Kooks and Spooks

A minister friend of mine called me recently and related the details of the funeral of a man we both knew. Since I cannot see obituaries, and I hear from very few people, I did not know he had died.

This man came from a family of wealth, owners of a large farming implement and hardware distributorship. After college, his brother ran the business, and because of his efflorescent personality, he was used strictly in a public relations manner, calling on stores on the east coast, just staying in touch and keeping their business. Since this only took a few days each month, the rest of his time was spent in doing things which he enjoyed. You can say, without fear of contradiction, that he was a sportsman: hunting, fishing, golfing, season tickets to everything at the university, attending all national play-off games. He was a womanizer, adulterer, a country club “good ol' boy”, he had a repertoire of dirty jokes that could not be surpassed. He never went to church, proclaimed to be indifferent about the entire matter. My friend was his wife and two children's pastor. His wife was a remarkable Christian woman, rearing two fine children by herself.

He fell dead on the golf course, first stroke on a Monday morning. The wife, the brother could have played the hypocrisy part and had the funeral at their church, but they did not...the funeral was at the funeral home, running over with outstanding people (like the atheist Robert Ingersoll's obituary in the paper, no scriptures, no singing). An expensive casket, he, dressed in his hunting outfit, his golf trophies displayed on the end of the casket, three large, blown-up pictures attached to casket just above him. One of him with a large fish which he had caught in a contest, one of him on a golf course, holding a golf trophy, one of him in his hunting outfit, holding his gun beside a fallen deer. Before and after the service was his favorite Sinatra tunes, a recording of his alma mater song, a recording of the navy hymn (since he had serviced two year in the Navy) were played. Her minister, my friend was used just in a prayer. One of his Unitarian pastor golfing buddies was used for the eulogy, of course, he talked about universal restoration, that he was now on the golf links of heaven. A totally likable man, but totally lost.

There is nothing the human mind enjoys more than deception. The first thing Jack Lulanne gave up when he started on his health quest was sugar. Sugar is the most addictive substance known to man and can destroy the body. We live in a world of diabetes, so much sugar comes from the pulpit, “everyone who dies is going to heaven.” The older I got, the more I realized how little I knew when young. I had studied subliminal perception, been exposed to Chinese indoctrination and mind control during the Korean conflict. One night, in the officer's quarters of the Army hospital, where I was on staff, an officer who had been a prisoner of the Chinese in Korea, began to throw things at the television. He said, “this thing is following exactly the mind control tactics which we swallowed in Korea.” He said, “they have captured every form of mind control and now use it on television to control the American people.”

This week, at a lavish dinner put on by Obama to honor the Chinese premier, a Chinese pianist, played the victory song from the Korean war. The song “My Homeland” portrays American troops as “jackals”. One foreign guest said later that “it was supposed to be an insult to Obama and his Americans, but they were too stupid to be insulted. They were oblivious to what was happening.”

We know that from 1950 to around 1970, MKULTRA (ultimate mind control) was used by American forces in military situations. Many of us were probably subjected to it, mind control about many things. It was far more effective with trauma, those who had been wounded, and we have learned that it is far more effective with a nation that is wounded such as the Oklahoma City bombing, the 9/11 episode. Almost like hypnotism, psychologists and psychiatrists unable to disassemble it's effects, we have mind control in the country involving everything, which has resulted in political correctness, an almost total control by government and media.

No one has been able to convince me yet that a nation that has come so far has fallen so fast, that we have lost all of our values. We learn that 90% of all 10^th grade students have experimented with alcohol. College students spend more money on alcohol than books. 60% of all college girls have STDs (sexually transmitted diseases), 1/3 of all American college students use marijuana. Those my age have seen America change completely in our lifetime, we live longer, the American man can expect to leave to age 77, females to age 79. Just 100 years ago, the life expectancy was only age 40.

The home has become a filling station, changing and filling. The church, just a habit. The baptistry is the least used area of the church. We say we want consistency, honesty, truth, but in every way, every day, we chose deception. Perhaps the greatest deception is in music, man is a music receptor. King David was 62 when Solomon was born, the Old Testament is filled with David's music, words and instruments. Solomon, King David's son; the greatest temple in the world was filled with music, Solomon wrote over 1000 songs (1 Kings 4:32).

