Drop the Rock

"Drop the Rock"

Matthew 5:44 - But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

            During my long years of training and education in Memphis, Tennessee, some of my work was at the veteran's hospital at Millington.  In one room was four WWII veterans without arms or legs... just human beings with trunks and heads.  Of course, they were on special beds with specially trained nurses caring for them.  Men in this condition do not live long. 

            Veterans who are amputees, cripple, deaf, blind, know what they have given to their country.  I get so sick when I hear the pabulum about care for veterans.  Most veterans know they receive very little care.  Patriotism, like Christianity, is mostly talk.  This old blind veteran never even received a white cane from the Veteran Administration. 

            One preacher, seminary professor, said he had his students go to the cemetery and preach to the tombstones.  By doing this they knew what it was all about.  Some of the most impoverished people I have ever known, in my world travels, were missionaries on the foreign fields.  Of course with electronics all over the world, missionary zeal is different from hundreds of years ago.  Yet, it takes real courage to give your life for the cause of Christ among people who hate you, who do not in any way understand you.  Only those who have endured criticism in a home church or home community, could ever endure what might happen on the mission field. 

            Perhaps my favorite Psalm is Psalm 84, when David speaks of mountains and valleys.  I have written at length about one verse in the Psalm which changed my life.  Psalm 84:5 "Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee."  The race is mine, but in no way could I have engaged in the trials of life without realizing my strength comes from God.

            In my car, often at traffic lights, a car will come near me with the radio blasting or someone will walk down the sidewalk with a boom box blaring.  We can understand people who have this much ferocious noise around them have no tranquility of spirit.  In my years of selling bibles, door-to-door, in the summer, windows open, babies and old people unable to escape the noise inside the building.  There was no mystery to me about the depletion of all joys in the lives of some.  How could they have joy, solitude in living amid the clang, clatter, awful words in music which was always too loud for man or beast?  Just imagine a young, newborn baby, growing up amid such violent noise.  We should be surprised that many young people from many of these ghetto homes turn out as well as they do.  Yet, I have heard adults say they forgive their parents and siblings for the turmoil of their surroundings. 

            The most ecstatically happy person in the room when a child is born is the mother of the newborn baby.  She knows the pain of childbirth.  It took me a long time to discover why so many evangelists became preachers.  They had experienced the pain which sin brings and want to celebrate their deliverance. 

            The only time we find Jesus writing anything, he was in the outer court of the temple.  Some male religionists brought a woman to him caught in the very act of adultery.  (John 8: 3-11)  Of course, mosaic law demanded she be stoned to death.  There were so many stones-rocks in the holy land.  On three of the times I was there, in Capernaum, still mostly rocks, I thought that surely Jesus must of sat on some of these rocks.  I remember rock piles near the Muslim homes.  They still throw rocks at the Jews and Christians.  In a day of cell phones, newsprint and news broadcasts, there is not much need for the throwing of rocks.  It is also strange the man caught with the woman in the adultery was never mentioned.  Jesus said to these religious people, just as he would say to many of us who have been judgmental and hypocritical in our evaluation of others, "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone."

            The greatest deliverance in Christianity, forgiveness.  We must forgive because our fellow human beings are made in the image of God.  We must forgive because our we do not realize the baggage that some fellow human beings carry around.  We must forgive because God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven us.  In the disciples' prayer, where Jesus taught us to pray, he said, "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. "  (Matthew 6:12)  How can we expect forgiveness if we can't forgive?  I truly believe Jesus should have added to this prayer, "we should not put trespasses or temptations into the paths of others."  It is so necessary to start out each day asking God to keep Satan and his temptations away from us.

            I still remember the day our school principal held up a white piece of paper with one small black dot on the paper.  He said, "What do you see?"  Everyone said, "A dot on a piece of paper."  He was trying to squelch a rumor going around the school about a certain student.  The popular student had a perfect record in every area of life.  Someone was attempting to make one dot soil that record.

            In a day where the best seller is the worst smeller, when it is politically correct to excuse all bad behavior, it is so necessary to applaud-rejoice in good behavior, especially forgiveness of sins.  (Philippians 3:20).  When we realize the truth of sins ruin and Christ's redemption we know the full joy of forgiveness, both the joy of our forgiving and the joy of others forgiveness.  Truth is truth whether anyone believes it or not.

