Whenever someone is doing a good work, there will be opposition. There was opposition to Jesus' message when he walked the earth. In fact, His ministry started with the Devil personally taking an interest. He tried to tempt Him to sin. Satan failed but he also never gave up. He thought he had won when Christ was crucified but that death was our victory. Keep up the good work as long as God leads you to continue. Following God's will for your life is the important thing you can do; not what other people say about you or to you. In Him, you can be strong.
When people enact hate crimes against someone like Howdy they might want to check the constitution and their conscience unless it is no longer intact . . . their conscience that is.
There's a stretch of the Outer Banks of North Carolina that's known as the "Graveyard of the Atlantic." Hundreds of ships have been lost there over the centuries. So it was there that something called the United States Life-Saving Service was born. They established these white frame buildings called life-saving stations every seven miles along that treacherous coast. The Life-Saving Service was a spawning ground for heroes. In one case, for example, a ship was in distress with four men staying alive by just holding onto a mast. Six of the seven men from the closest station went out into a storm that could very well consume them - after leaving a verbal will with the man left running the station. After 22 hours without food or sleep, they brought those four stranded men back alive. Incredible heroism like that was the norm for these men of the life-saving stations.
One interesting observation: never in the history of the Life-Saving Service did a drowning person come to the door of their station and ask to be rescued. In every single rescue, the rescuers had to leave the safety of the life-saving station and go out into the surf and the storm to keep someone from dying.
It's the nature of rescue. You have to leave the comfort of the life-saving station to save those who are dying outside. The life-saving station is a great place to get rescuers strong enough to go out into the storm to bring people in. And it's a great place to bring people after they've been rescued. But if we wait for dying people to come into the life-saving station to be rescued, most of them will die without a chance.
That's the nature of spiritual rescue. Over the years it's been known by many names - evangelism, soul-winning, witnessing. But we may have lost the urgency of what's really at stake. Every lost person you know who has never begun a personal relationship with Christ, every lost person within the reach of your church is, in the words of the Bible, "perishing ... staggering toward slaughter," (Proverbs 24:11) "without hope and without God," (Ephesians 2:12) and ultimately, someone who will be forever, in the Bible's words, "shut out from the presence of the Lord" (2 Thessalonians 1:9). They are spiritually dying people, and their only hope is rescue by someone who is close enough to save them.
Sadly, we've been waiting for them to come to one of our meetings, our programs, our religious places, our life-saving station. But Jesus said in Luke 19:10, our word for today from the Word of God, that "the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." He said that in the house of a reviled tax collector, where Jesus had been criticized for going. But Jesus shows us that you have to go where the lost people are to rescue them. You have to seek them if you want to save them.
We keep having programs to rescue the dying - and few of them ever there. The plan of God is for someone like you - an everyday follower of Jesus Christ - to be the one to rescue the dying people around you. If we have to go where the lost people are to rescue them, you already are where some of them are. Don't just let them go on dying. Leave the safe, comfortable spot and take some risks to rescue them. You follow the Man who left the comfort zone of heaven to risk it all, to give it all to rescue you. Now He's asking you to join Him in rescuing some others who will die forever without Him.
There is nothing greater you can do with your influence, nothing greater you can do with your life than to rescue someone who would have died otherwise; to help someone else be rescued from hell and be in heaven with you. Ron Hutchcraft
Hoi polloi is a Greek phrase meaning "the many." Hoi polloi are the masses.
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Winnie, from Winnie the Pooh, was named after a bear at the London Zoo. The animal had been born in Canada but brought to London in 1914 as the mascot of a Canadian regiment.
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THE BEST EXPERIMENT EVER
The first chocolate chip cookie was developed in the kitchen of a Whitman, Massachusetts, country inn in 1937. Simple experiments led to a recipe combining bits of chocolate candy with a shortbread type cookie dough.
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WACO, TX
The only radio station in the U.S. with call letters that spell out the name of its home city is WACO, Texas.
