THE EMMAUS WALK:

Brazil Missionary Cora Taylor (turned 92), Daughters, and Birthday Cake

EXCERPT FROM MY MISSIONARY AUNT'S MISSIONARY PRAYER LETTER FROM CORA TAYLOR: A missionary for over 50-60 years in Brazil for the New Tribes Mission, my beloved Aunt Cora Taylor writes to me and my mother: "Let me share a great blessing of encouragement I received recently when I opened a letter from one of our missionary families working among the [name of tribe] Indian tribe in the Amazon basin. She was thanking for an offering thy had received. 'My name is Lourdes. My husband [name is given] and I have been missionaries with New Tribes since 93. We have two children. The [name of tribe], with whom we work live in an isolated area, 13 to 14 days travel by boat or two hours away by plane. They are a happy people but bound by fear of evil spirits to whom they sacrifice even their own children. But Jesus came to destroy the works of the Devil; and through the teaching of His Word they shall come to know our God and the wonderful life Christ gives His own. I have joy in teling you that God used you and your husband [now deceased, killed in a fatal car crash on the way to a mission conference] to bring us to where we are today. Many years ago you went to the small interior town of Itambe when my husband was just a teen. It was the worst time of his life. He was rejected by his parents and ordered out of the house. In the midst of this situation you came and held meetings telling of God's love for the tribal peoples. My husband said he went to church with the purpose of upsetting the service, but you blessed him and the next day came to visit him. He was so amazed that you would reserve time to seek him out; as a result he came to God. He has never seen you since then, but never will he forget the message of the love of God the Father that came to him through you! Today he is a wonderful husband, father, and dedicated servant of the Lord.'"

My aunt also writes: "I must translate one letter written by an Indian in New Guinea--pleading for a missionary. I can't help but bawl every time I read it. He has written our mission for years and pleads for some one to come and teach his tribe the truth. 'We are lost," he says and you can help us.'" My aunt is now 92, still going strong for the Lord. Please pray for her health, that she will continue to be the great blessing she is as a woman of prayer and hospitality to the many tired missionaries and others who come to stay and be refreshed in body and spirit at the guesthouse where she is the keeper. It is named after her! Remember also to pray for the tribesman in New Guinea (a big, mostly jungle island in the area of Indonesia, located above Australia). He has been writing and pleading for someone to come for years now, to bring the Gospel to him and his people! How can we not at least pray for this poor man and his urgent request. We can hear the Gospel preached almost every day if we want! But he has never heard it preached! Can we just stand by while he and his people slip into a Christless eternity?--Ed.

IT'S IN THE BIBLE: Most people may not know that many of the phrases they use in everyday conversation come from the Bible. Here are just a few of them: "In the twinkling of an eye" (I Cor. 15:52). "Den of Thieves" (Matt. 21:13) "Keep the faith" (2Tim 4:7) "A stone's throw" (Luke 22:41) "Old wives' tales" (1Tim. 4:7) "Drop in the bucket" ((Isa. 40:15) "Apple of his eye" (Deut. 32:10) "No rest for the wicked" (Isa. 46:22). --Rev. Jerome Porkorny in Catholic Quote

"Solid Rock, not Sand," Message Notes by Ronald Ginther, on how to keep it simple and honest with God. We are clay, He is the Potter--not the other way round, as it is preached and promoted in popular Christianity today. Want to "get back on track with God?" Here's how, in a few words:

"Choose Rock, Not Sand," Message Notes by Ronald Ginther

Sand and rock--it reminds me of yet another element, clay. A life-long friend was an artist, and she was an art teacher in high school long before I knew her in her retirement years. She had once gathered clay from a dry river bank in Eastern Washington, recognizing it as the stuff from which pots and ceramics could be made in her classroom by her art students, who could put their projects in the kiln and bake them into real objects of art or usefulness. She must not have used all the clay for her class, for a ceramic pot half-filled with it and also a plastic sack of it were found in the attic of her house after her death at the age of 87. It was given to me, as I had been her gardener and friend for many years. I was glad to get it, and poured water on this rock hard, fifty-year old clay, and it miraculously came back to life as soft, yielding clay--perfect stuff for any potter to fashion into beautiful and useful objects. I felt this was a most meaningful legacy for her to leave me, whether she knew it or not. "I am the clay, and He is the Potter," I thought.

