Monday, June 30, 2014

Mon Jun 30th Todays News

The 1876 election had seen the election of GOP Hayes based on a compromise. The military was pulled out of the South, ending reconstruction efforts and toppling state GOP governments. White Democrats would make the south one party and would isolate and prey upon African Americans. But in terms of populism, that was ok. Then James was elected and what followed was to James' credit in 1881, and a tragedy too. James was a GOP man too, but he had better control and discipline than Hayes. James Garfield would reform the US public service and purge corruption from the post office. He appointed african americans to prominent federal positions, promoted civil rights and education as a means to a free and fair electorate. And then, two hundred days into office, he was assassinated by a nut job. 

 The nut job was like any other extreme right wing idiot that ever lived. Born in illinois, to an ethnically French family of Huguenot, Guiteau had been given $1000 and instructed to study in New York by his father. He had listening issues, and struggled as a student. He dropped out and joined a religious cult, but struggled to find his place. He went to Boston and got an easily achieved legal license, but was a failure as a barrister, managing to enrage most of his clients. Next, Guiteau turned to theology and stole material from the cult from which he had been booted. Then he decided to support GOP people. He begged Hayes for political favours, and then Garfield. Garfield had opposed corruption. So Guiteau decided to shoot him. 

 Guiteau chose a pearl handled revolver for reasons of posterity. He picked his moment, approached Garfield from behind and shot him twice. Garfield would probably have survived but for the medical treatment he received by doctors that had not sterilised their surgery equipment or hands, as would be routine ten years later. It took eleven weeks for Garfield to die. In defence, Guiteau would claim that he was not guilty because "The doctors killed him, I just shot him." The defence failed, and so on this day in 1882, nine months after the shooting, Guiteau was hung. On the morning of his hanging, Guiteau wrote a poem. 

I am going to the Lordy, I am so glad,



I am going to the Lordy, I am so glad,



I am going to the Lordy,

Glory hallelujah! Glory hallelujah!

I am going to the Lordy.

I love the Lordy with all my soul,

Glory hallelujah!

And that is the reason I am going to the Lord,

Glory hallelujah! Glory hallelujah!

I am going to the Lord.

I saved my party and my land,

Glory hallelujah!

But they have murdered me for it,

And that is the reason I am going to the Lordy,

Glory hallelujah! Glory hallelujah!

I am going to the Lordy!

I wonder what I will do when I get to the Lordy,

I guess that I will weep no more

When I get to the Lordy!

Glory hallelujah!

I wonder what I will see when I get to the Lordy,

I expect to see most glorious things,

Beyond all earthly conception

When I am with the Lordy!

Glory hallelujah! Glory hallelujah!

I am with the Lord.
He was the only right wing extremist to assassinate a President of the US. He seemed incapable of rational thought, his application of poetry on a par with another right wing terrorist (McVey) who claimed he was the captain of his soul. Guiteau's case was one of the first attempts at an insanity defence in the US for a high profile case. At nine months he was the longest survivor of an assassination of a US President. 
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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
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Happy birthday and many happy returns Rex Lee and Diana Lam. Born on the same day, across the years. Your day is notable, including 1894, London's Tower Bridge, a combined bascule and suspension bridge over the River Thames, opened. In 1908, A massive explosion occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, knocking over 80 million trees over 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi). In 1934, Adolf Hitler violently purged members of the Sturmabteilung, its leader Ernst Röhm, and other political rivals on the Night of the Long Knives, executing at least 85 people. In 1963, A car bomb intended for Mafia boss Salvatore Greco killed seven police and military officers near Palermo. In 1971, The Soviet Soyuz 11 spacecraft suffered an uncontrolled decompression during preparations for reentry, killing cosmonauts Vladislav Volkov, Georgiy Dobrovolskiy and Viktor Patsayev—the only human deaths to occur in space. Grim reading, but how dare anyone raise their hand to you? The bridge is a fitting monument. Cheers.
Matches
Hatches
Despatches
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CANS OF TIME

Tim Blair – Monday, June 30, 2014 (2:50pm)

Last week’s request for culturally significant kitchen artefacts delivered a bounty of old-timey consumables, beginning with Gordon F.’s September 2013 memorial:

image

“Here’s my culturally significant artefact from last year’s election,” writes Gordon. “It’s slowly mummifying in my fruit bowl. Funny thing, I’m quite sure the real Kevin O’Lemon is looking younger and younger.” 

