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.

Bigger and Better

In this modern time of ratings we hear radio commentators, as well as television newscasts talk about their ratings, the millions of people who listen to them, and many stir up controversy, use every imaginable trick in the broadcast playbook to be able to brag about their audience and take great satisfaction in the millions of dollars they are paid in ludicrous contracts. (Rush Limbaugh $400 million, Sean Hannity $24 million, Glen Beck $24 million, etc.) None can boast of the numbers of American listeners who tuned in nightly to such shows as Amos and Andy who came on across the country at seven o'clock pm. or Lum and Abner who came on shorty thereafter. Lum and Abner were on the radio from 1932-1954, had an audience of millions who probably in their lifetime did not make as much money as Limbaugh makes in one day but were never lacking for advertisers such as Ford and Alka Seltzer.

One of the most entertaining episodes of Lum and Abner involved the town of Pine Ridge, Arkansas where their “Jot-em-down” store was located and the attempt by the City Fathers to expand the city limits with the still expressed notion of most cities, stores, churches and BIGGER IS BETTER. I have often expressed to religious groups, “what happiness can you possibly have in having a ministry of unsaved heathens, those who go to church from habit or for some type of social prestige? It is far better, to make numbers count instead of counting numbers.” The Joel Osteens of this world, the Schullers, the Benny Hinns are mostly offering the old Beatles tirade, “All You Need is Love” and the Sinatra direction, “I Did It My Way.” Please tell me a town, that has grown in size and population and is, in any way, better for its bigness. Please tell me, of a church, a college, a medical facility, a government facility such as a Post Office, which in becoming larger, or bigger has become better.

Immediately following Lum and Abner, the American public hung on every word from the mouth of Bill Stern and his Colgate Shave Cream News and Sports Newsreel. Perhaps, never in the history of entertainment, has there been a more popular show or sportscaster than Bill Stern. For those of us of that age, (1937-1956) we can still hear that wonderful music bringing on his tales of news commentary. He said, later in life, “What we did not know, we made up.” For instance, he talked about each prominent sports figure such as Joe DiMaggio, Tommy Hermann, Joe Lewis, Leo Durocher, etc, all of whom appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. As soon as they appeared on Time Magazine, making them bigger and better, some debilitating factor would happen in their lives, even to a famous golf legend, tennis champion, and Kentucky Derby horse.

Dizzy Dean, who we all will remember for his inarticulate vocabulary, said, “I don't mind telling anyone I only have a second grade education but you do not need to be well educated to be a sports broadcaster.” An English teacher once wrote to him, complaining that he shouldn't use the word "ain't" on the air, as it was a bad example to children. On the air, Dean said, "A lot of folks who ain't sayin' 'ain't,' ain't eatin'. So teach, you learn 'em English, and I'll learn 'em baseball." Abner Doubleday, who invented baseball, as a pleasant game for young men to play in a cow pasture probably never had any inclination that the game would become so much bigger, but not necessarily better, that some players would be paid millions of dollars and the game would become one of the most prolific gambling excesses in the country.

When the American Civil War started in April 1861, John Brown probably had no idea that his name would be used in the most famous Civil War Union marching song. His notoriety had been attributed to his friendship with a southern black. But like John Wilkes Booth, who jumped out of the balcony of the Ford Theater after shooting Lincoln, his foot was dragging the American flag, and so many were caught in the spirit of the American flag, from the darkened days of the Civil War until the present to make this unique Republic bigger and better.

Some have been misguided, traitors to the cause of life, such as Margaret Sanger, early proponent of eugenics, founder of Planned Parenthood, who in 1916, fled to England to escape prosecution (indictment in New York) for her attempt to indoctrinate the women of this country in birth control techniques and the horrendous practice of abortion. Her radical atheism, even in calling blacks “weeds” and her extreme writings on Darwinian racism (Darwin's book published in 1859: The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favorite Races in the Struggle For Life) and racial concepts so influenced Hitler, that much of his barbaric behavior can be traced directly to Margaret Sanger. But, to this day, she is the heroine of the liberated American NARAL and anti-life women (Hillary Clinton just received her award). These radicals (Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky. Mr. Obama's Bible) are the impetus for abortion, holocaust killing of 53 million children (3000 per day, 1400 black babies) who could bring joy to the lives of many parents and grandparents, and by working, could pay the taxes which only the ignorant would consider BIGGER AND BETTER.

A spell is the only explanation I can give you for the attitude of a Godless society that demonstrates such contempt for God and man's inhumanity to man. I never could understand how Egyptian mothers, even the Jewish mothers, at the dictum of Pharaoh would throw their babies into the Nile. I never could understand how, on my first trip to Communist China in 1976, I learned that the creeks were littered with dead girl babies because under the Communist system of one child per couple, only boy babies were permitted to live. Is there a satanic spell which causes a woman to kill the greatest of God's creation which she has been blessed as a female, to nurture in her body?

Is there a spell, that has come over this country causing a complete lack of intelligence in the loss of our largest corporations, largest banking facilities, the insanity of believing one can get out of debt by spending more money? Has a spell of insanity so bewitched the same citizens of this blessed republic that we have allowed a Sunni Muslim Communist to erase the progress of the world's greatest country in the matter of a few months?


Like Rip Van Winkle, who went to sleep for a long period of time, had I gone to sleep in 1960 and had awakened this year, having slept for 50 years, I would not be able to recognize this country of 50 years ago. The country is much bigger in population, the cars are much bigger and better. Everyone, (even to children) carries around sophisticated instruments into which they can talk around the world, take photographs that can be instantly sent around the world, aware of international developments anywhere at any time but, does this make anyone better? And does diminishing the size of the world make it, or anything in it, better? We have, as a people, learned to love and envy the bigger and better “things” of the world. In the process, we are much less. “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (1 John 2:15)

We have become a civilization steeped in subliminal perception, majoring on minority. Evil has become good, ugly beautiful. “Therefore, dear friends, since you already know this, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position.” 2 Peter 3:17

I fully realize that those who are caught in Satan's trap, just as Eve, beguiled by the doubts of God's inerrant word. Most, do not believe, nor do they want to hear it and it is still a mystery to me where they go for guidance. Truth is the truth whether anyone believes it or not. And, bigger debts for our country, bigger decadents for our country, larger murder for the country, older and young, bigger technology for the country, military and otherwise, will not make our country better. Bigger is definitely not better.

As you know, I am a totally blind, 100% disabled, service-connected veteran. I was never athletic, a book worm, since I am only 69 inches tall. With the Rules For Radical, with which this nation is now governed, with the world upside down, lets cut the ruler in half and make me much taller. I always wanted to play basketball, now I can be an NBA star.