The failures of this world are simply a failure of education, we must learn that students aged 10-20 live for music. Classical music is not popular with the young, starting in 1960, it was learned that rock n' roll, beat and words, cause sexual arousal, Elvis, Chuck Berry, the Beatles, leading to drugs and mind control. Bruce Springsteen and others teach rock music as a form of religion. Like the new television program “Skins”, popular in England, exploiting every youthful decadence, nudity, drugs, prostitution, homosexuality, an attempt to make the things which God hates totally acceptable by young people. The greatest words or song for a young person, Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

Turbulence

It took me five years to realize the fact that I did not recognize Benita from her facial features, but from the black and white dress, her Sunday dress, which she always wore when she came to my office. She worked at a Cherry Hospital, a mental hospital, as did her husband, both low paid attendants. She had told me that they had one precious son, who was in college, studying to be a preacher. In fact, he had already graduated from college and was in seminary (United, Trotwood, Ohio), she brought him by at least twice to meet me. A very fine young man, a very fine Methodist minister. He wanted to be ordained in their home church, a small Methodist church called Fellowship. Several of the relatives called, insisting I attend the ordination service and the meal that followed.

The ordination took place at noon on Sunday, the little church filled with excited people. The new seminary graduate, wearing proudly the handle of “Dr.” was an enthusiastic speaker, a tribute to his community, his church, his family. Like so many women, his mother only had one Sunday dress, his father one Sunday suit, because it had taken everything they could rake and scrape for his education, the blessing of this day. It was even more obvious at the home, there was not enough flatware to set the table. They had enough food, but a very humble home. The joy of the occasion was marked by their humility.

Dr. Styron preached that day on death, clinical death, the ticket to a better life. He spoke of the rewards of heaven, the resurrection of Christ and everything that makes Christian redemption possible.

Every time you pass a cemetery, every time you pass a funeral home, as much as you do not want to think about it, you know that death, your death, is inevitable. Many physically plan for it ahead of time, my grandmother kept her burial shroud in her cedar chest. I heard one woman say she wanted to wear a dress in the casket that would not make her look fat. I still do not like open casket visitations or funerals, I believe there should be as much privacy in death as in life...people gazing at you at the worst time of your existence.

I remember my sister's mother in law, and the closed casket funeral, one of the deceased's relatives went to her and said she would like to see her aunt. My sister said to her, “she would have liked to see you the ten years she laid in a nursing home before she died.”

I don't remember the reason, but I was in the hospital one night, and a family I knew asked me to be in the room to be with them, since her mother was dying. The patient, although almost dead, was still aware. We all know that the limbs are the first to get cold, I noticed that the daughter would keep running her hand under the cover to her mother's feet, finally her mother kicked at her. Death for most is a very lonely experience, I can think of nothing any lonelier than death in a traffic disaster, or a home disaster, unable to get help. I still believe the worst death is the long death faced by victims of Alzheimers...dead while still alive. A long, exasperating and expensive experience for the patient as well as the family.

Just as we know death is real, so we know God is real, we make the choice. Before the Jewish slaves left Israel, the blood of the passover lamb was put on the doorpost of every Jewish home. They made a choice, the death angel passed over when he saw the blood.

At the dedication of Solomon's temple (1 Kings 8), Solomon brought the entire history of the Jewish people amid the sacrifice of 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. When the Ark of the Covenant was moved into the temple, the cloud of glory was so great that the scribes could not speak, nor the trumpeters blow their horns. This was the dedication of the world's greatest building, and until this day, considered the world's most expensive building. Books have been written on the building of the temple, the cedar wood from Lebanon, the number of men required not only to cut the wood, but to bring it down the Mediterranean sea, transport it to Jerusalem, where the temple was built without the sound of saw or hammer, cedar wood, gold, brass. The children of Israel knew the prophecies and promises of God, they have experienced the glory, nothing has changed. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8).

700 years before the birth of Christ, the prophecy of Christ (Isaiah 53). The penalty, the promises, you must take him at His Word, God values His Word more than anything else. (Psalm 138:2) We know the penalty and the promise, we know that by His stripes we are healed, we know we escape death through His blood. If not healed, the ultimate, quickest healing, heaven.

All disciples were martyrs except for John, it took too long for the message to sink in, the eclismic experience of His death and Resurrection changed them totally. They were never the same again, knew they would never see one another again (no method of communication at that time), but each had a mission. Bartholomew skinned alive in Armenia, Thomas killed by a heretic in India, Luke hung in Greece, Mark dragged through the streets of Alexandria, Peter crucified in Rome, Paul beheaded in Rome. All could face death because they knew that Christ was real, they knew Him, the power of His Resurrection, the fellowship of suffering (Philippians 3:10).

