Friday, June 27, 2014

Fri Jun 27th Todays News

I admire people who serve. One great man, who was a great boy, made a significant achievement on this day, aged 13, in 1899. AEJ Collins scored 628 not out for his house in schoolboy cricket, the highest innings of any form of cricket of all time. Purists might dispute that he had been dropped several times, and the scoring was haphazard, with one scorer declaring he had been robbed of at least 20 runs. It was scored over three days, in less than eight hours. Bowling in the same match, he took 11 for 63, and the house he captained won an innings and 688 runs. He never played first class cricket. As a man, he joined the army to serve. He was killed at Ypres in 1914. And his young widow lived for another fifty years. Because service sparks devotion. He was an orphan, and in centuries past, nobody would have bothered to educate him. But because of conspicuous wealth of the industrial revolution, education became essential to have employees capable of factory labour. And I salute that boy, who would become that man. He achieved any schoolboy's dream on this day in 1899, but earned it through service. 

On this day in 1946, their parliament forever confused the Fairfax Press and ABC by defining what it meant to be Canadian. Terrorists captured a plane and redirected it to Entebbe on this day in 1976. Born on this day was John Monash (1865), Hellen Keller (1880), Michael Ball (1962) and JJ Abrams (1966). In this day in 1844, Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother were lynched in jail and killed. I am reminded of one of my favourite authors (Maps in a mirror, Orson Scott Card) that the faith has mythic elements like any religion, which doesn't bear scrutiny, but he retains his faith. I am not Mormon, but I know many fine people who are.  
===
For twenty two years I have been responsibly addressing an issue, and I cannot carry on. I am petitioning the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to remedy my distress. I leave it up to him if he chooses to address the issue. Regardless of your opinion of conservative government, the issue is pressing. Please sign my petition at https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-remedy-the-persecution-of-dd-ball
===

Happy birthday and many happy returns Cam Kret and Indra Bayu Hapsoro. Born on the same day, across the years. It is Mixed Race Day in Brazil. In 1743, War of the Austrian Succession: In the last time that a British monarch personally led his troops into battle, George II and his forces defeated the French in Dettingen, Bavaria. In 1844, Latter Day Saint movement founder Joseph Smith, Jr. and his brother Hyrum were killed by an armed mob who stormed the prison where they were incarcerated in Carthage, Illinois. In 1905, The crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin began a mutiny against their oppressive officers. In 1952, The Congress of Guatemala passed Decree 900, redistributing unused lands of sizes greater than 224 acres (0.9 km2) to local peasants and having a major effect on the nation's land reform movement. Be like the kings of old and take responsibility for your day. Avoid confronting those who don't see eye to eye, but seek the path of peace. But if confronted with oppression, overthrow it and claim what is rightfully yours. Cheers.
Matches
Hatches
Despatches
===

Mark Kenny should just say he was blinded by Gore

Andrew Bolt June 27 2014 (9:36am)

Fairfax reporter Mark Kenny co-wrote a front page story yesterday falsely claiming Clive Palmer would save the carbon tax - showing Kenny, a warmist, had just listened with his eyes at a press conference featuring warmist evangelist Al Gore:
Clive Palmer has thrown into chaos Tony Abbott’s plan to abolish the carbon tax, demanding the Prime Minister instead create an emissions trading scheme that would swing into action when Australia’s major trading partners adopt similar measures.

In fact, Palmer wants the carbon tax gone, even if his doomed plan for an emissions trading scheme on the never-never is rejected.
Mark Kenny today scrabbles out of his hole:

There are two schools of thought regarding the status of Tony Abbott’s climate change promises in light of Clive Palmer’s delphic pronouncements on Wednesday…
(O)ne theory holds that because Palmer has signed the death warrant of the carbon price, the decision is a clear win for Abbott. End of story.
The other holds that Abbott’s ...‘‘direct action’’ has been scuttled, while other crucial pieces of the Labor/Greens architecture will be left in place. Taken as a whole, therefore, his climate policy has been plunged into chaos.
The government, and frankly most people within the politico-media community, lean towards the former…
“Most people within the politico-media community” is just Kenny’s grandiose way of describing the Canberra press gallery’s group thinkers and their pet warmists, yet again out of touch with reality.
And Kenny then gives evidence that suggests the Government itself is not at all alarmed by this “chaos” it’s allegedly been plunged into:
it seems the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation - which the government desperately wants to scrap - and the 20 per cent Renewable Energy Target, will stay. Neither is popular in the Coalition party-room but their retention will not cause the government too much heartache
“I was wrong” or “I was fooled” would have been much shorter.
UPDATE
The Australian laughs:
CLIVE Palmer must have been tempted to throw out some chicken pellets as he left. The former media adviser to Joh Bjelke-Petersen had just sold the chooks of the Canberra press gallery a chopping block and rotisserie, and they gobbled it up.
Journalists and commentators who had long campaigned against Tony Abbott and in favour of a carbon price had just been advised of a package that would kill the carbon tax, defer an emissions trading scheme into the never-never and put an end to carbon abatement through “direct action” — and they applauded…
That the Queensland coalmine developer and nickel-refining billionaire was audacious enough to think he could snow the media just by having Al Gore share his podium was bizarre enough. That so many in the media fell for it is droll and depressing in equal measure. As for Mr Gore, given his claims about the origins of the internet, he might have found 10 minutes to Google his new political ally before administering self-harm to his diminishing reputation as a climate evangelist…
SMH columnist Mike Carlton took to Twitter saying the announcement would “screw the Tories” but succeeded only in demonstrating his venom and lack of political acuity…
If that weren’t embarrassing enough, no lesser figure than the managing director of the ABC shared an identical sentiment. “Sensing hyperventilation in The Australian’s editorial room,” tweeted Mark Scott. We should welcome Mr Scott’s honesty in publicly aligning himself with the embittered left fringe of politics but we should also despair that the ABC’s editor-in-chief should misunderstand policy and politics so comprehensively…
Wednesday night on the ABC’s 7.30 Sarah Ferguson said the PUP leader was “putting himself at the vanguard” of climate policy. A couple of hours later on Lateline Tony Jones asked Mr Palmer what had caused his “road to Damascus conversion” on climate…
Almost 24 hours on from the excitement of seeing Mr Gore take the stage with a man who has an equally large carbon footprint, the overexcited media pundits started to grasp what was happening.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
===

A racist ban on knowledge

Andrew Bolt June 27 2014 (9:32am)

How can any one “race” ban the acquiring of knowledge?
Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) has removed a controversial part of an installation that invited DNA testing for Aboriginality.
The exhibit by Swiss artist Christoph Buchel had been on a stand offering DNA testing with a sign that read: “Are you of Aboriginal descent?"…
MONA said it had removed the stall after consulting Aboriginal elders who had raised concerns about the concept. The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre said it was disappointed it had not been consulted before the exhibit went public.
The Enlightenment is being rolled back.
(Thanks to reader A Happy Little Debunker.) 
===

Greste is innocent, but why is Waleed Aly whitewashing al Jazeera?

Andrew Bolt June 27 2014 (8:28am)

Peter Greste is completely innocent and the victim of a show trial in Egypt. He worked for Al-Jazeera’s English service, which is a legitimate broadcaster. He must be freed.
But ABC host Waleed Aly, our leading Muslim apologist, typically turns the case into an attack on the West and a whitewash of Al Jazeera’s darker side - its links to the Muslim Brotherhood and the preaching on its Arabic service of bigotry, extremism and anti-Egypt conspiracy theories involving Jews:
Greste’s problem is simply that he works for al-Jazeera – which the Egyptian regime deems to be a mouthpiece for the Brotherhood. He has every reason to protest that he was merely reporting the news, but that necessarily means exposing some of the regime’s excesses and in Egypt that’s enough to make you a lying, terrorist supporter. And that’s exactly what the charges were: supporting the Brotherhood and spreading false news....
Al-Jazeera! Once upon a time not so very long ago, it was Western politicians – like Donald Rumsfeld – describing them as the “mouthpiece of al-Qaeda”. And it was their propagandists – like Bill O’Reilly – brandin it a terrorist organisation that shouldn’t be allowed in America. Last year he even warned its anchors that “they behead you” if you “misbehave”. “Sure,” you retort, “but these are just words – not the imprisonment of journalists after a sham trial”.  And that’s true. But it probably doesn’t mean much to Sami al-Hajj, the al-Jazeera cameraman who was locked up in Guantanamo Bay for six years without any trial at all – even a sham one – before the Bush administration decided there was nothing to charge him with. Greste was held in solitary confinement. If you believe al-Hajj’s lawyer, he was physically and sexually abused.
In those days al-Jazeera’s main crime was that it broadcast statements from Osama bin Laden to which they had gained exclusive access – which is to say that it broadcast what any news organisation would regard as news. That was al-Jazeera’s argument then, in exactly the way it is its argument now. In both cases it’s an argument with force…

I am becoming seriously alarmed by Waleed Aly’s excuse-making and wilful blindness to Islamist extremism, as in blaming the Boston bombing on American Right-wingers, refusing to identify Boko Haram as Muslim and refusing to blame Boko Haram for kidnapping schoolgirls.

