I just finished "A Safe Haven Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel". I had read Chaim Wiseman’s biography “Trial and Error” as well as Heller’s look at the politics of Ben Gurion at the start of the Israeli nation. This work by Allis and Ronald Radosh filled in some gaps and tied together the different narratives for me. I was rewarded in seeing a man, Harry Truman, do what he believed was right, and despite being manipulated by his own state department, in the end plays the trump card and makes America the first nation to recognize Israel, although I think the Russians can debate the qualifications of President Truman’s announcement.

 

I was impressed with the influence of the Jews in America to lobby, demonstrate, orchestrate their impact on the US and the UN. Not much domestic Jewish activity for the state of Israel today. The times have changed. It was the horror of the holocaust and the search for a home of the displaced persons from the war, many of them Jews wanting to return to Palestine. The book covers the end of the war to the birth of Israel in May of 1948. Truman’s involvement in the issue started with his desire to see 100,000 of these displaced persons given the paperwork by the British to enter Palestine.

 

As I read, enjoying the details and the political intrigue, I kept wondering when the 100,000 would actually be allowed to go to Palestine. At the same time I had a recurring sermon thought about the displaced persons and a backslider.

 

President Truman was horrified by the treatment that the “DP’s” were receiving. The Jews had been driven from their homes, gathered into concentration camps and faced the gas chambers. Those that had survived all of that now found themselves to be DP’s or Displaced Persons. Some tried to return to their homes only to be murdered. Many were transferred from the German concentration camp to an Allied holding camp where the years of deprivation took their toll and they died. In these new camps, the Harrison Report, described life behind wire, with guards, sometimes the same German guards from the concentration camp, where their one desire, their last hope was to go to Palestine. But, they were trapped.

 

I saw the picture of the backslider, trapped in their sin, trapped by their choices and knowing in their heart that there was really only one answer. A person can lose control of their life by the choices they make. Now, just like these displaced persons they were trapped. Truman’s answer was to start with getting the first 100,000 to Palestine. There were issues. The Arabs, the coming Cold War and the obstinacy of the Labor government that replaced Churchill’s conservative at the end of the war all worked against their release.

 

The Jews in Palestine were making a life for themselves. They were buying the worthless land and turning it into productive farm land. Their presence had created an economic boom that was attracting Arabs from all over the Middle East. The displaced person looked through the wire, pass the guards and across the sea and knew there was a better life waiting for them in Palestine. But, they were trapped.

 

From the end of the war in May of 1945 until May of 1948 President Truman tried at a minimum to get the first 100,000 displaced persons placed in Palestine or anywhere else for that matter, but failed. While they waited for deliverance many other Jews chose to take their chances with the Jewish underground railway to get to Palestine. While those trapped in the camps waited and waited over 300,000 displaced Jews made it into Palestine illegally. Those that were captured by the British were taken to the camps in Cyprus or, even worse, taken to the camps back in Germany.

 

What finally happened to get those displaced persons out of the camps and into Palestine? The Jews had created a nation. A partitioned Palestine was always a second choice for the Jews. The Arabs demanded one Palestine with a Jewish minority. The editor of “The Nation” had done a thorough job in educating America to the Nazi sympathies of the Mufti (Muslim leader) of Jerusalem. The delegations that visited Palestine for the US or the UN came away with a realization that the Jews as a minority in Arab lands might survive but the Arabs made it clear, no more Jews. The Displaced Persons would still be displaced.

 

Eventually, the US came to support a partitioned Palestine. The State Dept. opposed this solution for probably the same reasons that the State Dept. opposes Israel today. The UN vote was close but the partition plan was OK’d in Nov of 1947. The British had already declared their intention of abandoning Palestine to its fate by May 15 of 1948. Israel, even though not a nation, began to take responsibility into its own hands. Every immigrant found productive work to prepare the land for nationhood. The state department took one last shot at undermining the new Israeli state, making President Truman to look like a liar, but their attempt failed to gain the political traction to turn Palestine into a UN protectorate. The UN resolution of Nov 1947 still stood creating two separate states, one Jewish and one Arab, with the dissolution of the British Mandate on May 15. President Truman trumps the state dept. by recognizing Israel in a speech given at 6:15 his time, 12:15 Israeli time May 15.

 

It was only then, at independence, that Israel began to pay to bring back the displaced persons, 15,000 each month.