Garbage Dump

Garbage Dump

When will we learn that we are just squatters in God's territory even those of us chosen by Him? Those he chose, elected, predestinated, are still sinners and must be forgiven. He purposed us for a reason. Knowing this, those of us who are His should realize that everything we see, hear, take into our body, gives to the world a version of what we are. Why not be the best version of self? It is impossible to erase the junk of pornography, the junk of tasteless-stupid television, the junk of foolish sounds, the junk of synthetic-chemical polluted food. I still remember until this very day, and it was at least 65 years ago, the first pornography I ever saw, a "dirty" magazine shown to young boys by a school bus mechanic. The demons which attacked me 25 years ago (Eph 6) would lose some teeth today because I am much tougher now. Plus, I have learned to put on the whole armor of God (Eph 6) and stand, digging in, not yielding one inch, and certainly not turning my back because the "whole armor of God does not cover the back."

In my lifetime, the world has been turned upside down. Evil has become good, good, evil. 81 times in the book of Proverbs, alone, the word wicked is called evil. I listen to the democrat convention, clapping-laughing at evil. A former President of the United States, of all people, pervert, adulterer, impeached, a real hero to street people, people in prison, welfare dependant, the takers of the world. Blacks, who abort 52% of their babies, drop outs, numbering 50% of the population who live off the hard work of the other 50%. not caring about their bodies-health-or anything else. Health character is like Christian character, a minute by minute, everyday lifestyle. Christianity is not complicated, just tough. Good health is not complicated, just tough, requiring discipline.

Everything is upside down, much like the pyramid of entitlements. When social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs started, there was a large number at the base paying into support the small number at the top. Today, the pyramid is upside down, small number at the bottom, scrounging to support the huge number at the top. Because of lifestyle, eating habits, in 1908, 1 of 33 citizens with cancer, 1985, 1 of 3 citizens with cancer, today, 1 of 2 citizens with cancer and in 2020, every person will have cancer.

Those of us born on dirt roads, no power, telephone or waterlines, struggled through the lower grades AND college, step by step, military and professional careers.

If only this writer could have gone to college (in my case 8 years of professional education) without having to work my way through, worrying about survival. If only I could have married without having to worry about "keeping up with the Jones,'" getting ahead and staying ahead. If only I could have lived without being disabled, blind, attempting to prepare some food without burning the house down, wearing something completely bizarre, and keeping helpers from stealing everything in sight.

We live in a time of addiction, human weakness to evil. Law enforcement does not have time for absolutes because they are so busy with trauma. There is an absolute unconcern in the healthcare community about prevention because Big Pharma pays too well for drugs and surgery.

Take the time, study carefully, the perverse profane neo-pagan culture in which we find ourselves. In the White House, the school house, court house, church house, imposters, a charade. The preacher is afraid he will offend someone, sophisticated, powdered and perfumed, padded pew-air conditioned comfort, depending on not losing any money from the congregation. Our entire political system built around money. Parents who want their children to have an education must pay for a private school or home school, themselves.

The sob sisters at the court house, more concern for the criminal than the victim, has shown that the government can get by with anything, that the general public will ACCEPT anything after the nonsense of the burning alive of women and children at Waco, the destroying of children in the Murrah building (Oklahoma City) and the 2,980 deaths, 9/11, when 118 witnesses heard explosions inside the towers and indeed, one building number 8, just up and fell hours after the others, not hit by anything.......ALL CONTROLLED DEMOLITION.

How many false flags, how deep must American patriots sink into the dumpster before they realize what is happening to their country?

One man had a maddening dream, books full of his sins, alphabetically organized, and then as he sat looking through the books, Jesus appeared on the scene. Embarrassed, humiliated, he thought, how can I escape His contempt? But, then, Jesus went through every book, every page, and wrote "forgiven."

Forgiveness

It was just four years ago, this week, October 2, 2006, and in the flurry of news flashes each day, horror stories from every direction, it is hard for any of us to remember anything. In an Amish community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania called “Nickel Mines”, a one-roomed Amish school, the horror story of a man named Carl Roberts, who killed 10 Amish girls (ages 6 – 13), most of us just remember the funerals. I could not see the activity, but could hear the horses feet as they moved the carriages along the street to the graveyards.