Here are two notorious videos of Al Jazeera throwing a party for a jihadist who killed a four-year-old Jewish girl and hosting a preacher, the Muslim Brotherhood’s chief ideoiogist, who praises what Hitler did to the Jews and offers to shoot some himself:
Why is an ABC presenter whitewashing a broadcaster guilty of such bigotry? 
===

20 Syrian fighters have returned to Australia

Andrew Bolt June 27 2014 (8:18am)

I really do not understand why we have immigration policies which expose us to this danger and this expense:

ASIO director-general David Irvine warned that extremists fighting in the Iraq-Syria theatre may soon turn their attention towards targets in the West....
Intelligence agencies estimate that about 150 Australians are participating in the Iraq-Syria conflict, either overseas or via ­activities here in Australia such as recruiting fighters. The number thought to be in Iraq is small, fewer than 10.
Among them are convicted terrorist Khaled Sharrouf and his companion Mohamed Elomar, both of whom are fighting with ISIS.
Elomar and Sharrouf are suspected of having participated in mass executions conducted by ISIS against captured Iraqi prisoners in northern Iraq about two weeks ago…
Mr Irvine confirmed that a number of Australians who fought in Syria had since returned. The Australian understands they number about 20. 
===

Clive Palmer feeds his favorite journalist a falsehood

Andrew Bolt June 27 2014 (7:58am)

Hedley Thomas on the false claims Clive Palmer made to his favourite interviewer:
The ABC’s Tony Jones is an interviewer, not an investigator like Woodward or Bernstein, but the flagship program he presents (and on which Palmer loves appearing) has the staff and the resources to be properly informed by publicly available court documents about a very serious matter. A few hours after Palmer’s appearance with former US vice-president Al Gore in Canberra, Jones put to him that “it seems to be an allegation made by your partners (Citic Pacific) that $12 million has gone missing from …’’
Palmer replied: “Well that’s just not true. There’s no allegation made by them. There’s no action taken by them. There’s no action against us in any of these matters. It’s just rubbish.’’
No allegation by the Chinese? No action taken by them? All those matters in all those court proceedings must be make­-believe, too. Along with the large sums of money currently being spent by Palmer on lawyers to defend him in the same proceedings.

Read on, as Thomas explains these court documents which prove Palmer is peddling porkies:
image
UPDATE
Graham Richardson says voters will one day work out Palmer is feeding them bull:
I asked him how he could explain the disastrous business performance of his resort at Coolum. The occupancy rate when he booted Hyatt out of the resort (after losing yet another court case where he falsely accused Hyatt of stealing $20 million from him) was 58 per cent and now it is 0 per cent.
Palmer laughed it off and replied that he was a billionaire who could buy any home he liked. There was no mention of the 350 people who no longer had a job or the unit owners and part-owners who had been locked out. They are all suing Palmer and they must win. The payout for damages, repar­ation and legal fees will be massive. Those pockets will need to be very deep indeed.
Perhaps his greatest publicity stunt has been the Titanic replica he has been going to build for the past few years. When I asked him to nominate the shipyard he had contracted to build it, Clive nominated the same shipyard this newspaper had reported as denying that any such contract existed.
===

The Bolt Report on Sunday, June 29

Andrew Bolt June 27 2014 (7:54am)

On Sunday on Channel 10 at 10am and 4pm…
Editorial: Spot the biggest fraud this week.
My guest:  Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews on reforming welfare.
The panel: former Gillard media advisor Sean Kelly and former Howard chief of staff Grahame Morris. Was this Tony Abbott’s big breakthrough week? And why was it so easy this week for Clive Palmer to fool so many journalists?
NewsWatch: Gerard Henderson on giving extremists a platform - and the anti-Murdoch witch-hunt.
Plus spin of the week and more.
And a question: how come the mud isn’t sticking to Bill Shorten?
The videos of the shows appear here.
===

Ricky Muir could still save the carbon tax

Andrew Bolt June 27 2014 (7:45am)

Almost every non-Government senator now wants to be bought off, meaning the Senate is disposed to spend billions more than we have - and a double dissolution election could be best for the national interest:

CLIVE Palmer’s alliance with incoming Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party senator Ricky Muir may unravel on the very first vote of the new Senate after July 1. 

