Serials and Samples

Whoa! All of a sudden Findley Family Video has thirty-six titles? How can anyone keep them all straight? Well, here’s how, with this handy catalog of all our ebook offerings:

Antidisestablishmentarianism 

Illustrated Antidisestablishmentarianism

“Why Go to the American Wilderness?” Contains the Preface, Introduction, and first chapter of the complete plain text version of the book.

“Serial Anti” ebooks (illustrated and unillustrated versions. Each contains a five-chapter section of the complete book plus relevant appendixes and complete bibliography):

1. “What Is an Establishment of Religion?”

2. “What Is Secular Humanism?”

3.  “What Is Science?”

4. “What Are the Results of the Establishment of Secular Humanism?”

The Conflict of the Ages Part One: The Scientific History of Origins

The Teacher’s Edition Biblical Studies 

Student Edition Biblical Studies

“Old Testament and New Testament Manuscript History,” the first section of the Biblical Studies Student Edition.

Hope and the Knight of the Black Lion

Illuminated Hope and the Knight of the Black Lion, an illustrated version

“Oysters and Orisons,” a three chapter sample with smaller illustrations

“Home to My Father: A Knight’s Diary,” another excerpt from Hope which can be read as a stand-alone story.

Empire Saga

“City on a Hill,” a stand-alone story excerpted from Empire

“Sojourner,” a stand-alone story excerpted from Empire

“Empire 1: Humiliation,” first part of the Empire Trilogy

“Empire 2: Repentance,” second part of the Empire Trilogy

“Empire 3: Sanctification,” third part of the Empire Trilogy

The Baron’s Ring

“The Depths of the Pit,” a three chapter sample

Chasing the Texas Wind

“These Society Things,” a three chapter sample

Send a White Rose

“Mail-Order Mistake,” a three chapter sample

Benny and the Bank Robber

“Death and Peppermint Sticks,” a three chapter sample

Benny and the Bank Robber 2: Doctor Dad

“My Best Man’s Mother, ” a three chapter sample

Foundational Facts

Our book Antidisestablishmentarianism expands the following points in detail. Antidisestablishmentarianism has thousands of footnotes and over thirty pages of Bibliography references. These brief explanations will help those indoctrinated in the religion of Secular Humanism to begin to understand what America’s founding fathers knew when they wrote the Constitution.

The words belief, trust and faith are legal terms which form the foundation of true science. Belief means examination of the evidence and deciding by an act of the will to choose what is true. Belief is similar to the word credible. Belief can be misplaced. Faith is the active part of belief. Trust is the passive part of belief. Belief is the foundation of true science. The Wright brothers believed men could fly. With that faith they built an airplane in Ohio and shipped it by rail to North Carolina. They trusted in their beliefs by riding in the airborne airplane. This is the foundation of true science and the historic use of the words belief, trust and faith found in the Bible and used by America’s founding fathers. No basic law of physics contradicts anything in the Bible.

Secular Humanism is a leap of faith devoid of scientific facts. Like all religions, no two believers believe exactly the same way. In Chapter Six of Antidisestablishmentarianism we list 18 dogmas of Secular Humanism. Some of the most important points held by the vast majority of Secular Humanists are: Secular Humanism is a religion based on feeling and emotion, not reason. Secular Humanists do not believe in anything non-material. Secular Humanists deny God, angels, sin, Satan and demons. They believe that the goal of mankind is personal fulfillment, (as they define it) and collective evolution. Like everything else, children are the property of the state. Unity means the eradication of opposition. In 1957 Secular Humanists sued and won tax exemption as a religion. Secular Humanism is recognized by the United States Supreme Court as religion, with evolution as a central tenant of that religion. The core of evolution is the concept of “deep time” on earth.

Chapter 14 of Antidisestablishmentarianism is a twenty-seven-point list of scientific facts which scientifically prove that the belief in deep time on earth is a myth. A modified version of Chapter 14 is on the website. These four points sum up the major arguments. First, the moon is receding from the earth at a rate of approximately 1.5 inches per year. The moon’s orbit is unstable. Since an orbiting satellite must increase speed the closer the satellite is to the object it is orbiting, at some point closer to the earth the moon’s orbit would have been stable. A catastrophic event more powerful than all the nuclear weapons on earth was needed to change the moon’s orbit.

Second, near the top of the Himalayan mountain is a “yellow band,” a layer of intact fossilized ammonites, ancient marine creatures similar to a modern nautilus. Because they are mostly intact, they had to be put in place while their surroundings were in a plastic state (mud). Either there was tens of thousands of times more water on earth than there is now, or far more likely, the entire Himalayan mountain chain, including Mount Everest, was catastrophically upthrust. That is, with approximately the same amount of water that the earth has now, the Himalayan mountain chain went from layers under the ocean to its present location in a matter of minutes.

Third, Lake Titicaca is 12,500 feet high on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It is classified as brackish, which means that it has a salt content, though it is not salty enough to be classified as seawater. Only fresh water feeds the lake now. It has living sea horses, which indicate that Lake Titicaca was once connected to the ocean. There is an ancient shoreline which is much higher at one end of the lake than the other. At some point in the past Lake Titicaca was severely slanted compared to the modern lake. There is a large (660 feet long) building underwater with a road leading to it and steps leading down to unexplored depths.

Tiahuanaco is a city twelve miles south and 800 feet higher than the current lake. Tiahuanaco was a port city with a harbor for ships much larger than the current lake ships. They were probably ocean-going vessels. Though corn will not germinate above 11,500 feet, there are terraced cornfields on the shores of Lake Titicaca going up to 17,500 feet. The reasonable, scientific conclusion is that the moon’s orbit, the Himalayan yellow band and Lake Titicaca were all a result of a massive catastrophe which happened since civilized men were building cities.

Fourth, the according to Secular Humanists the only really reliable dating method is radiometric dating. For radiometric dating to be accurate, the earth could never have passed through a thermonuclear event. It is also impossible to know the original condition of the radiometric samples being tested. All the radiometric sample tells us is the ratio of radioactive isotope to stable isotope. The usual published date is nothing more than the oldest possible date of a range of dates. Zircons are the standard Secular Humanists use for establishing a 4 billion plus age for the earth, using the uranium to lead dating method. The exact same zircon sample, however, using the helium diffusion rate gives a date of only 6,000 years ± 2,000 years.

Only Secular Humanists can even conceive of the idea that the phrase “establishment of religion” in the first amendment of the US Constitution is vague and without meaning. The opening to the Magna Carta clearly states “that the English Church is to be free and to have all its rights fully and its liberties entirely.” The Magna Carta opens with this clear statement that the English Church was to be completely free of the English Crown. For hundreds of years the Magna Carta was signed over and over again by various monarchs, always with same words in the first point. The English Church was the center of worship, the dispenser of alms to the poor with preaching friars and monasteries and the overseer of education with the great Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

Henry VIII decided to change the meaning of the Magna Carta to mean free of foreign control, meaning the Church of Rome. This seizure of doctrinal teaching from the pulpit, almsgiving (remember John Bunyan’s imprisonment) and education by the crown was the sharpest goad to force Englishmen to leave England for the New World. At the same time on the European Continent, the Peace of Augsburg (1555) and the Peace of Westphalia (1648) clearly spelled out what an Establishment of Religion was and what was and what was not allowed. As in England, taxes supported the established churches which were responsible for providing for the poor, education and public preaching. Since the heresy trials of Charles Augustus Briggs in the 1890s, American schools, poorhouses and other types of welfare have only had to claim that they were not religious (secular) to receive tax money and favorable laws. These welfare and educational payments have been given with strict secular humanist strings attached. Through these judicial rulings, federal laws and federal funds, Secular Humanism is now an establishment of religion in every sense America’s founding fathers meant by the phrase “establishment of religion.”

