I'm thinking of what Robert Thomas, a big inmate at LARC who comes to services in his wheelchair, told me Sunday night. I asked if he had heard anything about J.D.Malone, another inmate who came in a wheelchair but has been hospitalized for several months now. J.D. is from WW where Niece and I have given Christmas gifts to his grand daughters for several years through Prison Fellowship's program called "Angeltree." Robert told me that J.D. was being kept alive by the DHS even though his mind was completely gone so that they could collect from the goverment on him. Robert has had a lot of contact with the prison medical people and has a bitter attitide. Yet I knew some of it was true because Adury,J.D.'s wife, had told me a long time ago that her husband didn't know her or anyone else, so she didn't go up with the girls for visits anymore. J.D. used to be faithful at chapel services and I've called the prison hospital a few times asking about him. The nurse assured me "he wants to live and hopes to get well." I was quite skeptical of that report. Now he's in one of the newer prison buildings out at LARC instead of the hospital, and I haven't figured out how to get in to see him there. At least it's air conditioned, I'm told. And since I couldn't pray with him, my prayers are just as effectife for him here at WW as I see it.

If he hadn't smoked so many years, Sept.18 would have been my father's 98th birthday. But he died instead at age 67 on Dec.10, 1969. My older brother, John, who is his namesake, e-mailed me a reminder last week and said he'd been reading from "The Guv Book", which is a fine biography he wrote of our dad for all of the family. My bother gave dad that nickname "Guv" and we all used it while he was living as a way to kid him about being the firm ruler of his household once called "dictator" by an outsider. In the over thirty years since his untimely death, my sister and I have gotten back to saying "dad." The nickname even got extended to our mother whom we called "Muv." And that stuck for as long as she lived, to age 96 as I recall. Since I go by the main PV cemetery so often, I drive by their graves just to see that things are in place. It keeps me mindful of how blessed we were as a family and each time I entrust their spirits to the Lord Jesus, who will bring the breath of life back to their bodies sleeping in the earth when they are renewed and glorfied in the resurrection at His final coming. I don't use the term "rapture" to describe that glorious day because it's not in Scripture. But I do feel that dad was raptured out of a low point in our national history that would have devastated him, America's loss of a war for the first time ever. He lived to see us land astronaughts on the mood, but was spared the sight of our helicopters fleeing from Siagon as South Viet Nam fell to the Communists. For such a patriot, that would have been too much. So I think of him being raptured (caught away), though my mother had to live on and endure the ravages of old age. Yet she was sustained by an unfaltering trust in the Savior till very end as our sister, Jane, gave her attention faithfully there in Altus.

I'm always thinking of things to write down but then they won't come to mind when I have the opportunity to put them in writing. One thing I've pondered is what Columbus Day means to the world in this new century. Just as that voyage of the Nina,Pinta and Santa Mariea opened up the other hemisphere of this planet, so a voyage soon coming to Mars will open up other planets. The age of discovery just keeps spreading our world into wider domains. As I think about those days of my boyhood when I looked at the moon through those binoculars my dad gave me, the thrill of adventure that came to mind back then still rises in me with the prospect of seeing a Martian exploration journey. Since the International Space Station is being built with that in mind, it will surely take place within a decade. Of course the necessity of bringing a crew home again after getting them there will add considerable complexity to the venture. So perhaps the first to go should be senior citizens such as myself who would be willing to go and stay for the sake of such an opportunity. Just having humans there and reporting back on TV would hasten the tide of travel, even though round way might take nearly two years for those to follow. I'd be willing to go solo if need be just for the priviledge of stepping onto Mars with a name change. I'd rename it Shalom since that would typify the Prince of Peace instead of the ancient Greek and Roman god of war. My wife once said that it would be easier to change the name of Mars than of Wynnewood. So this idea has come to me in response. Thus the red planet would signify that divine blood shed for sin rather than bloodshed of human conflict.

I saw a cartoon yesterday of a little spook at the front door just opened to him. He said "Violence or treat!" That certainly seems to fit the climate of these past weeks worldwide. In fact it gave me a deeper insight into just what is the source of violent conduct: when the laws of GOD have been broken. Such violence against the Source of all orderly behavior will certainly bring that same thing upon all who allow it to happen. Thus morality is not at all the private matter than has been supposed.

