Choose Ye This Day
Since Jan 28, 2003
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Choose Ye This Day
Since Jan 28, 2003
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And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose ye this day whom ye will serve...but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. (Joshua 24:15)
You did not do anything to achieve your salvation, but you must do something to exhibit it. You must "work out your own salvation" which God has worked in you already (Philippians 2:12). Are your speech, your thinking, and your emotions evidence that you are working it "out"? If you are still the same miserable, grouchy person, set on having your own way, then it is a lie to say that God has saved and sanctified you. --Oswald Chambers
Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions, or Faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary. --C.S. Lewis
Some years ago A. W. Tozer expressed his "feeling that a notable heresy has come into being throughout evangelical Christian circles--the widely-accepted concept that we humans can choose to accept Christ only because we need him as Savior and that we have the right to postpone our obedience to him as Lord as long as we want to!" (I Call It Heresy, Harrisburg, PA.: Christian Publications, 1974, p. 5f) He then goes on to state "that salvation apart from obedience is unknown in the sacred scriptures."
This 'heresy' has created the impression that it is quite reasonable to be a "vampire Christian." One in effect says to Jesus: "I'd like a little of your blood, please. But I don't care to be your student or have your character. In fact, won't you just excuse me while I get on with my life, and I'll see you in heaven." But can we really imagine that this is an approach that Jesus finds acceptable?
And when you stop to think of it, how could one actually trust him for forgiveness of sins while not trusting him for much more than that. You can't trust him without believing that he was right about everything, and that he alone has the key to every aspect of our lives here on earth. But if you believe that, you will naturally want to stay just as close to him as you can, in every aspect of your life. --Dallas Willard
"I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptations. It is not serious, provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience, etc., don't get the upper hand. NO AMOUNT of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one's temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of his presence"--C.S. Lewis, Letters of C.S. Lewis, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966, p. 199.
When I look back on my life nowadays, which I sometimes do, what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed at the time most significant and seductive, seems now futile and absurd. For instance, success in all of its various guises; being known and being praised, ostensible pleasures, like acquiring money or seducing women, or traveling, going to and fro in the world and up and down in it like Satan, exploring and experiencing whatever Vanity Fair has to offer. In retrospect all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called "licking the earth." They are diversions designed to distract our attention from the true purpose of our existence in this world, which is, quite simply, to look for God, and, in looking, to find Him, and, having found Him, to love Him, thereby establishing a harmonious relationship with His purposes for His creation. --Malcom Muggeridge, "A Twentieth Century Christian Testimony"
Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason once accepted, despite your changing moods." -- C.S. Lewis
“And it is my duty to say to you that the need was never greater of new revelation than now. … In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is man made sensible that he is an infinite Soul? … It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake. … Men have come to speak of … revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead.” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Meaning no disrespect to the religious convictions of others, I still can't help wondering how we can explain away what to me is the greatest miracle of all and which is recorded in history. No one denies there was such a man, that he lived and that he was put to death by crucifixion. Where...is the miracle I spoke of? Well consider this and let your imagination translate the story into our own time -- possibly to your own hometown. A young man whose father is a carpenter grows up working in his father's shop. One day he puts down his tools and walks out of his father's shop. He starts preaching on street corners and in the nearby countryside, walking from place to place, preaching all the while, even though he is not an ordained minister. He never gets farther than an area perhaps 100 miles wide at the most. He does this for three years. Then he is arrested, tried and convicted. There is no court of appeal, so he is executed at age 33 along with two common thieves. Those in charge of his execution roll dice to see who gets his clothing -- the only possessions he has. His family cannot afford a burial place for him so he is interred in a borrowed tomb. End of story? No, this uneducated, propertyless young man who...left no written word has, for 2,000 years, had a greater effect on the world than all the rulers, kings, emperors; all the conquerors, generals and admirals; all the scholars, scientists and philosophers who have ever lived -- all of them put together. How do we explain that? ...[U]nless he really was what he said he was." --Ronald Reagan
"I believe in one God, the creator of the universe. That he governs by his providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion." --Benjamin Franklin
"There are but two parties now, Traitors and Patriots, and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter . . . We have a government, laws and a flag, and they must all be sustained." – Ulysses S. Grant
Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.--Edmund Burke
Our enemies have made a bet -- that the West in general and America in particular are soft and decadent and have no attention span; that the ''sleeping giant'' Admiral Yamamoto feared he'd wakened at Pearl Harbor can no longer be roused. If he could, he'd be a problem. But he's paunchy and effete and slumped in his Barcalounger, and he's defining decadence down: In Vietnam, it took 50,000 deaths to drive the giant away; maybe in Iraq, it will only take 500; and maybe in the next war the giant will give up after 50, or not bother at all. He has the advantage of the most powerful army on the face of the planet, but he doesn't have the stomach for war, so it's no advantage at all. He's like the fellow with the beautifully waxed Ferrari in the garage that he doesn't dare take on the potholed roads. --Mark Steyn
Our rule should be the same for the nation as for the individual. Do not get into a fight if you can possibly avoid it. If you get in, see it through. Don’t hit if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting, but never hit soft. Don’t hit at all if you can help it; don’t hit a man if you can possibly avoid it; but if you do hit him, put him to sleep. --Theodore Roosevelt
"War is cruelty. There's no use trying to refine it. The crueler it is the quicker it will be over." -- William Tecumseh Sherman
" Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant...The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth." --Omar Ahmad, CAIR
"We will fight to the death to protect the artists who create Piss Christ, but we'll also fight to the death to protect the feelings of the people who hate us and kill our children. We have surrendered our free expression to people who are at war with us. They kill us in the name of a religion and we bow and scrape to that religion while letting people dump on Christianity and Judaism." -- Ben Stein
Let’s assume that all the chips fell the jihadis’ way, that they recruited enough volunteers to be able to kidnap and decapitate every single Jew in Palestine. Then what? Muslims would still be, as Pakistan’s General Musharraf told a conference the other day, “the poorest, the most illiterate, the most backward, the most unhealthy, the most unenlightened, the most deprived, and the weakest of all the human race.” Who would “the victim of the world” blame next? The evidence of the Sudan, Nigeria, and other parts of Africa suggests that, when there are no Jews to hand, the Islamofascists happily make do with killing Christians. In Kashmir, it’s the Hindus’ fault. There’s always someone. -- Mark Steyn
"Yes, civilians will die. My cousins will die. Maybe. Allah forbid. But here is a certainty that you do not understand in your simplistic Nickelodeon diplomacy, is that you are guaranteed to have civilians die under Saddam. So now you try again to answer my question without playing the ping-pong: How does leaving Saddam in power promote peace and justice in Iraq?" -- Iraqi caller Mohammed confronts United For Peace and Justice spokesperson Andrea Buffa on US radio
I think vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. The scriptures assure me that at the last day we shall not be examined on what we thought but what we did; and our recommendation will be that we did good to our fellow creatures.--Benjamin Franklin
"The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis. --Dante Alighieri
"And if we elect a government that subverts or weakens or ends our war against terrorism, we can count on this: We will soon face enemies that will make 9/11 look like stubbing our toe, and they will attack us with the confidence and determination that come from knowing that we don't have the will to sustain a war all the way to the end." --Orson Scott Card
"I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile land and boundless prairies, and it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." --Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy in America, 1826
"Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." --George Washington, Farwell Address
"I am inclined to believe that when the language in common use in any country becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin or their degradation." --John Milton
"Man without God is a beast, and never more beastly than when he is most intelligent about his beastliness" --Whittaker Chambers
"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible." - George Washington
"We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." - James Madison
"The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected, in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity." - John Quincy Adams
"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ!" - Patrick Henry
"The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God." -- John F. Kennedy, 1961 inauguration
"Corrupt the young, get them away from religion. Get them interested in sex. Make them superficial, and destroy their ruggedness. Get control of all means of publicity, and thereby get the peoples' mind off their government by focusing their attention on athletics, sexy books and plays, and other trivialities. Divide the people into hostile groups by constantly harping on controversial matters of no importance." -- Vladimir Ilich Lenin
"The American Republic will endure until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money." - Alexis de Tocqueville
"Nothing is easier than spending public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody." -- Calvin Coolidge
"There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100 per cent Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else." -- Theodore Roosevelt, Republican Convention; Saratoga
"Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty." -- P.J. O'Rourke
"We cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him less. We merely deprive him of the right to earn the amount that his abilities and opportunities would permit him to earn, while we deprive the community of the moderate services he is capable of rendering." -- Henry Hazlitt
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. "The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage." - Lord Alexander Tytler, on the fall of the Athenian republic
"You ask, what is our policy? I will say: it is to wage war, by sea, land and air, and with all our might. . . . You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory. . . . Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival!" -- Winston Churchill
"I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." -- Mahatma Ghandi
"We make war that we may live in peace." –- Aristotle
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases." - Thomas Jefferson
Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. -- Milton Friedman
"Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." –- Milton Friedman
"No accountability? Missing billions? Fantasy bookkeeping? Pick any federal agency you like. WorldCom's $4 billion is less than a third of the $12.1 billion Medicare misplaces every single year. It's less than a thirtieth of the $142 billion the federal government has overspent its supposedly binding budgets by in the last five years. It's less than one-sixtieth of the new $248 billion farm subsidy bill, three-quarters of which goes to a bunch of multimillionaire play-farmers like Ted Turner and David Rockefeller." -- Mark Steyn, July 2002
"We had strayed a great distance from our Founding Fathers' vision of America. They regarded the central government's responsibility as that of providing national security, protecting our democratic freedoms, and limiting the government's intrusion in our lives -- in sum, the protection of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They never envisioned vast agencies in Washington telling our farmers what to plant, our teachers what to teach, our industries what to build. The Constitution they wrote established sovereign states, not mere administrative districts for the federal government. They believed in keeping government as close as possible to the people." -- Ronald Reagan
It is not the function of the government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error. -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, 1950.
