Think Of The Homeless

There are over 30 million Americans who live on the streets of our nation. Can you consider giving something to a shelter near you? Your fellow human beings need socks because they walk everywhere. Food and shelter are great too, if they will take them. So please give.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Reviews by Hubie Goode: No Going Home, An Interview With The Homeless Part 2


No Going Home
Part 2


An Interview With The Homeless


John worked as a taxi driver in New York City for over a decade before becoming disenchanted with the “living inside of a pinball machine” existence of the big city and he hopped a greyhound bus headed west. After ending up in Southern California he landed a job as a 7-11 night clerk. What he didn’t expect was the clientèle that frequented these kinds of haunts in the middle of the night. All too often the customers would grab beer and snacks and just walk out. There were also a few hold-ups at gun point over things such as a submarine sandwich or a bag of donuts.

“I could have been killed over nothing,” John tells me shaking his head in confusion. “So I got the hell out of there.

In 1996 he moved to Santa Monica but has only been able to find part time work. “It’s hard to find anything here,” he admits. “If I had known it was like this, I would have stayed where I was.”

John was now one of the huge hordes of single men who are homeless on the streets of Santa Monica. Statistics show the majority of homeless are single men with no families and no employment. The total of Los Angeles homeless is around 90,000 and a big section of that is ensconced in Santa Monica. A huge number if you consider that a football stadium can seat about 66,000 spectators.

He was at the time commuting from a mattress store where he was earning $9 dollars an hour, part time, from the area in which he now lives, but the bus trips every day take almost two hours each way. The cost took huge bites from his salary which was about the same as he makes from welfare now. Santa Monica was cracking down on the deluge of homeless men and women who peppered the streets and choked the third street promenade, turning away many customers who would otherwise spend money in the over priced, affluent area. Northridge is like small town America in comparison and sometime in 2007, after sleeping on the streets for a year, he was laid off from the mattress store. Another invisible victim of the mass recession.

“I was at first sleeping on the corner in a sleeping bag, and then I started to feed the stray cats. I built them some homes and then decided I needed one too. So I built this tent.”

There were no stray cats to feed in Santa Monica, he couldn’t find any. The cats here in Northridge disappear during the day and no one knows where they go. After some time of taking care of the kitties, he ran into an entire society of people who do the same. Feral cat activists will donate food to John so he can take care of the “lost boys” of the cat world.

One person who is a feral cat defender and supporter of John’s work, has told me by phone that John is really a very kind hearted man. “He takes a real offense at the state of forgotten cats and people who don’t have much.” It was when John was ticketed by the railroad company for pitching his tent on the property that his defender became enraged. “They don’t care about anything but money. If John were to die today, they would simply call the coroner and have his stuff trashed. It would be all over before you knew it.”

In 1880 the railroad was such a problem that newspaper reporters and settlers to the area were convinced that it represented corporate greed and political corruption that was taking over the country. That’s 1880! The attitudes of the railroads all across the country towards locals was so prevalent that it even inspired movies like Once Upon a Time In The West.

A few months ago the railroad sent a Union Pacific police officer to John’s tent. These men are fully commissioned and work with local, state and federal agencies, so I am told by those who know. They were alerted to John’s presence by the railroad tracks by local businesses and citizens.

“While we are certainly concerned for the homeless,” I am informed by email. “We certainly have to look out for the health and welfare of all citizens and businesses in the area. The presence of someone trespassing on the railroad’s land poses a dire threat and danger to everyone.”

According to John, “The police officer was not listening to anything I had to say. He seemed to hate poor people. I explained to him why I am here several times and he turned a deaf ear to me.”

John was then told that if he did not leave within three days that he would be ticketed. He was then given a summons to appear in court in a three counts criminal case: Lodging without permission, trespass on rail property and general trespass. The courts biggest concern is for the health and well being of the surrounding citizenry, and this is a misdemeanor crime, so says the courts.

The local councilman also states that there have been consistent complaints to his office about the man living in a tent behind the store just a block or so away from the councilman’s office. The office would not say just who had made those calls, since all information must be kept confidential.

A staff member of the office visited John also, and during the visit referred him to some services that could assist him. The councilman’s office repeatedly states that its concern is for both John and the public. Not a short time later the matter was then considered to be a county problem and no longer a case that could be handled by the councilman’s office.

A long time real estate assessor tells me that if indeed it is a county problem, then the Railroad cannot legally serve trespassing documents to John based on the very spot he has chosen to live. “Because of the flood channel below him,” the assessor states. “John is not on Railroad property.”

When John went to court that day, several people who had taken up his cause also showed up to provide the court with the homework on property ownership vs. county land that the assessor had discovered. The prosecutor was taken aback and befuddled to see the evidence. Evidence that should have been basic investigative work for any prosecution office. The prosecutor asked for a continuance.

John has been defending himself since his court lawyer told him to just plead guilty to trespassing and get on with his life. John still faces trial in the near future and the prosecutor’s office has yet to respond to the legal land ownership evidence. There has been nothing but back and forth between all offices concerned and the case is stalled until someone can discover if John has broken any laws at all.

How this all began is a real mystery though, since newspapers have also gotten into the fray. They have found that those so called businesses that complained about John are all smoke, as no one will repeat the often chanted mantra of the system that local businesses complained. In fact, many told the papers that they have no problem with John at all. Most local employees and citizens didn’t even know he was behind the store.

John says that ever since the local mall sold space to several high profile retailers that his tent has been visited often by police, security guards and three people who flashed fake police ID’s and then messed with his belongings. He filed a crime report with the police but was ignored.

Investigating the incident has been difficult to do since no one knows who has jurisdiction. So the impersonators get off scott free. The local police have repeatedly offered city services to John but he has refused to take them. Admittedly, the police say, the complaints they get are about the cats he feeds, not about John. “His personal behavior has been quiet and reserved,” the police say.

PATH, People Assisting the Homeless, has said, “The system is failing to respond to John’s needs in the proper fashion. Finding him a place to live is the answer, not wrangling over who’s property he is on.”

According to PATH, the longer a person stays on the street the more emboldened they become as to remaining there. Even if John loses in court, he will still be back on the street somewhere, and probably the whole process will start all over again with a new group of people.