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BE MINE
Historians claim that the first valentine was a poem sent in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London at the time. In the United States, Miss Esther Howland is given credit for sending the first valentine's cards. Commercial valentines were introduced in the 1800's and now the date is very commercialized. The town of Loveland, Colorado, does a large post office business around February 14.
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"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."
ANSWER: Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885), French author.
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The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. --2 Peter 3
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"In sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope, authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less the pardon of our national sins..." --Abraham Lincoln
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A careful study of economics usually reveals that the best time to buy anything is last year.
No one should live by the early bird policy without finding out whether he classifies as a bird or a worm.
Sign on a clothing store - Come inside and have a fit.
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The most eccentric orbit of any planet in the solar system belongs to Pluto, a ball of rock and ice smaller than Earth's Moon. With its even smaller companion, Charon, Pluto traces an elliptical orbit in the outer reaches of the solar system.
When it is closest to the Sun, Pluto is 2.8 billion miles out (4.4 billion km), which is closer than Neptune. But the outer end of its long path is 4.6 billion miles from the Sun (7.5 billion km). For all but twenty years of its 248-year orbit, Pluto is the outermost known planet in the solar system.
The Creator made Pluto's unusual orbit have an effect on the planet. When it is closest to the Sun some of the ice on its surface evaporates, giving Pluto a thin atmosphere probably composed of nitrogen, carbon monoxide, methane, and other light gases. That atmosphere condenses into snow when the planet is farther from the Sun. Did you happen to know that Pluto's Creator was that Babe in Bethleham?
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What is man? This question has captivated the ages. Ask it today in a university lecture hall, and you are likely to hear that there is no such thing as man, for there is no universal human nature that we all share. There are just individuals. Yes, we share the same physiology, the current fashion says, but we do not share the same destiny, or purpose, or morality. Therefore, there is no such thing as human nature, no such thing as man.
Such an answer has not always been in vogue. Even such disparate figures as Friedrich Nietzsche, the atheist philosopher, and Alexander Pope, the great Christian poet, agreed that humanity had a common nature, something that we all shared. Yet they disagreed what that common nature was.
Nietzsche thought that humanity was "a rope tied between beast and Overman." (Footnote 1: Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathrustra, as quoted by Damon Linker in First Things, August/September 2002, No. 125, 57.) Overman was superman—humanity that had evolved beyond our current state into a more powerful and more awesome form. Thus humanity was between superman and beast. Nietzsche said as much in his magnum opus Thus Spoke Zarathrustra:
What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for Overman…[We] have made our way from worm to man, and much in [us] is still worm…[So] man is a rope tied between beast and Overman…[and so] what is great in man is that he is bridge and not an end. (Footnote 2: Ibid.)
Thus Nietzsche looked forward to man evolving into superman.
Alexander Pope looked for no such evolution of man. He looked for the salvation of man. Yes, Pope also saw man as being in a between state, but not between beast and superman, but between beast and God. He powerfully articulates this in his masterful poem An Essay on Man:
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the skeptic's side With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride, He hangs between;… In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast; (Footnote 3: Ibid.)
Pope, like Nietzsche, understood that we are darkly wise and rudely great. But Pope also knew that our destiny was not to evolve into supermen.
Our destiny, and our great hope, is the putting on of the new man in Christ. Our human nature made in the image of God has been marred by sin. Yet Christ, gives us the hope of overcoming our sinful nature. His promise is clear: "I am the Light of the World, whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." (Footnote 4: John 8:12) He is the Creator of heaven and earth, the Author of Life—will you follow him to that for which you were created? Keith Cox
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Q: Why do UNC grads leave empty milk cartons in the fridge?
A: In case someone wants black coffee.