You cannot conjure up comfort on your own, trying to understand the actions of God. When a person kills oneself, it is unnatural, it natural to fear death. God in life is a mystery, surrender to mystery. Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints. (Psalm 116:15)

Kaddish

Anytime an atheist, agnostic, unbeliever, or one who just “plays church” challenges me about proving the existence of God, I tell such a person to just study just one three letter word, “J.E.W.”

From the first Jew, Abraham, 4,000 BC, we have a history of a people, which historically and otherwise can be studied, which is as basic in academic credibility as one can get. Most of the Bible is a history of this one race, chosen by God, its prophets, prophecies, promises, laws, a study which affects the rest of us only as we affect this one race of human beings. The entire Old Testament, the four Gospels of the New Testament, transition of the church in Acts, comes through the epistles of the apostle Paul, gentiles, the Church.

One of the most remarkable factors in the study of the Jewish religion and rituals, the Kaddish, “prayer for the dead”. From the very beginning, the Jewish death is an honored occasion. After internment, a male of the family, usually on Sabbath for one entire year, gives the Kaddish at the synagogue. Since the males and females sit separately, only recently have the women started to give such. On special days, and observances, Holocaust, etc. the prayer is given.

One of the most remarkable facts of Jewish life is the ancient necessity to honor ancestry, history, tradition, their religion, perhaps this is one of the many things that has made this people such a great nation regardless of where they are found in the world.

Death has always been a mystery to me, I understand clinical death, whether from old age, disease or accident. I have trouble understanding how indifferent those alive regard the deceased. Only one who has studied life can know the value of life, just as only one who knows God can understand God. I could not worship a God that I could fully understand, I stand in absolute amazement of God. I cannot fully understand life, I stand in absolute amazement at life.

There is nothing more helpless than standing over one who has died. Death was a liturgical mystery to me as a child, I remember my first experience with a human being, I must have been 3 or 4 years of age. I was with my mother at a graveside service, the flowers, the ministers talking was a mystery to me, it still is (giving flowers to someone at death who never received a flower while alive, a minister speaking about something which he knows nothing about).

Later, a boy in my Sunday school class's mother died, I remember we went to the house, the casket was in the hallway. He and his brothers were in the yard playing ball. Later, a black women I knew in the community died, her casket was under a tree in the yard, the house was full of people cooking and eating. In a field close by, boys were playing ball. I was seven when I remember the first relative dying, my grandmother, an outstanding woman of the community, a beautiful, large church service. Now, late in life, I think of the 53 million babies killed just since abortion, for any cause, was established by the Supreme Court in 1973. Our future warriors, taxpayers, doctors, farmers, etc. How do you reconcile those who never had a chance at life, those who lived a long, full life, those whose life was snatched away by disease or accidental tragedy?

In my lifetime, I have seen people become very blaise about death, even in their own family. Death has become so sanitized, morticians who I know, tell me that some families approach a family death as an inconvenience. One told me, often the wealthiest families, someone will call and say, “use the next-to-the-cheapest casket, we'll send some clothes to the funeral home,” never look at the deceased. The cheap casket will be covered by a church pall, brief service, private burial. I noticed that more and more families chose cremation, the Bible is silent on cremation.

In America, particularly in the South, families were expected to have a family memorial service at the deceased's place of worship. When I was young, it was rare to see a funeral at the funeral home; if a funeral was at a funeral home, it was usually someone who did not have any type church relationship. Families now have gotten so cheap, since it costs more to have a church service, much like a drive-in, fast food, “get it over with” service at the funeral homes, many times at night, to even make it too cheap for a visitation. Don't treat the dead that way, they deserve better. While alive, most were loving, contributing members of society who gave so much for families and others. Burying anyone, especially the elderly, is like burying a library. I cannot understand this recent abomination of family members feeling obligated to speak at the funeral service. If you have a pastor, former pastor, friends, use them at a time like this. Give the deceased the same elegance, obligations, considerations in death, that they deserved in life.

Older people, ones who have been to many farewell services, have probably expressed the type service they desire. You can be sure that a mother has observed how her children react to the burial of their father. Personally, I have left strict instructions to the bank trust who will be in charge, I require no services at all, I have lived my funeral oration. I will not embarrass my unconcerned family, while I was alive, to think they should be concerned at my death. I would not embarrass my country to provide military honors when my country so dishonored my military service while alive.