During our last midnight run to feed cats, John and I stop at a McDonald’s and he offers to treat me. I decline and he declines to eat for himself. “I’m like this,” he tells me. “Because my father was abusive. He would come at me with a stick for the littlest things. He thought I was lazy.” He then takes a long moment to stare unfocused out of the window. “I can’t shake it. It’s just the way it is.”

“What about you, John?” I ask him. “What are YOU responsible for?”

He perks up and says, “The cats.”

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Reviews by Hubie Goode: No Going Home, An Interview With The Homeless



No Going Home

An Interview With The Homeless



Seven days ago a man known only as “John” walked out of a court hearing for trespassing on railroad property so he could return to his “area” and feed his stray cats that roam the neighborhood in a tree lined area of Northridge in the San Fernando Valley.

“Cats have no reason to be hungry,” explains John, who although a foreigner, speaks English like a college professor. “Cats love their life, like people should. They never worry about not being better than they are. They’re cats. Its enough.”

Only a few hours ago, during the usual scorching heat of the valley, John had sat in his tent near a lonely stretch of railroad, quiet and weed riddled, listening to the news on the radio. The radio blasts its report across the seemingly forgotten stretch of rail tracks which seem almost forlorn by any train that may have once come this way. The radio reports on the death of a famous star, John looks off into the distance at the rails that go on and on and seem to only come together somewhere at the bottom of the crest of mountains that surround the entire valley.

“Jeeze, that’s so sad,” he finally chokes out in a light whisper. “We were born on the same day. He dies, and I’m still here.”

As the sun sets and the heat of the day begins to abate, there is a brief respite as gentle breezes begin to announce the oncoming cool of the desert night. He quickly forgets the harassment of the legal system and the death of a famous person as kitty cats begin to seemingly show up from some hidden dimension that they alone are aware of.

John has an old blue mountain bike that he attaches three or four old plastic grocery bags to in which he loads lots of cat food. He generally walks the bike, every night, for about six or seven hours, up and down the back streets of Northridge giving to the only creatures he knows that ask for nothing, demand nothing, harass him about nothing, they just simply “are”.

I offer to give him a ride around the streets instead, my only real contribution I can handle myself at the moment, and John agrees. “Thanks, it makes it easier, “ he tells me with sorrowful eyes that have spots and specks in their white areas that move me to distraction. Though I never mention it.

He sits next to me in my car, ripe as a trash can full of fruit left out in the midday sun and it’s all I can do not loose my lunch. It’s not a revelation I am proud to admit. He wears a long coat, which once had stuffing inside of it that made longitudinal puffs from head to toe, but now only bares tears and curious burn marks where long lost stuffing once found its own type of liberty long, long ago. He has on a green suit coat and grey slacks that do little to hide the complete lack of any leg volume beneath their obviously smeared fabric patterns. Beneath the coat is a v-neck t-shirt that has not been washed in so long I hate to even make a guess as to its current age. He is bald except for a ring of wild white hair around his crest, but the hood of his puffy coat is functional enough to help with the cold of the evening.

It’s rather late in the night when we return to the car after a cat feeding episode and I absent mindedly turn on the car radio. In the disk player is an old Stephen Curtis Chapman album I still like, and the song His Eyes has just begun. John stares straight ahead, he seems fixated on the lyrics.

His eyes are always upon you,
His eyes never close in sleep,
And no matter where you go you will always be,
In his eyes.

The song ends and John seems shocked and saddened. “I haven’t heard that song in a long, long time.” He wistfully morns. “I hear lots of hateful stuff on the radio these days, lots of deep dark voices that really can’t sing. The beats drive me crazy. Just crazy. Why don’t they play more songs like that one anymore?”

He seems concerned with lots of trivia about the world and his own life, much to his own distress. Whether he realizes this or not, is hard to say. Right now he seems very far away from concern over the legal fight with the railroad that wants to kick him out of his makeshift home near the tracks.

The Valley has an unusual way of marking the haves and have nots in that there is a literal “temporal” shift in neighborhoods the further east you go toward the Santa Susanna mountains. Glossy malls and chain stores give way to sudden influxes of small business stores like laundromats and carnecerias. John lives behind a store just over the tracks in a neighborhood that seems to be still reinventing itself, even after all this time since the destructive earthquake of 1994.

On another day, one where the temperature is some 90 degrees plus with no humidity, John tells me he has already fed the seagulls and pigeons, something he does twice a day. His radio is once again blaring the news across the stultified railroad tracks, solitary and cut off from the daily movement of the teaming populace only about 50 yards away at most, yet his home is largely invisible to the daily grind. He turns the radio off and offers me some boxed cookies from the 99 cents store and some fruit juice, the bottle is marked with something like tar and seems to have been kept in a trash bag. I ignore my natural revulsion and appease him, though inwardly I wish I had not.

“I receive a monthly welfare check,” he tells me between cookies. “I get 200 dollars a month, and food stamps.” He continues matter of factly, with little sign of remorse or self effacement. I can’t help but cringe inwardly as I remember my own figures for living requirements here in Los Angeles, those requirements that run along the costs of $3000 a month just to live here comfortably.

“I’m gonna get a job someday,” He tells me. “A man’s gotta work.”

He stares at the cookies in his hand as if they might suddenly jump from his grasp if he doesn’t keep and eye on them. He gets up and grabs an old plastic bathroom stool so we can get out of the sun and sit inside of his tent which he bought at a local store for around $100 dollars. A thick tarp has been thrown over the tent, which is necessary for reflecting the valley’s harsh midday sun. Unfortunately, John has chosen a spot to live on that is cement in every direction. Cement that turns into a baking sheet in the day and an ice trey at night. Nearby there is a railroad spur used at one time to supply goods to local businesses. There are no trees to provide him shade. There is only the long, torturous railroad track that stretches out to forever, visually bobbing and weaving in the afternoon heat, and seems to call to anyone who might pass by to join it in its dissolution.

Inside John’s tent he has a large stained up mattress and a small cage for his cat named Desiderata. He tells me the definition of the word means, “those things desired or wanted.” I don’t mention that I am quite familiar with the term.

Little multi-colored car fresheners shaped like Christmas trees hang openly all over the interior of the tent. On one wall there is a sheet of paper on which is written a poem that has faded with the sun’s rays. I ask him what the poem was since it is now impossible to read.

“It’s something I once liked a lot,” he tells me. That’s all he volunteers.