The Australian understands that Mr Muir plans to vote against the carbon tax repeal bills unless the Abbott government supports the automotive transformation scheme
Mr Muir may be supported in his stance by independent senator Nick Xenophon and Democratic Labour Party senator John Madigan — with the bloc potentially deciding the outcome of the vote.
If the Abbott government refuses to revive the $700m automotive transformation scheme that Kim Carr set up as industry minister during the previous Labor government, the combined votes of Labor, the Greens and the three crossbenchers would defeat the carbon tax repeal bills.
This could force the Abbott government to go to a double-­dissolution election to honour its election commitment to scrap the carbon tax.
Mr Muir, Senator Madigan and Senator Xenophon are believed to favour reviving the automotive transformation scheme to assist components parts manufacturers in the wake of the decisions by Holden, Toyota and Ford to cease building cars in Australia.
That would be stripping money from healthy businesses to prop up dying ones, with taxpayers the losers.
I’d like to know the terms of the memorandum of understanding Muir signed with Palmer, and what costs Muir might have to repay in pulling out. 
===

National Imams Council finally denounces extremists

Andrew Bolt June 27 2014 (7:33am)

I don’t for a second buy the excuse for the silence but am glad it is now finally broken:
AUSTRALIA’S Islamic leaders have demanded radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir stop voicing its vile sermons in public, hate-filled messages which they claim are tarnishing the entire Muslim community…
For years Australia’s often divided coterie of imams have been loathe to publicly scold Hizb ut-Tahrir’s tiny but vocal members, shaking their heads in private but preferring to preach freedom of expression.
Now the religion’s chief authority — the Australian National Imams Council — has had enough.
The stance follows The Daily Telegraph’s revelations Hizb ut-Tahrir’s spokesman Uthman Badar was stopped from giving a speech at the Sydney Opera House that debated the moral justification of honour killing, while the group was also found to have sickening views that men could “morally’’ marry pre-teen girls and that the US and Australia were terrorist nations for invading Iraq and Afghanistan.

“They send the wrong message about Islam and they should refrain and have better judgment about preaching a message of inflammatory nature,’’ said Imam Mohammadu Nawas, a spokesman for both the ANIC and the Grand Mufti of Australia, Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammed.
Why such a belated response, and then only after Hizb ut-Tahrir has been denounced by everyone else?
Prominent Islamic leader Ameer Ali, former president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said all Muslim groups, leaders and mosque preachers should be resoundingly denouncing the views of Hizb ut-Tahrir.
“But I don’t hear it yet. I don’t hear people coming out in sermons denouncing them. They need to do this and be at the forefront of demolishing these ideas,’’ he said.
“Indeed, most Muslims are horrified by what they are saying. So why aren’t the council of Imams stopping them? That’s surprising to me.’’
I’d like far more argument to not just shut up Hizb ut-Tahrir but to prove them wrong. 
===


===


===


===


===


===


===


===


===


===


===


===


===

===


===


===


===


===


===


===


===


===


===


===


===


===


=== Posts from Last year ===
4 her, so she can see how I see her 



===


I was traveling well inland, and had been traveling for many hours by now and was sort of losing my mind and singing the entire Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album with a Garth Brooks imitation voice (and it works!) when I came across this unusual sight… a lighthouse in Maryland. I knew immediately that this spot was for me! The building is actually part of a church called the World Lighthouse Worship Church. I found that interesting. The high stratus clouds really added to the effect as the sun was setting. I grabbed a bite to eat nearby afterwards and then continued my long trek to my next destination… alone… into the oncoming night… singing in a Garth Brooks voice…

Taken while on assignment last May as part of Yahoo's OTR campaign as the weather photographer.
  — in Grantsville, MD.
===

===

===
Joel Rubinfeld, the Brussels-born co-chair of the European Jewish Parliament, said, “The reports concerning this case are extremely disconcerting: It sounds like something from 1930s Germany. Especially disquieting is the authorities’ apparent inaction.”

Earlier this month, prosecutors in Brussels decided not to file charges in a 2011 case in which a 15-year-old Jewish girl was attacked outside her school by five boys who called her a “dirty Jew” before hitting her repeatedly in the face.

“A pattern of indifference emerges,” Rubinfeld said.

Subsequent detail suggests the attack may be homophobic, not anti semitic. Regardless, we know it was bigoted and the bigots have broken the law. Although some excuse such attacks.. -ed
===

I have not found anything to verify this statement - ed
===
Chris Heins'
Stuck in my head: "Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
That was the end,
Of Solomon Grundy."

