ANGELFIRE 8-10-05
Peter Jennings of ABC has died at age 67 from long cancer. It's at the same age my father, J.M. Hazlitt, died in '69 from a ruptured aneurism on his heart. Both men had been heavy smokers and both had quit, then started back. My dad stayed smoke free for exactly a year, so I've wondered if that was his goal. It's good to see growing public opposition to nicotine addiction and the effort to preserve smoke free workplaces. Young people can't recall how cigaretts used to pollute the air we all had to breath. Yet even now the butts are often thrown down and left as disgusting litter. I hate sweeping up after hired workers who leave such a trail in houses we've remodelled. And picking up beer bottles or cans tossed on the street side past our Pinkhouse is equally repulsive. It's an inspiration to see other folks out picking up litter along the highway. Now there's quite a contrast between creating the mess or cleaning it up, and most of us have cheers for the latter; even if they're often prison inmates. I've previously linked the global war against terrorism with the war on drug, which are the root of so much rot. Then just one closer step is the war against trash and litter. It can be also seen as against filth, obscenity and profanity in conversation or in the media. And that can extend to pornography as well. It's all the devil's attack on mankind's well being and the real source of victory is in redeemed humanity through Christ Jesus as Savior.
May our seven space travelers aboard Discovery be back down safe by the time this is read (and now they are), just as the seven Russian sailors are back up from their sub in the deep as it's being written. That's been a contrast of ventures the past few days, just like the two attacks on London last month. July 7 was a lethal day at the five city sites while July 21 also had five urban places with no explosions nor fatalities. Both seem like opposites frequently mentioned in the Bible: last shall be first and first the last, blind shall see but the "seeing" be found blind, blessed the meek for they shall inherit the earth, greatest among you shall be your servant etc. As I think about Iran's view of the US as a "great Satan," I recall that Zoraster was their prophet of theological dualism. His religion included two divine powers, Araman and Mazda, light and dark, good vs evil. And in fact, it's where the children of Israel learned during their Babylonian captivity about an adversary to Yahweh, the one true GOD. So the Adversary was that name, or "satan." Thus the New Testament says less of false gods as in the Old, but much of "Satan and the Devil." Cyrus of Persia was kind to the Jews. He let them return from Iranian rule over Babylon and go home to Jerusalem. Maybe that's why a bit of his religion was taken with them into our Bible. Then Muhammad put it also into the Qu'ran of Islam and from there modern Iran's been using Satan as a name for America. The book of Job makes earliest mention of that wicked one, when "Satan came also" before Yahweh with all the good angels and provoked Job's faith into being extremely tested.I don't feel the LORD ever allowed him to come that near again. He's also seen as the angel Lucifer (shining one) who led a third of the angelic army to revolt. GOD's archangel Michael led the angelic legions in casting the rebels all out of shamayim (highest heaven) down into this material universe. I'll share more on the web site. Shalom
With more evidence that Iran's building nuclear weapons, we might respond to their great satan charge with "it takes one to know one." Concerning that monster in the Bible, I find Isa. 14 and Ezekiel 28 as two chapters where earthly tyrants are given such scruteny that their metaphysical origin is revealed: derived from the fallen state of angelic rebellion. Then I look back to the second verse in Scripture about earth being "without form and void, and darkness upon the face of the deep." It's the clue that discloses that possibility of future evil in a good creation, even though the six days of creation are before such. As I have read again from the Scofield Bible, Gen.l:3, I see a choice between "Original Chaos" and "Divine Judgement" interprestations. For me, the latter is more adequate with the comment added: "condition subsequent to creation and not as it originally was." That's to describe the universe created in time and space from start to finish in, whereas highest heaven is in eternity/infinity. Elohim, a plural name for GOD, implies his creation of the angels when heaven it'self was made. That may also be why "heavens" is used by so many translations. The war in heaven (Rev.12) being in that higher realm, may have begun during the seventhy day while Yahweh rested. Thus everything is perfect during the six days of Genesis 1. Then Satan used the serpent to trick Adam and Even at a later stage. "Adam," being a generic name for any material creature, could be the ancestor of all temporal beings, even beyond this one planet, though it seems quite unlikely. Yet "earth" is likely far more than just Earth.
ANGELFIRE 8-17-05
With no agreement Monday on their constitution for the new Iraq, delegates voted to take another week trying. So we just have to hold steady like mid-wives in a birthing process. It's tempting to make calls for withdrawal of our troops, but that gives support to the insurrection which has just such a goal. So holding steady is our obligation to more than 1800 of our sons and daughters who've already made the ultimate sacrifice. If there's no constitution adopted by next week, our patience will be put to the ultimate test in waiting for another general election. As our late beloved bishop Paul Milhouse used to say when business ran long and he had to rap the gavel, "Hold steady, now. Let's all hold steady."