There are also small Christian crosses and American flags decorating the tent walls with a dizzying randomness. “I’m religious,” he tells me as he gestures to the crosses. “I would rather die hungry than steal.”

The interior of the tent is stacked with his belongings. He literally lives among his possessions. He shaves every day and has a makeshift shower with a gas can that hangs from a support bar that has little holes poked in it to create a shower effect. Not surprisingly, the gas can is bone dry and pushed back toward the rear wall. There is a narrow flood control channel with tumbling water a few yards beneath the small concrete bridge way where he lives, and I can only guess where the facilities are.

He tells me he doesn’t use drugs, he only smokes. He buys the cheapest smokes on sale, and he has made his own filter out of plastic straws and old cigarette filters. He can’t stop smoking even though his father, whom he seems to imply was abusive, always hassled him about it.

John is the fourth child of 11 who once lived somewhere between Jordan and Damascus, he’s not quite sure anymore just where it was or what the town was called. All he can tell me is that his family fled the area during the Six-Day War.

“You know those old Vietnam films you see with all the helicopters? That’s what it was like, complete pandemonium (his word). Tanks and helicopters were shooting at everyone. Everyone was running.”

He learned to speak English in school but didn’t have much stomach for studying. “Besides, my father wanted me to work.” He says with a long breath.

He left school surprisingly, at the seventh grade, and got a job as a cement mixer. He made about $6 dollars a week. “We needed to help my dad,” he explains. “ It was important to support the family. We got sixty cents a week for ourselves, but that used to last a week.”

The 70’s were a turbulent time, but John was a kid with kid concerns. He could then buy a Pepsi with three cents and a pack of cigarettes with the same. When caught smoking he would be beaten and kicked out of the house. He would go to special places in the town where he could meet other kids who had also been banished from the house. Many of the kids in his forgotten land were victims of abuse in the home.

Sometimes these kids would organize and sneak back into their own homes to rifle through the food stores or take some of dad’s money. They would all then go hide someplace and smoke all night.

John says his mother was a good hearted woman who used to feed stray cats. His brother met an American girl and moved to New Jersey, then his brother sent for him to come and live here in America with him.

“That was 1976,” he says, nodding with solicitous affection. “The whole world was different then. That’s when America was truly America.”

more on this next time

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Reviews by Hubie Goode: There's a Story in the Stars




There's a Story in the Stars

“The Heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.”
(Psalm 19:1,2)

A long time ago and far, far away, mankind had a deep desire to know God and his relationship to him. There had been prophets of God in the antediluvian world, as well as the time before Moses. There is much to be said about who has written scripture, and it is believed that Old Testament manuscripts were indeed written by the early patriarchs and then edited by Moses at a later time.

Therefore, the revelation of God had come to mankind long before Moses wrote the Pentateuch. Ancient prophecies such as Genesis 3:15, which promised the coming “seed of the woman” which would crush the head of the great serpent, while the latter bruised his heel, was one way in which God revealed himself to mankind. There is also the judgement prophecy of Enoch about the coming time when all rebellious and ungodly mankind would be weighed in the balance (Jude 14). Quite possibly, however, there are other prophecies that have not been written down and preserved for mankind but were nonetheless important in ancient times.

These prophecies also seem to be reflected in ancient traditions and mythologies, though usually distorted by pagan accretions. There must, therefore, have been a universal primeval revelation shared by all peoples in early times, at least up until the time of the Jewish dispersal at Babylon.

Could the Stars indeed be telling us something?

The most important of these revelations seem to have been entwined within the very stars themselves. It is quite possible that the prophets of those days before the great flood may have been looking into preservation of prophetic information by encoding their information upon the stars themselves, the only thing they could be certain of that would survive the world wide destruction to come.

Unobstructed by the intrusion of massive amounts of modern day city lights, the skies revealed nightly a vast array of grouped and clustered stars that had become as familiar as an old friend. The constellations marched across the skies each year, marking time and tide, and then disappearing for a time, only to reemerge as signs of the continuance of things outside of the Earth bound experience, things which provided a comforting “We’re still here” message for those of the physical world who could only gaze skyward, and dream.

Someone somewhere, noticing this parade of the great heavens, got the brilliant idea to record the great events of mankind by marking the placement of constellations in the heavens during the age. Due to the permanence of the stars, great events could be recorded in their time and remain forever locked together in the mighty trek across time itself.

The Bible, of course, does not tell us who may have been the one to write the ancient prophecies on the stars themselves. The Jewish historian, Josephus, wrote about how this could possibly have been done by Seth or perhaps Enoch. But let’s not be too independent, for it is also quite possible that God himself was the author, for Genesis 1:14 does relay that the heavens were for marking time and seasons. Scripture also indicates the naming of Stars by God himself, (Psalm 147, Isaiah 40).

The book of Job is especially forthcoming with some of these names such as “Arcturus and his sons” (38:32), the sweet influence of the Pelaides (38:31) and the bands of Orion. But the most important reference in Job is 38:32: “Can you bring forth Mazzaroth in his season?” The revelation that these words were spoken to Job directly by God himself implies authorship of the speaker.

The word Mazzaroth is agreed upon by all scholars as a reference to all signs of the Zodiac and their complimentary constellations. Therefore, we can reasonably conclude that the star groupings and their symbolic counterparts had an ancient purpose for disseminating information to all peoples who would live far beyond the current age generation as they, themselves, would look up into the night sky and read a message of God’s plans for the distant future.

Dangerous Facts to Keep in Mind

The modern system of interpreting stars and their meanings is completely condemned by the Word of God. (Deuteronomy 4:19, Isaiah 47:11, Kings 23:5, Acts 7:42). Therefore, I shall endeavor to avoid any such meanderings into Zodiac mysticism.

Astrology is systematically attached to the ancient paganism of polytheists. Images of man and bird and beast, associated with idolatry, have their counterparts in many of the constellation groupings.

Worship of the heavens, is intrinsically tied to the worship of fallen angels. And we know who those guys are. Therefore, whatever may have been the initial use of the stars and signs in the heavens, it has been “hijacked” by the ends of paganism.

There are still so many points of familiarity between the prophetic themes of scripture and the astrological mythology of ancient times, the latter must be a corruption of the initial revelation, rather than a completely independent contrivance on the part of ignorant indigent of long ago. Now if we can still recognize the initial remnants of the original meanings and revelations of the stars from their inception, then we can gain further insight into the authenticity of scripture from ancient times.