Fifty years ago, when I could see, when I often attended burial services in cemeteries or graveyards. I enjoyed looking at the old tombstones, family names that will come back in my memory. On every marker of every type, large or small, you have the year of birth and the year of death with a hyphen in between, it is that hyphen that counts...amazing what some accomplish in life. Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints. (Psalm 116:15)

Ides of March

#515

If we have anything to celebrate here at the Ides of March, it is that “Spring is in the air” and just perhaps, we are about to escape the worst winter in my memory. Shakespeare, perhaps the worlds greatest poet, made the Ides of March famous in his wonderful play, “Julius Caesar”. “Beware of the Ides of March”. The fictional character “Seer” or prophet referred to in the play, warned Caesar of the Ides of March. On his way to the senate, Caesar said to the Seer “It is the Ides of March and nothing has happened”. The Seer replied, “it is not over yet”. Caesar was later assassinated by men whom he trusted. Caesar, known for his many military exploits, know for the Gallic wars, had a most memorable funeral. The funeral oration of Mark Antony, I memorized as a student and so has students all over the world:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men--
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
Funerals of world leaders have always been interesting, particularly in England. As I have told many British subjects in traveling around the world, “you folks really know how to put on a funeral”. Do you remember the procession involving Lord Louis Mountbatten at St. Paul's? Hundreds of British sailors pulling the gun carriage on which the casket rested? The funerals of Queen Elizabeth's mother and father at Westminster? Do you remember the funeral of President Kennedy at St. Matthew's Cathedral? Short Haile Selassie and tall Charles de Gaulle? Do you remember the funeral of Lyndon Johnson at the First Christian Church in Washington? And metropolitan opera star Leontyne Price singing “Precious Lord Take My Hand” and “Onward Christian Soldiers”? I could describe the funerals of most world leaders.

Funerals have always bothered me, this is a very personal thing. But the thoughts of families getting together, gorging themselves with food, and then going to a memorial service is downright pagan. This past week, a second cousin killed himself...young age...depressed about losing his eye sight...leaving behind a family including a 4 year old child. Beyond all understanding, his family deciding to have him cremated, first had him stretched on a table with a quilt covering the lower part of his body, so his family could take one last look before his ashes were interred in an urn. How pagan can you get!!! All privacy gone, people starring at a dead body. Please God, deliver me from such heathenism.

Once, I was in Burma, a Buddhist Monk had died. My driver just happen to take me by the site of the “festivities”, “drums and drama”, “bells and smells”, “family and others dancing around the bloated corpse”. I said to him, “please get me away from this satanism”. Once in Singapore, walking down a busy street with my guide, he said, “this looks like a busy store, let's see what is going on here”. When we got in he said, “oh my god, we are in the midst of a funeral”.

The great late blind editor of the news Argus, Goldsboro NC, often wrote about being in a restaurant with his “seeing eye wife” and people being so curious watching a blind man eat. For many years, I have felt the “stares” of sited people as I have tried to live a somewhat normal life knowing they were watching my every move, particularly in a restaurant. I feel this is the reason so many disabled become reclusive. Certainly, in a coffin, or laying on a table with a quilt, (as was this cousin, a suicide victim), I do not want people staring at me. I have had my fill of this type degrading, uncivilized behavior.

One mortician, told me, I give the dead just as much privacy as I give the living. I always keep them covered with a sheet. I even resented the cadavers, in the laboratory laying naked while being dissected by students. I feel babies and children, should learn early in life the decency, the privacy, of being covered.

Please, please, don't invite me to a funeral where I am expected to gorge myself with food celebrating someones demise. I have one aunt and uncle who never missed the chance of a free meal at a dead persons house. They always know that food will be brought in and that if they get there in time, they will be invited to eat. There is no such thing as grief anymore, death is almost an embarrassment. I am told some families never look at the deceased. The coffin is kept closed with a church pall or flowers over it. Prayer and fasting for the deceased or a proper memorial service are rare. Why is it that family members feel they must speak at the funeral? The Preacher out west, who was killed by someone in his church, was eulogized at his funeral by his wife! Don't tell me you are Christian if you participate in these unholy, unnecessary, exercises. There is nothing here that is “Christ-like”. Whose end [is] destruction, whose God [is their] belly, and [whose] glory [is] in their shame, who mind earthly things.) (Phl 3:19) .