Also in the Middle East, Israeli's are pulling out of Gaza despite widespread protest from their own citizens who maintain Biblical claims to that territory. Of course there's far more on the West Bank that's still in dispute. So yielding down there that the ancient Philistines once once held may evoke the solidarity that David created for that ancient war. The name Palestine comes from way back then and was imposed by the Romans to stifle Jewish patriotism which David had engendered. Warfare against all the Canaanites under Moses, Joshua and the Judges down to Samuel was mere dress rehearsal for Saul and David's fight with the Philistines Their horses, chariots and iron battle armor, made them the worst ever. And that was a preview of today's global Armageddon, as I see it.
Could it be that the parousia (Christ's return to bring a new heaven and earth) will be humanity stepping out from this small planet to continue in time and space rather than on into eternal/infinite realm of shamayim? As a space age theologian, I've pondered that millennium of His rule and wondered how prominent a part technology might have in it. From what's being predicted by futurists, nanotech and artificial intelligence will make miraculous achievement unlimited. If futurism is a form of prophecy, I can testify to seeing it already proven. Back in '84 I took such a course at OCU. Our text was by a famous sociologist entitled "Megatrends." There were ten that have mostly come to pass by now. Think his name was John Nesbitt. We also studied "The Third Wave," a view of history moving from agriculture to industrial and finally this information era. First it was food, then machinery, and now information that is the "gold" we go for. But the endless era is when it's so common, gold is used to pave the streets. That's still supernatural I say, as in Revelation 21:21.
I found a chronology of deep space exploration that began with our Pioneer 2 launched in '60 toward Venus. Then the USSR tried for Mars, but failed. We had a number of "stranded in earth orbit" shots, but they had them twice as often. We even put several sattelites in orbit around the sun, and then finally a man on the moon (though that was not deep sapce since it's far less than a million miles). The USSR dropped out of the space race and ceased trying for a manned lunar landing. But they had started it all with their "Sputnic" back in the mid fifties. What a jolt that was when they put their tiny sattalite up around Earth. I'd always been interested in aircraft, but just couldn't comprehend how Sputnic stayed aloft without wings or a propeller out beyond the atmosphere. It was a new age dawning and we had to catch up. So we sure did, and won by going to the moon in '69. Then the whole USSR collapsed two decades later. I wonder if loosing the space race was a major factor, and if Sputnic's still out there? Surely not, but the SSI certainly is. And other nations are getting into space i.e. European Union and then Japan, plus China and India. Plenty of room for everyone out there! An Episcopal clergyman published his book "Honest to God" in '64 that said "heaven isn't up there anymore, it's out there instead." Our three storied universe (hell below, earth between and heaven above) was ending he said. He also talked of "the new morality" based solely on love. It was a turbulent time that brought back those words of Jesus, "heaven and earth may pass away, but My words shall not pass away." That's when I centered on finding Him in the Bible as life's priority.
ANGELFIRE 8-20-05
Even though Discovery made it back safely to earth last week, the space shuttle is shut down until next March. It is caution about stuff coming loose on launch that can turn the return into another disaster like Columbia back in '03. Take off and landing are the most dangerous times with humans aboard. But the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter got on it's way last Saturday after only a day's delay, and should be there in seven months to orbit Mars the next four years. It should gain more information about the landscape that all previous probes there combined. Such will be used to determine a manned landing site, plus future colonies. MRO is also using solar power during it's voyage, something new as I understand. So sails will be deployed to gather sunlight. Sure glad it's not running on gasoline or we'd all go bankrupt paying for just this one way trip. In fact we earth bound fleshly beings can learn from it's example to draw strength from our divine Source for life's journey. Our faith is the sail we deploy and the larger it is, the more soul energy we gain.
My time in the navy was nearly all landside, but had some sailing aboard a destroyer on a training cruise down to Jamaica in the summer of '47. We spent a day at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; then went on to Kingston. A few of us met a youngster there who tagged along wanting to show us the place. His one great goal was to come to the states in his lifetime. There was so much poverty, prostitution and misery everywhere then, that we thought about trying to smuggle him aboard. But our ship was crammed full already. The bunks were spaced at only three feet or less. He was waving as we shipped out and I've never forgotten how much he wanted to come with us to live. That's been lifetimes ago, but I hope he did finally make it here somehow. I was still a teen ager myself and wondered why the US navy had even taken us to such a place of black people who spoke with an English accent, all trying to sell us booze of sex; nothing like the image now on TV of children singing on a beautiful little island of vacation down there.
Here in WW the Steakhouse is supposed to open again this week. The past month I've been going into Neta's at PV for lunch carry outs instead. It's such a nice place and right on my route too. Seeing folks there I've known so long ago has been an extra blessing. I think of that song "make new friends and keep the old. One are silver and the other gold." But the gold ones are getting scarce for me. First thing I see on each new Democrat is the obits, and too often there's someone I've known. The days go by so fast. Seems like a merry-go-round that keeps gaining speed. Soon I'll be hanging on as my feet swing clear out horizontal. Something else new that I've see along with AI ("artificial intelligence" previously discussed) is IT (information technology). Now it's making a shift from analogical to digital. Jack Pack told me about this nearly a year ago as pressure grows for his TV channel to go digital. We thought our giant TV was going out and learned that new ones were all digital. But we got this one fixed and are still analogical. I can recall when the late Monte Lee was bringing digital service to PV. So by now it's all you can buy in new TV sets. Jack said that TV stations would eventually drop analogical transmission and our sets, along with his cable channel would be obsolete. Seems there is pressure in the industry to do that, maybe sooner than later because of so many benefits. So read all about IT on the Internet. And hang on to the merry-go-round, as we wait for the Lord's glorious return. Come Lord Jesus
ANGELFIRE 8-24-05
I finished the last column with a play on words from newsboy lingo, "read all about IT" but on the Internet. Should have included "extra,extra" that meant a special edition had been run. If you saw what I said, you knew IT meant "Information Technology." But more than the info, I enjoy just playing with words; and a reader at Waurika has sent me this list of zany statements. With school going again, it can be a delightful lesson in lexography: 1. A bicycle can't stand alone because it is two-tired. 2. What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead giveaway.) 3. Time flies like an arrow -- Fruit flies like a banana. 4. A backward poet writes inverse. 5. In a democracy, it's your vote that counts; In feudalism, it's your count that votes. 6. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion. 7. If you don't pay your exorcist you get repossessed. 8. With her marriage she got a new name and a dress. 9. Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I'll show you A-flat minor. 10. When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds. 11. The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered. 12. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart. 13. You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it. 14. Local Area Network in Australia: the ! LAN down under. 15. He often broke into song because he couldn't find the key. 16. Every calendar's days are numbered. 17. A lot of money is tainted. 'Taint yours and 'taint mine. 18. A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat. 19. He had a photographic memory that was never developed. 20. A plateau is a high form of flattery. 21. The short fortuneteller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large. 22. Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end. 23. When you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall. 24. Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine. 25. When an actress saw her first strands of gray hair she thought she'd dye. 26. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis. 27. Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses. 28. Acupuncture is a jab well done. 29. Marathon runners with bad footwear suffer the agony of defeat.
Wasn't that fun. I had to read twice or more to get the chuckle on some. Just wish classes could be that enjoyable for all our Garvin county students. But I know the teachers can't be entertainers and learning is hard work. And worship can be also, even though inspiring. But # 15 on the list sure isn't me, because I sing from having the key, Christ Jesus as Lord.. PV's A/G Church often has playful lines posted on their front sign and I drive out of the way just to go read them. It's pastor Dean's wife who finds them to put up. Don't know how she get's so many good ones (maybe out of her own wit). I saw her at Punkins last week and offered one I'd made up myself for school: "Godly girls should seek to be chaste more than chased." So the devil says "Had you rather be one looked up to, or just looked up?" When he first got Eve listening, everything took a fall. Yet chastity means purity and is still a virtue, despite the opinion of this gross world.
ANGELFIRE 8-27-05
This morning my Bible reading was from Judges, about the Israelites failing to expel alien peoples from the land Yahweh had given them. Instead they made treaties to collect tribute by allowing them to stay and worship their false gods. Of course that led to one calamity after another, which caused them to repent and call on Yahweh for deliverance. The deliverers were Judges, but they were also warriors who fought bravely for the LORD (Yahweh). The Canaanites served Baal and Ashteropth (male and female deities). There's so much sex obsession in our culture today that I see those same battles of behavior around us now. Yahweh demands holiness, purity, and high standards of morality. Baal is the phallic view of manliness as being stud. An upright pole was the mark of his shrine. So you see TV ads for Viagra or other potency enhancing drugs quite commonly. And a Baal is always after Astherepths with which he can be physically conjoined. Have you heard that the primary cause of death for pregnant women today is murder. "Boy friends" can no longer hide their identity because of DNA, yet they refuse to pay child support as the public rightly demands. So they secretly eliminate both mother and child before birth. What a pattern of Baalism. The late Lacy Peterson already had her man, but even as a husband Scott didn't want that burden of responsibility. Just think of all those baby makers who'd never even consider matrimony. Or the expectant mothers who perhaps thought that pregnancy was a trap to catch a guy. We're clear back to primitive Bible days it appears, going backward instead of forward as the false gods abound.