He was week - ed
===

===
Romanian Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa writes that high ranking Soviet politician Yuri Andropov, through an initiative to seed the Muslim world with anti-American and anti-Israel sentiment, sent hundreds of agents and thousands of copies of propaganda literature to Muslim countries during the decade.
According to Pacepa: “By 1972, Andropov’s disinformation machinery was working around the clock to persuade the Islamic world that Israel and the United States intended to transform the rest of the world into a Zionist fiefdom.

===

===

There is an Eco Bridge in Netherlands. It allows Animals to cross the highway easily.
===

===

===

The War Illusionist Jasper Maskelyne

http://independentfilmnewsandmedia.com/the-war-illusionist-jasper-maskelyne/ 

This is the unique story of the British Stage Magician, Jasper Maskelyne who, when war broke out, offered his ‘special skills’ to the War Dept. He promptly enlisted in the British Army and attempted to convince the Generals that his skills as an illusionist could be put to use against the Germans.
===

Friday Fotos Monsoon: Storm Cell in San Tan Park
===

===

She lacked poise and grace in parliament .. but in leaving she showed a glimpse of what it is like to be freed from a lunatic asylum - ed
===
Makena Monk
I hope people are aware that once you go to our Club in Second Life and Vote for the Songs that are played.. they have a chance to end up in the Second Life's Top 40!!! http://www.shxonline.com/top40/ This is absolutely fantastic!!! But songs do need votes!!! So if you want mainstream songs to disappear from the Top 20 then come over to Second Life and VOTE VOTE VOTE!!!!
===

John Wayne: American Legend

http://independentfilmnewsandmedia.com/john-wayne-american-legend/

From his difficult childhood to the biggest Film star ever. Biography with Photos, film, clips and interviews with colleagues in this AE “Biopraphy” series dvd.
===



A Fact (Photographic Proof!)>

===

Larry Pickering
A VILE PIECE OF TRASH CALLED SUMMERS

I received a call from the Brisbane Courier mail, “Larry Pickering? Anne Summers says people like you are responsible for Jill Meagher’s rape and murder, do you have a reply to that?” They couldn’t print my reply.

At the time I hadn’t heard of this unhinged man-hating dragon, mainly because I don’t read the socialist Press or Fairfax.

Now I hope you don’t mind because I can’t bring myself to call her a woman (real women are wonderful) so I will refer to her as “thing”.

It’s this “thing” who encouraged Julia Gillard to embark on a fateful gender tirade that contributed to her knifing.

It was this “thing” who encouraged Government payouts of $5,000 for late/full term abortions (covered here two posts back).

It’s this thing who enjoys degrading men by shagging toy boys less than half her age.

This “thing” plasters lipstick all over her filthy mouth in an attempt to appear human but it doesn’t work, and someone should explain the purpose of lipstick and rouge, the colour red in humans and primates, is to indicate arousal to the opposite sex (and I can’t see that working either).

But this “thing” has now turned on her own kind, criticising Labor’s women politicians who are refusing to jump ship in sympathy with Gillard. Only men, in thinly veiled disgust, have so far tossed in the towel.

Even lesbians like Wong have turned their backs on Gillard.

Julia sits alone, banished to a back bench, mulling over what might have been without her coterie of gender terrorists.

If you wish to dry retch and peruse the sewage that pours from this “thing”’s noisy red orifice you will have to read today's Fairfax Press or watch the ABC, because only the far Left will stomach her disgusting, vile drivel.

Understand this, Summers, it’s obnoxious vermin like you who emboldened Gillard to take the misogynist road.

It was you who applauded that nauseating crap and it is you who are responsible for her downfall. Live with it!

We real men adore real women and a thousand “thing”s like you will never drive a wedge between us.

===

Great blue hole of the coast of belize.