 

To know Christ, the real thing, not just church, to know Christ to be saved and then to walk away, be lured away or to fall away has got to be the darkest of the dark experiences of life. Forever displaced, a man without a country, no amount of life’s sedatives can completely dispel the knowledge of Christ in your heart.

 

Just like those displaced persons trapped in the camps you can kindle that ember of knowledge of God and His salvation and return to where you belong. This was something God did in Jews hearts at that time. It might be something God is doing in those that have tried to abandon their faith; putting a new desire in your heart. The book describes prophetic times, and we are living in prophetic times now. Could God be drawing back those who have fallen? It won’t be easy; there will be no free rides. The secret of the displaced person’s success was their willingness to work for the building of the state of Israel. To come back to church; is to come back to labor to build the church. Find your place again and be productive.

 

The lesson for the church is that you can’t set the captives free until you become the church preaching the message of salvation and freedom in Christ. Do you want them back? Do you care about them? Are you willing to work and pay the price to redeem them? It all makes sense to me. There is a stirring of backsliders and I am praying that this nation can experience another “Awakening”.

Try Again!

Joan and I went to a small festival in Fultz underneath the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River. We hiked up to a unique semi-desert landscape that covers just the points of the bluffs. We then traveled along Bluff Road into Maeystown where we saw two of the old stone bridges. I posted pictures below along with a graduation picture of Erriel Walters, last in line. We are all happy for her. She will go onto college to study Western (Old West) History.

Here is an interesting article about disappearing men on campus. Some of the comments are worth a gander.

 

The prophetic verse is:

Jer 51:30

30 The mighty men of Babylon have ceased fighting,

They have remained in their strongholds;

Their might has failed,

They became like women;

 

The war to convince us that homosexuality is natural and the war to make men act like women will always fail at the common sense level. College seems be no place for common sense.

I used a statistic in a recent sermon that we have reached the point in our nation where 40% of our births are with unwed mothers. It seemed high, and I just repeated something I am sure I had read but really couldn’t remember where I saw it. Here is an article that repeats that 40% figure.

 

That is why this book is on sale in college bookstores: Shacking Up; How to Live in Sin without getting Burned. There is God’s way and there is the world’s way. Which way is America going?

Joan and I visited SWIC (Southwestern Illinois College) in Belleville so she could get oriented and sell and buy textbooks. At the bookstore I asked if the man who asked me if I needed any help was the singer. He said yes. I had just read an article about Damon Mitchell (Facebook) in the college paper. He was the manager of the on-campus Barnes and Noble. He performs gospel music and must do a pretty good job with his last performance at the St Louis Repertory Theatre.

 

We got to talking. I had a Zambia cap on so we could talk about third world missions. He had been to the Dominican Republic several times. We talked about fulfilling dreams. I think for Joan completing college is one of those personal dreams for her. He paused me after one comment I made to remember “Everyone benefits when someone’s dream happens”.

 

He began to talk about calling and the fear of responding. As of yet, he doesn’t know for sure what God wants him to do, but the day will come and I am sure God will take care of him and his family. I came away edified.

Terri from http://usmarinemama.spaces.live.com/ has a great story about red shirts in this article .I enjoyed it immensely.

I had a nice intersection of my sermon and life before I preached it. Steve was helping me locate and buy a used lawn mower. This associated effort took place after a revival message about gouging eyes and cutting off hands to overcome sin. Steve has been in and out of church so he is very susceptible to the mental attacks of spiritual forces. We will never be good enough to satisfy the requirements of righteousness as laid out by the enemy of our souls. So he is in a state of condemnation and lets me know that he won’t be coming to church.

 

I am preparing to preach from 1 Cor 1:4-9 as I enter this adventure with Steve. The title was “Those Within and Those Without”. The first point was about the security of our salvation because of our calling from God. The highlighted phrases are: “enriched in everything”, “utterance and all knowledge”, and “testimony of Christ was confirmed in you” with emphasis upon the Greek structure of the word “confirmed”. These are those within.

 

The second point highlighted the difference between those who are within and those who are without. 1 Cor 1:18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. To one the gospel message is foolishness, to the other it is the Word of Life. One is blinded by the god of this age, the other has been enlightened by the glory of the gospel. 1 Cor 1:18; One is not capable of receiving the things of the Spirit of God and the other’s entire being is sensitive to the presence of the Spirit of God. 1 Cor 2:14; The key words of Christianity: relationship, discernment, sensitivity to the Spirit, born again, new man, alive to the Word.