Zodiac Signs

Mazzaroth, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, are indeed the most important of all the star groups in the heavens. Each sign has its own month of the year, and corresponds to the Sun’s passage through the sky during the year. This transmogrifies, of course, throughout the year.

Because of the slight wobble of the Earth’s axis, the equinoctial points, those two times during the year when days and nights are equal in length, gradually shifts from one year to the next. This creates a procession of equinoxes that causes months and their various corresponding signs to change gradually.

If Mazzaroth tells a story in the stars, then it would be prudent to intel the beginning of the story. There actually is no reason to believe that January holds any more sway as the inception of this story than at any other time during the year.

Not only that, but there are many, many OTHER constellations that could have been used to tell this story besides the ubiquitous 12 signs of the Zodiac. Ancient Zodiacs not only include the 12 basic signs we all know but they also include 36 additional “decans” or “side kicks”, secondary constellations that accompany the major signs. As an example, take Ta urus, who has as decans: Orion the Hunter, Eridanus the fiery stream, and Auriga the Charioteer.

So, therefore, where did the story begin? There are actually four good reasons to believe that the story could have begun with the virgin.

1) Since the primeval promise of God to mankind was of the seed of the woman crushing the serpent, which was Genesis 3:15, it would make sense to start with a sign of the woman.

2) When God asks Job if he can bring forth Mazzaroth in his season, he follows it with “Can you guide Arcturus with his sons?” This displays something called Hebrew parallelism, which would equate both Mazzaroth and the star Arcturus, which being one of the brighte st stars in the sky, is also one of Virgo’s decans.

3) The symbol of the Sphinx is found on certain ancient Zodiacs, it is usually a creature with the body of a lion and the head of a woman. It is shown in the Zodiac circle with the head facing Virgo and the tail toward Leo.

4) If the story begins with Virgo, then it must end with Leo. Zodiac art often shows Leo attacking the heads of the Hydra in order to destroy him. And who is the Seed of the Woman and the Lion of the Tribe of Judah?

So what does it all mean in terms of the story? It is very difficult to say at this point, although there is enough evidence to suggest an original story line that could be followed by the march of stars across the sky. When writing a story of the stars, a Bible story, if you will, it’s very difficult to not indulge in some often times brilliant flights of imaginative fancy, and several have indeed done so. But this is also necessary, given the immense amount of literal and figurative characters involved.

Certainly ancient peoples who were looking to interpret the story in the sky would have needed some type of instruction book to guide them. But the theory is quite good, nonetheless, since drawing pictures in the sky with familiar meanings would indeed be re adily available to be read by all peoples at all times.

Corruptibility of the original symbols is, of course, a major concern in any consideration of the star clusters, and those we have today may be but a shadow of their former intent. Their sufficient similarity to ancient star charts indicates however, that despite their malleability over time, there was at one time an original directive chart. One chart.

Due to the requirement of imaginative star connecting, it is evident that someone somewhere arbitrarily selected symbols to coincide with certain star charts that have b een associated with them ever since. Such work was hardly the ramblings of some madman, but instead points toward the desire to tell a story.

Is the Zodiac a corruption from Hell itself? Numerous Babylonian ziggurats, pyramids, step towers and high places all have shrines at their apexes dedicated to the “host of Heaven”, decorated with Zodiac signs on their interior walls. Paganism, polytheism and occultism all have adopted the Zodiac in one fashion of another, so the hypothesis of its corruptive origin is not all that far fetched. This should be no surprise due to the fact that Satan has historically been a corruptor of religion instead of an innovator, which should be a revelation in and of itself if you are really paying attention.

If we accept that this is so, then we perhaps can ascertain the outlines of the original information meant for mankind by God himself. For instance, if you study the entire chart, you see the theme of the battle between the serpent and the Deliverer repeated over and over. This means something, not just an arbitrary point, for it is as classic a tale told by mankind as the battle between brothers.

Ancient zodiacs are probably the most similar to the original. And there are significant differences. For instance, Gemini may have at one time been the joined man and woman instead of a set of twins. Cancer the crab, may have also been a great enclosure into which people entered from all sides, like a church in the round. This lends significant credence to there having been changes all around to the major signs.

To try and recover the written story, we must rely upon latter written instruction, knowing of course that God would not contradict himself. We also need to think in terms of what would be meaningful to the antediluvian partiarchs who originally attempted to reveal this information.

Okay, so what IS the story???

Let’s try to tell it:

Virgo: A deliverer will arise within the human family someday, born as a man yet delivered by a virgin. Seed of the woman.

Libra: Since mankind has fallen and sinned, a price must be paid and the scales of justice balanced.

Scorpio: The Deliverer must pay the price of redemption and in doing so, must destroy the serpent who led man to sin.

Sagittarius: In order to halt his own destruction, the serpent will try to corrupt mankind by turning the race of man into demon possessed monsters, half man - half GOAT.

Capricornus: Man will become so sinfull as to leave no other recourse but the inundation of the whole Earth.

Aquarius: The floodgates will open and flood the whole world with only a remnant remaining.

Pices: From the waters will emerge the true people of God, despite all attacks by the enemy.

Aries: In the fullness of time will come the deliverer ready to die for the sins of mankind and to destroy the dragon.

Taurus: Having paid the price, the slain “RAM” (sheep) will rise as a mighty bull to execute judgement on all unrighteousness and rule supreme.

Gemini: As the Son of God and the Son of Man the second Adam will take his bride as did the first, taking her to himself forever.

Cancer: All those redeemed will come to him from all times and all places, secure eternally in his presence.

Leo: As King of Kings and Lord of Lords he will destroy the works of the serpent as a lion would and then rule for ever and ever.

This story of Mazzaroth is, of course, merely a suggestion based upon a cer tain parochial strain of logic. It is however, a reasonable reconstruction given what is known of the ancient patriarchs and the written scripture we have today. Sufficient correlation is provided fo r the assertion of the “Gospel in the Stars”.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Reviews by Hubie Goode: The Spirit of Prophecy


The Spirit of Prophecy

by Mike Wong


When talk about prophets, we may think of the weird man wearing strange clothes scolding people for their sin and warning them for the judgment of God. This impression obviously came from the Old Testament. But there is a different expression of prophets and the spirit of prophecy in the New Testament. All believers are called to operate in the spirit of prophecy.