While the first Humanist Manifesto openly used the term “religion” to describe their beliefs, modern Secular Humanists have discovered that lying about their religious beliefs gives them enormous political power. By falsely claiming that they are not a religion, they can appoint bureaucrats, collect taxes, and pass laws against, fine and even imprison those who oppose them. Any other form of religion is their enemy and must be quashed. The second and especially the third installments of the Humanist Manifestos are filled with newspeak straight out of Brave New World.

To a Secular Humanist, Science is “deep time.” The exact amount of time is unimportant. Secular Humanists are dogmatic that “science” allows for evolution. Their religion requires vast amounts of time uninterrupted by global catastrophes to account for evolutionary development. Overwhelming evidence forces them to admit to some catastrophes. These must be shoved far enough back in time to not interfere with evolution. Secular Humanists do not mean the scientific method, unbiased experimentation and observation when they use the word “science.” These are acceptable parts of science only when they are connected with “deep time.”

When Secular Humanists are not in power, they demand unity, “sharing” and that everyone “come together” to achieve goals. When they are in power, they ignore, attack, or overwhelm any opposition and go ahead with their own plans. Anyone who refuses to put their faith and trust in “science, falsely so called” is blocked from employment, fired if they do get a job and blacklisted once they are fired. Common forms of blacklisting include failure to cooperate with others (they cannot be pushed into believing in “science”) and refusal to abide by customary standards (refusal to put their faith and trust in “science”).

Since Secular Humanists believe that children are the property of the state under the brotherhood of man, they actively support the kidnapping of children for indoctrination. Secular Humanists believe in property confiscation to force people to believe. In Communist countries, Secular Humanists put unbelievers in re-education camps and work them to death.

“Free” sex, immorality, self-indulgence, profanity (free expression) and violence against all who disagree with Secular Humanism are not only tolerated, but encouraged. Disagreement is not tolerated.

Tools used to coerce unbelievers are social (isolation, crimes committed against them are ignored), political (laws are passed and regulations written to enforce secular humanism) and economic (loss of job and confiscation of property). Widespread abuse of prescription drugs allows behavior control and masks consequences and responsibility for sin.

(from our website, http://findleyfamilyvideopublications.com)

Will You Lose Your Job Because of Facebook?

 

This is not about your indiscretions which might show up in human resources. Yes, those are important, but this is about the very existence of the company you work for.

“But I work for a huge, stable company.” If you believe that you are safe then you do not understand how the stock market works.

Several years ago when politicians attempted to buy stock with social security funds, liberal cried, “risky scheme.” The current Social Security has no risk factor at all. Politicians spend the money as fast as it is collected. It guarantees that the money will not be there when it is needed.

The United States is in a desperate financial condition. If you do not understand that, the rest of this blog will make little sense to you. The federal government has borrowed more money than it can possibly repay. Private funds have nothing valuable to invest in. Unemployment is far higher than the government will admit. The government has to cook the books to hide the reality of the situation. The same is true for inflation.

Desperate to make a profit, large Wall Street investment firms are taking immoral risks and getting caught. With the failures of the Federal Government and traditional Wall Street investment firms, investors turned to a non-traditional source of income to seek profits in Facebook.

Investing means taking some of your money and saving it. You can do one of two things with your savings; hide it (put it in a mattress, safe deposit box, buy gold, etc.) or attempt to make more money. This attempt to make more money is known as investing. You can put your money in a traditional savings account with lower returns but relatively safe investments. You can also buy bonds, another traditionally safe investment with low rates of return.

But the largest and most common long-term investment instrument is a stock certificate. Both Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking were told by their publishers that they would lose half their audience every time they used a formula. Following that sound advice, there will be no accounting here.

A stock certificate is legal ownership of a company. While there is a lot of hoopla surrounding an IPO (Initial Public Offering), you must realize that an IPO is selling the company. Most people understand selling a car or house. When the deed or title is transferred, they have the money but not the car or house. A stock certificate, however, is only part ownership. Since stocks can be structured so many different ways, something simple might help us understand.

A man gets married. He has lived at home and worked on a farm his entire life. He wants to move out of the house and start his own farm. He convinces ten people with money to invest in a very small, completely equipped farm. They are not just giving him money. They are lending him their retirement funds. They need the money back but not for a few years. Each of these ten people gets a single stock certificate. To make the illustration very simple, whatever profits the farm makes when it harvests and sells it crops will be split 50/50. The farmer will keep 50% and the ten investors will each get 5%. So in this example, if the farm made $200,000 the first year, the farmer would keep $100,000 and each investor would get $10,000. This is similar to the way the real world works. The capital equipment, such as the land and tractors, would be purchased with original investment funds. Ongoing expenses, such as tractor repairs and diesel fuel, would be paid for out of the farmer’s share of the profits. As long as the investors keep their stock, they will continue to get 5% of the profits.

The risk is that if the farm does not make money the investors do not get paid. Every day companies fail and the investors lose their investment. Most people invest in some type of mutual fund where they buy shares in a lot of different companies. If most of the companies you invest in are profitable, it does not matter if one or even a hundred companies fail. If those profits more than offset the failing companies, you still come out ahead.

This is where Facebook comes in. We have a failing economy, a failing federal government, and failures on Wall Street. Facebook was the largest IPO ever. Though the IPO took place 5 days ago, there is still disagreement as to exactly how many billion dollars Facebook raised. The price per share was based on the number of shares issued and the amount of income Facebook is expected to generate. Unlike a farm, which harvests and sells a tangible product, the only income Facebook has is advertising revenue. It makes estimating income very difficult.

The billions of dollars invested and lost in Facebook were taken from other companies. Where did the money go? On a farm, money is spent on tractors, land and seeds. In a tech company, the buildings and equipment often have little value to anyone else. The capital investments are often in salaries of tech savvy employees and highly specialized equipment. However, in Facebook’s case, the money the original investors lost is not gone until the investors sell their stock. Facebook as a company has spent some of the initial investment. If Facebook uses that money wisely and eventually pays large dividends, then everyone who invested in Facebook will be paid back. The only people who lose money are the ones who sell while the stock price is low.

Facebook is pointing out Amazon.com as an example. Amazon’s IPO opened at $18 per share and fell to around $1.50 per share. Amazon went public in 1997 and failed make a profit until 2001. It is now up to $217 per share. However, Amazon sells stuff. It is easier to evaluate how well Amazon is doing by looking at what and how much Amazon sells. Facebook has a huge audience, but how much of that audience buys products Facebook advertises?

Our little business advertised on Facebook. Our tracking showed zero results from our Facebook advertising. GMC just canceled Facebook advertising last week for similar reasons. Facebook advertising does not work. Of course, Facebook can turn things around. But at this time, Facebook stock is worth less than half of its IPO opening price.

Most people are realizing that Facebook was oversold. The IPO price was inflated. No one can explain how the price came to be what it was. This is still being analyzed, but whispers of impropriety, dishonesty, and serious misconduct are becoming shouts.

At this time, Facebook is looking more like Netscape. The browser with more than a 90% market share in the mid 1990s now has less than a 1% market share. Netscape was sold and investors lost almost everything.

The difference between Facebook and Netscape is that Netscape failed in a strong economy. The money invested in Facebook was pulled from other businesses. If Facebook fails, or even just loses a lot of money, other companies will not have the money to meet their payrolls.

Combined with the other problems the US has, it just might be the perfect storm to bring down the US economy.

A $2 a mile load pays more than $12.50 a mile load?

This is for the Landstar community, but I am posting this for the world at large because I am asked about this at least twice a day. From here on out, I will just post a link to this blog. Since this is for everyone, I will explain some details the Landstar community takes for granted.

Landstar agents and truck drivers are paid by the load. There is no “company” to pay us by the hour or give us a salary. While there is a lot of money involved, we also absorb all the risk. We have no sick time, no benefits, no income whatsoever when we are not working. We have about $200 per week in expenses, even the weeks we do not work. These expenses are primarily taxes and insurance (a form of tax).