My next door neighbor died, Bill, one of the most distinguished men I have ever known, graduate of Williams College, successful in every endeavor, wealthy. He was barely at the funeral home, surely not embalmed, when I heard from my house such clammering over “things”. Relatives running out the door carrying his things, yelling back insults at one another. “He wanted me to have this”! Another neighbor, Margaret, former clerk at the Federal Court drove me to his funeral. Three of us were there. Margaret and I, and the young man who cleaned and cooked for him...not one relative.

“If you want to see what your friends and family think of you, die broke, and see who comes to your funeral” (Gregory Nunn).

Set Your Course

One of the most famous songs of the 20th century is as follows:

This world is not my home, I'm just passing through.
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me from Heaven's open door
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.

Chorus
O Lord you know I have no friend like you
If Heaven's not my home, then Lord what will I do?
The angels beckon me from Heaven's open door
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.

Scripture tells us that our citizenship is in heaven, that we are just foreigners here on this earth, strangers and pilgrims, “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul”  (1 Peter 2:11)  Just moving through, but that we are to give allegiance to authority over us.  This often becomes very difficult when we consider the character of the political leaders in charge of local, state, and federal government.  I have watched the funerals of several past presidents, knowing their lifestyle and the political corruption with which they were elected.  The first Christian church in Washington DC, was the sight of the funeral for Lyndon B. Johnson 36th president of the United states, before a church, filled with political dignitaries, Leontyne Price, the Metropolitan Opera sang “Precious Lord Take my Hand” and “Onward Christian soldiers,” at his burial. Under a tree at his ranch in Texas, Dr. Billy Graham eulogized him as a great man. 

We saw murdered John F. Kennedy’s casket taken into St. Matthews Catholic cathedral in Washington DC, amid the pomp and circumstance of a catholic state funeral. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt died in warm springs GA, his flag draped casket centered in one carriage of a train with many lights bringing him slowly up the eastern seaboard, slowing at every small town along the tracks as thousands lined the railroad tracks to get a glimpse of the casket as it proceeded to Washington for a state funeral in the east room of the White House.  And then onto his final burial in hide park

Richard Nixon, like Ronald Reagan, was buried on the grounds of his library.  Reagan, more popular, had a much larger state funeral than did Nixon, both of whom were buried at their libraries in California.  The presidency is our closet aspiration to royalty.  We have seen the great funerals of England at Westminster Abby and St. Paul.  Perhaps one of the most spectacular funerals was that of Nicholas Mountbatten, admiral of the Royal Navy, last ruler of India, killed by the Irish, whose coffin on a caisson was pulled to St. Paul’s cathedral by several thousand sailors.  Another spectacular sight in England was the casket of Winston Churchill on a barge going down the Thames river and all the cranes dipping or bowing as the barge passed.

Greatness does not come cheap, in this country, you must raise millions of dollars to buy the office as in the last election with President Obama.  Recently, I heard a black college student interviewed on the radio who referred to President Obama as the black race having a god.  He said, “Now we do not say God bless you when someone sneezes rather, Barack bless you.”  He said, “ The white folks have had their white god, now they must honor our black god.”  Politicians are like a coin.  A coin has symbols on each side which makes it worth something.  Eliminate the symbols on one side by an abrasion and the coin is worth nothing. The reason Abraham Lincoln is always at the top of the most important figures in political history is because he was a man of integrity. Anyway you turned him he had certain basic convictions and he stood by them.  Ronald Reagan also makes the list of the 5 most important political figures in history.  Even George W. Bush still makes the list though one of the most unpopular presidents in history, with the lowest poll rating because he had certain convictions and he stood by those convictions, such as opposition to abortion.  One cannot be a proponent of the slaughter of babies without suffering the consequences of damnation by Satan and eventually the public. 

Peter Drucker, author of 39 books, largely responsible for the rapid advances of Japan following WWII.  Japan used the famous 3 legged Peter Drucker’s approach to government which “teaches that a "healthy" society is built upon three sectors: a public sector of government (State); a private sector of businesses (Corporations); and a social sector of community, church and charitable organizations.  Each of these sectors must ultimately be accountable to the State.  In countries where this has been tried, it was easy to control economics and education such as in Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Pol Pots Cambodia, and even Mao Zedong’s China.  The reason most of these regime’s did not function well is they did not control religion.  It is the objective of the Drucker followers in this country to control religion.  It is significant that president Obama’s mentor, Saul Alinsky author of “Rules for Radicals “ and “Revelry for radicals” and is at close adherent of peter Drucker's theories. 