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'CANS OF TIME'
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THE MYTHERS

Tim Blair – Monday, June 30, 2014 (2:40pm)

Full marks for insight to Julia Gillard. According to a new book, the ex-PM had this to say on the morning after she was dumped by Labor for her rival Kevin Rudd: “This has been contentless, it’s been all about ego and personalities.”
The Australian public had come to that conclusion some months previously, but it’s nice that Gillard eventually caught up. 

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'THE MYTHERS'
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FOUNTAIN OF TRIUMPH

Tim Blair – Monday, June 30, 2014 (2:23pm)

I was raised in Victoria, so will always claim that AFL is a superior code to rugby league. Yet even I now concede that when it comes to scandals, the NRL has the AFL beat.

Icon Arrow Continue reading 'FOUNTAIN OF TRIUMPH'
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NOBODY WINS

Tim Blair – Monday, June 30, 2014 (1:49pm)

A superb letter to the SMH: 
Like many of your respondents in Friday’s letters section, I read Elizabeth Farrelly’s article, ‘’In Tim-speak, we women should shut up’’, but with a slightly different take.
While I understand the need to call out sexism, especially when it’s personal, I could not really understand why a sophisticated and cultivated writer would bother crossing swords with an intellectual nobody like Tim Blair. Surely, like a toddler’s tantrum, the rantings of the likes of Mr Blair are best ignored. 
Yet Elizabeth cannot resist. Like a truck blocking a bicycle lane, there is no ignoring the intellectual nobody. 
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JUSTIFY THIS

Tim Blair – Monday, June 30, 2014 (1:09pm)

Last week it was announced that an Islamic extremist would deliver this speech at the Sydney Opera House: “Honour killings are morally justified.” The speech was subsequently cancelled, which must really annoy everybody involved, because now they’ve missed a perfect news angle: 
A young couple murdered in Pakistan barely a week after they had married for love were killed as a warning to other girls not to marry without the permission of their parents, according to witnesses.
Residents of Satrah, Punjab, said relatives of the bride slit their throats and forced children to watch as they bled to death. 
Too bad. This would have been a lovely discussion point for culturally-sensitive Opera House attendees.
(Via Brat)
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The throatcutters of the Socialist Alternative

Andrew Bolt June 30 2014 (4:50pm)

Culture wars, How the Left hates

The Socialist Alternative is a Marxist group claiming to represent more moral people.
In fact, as I’ve noted many times, it is a natural home of the thug and the vicious. Socialist Alternative members have this year physically attacked Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, physically intimidated and shouted down former Liberal MP Sophie Mirabella as she gave a university lecture, vilified a daughter of the Prime Minister and shut down debate on the ABC’s Q&A.
Now this:
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Note well the savagery of these totalitarians. Imagine a society in which they were allowed real power.
Realise these are barbarians.
And one final thought: remember how the Left used to complain, on the basis of a Ditch the Witch sign, that no prime minister had ever been abused as badly as Julia Gillard?
(Thanks to many readers.) 
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Newman Government now behind in polls

Andrew Bolt June 30 2014 (5:43am)