THE SOJOURNER

3-28-00

Pope John Paul II made a magnificient journey of peace and goodwill and it didn't cost us tax payers either. I'm glad he got back home safe and sound, just as I am for our president too. But Clinton's jaunt around the globe cost us taxpayers some seventy million dollars. And we see little results except to get OPEC to sell us some more oil to let the price come down. Yet OPEC doesn't provide but a third of the world's oil anyhow. If that seventy million had been used to subsidize our domestic production, I think it would have been a better investment. And isn't it a coincidence that George W's campaign chest had reached that same amount when he launched his race for the Republican nomination. I'd guess it's nearly all spent by now, but at least he got the nomiation with it. Clinton may have looked brave to go into danger zones but we sure had to fork over plenty to pay for all the security required to protect him. He could have saved a lot using long distance video calling the way TV takes us to hear reporters. But you can't grand stand that way, can you. And you sure couldn't equal the attention gained by the holy father's pilgrimage. Did you realize that John Paul II showed due respect to the Orthodox church, which predominates among Christans in Israel, by observing clergy protocol there? We forget that so many of the Palestinians are Christians, even though Arabs. They use "Allah" as the name for Jesus' Father, despite Scripture's use of "Yahweh," which Jesus referrs to as "hallowed" in the prayer he gave for an example to us. My prison ministry partner Glen Simonsen was reared in NYC of Armenian Orthodox parentage, though many of his neighbors there were Jewish. Now he's an evangelical Christian familiar with both groups, and feels that they all need the personal knowledge of our LJC as Savior. We hear so often from Jews about that horrible Holocaust back in the '40s, but Glen tells me of a genecide effort against his Armenian ancestors clear back before the 20th century began. It was undertaken by the Ottoman Turkish empire of Islam and wasn't called a "holocaust" only because the technology of mass cremation hadn't yet been developed (though the Bible's book of Daniel mentions that "burning, firey furnace" in Babylon where the three Hebrew children were cast, which was built in such ancient times to try turning those Godly men into burnt offerings). As the pope confessed a fault of Roman Catholicism for for it's silence, the rest of us earthlings need to also repent of our inhumanity to each other. Jesus called Himself "the son of man" and told us the words He would say of neighborly good deeds at the great and final judgement, "for as much as ye did it unto one of the least of these, My brethren, ye did it into Me;" or of neighborly neglect, "as much as ye did it not unto one of the least of these..." He placed the love of neighbor right up longside the love of GOD by linking the "golden rule" (royal law) so basic in all religion to the Hebrew shema, "Hear Oh Israel: YAHWEH thy God is one; and thou shalt love YAHWEH thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul (mind) and with all thy strength."

Guess you've heard that speaker of the House named Hestert has appointed a Catholic as chaplain to replace the retiring Dr.Ford. There was quite a struggle as a bi-partisan committee failed to agree on one of the three candidates chosen from hundreds that were considered. So the speaker finally broke their impass by appointing a fourth clergyman, a high ranking priest from Chicago. It was even more of an ordeal than the Oscar awards had to go through, I'd say. Yet I'm sure the chaplain will be a lot easier to understand than Warren Beatty's address at the Hollywood ceremonies. I just didn't get what he was trying to say with all that string of apologies. Was he mocking the pope, or what? Guess I just don't dig the movie world.

THE SOJOURNER 12-11-99

Russians are justifiably angry over all the terrorist bombings in Moscow in recent months and so they support their military operations in little Chechnia because that seems to be their hideout. But it sure makes them the global "bad guys" again. Just a few years back we were feeling so sorry for their economic plight, but our attitude's surely changed; especially with the discovery of their spy in our capitol. The Cold War mentality comes rushing back toward Russia. And Yeltsin did a lot to fuel the fire by mentioning that they still had a nuclear arsonal to face us with (if he can find and control it). He sounds to me like a crippled bear that can only resort to bluff against her presumed foes, while she chews up a defiant cub. My late father used to sing a song about the Orthodox and Muslim conflict that never ends: The sons of the prophet are hearty and bold, and quite unaccustomed to fear. But of the bravest of all that I've ever been told was Abdul Abulbul Amere.Yet they say that the Russians make death a mere game who ride in the ranks of the Czar. And of all the most wreckless of name or of fame was Ivan Skeninski Skevar. One day this bold Russian went down into town, and he donned his most truculent sneer. But not far did he go er'e he trod on the toe of Abdul Abulbul Amere. Said Abdul "My friend, your remarks in the end will avail you but little I fear. For I'll have you to know that you've trod on the toe of Abdul Abulabul Amere." Oh they fought all that night neath the pale yellow mood. The din could be heard from afar. Great multitudes came for so great was the fame of Abdul and Ivan Skevar. Just as Abdul's long knife was drinking it's life, in fact he was shouting "Huzzah," he felt the kaboop of the big mamalute named Ivan Skeninski Skevar. Now a tomb rises up where blue Danube rolls and engraved there in characters clear, "Kind stranger when passing please pray for the soul of Abdul Abulbul Amere. And a Muskovite maiden her long vigil keeps, neath the light of the cold polar star. While the name that she murmers so oft as she weeps is Ivan Skeninski Skevar. It's a sad song he had learned somewhere and it describes that situation now causing such global disdain. Remember that old question about what happens when an irrestible force strikes an immovable object? Our prayer needs to be "Come Lord Jesus."