It is amazing how rapidly Mr. Obama and his disciples are establishing these principals while slow thinking, lethargic acting, evangelicals, and even Christians including Catholics, with same sex marriage and emphasis on abortion,  are complacently undisturbed.  The two legs of the three legged stool, economics and education, as in the communist systems, were easily taken over. The absolute success of what Saul Alinsky calls the “target” is more difficult.  In JFK’s  “While England Slept,” in which he describes the failures of the British government to prevent WWII by not castigating appeasement.  We seem to think that spirit filled “Children of God” can isolate themselves from this total communist takeover.  When will we awaken to what is happening? 

Many years ago, at a southern Baptist convention. I heard Dr Baker James Cauthen secretary of the foreign mission board, state that the greatest area for evangelicalism was the black people of United States.  A prominent black minister told me, “most blacks go to church, just in case there is something to it.”  Dr. Frederick K Price, famed black California preacher, founder and pastor of Crenshaw Christian Center, author of the book “How Faith Works”, has revealed these shallow pretensions of most black religionists.  As president Obama, and pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, has said, “The chickens have come home to roost.”  And with the threats of Janet Napolitano concerning right wing terrorists, and representative Barney Frank's attempt at “hate speech”, the course has been set. 

President Obama, the most liberal senator in US history, the most pro-abortion politician in US history, has surrounded himself with radicals from every field: abortion, economics, affairs of state, education, etc.  Would the most radical liberal ever have believed that Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius who received a reported $200,000 from the most radical abortion physician, Dr. George Tiller, would be selected for Director for Health and Human resources in a country that until a few years ago was considered “Christian.” (1799 to 1892, US supreme court declared this a Christian Nation) The liberal media who never discusses such disgusting Godless Ideas as the White House covering everything pertaining to Jesus Christ at Catholic George Washington University or the nearly ½ million Catholics who have expressed their displeasure with Obama’s commencement address at Notre Dame.  Finds it imperative to talk about a disgusting homosexual subject such as same-sex marriage on every news broadcast.

The true Christian finds joy in the knowledge that his citizenship is not of this world, that we are just strangers and pilgrims passing through.  We should rejoice in the fact that these Godless people will not only reap their rewards EVENTUALLY here on earth but will enjoy one another’s company forever with the prince of darkness in hell.   How easily, as was Eve, these liberals have been beguiled, how easily, these liberals have thrown away their inheritance of integrity and decency. How easily, the Obama-Alinsky target of socialism has taken over.  In my lifetime, I have seen education: elementary, high school, college, deteriorate beyond words to describe.  If a foreign power had occupied this country and forced American citizens into madrassas for brain washing indoctrination we would have said it could not be done, certainly not so easily.  Many Americans voted for change, the course has been set. 

The Perils of Vision

The 1947 film, Perils of Pauline, starred Betty Hutton, William Demarest and Billy DeWolfe in a comedy depicting Pauline as an enterprising starlet. The movie has never been forgotten because of its exaggerated conflict.

Those of us who are blind will never comprehend the lackadaisical attitude of sighted people---those who just take their eye sight for granted. One young man, working for me, went home and covered his eyes with adhesive tape to see if he could manage, as I do, in just doing his routine around the house. He said it didn't last but a few hours. He just could not stand it. He said, “How do you live everyday in a world of darkness, taking care of yourself, even running several businesses, and on top of all of your financial and other interests?”

Many years ago, a young man in my military unit died in a vehicle crash. Since he was such an outstanding person, I went to the funeral and had the privilege of walking into the church (St. Paul's Methodist Church) with his mother. She said to me, “He was outstanding in every way: smart, never any trouble and never IN any trouble; but he did not want to attend church and I never did insist on his attending, and spirituality was completely left out of his life. This is the first time he had been in church since he was a baby.” As we went to the cemetery, and I walked up to the open grave with her, the minister at the head of the grave took some sand out of his pocket and put the sand on the casket in the figure of the cross. I realized, just as this grieving mother must have realized, that it was too late for her son to make things right with his Creator. “Without vision, people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18)

As with most children who find their life in front of a television screen, most of the time following the example of their parents, who spend six hours a day watching television, their space world has been drawn in—limited---and the eye doctor, such as your writer, must put minus lenses in Rx glasses frames on them to push their space world out where it belongs.

