Exhortations on Holy Living-Then & Now...

I enjoy reading quotes from revivalists and theologians of past years. More often than not, their advice is very timely and applicable to our world today. I presented a Bible Study recently from 1 Thessalonians 5:16-22. Sometimes the Bible does some "hard preachin'" Here are some parts of that presentation with some additional quotes of others from past years. First, let us look at the Scripture text:

¹² And we urge you, brethren, to recognize those who labor among you, and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, ¹³ and to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake. Be at peace among yourselves.
¹⁴ Now we exhort you, brethren, warn those who are unruly, comfort the fainthearted, uphold the weak, be patient with all. ¹⁵ See that no one renders evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue what is good both for yourselves and for all.
¹⁶ Rejoice always, ¹⁷ pray without ceasing, ¹⁸ in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
¹⁹ Do not quench the Spirit. ²⁰ Do not despise prophecies.* ²¹ Test all things; hold fast what is good. ²² Abstain from every form of evil. NKJV

^*20 Don’t brush off Spirit-inspired messages,CEB

Rejoice Always: This can be a difficult one when going through trials and temptation. John Wesley stated that in the book of Job,"There are many things hard to be understood." Others have noted that Job's "patience" only lasted two chapters out of a forty-two chapter book!

Pray without ceasing: "The evangelization of the world depends first of all upon a revival of prayer."- Charles G. Finney, in Revival letters

Quench not the Spirit: "Catch on fire and others will come to watch you burn." -John Wesley

Despise not prophesyings (Preaching) The original Greek word here was analogia, meaning "according to the proportion of faith" This actually meant preaching, and not predicting the future. However, the early "evangelists" were spiritually in tune with God. Most preaching in the 1700's and later was expository in nature, much different than many of today's user "friendly" and topical sermons.

"Sermonettes make Christianettes."- Jack van Impe

"What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace." -John Wesley

Abstain from all appearance of evil: In today's "Grey" world, this rings more true now than ever! There are several quotes herewith a humorous one by the late George Carlin.

"Vice does not lose its character becoming fashionable."- John Wesley

"Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, takes off your relish for spiritual things, whatever increases the authority of the body over the mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may seem in itself."

Susanna Wesley, Mother of John and Charles

"The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse:
You cannot post “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and “Thou shalt not lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment." George Carlin

Getting it Right for a Change!

AP/ACLU

Savanna Redding talks to the media in Safford, Ariz., in this March 2009 photo provided by the ACLU.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a school's strip search of an Arizona teenage girl accused of having prescription-strength ibuprofen was illegal.

The court ruled on Thursday that school officials violated the law with their search of Savana Redding, who lives in Safford, in rural eastern Arizona.

Redding, who now attends college, was 13 when officials at Safford Middle School ordered her to remove her clothes and shake out her underwear because they were looking for pills. The district bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs and the school was acting on a tip from another student.

Ibuprofen is an over-the-counter pain reliever sold commonly as such brands like Advil and Motrin.

The high court, however, said the officials cannot be held liable in a lawsuit for the search. The justices also said the lower courts would have to determine whether the school district could be held liable.

A schoolmate had accused Redding, then an eighth-grade student, of giving her pills.

The school's vice principal, Kerry Wilson, took Redding to his office to search her backpack. When nothing was found, Redding was taken to a nurse's office where she says she was ordered to take off her shirt and pants. Redding said they then told her to move her bra to the side and to stretch her underwear waistband, exposing her breasts and pelvic area. No pills were found.

A federal magistrate dismissed a suit by Redding and her mother, April. An appeals panel agreed that the search didn't violate her rights. But last July, a full panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found the search was "an invasion of constitutional rights" and that Wilson could be found personally liable.

The case is Safford Unified School District v. April Redding, 08-479

Pendulum Swing Like a Pendulum Do

Hal Lindsey

When I watched Supreme Court candidate Sonia Sotomayor accept her nomination from President Obama, I liked her instantly. Her humility was appealing. Her personal story was inspiring.

I loved the way she credited her mother, bragged about her brother the doctor, and told her stepfather from the podium, "I love you." She seemed such a nice lady. It made me wish she was being nominated for almost any other job in America except the as guardian of the Constitution.

Judge Sotomayor is listed as a member of the National Council of La Raza, according to a report by WND's Joe Kovacs.