Here at the Nativity season just before another century and millennium I'm offering a term for greeting others that could remind us of that prayer: SHALOM. I've used it for nearly a decade to close this column because it's a blessing as Hebrew for "peace." In my two trips to Israel, I found it's both "Hello" and "Goodbye" in that country. And since Jesus' greeted His apostles with "Peace be unto you" when He appeared after the resurrection, it was the Kingdom blessing that He spoke to them, whether in Hebrew or Aramaic. More recently I've added the same word in Arabic, "salaam." But that's from the Koran rather than the Bible. So "SHALOM" was the way Jesus said it, though the meaning's the same. I'm reading a book entitled "Who Is Israel" that says we who believe in Yeshua Messiah are not Gentiles. [So we have a right to use this Israelite greeting, especially to each other]

Shalom/Salaam

The dedication of that bombing memorial today will put the eyes of this whole nation on OKC again where 168 federal employees were killed in that terrorist attack five years ago. A guy named Timothy (famous name of two books in the New Testament) was finally found and convicted of the supercrime. He had learned how to create such destruction while serving in the U.S. armed forces. We were all quite sure at first that some alien agents from the middle east had stolen in among us to do this horrible thing. Then we had to learn that one of our own decorated war heros had done it. He was, like Judas of old, from the inner circle of Persian Gulf War veterans and was boiling with anger toward our government's assault on that Waco compound two years before. So he chose the same date in '95 to take revenge here in our beloved Oklahoma, the heartland of America. It seems incredible that he should still be alive half a decade later in some federal prison. I saw where he'd issued a scathing criticism of the Enid attorney who endured much of our revulsion by representing him. Now McVeigh may yet grow into a hero for some segment of our violence crazed society. Now here in Holy Week I've seen an announcement of the remake of that musical "Jesus Christ Superstar," which was such a hit thirty years ago, that is coming out soon. It told the story from Judas' point of view and depicts the traitor singing his protest of being "damned for all time." Seems likw the way McVeigh gets to live on and keep spouting off. The musical also intimated that Jesus was having an affair with Mary Magdelene, which shows how Satan has twisted the Scripture. Of course the script wasn't written by believers but only to exploit the Gospel as entertainment. A recurring theme keeps asking "Jesus Christ, Superstar! Do you think you're who they say you are?" That leaves the audience feeling that maybe it was only the eager imagination of throngs of seeking souls that invented this Christ person as their hero. And the Resurrection is almost ignored as I recall. Yet there was one haunting song by the former prostitute out of whom Jesus had cast seven devils, "I don't know how to love Him...He scares me so." It refutes the "affair" suggstion and comes closer to the fear of GOD plus true faith in the SON than anything else that musical had to say. She was changed from a manipulater of men into a worshipper of the divine Man. It wakened my awareness of the miracle that transforms "eros" into "agape." If Mary Magdalene could be so transformed, then it makes me wonder (dare I say so) about Timothy the terrorist.

Waco and OKC are sequals the way Seattle and Washington D.C. have now become, though without loss of life in the latter case. Those protests against the World Monitary Fund and the International Bank have stirred our awareness of these global entities and what they are doing, though I feel that the protesters and just looking for scape goats. Why not just blame the United Nations for all of it the way we have in the past? But I don't guess UN meetings attract that much attention anymore. CNN's report showed one of the main protest leaders in D.C. came from Seattle where he's a socialist advocate. I thought everyone had given up on that failed notion, despite the inherent evils of world capitalism. Just look at Cuba for a socialist exhibit. The Kingdom of Christ is the only real answer and it's good news that He will be coming again very soon. Already He has created an international conscience for the poor and needy that is offering "debt forgiveness" to some desperate nations. And the wild stock market fluctations all over the world are telling us to lay up our treasures in heaven instead of here on earth. Just a few years ago we never heard of markets other than the New York Stock Exchange. Now there's a dozen or so to watch in this global economy. Just so, the return of King Jesus will be to this entire planet, fully global as "every eye shall see and every knee shall bow."