Being prophetic is more than able to predict the future. It is true that sometimes revelations from God foretell some events in the future, but in fact the most important value of prophecies is to reveal the heart of God. The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (Rev 19:10). The spirit of prophecy gives revelations to the testimony of Jesus, what He had done and what is in His heart. A prophetic person has the grace from God to experience His heart and reveal it to others.

By the blood of Jesus, we are allowed to enter into the sanctuary of God. We are able to restore our intimate relationship with God our father. We can experience His heart intimately and at many dimensions. We experience how He loves us. We experience how precious His grace and mercy is. We experience how joyful He is when He looks at us.

Whenever a prophecy is spoken forth, God's heart is revealed. Man's total being is completely corrupted by sin. We are incapable of knowing God without His revelations and grace, not to mention loving Him. It takes God to love God. When He reveals His affection for us, we receive the ability to show our affection for Jesus.

There are some common misconceptions among the churches. Some experiencing prophetic events like dreams and visions immediately claim themselves to be prophets. Others refuse any prophetic encounters with reason that they are not called to be prophets. There are clear distinguishments between being a prophet and operating with the spirit of prophecy according to the bible. The Lord promises to pour the spirit of prophecy on all of His sons and daughters, while only a few chosen people are called to the office of prophets.

An example of a prophet who revealed the heart of God according to the will of God is John the Baptist. He was called the greatest man born of a woman by Jesus. He was the forerunner prepared for the first coming of Jesus who also symbolize a group of God's people who are being raised up in the end of the end time to prepare the second coming of the Lord. They will be revealing the heart of God, His mercy and His judgment and warn people of the coming crisis. The prophetic anointing will be operating mightily on them. Some would even call fire from heaven and beyond. Let's follow the teachings of the Bible and desire earnestly for the spirit of prophecy.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Sickness, Disease and Microforms in Acidic Blood


Sickness, Disease and Microforms in Acidic Blood

In the late 1800’s, the work of Louis Pasture developed ideas in classical Biology that disease relied on germs that come from outside of the body. But there are some amazing works done by his contemporaries which did not receive the press of Pasture’s work. Their endeavors produced intell that points to a reality of bacteria and other microforms that come from our very body cells themselves.

Pasture believed in something called the “germs of the air”, and was implicit in their primary role of making one ill, however, the truth is a bit different. Although, involved in the act of making one ill, the germs of the air themselves are simply another catalyst for an already compromised biological system.

Including the various microforms that can be generated within one’s own body, their entrance coming through our respiratory system or intestinal tract, they also begin to grow once they are within the body. Once interior, they then promote similar growth of unhealthy bacteria already present in the body, depending of course, on the environment they find themselves in.

As I have written of before, when the blood is acidic, these microforms get the big “go ahead” for this process. To contract an infection, a body has to be predisposed to it already. This plays a big part in family history diseases such as cancer and such, for how many people do you know never get certain ailments, while others have it rife within their families? If you have the acidity to let a bug take hold, then you play right into the family illness history. Conversely, if you already know of family history, you can end it NOW, at least for yourself, by working on the acidity of your own blood.

Consider for a moment the flu epidemic of 1918. It killed about 30 million people, a huge amount in that day as compared to our current worldwide population numbers. However, it would happen to one home and not to the neighbors next door. Without the fertile ground of acidic blood, germs can’t proliferate, much in the same way as hard soil won’t produce crops.

Microforms also have an annoying ability to be metamorphs. Bacteria can change into yeast, yeast into fungus and fungus into mold. The work that has revealed this has been largely ignored by the mainstream media, for Lord knows what profitable reasons, and has resulted in more than a hundred years of misinformation about health and disease. This knowledge proved way back then that disease is a product of our inner environment and not the result of an external attack.

This forgotten chapter in biological history revealed something living on its own within the cells and bodily fluids that is capable of developing into a more complex form. These elements are known as microzymas, and they are the beginning of all cells in their inception. The body’s regeneration and degeneration always begins and ends with microzymas. In the correct environment these microzymas can evolve into more complex entities, including bacteria and fungi. Yes, it would seem this is the curse of the body. However, it is a process that has corrective tendencies, as it can metamorph both forward and backward, becoming the more benign entity once again as it had first been. Therefore, reversals of disease itself, at a certain point of development, can actually be “cured” due to a change of the environment in which it lives. That is not to say that long term damage from disease conditions can be reversed, for as once damage is done, it can be permanent, but the major concept to take with you is that an ounce of prevention must be the linchpin of physical directive health.

Pleomorphism is the term of the microforms ability to, in total physical reality, act like some Star Trek alien and be one thing, like fungus today, and revert to a microzyma tomorrow. One thing, the fungus, being harmful, the other being the benign form of the microzyma. In fact it has been purported in theory that red blood cells may also be able to perform this same function. They are able to become whatever the body needs, be it brain cells, bone cells or anything else. Bacteria and its buddies: fungus, yeast and mold are merely the anitcell developments of red blood cells and an indicator of where you are on the blood acid chart.

For instance, you have already seen water turn into steam or ice, this is a pleomorphism. Keeping in mind that it is the environment that brings about this transformation. Thus it is quite natural and logical for our inner bodies to have the same principle capability as we are all a part of God’s great creation. Chemical structure never changes, but the form does, and in often too many instances the function also changes. Steam or ice can be used in various other functions that cannot include just regular water in its primary form.

Acidic blood is the direct environment that changes microforms in the human body. Microzymas don’t always become bacteria, and fungus doesn’t always become mold, it requires an acidic environment. A blood stream that is also a healthy alkaline environment prevents these things from happening merely due to its germane state.

There have been incredibly informative experiments that have displayed the transformation properties of microzymas. For instance, one type of amoeba (a single celled organism) feeds on bacteria and another dysentary amoeba, feeds on rice. Each one has specific DNA that is resident in their form. Amazingly though, if you flip flop their diets, the genetic material changes! They metamorph into each other. Literally they each become the other microform. I know, sounds like science fiction, doesn’t it? This is even a more tantamount change than a caterpillar into a butterfly, but more so, as it can happen in the blink of an eye. Yet, keep in mind, the activity remains consistent with all other natural occurrences that have their logical place in our reality, so it is not all that surprising, this is simply a fact that has not been known before the beginnings of microbiology study.