Sloppy politics, indiscipline and high-handedness has made it much harder for the Queensland Newman Government to sell the necessarily harsh medicine - and a dangerous populist is cleaning up:
Two years after scoring the biggest election win in Australian history, the latest Newspoll shows the LNP is trailing Labor by 49 per cent to 51 per cent after preferences, a swing of almost 14 percentage points since the victory.
Primary support has plum­met­ed from the 49.7 per cent support it received at the March 2012 election to just 32 per cent — including an 8 per cent fall since the previous Newspoll in March.
But the latest voters to abandon the Newman government are not turning to Labor — the state opposition’s primary support has declined by 2 per cent to 34 per cent in the past three months.
Instead, support for indepen­dents and, to a lesser extent, Clive Palmer’s Palmer United Party, has jumped from 15 per cent in March to 24 per cent, with the Greens remaining static on 8 per cent.
Michael McKenna:
This is a government that has a good story but seems unable to tell it. The economy is turning around, with growth forecast to double next year and a surplus on the horizon. The health and education sectors are free of the scandals that plagued them under Labor.
But the pugnacious Premier has turned off many voters with his “with me or against me’’ tone. In February, Newman privately conceded his government had “scared people’’ with its public service cuts and last year’s crackdown on bikies…
There was [lately] the brawl with doctors over contracts, with lawyers over bikies and worrying changes to the Crime and Misconduct Commission and political donation laws and, finally, with the judiciary over the new chief justice. 
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Al Gore and Clive Palmer’s nice little earner

Andrew Bolt June 30 2014 (5:24am)

AL Gore, the world’s most famous global warming guru, last week used Australia to trash what’s left of his reputation.
The Nobel prize-winning alarmist didn’t just tell his disciples here more astonishing falsehoods about the climate of the kind that’s good for his business. (See here for his latest whoppers.)
Gore also meddled in our climate politics to the undisclosed benefit of his business partners, and against the interests of Australians.
And in return for a favour, he falsely praised coal baron Clive Palmer as a planet-saver, when Palmer was in fact destroying our biggest schemes to tackle global warming.
This fraud started on Wednesday, when Palmer presented Gore at a press conference called to announce whether he’d help the Abbott Government axe the carbon tax.
The warmist journalists there, notably from Fairfax newspapers and the ABC, were completely fooled by the surprise appearance of their warmist god.
(Read full article here.) 
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What Gore got wrong. Again

Andrew Bolt June 30 2014 (5:20am)

Global warming - dud predictions

FORMER US vice-president Al Gore got rich by predicting global warming doom — but also got reckless.
His film, An Inconvenient Truth, was found by a British judge to have nine significant errors, and Gore may have become even more unreliable.
Here are just some of the astonishingly false claims Gore made in a lecture last week to Climate Reality Project presenters in Melbourne.
(Read full article here.) 
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Just another day on the globe we’re told is warming to hell

Andrew Bolt June 30 2014 (5:05am)

Jo Nova:
Nils-Axel Mörner has a new paper out (his 589th). For 60 years he has been tracking the coastlines close to him, and carefully isolated the exact part which appears to be the most stable. From that he shows that the real sea-level rise in Northern Europe is less than 1 millimeter a year since 1890. This is less that the 1.6mm trend in 182 NOAA tide gauges, and far below the estimates of the IPCC reports.There is also no sign of acceleration in sea-levels for the last 50 years…
If anything, Nils work shows how difficult it is to measure true sea-level rise on land that shifts.
Meanwhile, there’s record sea ice around Antarctica:
image
The new record anomaly for Southern Hemisphere sea ice, the ice encircling the southernmost continent, is 2.074 million square kilometers and was posted for the first time by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s The Cryosphere Today early Sunday morning.
(Thanks to reader Rocky.) 
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New Labor speaks

Andrew Bolt June 30 2014 (5:00am)

Christian Kerr on the Labor Senator the Leftist media adopted as the heroine in her battle against fellow Labor Senator Joe Bullock, a conservative:
DESPITE all the attention she grabbed in the special Senate election back in April, Labor’s Louise Pratt was virtually ignored when she gave her valedictory speech last week. So let the record show: Pratt thanked the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, the Maritime Union of Australia, the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, the Community and Public Sector Union, the Electrical Trades Union, the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union, Emily’s List and other party groups. About the only mob she missed were the voters.
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ABC standards up in smoke

Andrew Bolt June 30 2014 (5:00am)

  The ABC sets the standard once again:
THE ABC appears to have shrugged its shoulders over an internet video in which its high-profile star Wil Anderson appears to smoke marijuana.
A spokesman from the ABC said there was “no comment” yesterday relating to the video of Anderson apparently using pipes and a bong to smoke marijuana, during an interview on the online US show Getting Doug With High.
Reader Peter of Bellevue Hill:
AB, just as well Anderson’s a pot-smoking ABC presenter rather than a cigar-smoking conservative politician. ABC News Breakfast might think the matter at least worthy of a Facebook post otherwise.
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Can Palmer honor his promise to Gore?