THE SOJOURNER 12-15-99

I viewed part of the debate at Des Moines Monday night and was somewhat startled when W said he felt that Christ was the greatest philosopher and thinker. Several others joined in that acclaim which was so good to hear in this season of the Nativity. Yet Alan Keyes had spoken more accurately when he mentioned John Lock or Thomas Jefferson, because Jesus was not a philosopher. It really raised my resepect for the black candidate who also passionately affirmed his allegiance to our Savior. Though quite an intellectual, he also showed more emotion than any. The only one that raised questions in my mind was John McCain, who named FDR as his hero and then sited him as a solid example of family loyalty. I doubt that Eleanor would have felt that way, when he died with his mistress down south instead of their New England home with her. FDR also gave America back it's legal liquor with repeal of the 18th Ammendment that ended prohibition (and ushered in the colossal increase of alcoholism). And he started us down the road of federal deficit finance that's led to a national debt of astronomical proportions.

Hanukkah is the Jewish "Festival of Lights" that sounds like a description of Christmas. Yet it's about the Hebrew temple being purified and re-dedicated a century and a half earlier than the birth of Christ. So that's why it's called Dedication ("hanukkah") and lasts for the eight days a temple lamp miraculously continued to burn on one day's supply of oil; thus the menorah (candelabrum) is it's symbol. We have a lighted arch out back of the Pinkhouse that the Woolseys gave us saying "He is the Light." I think it's a Christian's menorah, just as the Church is that new and purified temple Christ said He'd build on the Apostlic foundation(Peter's faith as held by all Twelve). John 10:22 mentions Jesus at the temple for Hanukkah: "and it was winter" even then. Niece and I went over to Chickasha to see their"Festival of Light" that we've heard so much about. We took the long way through town and then there was quite a line of cars waiting to enter Shannon Park, but the place was spectacular and well worth the drive. That "tallest Christmas tree in America" dominates all else and is visible before you get inside the grounds. It looked to us a couple hundred feet tall, with lights strung clear to the top. Then all around in the park and lakeshore there were lights, lights, and more lights.

Ramadan in Islam, is this ninth month of the Muslim year when they all fast during daylight hours. It commemorates the first revelation of the Koran to Muhammad. Yet Islam's lunar calendar causes it to fall in different seasons instead of always being near our Christmas, the way Hanukkah is as in John 10:22. Since Islam didn't exist when the Bible was written, there's no reference to Ramadan in our Scripture. The Koran's name for deity is Allah which is Arabic for "THE God." No images or pictures of Him are ever allowed in mosques because of the second commandment, "Thou shalt not make any graven image of Yahweh" (Who was the God of Abraham). Muslims claim Abraham as their ancestor through Ishmael, just as Jews do through Isaac. So now we're hearing warnings from the state department about terrorist dangers for Y2K celebrations abroad with that Bin Lauden as the instigator. He's trying to rekindle the ancient strife between Isaac and Ishmael that caused the medival crusades, but he certainly doesn't represent all the Islamic world of today. Remember Sadat, the peacemaker? And the late Hussein of Jordan? As we celebrate the 2000th birthday of our Prince of Peace, let us be thankful for peacemakers from every branch of humanity. Let's pray for the talks between Barak and Arafat, that the peace of Jerusalem may be the outcome as we awail the soon appearing of Yeshua Messiah and the New Jerusalem (City of shalom/salaam).

Monday marked the 30th year since my father's funeral in the old sanctuary of 1st UMC. I came to realize what a heart of love there is in my home town as the whole Ministerial Alliance attended and pastor E.E.Gregory told the packed house that "you may not have agreed with John Hazlitt, but you always knew where he stood." Joshus 7:21 was the text for his message about Gideon's chosen 300 Israelite soldiers who surrounded the enemy camp, "And they stood every man in his place" while Yahweh gave them victory over the Midianites. Our family put that verse on his grave marker, which stands in it's place in Mt.Olivet cemetery. Dad was always a hard shell Bible believer. I think he got that from his Presbyterian days. Then he quit drinking, gambling and cussing when he joined the Methodists with my mother. And then he came back from WW II to her town a totally changed man, but always with a limp. His book of poems "Tangled Twine" that he wrote over in the south Pacific makes me think that he must have wrestled with the LORD over there (like Jacob who became Israel, and had a limp in his walk ever after). Maybe some of you old timers can still remember his column, "Sounding Off" by JMH.