 

So, with all of these thoughts percolating in my mind, we go off to buy the lawn mower from Steve’s friend. The price Steve has quoted me is $50. So I meet the lawn mower man. He is a Navy veteran, I find out when I ask him about the hat he is wearing. To prove his point he adds some colorful language. Steve lets him know I am his pastor. Another excuse for more colorful language with a final conclusion that religion is OK, just useless. This takes place after he shows me the lawn mower for $55 After starting the lawn mower he lets me know the price is $65 and that is final. I countered with $40 and he almost had a hissy fit. That’s when he sat down with arms folded and we began to talk. I found out that preachers are only good for taking your money. I counted my cash and told him all I had was $61. That ticked him off. Steve offered him his $3 and it almost satisfied him. I looked at him as he said he probably had 30 more years to live. Red eyed (he had to quit drinking because his diabetes got so bad) and looking a little unhealthy as he chain smoked away I doubted the prognosis and he could see that I did. Divorced and now seeming to even enjoy the company we talk about things. I ask him, is there anything he wants to ask me. Silence. Maybe 20 seconds of silence. I ask again. Silence, followed by him asking if he will ever see the dollar I owe him. He volunteers to wash the lawnmower and helps me put it in the car. We say our goodbyes and he rides off on a riding mower to the lot across the street as me and Steve drive away.

 

During our conversation he made the common statement: “I am just as good as all of those hypocrites going to church”. I watched it register on Steve with that cloud of condemnation dripping all over him. Now in the car I asked Steve if the lawn mower man was any different from him. The enemy of his soul would say “no, in fact he is better than me because et least he isn’t a hypocrite”. I think you follow what is happening. My sermon began to come alive. The lawn mower man is an unbeliever. The gospel is foolishness to him. Steve, is it foolishness to you? The light began to go on. We talked out the differences between a believer and a non-believer. What are you Steve? A believer? A struggling believer? But, still a believer and not a non-believer.

 

Steve came to church that night and the evangelist, Pastor Johnny Valtierrez, powerfully ministered to the church and Steve in particular.

 

The last point of the sermon: How can I transmit this message to an unbeliever? Knowing that it is foolishness to him? It is because I am partnering with God Almighty and He alone can open a blind eye or touch a hard heart or even open a deaf ear.

"Live Free or Die" is the latest article from Mark Steyn.

 

There are stages to the enervation of free peoples. America, which held out against the trend, is now at Stage One: The benign paternalist state promises to make all those worries about mortgages, debt, and health care disappear. Every night of the week, you can switch on the TV and see one of these ersatz "town meetings" in which freeborn citizens of the republic (I use the term loosely) petition the Sovereign to make all the bad stuff go away.

 

Once you have government health care, it can be used to justify almost any restraint on freedom: After all, if the state has to cure you, it surely has an interest in preventing you needing treatment in the first place. That's the argument behind, for example, mandatory motorcycle helmets, or the creepy teams of government nutritionists currently going door to door in Britain and conducting a "health audit" of the contents of your refrigerator. They're not yet confiscating your Twinkies; they just want to take a census of how many you have. So you do all this for the "free" health care—and in the end you may not get the "free" health care anyway. Under Britain's National Health Service, for example, smokers in Manchester have been denied treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk are refused hip and knee replacements. Patricia Hewitt, the British Health Secretary, says that it's appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of "lifestyle choices." Smokers and the obese may look at their gay neighbor having unprotected sex with multiple partners, and wonder why his "lifestyle choices" get a pass while theirs don't. But that's the point: Tyranny is always whimsical.

And if they can't get you on grounds of your personal health, they'll do it on grounds of planetary health. Not so long ago in Britain it was proposed that each citizen should have a government-approved travel allowance. If you take one flight a year, you'll pay just the standard amount of tax on the journey. But, if you travel more frequently, if you take a second or third flight, you'll be subject to additional levies—in the interest of saving the planet for Al Gore's polar bear documentaries and that carbon-offset palace he lives in in Tennessee.

 

That's Stage Two of societal enervation—when the state as guarantor of all your basic needs becomes increasingly comfortable with regulating your behavior. Free peoples who were once willing to give their lives for liberty can be persuaded very quickly to relinquish their liberties for a quiet life.