Now I had real clay in my hand, and I offered it at church to a pastor and his wife who came to a sparsely attended prayer meeting one night. The pastor made a face as I handed it to him on a clean napkin, but his wife was more appreciative, and when she prayed, she prayed in the spirit of humility, in the spirit of humble clay that God the Potter can use for His glory. I was glad to use this clay, and hope there will be more opportunities in the future where I can share it with fellow members, fellow "vessels" of the Body of Christ. It may be unpleasant, ugly stuff, but look what a Master Potter chooses to work with, and look what wonderful things He can make of it if He is allowed to do what He wants to do with it!--Ed.

DUNCES' CORNER:

FBI STATES THERE IS NO THREAT POSED BY SUSPECTED MEMBERS OF TERRORIST GROUPS DRIVING BLUE BIRDS FULL OF SCHOOL CHILDREN: Now heading the list in our Dunciad, FBI has just released information that "suspected" members of terrorist groups (read, without the politically correct language, "Muslim jehadists operating in secret cells for conspiracy to overthrow the United States government") are driving U.S. Blue Birds carrying school children to and fro. It is nothing to worry about, dunce spokesman, Mr. Kolko of the FBI (a name that reminds me of cuckoo!), says to the American people!

His statement ought to cause us to laugh ourselves sick, if it weren't so serious a matter. Are they stupid, ignorant, deceiving and deceived? Or are they all three at once? I would opt for all three! They are stumbling over themselves, trying to be politically correct, not alarm the American people at all costs to the security of the people, and save their hides and jobs while jeopardizing their mission: which is to stop Muslim jehadists and cell groups in the U.S., round them up, get all the information that can be gotten about their ties to other groups, and deport them and bring them to justice if crimes can be proven. It takes no rocket scientist to figure out that this is a grave threat to U.S. school children, the government, and society. Those innocuous Blue Birds can be loaded with explosives, then filled with children going to school to use them as hostages, and then driven to targets and detonated as suicide bombing missions. How like the Al Qaida to try to pull off this kind of operation! It bears their rubber stamp all over it. But the FBI tells us all there is nothing to worry about. I am not going to worry. Any country with so defunct and dysfunctional an agency as this needs to go to God Almighty for protection. This is the news--as stated in the AP--which you can hardly believe 95 per cent of the time--but this is very credible, indeed. It goes right along with the history of the FBI in recent times, when dealing with Muslim terrorists. They may be average to good at snooping around, but follow-up is abyssmal, as this report proves. If they are as naive as this report tells us they are, they could not protect a children's playground at a day school, much less an entire nation. They need to be fired, and real people who want to do their jobs hired. American people, fellow Christians, why do we put up with such egregrious incompetence, if not lying, deceiving, and double dealing, that puts us all in deadly peril from our enemies within the borders? Why do we pay for such a worthless service? It is a terrible waste of tax money, to say the least. The FBI has been so dumbed down by politically correctness, which is secular humanism trying to bring socialism to the U.S., that their hands are tied behind them--exactly what the situation they should be working instead to bring to all our domestic enemies, who are Muslims, not Quakers and Presbyterians, Masons or Rotarians or Lutherans or Pentecostals! They are MUSLIM--there is no other religion whose malignant muftis and clerics are SYSTEMATICALLY, GLOBALLY, promoting this kind of activity. What is there about "Muslim" they cannot understand? It is an acronym for "Madmen use slyness, lying, invasive malevolence." That is what Mohammed taught (read the Hadiths) and his followers followed-up. That is how they got the advantage of Christians and Jews whose kingdoms they could not overwhelm with the first military attacks. Now if that acronym doesn't describe Osama bin Ladin and all his long-robed, long-beared clones to a "t,", tell me one better.--Ed.

