There was a time when Job, an otherwise righteous man, complained about God’s treatment of him. Job had experienced terrible suffering and he blamed God.  His complaints went on for a period of time, when God eventually responded that Job was speaking “words without knowledge.” (Job 38:2) However sympathetic God

Hi Friend, This Saturday our country will celebrate the day our country was founded.  Our fathers, Lincoln stated at Gettysburg, brought forth a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. The act of declaring this to the world, said Lincoln, made

Hi Friend, When the founders of America hammered out the framework for democracy in our country they relied on the ethics of Christian teachings as a foundation to build upon. There was no equivocation or apology, just a desire to establish a system of laws that was fair to all

Hi Friend, The Bible begins with a fundamental truth about how the world began.  We weren’t there so we would not know how it all started without this revelation from God to mankind.  In the very first verse He tells us, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the

Hi Friend, Even skeptics have to admit that Jesus was a great teacher. He never wrote a book nor is there any record he even wrote an epistle and yet the words he spoke to his students have passed down to reach us 2,000 years later. How many college professors

Hi Friend, The French poet Baudelaire wrote an unusual short story about meeting the devil.  He wrote that the devil “did not complain in any way about the bad reputation he enjoyed all over the world.  He assured me that he himself was the person most interested in the destruction

Hi Friend, The nature of human beings has changed little since creation nearly 6,000 years ago. However, one internal and unseen change revolutionized the world. It transformed the nature of man. We don’t know exactly when the decision was made, but the Prophet Joel wrote about it almost 800 years

Hi Friend, The year 1776 was noteworthy for the birth of several historical documents. Among those is the Declaration of Independence, considered one of the three most significant political documents in history.  If that wasn’t enough, one of the five greatest historical works ever written was penned by Edward Gibbon,

Hi Friend, Have you read the 1st Amendment lately? Amendment I “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the

Hi Friend, Are there people vital to the survival of the human race?  It’s an interesting question. In 1906 an Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, was fascinated by a statistic that 20 percent of the people in Italy owned 80 percent of the land. Further surveys showed the same principle existed

Hi Friend, Do Christians have a duty to support justice? Or is it sufficient to accept the status quo, ignore evil and hope it will go away? The movie National Treasure revolves around a plot to steal one of our nation’s most sacred documents, the Declaration of Independence. In a

Hi Friend, A somewhat strange news story was reported from Hawaii.  State and local officials are stationed at certain airports in Hawaii to turn away homeless people who are arriving in the state with the intent to set up a tent as a permanent resident.  Apparently airlines have reduced fares

Hi Friend, Some years ago, American Heritage magazine published a fascinating article about the death of Abraham Lincoln. We were correctly taught that John Wilkes Booth fired the bullet that shot President Lincoln in Ford’s Theater, but we didn’t know that it wasn’t the gunshot that killed Lincoln. He died

Hi Friend, The Biblical season of Holy Days has begun.  We are at the beginning of the cycle that starts in spring with Passover and continues through fall ending with the Feast of Tabernacles. I’m repeating something obvious to students of the Bible because it reveals something of the nature

Hi Friend, Why would a person do a job for free when he refuses to do the same job for pay? Is there a greater reward to work for nothing than to work for money?  A friend told me a story about making repairs on his daughter’s new house. He

Hi Friend, In the past few months the world has become more familiar with the word “quarantine” than anyone ever wanted.  It comes from the Italian “quaranta giorni” meaning “a space of forty days.” Every major pandemic has needed a carrier to break out of the local point of origin

Hi Friend, There is a theory of logic for determining the age of ancient relics.  It says that if you walk into a room with ten working clocks and eight of those clocks read the same hour, minute and second but two of them are different the safest assumption is

Hi Friend, “And there was war in heaven….”  (Rev. 12:7)  Hard to believe isn’t it? We think war is limited to the human realm, but it isn’t.  Spirit beings have actually fought wars.  What’s shocking about this is the thought that powerful beings who once had their abode at the

Hi Friend, “I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals. Then I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, “Come!”  I looked, and there before me was a white horse! Its rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as

Hi Friend, Does God forget His promises?  The safe bet is “No.”  And in the serious moments of reflection as a man contemplates the wonders of creation, he recognizes the certainty of God’s word. Yet politics can make strange bedfellows, so it’s curious how many people can support a man

Hi Friend, By now you’ve heard of the deadly Coronavirus sweeping the world.  You have also heard that it originated in China, in the Wuhan region.  AI projections are that 2.5 billion people will be infected and possibly 53 million will die from the plague.  The latest theory that shocks

Hi Friend, Do words have meaning?  For example, if every runner wins the race, what is a winner?  If no team can lose the game, what is a winner? What is a Super Bowl or World Series?  What is achieved when a culture redefines a term and, more importantly, what

Hi Friend, I always wondered how ancient people could ever view their king or Pharaoh as a god.  How could any man, however primitive, ever have viewed another human being as being descended from God? Yet, that is precisely what I believe about Jesus Christ! God knew the dilemma man

Hi Friend, As Christians we readily envision our savior as the suffering servant.  Jesus willingly submitted to the pain. When the disciples brandished their swords ready for battle with the Roman soldiers, it was Jesus who told them to put their weapons away.  He could call down twelve legions of

Hi Friend, Donna and I chose a French restaurant for dinner one evening. The owner/chef after 23 years in the U.S. still speaks with a thick accent. She knows French cuisine so well that she exceeded our expectations. When she came to our table, we engaged her in a conversation

Hi Friend, Growing up in a typical Protestant church, my early perception of Jesus was formed by the pictures surrounding the worship area.  I don’t know exactly when it was that I looked at the picture behind the preacher on Sunday morning and said to myself “That picture is a

Hi Friend, Does a nation benefit by recognizing the existence of the God of the Bible?  How would it change our view of man if we did not believe in God? That is the question staring us in the face as we move to a post-Christian and post-biblical world. The

Hi Friend, War changes one’s perception of life.  For those of us who grew up during the years following the Korean War and then watched close friends and family members accept military assignments during the Vietnam War, it was sobering. Getting an appointment to West Point was not easy.  It

Hi Friend, In a recent newsletter, “A Time to Tear Down” I reflected on the teachings of economist Adam Smith and some of his disciples.  The essence is that a free economy has a natural cycle that includes the “death” of some things in order to achieve necessary growth.  It’s

Hi Friend, There was a strange irony in the founding of this country.  The Pilgrims who made the treacherous voyage faced extreme hardships just to survive.  In fact several did not. Yet the nation they started became the strongest and wealthiest in history. A greater irony may be that people