Thankfully, the news media and inquiring public was kept away from the funeral of these private, grief-stricken, deeply religious people. The news media would like the glitter of a Princess Diana, or Michael Jackson's funeral, they will never understand Amish people, their religious customs, their Christian faithfulness, nor their Christian forgiveness, extended to the family of the killer who committed suicide and even to the killer himself.

The talk is cheap, but the walk is difficult. Only when we see forgiveness such as with this Amish community can we understand forgiveness. only when we recognize our own forgiveness from the supreme God of the universe, can we realize the necessity of forgiving those around us, why should we not forgive when so much has been forgiven? We have all heard, to err is human, to forgive is divine. Forgiveness is absolutely the most difficult act of human thought, it much easier to hold grudges, to seek revenge.

Usually, it is a waste of time to even talk to the offended or offender about forgiveness. Unless of the same mindset, unless some level of mutual understanding, unless God is in the action, there is not a conscious, inner soul involved, it must be left up to God to do the work. With an enabling media, an egocentric academic school system, we have become desensitized to murder, rape, robbery, and even warfare in which millions of innocent people are killed. We carefully select our altruistic thought process, which does not usually include forgiveness.

The Koran says nothing of original sin, its Shira law fastidious towards punishment, we find little mercy in Islamic fundamentalism, rather harsh punishments, killings. Can one even comprehend the cutting off of a hand for robbery, stoning for infidelity? From Abraham, two sons; it is from Isaac, Judaism, that we find forgiveness, it is from Ishmael, Islam, that we find vengeance. The Jewish male was circumcised as a sign that he was elected of God, the male was baptized, giving an ark of salvation to his entire family...a cloak of forgiveness. It was not until after Christ, that women were baptized into the church...the church follows Christ's resurrection, and the Christian redemption experience through the Holy Spirit.

Paul, both to the Jews and Gentiles, preached forgiveness, forgiveness is not a selective process, as hard as it is to understand the idea, the Bavarian Paperhanger. A Corporal in WWI, Adolf Hitler, who put millions of people to death, would and could be forgiven, he knew about Christ, he was a Catholic alter boy. Joseph Stalin, a 5 foot 4 inch dictator who put a reported 56 million Russian peasants to death in his communist revolution, who, according to his daughter was shaking his fist at God as he died, was, in his youth, a seminary student. He knew about forgiveness and could have been forgiven.

“If gold rusts, what do you expect iron to do?” 50% of Protestant ministers are divorced, there are groups in almost every church of divorced people, groups of single mothers in every church, who were never married to their child's father. The phoney bologna, air conditioned, carpeted and cushioned, bells and smells, protestant church of Jimmy Carter, Rick Warren, Bill Clinton, Brian McLaren, even some seminaries and Bible colleges, are just playing around with the sanctity of forgiveness. Do we have any idea of the forgiveness of God? God, before the very foundation of the world, placing on his only son, every sin, every sickness, every evil act of mankind, all ask of us, faith in the atonement of Christ. Like giving, the supreme act of worship, becoming a Christian has become so easy, smiling as we walk the aisle to sign a card, no confession of belief to anyone, no repentance. When we as Christians realize the cost of our forgiveness, we are more willing to forgive others.

I have relatives, neighbors, former close friends with whom I have little or no contact, I sometimes realize from one reason or another, that they are upset about something.

Something I do not even remember, even important things, even if I were real nasty or offensive about something, please give a reason and right to ask for forgiveness. The unforgiving spirit, the spirit of not asking forgiveness, is the spirit which will keep many people from a good life here on earth, as well as eternal life. Earthly prisons are filled with human beings, who, in every thought, desire forgiveness. I have often thought how many visitors I would have if I were in prison: family, friends, neighbors, Christians, certainly was on the mind of Christ. It did not take long for his followers to desert him.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matthew 25:34-40)

Spiritual Continuum

In the spring of 1987, I had just returned from a round the world trip and at nearby Duke University, at the spring commencement festivities, newsman, Ted Copple, had just delivered the commencement address. When I talked with friends at Duke Hospital, Copple had made an impression with his down to earth delivery speaking of the pitiful attitude Americans show in their news compliance. He said, “...You can partake of our daily banquet without drawing on any intellectual resources; without either physical or moral discipline...” He spoke of the Ten Commandments and our lackadaisical attitude towards them. He spoke of “Vannatizing” the intellectual acuity of the public, the very idea that Vanna White, known only for her ability to turn numbers on a television program would write her autobiography.

Ted Copple said,
“...We are beginning to make our mark on the American psyche. We have actually convinced ourselves that slogans will save us. "Shoot up if you must; but use a clean needle." "Enjoy sex whenever with whomever you wish; but wear a condom." No. The answer is no. Not no because it isn't cool or smart or because you might end up in jail or dying in an AIDS ward -- but no, because it's wrong. Because we have spent 5,000 years as a race of rational human being trying to drag ourselves out of the primeval slime by searching for truth and moral absolutes.”

In the 22 years since he made this speech, state run television with it's newscasts, have only worsened. Malcolm Maldridge, Brittish historian said, “Today's news is old news for new people.” Dr. Samuel Johnson said, “Your focus becomes sharper when you see the hangman's noose.” When will we realize that state-controlled news is just what Satanic forces of Communism, Totalitarianism, has sought for the past 50 years? GE, who owns NBC and it's affiliates, has their CEO as Obama advisor. Every alphabet news organization spits out the same culture of controlled jargon.

This weekend, BBC, and the Homeland Security Department reported that 2 million Americans were protesting on the streets of Washington D.C. But, the controlled media kept saying tens of thousands. Thinking Americans are beginning to see through this charade. Thinking Americans want honesty in government and they demand honesty in news reporting. Because of the dishonesty in news reporting, newspapers are failing like leaves falling off trees in autumn. The only reliable electronic news is found in the many channels of the internet or from abroad. Patriots in America may forgive many things in the American experience of justice. But they will never forgive dishonest reporting.

A few weeks after this address, I was talking with a friend of mine who had just returned from his brother's funeral. His brother, divorced from his first wife, had moved with his young 3 children to Georgia where he had remarried and had lived a normal life. His children, his family, had brought his body back to NC for burial in the family cemetery in rural Wayne County. His first wife, who had never recovered from the divorce and still carried around much baggage of frustration and bitterness, drove out to the cemetery while the commitment ceremony was going on where her own adult children were surrounded by family and family friends from the community. She stood on the highway next to the cemetery and yelled out many brutal, slanderous accusations against the man going in the grave while his grieving family and friends were there for the service. He said, “It was the most embarrassing, barbaric pathos one could every imagine.” He said, “How any person could carry around that much hatred, unforgiveness and hurt towards her own children because the husband to whom the insults were directed, had escaped her wrath.”

Hatred and unforgiveness is first an injury. Then it becomes a debt. And lastly one must make the decision to forgive and let it go. Blessings and cursings cannot come out of the same mouth any more than potable water and putrid water can come out of the same faucet. Christianity is separated from every other religion because God is love. (Love is mentioned 540 times in the scriptures.) The love of God is manifest in His only son, Jesus Christ who lived and died to show forgiveness. We can forgive when we realize how much we have been forgiven. It is difficult to forgive a government and the state-controlled news outlets of that government who are so totally dishonest in their professional responsibility. As an example the corruption has extended so far that few have heard of the 87,000 military weapons missing in Afghanistan, many of which, we know according to “Reader's Digest” have been used to kill our own young warriors. We have heard nothing of the 33 billion tax dollars unaccounted for in Afghanistan. We have heard nothing of the billions of tax dollars unaccounted for in the bailouts during the Obama largess. The hardworking, sweating, tax-paying, God-fearing, coupon-clipping American patriots deserve better from their government and certainly from the news organizations, supposedly licensed to give oversight to government operations.

For far too long, the politically correct liberals have excused everything in the name sake of progress. For far too long, many have just said, “business as usual. We go along to get along. Everything will work out.” Have you ever seen how much water will come into your building through a pinhole? We are drowning in our own unconcern, the ambiguity of just turning the blind eye. In the day of rose garden rhetoric, deception about everything, rejoice. The power of prayer can completely reverse the oligarchy of the deceit of a few. Mr. Obama and his Alinsky's Rules For Radicals, might know about Satanic deception. But, he has much to learn about the devotion of patriots. The state controlled newscasters and news editors, print and electronic, will not have the last word.