Andrew Bolt June 30 2014 (4:33am)

Clive Palmer gave Al Gore a reward for blessing his destruction of the carbon tax - a promise to defend the Renewable Energy Target that forces us to use expensive wind and solar power.
As I explained yesterday, Gore’s investment business involved with super funds that are heavy investors in exactly those sorts of projects:
But Jacqui Lambie may rebel against her string-pulling leader:
TONY Abbott and his cabinet face new pressure on climate policy, with 25 Coalition MPs urging a reduction in the Renewable Energy Target and a key Palmer United Party senator-elect breaking ranks to call for Tasmania to be exempt from the scheme.
The 25 Coalition MPs, comprising about half the government backbench in the lower house, have written to Environment Minister Greg Hunt and Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane calling for the RET to be dramatically scaled back to enable a full exemption for the aluminium industry…
Tasman­ian PUP senator-elect Jacqui Lambie broke ranks with her leader to call for changes to the RET… Ms Lambie ... warned she would seek exemptions from the RET for businesses in her home state of Tasmania, underlining the potential for the balance-of-power party to split.
While Ms Lambie insisted her PUP colleagues understood her position, Mr Palmer yesterday reaffirmed the party’s commitment to the existing target to source 20 per cent of the nation’s energy needs from renewable sources such as wind and solar power by 2020.

The Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party’s Ricky Muir - and his assertive new staffer - could rebel against Palmer, too:

In a challenge to the agenda set out by Clive Palmer, the AMEP senator-elect is refusing to signal his position on any issue ahead of debate on the floor of the Senate.
Mr Muir and his adviser, Glenn Druery, held their first detailed talks with the government late last week and appear likely to meet the Prime Minister in Canberra in the coming days…
While the AMEP has declared its solidarity with the Palmer United Party, this does not force Mr Muir to vote with Mr Palmer’s group on key issues, including clima­te change and spending cuts. 
Back in March, Palmer was actually against the RET:
CLIVE Palmer has been pounced on for contradicting his lead candidate for the West Australian Senate election over renewable energy targets.
Palmer United Party’s Dio Wang said on Tuesday that the existing Renewable Energy Target ... was the right scheme for maintaining and improving the nation’s environment, and should stay as it is… Mr Palmer said he believed the target should be voluntary. “We don’t agree with people being compelled to do anything,” he told reporters.
What a blight on the landscape:
Clive Palmer’s decision to protect the Renewable Energy Target – leaving it as the government’s default climate change policy – is expected to lead to the equivalent of 40 new wind farms around Australia...
And what a waste:
With the carbon tax set to be repealed, all that remains of the greenies’ grand design is the RET; but preliminary modelling for the RET review estimates that over the period to 2040, the RET increases electricity costs by $12.8bn. Since the abatement it causes could be purchased internationally for some $2bn, over 80 per cent of that $12.8bn is pure waste.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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From India? Then no

Andrew Bolt June 30 2014 (4:26am)

We should be be accepting alleged refugees from a democracy such as India:

Sri Lankan high commissioner Admiral Thisara Samarasinghe pledged his gov­ern­ment’s continued support for the border protection policies of “close friend” Australia, including the swift return of boatpeople, amid claims that 153 Tamils were being held aboard an Australian vessel close to Christmas Island after a two-week journey from India.
There were reports yesterday that two asylum-seeker boats had been intercepted by border protection authorities — including the one from India, which refugee advocates said had encountered mechanical problems, and a second from Indonesia with about 50 passengers…
Sri Lankan human rights lawyer and refugee advocate Lakshan Dias said in the past 12 months Australia had deported numerous formerly India-based Sri Lankan Tamil asylum-seekers to Sri Lanka.
But be sure there will be a concerted effort from some in the media to use this as a battering ram to smash open our doors again.
(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.) 
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4 her, so she can see how I see her