La Raza means, "The Race" (in the genetic sense) and is affiliated with the Nation of Aztlan, a Latino nationalist group dedicated to reclaiming the Southwest from the United States as a Latino homeland. This is a very serious threat since it is now believed that Latinos are now in the majority in states like Texas.

La Raza has often compared the Latino population of the Southwest with the Palestinians and their effort to overwhelm Israel demographically.

Do you believe that a member in good standing of a racist organization that has advocated the overthrow of the United States would pose a danger if appointed for life as Supreme Court justice?

To argue that La Raza is not a racist organization is to redefine the word racist beyond recognition. I guess one way would be to count the number of Irish names among the top membership.

Her public comments define her as 'racist' under any meaningful definition of the word.

Her now-famous quote from a 2001 speech at Berkeley Law; "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life," caused Newt Gingrich to ponder aloud what the reaction would be had a white man suggested his experience made him more qualified than a Latina woman.

It seems that the more we obsess about race and whether or not America is racist, the more racist we become. The White House was not shy about admitting that Sonia Sotomayor was on the short list because she was a Hispanic woman.

She wasn't nominated because she was the most distinguished jurist in America. She was nominated because she was the most distinguished Latina female jurist available from the pool.

In our obsession with becoming race-neutral, we've allowed ourselves to become a nation where ability is secondary to immutable biological factors like race and gender. The pendulum has begun to swing too far.

So let it be known that I am against Sonia Sotomayor being elected to the Supreme Court. NOT because she is Latin American, not because of her race, not because of her gender or any other social factor - but because of the things that she is on record believing. In my opinion, she would pose a significant danger to America.

Not all ‘Compelling Personal Stories’ Are Equal
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
By Michelle Malkin www.cnsnews.com

Since when did securing a Supreme Court seat become a high hurdles contest? The White House and Democrats have turned Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination into a personal Olympic event.

Pay no attention to her jurisprudence. She grew up in a Bronx public housing project. She was diagnosed with childhood diabetes at 8. Her father died a year later. And, oh, by the way, did you hear that she was poor?

It’s a “compelling personal story,” as we heard 20,956 times on Tuesday. Sotomayor’s a “real” person. Why, she even read Nancy Drew as a young girl, President Obama told us. She’s “faced down barriers, overcome the odds and lived out the American dream that brought her parents here so long ago,” Obama said.

If Sotomayor were auditioning to be Oprah Winfrey’s fill-in host, I’d understand the over-the-top hyping of her life narrative. But isn’t anybody on Sotomayor’s side the least bit embarrassed by all this liberal condescension?

Republicans are not allowed to mention Sotomayor’s ethnicity lest they be branded bigots, but every Democrat on cable television harped on her multicultural “diversity” and “obstacle”-climbing.

Obama made sure to roll his r’s when noting that her parents came from Puerrrrto Rrrrico. New York Sen. Charles Schumer stated outright: “It’s long overdue that a Latino sit on the United States Supreme Court.” Color-coded tokenism dominated the headlines, with blaring references to Sotomayor as the high court’s potential “first Hispanic.”

Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill—one of the leading Democrats tasked with guiding Sotomayor through the nomination process—carried the “compelling personal story” talking points to the tokenist extreme in an interview on Fox News:

“If you look at what this woman has been through, and the obstacles that she has had to overcome, I think she does have a richly, uniquely American experience that makes her incredibly qualified to pass judgment on some of the most important cases in our country,” McCaskill asserted. “Overcoming incredible odds, and I think that is an experience that is new to the courts. There have been a lot of privileged people that have landed on the Supreme Court. The fact that she has lived the life of the common American, trying to grow up in public housing, reaching for scholarships, reaching for the courtroom as a courtroom prosecutor, all of those things will make her a better and wiser judge. And I don’t think that is identity politics. I think that is the American experience.”

Clever. Challenging Sotomayor’s credentials and extreme views on race and the law is not merely anti-Hispanic. It’s anti-American!

More significantly, McCaskill waved the high-hurdle card after being asked to defend Sotomayor’s infamous statement at a 2001 University of California at Berkeley speech asserting brown-skin moral authority: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” McCaskill actually denied that Sotomayor had made the remarks, then argued the words were taken out of context.

You want context? It’s even worse than that sound bite. As National Journal legal analyst Stuart Taylor reported, “Sotomayor also referred to the cardinal duty of judges to be impartial as a mere ‘aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others.’ And she suggested that ‘inherent physiological or cultural differences’ may help explain why ‘our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.’”