The most important part of economic survival is control of expenses. In fact, the choice of equipment, the choice of loads and the expenses are the only things a driver has any control over. I am not going to mention anything about the choice of equipment here. That is a multiyear decision. I am only going to compare two different loads.

These are two mythical loads, not available on any load board anywhere. But the data is based on loads I have actually hauled. I am less interested in realistic numbers than making in an easy to understand illustration.

Load A picks up in the AM in NJ, goes down a toll road, crosses a toll bridge and delivers in Philly, PA. It pays 50 miles. Load A pays $600 line haul and $25 Fuel surcharge. Fuel surcharge is based on $.50 per mile for 50 miles. $625 for 50 miles will post on the Landstar board as paying $12.50 per mile. It is floor-loaded, live load and live unload. You drive a half hour to the shipper to pick up at your 7:00 am appointment. You leave the shipper at noon. Traffic jams slow you down and you arrive at the receiver at 14:00 for a 25 mph average. The receiver tells you that you had a 1300 appointment and they will try the “fit you in.” It is cold (or hot), and neither the shipper nor the receiver has a driver’s lounge. You are forced to idle you truck at both locations, even though it is against the law. You leave the receiver at 1930, with only an hour to drive and the only truck stop in range is a pay truck stop back in NJ where you will have to pay another toll to get out of NJ. Since you do not have another load scheduled after this one, you do not want to risk running out of hours trying to reach the free truckstops in Elkton, MD. Expenses for load A: tolls in NJ, bridge toll to PA, driving 90 miles @ 3.5 mpg (a lot of idling in traffic) and 4 total hours idling at shipper/receiver. If you have a $10,000 auxiliary power unit (APU), you will have no idling at shipper/receiver and a total fuel cost at shipper/receiver of about $1.50. You will also be legal.

Fuel is calculated at $4.00 per gallon. Breakdown of immediate expenses are; $55 for tolls (estimate), $120 for fuel (approximate-includes driving to Petro in Bordentown, NJ after load delivered), $20 overnight parking. Total immediate (short term) costs for load A are $195.

Income for load A is 66% of $600 (old contract) and $25 for Fuel surcharge. Total income for load A is $400 plus $25 for $425 gross income minus $195 immediate expenses for a total net income of $230 for one day and no load the next day. You had little wear on the tires, but a lot of wear on the clutch and the engine had as much wear as a 600 mile run.

Load B picks up in Washington State and delivers near Atlanta, GA with one stop. It is a 3000 mile run. The fuel surcharge is $1500. The linehaul pays $4375. Stop pay is $125 (includes light driver assist). Landstar will post this load as paying $2.00 per mile. There are no tolls. Total mpg, including all idling, is 7.5 mpg. This is the only number which is not made up for this article. We actually get 7.5 mpg including idling. On this trip, there are no additional expenses. 3000 miles takes 5 days, including loading and unloading. You have a total 150 miles deadhead. The only immediate expense is $1680 for fuel.

Income for load B is 66% of $4375 plus $1500 for fuel surcharge and $125 stop pay. Total income for load B is $2887.50 plus $1500 plus $125 for $4512.50 gross income minus $1680 for fuel. The only immediate expense is fuel. The total net income is $2832.50. Since this load takes 5 days, the per day total is $566.50.

The wear on the tires is much greater on the 3150 mile trip compared to the 90 mile trip, but the wear on the rest of the truck is comparable per day.

While this is a purely mythical example, it is based on trips we have run. In this mythical example, the trip Landstar lists as $2.00 pays the driver more than twice what the trip Landstar lists as paying $12.50 per mile. Which is why I do not care what the “per mile” rate is. All I care about is how much the load pays.

Why does Abe Lincoln Look So Grim?

This is a rest stop along I-80 near Laramie, Wyoming which serves to commemorate the Lincoln Highway, which, the displays say, crossed the US from Times Square to San Francisco. There is a huge sculpture of Abraham Lincoln’s head on the site as well. Displays tell how the sculpture was made, how many tons of clay for the mold, how long it took, and so on. In fact, the displays have some pretty cool history of the building of the highway, pictures from early days, a memorial to the fellow who’s called “the father of the highway.”

Interesting how many observable, verifiable facts there are at this commemorative center. People were present to observe when this work was done. Statements can be verified, pictorial evidence confirms stages of the work, and so on. We can pretty much accept these statements as truth just because of the pile of evidence included in these displays.

Then there’s the stuff in the other pictures. Vedauwoo is a collection of rock formations in nearby Medicine Bow National Forest. The displays say they’re not sure where the name came from but they believe it’s a corruption of an Indian name. So they’re not sure about that, but they gave some evidence, and they’re probably right about where the name came from. But they’re not sure, and they admit it.

Now here’s the kicker: Amid all these verifiable facts and one maybe, there’s that line that says the rock formations are “1.4 billion-year-old Sherman granite.” It doesn’t say they might be. Doesn’t even give any evidence for why they are. Just like the Inland Ocean fossils we took pictures of in Montana, this presupposition, assumption, and religious dogma is stated as a fact. That’s why Abe looks so grim, I think.

This article originally appeared on our website, http://findleyfamilyvideopublications.com, at this url:

http://findleyfamilyvideopublications.com/graphiclincolnhighway.html

 

Bringing Light, Casting Shadows: A Review of Lisa Grace’s Angel in the Shadows

Many friends and blog readers may be offended that I have read and am reviewing a book sometimes classified as “Christian Horror.” Calling it an oxymoron or worse, some people say horror has no place in Christianity.

What is appropriate to write and call Christian is a big area of disagreement. Workshops, seminars and conferences teach biblical standards. I have different beliefs and standards from Lisa Grace. Many people will reject this book without reading it because they don’t think they would agree with all it teaches. That would be a mistake.

Lisa Grace has said, “Nothing is more horrible than going to Hell and being without the love of your Creator. I find Christianity and horror extremely compatible for this reason. Why do people commit suicide? Because they lack hope and love.” Most of the modern definitions of horror don’t fit this book. There are no undead. There is no gruesome violence or dwelling on the occult. She deals with both good and bad spiritual power but in a pretty down-to-earth way, at the risk of resorting to a pun.

Seth, a character in the book, is a growing Christian, as any teenager might be. He joins the spiritual rollercoaster ride with his girlfriend Megan (the main character) and shows faith, patience and dependability not everyone would be able to manage. Seth learns that we can sometimes fight the good fight without wholly understanding it, and grow into better understanding of our spiritual battles along the way.

I found technical flaws in the book. The writing style is intended to be simple, to reach more readers, but I think a cleaner, more traditional attention to style and mechanics would not hurt its influence much. The handling of angels living among us and interacting with humans was also a bit clumsy at times. I am not sure their consistent physical presence, like Grace portrays, would really be compatible with an angel’s mission either to help man to good or to tempt man to evil.

People in the story say they don’t have enough knowledge of the Scriptures but little attention is given to more study. The book seems to portray some loose personal standards as compatible with Christianity. While we all come to the Cross with baggage, mental and physical, we need to learn what has to be left at the Cross or quickly discarded.

The book shows a sex and drug party. Little detail is given. The evil angel is active in temptations there. The lifestyle is shown as wrong, resulting in death and terrible consequences. Teenage sex is also there, without real detail, and it is shown to be wrong.

Adults, even Christian ones, are portrayed as weak and are disturbingly uninvolved in their children’s Christian lives. Megan’s mother automatically disbelieves her account of a lifesaving event. Parents and adults are purposefully excluded from the main spiritual warfare of the book. I did not care for this obliviousness, though I know it is sometimes true. We as writers are here to edify, not reinforce what may be true but we acknowledge is wrong. I object to running down parents and lifting up teenagers as superior beings.