Science is all about those things which are observable, if it is not observable, then it is not science but something else. Pasture’s work of “germ theory” benefited from marketing efforts and press coverage much to the detriment of us all, as these amazing biology facts were being discovered in his day and time yet they were largely ignored. Mainstream medicine has largely ignored these facts as it has been “hi-jacked” by forces such as Big Pharm, who’s main purpose seems to be getting at least ten prescription pills into every person on the planet on a daily basis.

But it’s not all their fault, the fault also lies in the malleability of the microforms themselves. Let’s take beer for instance, only a trace amount of yeast is present after fermentation of the grain, and it is no longer visible to the naked eye. Only the alcohol - a “mycotoxin” by the way - is still remaining. Where did the yeast go? It has returned to microzymas. Now think about cancer, every cancer tumor is surrounded by a pool of lactic acid. (Another mycotoxin) But the microform may or may not be there, so even when you go looking for it you may not find it. The bottom line though is environment, keep the blood alkaline and the weeds won’t take root.

Death, you may say, is perfectly natural. We all gotta go sometime, and indeed the insanity of acid blood and microform invasion is perfectly natural when one is headed to the great beyond. Becoming acidic is actually the body’s way of ushering in death. Once you stop breathing, the anaerobic environment that microforms breed in becomes paramount. It is then that these little deconstucters begin their natural work. They are indeed the principle undertakers of our bodies when we die, for they are assigned the job of taking the body back to the dust from whence it first came. You might call this the carbon cycle, as I have talked about in other posts, the body decomposes down from its complex information process into the simplified form of dust. If we had begun in the water as primordial ooze, then we would deconstruct down into a liquid form, and that is more evidence of evolution propaganda. But to stay on point, microforms are what makes the body rot.

Therefore, keeping the above in mind, if you have microform overgrowth within the body of a living being: you have begun to prematurely perish. If you have older folks in your family whose houses smell odd to you, it is the fermenting bodies that you are perceiving. They are literally rotting while still alive.

Understand though, there is nothing inherently wrong with the micro-organisms themselves, they are actually functional and good for the body when contained within the correct environment. Cells all over the body must constantly break down and renew themselves in order to stay healthy, microforms are the garbage collectors for this process. Their function remains benign to the body in this instance. As in the water into steam example, you would have a hard time drinking steam when you are thirsty, but if you allow it to condense it can be of greater utility.

The problem for Louis Pasture was one of confusing the disease with its symptoms. This misconception has now been firmly entrenched as scientific law. Disease is actually a general, underlying condition, not the symptoms that are diagnosed. Germs come from within the cells themselves and any germs that come from outside of the body are mere catalysts for the internal imbalance that is resultant. What most call a disease, is really a collection of secondary symptoms, they are the weeds and not the roots. The roots being, of course, over acidity in the blood and microform overgrowth.

Mainstream science has conquered several types of disease, or at least it believes it has, over the last few centuries, but there are many that are still a mystery to the medical establishment everywhere. Many are those who are amazed at new outbreaks of a disease that was thought dispatched long ago. One must understand that no matter what is bothering you, the root problem is always the same, consistent with inner biology and outer nature: acid blood and microform overgrowth.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Reviews by Hubie Goode: The Victory of Small Colleges



The Victory of
Small Colleges


Anyone who has ever considered where they should attend college has become aware of a trend within almost every state which divides the large colleges from their smaller counterparts. In almost every state, one can point to a college, famous though it may be, where one can literally “purchase” a higher education. These colleges are often looked down upon academically, though they may have the illusion of prestige, but they are actually admired for the success of their sports or some other well known program. These financed academic programs are proving to be less and less worth their high price as smaller, more intimate institutions, quietly prove to be turning out students who are more competent and successful. The gap that is widening between the two gateways to education has become wider and wider, much to the benefit of those who do not choose the big brand names and instead seek a smaller more intimate and surprisingly, more productive road toward their career path.

Long term statistics from the past 30 years have now proven that smaller schools have become more adept at turning out better students over the subsequent years following each generation’s graduating class. The big brand named schools have become too much of a “mountain that supports a molehill” and their skyrocketing costs and over crowded classrooms have provided a way for students to literally “hide” within the teaming throng. A smaller school of about 2,000 students allows great opportunity for exposure to faculty who can more facilitate the learning experience. At a lower ratio of students to teachers, a student can hardly afford to allow themselves to sit way in the back of a classroom and pay their way to a degree. Their fellow students are also more involved, more familiar with the professors and instructors and as the smaller crowd all moves in a productive direction, which is much harder to escape from, the learning environment becomes one where a student wants to excel, and can excel.

The famous named and larger colleges have become fat and sluggish with classrooms of 200-300 students and have for some time now presented for far too many graduates a “spectator” experience. May of these classes simply fill up a student’s notebook with notes, then administer a test made out for the general masses which, in turn, is then graded by a teacher’s assistant. In smaller colleges, a family type environment is created by providing many classes where a student may find themselves a part of perhaps a class of 20 students, who then move together as one body throughout the semester and experience an “iron sharpening iron” experience with both fellow students and their professors. These “family” professors have many opportunities for actively expanding the mind of the student and personally engaging them in the learning process. Therefore, the learning process is always activated as a way of day to day life, whether inside the classroom or in social situations with a person’s fellow students. It is very difficult in such a society for a student to wonder what is on a test tomorrow due to the fact that they are involved in study from day one for the test that may be three weeks away.

Unfortunately, much to their own harm, many aspiring students make college choices based upon the social climate they experienced in high school. This “herd mentality” can be a hard current to swim against and provides not much more than a continuing spiral downward of their own individual success. If the buddies from high school that a student has are making their choices based upon brand names and not based on research, then the crowd who goes to the big state school together will have only the rare few who actually benefit from the college experience in a meaningful academic way that translates into cogent success in later life. The benefits derived from matching a student to the correct school for them will be lost in a major waste of time and money due to a lack of careful attention to individual details of what that single student needs and wants for their continuing education and thus later life, all due to a desire for a big name on a diploma and a comfortable current social life. Students need to realize that the majority of friends they have today will all move on with their lives one day and be little more than memories of yesterday which produce no individual profit for their future lives. There must be a concentration and atmosphere focused on achievement from the high school level and into the college level or else many years will be missed while trying to vainly make up for lost time later in their lives. Too often this kind of student finds themselves years after college cutting into time for today’s events in order to make up for the lost opportunity of education that was sacrificed for a social climate that, more times than not, ended long ago.