BRAC rhymes with "whack," and that's just what it's become as so many military bases are set to close across the land. I think BRAC means "base reallignment assessment commission," and is about nine officials the Pentagon appointed to make the determinations. Here in OK we'll see a few gains rather than losses, but think of those states that have to give up huge installations where thousands have been employed. Even the famous Walter Reed Army Hospital in our national capitol is to be shut down. Sort of reminds me of the French Revolution when so many heads had to roll. They even invented the guillotine to make it faster and less painful. Might you guess it was when mass production began? Only heads instead of goods. So now each whack of BRAC means another thousand heads of households unemployed. Ugh!
I can't imagine Oklahomans voting for a nickel to be added to the price of gasoline in that vote Sept. 13. Nor even a penny. An on-line petition to Bush that I've just endorsed asks that he use his presidential power to lower the price NOW. Any addition is just crazy as I see it, despite the bad condition of roads and bridges. We won't even need them if we're too broke at the pump to drive any more. Dick Cheney has the connections, so yah gotta tell him GW. Just do it. Now!! Gov. Brad Henry's big lottery for education to raise some 150 million is going to have only a small fraction for teacher pay. Most goes to universities and other school needs. And the teachers were hood winked into supporting his election. ANGELFIRE tried to warn, remember. "Too bad, so sad," says Dad. And JC Watts has revealed he won't be running since he's bought a home and making big bucks in D.C., which leaves it probable for Henry's second term. But I've just learned that home schooling has no regulation at all in our state. That sounds like a lottery at it's worst, since 15 to 20 cases are found each year where parents have taught their kids nothing. TV had to do the whole job. Whew. GOD bless our public schools & teachers, I'm saying now. Let Thy grace be in the system we pray, Lord Jesus, as we await Thy glorious return. Sooner the better, Lord. It's the nickname of our state and the way so many of us feel. I'd say we are Jesus Sooners.
ANGELFIRE 8-31-05
I punched up the web page
Don't you feel sorry for girls with that pretty name of Katrina, because now it's been marred by that frightful hurricane that even seemed like a terrorist; though it's image as a personal entity is only man made. Just now saw that the damage estimates will cost as high as fifteen billion. But so far the death toll, though mounting, is far less than grim estimates we were given. I heard Brother Shannon pray Sunday for folks along that coastal area and realized that's what I should be doing (while watching all the news about it). Jesus told Peter, James & John to "watch and pray" while He faced His own l alone in the garden. Now He cares for all those people agonizing over their losses. So thank GOD for the Red Cross, as well as Alabama's national guard and federal agencies coming to the rescue from so much flooding and destruction.
C-SPAN showed an author "The Faith of an American Soldier" telling how "the millennial generation" is being changed by battle experience in Iraq, to gain deeper faith. He compared it to the noble secret pledge taken for Knighthood in the middle ages, which contained compassion for the weak and wounded. Then he said that the hymn "Be Thou My Vision" is based on that long hidded pledge. I've always loved it's melody, but felt the words were not evangelical. No mention of Jesus. So I read them again and sensed his claim that "soldiers need deeper guidance than just following orders. They need GOD;" in Christ Jesus implied, as I now see it. Watching both C-SPANS, I try comprehending what's happening to U.S. in this day's "shaking of the foundations." That's the name of a book of Paul Tillich's sermons which I read long ago. The Biblical words are in Hebrews, which also says there will be shaking yet again. So that's NOW as I see it. We thought 9/11 was terrible four years ago, then the tsunami last year, and now global terrorism (worst as a spiritual hurricane). Destruction from nature isn't truly evil, since there's no intention involved. Or if it should be from the LORD as Noah's great flood came or the fire and brimstone that fell on wicked Sodom, it's not evil but divine judgement upon evil. Of couse both would have seemed evil to Satan, wouldn't they. I saw "Benjamin Franklin" on TV and how he taught us not to fear lightning. As a deist, he believed the Creator had given man natural law and the job of figuring out how to use it. His kite proved that there was electricity to use down here instead of fearing what's up there (as Martin Luther when a bolt scared him into the priesthood two centuries earlier). Franklin's attitude became basic in our national ethos, "it's true if it works." Now "intelligent design" by the Creator as opposing evolution by mere chance is at issue. I'm glad president Bush approves of it because Franklin's scientific attitude didn't exclude GOD; thus science doesn't rule out Ultimate Reality, though it still wasn't the way Jesus taught: He said "Ye believe in GOD. Believe also in Me" at the Last Supper Jn.14, and in His sermon on the mount, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of GOD and His righteousness, and all these (food, clothes, etc.) will be added unto you." Mt.6:33 Such seeking causes you to look for His soon return bringing it, Rev. 21:2 "Then I, John, saw the holy city coming down from GOD out of heaven." Amen