Contact lenses were a very new thing when I was in school and beginning my professional activities. The first contact lenses were scleral, covering the entire eyeball. Can you even imagine how uncomfortable they were? But as I said many times to many parents, “Young girls would wear thumb tacks in their eyes to keep from wearing thick eye glasses.” Then there were the smaller plastic contact lenses, then the soft plastic lenses, and now surgery to physically and surgically correct myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism. Today, very few people wear eye glasses but the physical, emotional and neurological problems concerning sight in learning still exist.

Like everything else in the health care industry, technology and development has made things much easier but problems still exist. As a young practitioner, the cataract patient had to lay perfectly still for days with a cement block on each side of the head. Today, a lens transplant can be made and the patient can be at regular activity the next day. However, there has been no cure and little treatment for diseases of the retina, optic nerves and the tracts through the brain, where all vision takes place. The eyeballs themselves are just receptors for light. All vision takes place in the brain itself. (Calcarine Cortex, area 18 at the back of the head) I never cease to be amazed about the trash that people will allow their eyes to see as unfiltered it pollutes millions of neurons in their brain, anymore than I can understand how a woman, or man for that matter, can spit in the face of almighty God by giving their most personal and private possession, their sexual senses, to just anyone who has the money to pay for such. Prostitution, fornication, adultery, the desensitizing of values, the corruption of purpose, must surely embarrass our blessed Lord who gave us a body created in His image, in such a marvelous manner. (Psalm 139:13-14)

According to Forbes Magazine, pornography accounts for $10 billion of revenue each year. Most pornography comes from the Northrigde area in California which was almost destroyed in the last big earthquake. Maybe, when the earth starts shaking there again, as it will, these pornographers might think of how almighty God will shake them one of these days for the misery and deception, despair and distortion they have brought to humanity. Any time I have talked to a Muslim about religion, he has always thrown pornography in my face. The fact that this “Christian” nation, a country built on the sovereignty of God's Word, would, because of the Supreme Court, allow such 'slop' (liquid garbage) to addict a large percentage of our young people and adults. The fascination and addiction to pornography comes through eyesight. Helen Keller, born deaf and blind, said in a speech one time, “How can precious eyes be used for anything except the viewing of beauty---a beautiful bird, flower, or smile of a child?” (When I heard Helen Keller by record she had never heard a voice and her speech had to have an interpreter. Buried in the floor of the national cathedral, this magnificent blind lady went on to graduate from several colleges and became an inspiration to the sighted world.)

Recently, in the presence of my son and youngest grandson (a college senior), I said, “Never doubt for a moment that God does not know what He is doing. He chose me to serve Him as a blind person. He knows how to keep us where He wants us.” My son said, “I have heard how fast you drove your car before the war; how you were always in a hurry.” GOD IS BOSS! He has a right to slow us down. Enjoy and prize your eyesight every day of your life. We may not have a Mount of Transfiguration experience such as Moses and Elijah but with purity of eyes we will see God.

“I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes.” (Psalm 101:3)

All's Well That Ends Well

To the existentialist, history means nothing and the future is unpredictable; how pitiful that the human mind so limits itself.

This country boy did not fall in love with Shakespeare until college. Steele Building is now an administration building at UNC-CH but when I was a student there it was a dormitory where I lived. It was right next to the historic PlayMaker's Theatre. That Greek architectural structure which brings gladness to the hearts of so many alumni. One of my friends had introduced me to one of the actors in Shakespeare's play “All's Well That Ends Well”. He was standing outside the theatre smoking a cigarette one day and said he was leaving me a ticket for a play at the ticket office. It was at that play that I fell madly in love with Shakespeare. Little did my friend know, or did I know at the time, how many Shakespearean plays I would live to appreciate in the future. In England, at Stratford-Upon-Avon, I was at the play “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” and I went through the 400-year-old Shakespeare home, walked the streets where the Bard himself had walked.

Life, at best, is a very short experience. Death has become so fantasized on television, so sanitized to those left behind, almost an embarrassment to a family because your death interferes with their routine, their me-ism lifestyle. One of the most lovable, respected men I have ever known, who lived next door to me, died some years ago. One neighbor, Margaret, asked me to go with her to the funeral. This man, graduate of Williams College, successful by every measure with which men measure success, did not have one member of his family at his funeral, just a handful of business acquaintances and friends.

