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Columnist L. M. Boyd recently described the amazing good fortune of a man named Jack Wurm. In 1949, Mr. Wurm was broke and out of a job. No job and no money, just like some of us here. One day he was walking along a San Francisco beach when he came across a bottle with a piece of paper in it. As he read the note, he discovered that it was the last will and testament of Daisy Singer Alexander, heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune. The note read, “To avoid confusion, I leave my entire estate to the lucky person who finds this bottle and to my attorney, Barry Cohen, share and share alike.”
According to Boyd, the courts accepted the theory that the heiress had written the note 12 years earlier, and had thrown the bottle into the Thames River in London, from where it had drifted across the oceans to the feet of a penniless and jobless Jack Wurm. His chance discovery netted him over 6 million dollars in cash and Singer stock. How would you like to have been making Mr. Wurm’s footprints on that San Francisco beach? What a find!
I want to share a story about a man by the name of Karl Marx. (Has anyone here ever heard of him?) He is known as the father of Communism. He had one agenda and one agenda only and that was for communism to replace capitalism. Let me explain. Today, in USA, we live in a capitalistic society where our economy is made up of privately owned and operated businesses. This means that distribution, production and pricing of goods and services are determined by business people. What Marx wanted to do was shift gears from a capitalistic economy to a communist driven economy where the government is in total control. What this did was eliminate the class system our society was divided into: the lower, middle and upper classes. There would be no poor people and no rich people, all would be equal. Sound’s good in theory, but this type of government would neutralize the economy. This meant that the government would have their hands in everybody’s pockets. This would make them more powerful and the people less. This meant the government would tell you what to eat, how much money you made, what to listen to, what to watch, and the list goes on. They would virtually control everything and everybody. When Marx was in the public, he would defend the working class people to the end, but I learned that he never have had a single friend among them. He lived his life building a government structure for people that he hated. That sounds like an oxymoron. His life work was for a group of people he is said to have never conversed or lived amongst. People were a vehicle that helped him get to where he wanted to go in life. I learned that he verbally abused anyone and everyone. His actions never lined up with his words. He was a complete hypocrite.
Dave Barry - Excerpt from “The Pain of Childbirth”:
The key to avoiding drugs, according to the natural-childbirth people, is for the woman to breathe deeply. Really. The theory is that if she breathes deeply, she’ll get all relaxed and won’t notice that she’s in a hospital delivery room wearing a truly perverted garment and having a baby. I’m not sure who came up with this theory. Whoever it was evidently believed that men have very small brains. So, in childbirth classes, we spent a lot of time sprawled out on little mats with our pillows while the women pretended to have contractions and the men squatted around with stopwatches and pretended to time them. The swank couples didn’t care for this part. They were not into squatting. After a couple of classes, they started bringing little backgammon sets and playing backgammon when they were supposed to be practicing breathing. I imagine they had a rough time In actual childbirth.
Anyway, my wife and I traipsed along for months, breathing and timing, respectively. We had no problems whatsoever. We were a terrific team. We had a swell time. Really.
The actual delivery was slightly more difficult. I don’t want to name names, but I held up my end. I had my stopwatch in good working order, and I told my wife to breathe.
“Don’t forget to breathe.” I’d say, or. ‘You should breathe, you know.” She, on the other hand, was unusually cranky. For example, she didn’t want me to use my stopwatch. Can you imagine? All that practice, all that squatting on the natural-childbirth classroom floor, and she suddenly gets in this big snit about stopwatches. Also, she almost completely lost her sense of humor. At one point, I made an especially amusing remark, and she tried to hit me. She usually has an excellent sense of humor.
Nonetheless, the baby came out all right, or at least all right for newborn babies, which is actually pretty awful unless you’re a big fan of slime. I thought I had held up well for the whole thing when the doctor, who up to then had behaved like a perfectly rational person, said, ‘Would you like to see the placenta?’ Now, let’s face it. That is like asking. ‘Would you like me to pour hot tar into your nostrils?’ Nobody would like to see a placenta. If anything, it would be a form of punishment.
Jury: We find the defendant guilty of stealing from the old and the crippled.
Judge: I sentence the defendant to look at three placentas.
But without waiting for an answer, the doctor held up the placenta, not unlike the way you might hold up a bowling trophy. I bet he wouldn’t have tried that with people who have matching pillowcases.
The placenta aside, everything worked out fine. We ended up with an extremely healthy, organic, natural baby, who immediately demanded to be put back in the uterus.
All in all, I’d say it’s not a bad way to reproduce, although I understand that some members of the flatworm family simply divide themselves into two.
On the Lighter side: The Wisdom of Cowboys:
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad
judgment.
Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier ’n puttin’ it back in.
If you’re ridin’ ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and
then to make sure it’s still there.
If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try
orderin’ somebody else’s dog around.
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started
roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him... The
moral: When you’re full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.
There’s two theories to arguin’ with a woman. Neither one works.
If you find yourself in a hole, t...
Doubt in the Scientific World
Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.
In Albert Einstein’s early days, physicists had scratched their heads for some 50 years over the unexplainable orbit of the planet Mercury. Newton’s theories of gravity had served well for centuries to understand the orbits of all the other planets, but in Mercury’s elliptical orbit, the point nearest the sun drifted by a very small amount. . . .
Astronomers theorized that another small hidden planet, which they named Vulcan, might orbit near the sun and exert gravitational force on Mercury. But Vulcan was never discovered. . . .
Then Einstein formulated his general theory of relativity. When he applied this gravitational formula to the eccentric orbit of Mercury, he had one of the breathtaking moments of his scientific life: the numbers fit. Mercury was a mystery no more.
My life will on occasion have an orbit like Mercury that for a time simply defies my best efforts to explain it. Nonetheless as surely as there is order in the universe, there is a heavenly reason for my circumstances utterly consistent with God’s Word and character. I just cannot understand it yet. We doubt because we don’t have all the facts.
Here we see some doubting even when they see the facts, Know the facts but still doubt. They can not see beyond what they believe.
Vs 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted.
The following statements are taken from official documents, newspapers and magazines widely read during their day. Listen to what the "authorities" had to say:
1840 - "Anyone traveling at the speed of thirty miles per hour would surely suffocate."
1878 - "Electric lights are unworthy of serious attention."
1901 - "No possible combination can be united into a practical machine by which men shall fly."
1926 - (from a scientist) "This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is basically impossible."
1930 - (another scientist) "To harness the energy locked up in matter is impossible."
(From a sermon by Bob Soulliere, The Power of Doubt, 1/30/2010)
CARGO CULTS
First noticed in the late 19th century, the concept of the cargo cult came to prominence in the years immediately following WWII. As the Japanese and American armies began to island hop their way to victory and defeat across the Pacific, they literally took over these small territories from people who had little or no contact with the Western world.
In the midst of this war, there was a collision of cultures that was taking place. In areas such as Vanauatu, across Melanesia, from New Guinea to the Solomon Islands to Tanna's archipelago, the New Hebrides, dozens of unconnected communities, thousands of miles apart and speaking unrelated languages, seemed spontaneously to generate the same set of bizarre beliefs.
The classic account was by the Australian anthropologist Peter Lawrence, who went out to the Madang district of New Guinea in 1949 to conduct field research into the traditional social relations of people who, despite colonial rule, were still living much as they had in the recent Stone Age. Lawrence gradually discovered that his presence in Madang had become woven into an extraordinary complex of beliefs. Persistent rumours abounded that a cargo ship was about to arrive in the harbour with huge consignments of goods for him, and the local people asked him to help them supervise the clearing of an airstrip. When he asked what the airstrip was for, he was told that cargo planes were about to arrive bringing tinned meat, rice, tools, tobacco and a machine for making electric light. And when he asked who was sending this cargo, they replied 'God in Heaven.'
Cargo cult activity in the Pacific region increased significantly during and immediately after World War II, when large amounts of manpower and materials were brought in by the Japanese and American combatants, and this was observed by the residents of these regions. When the war ended, the military bases were closed and the flow of goods and materials ceased. In an attempt to attract further deliveries of goods, followers of the cults engaged in ritualistic practices such as building crude imitation landing strips, aircraft and radio equipment, and mimicking the behaviour that they had observed of the military personnel operating them.
Notable examples of cargo cult activity include the setting up of mock airstrips, airports, offices, and dining rooms, as well as the fetishization and attempted construction of Western goods, such as radios made of coconuts and straw. Believers may stage "drills" and "marches" with sticks for rifles and use military-style insignia and national insignia painted on their bodies to make them look like soldiers, thereby treating the activities of Western military personnel as rituals to be performed for the purpose of attracting the cargo. Cult behaviors usually involved mimicking the day to day activities and dress styles of U.S. soldiers, such as performing parade ground drills with wooden or salvaged rifles. They carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses. In a form of sympathetic magic, many built life-size replicas of airplanes out of straw and created new military-style landing strips, hoping to attract more airplanes. The cult members thought that the foreigners had some special connection to the deities and ancestors of the natives, who were the only beings powerful enough to produce such riches. Interestingly, there are no reports of villagers mimicking the Japanese army. It was quickly understood by villagers that the white (U.S.) tribe had won the conflict.