This book has a FANTASTIC occurrence near the end drawn from real life experience. The book is worth reading just to see how God can work even in the most impossible circumstances and concerns an issue crucial to our times and our Christian and human natures. It is one of the best descriptions of characters and events I have ever read.

Angel in the Shadows, Book 1 (The Angel Series)

 

THE POWER IN A WATERMELON SEED Guest Blog by Ada Brownell

Daddy grew watermelons in his garden—Black Diamond Watermelons— gorilla sized, not the striped tabby-kitty varieties we see in stores now.

A watermelon is a wondrous thing—a vegetable, experts say.

Daddy plopped seeds about the size of my pinky fingernail into the ground and then irrigated the rows.

Botanists tell me when you plant a watermelon,  a sprout comes to life and consumes nourishment from within the seed. (Wow. Isn’t God super?) The sprout grows and like a new chick escaping the shell, the seed shell bursts and a shoot forces its way out. Soon it emerges into the sun. Leaves unfold and photosynthesis provides food.

The seedling’s hairy roots push down into the soil to anchor the plant and absorb water and minerals.

The vine soon stretches itself over a large area. Yellow blossoms appear; then little green things about the size of a walnut. The roots suck nourishment and water from the earth through their hairy systems, pump it up through the stem and to the melons. The teensy watermelons grow from that small black seed, but now we have fresh dessert—green on the outside, white next to the peel, and an abundance of sweet red meat filled with more seeds that will make dozens more watermelons!

Watermelons are 92 percent water. Ancient travelers brought them along as a convenient source of water. But one large watermelon also can feed a big bunch.

Guinness lists the heaviest watermelon ever grown as the one planted by Lloyd Bright of Arkadelphia, Arkansas, that weighed 268.8 pounds.

Imagine. Almost 270 pounds from a tiny seed where life burst forth.

Can you grasp the wonder in a package of watermelon seeds? The energy comes from life—and life originates with God.

Jesus likened our faith to a seed, because it has the potential to grow and do great things.

We’re told resurrection is similar to seeds. “Someone will say, ‘How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?’ Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain—perhaps wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as he pleases, and to each seed its own body….

“So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption.  It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body….

“Behold I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed….

“For this mortal shall put on immorality. Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory”

(Selected from 1 Corinthians 35-59NKJ).

Like a simple watermelon seed, that’s the way God’s power will work in us!

©Ada Brownell 2012

http://amzn.to/Jnc1rW

Swallowed by Life—KINDLE VERSION FREE ON AMAZON May 18-20

By Ada Brownell

Do you know you are more than a physical body? Evidence shows our body is constantly dying and being renewed cell by cell and about every seven years is totally rebuilt – even our bones. We start as an egg about the size of a dust mite, yet we were the same person in the womb we are today. We may lose limbs, gain and lose weight, have vital organs removed and mechanical or transplanted parts inserted and we’re still the same person. Inside us is life, and a soul and spirit which were designed by God to live forever.

Swallowed by LIFE is subtitled “Mysteries of Death, Resurrection and the Eternal.” The book speaks about this mystery; how you know what to believe; the wonder of life with all its electrical systems; the awesome truth about cell death and regeneration; brain death, and other mysteries of the change from mortal to immortal; where we go when our body dies; resurrection; a glimpse at what we will do in heaven; God’s mercy  after man’s rebellion when He promised a Redeemer way back in Genesis to deliver us from death; and leaving a legacy here.

Questions and answers are included for study groups.

Ada’s Blog:http://www.inkfromanearthenvessel.blogspot.com/

Review of The Avengers

Likely to be the most popular movie of all time, The Avengers doesn’t need any hype from me, just as Captain America doesn’t think anybody would ask him to join a group of heroes to save the world. He wonders if he isn’t a little old fashioned. Phil (paraphrasing, and there will be more about him later) says, “Maybe it’s time for a little old-fashioned.” This movie is full of old-fashioned and biblical concepts that we need to take to heart.

Loki of Asgard plans to divide and conquer the “Team.” He is right to be confident. Captain America is obsessed with all he doesn’t know about the modern world and how “out-of-the-loop” he feels. Iron Man buries himself in his technology, popping up to insult or belittle someone and expressing his disdain for and suspicion of everyone who is not him. Iron Man and Captain America are great foils.

Thor just shows up at first to collect Loki and fix everything with his hammer. There’s a fantastic scene where he falls to earth, picks himself up, and goes to pull the hammer to him, but it won’t come. It’s not Asgard “magic” this time. It’s his own uncertainty.

Letting a bad guy play mind games and manipulate the good guy has been a standard in crime fighting programs too long. Black Widow turns that on its head in a very slick scene.

Bruce Banner, urged to “get angry,” so the Hulk would emerge, said, “That’s my secret. I’m always angry.” You can’t avoid being angry. But you can learn to control it, instead of letting it control you.

Hawkeye doesn’t dwell on a temporary failure. He gets back in the fight. Everyone has a part to play in the climax, a great part, both as individuals and co-operating as a team. Even the scientist who was, like Hawkeye, forced to help Loki, discovers determinism isn’t always a complete winner. He is a critical help in the final win.

Phil, a quiet guy in a business suit who called most of the team together, pitches in to try to stop Loki. His confidence and loyalty inspired the team when Fury practiced a deception with Phil’s Captain America trading cards. Fury showed the truth about the need people have for heroes committed to something bigger than themselves.

Here are some of the great values promoted in this movie:

Freedom: Loki says people really want and need to be controlled. Captain America arrives and says (paraphrasing here): “The last time I was in Germany I saw a bunch of people bowing down to one man. I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it now.”

One Man, One Woman: Pepper Potts and Tony Stark, as well as Black Widow and Hawkeye. I wish they were actually married, but their love and commitment, and the women’s ability to “manipulate” their men in a strong and positive way is excellent. Although there is no love relationship, Fury’s female second-in-command also had a strong and positive female support role.

Self-Control: Everybody needed more of this. Each character learned to focus on the real mission, to co-operate, to use different talents and skills and adapt to using his/her abilities in unusual ways.

Selflessness: Every character had a weakness. Except for Captain America, they were all self-centered. It was most clearly depicted in Iron Man but evident in different ways in the others. Captain America needed to get over his feelings of inadequacy. Hulk needed to realize he didn’t need to be afraid of his anger, as everyone was. Thor had to learn to say, “What do you need me to do?” to mortals he thought he was taking care of.

One God: Loki says, “We (Asgardians) are gods!” Captain America says, “There is only one God, and He doesn’t look anything like you guys.” Loki tries the same line on the Hulk, and Hulk smacks him into the floor and says, “Puny god.”

The movie teaches that men are not gods. We can still be heroes with the right perspective. In Christian terms, we can’t let Satan take advantage of our present weaknesses or past failures. God forgives and forgets, but we have to grow and learn what He wants us to do, work with our fellow-servants, and stay on course until the end. People like Phil and the other four non-super cast members can also be heroes. Just like people like us can, when our power comes from God. We can save the world, for Him, in a spiritual sense.

The Busy One

Though Solomon warns us of the dangers of sloth in Proverbs 6:6-11, The Busy One is an Arabic title for Satan based on Job 1:7 And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.

Every American, even if he is hates Christianity, knows Solomon’s admonition Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat (food) in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard: when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep: Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little fording of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man. From a child I have heard the phrase “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.”

But just “being busy” does not put us in good standing with the LORD. In our culture Be still, and know that I am God. is often taken as a sign of laziness while being busy is exalted. Resting in the LORD is not laziness.

Satan is very busy. Though the title The Busy One is not the exact wording of Job 1:7, it is the right idea. We can never be busy enough to outwork Satan. Satan, like the LORD, never sleeps nor slumbers. He is looking for weaknesses we do not even know about ourselves.

When we are too busy for God we are doing the work of Satan. The work of Satan distracts us when we should be worshiping. The Law commands the Children of Israel to stop working and worship Him every Sabbath, on feast days and special occasions. While laziness is condemned, working to the neglect of worshiping God is following The Busy One.

Through the Windshield 3

Montana has the largest surface area (by measuring all the mountain area) of the 48 contiguous states. It’s filled with bumper stickers like “My state is bigger than your state.” Yet small states like Arkansas have more roads for trucks than Montana. So last year when we drove from North Dakota west across central Montana during the floods of the Missouri River, the road closures were scary. There are no detours. At least three places had one lane of the two-lane road washed away. The remaining lane was under shallow water, but passable. Not a good thing when the last truck we passed going the other way was half an hour ago and we have no cell phone or Internet service.

Most of central and eastern Montana is made up of rolling mountains. It is like a large scale version of Oklahoma, Illinois or Ohio, only the rises and falls of the landscape are measured in the thousands rather than hundreds of feet. When it is not freezing, it is quite green. The eastern badlands are quite an exception.

While Colorado has the highest elevation of any Interstate, with Vale Pass just West of the Eisenhower Tunnel at 11, 000 feet, Montana is filled with Interstate passes over 8,000 feet and several over 10,000 feet.

Ice fishing is popular. During the winter I have seen thousands of huts on lakes, but the most memorable one was about a hundred huts on a series of small lakes near Helena. The ice fishing huts I saw in New York, Wisconsin and Minnesota were just sitting empty on the lakes. Not so in Montana. There was always somebody ice fishing.

Last year around Memorial Day, maybe even in June, we crossed Lookout pass on I-90 into Northern Idaho. We stayed the night at a truckstop near the summit. Heavy snow covered the ground and serious avalanche warnings were posted at the doors. The walls of the  truckstop were covered with silver dollars. People wrote their hometown on the silver dollars with a magic marker before attaching them to the wall. They claimed there were 50,000 silver dollars fastened to those walls. I made no attempt to count them, but there sure were a lot.

Several restaurants in Montana serve Walleye. If that is something you might like to try, one place that serves it is at the Town Pump (Pilot) truckstop in Missoula, I-90 at milemarker 101.

While there are outcroppings all over the state, the really high Rocky Mountains are West of I 15. Butte is located in an impressive valley.

I once watched a coal train being filled with coal near the Anaconda Mine. The coal came down the mountain on a conveyor belt of some kind and filled a huge hopper. One car at a time, the hopper would open up to the train car below, close its door and allow the train to move to the next empty car.

The upper Missouri River in the Rockies is about one hundred feet wide and is perfect for fishing. It also seems to be the most densely populated area outside of a city. The dam across the Missouri River at Great Falls is spectacular. There is a gorgeous park where visitors can walk up and down the riverfront.

Several dams across the Missouri River in North Dakota make lakes so large there are ocean-going tunnel hull racing boats during the summer.

I-94 in North Dakota has a very wide median and shoulders. Instead of lawn mowers, North Dakota lets the grass grow long, and then harvests it for hay. It is quite a sight watching the grass get rolled into a hay bale.

Righting Sew Reel Ayes Reed Passed Yore Tie Till

I started to “meet” many modern authors through the joys of Internet groups for authors, readers and writers. So I started to read their books. I am especially interested in Indie Christian Writers, and I wanted to help them by writing reviews to post on places like Amazon and Goodreads.

Please don’t think I’m joining the legion of critics accusing Indie writers of being incompetent. But I do believe we are insular. We do what we do without a lot of help. Authors who have experienced the slash and change technique of traditional publishers understand that their “I know what will sell” attitude can do great violence to a writer and his work. Some have told me they paid for proofreading and editing. They got robbed, in my opinion.

I’m going to hope that I’m right, that authors can do a few simple things to help us get out from under the stigma that Indie writers don’t care about correctness.

First, please throw away that auto-editor, if you have one. It introduces errors. Should I repeat that with all capital letters? Even if you hired and paid an editor, I would bet money some of them are using an auto-editor. Somehow writers are letting homophone errors into their works. The title of this post is an example of homophone errors.

You control your horse with reins. You also rein in your emotions. But a king reigns over you. A dictator has a reign of terror. I have seen shutter (window coverings) for shudder (shaking badly), wonder (uncertain or amazed) for wander (walking aimlessly), and many, many others.

Read up on homophones, and you’ll get a list of words commonly misspelled, commonly confused, and that spellcheckers or auto-editors really can’t handle. But some are not so obvious. The cure is to have some real person read the thing. Maybe several real persons, and underline or turn red everything that sounds strange or wrong. I’m not really talking about editing. Hardly even proofreading. Just real eyes to catch what you might miss.

“Lay” and “lie” are very confusing. Lay the book on the table. The path lies yonder. Lay up treasure in heaven. It’s a question of whether something does the action, or whether action is done to it.

Use “further” when it’s in your head, like “upon further examination.” Use “farther” when it’s on a map, like “We went farther today than yesterday.”

One rule of thumb is that almost all punctuation goes inside the end quotation mark in a conversation, unless you use British English rules. “I love you,” she said. “I love you!” he screamed. “I love you?” she asked. “I love you.” Hannah threw her arms around him. Only time it might not is something like this: “‘I love you’! Is that all you can say after what you did?” Somebody’s repeating what someone else said, but with his own inflection (emotional quality) and within his own sentence. The exclamation point means the speaker’s angry about what the person he’s quoting said. It doesn’t go with the original “I love you.”

Enough mushy stuff. One set of errors that is both a punctuation problem and a homophone problem is with “it’s” or “its.” “It’s” is a contraction meaning “it is.” It does not mean “belonging to it.” That’s what “its” means. Examples: “It’s a sad state of affairs when your car gets a mind of its own regarding fuel economy.” If you can’t make the words “it is” out of what you want to say, then don’t give it an apostrophe.

Here’s how to do “to, too and two”: “The two of us are going to the store and dad is going, too.” Two is a number. To is a destination. Too means also (or sometimes it’s a qualifier, as in “too much”). Here’s one more: “your” is possessive, as in “That’s your problem” and “you’re” is a contraction meaning “you are.”

Do not use apostrophes for mere plurals like “The Bushes invited us to Kennebunkport.” (Notice that the name Bush gets an “e” tacked on in both these examples.) Use them for plural possessives like “The Bushes’ estate on Kennebunkport was beautiful.” No it doesn’t get another “s.”

Briefly, here are my rules on hyphens, dashes and ellipses (a group of three periods). Hyphens connect two words that go together to modify a word. “Blood-red sand.” “Break-neck speed.” “Ellie-Mae Clampet.”(Well, maybe that last is not the best example.) “Dead-on throw.” A dash is two hyphens together, sometimes called an em-dash. If you are running, speaking in broken gasps, use that double-dash between words. “Wait — Can’t catch — breath.” If you are a poor speaker of the language and words might be left out, use that too. “No — understand — English.”

In other words, dashes are for speech that’s broken up but not drawn out. Quick breaks or sharply broken off, as when someone is interrupted or startled speechless. Ellipses are for drawn-out speech. “I … am … dying.” “You … can’t … be … serious.” Nothing missing, nothing uncertain, just drawn out for a certain effect. Leave a space after the word and before the em-dash or ellipses, but normally not when using a hyphen.

Here are some bad, wrong, naughty things I don’t want to see in your books. Please. Not ever. At least, not again.

“John looked into her eyes”.  (Unless you are British, get that period inside that quote, now!)

“Go over their and help him.” (Go over their what? — It should be there.) Their is a possessive, when something or things belong to more than one person. And by the way, stop saying “their” instead of him or her/ his or her to try to be politically correct/gender neutral.

“Those books are not her’s.” (No such thing. It’s hers and only hers. There are no hi’s, are there?)

“I’ll never except that from you.” (You say “accept” here. ‘Except” would be as in, “I like this, except I hated the ending.”)

“You cant come in here.” You must have an apostrophe in this, “can’t.” It’s a contraction for can not. “Cant” means putting something at an angle or a special vocabulary for a group of people.