Years ago, I left instructions with my Trust, who will handle my estate, that my death will be only a paid interlude with no services and no visitation of any type. As several of my disabled friends have told me, people, especially family, have erased me from their memory and recognition while alive. Why should I want any of them around me after death? The Trust department will be paid to have my body cremated and interred next to my beloved parents and they will dispose of and distribute the philanthropy which I have left. While alive, even those to whom my wealth will be left, could not be bothered so why should they be bothered at my death? Although a 100% disabled service connected medical officer veteran of the Korean War, I have made very sure that your government will not pay one dime to bury me, not even to a flag under which I served proudly. The Veteran's Administration has done everything possible to deny me any benefits of my service, so why should I count on them for anything at death? It troubles me that those brave, young warriors, now and then, get such callous appreciation.

I had the joy of knowing real Christians, real people of quality, real people of concern. I have not forgotten one marvelous Christian lady who was a patient of mine for several years after I returned from the War. Living way out in the country (Grantham, Wayne County), she had been left a large inheritance by her family. She had never married, lived in the same house in which she was born, still used a hand pump to get water out of the well. Once, I remember this more than anything else, I had a full head of wavy black hair, which is now white and she said one day, “I just want to put my hands in your hair”. I felt, since she had never had a man to love, I could grant this gesture. Her extensive family were all members of a Pentecostal church where she played the piano for 75 years. They asked me to speak at one of their homecomings and I haven't forgotten the nice box of food she insisted I take home with me, knowing I lived alone.

One morning, her aging brother called and told me that Miss Lilly had died in her sleep and that nothing would please she or her family more than to have me say a few words at her service. I came face to face with real death, a real funeral, a real burial.

The large, framed church off the main highway was overflowing with community people (black, white, rich, poor). Her cheap, plywood casket covered with cloth, had been brought from her house to the church on a pickup truck (remember this lady was a large landowner, a woman of wealth who drove a car at least 50 years old). As the casket was taken out of the truck and her two brothers and four nephews took it into the church, the large crowd all sang Christian hymns. Every one of her former pastors, who were still living, spoke for about 5 minutes, giving the Christian message of death. The fact that she had already died to a life of sins ruin and Christ redemption many years earlier and had been baptized by immersion, thus, showing to the world her death to the old life of sin and rejection and her raised into a new eternal life. This was only clinical death whereby her weightless, vision-less soul without mass would go on to the glory for which Christ had redeemed her, having escaped through clinical death.

Several members of the community spoke about her Christian witness. I will never forget one old black man, weeping openly, who said, “There was much sickness in my family over the years and I could always depend on seeing her old car coming up the path to my house with food for my family”. This is the way she was known throughout her community. She and I had discussed, many times, the healing touch through the Holy Spirit in our hands. She always put her hands on the forehead of any sick in the community.

I only spoke a few words, I said that in her presence I felt the inspiration of Christ. I knew that Miss Lilly had not only been with Jesus but stayed with Him every moment of her life.

At the end of the service her two brothers and four nephews took her cheap casket out to the churchyard/graveyard to an open grave, which they had dug themselves, and with ropes lowered the casket down into the ground. Then, as the family and friends stood around singing (“Rock of Ages” and “In The Sweet By and By”), members of the family with shovels filled the grave with dirt. To this day, I can still remember the sound of the dirt hitting the casket.

This is the way death was handled by our forefathers who had the courage of faith, who knew that the splendor of life and death, the reality of trust, the assurance of faith, who knew nothing of political correctness or the insensitivity of letting a funeral home handle everything, except just a few minutes at a hypocritical service...a visitation with people staring at the corpse, the most insensitive, inhumane act of life.

Often, the funeral home goes to great extent to make the dead look better in death than in life. One of my friends, a mortician, said, “The wealthiest families have the very least to do with the deceased. Many never even look at the deceased after death, they just throw the church pall over the casket and it becomes “party time” for family and friends,...eating, drinking, celebrating”. One can celebrate the “home-going” of a Christian, but it is a sad thought to think of an unsaved, deceived loved one spending eternity in hell. The charisma of a beautiful inter-spring casket, adornment with expensive clothing, extravagance with flower arrangements, eulogies by lying, deceiving preachers do not change the eternal destiny of the soul, the real person, as the “shell” is buried, entombed or cremated.

All's Well that Ends Well