Based on this definition, the term "cargo cult" also is used in business and science to refer to a particular type of fallacy whereby ill-considered effort and ceremony take place but go unrewarded due to flawed models of causation, as described above.
All over, islanders were downing tools, clearing airstrips in the jungle, building imitation radio masts out of bamboo, scouring their bibles for hidden messages, even sitting around politely drinking afternoon tea. If it worked for the white man, so the theory went, it would work for them. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land.
Anthropologists note that the common point among all of the cargo cults that existed throughout the years is a desire for "stuff." Their imitation of what they have observed is the means to get the stuff. Their failures are blamed on the stronger magic that others have, but they continue to see themselves as the rightful recipients of the cargo, as they are the only people who matter, and therefore the planes are coming from heaven, from their ancestors.
PREACH THE WORD I am greatly diappointed in the preachers of today, With their logic and their ethics, their aristocratic way; With their science and their theories and their new theology, Full of everything but Jesus and His love for you and me. There is plenty in the Bible for preachers of today If they will but search it pages and for help Divine would pray; For God’s word is everlasting, it never will grow old, ‘Tis indeed a priceless treasure far more precious than pure gold. If the Preachers in our Church would preach Jesus crucified, How through love for us he suffered and through love for us he died, Then our lives would not be empty as so many are today, But be filled to overflowing in the good Old Fashioned way What we need is just plain gospel, just good old fashioned Preaching, Not Emerson and Shakespeare, or this modern, liberal teaching. What care we for all their saying, or teaching true and tried? I want the the dear old story of my Saviour cricified What we need is consecration in a good true man of God, With a Bible education, and a love for God’s dear Word; Who can lead us and direct us to the truth, the Life the Way, Who brings peace to the soul and body through the burdens of each day/ This alone can save the sinner, this alone can set men free, Just the precious dear old story of God’s love for you and me; That is what the people’s needing, that is what they need to see, The preaching of Bible stories that they heard at mother’s knee
May your Saturday mornings be special.
The author is unknown.
The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it’s the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it’s the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.
A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the basement shack with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning, turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it.
I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind, he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whoever he was talking with something about "a thousand marbles".
I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say. "Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. I’m sure they pay you well but it’s a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. Too bad you missed your daughter’s dance recital."
He continued, "Let me tell you something Tom, something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities."
And that’s when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."
"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years."
"Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900 which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now stick with me Tom, I’m getting to the important part."
"It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail", he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy."
"So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round-up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear. Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away."
"I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight."
"Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I ...
A few nights ago I was watching the TV show 20/20. The nights episode was on the subject of Hell and of course with this show they gave many views. Few that was close to the truth.
They had one opinion that Hell was some trash dump just outside of Jerusalem well they would burn trash and dead carcasses of animals. Smoke, fire, sounds like Hell, just not sure where the darkness comes in.
They had a Minister who was labeled a Heretic because he began preaching ’Nobody Goes to Hell’ and his church of 6,000 diminished to 300. He claims he heard a voice that told him that a loving God would not send anyone to hell, that hell is something we experience here on earth. But in order to sale this theory he had to denounce the Bible so he teaches that the Bible was just a story written by men. This is a minister who at one time had rubbed shoulders with the best of them; Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell.
They had a confected killer who was serving three life terms and showed no remorse; who states that. “If he goes to hell, so be it”.
They had others who say they survived hell on earth. They had one who survived the Holocaust, another a nun who survived a kidnapping and was repeatedly raped and tortured.
The only one who came close to my view of hell was one man named Matthew Dovel who says he has had two near-death experiences, and seen visions of both heaven and hell. He almost drowns at the age of 12 and saw the light and was met by Jesus who told him he had to return. Then after a life of booze and drugs, he decided that he couldn’t take it anymore and wanted to go back to the place he had been as a boy, so he tried to commit suicide only to find his self in a very different world; A place called hell.
From Dean Meadows’ Sermon: The “What” in the Hell
In his book, Men at Work, George F. Will takes a close look at four baseball players. One of those examined is Orel Hershiser (of Dodgers fame), who talks about his philosophy of pitching. “There are two theories of pitching,” Hershiser says. “One is that you try to convince the batter that a particular pitch is coming and you throw something different. The other theory, that you don’t hear as much, but that I use, is that if the batter expects a particular pitch, you throw it, but you throw it in a place where he can’t hit it.” That is: Know what a batter wants or expects and throw the ball almost there. If he is a highball hitter, throw it a bit too high. His eagerness will prevent him from laying off it, but it will be hard to hit well.
Isn’t that the way the enemy works in our life? He knows just what kind of pitch that we are a sucker for and then throws it our way. But...