“That wasn’t complementary to my intellect.” This word means something that goes with something or makes it better. Instead you want complimentary, meaning to express approval.

Verbs have a present tense, a past tense and a future tense. Plus there are a bunch of sub-tenses. Most authors write in the past tense. “He went to school.” Simple. However, if you add this it gets more complicated: “He went to school as he had gone every day that month.” You might also say, “He went to school as he did every day.”

Here’s where it gets very tricky. “John no longer went to school. At one time he had gone every day. He remembered having gone, but it had become only a faint recollection.” You have established a pattern of starting out in the past and then talking about times in the more distant past. “At one time he went every day. He remembered going, but it became only a faint recollection.” It really is okay to say it this second way. But you don’t want to end up with this. “He will have went back to that time when he hadn’t have thought through what leaded up to that dreadful sentence.”

Through the Windshield 2

On I-80 in Illinois on the north side of the road we saw a dozen or so small elk. I didn’t recognize them at first because they did not have the characteristic rump. Then I realized that they were covered in mud and the young bull had small velvet antlers. They were on a small piece of land just coming out of a lake. I had never seen elk in Illinois before.

Today I saw a larger herd of adult elk in central Utah. They were up the mountain about a half-mile with several large fence rows between us and them. A few months back we saw an even larger herd of elk in Utah on US-89 between Kanab and Panguitch. I believe that all three of these are domesticated elk herds.

Yesterday and today we saw herds of antelope along I-80 in Wyoming. It’s warm enough that I expected they would no longer be in herds, but I guess I was wrong. While no single herd was larger than maybe a hundred, the Pronghorns numbered in the thousands. They were all at 6000 feet or higher. There is still a lot of snow up there.

Birds have paired up, except for the seagulls which are in large flocks. The storks are huge, much larger than great blue herons or bald eagles. These storks are the largest birds I have seen outside of zoos.

Porcupines were the favorite roadkill of Vermont and upstate New York. Opossums and Raccoons took their place in Ohio to Iowa, where coyotes and deer seemed to take over.

Canada, from Windsor to the Thousand Lakes region, is in the 40s and 50s. Watertown, where we had dinner with our son, Sergeant Findley (10th Mountain Division) was about 50. Jon told us, “This is about as warm as it ever gets around here.”

We had to run the AC from Ohio to Nebraska, then the heater in WY and UT. IT’s AC time again in California, so we are “motelling” rather than run the truck all night.

Be Ye Holy

(Exodus 22:31, Leviticus 11:44, 45, 19:2, 20:7, 20:26, Numbers 15:40, Deuteronomy 23:14, 26:19, Ephesians 1:4, 5:27, I Peter 1:15,16, II Peter 3:11)

Facebook friends we never met such as Pastor Mike Sproul and John Darrell Askey have linked to several excellent, thought-provoking articles over the past several months. While there were many excellent comments, some were deeply disturbing. One issue I have seen repeatedly is, “So what is worldliness? We are not to love the world but what does that mean?” While I am not the Holy Spirit and I do not know the intentions of these people, the very question troubles both my wife and I.

The command, Be Ye Holy or some other form meaning the same thing, is found in at least 14 verses. We are to draw near to God, not see how far we can get from God and still squeak into heaven.

So what is that supposed to mean? Is it any wonder the pastorate is such a high-stress job? Jesus is concerned about our heart attitudes, what we really believe. This all too common response breaks God’s heart.

The last words penned in the Gospels are And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written. (John 21:25, NASB) With so many deeds omitted, why is the command Be ye holy repeated over and over?

Jesus told twelve men to leave all and follow Him. This same command was given to the nameless man we call “rich young ruler,” because he did not give up his wealth and follow. Abraham, Isaac, Solomon, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were allowed to keep their wealth. The man of the Gadarenes who had a legion of unclean spirits cast out of him wanted to go with Jesus, but Jesus told him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee. And he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis haw great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel.

We do not know why Jesus tells one disciple to leave all and follow Him while telling someone else to go home to his friends. Not only are we not omniscient, most of us do not examine our own circumstances very well. The important point we need to understand is that being holy and not loving the world is a heart attitude. Two people, each with the correct heart attitude, might be commanded to take what seem to be opposite courses of action.

There are certain principles that apply to all believers. Loving the Lord with all your heart means spending time with Him. The more you love someone, the more you set aside other things to be with that person. This might mean more personal Bible Study, more time in prayer, taking a mission trip or going to Bible School. The one thing it always means is rearranging the priorities in your life.

We are to go into all the world and preach the gospel, teaching them. “Only one life, twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.” We can only do one thing at a time. Every purchase we make, every obligation we agree to either draws us closer to God or drives us a little further from Him. An acquaintance, a fellow believer, in another congregation, owned a Porsche. I asked our Pastor, actually in jest, if owning Porsche was a sin. He gave a wise reply. “It would be for me.”

“Well, so far you have not said if you think electric guitars in a church are sin!” I believe if you are thinking this way, the answer is “yes.” Paul put it this way: For if because of food your brother is hurt, you are no longer walking according to love. Do not destroy with your food him for whom Christ died. Therefore do not let what is for you a good thing be spoken of as evil; for the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. For he who in this way serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved by men. So then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another. Do not tear down the work of God for the sake of food. All things indeed are clean, but they are evil for the man who eats and gives offense. (Romans 14:15-21, NASB)

The word “offense” in the Bible does not mean to hurt someone’s feelings. It means to cause someone to sin. The believer who walks up and says, “That offends me!” is sometimes, perhaps most of the time, proud. They need to grow in the LORD and not allow little personal “affronts” to bother them. The weak believers most likely to be offended are also the ones most likely to keep quiet.

If you really knew what a weak brother thought about you, would you watch that movie? Would you watch any movie? Would you watch television?

If you want to be a better ball player, musician, computer programmer or whatever else, you both spend time developing that skill and improving that skill. How much time do you spend reading God’s Word? Studying God’s Word? Praying? Talking to others about the Lord? Teaching God’s Word? Fellowshipping with other believers? (not talking about the weather), staying out of debt? If you are doing these things already, are you examining your walk with the Lord and looking at ways to improve it?

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13, NASB)

A Christian Continuum

The name or title “Q” is known to geeks and many others as the godlike creature in Star Trek the Next Generation. He was part of something called the “Q Continuum,” a race of fellow godlike beings who apparently liked being aloof and distant from mankind. This Q claimed he had benevolent feelings for humanity (include in this all the races of intelligent beings STNG insisted existed, please), and was just trying to figure man out. Usually, however, he did this by putting people in outrageous and impossible situations. He found out how to create these situations by asking questions about cultural ethics, values, and resolves, or at least those that the scriptwriters claimed man held. He would then reduce people to helplessness and cause them to fail. He was trying to help man, he insisted. He was trying to show the crew of the Enterprise how unprepared mankind was.

A conference of young evangelicals calling itself “Q,” hosted by Gabe Lyons, met in the middle of April of this year. Among other things the conference advocated providing contraceptives to singles in evangelical churches, as a ministry of the church. The name Q seems appropriate, given the repeated insistence by the group that they were caring and concerned, that they only wanted to help people, to get them prepared for the realities of life. I don’t know much about this Gabe Lyons or his organization, and I don’t know why he chose this name for it. It just seems ironically appropriate.

An excellent article in Christianity Today addresses these misguided people and their “Solution.” Matthew Lee Anderson points out that the conference advocated contraceptives because of the epidemic of abortions in evangelical churches. To those who protested that women who get pregnant should have their babies with the help of the church, they respond that no church member is going to be there with that mother when the baby starts to cry at 3 AM.

Please back up a step, Q, Gabe Lyons, and the rest of evangelical and many other kinds of Christianity. Maybe more than a step. You have given all mankind permission to fail. You have said that sin is inevitable. Single people are going to have sex. They are either going to use contraceptives or abort their babies. You have insisted the only way to stop this is with contraceptives. If we leave them alone with a crying baby at 3 AM what else will they be unable to stop themselves from doing?

Please explain to me why Jesus Christ bothered to die on the cross? I thought it was for sin. In fact, I’m sure it was. Even for the sin of being tempted to have sex while unmarried. He not only died for it, He provided the power to overcome it. If abstinence, true chastity and continence are jokes, then so is the Cross of Christ. The Cross, the sacrifice, the atonement, are all so much more than just Jesus “loving us.” Salvation is so much more than us “loving Jesus back.” The atonement is power, crackling supernatural energy to submit to God and do all kinds of amazing things that make sin anything but inevitable. Putting a condom in your pocket or a birth control pill in your mouth, as Anderson says, is admitting you’re going to fail. Wrapping the sheltering wings of Almighty God around you and strapping into place the armor of God is insisting that you’re going to succeed, not by your own power, but by tapping into the ultimate power source.

http://bit.ly/JmrZQG
Christianity Today “Why Churches Shouldn’t Push Contraceptives to Their Singles.” Matthew Lee Anderson, posted 4/25/2012 10:46 AM

Gabe Lyons’ website
http://bit.ly/JbfF8e

 

“I’m Going Home.”

A review of Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers

Perhaps I was the only remaining Christian female on the planet who had not read this book. The parallels to both the biblical book of Hosea and a human’s relationship to God are beautiful and valuable. It is almost a perfect allegory of the rocky relationship we have with our God and with our Savior as His sought-out bride. So many times we just don’t get it, just as Angel just doesn’t get it. Angel has good reason not to understand the fatherhood of God and Christ as a loving husband. She has never seen any example of either until Michael Hosea literally redeems her from the slavery of prostitution.

The book is full of beautiful examples of love, and of good, strong males showing how to be husbands and fathers and just good men. It also has one remarkable man, Paul. He is a needy, jealous, hypocritical accuser and adversary for most of the book. But he also plays one of the most surprising roles I have ever seen a character perform. This story is worth reading just to see the unexpected part he plays.

In this book God speaks with an audible voice and miracles happen. People are so sure of this reality, and one person is so shocked when it happens, it is time to look around in amazement. The spoken words are almost all Scriptures or Scriptural principles, so there’s no reason to question whether the audible whispers of “Beloved” in the ear are a part of the allegory or whether the author means an actual voice spoke. The defeat of Angel’s greatest enemy is nothing short of miraculous.

A bi-weekly stroll by a beautiful woman down a muddy street means so much more than “taking the air.” A dead woman’s hand-me-downs give occasion for both outrage and touching generosity. A hatbox of worries produces laughter and a lesson in faith. A golden key hangs in a spot where no one would imagine being able to reclaim it. When Angel finally says, “I’m going home,” it’s the echo of the final understanding every believer must come to about who is guilty, who is worthy, and what a bridegroom really offers to his bride, humanly and spiritually speaking.

So, What Is A Baptist?

“The Bible alone is our absolute rule of Faith and Practice.” Ever heard this before? Though many things define a Baptist, this is good place to start. It is easier to see what Baptists do (Practice) than it is to understand what we believe.

The Wikipedia article on Baptists under the series on Christianity correctly identifies us. “Diverse from their beginning, those identifying as Baptists today differ widely from one another in what they believe, how they worship, their attitudes toward other Christians and their understanding of what is important in Christian discipleship.”

One problem is identifying what “Baptist” means. As reported in the same Wikipedia article, there are 41 million people worldwide who identify themselves with the name “Baptist” but more than 100 million with Baptistic beliefs. (Baptist World Alliance). The largest single group is the Southern Baptist Convention with a membership of over 16 million worldwide. So every comment I make has exceptions. This includes comments about other Denominations. I am attempting to describe the mythical “ordinary, average Baptist.”

Baptist congregations range in size from less than a dozen to megachurches in the tens of thousands. They meet in homes, out in the woods, by lakesides, in chapels and beautiful, ornate church buildings. Compared to Lutheran, Reformed, Roman Catholic and Orthodox buildings, Baptist churches are considered “plain” or “simple” (the Amish term). Baptists (except for the Amish and Mennonite groups) have no doctrine against ornate buildings. Solomon and Herod’s temples were ornate golden buildings. But Baptists believe that the Church, the body of Christ, is made up of people, not buildings. In this age, from Pentecost in Acts to the Rapture (or the Tribulation if you do not believe in a Pretribulation Rapture), money collected should be used meet to needs of the saints, primarily missions. Building expenses must be minimized. There is a constant debate among Baptists as to what is the minimum. Even in America, Baptist churches range from beautiful buildings with organs, stained glass windows and elaborate sound systems to plain modular buildings with just a keyboard.

Some Baptist churches have services on Saturday, services almost all day Sunday and some form of service almost every night of the week. Other Baptist churches have just one service a week. Probably the most common is Sunday School on Sunday with one or two morning services, a Sunday evening service and a Wednesday evening service. Large churches often have multiple Sunday morning services because there are more people than the main sanctuary will seat.

The types of services vary from very informal (blue jeans and shorts) to suits and ties for members and robes for those on the platform. The average is for the pastor and anyone else conducting the service to wear business apparel while most of the congregation looks like a business on casual Friday, Dockers, etc. For some reason, sports coats and suits are more common in the South where it is hotter.

As is common across Christianity, worship services are divided into CCM (Contemporary Christian Music: electric guitars, drums and amplifiers), traditional (choirs, orchestras, congregational singing of hymns, piano and organ) and blended. Some do not believe in the use of any instruments.

Sunday School is a time for teaching the Bible. It might be book-by-book, topical (such as marriage in the Bible), or biographical (such as the life of Samuel). Sunday Schools are the small groups of large churches. A very large church will have hundreds of Sunday School classes. A very small church might only have three groups, preschool, school aged children and adult. The Southern Baptists and the General Association of Regular Baptists have standard curricula that aid teachers and unify teaching. Teachers can use flannelgraphs, videos, audio, PowerPoint presentations, small group discussions, blackboards and whatever else the teacher can think of. Some churches have classes that “teach the teachers.” This class usually covers the more difficult sections of the material with brainstorming to come up with answers. It also covers ways of teaching the material for the greatest understanding. Sunday School time is limited there is also an emphasis on starting on time and ending on time. Since the pastor preaches in the main service, a strictly lecture style is not common for these class times.

The main service has a beginning time where people may fellowship, sit quietly or pray. While there is no format that every congregation is expected to follow, most follow a similar order. The service normally begins with someone leading in prayer. This will be followed by (in no particular order) a public welcome, greeting and announcements, saying of a creed (or singing a Doxology), an opening hymn, special music, more singing, scripture reading (audience participation), more singing, public prayer, everyone but the pastor leaves the platform, and then the sermon. The sermon is the same as a homily in other denominations. While a pastor is free to preach whatever he wants, in practice there are fellowships that often agree to cover certain topics on certain days.

Some Baptist churches celebrate the ordinance of Lord’s Supper each week during the service. Other congregations celebrate it less often, but it is always on a regular basis. The service usually closes with Believer’s Baptism, or if there is no one to be baptized, prayer. Offerings might be taken in the middle of the service, at the end of the service or not at all. Some congregations simply have a place to put tithes and offerings as you leave.

Sunday evening services are usually informal and once a year (or quarter) are devoted to financial business. While anyone may ask a question or bring up a point, there is enormous peer pressure to keep these meetings as short as possible. The real business is delegated throughout the year. These meetings are much like a stockholder’s meeting.

Sunday evening services can be singspirations (the entire service devoted to congregational singing), fellowships (food), missionary presentations, question and answer sessions, presentations by people other than the pastor or another sermon, this one usually more in-depth.