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Kool Airplane Sites: http://usfighter.tripod.com/p51.htm http://www.f22-raptor.com/index0.html
"The Bible...is the one supreme source of revelation of the meaning of life, the nature of God and spiritual nature and needs of men. It is the only guide of life which really leads the spirit in the way of peace and salvation. America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture." --Woodrow Wilson
================== "How to Be Sure You're a REAL Christian" 1-888-NEED-HIM (24/7 - free call) ==================
The field of physics worships at the altar of c, the velocity of light. It is widely regarded as the inviolate constant which affects all things: from our knowledge of astronomy to the very behavior of subatomic particles. Even the basic relationship between mass and energy is known by every schoolboy as E = mc2.
For many years, and in many of our previously published materials, we have made allusions to the very controversial view, held by some, that the speed of light (usually designated mathematically by "c") has been slowing down.1 We have, naturally, received a number of adverse reactions from those who have difficulties dealing with this possibility.
Evidence suggesting that the velocity of light, c, has been slowing down throughout history was first reported by Barry Setterfield and Trevor Norman for some years.2 Now two physicists-Dr. Joao Magueijo, a Royal Society research fellow at Imperial College, London, and Dr. Andreas Albrecht, of the University of California at Davis-are proposing that, immediately after the universe was born, the speed of light may have been far faster than its present-day value of 186,000 miles per second.3 They now believe that it has been slowing down ever since. The effects predicted by their theory are to be published in the prestigious scientific journal, Physical Review. "If it's true, it would be a very big leap forward that will affect our perception of the universe and much of theoretical physics," said Dr. Magueijo.
Albert Einstein's most famous formula is widely known: E=mc^2, which relates mass to energy. It says that the energy contained in matter is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared.
Since light travels very fast (300,000 kilometers per second, or 186,000 miles per second), there's a lot of energy wrapped up in a very small bit of matter. The energy of one gram (1/28 ounce) of matter would keep a 100-watt light bulb glowing for 28,500 years.
One of the most noticeable examples of the mass-energy relation is in the sun, where hydrogen is converted into helium by nuclear fusion. During the reaction, 0.7% of the hydrogen's mass is released as various forms of energy. The Creator pointed a tiny fraction of that energy toward our planet in order to keep the Earth from turning into a ball of ice. Did you happen to know that the Sun, light, & Einstein's Creator was that Babe in Bethleham?
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Hamas Launches Website Encouraging Children to be Martyrs
The Palestinian Authority's ruling Hamas terror group has launched a web site for children, preaching the moral desirability of being a suicide terrorist through cartoons and children's stories. The Hamas-run Al- Fateh.net glorifies shahada, martyrdom, and presents the deaths of terrorists attacking Israelis as a time of celebration, according to a report by Palestinian Media Watch.
One of the stories on the site quotes a mother saying that when she heard her son had become a shahid, a martyr, she bought dates, candies and coffee to give out. An entire section of the site is called "Stories of the Shahids" and the most recently posted story honors Hamas terrorist Naseem Ja'abari, who murdered 16 people when he blew himself up on a bus in Be'er Sheva on August 31, 2004.
The homepage (pictured above) encourages martyrdom with a prominently featured drawing of a religiously garbed girl participating in violent attacks on both the homepage and on a second page with a poem glorifying Jihad, Islamic conquest, and Shahada.
Will we hear an uproar from "Children's Rights Activists" and "Child Abuse" Advocates over this??? We should!
Where do we begin to stop this insanety? Enough is enough!!
I suggest you might say to Brenda in response to her query -- we have attempted to stop "this insanity" in Iraq by sending all the troops we are able to muster . . . we can't do much about Hamas and the Palestinians until we get some more troops so we are able to declare war on them. However, as we should have learned from Viet Nam, you can't defeat an ideology or a philosophy by military force. Minds have to be changed. And going soft in our support of Israel as Condi Rice advocates is not helping to quell the Hamas activities. Until we are able to handle another conflict in that part of the world, we need to do all we can to help Israel. They are our front line of defense and offense against Hamas, etc.