Take a look what is hidden in it here :http://www.unbelievable-facts.com/2012/07/mysterious-blue-holes-in-sea.html
===

===

===

===

Why was Nik Wallenda praising Jesus during his death-defying walk? His answer may surprise you:http://tinyurl.com/qdb67kt

During the Grand Canyon stunt, Wallenda’s mic picked up what he was saying. “Praise God” and “Praise you, Jesus” were among the phrases uttered.
At one point, Wallenda thanked God for calming the wind. But, he told Sean, “I believe that God’s given me a very unique talent and I use it to give glory to Him. [...] I don’t believe that God holds me on that wire in any way. It’s not as though I’m praising God’s name while I’m walking, saying ‘God hold me up here, I’m going to fall.’”
Hannity asked why so many people have a fear of heights. Wallenda answered, “You call it fear, I call it respect. […] I go on top of a skyscraper and I look over the edge, and I believe just like anyone else, I look and say I don’t want to go down there. But I’ve trained my whole life to stay on that wire.”
===

===

Learn about our plan here: www.national.org.nz/families
===

===

===

===
Tanaka Giichi
===

Events[edit]

Births[edit]

Deaths[edit]

Holidays and observances[edit]

===
““‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.” Leviticus 19:18 NIV
===
Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"Art thou become like unto us?"
Isaiah 14:10
What must be the apostate professor's doom when his naked soul appears before God? How will he bear that voice, "Depart, ye cursed; thou hast rejected me, and I reject thee; thou hast played the harlot, and departed from me: I also have banished thee forever from my presence, and will not have mercy upon thee." What will be this wretch's shame at the last great day when, before assembled multitudes, the apostate shall be unmasked? See the profane, and sinners who never professed religion, lifting themselves up from their beds of fire to point at him. "There he is," says one, "will he preach the gospel in hell?" "There he is," says another, "he rebuked me for cursing, and was a hypocrite himself!" "Aha!" says another, "here comes a psalm-singing Methodist--one who was always at his meeting; he is the man who boasted of his being sure of everlasting life; and here he is!" No greater eagerness will ever be seen among Satanic tormentors, than in that day when devils drag the hypocrite's soul down to perdition. Bunyan pictures this with massive but awful grandeur of poetry when he speaks of the back-way to hell. Seven devils bound the wretch with nine cords, and dragged him from the road to heaven, in which he had professed to walk, and thrust him through the back-door into hell. Mind that back-way to hell, professors! "Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith." Look well to your state; see whether you be in Christ or not. It is the easiest thing in the world to give a lenient verdict when oneself is to be tried; but O, be just and true here. Be just to all, but be rigorous to yourself. Remember if it be not a rock on which you build, when the house shall fall, great will be the fall of it. O may the Lord give you sincerity, constancy, and firmness; and in no day, however evil, may you be led to turn aside.

Evening

"Having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust."
2 Peter 1:4
Vanish forever all thought of indulging the flesh if you would live in the power of your risen Lord. It were ill that a man who is alive in Christ should dwell in the corruption of sin. "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" said the angel to Magdalene. Should the living dwell in the sepulchre? Should divine life be immured in the charnel house of fleshly lust? How can we partake of the cup of the Lord and yet drink the cup of Belial? Surely, believer, from open lusts and sins you are delivered: have you also escaped from the more secret and delusive lime-twigs of the Satanic fowler? Have you come forth from the lust of pride? Have you escaped from slothfulness? Have you clean escaped from carnal security? Are you seeking day by day to live above worldliness, the pride of life, and the ensnaring vice of avarice? Remember, it is for this that you have been enriched with the treasures of God. If you be indeed the chosen of God, and beloved by him, do not suffer all the lavish treasure of grace to be wasted upon you. Follow after holiness; it is the Christian's crown and glory. An unholy church! it is useless to the world, and of no esteem among men. It is an abomination, hell's laughter, heaven's abhorrence. The worst evils which have ever come upon the world have been brought upon her by an unholy church. O Christian, the vows of God are upon you. You are God's priest: act as such. You are God's king: reign over your lusts. You are God's chosen: do not associate with Belial. Heaven is your portion: live like a heavenly spirit, so shall you prove that you have true faith in Jesus, for there cannot be faith in the heart unless there be holiness in the life.
"Lord, I desire to live as one
Who bears a blood-bought name,
As one who fears but grieving thee,
And knows no other shame."
===

Today's reading: Job 5-7, Acts 8:1-25 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Job 5-7

1 "Call if you will, but who will answer you?
To which of the holy ones will you turn?
2 Resentment kills a fool,
and envy slays the simple.
3 I myself have seen a fool taking root,
but suddenly his house was cursed.
4 His children are far from safety,
crushed in court without a defender.
5 The hungry consume his harvest,
taking it even from among thorns,
and the thirsty pant after his wealth.
For hardship does not spring from the soil,
nor does trouble sprout from the ground.
7 Yet man is born to trouble
as surely as sparks fly upward.

Today's New Testament reading: Acts 8:1-25

1 And Saul approved of their killing him.
The Church Persecuted and Scattered
On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. 2 Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. 3 But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison....


No comments: