Charlie Brown's Christmas Time is Here

In the beginning was the word

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning.

3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood[a] it. -John 1:1-5

DNA has been found to have a bizarre ability to put itself together, even at a distance, when according to known science it shouldn't be able to. Explanation: None, at least not yet.

Scientists are reporting evidence that contrary to our current beliefs about what is possible, intact double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. Somehow they are able to identify one another, and the tiny bits of genetic material tend to congregate with similar DNA. The recognition of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science. There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible.

Even so, the research published in ACS’ Journal of Physical Chemistry B, shows very clearly that homology recognition between sequences of several hundred nucleotides occurs without physical contact or presence of proteins. Double helixes of DNA can recognize matching molecules from a distance and then gather together, all seemingly without help from any other molecules or chemical signals.

In the study, scientists observed the behavior of fluorescently tagged DNA strands placed in water that contained no proteins or other material that could interfere with the experiment. Strands with identical nucleotide sequences were about twice as likely to gather together as DNA strands with different sequences. No one knows how individual DNA strands could possibly be communicating in this way, yet somehow they do. The “telepathic” effect is a source of wonder and amazement for scientists.

“Amazingly, the forces responsible for the sequence recognition can reach across more than one nanometer of water separating the surfaces of the nearest neighbor DNA,” said the authors Geoff S. Baldwin, Sergey Leikin, John M. Seddon, and Alexei A. Kornyshev and colleagues.

This recognition effect may help increase the accuracy and efficiency of the homologous recombination of genes, which is a process responsible for DNA repair, evolution, and genetic diversity. The new findings may also shed light on ways to avoid recombination errors, which are factors in cancer, aging, and other health issues.

David Warren's perspective on the election and irrevocable acts

David Warren lives in Ottawa.

As I have quoted in the past, let me quote again, the profound words of the late Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, replying to the central lie in Marxism, which remains the central post-modern or post-Christian lie: "A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death -- the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged."

A great danger in democratic politics comes with just this denial. We are tempted to think that just by voting for a demagogue, a charlatan -- for any politician who tells us cynically only what we want to hear -- we can change the facts of nature.

We think that we can "make the rich pay," or otherwise transfer our personal responsibilities to the Nanny State. By some mysterious "social contract," we transfer to politicians the responsibility for what we have ourselves decided. And in due course, we may punish them, for what we got wrong.

I invite any reader with the stomach for it to consider the incredible demonization of the outgoing U.S. president, which was used in turn to secure the election of the incoming one. George W. Bush, from the balance of evidence a decent man with an honest view of his own limitations, served his country as well as he knew how. He has been made a scapegoat as if he were personally liable for everything that went wrong on his watch. A true scapegoat: for in the end he is blamed even for what was done to him.

John McCain is perhaps lucky to escape that fate. For the same forces in contemporary North American society would turn against him as turned against Mr. Bush -- the vicious machinery of recrimination by which "progressive forces" make their advance.

The president-elect may seem luckier, still, for he has an articulate gift for deflecting his own failures of judgment, and for finding plausible scapegoats external to himself.

Watch for this in the trials that will soon beset him.

Yet also, he professes to be Christian. So pray for him, that he will find the courage, perspicacity and prudence that come with the remembrance of our Lord.

The rebuilding effort by the Republican opposition will also need prayers.

Every attempt to disown "conservative principles" -- the principles not only of the free marketplace, but of moral absolutes and human responsibility -- will be a furthersetback. The abandonment of the specifically Christian heritage on which America was built can only contribute to her further destruction.

-more-

The Glory of God on Capecod | October 4th

The Lord has stirred us to call pastors, ministry leaders, and intercessors across New England, to come together in a Solemn Assembly on October 4th, from 2-6 pm, at Harvest Ministries International in East Weymouth, MA. This will be a time of corporate repentance, intercession, worship, renewal of covenant, and united action. We will stand in the gap together for New England, crying out collectively for what we currently lack: the presence and the glory of God among us, and the subsequent outbreak of revival.

We are writing to you because the Lord has stirred our hearts with a burden for New England, the place where God has sovereignly positioned all of us at this time. As you know, the Bible speaks of "the sons of Issachar, who understood their times, and knew what Israel ought to do" (1 Chr. 12:32). Also, the Lord Jesus taught us to discern the times, and He rebuked the Pharisees for not doing so: "You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times" (Matt 16:2).

We collectively share the conviction that we, the church, currently live in a condition similar to that of Israel during the time of its Babylonian captivity. The body of Christ today is in a fragmented, weakened state, lacking the authority that comes from the manifest presence of God among His people. This is because of our own weakness, compromise, and lack of unity.

Lincoln, FDR, JFK & Clinton could invoke God's blessings on our nation, but not Sarah Palin?

Charlie: "are we fighing a holy war?" Perhaps you ought to ask Osama Bin Laden that question.

Ezekial 38: 7-13

If any country takes the words of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad more seriously than the United States, it is Israel. And that's not surprising: Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be wiped off the map, and Israeli intelligence estimates that Iran could be two years away from having a nuclear weapon.

Correspondent Bob Simon got a rare look inside the organization that may well be called upon to do something about it: the IAF, Israeli Air Force.

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7 " 'Get ready; be prepared, you and all the hordes gathered about you, and take command of them. 8 After many days you will be called to arms. In future years you will invade a land that has recovered from war, whose people were gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate. They had been brought out from the nations, and now all of them live in safety. 9 You and all your troops and the many nations with you will go up, advancing like a storm; you will be like a cloud covering the land.

10 " 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: On that day thoughts will come into your mind and you will devise an evil scheme. 11 You will say, "I will invade a land of unwalled villages; I will attack a peaceful and unsuspecting people—all of them living without walls and without gates and bars. 12 I will plunder and loot and turn my hand against the resettled ruins and the people gathered from the nations, rich in livestock and goods, living at the center of the land." 13 Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish and all her villages [d] will say to you, "Have you come to plunder? Have you gathered your hordes to loot, to carry off silver and gold, to take away livestock and goods and to seize much plunder?" '

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn December 11, 1918 - August 3, 2008

"When all of the rest of the civilized world, as well as the Marxist world, was tossing God into the dustbin of history, Solzhenitsyn realized that only God really matters. He chided the West for embracing materialism and forgetting God, a lesson that is just as true today as thirty years ago." - Bruce Walker

In the camps of the Gulag, the brilliant Russian atheist found God.

He also kept meticulous notes. He chronicled the inhabitants, the processes, and the regions of Hades. When Solzhenitsyn was released from the Gulag, under the thaw after Stalin, he wrote a short story for Novy Mir, the Literary Gazette, entitled "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich."

We tame moderns cannot imagine the courage that it took simply to submit that short story. The author, after all, was a Zek, a political prisoner, who had been released. It would have been less than nothing for the KGB to simply re-arrest him and send him to spend the rest of his life in the very monstrous system from which he had been released. No one else, as far as we know, did what Solzhenitsyn did - although others would follow in his footsteps.

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Biblical Proof of Jeremiah Unearthed at Ancient City of David

(IsraelNN.com) Archaeologists have unearthed proof of another Biblical story at Jerusalem's ancient City of David, this time corroborating the Book of Jeremiah.

A completely intact seal impression, or "bula", bearing the name Gedaliahu ben Pashur was uncovered. The bula is actually a stamped engraving made of mortar.

Gedaliahu ben Pashur's bula was found a bare few meters away from the site where a second such seal, this one belonging to Yuchal ben Shlemiyahu, an elder in the court of King Tzidkiyahu, was found three years ago, at the entrance to the City of David.

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Jon Voight visits Israel

Israel's Predicament at 60: World's worst neighbourhood

by Daniel Pipes National Post

May 6, 2008

Two religiously-identified new states emerged from the shards of the British empire in the aftermath of World War II. Israel, of course, was one; the other was Pakistan.

They make an interesting, if infrequently-compared pair. Pakistan's experience with widespread poverty, near-constant internal turmoil, and external tensions, culminating in its current status as near-rogue state, suggests the perils that Israel avoided, with its stable, liberal political culture, dynamic economy, cutting-edge high-tech sector, lively culture, and impressive social cohesion.

But for all its achievements, the Jewish state lives under a curse that Pakistan and most other polities never face: the threat of elimination. Its remarkable progress over the decades has not liberated it from a multi-pronged peril that includes nearly every means imaginable: weapons of mass destruction, conventional military attack, terrorism, internal subversion, economic blockade, demographic assault, and ideological undermining. No other contemporary state faces such an array of threats; indeed, probably none in history ever has.

The enemies of Israel divide into two main camps: the Left and the Muslims, with the far Right a minor third element. The Left includes a rabid edge (International ANSWER, Noam Chomsky) and a more polite centre (United Nations General Assembly, Canada's Liberal Party, the mainstream media, mainline churches, school textbooks). In the final analysis, however, the Left serves less as a force in its own right than as an auxiliary for the primary anti-Zionist actor, which is the Muslim population. This latter, in turn, can be divided into three distinct groupings.

First come the foreign states: Five armed forces that invaded Israel on its independence in May 1948, and then neighboring armies, air forces, and navies fought in the wars of 1956, 1967, 1970, and 1973. While the conventional threat has somewhat receded, Egypt's U.S.-financed arms build-up presents one danger and the threats from weapons of mass destruction (especially from Iran but also from Syria and potentially from many other states) present an even greater one.

Second come the external Palestinians, those living outside Israel. Sidelined by governments from 1948 until 1967, Yasir Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization got their opportunity with the defeat of three states' armed forces in the Six-Day War. Subsequent developments, such as the 1982 Lebanon war and the 1993 Oslo accords, confirmed the centrality of external Palestinians. Today, they drive the conflict, through violence (terrorism, missiles from Gaza) and even more importantly by driving world opinion against Israel via a public relations effort that resonates widely among Muslims and the Left.

Third come the Muslim citizens of Israel, the sleepers in the equation. In 1949, they numbered merely 111,000, or 9 percent of Israel's population but by 2005, they had multiplied ten-fold, to 1,141,000, and to 16 percent of the population. They benefited from Israel's open ways to evolve from a docile and ineffective community into a assertive one that increasingly rejects the Jewish nature of the Israeli state, with potentially profound consequences for that the future identity of that state.

If this long list of perils makes Israel different from all other Western countries, forcing it to protect itself on a daily basis from the ranks of its many foes, its predicament renders Israel oddly similar to other Middle Eastern countries, which likewise face a threat of elimination.

Kuwait, conquered by Iraq, actually disappeared from the face of the earth between August 1990 and February 1991; were it not for an American-led coalition, it would quite certainly never been resurrected. Lebanon has been effectively under Syrian control since 1976 and, should developments warrant formal annexation, Damascus could at will officially incorporate it. Bahrain is occasionally claimed by Tehran to be a part of Iran, most recently in July 2007, when an associate of Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i, Iran's supreme leader, claimed that "Bahrain is part of Iran's soil," and insisted that "The principal demand of the Bahraini people today is to return this province … to its mother, Islamic Iran." Jordan's existence as an independent state has always been precarious, in part because it is still seen as a colonial artifice of Winston Churchill, in part because several states (Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia) and the Palestinians see it as fair prey.

That Israel finds itself in this company has several implications. It puts Israel's existential dilemma into perspective: If no country risks elimination outside of the Middle East, this is a nearly routine problem within the region, suggesting that Israel's unsettled status will not be resolved any time soon. This pattern also highlights the Middle East's uniquely cruel, unstable, and fatal political life; the region ranks, clearly, as the world's worst neighborhood. Israel is the child with glasses trying to succeed at school while living in a gang-infested part of town.

The Middle East's deep and wide political sickness points to the error of seeing the Arab-Israeli conflict as the motor force behind its problems. More sensible is to see Israel's plight as the result of the region's toxic politics. Blaming the Middle East's autocracy, radicalism, and violence on Israel is like blaming the diligent school child for the gangs. Conversely, resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict means only solving that conflict, not fixing the region.

If all the members of this imperiled quintet worry about extinction, Israel's troubles are the most complex. Israel having survived countless threats to its existence over the past six decades, and it having done so with its honor intact, offers a reason for its population to celebrate. But the rejoicing cannot last long, for it's right back to the barricades to defend against the next threat.

Old Testament Easter

By Tom Flannery

The Easter story of Christ's passion and bodily resurrection from the grave will be celebrated in churches around the world this weekend. And while it's true that the secular aspects of Easter (the rabbit, egg hunts, etc.) are rooted in paganism, the religious aspects (the cross, blood redemption, etc.) have their foundation in the Bible – not the New Testament, where they were fulfilled, but in the Old Testament, where they were first prophesied and foreshadowed.

It was in the Old Testament God revealed, hundreds of years before it happened, that the promised Messiah would be "cut off" (put to death) but "not for Himself" (Daniel 9:26). He would die a substitutional death for the full payment of the sins of the world. The prophet Isaiah was given a vision of His death some 800 years in advance and described it in detail in the 53rd chapter of his book. In this chapter, God foretold through Isaiah that Messiah would be a Suffering Servant who would take our sins upon Himself and through His personal sacrifice make it possible for us to have peace with God.

Verses 5-6 tell us: "But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way; and the Lord [God the Father] has laid on Him [God the Son] the iniquity of us all."

Furthermore, the animal sacrifices instituted by God in the Old Testament foreshadowed Christ's substitutional death. As we are told in Leviticus 17:11, "It is the blood that makes atonement for the soul." In Exodus, we read that God used the shedding of the blood of spotless lambs in the Passover to save His people and deliver them from bondage. In the Gospel accounts of the New Testament, we read that Jesus was the Lamb of God whose precious blood was shed at Passover for the salvation of all men who would ever trust in His sacrificial death for them. Through Christ alone, we are saved and delivered from the bonds of death to live forevermore.

Isaiah revealed that Jesus was the Spotless Lamb who would not speak to defend Himself at His trial though He faced a horrific death. The prophet wrote: "He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth" (Isaiah 53:7).

In verse 9 of that same chapter, Isaiah prophesied that Jesus would die with the wicked (He was crucified between two criminals) yet be buried with the rich in His death (He was buried in the tomb of a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea).

Some Jewish critics have labeled Isaiah 53 as "The Forbidden Chapter" and either banned its reading or simply ignored it. Others have said the Suffering Servant predicted in this chapter is the Jewish people – but that cannot be so. After all, God declares through Isaiah that the Suffering Servant would die "for the transgression of My people" (verse 8), and the only people God addresses as "My people" in Scripture (certainly in the Old Testament) is the Jews. Thus, the Jewish people are not only referred to separately and apart from the Suffering Servant, but they are identified as beneficiaries of the sacrifice He makes.

God also gave a vision of Messiah's substitutional death to King David, who wrote Psalm 22 from the point of view of Jesus on the Cross about 1,000 years before the fact: "I am poured out like water, and all My bones are out of joint. ... They pierced My hands and My feet ... they divide My garments among them, and for My clothing they cast lots ..." and so on.

All of the prophecies of Psalm 22, like those of Isaiah 53 and many others throughout the Old Testament, were fulfilled in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ as recorded in the New Testament by men whose lives were radically transformed by these events and who died as martyrs rather than retracting their testimonies.

The Old Testament also contains numerous stories that uncannily foreshadowed significant events in the life of Jesus, including His substitutional death and bodily resurrection. For instance, the Genesis account of when God commanded Abraham to take his beloved "only son" Isaac, the "son of promise," up on a mountain and sacrifice him (Genesis 22). When Abraham had Isaac on the altar of wood and was about to obey, God stopped him and revealed a ram whose horns were caught in a thicket (a crown of thorns). Abraham loosed Isaac and used the ram with the crown of thorns as a substitutional sacrifice as directed by God, just as Jesus wore a crown of thorns and was a sinless substitutional sacrifice on a mountain for each one of us on the wooden altar of the tree, or cross. The Old Testament states that "cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree," and Jesus literally became our curse upon that tree, the curse of our sin, and paid for it in full there.

Before climbing the mountain, Abraham told His servants that he and the boy would be returning together. That's because God had already assured him that the Messianic line would continue through his seed (Isaac, the first natural-born Jew whose descendants would include Moses, King David and ultimately Jesus, the divine "Son of Promise").

Now, Abraham had every intention of obeying God and sacrificing Isaac, as he demonstrated at the altar. So by telling his servants that the boy would be coming back with him, he was essentially saying he believed that God was going to raise his son from the dead. This, of course, foreshadowed the promise of a future bodily resurrection, the one hundreds of millions of Christians worldwide will celebrate this Sunday.

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Tom Flannery writes a weekly political column called "The Good Fight" and a continuing religious column called "Why Believe the Bible?" for a hometown newspaper in Pennsylvania. His opinion pieces have appeared in publications such as Newsday, the Los Angeles Times, and Christian Networks Journal. He is a past recipient of the Eric Breindel Award for Outstanding Opinion Journalism from News Corp/The New York Post, in addition to winning six Amy Awards from the Amy Foundation.

UPDATE: Mid-Cape Gathering re-scheduled | Feb. 23, 2008

The heavens declare the Glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. -Psalm 19:1-4

The Mid-Cape gathering is on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at the Cape Cod Community College,Tildon Arts center, from 3 pm -6 pm. It's open to all the body of Christ on Cape Cod.

If you haven't registered yest, please do so (free) on our website: http://www.thegloryofgodoncapecod.com/ , by clicking on "Special Events", then "Register for this event".

The gathering will be primarily worship and prayer, interspersed with brief sharing/impartation of key principles for the Glory of God in our midst:

• Intimacy with God, which is the foundation of it all :It is the realization/revelation of God's love for us that compels us to respond to Him, that "we love Him because He loved us first"



• Holiness in the context of (a.) above :Our obedience is motivated by, and is an expression of, our love for God



• Our role as "watchmen" in Prayer and Intercession: " I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem (equivalent to Cape Cod forus), They shall never hold their peace day or night. You who make mention of the Lord, do not keep silent, and give Him no rest, till He establishes Jerusalem a praise in the earth (equivalent to till He manifests His Glory in our midst on the Cape)". Isaiah 62:67

See how your enemies are astir,

Psalm 83
A song. A psalm of Asaph.
1 O God, do not keep silent;
be not quiet, O God, be not still.

2 See how your enemies are astir,
how your foes rear their heads.

3 With cunning they conspire against your people;
they plot against those you cherish.

4 "Come," they say, "let us destroy them as a nation,
that the name of Israel be remembered no more."

5 With one mind they plot together;
they form an alliance against you-

6 the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites,
of Moab and the Hagrites,

7 Gebal, [a] Ammon and Amalek,
Philistia, with the people of Tyre.

8 Even Assyria has joined them
to lend strength to the descendants of Lot.
Selah

9 Do to them as you did to Midian,
as you did to Sisera and Jabin at the river Kishon,

10 who perished at Endor
and became like refuse on the ground.

11 Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb,
all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna,

12 who said, "Let us take possession
of the pasturelands of God."

13 Make them like tumbleweed, O my God,
like chaff before the wind.

14 As fire consumes the forest
or a flame sets the mountains ablaze,

15 so pursue them with your tempest
and terrify them with your storm.

16 Cover their faces with shame
so that men will seek your name, O LORD.

17 May they ever be ashamed and dismayed;
may they perish in disgrace.

18 Let them know that you, whose name is the LORD—
that you alone are the Most High over all the earth.

Cape Cod - Mid Cape Assembly Feb. 2, 2008

Date:
Feb 2, 2008
Time:
From 3:00 pm until 6:00 pm
Location:
Cape Cod Community College

"Many people shall come and say,'Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths." Isaiah 2:3

"Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water" Hebrews 10:22

You are warmly invited to join the body of Christ on the Cape for this regional gathering of prayer and worship. The meeting is hosted in the Mid-Cape area, but is open to all the body of Christ on the Cape.

The gathering will be primarily worship and prayer, interspersed with brief sharing/impartation of key principles for the Glory of God in our midst:

a. Intimacy with God, which is the foundation of it all :It is the realization/revelation of God's love for us that compels us to respond to Him, that "we love Him because He loved us first"

b. Holiness in the context of (a.) above :Our obedience is motivated by, and is an expression of, our love for God

c. Our role as "watchmen" in Prayer and Intercession: " I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem (equivalent to Cape Cod for us), They shall never hold their peace day or night. You who make mention of the Lord, do not keep silent, and give Him no rest, till He establishes Jerusalem a praise in the earth (equivalent to till He manifests His Glory in our midst on the Cape)". Isaiah 62:67

link

Abiding

[I was not thinking about the Enlightenment or the Illuminati, or any such thing, when out of the blue, as it were, I heard Him say],

You are only as enlightened as your last illumination.

[Obviously He intended me to ponder that, so I did – and eventually responded]:

To receive illumination, one must abide in you. Then it comes as a matter of course, like physical healing.

When I walked the earth, each thing my disciples and I encountered became an opportunity for illumination, for those who had eyes to see it. Not all did.

Was the Bible filtered, to keep it simple – and profound?

You are asking if the Gnostics were right.

I did not realize I was, but as you say it, I see it. Part of me – the ego-driven part – wishes there were a hidden volume of secret wisdom, kept from us because, in the immortal words of Col. Nathan Jessep, “you can’t handle the truth!”

There’s a part of each of us that believes we can handle it, and that it has been purposely hidden from us.

Why would I do that? The other one entices the entice-able with suggestions that I or my Church have withheld truth, because it would make men like gods. Have you not heard that enticement before?

We have, Father. That was the temptation put to Eve. You had asked of her and Adam the same thing you ask of each of us: to trust and obey. Nothing has changed.

Why did I create mankind?

To become your companions for time and eternity – freely, of our own volition.

What would make a boon companion?

Someone who loves you enough to trust you, no matter what. Who will give you instant, exact obedience, regardless of what it might cost. Who has demonstrated under fire that you can trust them. And who never doubts your perfect love, even when it appears you have forsaken them.

Well answered, my son. Did it take great discernment or wisdom to arrive at that definition?

No. Anyone earnestly seeking you is going to wind up there, whether they are on clean-up detail in the kitchen, or a centurion in charge of a thousand troops. The lessons on the Way of the Cross are not hard to grasp. The difficulty comes in applying their simple truth to our complex lives.

Is there any hidden knowledge that would make it easier?

No. Everything we need for the journey is either known already or easily knowable. Your love – is where we begin. Your grace – encourages to believe we can do it, when the other one is doing his utmost to convince us we can’t. Your precious Blood – has already bought our souls for eternity.

And – we have each other. You put us on the path with other pilgrims who will be able to help us, when we need their help. Often, they will have surmounted obstacles now confronting us. Armed with the word of their testimony and the Blood of the Lamb, we can overcome – anything.

We know that in our heads. We are still learning it in our hearts. Each time you ask a new, seemingly impossible thing of us, we are learning that you would not ask, if we could not answer.

Book of Secrets? We have it already, though its contents are hardly secret. Your Word chronicles all that you have done with us – and are doing and will do. Easy to read, mark, learn, and inwardly absorb, it is a living entity that meets each reader at whatever level he or she chooses to enter. A young child laughs at its easy-to-picture stories. An aged scholar is overwhelmed, as with metaphysical tweezers he carefully lifts off each gauze-like layer of meaning.

At the end of his life, the great theologian, Karl Barth, was asked if he could sum up all he had learned in a lifetime of probing the mysteries of the Christian faith. He thought for a long moment, then smiled. “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

-David Manuel, Dec. 31,2007