 %) the disabled. The disabled are expected to pay taxes like everyone else. But you find very few disabled people (crippled, blind, deaf, etc.) in tax-supported parks, concert halls, libraries and jails. All of my employees, and most of my friends, home-school their children in order that their children will get a responsible education, discipline and stay as detached as possible from the chaos in the public schools; but, they get no exemption and pay the same tax as everyone else. My only child, my two grandchildren, never went to a public school because they were loved too much; and we wanted them to have a good education, divorced from the chaos of the public schools. But, even though I give many thousands of dollars in scholarships and awards, I pay the same tax as everyone else for the mediocrity existing in the public school system.

Like NAFTA, Obama-care will be put on the fast track and before you know it, (“Read My Lips”) you will find your most sacred choice outside your church, your health care, under the total supervision of government. Like Medicare and Medicaid (both bankrupt), like Social Security (bankrupt), like the postal service (I think it is bankrupt, too.) like law enforcement, Social Services, public schools and public colleges, Veterans Administration, all under government control, with the accompanying problems of corruption and deceit. Through the firewalls, hackers have obtained financial information on 130 million Americans. The CIA and other law enforcement admit it is impossible to keep drugs out of the prison system.

Three times in my life, I have traveled through Afghanistan. I was “slipped” into Banyan, Afghanistan, while the Russians occupied, to see the great standing Buddhas before they were destroyed by the Taliban. My first time in the Khyber Pass, I saw a camel train come through as it would have 2000 years ago. There was a large sign displaying the British insignias of military legions which had fought in this part of the world just as Russia lost a war here. And, today, a country that does not own one plane, one tank, has no organized military forces continues to win a war against USA and NATO troops which has gone on now for 8 years. And we are losing more troops and treasure now than ever before. In the Hindu Kush mountains (the most horrific mountain range in the world) and even on the plains of western areas of the country around Kabul, where the tribes people still travel by donkey, huge US armored vehicles move around in military style unable to control anything, not even the largest opium market in the world. The 2000 mile Afghanistan-Pakistan border and the 900 mile Afghanistan-Iran border are places of intrigue and terrorist activity which can keep democracies fighting there, stymied for many years to come. Mr. Obama, who knows more about voodoo than he does about military exercises, is doing exactly what he criticized when running for the presidency, sending more American troops into the turmoil.

Recently, a young man killed his father by stabbing him 40 times. He said, “He just would not die.” In spite of politicians trying to kill our country, we just will not die. Politics (poly-ticks) which means many ticks, applies to our situation. Several big ticks on a dog, will suck out all of it's blood and kill the animal. This is what we are facing as a nation, discouraged, bankrupt, and disillusioned. The first time faithfulness is found in God's Word, is in I Samuel 26:23,
The LORD render to every man his righteousness and his faithfulness; for the LORD delivered thee into my hand to day, but I would not stretch forth mine hand against the LORD's anointed. Moreso than any other time in the history of this republic, we face challenges from outside our borders and from inside our country. It is time for faithfulness. One man plus God anytime anywhere, is a majority. We do what we do because we believe what we believe. We believe in faithfulness to God, family and country. Five times, in the New Testament, Jesus said, “Be of good cheer.” These are the only times these words were used. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)

Practice Makes Perfect

Joan of Arc, just before being burned at the stake for her religious convictions said, “I was born for a time such as this.”

I was chosen to live during these years of world history, when I have witnessed, as a totally blind, disabled citizen, a total change in values, both historical and spiritual, from which the world, and certainly this nation will never recover. To date, in the past 80 years (my life span) two unbelievable religious abominations have taken place in the “land of the free and home of the brave.” In 1993, US forces, under the leadership of Bill Clinton and Janet Reno, burned alive 85 American and British citizens in a religious compound commonly known as the Davidian Compound (this included 20 children and two pregnant women). The excuse, which will be debated as long as decent men live, the government wanted to serve warrants on the Davidian leader David Koresh (Vernon Wayne Howell). The truth of the matter is that the FBI was encamped near the religious compound just outside Waco, Texas, and that everyday when Koresh did his jogging run, FBI agents, whom he considered friends, ran with him and could have served a warrant on him at any time. Instead, in a horrendous Holocaust Ms. Reno directed Americans to burn alive fellow Americans in one of the most bizarre and hideous government atrocities in history.

Flying into popular New Guinea one time, I sat next to David Koresh on the plane. I did not find him a religious zealot, as he has been described by the country to which he had paid tax and to which he was a loyal citizen; he seemed perfectly sane to me. We discussed the indisputable fact that if Christians lived their Christianity before the world, the world would be a different place with trust, tranquility, love and even peace. Denominations have been deceived and Satan has swindled the world by those who profess and yet do not possess the Christian principles for which his denomination and himself were having difficulty. He stated, “No pastor or a church member could possibly read the first chapter of Romans and continue in the charade of playing games with God.” I do not know his heart, I only know my own, but he seemed perfectly genuine to me and deserved better than the death he received from thugs of the US government.