THE LATE GREAT STATE OF MINNESOTA'S FIRST MUSLIM CONGRESSMAN HAS EXPOSED HIS OWN DUPLICITY AND SHOWN HIS TRUE COLORS: Minnesota was my favorite state after my homestates of Washington and South Dakota--but no more! I am ashamed of a state that would elect such an anti-American, anti-Chrisian charlatan as this man! This deceiver declared to the nation he was not going to swear in on a Bible, but chose his Koran, which is his holy book, even though it is not America's, the country which he is supposed to be serving! What an Anti-American! What an anti-Christ dunce! Would he dare do this in any other country? This shows how much he despises this Christian-founded country and its Christian foundation and roots! Congress, which is secular humanist and anti-Christian at the core, went right around him and accepted and commended him! The White House and our President accepted and endorsed him as well--which shows their true lack of respect for our Christian-founded heritage and foundation, not "tolerance" and "multiculturalism," which are mere buzzwords for socialism and secular humanism's agenda for America. Well, it has come out that the Koran that he took from Thomas Jefferson's library (which Thomas Jefferson would have denied him!) was not there because Thomas Jefferson admired the Muslim religion of Islam. On the contrary! He got a Koran to read because he wanted to know the thinking of this religion that would attack Christian countries and even new-born nations such as America, which had no prior dealing with Muslims of any kind. At the time of his presidency, the Muslims of North Africa were pirates, attacking the merchant vessels of Britain, France, and America, enslaving the crews, and taking the cargoes, or holding them all up for ransom if they thought they could get more that way. Britain and France had been paying millions yearly in tribute to protect their ships and crews, but America finally said enough to this racket, and went to war! The new-born navy and commandoes of the U.S. (a kind of colonial SEAL operation) outflanked and then defeated the Barbary Pirates, the Muslim rulers of Morocco and Libya, and forced them to the conference table. "Why do you hate us so, when we never had dealings with you as a nation before?" the amazed Thomas Jefferson asked one of their leaders. He was told that the Koran, their holy book, commanded them to do what they were doing to "infidel" Christians and Jews! Well, there is your answer to tolerance and multiculturalism's deceptions. Our first war after the War of Revolution with Britain was with Muslim powers who were jehadists in their day. Has anything changed? Apparently not! We are still being attacked by the same countries, as they support international terrorism against our nation and our remaining allies.

Thomas Jefferson, who was a true American, would have taken this rascally Congressman from Minnesota by the seat of his pants and thrown him bodily out of the Capitol! Is there a man left with red American blood in his veins who would do it today? Obviously not! You would be arrested, rather than commended! You could have Congressmen beat other Congressmen with canes in a session, but if anyone defends the honor of the United States, he is arrested! That is the low state, the nadir, to which we have descended as a secular humanist-corrupted nation.

HERE IS A QUIZ THAT WILL TEST YOU ON YOUR KNOWLEDE OF THE TWELVE DISCIPLES AND APOSTLES:

Here is a "new" quiz, reborn from the year 1931, its last printing, according to the booklet I have in hand. I do hope it will bless you, as we review our knowledge or lack of it regarding the Apostles, men who served to found the Christian church and the Body of Christ world-wide. We owe them this much review, as we owe so much to their sacrifices, which, minus one, were their cruel deaths by martyrdom. Which one disciple did not die a violent death for his faith in Jesus Christ? That is one of the questions. But it should be remembered, that he still was tortured by expert Roman torturers, and when he could not be put to death, he was exiled to a desert island, so we know he suffered greatly for the Gospel. Tradition about this particular disciple who was the most long-lived, is reliable, because it was witnessed to by Polycarp, who knew the disciple personally and was mentored by him; in other words, tradition about him can be trusted precisely because it is so early and verified by near contemporaries that we can accept it without reservation.