Weeknight services are usually prayer services and if the congregation is geographically spread out, the services are often in people’s homes so people do not have to travel very far. There is usually little or no singing or preaching. This is where personal information is given out that is often not intended for the general congregation. In some congregations, these smaller, local groups are sometimes Sunday School classes.

There are also AWANA clubs, summer camps, retreats, men’s and women’s fellowships, projects to repair homes, feed people and run Christian Schools. The total number of projects various Baptist groups are involved in would take hundreds of pages. Did you know that the Southern Baptist Convention was second only to the Salvation Army in providing aid to the victims of Hurricane Katrina?

The Other aspect of Faith and Practice is our Faith. First, the word believe in the Bible is not just a matter of opinion. Did you think the word believe, as used in the Bible, meant accept something without thinking, blindly? It means to examine the facts and come to a conclusion. The best example that I have come up with in our culture is a jury foreman, when the judge asks if the jury has reached a verdict. When the foreman responds “We find the defendant is guilty (or not guilty)” he means that they believe, because they have come to a conclusion based on the evidence. Yes, it is an opinion, but it is a reasoned, informed opinion based on the facts.

The word Baptist is used because it emphasizes our belief in a congregation made up of believers. While there is no age mentioned in the Bible for being old enough to be baptized, it means that the local congregation is made up of believers, not people who were baptized as infants by someone else without any understanding on their part.

Our form of Church government is Congregational (the property is owned by the Congregation and the Congregation votes on the selection and retention of the Pastor). Episcopalians, Anglicans, some Lutherans, Methodists and Roman Catholics are Episcopal in their form of church Government. The Denomination owns the property and chooses the leadership. Presbyterians, Reformed and some Lutherans have a Presbyterian or Representative form of Church government. While the Denomination owns the property, individual congregations vote on their own leadership as well as the denomination’s leadership. As I said in the opening, there are exceptions to everything, but I am attempting to describe the mythical “average.”

The major difference between Baptistic groups and the Denominations I just listed are a belief in what makes up the true Church, the Bride of Christ. Each of the above listed Denominations believes, in some way, that the Church replaces Israel, at least for now. Baptism replaced circumcision, the Lord’s Table (Eucharist) replaced the temple sacrifices and Peter and the Apostles replaced the priesthood. None of these beliefs have any basis in Scripture.

Baptists believe, that is, they have searched the Scriptures and have concluded based on the facts, that the Church, the Bride of Christ is made up of believers who are obedient to the Word of God. While there should be, and can be, an organic unity (direct connection to a founding Church, Apostle, Evangelist, Pastor or Deacon) the New Testament does not require it. There is certainly not an unbroken line of believers in any Church office back to the time of Christ. The priesthood of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches have no greater authority than any other believer. One foundational doctrine Protestants and Baptists share is the priesthood of every believer. A seven-year-old unbaptized girl has the same standing in prayer before God as any Pastor; more if she has confessed her sins and the Pastor has not. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (I John 1:9). The word confess, homolegeo, means to say the same thing about our sins that Gods says. It does not mean to say it out loud to someone else.

Then some of the Pharisees and Scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, “Why do Your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread.” And He answered and said to them, “Why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?” (Matthew 15:1-3 NASB) Baptists view traditions as important, but not inspired. We use the Word of God to judge traditions. Traditions do not judge the Word of God. For example, when the days of creation say and the evening and the morning were the (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th) day, any tradition which allows you to choose to disbelieve these words is in error.

The Scriptures must be taken at face value. You do not get to determine what face value is. They are to be read as any other work of literature. For example, Mary has directed Shakespearian plays. While there were people with a High School mentality who had no idea what Shakespeare meant, they average person understood. After he is mortally wounded in a swordfight with Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, the witty Mercutio says “Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.” Everyone who understands Shakespeare at all sees the double meaning of the word “grave.” Hamlet, as he contemplates suicide in perhaps the most famous words in all of Shakespeare, says “To be or not to be.” and “To die, to sleep, To sleep, perchance to Dream; Ay there’s the rub.” He wonders aloud if his problems will hound him beyond the grave. There are similar word plays in the Scriptures. So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.” (John 6:53-56 NASB) This is explained clearly in the same passage when his disciples came to him confused about this saying. “Does this cause you to stumble? What then if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. But there are some of you who do not believe”. (John 6:61-64 NASB) So Jesus is clearly saying this is a figure of speech that he used to force people to examine their own beliefs. Like Shakespeare, all authors sometimes use figures of speech.

While there is a debate among Baptist over the office of Apostle, that is, does the office of Apostle still exist, the only two other offices mention in the Scriptures are Deacon and elder (also known as Pastor, Presbyter or Episcopal). The term priest belongs to Israel and is not part of the Church.

Traditions can be helpful to understand various doctrines, but the doctrines themselves are determined by the infallible authority of the Word of God, not the fallible authority of human traditions. It is not that traditions are unimportant. For example, the word “Trinity” is not found in the Word of God, though the teaching is there. The Word Trinity is a good and helpful word, though it is not inspired. Creeds which we recite in services are not inspired. Creeds are not only useful, but also necessary to simplify some complex doctrines.

Some have asked about our origins. It is not very important to us, since the requirement of Scripture is obedience to the Word of God, not man made traditions. Many groups throughout the world have suffered severe persecution, and have no written records left. Ukrainian Baptists are from the Mennonite heritage. Roger Williams, the first Baptist Minister in America was ordained in the Church of England. The first Church in England to use the name Baptist was a Separatist congregation. There is one group of Russian Baptists who claim to be part-descendants from the Russian Orthodox Church. Baptists examine what you believe, and fellowship based on those beliefs, not your physical heritage.

Important Baptists, such as Charles Haddon Spurgeon and Jesse Mercer hold that Baptist beliefs go back to Christ, though there is not a direct unbroken line.

Guest Post by Pastor George McVey — Hearing God Speak

Pastor George McVey recently started a new blog, “Ask Pastor George,” which you can see here:

http://askpastorgeorge.wordpress.com/

Here is a sample of what we can expect from Pastor George, who will soon be releasing what sounds like a classic Western with more than a touch of romance.

As a pastor and revivalist one of the most often asked questions I get is: How do I know it is God speaking to me? Or: How can I hear God like you do? To be quite honest this question surprises me every time I hear it. It says more about the leadership of churches than about the individual asking the question. How can people be attending a Bible believing, Bible teaching church and not have been taught how to hear the voice of God?

The answer to how is that for some reason we don’t teach that prayer is a conversation. We teach people to make requests to God and tell God how we love him. But we never teach them that God wants to talk to us as well. Psalms 37:7-9 tells us God is looking for those who will wait on him if you wait for someone you have to listen for them and look for them. These verses tell us not to fret which is when most people pray when they are worrying and fretting about things.

That still brings us back to the original question How can I hear from God like you seem to? My usual answer to the question is this question: How do you know your spouse or parents’ voice when they talk to you on the phone, without seeing them?  How come you can place thirty moms with sixty kids in a room, and have one child call mommy and the right mommy turn around?   The answer is easy, because there is communication between them regularly.

This is the answer to how to hear God speak to you. You have to communicate with him. I know every Christian prays, but we are taught to pray by giving thanks, asking for request, giving praise. This isn’t communication it’s talking at someone, not with them.

How long would your other relationships last if all you ever did was talk at them, and not listen to them talk?  Not long, that’s for sure.  So the reason we don’t hear God speak, or aren’t sure it is God speaking, is we don’t take the time to listen and have a real relationship.

I don’t just mean by reading our Bibles, don’t get me wrong that is one way God speaks. He is a living God, he wants to talk with us one on one. I want to challenge you today to start listening to God. Take some time and just listen. Start a conversation with HIM ask HIM to talk to you, then shut up and listen. If you are sincere about the request and willing to listen HE will answer you. Jeremiah 33:3 tells us he will.

Then after he has said something answer him. Keep the conversation going, that’s communication.