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Dr John Mendoza, the former Chief Executive of the Mental Health Council and of the Australian Sports Drug Agency, told Adelaide radio that in his opinion Kevin Rudd was a sociopath. Heavy language, not repeated in other media although they reported some of his diagnosis.

John Mendoza, who resigned as Rudd’s mental health adviser, says the former PM is “not fit for office” and he will “leave the country” if Rudd returns to The Lodge. “There was constantly work being done on ridiculous timetables,” he says. “There’s a litany of discarded policy and wasted effort during the Rudd years. The public was never told the truth.”

Mendoza told ABC radio yesterday he quit from the Mental Health Council because Mr Rudd’s leadership was dysfunctional, erratic and chaotic.

Kevin Rudd’s one-time senior adviser on mental health says the former prime minister was removed from the top job for his “own wellbeing”.

“The Australian public is now starting to understand that he (Mr Rudd) wasn’t knifed in the back, in fact he was removed for his own wellbeing and the Government of the country had to function,” Professor Mendoza said.

Extraordinary stuff. And it might just explain a lot.
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The Milwaukee art museum at sunset. This city was a pleasant surprise during my travels with Yahoo! as the designated weather photographer. This space age, strange looking architectural edifice actually has moving parts I was told. I would have liked to have stayed longer to see it move its' wings. — at Milwaukee Art Museum.
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I'm not asking for help. I'm just venting. Thursday I realized I was having a gout attack. Usually, I just keep to bed for a day and it goes. But I've now been bed ridden for two days and it looks like hanging around. It is my left knee, which is unusual. I know how to navigate around my right one. But I sat in a chair at 2:30 am and couldn't get out of it until 9:30. Then I am assaulted on the net by a former student who wants to be helpful but who isn't. I know far more about this than he does. And a former friend starts making really bizarre attacks .. It is lucky I don't own a gun. The pain is so intense! I'd do something I would regret .. But one thing I don't regret is embracing God. Prayer support would be good.
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Twilight over Manhattan.

Taken while on tour with Yahoo! on their OTR campaign. I left my heart in New York City... — atHunters Point, Long Island City, New York.
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Ernst Röhm
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Events[edit]

Births[edit]

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Holidays and observances[edit]

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“The LORD will vindicate me; your love, LORD, endures forever— do not abandon the works of your hands.” Psalm 138:8 NIV
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

"Them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him."
1 Thessalonians 4:14
Let us not imagine that the soul sleeps in insensibility. "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise," is the whisper of Christ to every dying saint. They "sleep in Jesus," but their souls are before the throne of God, praising him day and night in his temple, singing hallelujahs to him who washed them from their sins in his blood. The body sleeps in its lonely bed of earth, beneath the coverlet of grass. But what is this sleep? The idea connected with sleep is "rest," and that is the thought which the Spirit of God would convey to us. Sleep makes each night a Sabbath for the day. Sleep shuts fast the door of the soul, and bids all intruders tarry for a while, that the life within may enter its summer garden of ease. The toil-worn believer quietly sleeps, as does the weary child when it slumbers on its mother's breast. Oh! happy they who die in the Lord; they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them. Their quiet repose shall never be broken until God shall rouse them to give them their full reward. Guarded by angel watchers, curtained by eternal mysteries, they sleep on, the inheritors of glory, till the fulness of time shall bring the fulness of redemption. What an awaking shall be theirs! They were laid in their last resting place, weary and worn, but such they shall not rise. They went to their rest with the furrowed brow, and the wasted features, but they wake up in beauty and glory. The shrivelled seed, so destitute of form and comeliness, rises from the dust a beauteous flower. The winter of the grave gives way to the spring of redemption and the summer of glory. Blessed is death, since it, through the divine power, disrobes us of this work-day garment, to clothe us with the wedding garment of incorruption. Blessed are those who "sleep in Jesus."

Evening

"Howbeit, in the business of the ambassadors of the princes of Babylon, who sent unto him to enquire of the wonder that was done in the land, God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart."
2 Chronicles 32:31
Hezekiah was growing so inwardly great, and priding himself so much upon the favour of God, that self-righteousness crept in, and through his carnal security, the grace of God was for a time, in its more active operations, withdrawn. Here is quite enough to account with the Babylonians; for if the grace of God should leave the best Christian, there is enough of sin in his heart to make him the worst of transgressors. If left to yourselves, you who are warmest for Christ would cool down like Laodicea into sickening lukewarmness: you who are sound in the faith would be white with the leprosy of false doctrine; you who now walk before the Lord in excellency and integrity would reel to and fro, and stagger with a drunkenness of evil passion. Like the moon, we borrow our light; bright as we are when grace shines on us, we are darkness itself when the Sun of Righteousness withdraws himself. Therefore let us cry to God never to leave us. "Lord, take not thy Holy Spirit from us! Withdraw not from us thine indwelling grace! Hast thou not said, I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day'? Lord, keep us everywhere. Keep us when in the valley, that we murmur not against thy humbling hand; keep us when on the mountain, that we wax not giddy through being lifted up; keep us in youth, when our passions are strong; keep us in old age, when becoming conceited of our wisdom, we may therefore prove greater fools than the young and giddy; keep us when we come to die, lest, at the very last, we should deny thee! Keep us living, keep us dying, keep us labouring, keep us suffering, keep us fighting, keep us resting, keep us everywhere, for everywhere we need thee, O our God!"
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Ahilud

 [Ahī'lud] - a brother of one born.
  1. The father of Jehoshaphat, the recorder under David and Solomon (2 Sam. 8:16; 20:24; 1 Kings 4:3; 1 Chron. 18:15).
  2. Father of Baana, one of Solomon's twelve purveyors (1 Kings 4:12).
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LeeStrobel-Newsletter-Header-Final
The Future of Faith

LeeheadshotDrew Dyck explores reasons why young people are leaving Christianity in alarming numbers. The results are sobering - but they need to be faced

Drew Dyck, the managing editor of Leadership Journal, has written an important book that investigates the exodus of young people from the faith. It's a topic we ignore at our own peril. In this provocative interview, Drew discusses some of his disturbing findings from Generation Ex-Christian: Why Young Adults are Leaving the Faith...and How to Bring Them Back.

What prompted you to write about young people who have left the faith? As I moved through my twenties, I started to see some of my friends leave the faith. These were people who had been active in my youth group, sang on the worship team, and were passionate about Jesus. That got my attention.

So I read up on the topic and learned that what I was witnessing in my circle of friends was not unique. Several recent studies seem to indicate that there's a strong tendency for this generation to fall away. I also wanted to get behind the statistics to the real-life young people who had walked away. So I tracked down dozens of them, mostly 20-somethings, who identified as "ex-Christians" and listened to their stories.


Visit Us on the Web: LeeStrobel.com - The Ambition - BibleGateway.com
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Questions from readers:

  • How do Islam and Christianity differ?
  • Is the biblical Battle of Jericho a myth?
  • Is it wrong for Christians to drink alcohol?

Q. I understand that the Holy Qur'an and the Old Testament are very similar and that Allah is the same God a Christian follows. What separates Christian belief and Muslim belief? I will eventually seek it out myself, but I'm just now reading and learning the Holy Bible, so it would be sometime before I got to the point where I would know for myself. That is assuming you may know the answer. Thank you, Josh

A. Thanks for writing, Josh. I thought it would be helpful if I asked my friend N.A. Qureshi, M.D., to provide a response. Dr. Qureshi is a Muslim-turned-Christian and director of a new apologetics ministry called Creed 2:6, which is devoted to telling Muslims about the real Jesus. The ministry's website is www.Creed26.com. Here's his reply:

Dear Josh, This is a great question, one that more and more people are asking as we get increasingly acquainted with our Muslim neighbors in the US. And while it's good to find mutual beliefs we can use to relate to our Muslim friends, we should be careful not to go too far and assume common ground that isn't there.

The major doctrines of traditional Islam are encompassed in the "Articles of Faith." Five of these articles, found in 2:177 of the Qur'an, are more or less analogous to Christian doctrine: belief in one God, in angels, in the prophets of old (such as Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, etc.), in the divine inspiration of scriptures, and in a time of resurrection and judgment. In the same verse, Muslims are also urged to be consistent in prayer, steadfast through suffering, and charitable to family members and the poor. These teachings have strong parallels in the Christian life, and they offer a solid platform for building bridges to your Muslim neighbors.
Read the rest of this answer!

Have a question? Drop me a line atAskLee@Leestrobel.com. We'll answer the ones with the broadest interest in upcoming newsletters. Thanks to Sam Wall, former chief researcher for the Bible Answer Man radio show, who heads the "Ask Lee" response team.
Lee's Notes

• We're pleased to announce that Georges Houssney, who was born in Lebanon and has forty years of experience in reaching Muslims for Christ, will be participating in our national Unpacking Islam simulcast on Sunday evening, Sept. 11. Georges is president of Horizons International and is well-known for supervising the Bible's translation into modern Arabic and Kurdish. His book Engaging Islamis excellent. You can still sign up your church or small group to participate in the simulcast, which will clarify what Muslims really believe and how Christians can bring them the message of Christ. Stop by Incastevents for more information.

• Wow! Check out what Ane Mulligan of the influential website Novel Journey says about my daughter Alison's forthcoming novel Composing Amelia : "Alison Strobel keeps getting better and better. Composing Amelia is a novel I consider to be a lasting work of fiction. Within its pages, Strobel plumbs the depths of emotion in a subject fraught with prejudice and misinformation within the church. With characters your heart will embrace, it is a story of pride and depression without being depressive. From the first page until the last, I was caught up in Marcus and Amelia's world, unwilling to stop reading. A beautiful love story, you'll see God's grace through unconditional love. Alison Strobel is quickly proving she has what it takes to be a bestselling author, book after book. Novel Journey and I give it our highest recommendation. It is a 5-star must read. Bravo, Alison!" Way to go, sweetheart!

How a disabled child led family to Christ


God brought Greg and Kim Lucas to the end of their own strength so they could find their strength in him.

Lee's Links: Suggested articles from the web
Optimism versus pessimism
Fascinating survey of evangelical leaders finds pessimism about future is more widespread in U.S. and developed countries.
Religion news on the Internet
As newsrooms struggle to find new ways to cover religion in the face of downsizing, many turn to the Internet to fill gaps.
The state of Southern Baptists
Respected missiologist Ed Stetzer discusses why the country's largest denomination must move from decline to decision.
The faith of Stephen Colbert
Could this Comedy Central satirist, who often teaches beyond the laughs, really be the best thing going for U.S. Catholicism?
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Today's reading: Job 14-16, Acts 9:22-43 (NIV)

View today's reading on Bible Gateway

Today's Old Testament reading: Job 14-16

1 "Mortals, born of woman,
are of few days and full of trouble.
2 They spring up like flowers and wither away;
like fleeting shadows, they do not endure.
3 Do you fix your eye on them?
Will you bring them before you for judgment?
4 Who can bring what is pure from the impure?
No one!
5 A person's days are determined;
you have decreed the number of his months
and have set limits he cannot exceed.
6 So look away from him and let him alone,
till he has put in his time like a hired laborer.

Today's New Testament reading: Acts 9:22-43

22 Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Messiah.
23 After many days had gone by, there was a conspiracy among the Jews to kill him, 24 but Saul learned of their plan. Day and night they kept close watch on the city gates in order to kill him. 25 But his followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall....
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