The full speech was reprinted in something called the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal. “La Raza” is Spanish for “The Race.” Imagine if a white male Republican court nominee had published in a law review called “The Race.”

The selective elevation of hardship as primary qualification demeans the entire judiciary. If personal turmoil makes one “incredibly qualified to pass judgment on some of the most important cases in our country,” let’s put reality-show couple Jon and Kate Gosselin on the bench. Millions of viewers tune in to watch their “compelling personal story” of life with eight children on television. It’s a “richly, uniquely American experience” of facing obstacles and overcoming the odds. Get them robes and gavels, stat.

The lesson is that not all compelling personal stories are equal. McCaskill’s assertion that “overcoming incredible odds” is “new to the courts” is ridiculous. Is she arguing that Thurgood Marshall, Felix Frankfurter and Sandra Day O’Connor faced lower hurdles than Sotomayor? And how about Clarence Thomas, a descendant of slaves who grew up in abject poverty in the South without a father? His crime, of course, was embracing the wrong ideology. So his incredible set of odds and obstacles don’t count in left-wing eyes.

Democrats are eager to celebrate diversity, you see, as long as the diversely pigmented pledge allegiance to the Left for life.

YOU DECIDE: Who Should Have the Final Say?

A nationwide manhunt is underway for a mother and her sick son who are both in hiding after the boy refused to undergo chemotheraphy to treat his cancer. For more on this story, click here.

The First 100 Days-Change We Can "believe" In?

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S FIRST 100 DAYS: MAJOR ABORTION PROMOTION, ATTACKING PRO-LIFERS
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- President Barack Obama marks his first 100 days in the White House today and his record is replete with aggressive promotion of abortion and attacks on pro-life advocates. Obama has used tax dollars to pay for abortion and embryonic stem cell research and stacked his administration with abortion advocates.

TIME MAGAZINE PROMOTES EUTHANASIA KITS MAKING SURE ASSISTED SUICIDE REALLY KILLS
by Kathryn Jean Lopez
That Time magazine would consider covering a doctor who has advocated the right of troubled teenagers to kill themselves should set off all sorts of alarm bells. If we don't question the issue of assisted suicide and its seeming acceptance as an almost casual reality by the media, we're going to realize quickly that we have moved way beyond debating extraordinary care and the legality of assisted suicide in terminal cases.

A Small Blow to the Abortion Industry

Posted by Sarah Harlan - email

SAN DIEGO (AP) - A woman who posed as a doctor and performed unlicensed abortions at her clinic in Chula Vista has been sentenced to six years and eight months in prison.

A San Diego County Superior Court judge on Friday ordered Bertha Bugarin to serve the sentence concurrently with a three-year term handed down by a Los Angeles court for similar charges.

Bugarin pleaded guilty in December to nine counts of practicing medicine without a license and one count of grand theft.

One of Bugarin's patients suffered severe complications, had to be hospitalized three times and eventually gave birth prematurely.

Bugarin's defense attorney said her client is a "get-things-done kind of woman" who recognized what she did was wrong.

Bugarin also operated five abortion clinics in Los Angeles and Santa Ana.

I wonder if we would have heard about this had she been employed by Planned "Parenthood."

Quotes From Our Founding Fathers

A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.

Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, February 12, 1779

Judges Gone Wild-What Happened to Our Constitution?

Activist Judge Orders Homeschool Mother to Put Kids in Public School
by Christian News Staff
March 23, 2009

RALEIGH, NC, (christiansunite.com) -- Venessa Mills is fighting a legal battle for the heart and soul of homeschooling in North Carolina. As reported on World Net Daily, on Friday, March 6, Judge Ned W. Mangum stripped her of the right to homeschool, and ordered her three children to enter public school.
Mills was forced to defend her right to homeschool during divorce proceedings brought on by her husband's unfaithfulness. Mr. Mills admitted, under oath, to repeatedly committing adultery. Even with abundant evidence showing the Mills children are well adjusted and well educated, Judge Mangum ruled overwhelmingly against Mrs. Mills on every point. He stated the children would do better in public school despite the fact that they are currently at or beyond their grade level. Evidence showed two children tested several grades ahead.
When issuing his verdict Judge Mangum stated his decision was not ideologically or religiously motivated. However, he told Mrs. Mills public school will "challenge the ideas you've taught them."
What has emerged is a picture of a clearly liberal judge imposing his beliefs and striking down traditional values. Mangum, a Democrat appointee, disregarded the facts of the case in favor of his own agenda. Such anti-conservative prejudice is increasingly legislated from the bench, and appears to be encouraged by the Democratic Obama administration.
Robyn Williams, friend and homeschool mother of four was present at the proceeding. "I have never seen such injustice and such a direct attack against homeschooling," said Williams. "This judge clearly took personal issue with Venessa's stance on education and faith, even though her children are doing great. If her right to homeschool can be taken away so easily, what will this mean for homeschoolers state wide, or even nationally?"
On March 24th lawmakers in North Carolina will be reminded of the sheer numbers of homeschoolers in their state. As students and their parents descend on the capitol, organizers of the Capital Fest 2009 field trip will show they have a voice in North Carolina legislation regarding education.
Williams is rallying homeschoolers from across the nation to fight back to defend their rights as Americans to educate their children. She feels the judge has been given a free hand to impose his personal opinions and needs to reexamine his decisions. Please subscribe to Robyn's blog and join the fight for protecting everyone's homeschool rights ( www.HSinjustice.com).

This looks like another case of an activist judge imposing his own beliefs on the judiciary process.Parents should have the right to decide what's best for their children, not the state.
I guess he needs to re-read the constitution, if he ever did in the first place. As part of the holiness movement, we have a history of using ballot and boycott...What's stopping us now?...After all, Paul tells us in Galations,"It is fine to be zealous, provided the purpose is good..."Galations 4:18 NIV

"In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew; And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up." …Martin Niemoller

God bless...keith 1 Cor 13

The Ultimate Act of "Racism"-It All Sounds So Familiar, Doesn't It?

Day Gardner of the National Black Pro-Life Union Comments on The Supreme Court's Rulings that Neither Blacks nor the Pre-born are 'Fully Human'
March 12, 2009

MEDIA ADVISORY, (christiansunite.com) -- Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union submits this statement regarding the anniversary of the decision of the Supreme Court/Dred Scott Case:
"One hundred and fifty seven years ago today Dred Scott, a black slave, petitioned the Supreme for his freedom, but was denied. In the case known as the Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court ruled that slaves--even freed slaves, and all their descendants, had no rights protected by the Constitution and that states had no right to abolish slavery.
The reasoning in Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade is nearly identical. In both cases the Court stripped all rights from a class of human beings and reduced them to nothing more than the property of others.
In the Dred Scott case of 1857 the Supreme Court said:
Dred Scott was not fully human. He was the property of his owner -- and therefore he had no rights at all. The Court stated that because
Dred Scott was not deemed "fully human", he could be bought, sold or even killed at the owner's discretion.
In the Roe v. Wade case of 1973 the Supreme Court said the same thing:
A baby is the property of his/her mother -- and that he/she is not fully human, therefore he/she has no rights at all. The Court stated that because an unborn baby is not deemed "fully human" he/she can be bought, sold or even killed at the mother's whim.
The Dred Scott Decision implied that even if slavery is cruel and degrading, slaves are not human and so their suffering is as ethically important or unimportant as the suffering of domestic animals and they do not have any rights that would justify the abolition of slavery.
There are also those heartless people today who say while abortion is cruel and gruesome, babies are not wanted, therefore their suffering is unimportant or even less important than the suffering of domestic animals and therefore do not have any rights that would justify ending the atrocity of abortion.
In the Court's eyes, unborn children are now the same "beings of an inferior order" that the justices considered Blacks to be over a century ago.
We must all come to realize that if we are the truly America that holds life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness so dear -- then we must obliterate the scourge of abortion from our midst otherwise we are no better than the those who perpetrate the conflict in Darfur, or any other country where human beings are enslaved, butchered or denied their rights just because they are meeker or weaker.
Day Gardner is the president of the National Black Pro- Life Union headquartered in Washington, DC. "

Sounds l ike they used the same old tired arguments in the slave industry as used in the abortion industry today. As my good friend in the ministry, Ryan Dillman and I were discussing, today it must be about education. The public tide against slavery didn't begin in England until William Wilberforce made people aware of what really happened on the slave ships. WE must do the same with the abortuaries...keith 1 Cor 13