Disciple Quiz

Grade yourself! Then keep your score for submission when you apply for the graduate's Certificate!

Disciple Quiz Answers

ST. PATRICK'S DAY IS NOT ABOUT ST. PATRICK: The day when everyone puts on Irish green, and there are parades and dances, and people turning into leprechauns and worse in bars all over the country and Ireland, is not about St. Patrick. What is not being said on this day is the true story. Dr. James Kennedy gives the true story on a recent message, on who the real St. Patrick was, from birth to death--and all that he accomplished (it was tremendous, and Dr. Kennedy says St. Patrick is considered by many Bible authorities to be the greatest evangelist and Christian figure since St. Paul, which is saying something!).

Please go to the Coral Ridge Ministries link to get the message by Dr. Kennedy. But here I can say this much. I researched St. Patrick to do a newspaper feature article, and it was printed in a local paper. I was as much surprised to find out who he really was as my readers, no doubt. He would have denounced the current celebration using his name--not because he was a curmudgeon or a party-spoiler, but because he loved Jesus Christ and the Gospel and the people of Ireland so much!

His true story starts in the 5th century, in Britain, as the Roman Empire is crumbling away to nothing in Europe. Here on the outskirts of the empire in Britain, things are going much the same for the time being, though Ireland nearby is a problem, having remained pagan and outside the civilizing empire. From Ireland raiding parties go out and pillage the British coast, with impunity, since the Roman warships no longer sweep the Irish sea free of pirates periodically. Now the British coast has to fend for itself, and it cannot be done. It is just a matter of time before the pirates strike at Patrick's own hometown.

In his own telling, he began as a little hypocrite in his father's church, where his father was a deacon. He looked and acted like a Christian. He heard his father tell the truths of the Gospel, but it really didn't mean anything to him. Then the Irish raiders struck, and Patrick was carried off a captive to Ireland. There he was sold a slave to man owning flocks of sheep. In Britain, Patrick had lived until his early teens a comfortable life as a upper class Briton--a deacon's son--but here the life of privilege and security was completely stripped away along with his fine clothes. He was literally starving and naked, exposed to the cold, damp, and wild animals of a savage, uncivilized, pagan Ireland.

But...young Patrick, in his slavery and desperation and pain, remembered his father's words, and turned to Almighty God in prayer. He prayed constantly, hundreds of prayers in a day. God answered him. To shorten this account, God had a ship go to the coast 200 miles from Patrick that would be Patrick's means of deliverance. God then told Patrick to flee to it and get on board. Patrick obeyed. He found the ship, but was refused by the captain. As he walked away, God said to turn back, the captain would accept him. Patrick turned around, and the captain was calling him! Patrick took sail on the ship carrying Irish bloodhounds for sale in Gaul, and this same ship, after some adventures in Gaul, returned him home to Britain to his family. He was back! But God wasn't through with him. Patrick could not forget the Irish, despite their cruelty to him. God gave him a vision, Irish people appearing to him and calling to him to return with the Word of God, which was the light in their darkness. Patrick obeyed, and the rest is thrilling. Patrick preached fearlessly to the savage, pagan Irish, from king to shepherd, and over 100,000 Irish were saved, an entire nation became Christian for the first time in history. No one has equalled that achievement before or since. Billy Graham has influenced the whole world, and millions have been saved in his life-long ministry, but he has not preached and a whole nation, America, has been saved. The Irish people and nation were brought into God's holy kingdom, and they were delivered from paganism and witchcraft, drunkenness, abuse, slavery, dirty living, immorality, and obscene customs and coarse talking, and continual warfare as a lifestyle (the chieftains, before Patrick, were forever fighting and attacking each other's domains). Peace and civilization and happiness settled upon Ireland for the first time--thanks to the Good News of Jesus Christ--and a young man willing to forgive his former captors and bring them the liberating truth.

This is the true story, that you do not hear on the so-called St. Patrick's Day.

"Truths That Transform Broadcasts," the True Story of St. Patrick by Dr. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge Ministries

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