Students who are given no guidance at all, or who fail to research things themselves, suffer from a delusion that all colleges will be the same. While in grammar and high school, many students today mistakenly believe that it only matters that you graduate, not how well you actually do in school, and this is not all their own fault for believing this, however, this belief translates into the concept that it only matters that you DO go to school. There must be a transformation from high school to college in the way learning is seen, as a new experience, both personally and for future professional consideration, and not merely as the next grade up from high school. In such a critical developmental time for students it is important that a young person in their twenties have the benefit of their parents, advisors and professors who understand the inherent blind spots in the mind of the early twenty something person in the case of their own abilities and what their own road of personal discovery will reveal. Usually, that person is NOT the same one who just four years or so earlier, left high school as a triumphant senior.

Over the last thirty years or so, statistics have proven the redundancy of a well known college name upon a diploma. Real success translates from education to real life by what the student brings with them from the college they attended. Smaller colleges with a hands on approach and a society that orbits a student are proving to be more prescient in later life than big classrooms that send a student into great financial debt with less productive education in later life. And this is being revealed by the students who graduate from big colleges themselves. Many students have stated that they could have easily “mailed in” the college experience, and many who drop out of these larger institutions and enroll in smaller colleges sing the praises of their experiences with professors and fellow students who helped to make major improvements in the college experience.

Interestingly enough, smaller colleges are proving that a students high school grades were NOT true indicators of the students abilities. Shocked and awed by the increased performance of their college schooling experience, many graduates are quick to relate how they were indeed challenged in ways they could not have imagined by fellow students and college professors who were not merely there to gain tenure and security for themselves. These students found themselves a part of an honor society for the first time in their lives, much to their own consternation. Afterward, they also found themselves out distancing the students from the larger colleges due to the personal growth and more intimate attention that enabled them to meet major challenges with the skill to discover how to learn and think through any situation they encountered. Text oriented though the lessons may have been, the skills acquired along with the lessons carried them later in life higher and farther that they would have ever gone as opposed to any filling in a note book or taking standard tests from big colleges could have ever produced.

With a concentration on the student as they do in smaller colleges, many professors have indeed discovered hidden gold in students who were beforehand believed to be learning deficient. These students develop differently, and can fall through the cracks of a system that concentrates on a literary base for teaching and academia. Students with more hypothetical and almost intuitive ways of dealing with life simply have different ways of learning which don’t necessarily match the status quo of the pragmatic intellectual system. Have educators ignored a potential unknown of the human mind by concentrating on a cookie cutter approach to education? In nature, the more complex the entity, the longer the maturation rate. Smaller colleges may in the future prove that an entire aspect of adult mental civilization has been newly discovered by abilities and traits nurtured for another phase of life beyond the twenty something concentration of today. In the future, universities may look vastly different than what we see today as more and more evidence of various methods of applied learning and development unearth a new type of student arriving in the workplace.

Smaller colleges may indeed be the harbinger of change in America today for an improved workforce of tomorrow. Today’s system from the pre-school to the highest levels may take on a whole new complexion due to the ability of smaller colleges to recognize the promise of students and implement proven techniques for their development, rather than simply churning out graduate numbers and paper degrees. Home schooling may also itself, change the face of beginning education as it takes on more and more students due to its continuing ability to be of greater benefit to a student than today’s over crowded schools. The marginally successful student of today may indeed become a thing of the past as smaller colleges accept more and more of these home schooled students who are quite a different faction of up and coming thinkers. Having been given attention to the productive and yet little understood abilities of the mind and its different layers of learning since they were children, perhaps today’s kids who then graduate from smaller colleges, will have greater advantage at making the correct decisions in dealing with a hard and tough world that has seemingly “crashed” due to the decisions of those who in the past where schooled in ways that more resemble an automobile assembly line than they do a practical mental maturing that results in a mature intellectual society which can more effectively deal with real world problems.

One can only hope.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Are We Really in the Dawn of a New Age? Part 4


Are We Really in the Dawn
of a New Age?

Part 4



So what have we gotten as a result of all this new age education and thought in our world today? What is the afterbirth of the dawn of this new age?

When we consider this question, one must keep in mind that it has produced some of the most animated discussions of our time. It has been an object of great “progress” and also one of interesting consideration. Thousands of books have been written about education and where it has taken us, where it should take us and where it may take us. Many such analysis touch upon the problems created by our education system and its inherent errors, how it has failed democracy and also impoverished the souls of American students. The main concern in these thesis is the contrast between the old school method which provided a unity that rose above class, race, religion and national origin and was rooted in the concept of natural rights, with what we have today.

The “education of openness”, as it is called, is blamed for ignoring natural rights and historical origins which are now seen as being flawed and regressive. Instead, this new education is considered progressive and forward looking, without demand for fundamental agreement. It is open to all kinds of people, all kinds of lifestyles and all ideologies. In reverse, it makes an enemy of the person who is not open to everything. However, when there are no shared goals or vision of public good, is there any longer a need for the social contract?

Many of the detractor arguments, which get NO press, lament the deterioration of our schools, with special emphasis on the content of education. Morals have been down played and then replaced with a feeble attempt at “values”. The concepts of honor, honesty, virtue, and other truths once thought to be self-evident are taking the last train for the coast. They are left unreplaced or perhaps only filled in by pragmatism and profit concepts.

In a book written by former newsman John Chancellor, Peril and Promise, he had this to say concerning the events that have transpired in our century due to this new age education:

If the United States runs out of scientists and engineers by the turn of the century, who will replace them? Today’s thirteen year olds? Hardly. The department of education in 1989 helped fund a study of the mathematics and science skills of thirteen year olds in several countries. The American children came in dead last, with lower scores than Spanish, British, Irish, Canadian and South Korean children. South Korean thirteen year olds were first. The comparison was devastating, South Korea is a developing country, nearly destroyed by war in the 1950’s with a population that was mostly poor farmers a few decades ago. The United States is an economic giant, but is suffering from a softening of the brain. The Council on Competitiveness estimates that sixty thousand mathematics and science teachers in our high schools are not fully qualified to do their jobs.