"Man, no doubt, owes many other moral duties to his fellow men; such as to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, protect the defenseless, assist the weak, and enlighten the ignorant. But these are simply moral duties, of which each man must be his own judge, in each particular case, as to whether, and how, and how far, he can, or will perform them." -- Lysander Spooner
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. -- Mark Twain
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. – Abraham Lincoln
I fear for our nation. Nearly half of our people receive some kind of government subsidy. We have grown weak from too much affluence and too little adversity. I fear that soon we will not be able to defend our country from our sure and certain enemies. We have debased our currency to the point that even the most loyal citizen no longer trusts it. – A Roman Senator in A.D. 63
"The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 55 B.C.
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. – Thomas Jefferson
"My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for yourselves. You think you're entitled to something? You're entitled to freedom and opportunity. The rest is up to you.
"Don't come crying to me if you're not motivated enough, or won't make the necessary sacrifices and investment to be successful and engage in risky personal behavior. That's your problem, not the government's.
"We should make it as easy as possible for you to succeed. In addition to freedom and opportunity, you should be allowed to keep most of the money you make and determine how you want to save or spend it. You should be telling government how much of your money you intend government to have. Government should not be telling you how much of your money it will allow you to keep.
"Health care? Take care of yourself. Exercise. Eat right. Don't smoke. Look both ways before crossing the street. The truly poor we can help, but there should be less incentive for being poor and getting a government check than there is in becoming wealthy and earning your own check.
"All this bunk about helping 'working people.' Your grandparents looked after themselves and each other. Day care meant your mother was there when you arrived home from school. Stop divorcing. Stay married. Work it out. Don't abuse drugs and alcohol. Practice recreational basketball, not recreational sex. Obey the law.
"Don't watch garbage TV and garbage movies. Read to your kids. Talk to your spouse. Live within your means. Plan for your own future so others won't be burdened taking care of you. Get a life!" --Cal Thomas
In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. – Edward Gibbon
Everyone thinks about changing the world, but no one thinks about changing himself. – Leo Tolstoy
"The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it." -- George Washington
"Profanity is the common crutch of the conversational cripple." -- David Keuck
The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills. – Thomas Jefferson
The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. – Benjamin Franklin
The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly, and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly. – Thomas Sowell
The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but a swindling futurity on a large scale. – Thomas Jefferson
A successful economy depends on the proliferation of the rich, on creating a large class of risk-taking men who are willing to shun the easy channels of a comfortable life in order to create new enterprise, win huge profits, and invest them again. – George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty
"All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America rise ... from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation." - John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in 1787
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." -- P.J. O'Rourke
Depressions and mass unemployment are not caused by the free market but by government interference in the economy. – Ludwig von Mises
Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin. Bankruptcies and losses concentrate the mind on prudent behavior. – Allan H. Meltzer
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” — Martin Luther King, The Civil Rights March on Washington in 1963
"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, and to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law." – Ayn Rand
A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. – Thomas Jefferson (1801)
..."The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intellectual foreigners as the President of the United States." -- The Chicago Times...
A thread showing the level of class, compassion and maturity in the Democrat Party today: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x604894
The DUmmies support our troops? Not even close, as they show here, insulting and mocking a TRUE AMERICAN HERO:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1232373
I've been (almost) everywhere, man...
create your own visited states map or check out these Google Hacks.