 

And don't be too sure you'll get to choose your record collection in the end. That's Stage Three: When the populace has agreed to become wards of the state, it's a mere difference of degree to start regulating their thoughts.

 

The big problem for those of us arguing for classical liberalism is that in modern Canada there's hardly anything left that isn't on the state dripfeed to one degree or another: Too many of the institutions healthy societies traditionally look to as outposts of independent thought—churches, private schools, literature, the arts, the media—either have an ambiguous relationship with government or are downright dependent on it. Up north, "intellectual freedom" means the relevant film-funding agency—Cinedole Canada or whatever it's called—gives you a check to enable you to continue making so-called "bold, brave, transgressive" films that discombobulate state power not a whit.

 

And then comes Stage Four, in which dissenting ideas and even words are labeled as "hatred." In effect, the language itself becomes a means of control. Despite the smiley-face banalities, the tyranny becomes more naked: In Britain, a land with rampant property crime, undercover constables nevertheless find time to dine at curry restaurants on Friday nights to monitor adjoining tables lest someone in private conversation should make a racist remark. An author interviewed on BBC Radio expressed, very mildly and politely, some concerns about gay adoption and was investigated by Scotland Yard's Community Safety Unit for Homophobic, Racist and Domestic Incidents. A Daily Telegraph columnist is arrested and detained in a jail cell over a joke in a speech. A Dutch legislator is invited to speak at the Palace of Westminster by a member of the House of Lords, but is banned by the government, arrested on arrival at Heathrow and deported.

 

 

Which brings us to the final stage: As I said at the beginning, Big Government isn't about the money. It's more profound than that. A couple of years back Paul Krugman wrote a column in The New York Times asserting that, while parochial American conservatives drone on about "family values," the Europeans live it, enacting policies that are more "family friendly." On the Continent, claims the professor, "government regulations actually allow people to make a desirable tradeoff-to modestly lower income in return for more time with friends and family."

As befits a distinguished economist, Professor Krugman failed to notice that for a continent of "family friendly" policies, Europe is remarkably short of families. While America's fertility rate is more or less at replacement level—2.1—seventeen European nations are at what demographers call "lowest-low" fertility—1.3 or less—a rate from which no society in human history has ever recovered. Germans, Spaniards, Italians and Greeks have upside-down family trees: four grandparents have two children and one grandchild. How can an economist analyze "family friendly" policies without noticing that the upshot of these policies is that nobody has any families?

 

The bailout and the stimulus and the budget and the trillion-dollar deficits are not merely massive transfers from the most dynamic and productive sector to the least dynamic and productive. When governments annex a huge chunk of the economy, they also annex a huge chunk of individual liberty. You fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the state into something closer to that of junkie and pusher—and you make it very difficult ever to change back. Americans face a choice: They can rediscover the animating principles of the American idea—of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the opportunities to exploit your talents to the fullest—or they can join most of the rest of the Western world in terminal decline.

 

The future of one world economic system, one world government and one world religion is marching on.

We are in the middle of a revival with Johnny Valtierres from Prescott. He has a great preaching style, quiet yet forceful, giving individuals and the church words from the throne of grace. Last night a young man with his son showed up after service. I ran into Ray and his son when I first came to town. Joan and I were shooting a basketball in the park when this young (I thought girl) boy wanted to shoot the ball. I had to pick him up and he would be able to just get it over the rim for a basket. His excitement at the accomplishment of this feat was all consuming. One night late I was walking the streets late looking to run into someone to invite to our "Meth" play. Here comes Ray speeding by me on a bike. I shout and he spins around comes back and graciously takes an invitation flyer. The night of the play I am standing in front of the Cinemaplex where the play will take place when this girl pulls up to go inside and pick up her paycheck. Sitting in the passenger seat was Ray, he said upon seeing me; "I am suppose to be here tonight". So seeing him step into the church, even if it was after the service, was a step in the right direction.

 

I was substituting at Coulterville the other day. The class had to recite a poem they had written. One girl read a poem that described the perfect family. The poem took an emotional turn for the worse with abandonment and divorce as the girl began to cry unable to finish. The class quietly encouraged her. She later finished the reading. Poetry that touches the heart is real. As David said: "Is there not a cause?"