Jim Jones was the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple, which is best known for the November 18, 1978 death of more than 900 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana, along with the deaths of nine other people at a nearby airstrip in Georgetown. Jones was born in Indiana and started the Peoples Temple in that state in the 1950s. Jones and the Temple later moved to California, and both gained notoriety with the move of the Temple's headquarters to San Francisco in the mid-1970s. The tragedy at Guyana is marked as the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until the events of September 11, 2001. It also ranks among the largest mass suicides in history, although some consider it, instead, a mass murder. (One of those who died at the nearby airstrip was Leo Ryan, who became the only Congressman murdered in the line of duty in the history of the United States.)

Jones was a voracious reader as a child and studied Joseph Stalin, Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi and Adolf Hitler carefully, noting each of their strengths and weaknesses.
Jones' interest in religion began during his childhood, primarily because he found making friends difficult, though initially he vacillated on his church of choice. Jones was surprised when a Methodist superintendent helped Jones to get a start in the church even though he knew Jones to be a communist and Jones did not meet him through the American Communist Party.

Many of you do not remember these bizarre incidents which, at the time, used much newsprint. Like dumb sheep, being lead to the slaughter, after having been sheared over and over for many years (paying taxes for every conceivable invention of politicians) we have been brainwashed to just accept anything from anyone, anytime, anywhere, without questions. After the fact, we know that there was no reason why American women and children should have been burned alive in a Texas inferno. We know that the government lied to us about the entire incident; that Koresh could have been served with papers at any time, that the religious group in communal living (including a Durham, NC lawyer), for some reason known only to them, had a right to this religious liberty under the constitution.

Much of the contrived explanations about the Jonestown Massacre by people who have never left the borders of the United States is likewise conjecture, although it is a known fact that Jim Jones was a communist whose charisma had led a group of people to seek refuge in a manipulation which only those well trained in Rules For Radicals can understand.

How easily we forget, that this was just two groups of Americans led by religious zealots. Whereas today, we have an entire population, or at least fifty percent of the population, being led by political zealots whose radical, political ideas are not that different from those from Waco or Jonestown. We know that Jones was an avowed communist, just as Henry Wallace, FDR's vice president, was an avowed communist, and just as we know many of the present day members of the Obama administration are communists. Using the media and academia, all of whom have an appetite for the promotion for totalitarian zeal, the American people are being well prepared, totally brainwashed, to accept any ideology which offers 'change' and a promise of the better life through deceptive controls in banking, corporate production (takeover of automobile manufacturing), insurance and housing. The same political leaders and media who have seen the bailout consisting of billions of dollars, which is unaccounted for, offers no consistent analysis in where these billions and now trillions of dollars have developed, been used or expended.

The simple procedure, as we all learned in grammar school, of putting your assets on one side of the ledger and your debits on the other side of the ledger has been forgotten in the sophisticated computer awareness of economic strategy in Washington. The peasants in the field, who are just supposed to send their taxes in and ask no questions, want to know if the same accounting procedures which has taken over industry and insurance will apply to health care. Will we have the same product of government financial disgust in health care as we have in other government operations such as the postal service? The Veterans Administration? The housing system? (Fannie May and Freddie Mac) The Energy Department? (90 million dollars spent last year by their attorneys trying to keep their corruption private.) Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security? (all three bankrupt) Transportation system? (Last week, in Rochester, MN, fifty seven people on a parked plane for ten hours without food or water, stopped up toilet, illness) The list goes on, and the American people are expected to accept government mediocrity and inanity just as we were expected to accept the humiliation, as a nation, of the slaughter of Americans at Jonestown, Waco, Iraq, and Afghanistan, without asking any questions about the sanity of the people involved in directing these government operations, just keep paying the bills.

Last week, I tried to go through the simple process of getting a North Carolina state-issued ID card because one is now required if you buy a new car. If I had been an illegal, I probably would not have had a problem. But since my social security card was destroyed in a military crash, at least fifty years ago, and since everyone else has been willing to accept the military id of this 100% disabled, service connected veteran, it had never been replaced until this necessity. My assistant made an appointment for me to get a photograph and the card, requiring the social security at the NC Department of Motor Vehicles. But, when I arrived at the ZOO, like the VA Hospital, and like you will do with the new socialized health system, although I had an appointment, I was told to take a number and wait, and wait, and wait.

Integrity is a lost word in the American vocabulary. Integrity in banking, news media, academics, air travel, justice and even vaccinations. We are about to inoculate millions with a vaccine which has been untested and is known to have been laboratory produced.

Please explain, why the NATO Troops are being used to protect the opium production from a country in which we are at war? Please explain, why the greatest crime problem in our country, that of illegal drugs, cannot be controlled in the country when it cannot be controlled in our own prisons?

One of my last trips through the Middle East was in 1980 and I later heard Henry Kissinger, in speaking of the Iran-Iraq War, in which one million were killed, say, “It is a pity both sides can't lose.” As in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the USA had armed both Iran and Iraq. In Alan Friedman's book Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq we learn just how hypocrite diplomacy works, and it's always the sons and daughters of the poor families of the United States and it is always the hard-working, tax-paying, manipulated, brainwashed, average citizen of the United States who pays the price for the ineptness of that 535 member group of actors called congressional leaders and their bureaucratic supporters, all of whom are in life boats as the blood-bought, much-loved, constitution-endowed ship of state sinks.

The practice of deception has made perfect the destruction of a once-great nation.