Shalom/Salaam

We Christians call it the Holy Week that led lead us up to our first Easter of this new millennium. Yet right in the middle came the starting of Jewish Passover. Can't we see that it clearly illustrated how very much Christians and Jews have in common for faith? Charles Osgood hosted the "God Squad" in NYC on CBS "Sunday Morning," consisting of a rabbi and a priest who had become close friends. Each was quite active in their own Jewish and Catholic circles, yet both made cordial appearances together at various places. It appealed to me since I see that we share the same Old Testament and our Holy Week is the fulfilled Passover in which Jesus becomes the sacrificial Lamb. His offering shields repentant sinners from a second (eternal) death after the millennium, though He comes for His own to begin reigning ahead of Final Judgement being passed on this wicked world. For Jews, the destruction of their temple ended the sacrificial system at Jerusalem in 70 C.E., yet for Christians it had already ceased with the Crucifixion, when the perfect Pascal offering was made. We heard a magnificient vocal rendition of "Watch the Lamb" at church on Palm Sunday. It set the stage for reliving Holy Week as completion of all the Old Testament in a New Covenant. I've heard that we Christians might use the language of "hung on the tree" instead of "nailed to a cross" in witnessing to Jews, because for them the cross has been a sign of so much persecution (and the actual timbers raised were shaped more like a T than the beautified Latin cross now so familiar to us. If a change of words can open doors to faith, then I'm willing to alter termonology, despite my great love for hymns about the cross("cruel tree"). In the O.T. there's a curse upon anyone who is hanged upon a tree, and that's what Jesus endured for all of us sinners as He took the curse of our sin. [Maybe it's also why hanging became a form of execution in later ages, chosen as the cruelist way to die]. Remember that all the first believers were Jews, from the twelve Apostles to the 3000 believers added at Pentecost. Then "Christians" was a name applied later, by outsiders, to all who were following the Way, both Jewish disciples and converted Gentiles. Later a new religion called "Christianity" developed and became identified with Gentiles. Such a religion isn't even mentioned in the Bible. "Jews for Jesus" is a modern movement that doesn't require conversion to Christianity, but the completion of Jewishness instead. They become "completed Jews." All that leads me to an interpretation I've heard lately of "the two witnesses who stand by the Lord of the whole earth" that are mentioned in Revelation 11:3 (a quote from Zechariah 4:14). Judaism and Christianity are the two and certainly both have played such a major role in history, especially the formation of this nation of ours. The way I see it, Christians already know their King and are awaiting His return, while Jews will finally have a veil removed enabling them to see their own Messiah that most had failed to recognize when He first came: "He came unto His own, and His own received Him not." Or to quote Paul, "to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile." The testimony of that God Squad in NYC was that humanity today divides simply between those who believe in GOD and those who don't. That's true as far as it goes. But believers in the living GOD will finally also see that Jesus Christ is the SON! Hallelujah!!

Haven't mentioned our dog Critter lately, but she'd doing ok. Just doesn't get to go riding anymore since we bought a new car. Niece doesn't want her's scratched up and certainly not my new one. So our back yard's the extent of Critter's world now. She must feel like a "resident" or an "inmate," if you get what is meant.

The 31th Earth Day fell on Holy Saturday, a time when the body of Christ lay in that earthly tomb that was loaned by Joseph of Arimathea (Mt.27:57) While it's good to see all the concern about our temporal environment that is necessary to survive as a species, we mortals can have a destiny transcending the rest of creation through that One who came out of the earth again, back from the dust forever.This should be our very major concern, eternal environmentalism. Then Sunday marked 25 years since the fall of Saigon and loosing the long Viet Nam war. What a bitter day that was for all patriotic Americans to see. When Nixon brought our troops out he didn't know that he'd soon be out too. Subsequent leadership failed all around, though our ambassador there was like a captain staying last to leave his sinking ship. Maybe that's why the word "admirable" sounds like Admiral. Our own people escaped but we had to desert a lot of South Vietnameese who had sided with us. That's what has left us with this sick feeling the past quarter century. Wives and children were rescued but husbands had to stay and sadly went down like it had happened aboard the Titanic so long ago and far away, in another age and opposite side of the planet. Remember the post Viet Nam song drawn from our American escape: "Life was filled with guns and war and everone got trampled on the floor. I wish we'd all been ready. Children died, the days grew cold. A piece of bread would buy a bag of gold. I wish we'd all been ready. There's no time to change your mind. The Son has come and you've been left behind.
Man and wife asleep in bed; he turns his head, she's gone. I wish we'd all been ready. Two men walking up a hill. One disappears and one's left standing still. I wish we'd all been ready.
There's no time to change you're mind. The Son has come and you've been left behind. ... You've been left behind." It was true of those loyal Viet Nam citizens, but GOD FORBID that should be the case when Jesus returns.

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