In 1989, the Secretary of Education, Lauro P. Cavazos, reported that since 1985. American high school students had flat or declining scores on college entrance examinations and an unchanged dropout rate. One out of every four high school students does not finish school - close to one million young people. Another fourth - another million - who graduate are functionally illiterate when they get their diplomas. Half the eighteen year olds in this country have failed to master basic language, mathematics, and analytical skills. A million dropouts here, a million functional illiterates there, every year.

(One need only read through some of the comments on Youtube to see this reality in all its glory)

These commentaries must not be pigeonholed as people who are just trying to force certain political insights, there have been reports of thousands of parents who have been deeply shocked by the experience of their children in public schools. In a report by Phyllis Schafley called: Child Abuse in the Schools, she relays the disgust with the public school system, displaying the broad discontent with the higher rates of education that are resulting in decreased production of American schools.

Perceptive people have seen the dangers of “progressive education” for a long time now. Greek scholar and theologian J. Gresham Machen, had much to say about the state of education today. In his book, Christianity and Liberalism, he had this to say:

When one considers what the public schools of America in many places already are - their materialism, their discouragement of any sustained intellectual effort, their encouragement of the dangerous pseudoscientific fads of experimental psychology - one can only be appalled by a commonwealth in which their is no escape from such a soul-killing system. But the principle of such laws (the laws that require a public school education, and that, at that time, were also being used to deny the formation of Christian schools) and their ultimate tendency are far worse than the immediate results. A public school system, in itself, is indeed an enormous benefit to the race. But it is of benefit only if it is kept healthy at every moment by the absolutely free possibility of the competition of private schools. A public school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficial achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic, it is the most perfect instrument of tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combatted by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective. Place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the ultimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and where the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of Liberty can subsist. Such a tyranny, supported as it is, by a perverse technique used as the instrument in destroying human souls, is certainly far more dangerous than the crude tyrannies of the past, which despite their weapons of fire and sword, permitted thought at least to be free.

The truth is that the materialistic paternalism of the present day, if allowed to go on unchecked, will rapidly make an America that is one huge “Main Street”, where spiritual adventure will be discouraged and democracy will be regarded as consisting in the reduction of all mankind to the proportions of the narrowest and least gifted of the citizens.

In this book, Machen reaches out with concern for a dismal future of education in America and also, for freedom itself. His book was written in 1924, and I have to wonder if he wouldn’t been seen as some sort of prophet if he were alive today to witness the condition of America’s schools. Sadly, one needs not have prophetic discourse to have been correct on many of the points Machen makes, one need only look back to history which has been forgotten in favor of the hubris of our day.

We are warned again and again of the mounting economic power of nations such as Japan and China and the increasing power of Western Europe, along with the increasing crisis of the Middle East. Every analysis of the future, after speaking of the growing possibilities in Asia, Europe and even Russia, refers to the decline of the United States and North America. We now have a staggering public and private debt that has come home to roost after decades of mismanagement by the higher political order. There is also a rise in crime, a drug war, a rise in suicides, and the continuing AIDS epidemic. Right along side of these things is the reports of increasing costs for education with a teetering school system.

Will our future generations be able to handle the complexity of such a world as the future provides? Or does the future of America lie in the leadership of a dangerous few, a few who are head and shoulders above the rest and may have aspirations that don’t necessarily reflect the will of the people but of those few who hold power? Will the nation be a community of “hillbillies” at the mercy of an elite cartel of individuals who are perhaps not American at all? Some would say we have already reached that point in the future. The government already is trying to tell America that it knows better than we do what is good for us: “Just sit down and be quiet, we’ll take care of you.”

The decline of the West - here is an obvious fact. Where did this problem come from? What is the major influence upon our society and where has that influence failed? The answer is that the most prominent influence upon America has been the well developed, fully organized and expensively financed by your tax dollars, education system. One can receive education from kindergarten until far into college age and beyond here in America. Students come from all over the world to avail themselves of the opportunity to learn here, especially in the sciences. Even terrorists from foreign countries who hate America come here to learn how to bring us down.

In the meantime, education in the humanities has faltered. The teaching of philosophy, sociology and history have become less and less popular. And why, you ask? Could it be that they have been gutted of their educational value and spiritual content? Could it be that a degree in these subjects only traps students in a life of paying for college loans while they can only get work pouring coffee at Starbucks? And why is that? Is it necessary to always serve the “Main Street” mentality of materialism and only hire those who have monetarily practical schooling and not those for whom the higher aspirations of mankind have any meaning at all? Will the near future be full of homeless street people who have college degrees?

It is in the study of Philosophy that the questions of final authority are considered. In medicine, the final authority is the simple issue of life and death (with the recent addition of financial capability.) In science, the absolute is the speed of light, and this has now moved beyond discussion. In philosophy, however, the final authority has been lost, and with devastating results.

In the past, whatever conclusions the philosopher reached, he had to begin with some doctrine of objective value. The first objective value, out of which all philosophy was built, was the existence of God. “God is!” was step A for the study of anything philosophical. Then the assumption that God was replaced with “natural law”, which it could be argued, is the next best thing. But these days, we don’t even have that.

Dewey and his circular philosophy that begins with man and ends with man, paid little attention to old values in the process of creating that circle. Humanism has become prevalent in our schools as a result, and especially at the graduate level. From that point on the ruling point of view in America has been that there is NO ruling point of view.

What then is the fault of American education? There are many things that could be considered about this, i.e. the teaching methods, money, buildings, urbanization, but behind it all is the loss of objective value. The value of God and his Word. When the Bible is relegated to anachronism, all the substitutes fall into place to fill the vacuum. Evolution. Marxism. Freudianism and other alien ideas moved into the school system and became basic assumptions. In fact they were welcomed with open arms as a new order of thought that had more value than ideas that had sustained mankind for centuries. Such is the intellectual hubris of our day.

These new gods of the mind and thought found themselves injected into the up and coming generations of our now adult society with little backing beyond the fact that someone with a degree or perhaps some notoriety had thought them up or seemingly discovered them. Of course, it feels good to believe that man is smarter than God, therefore, one doesn’t have to listen to God, despite his overwhelming evidence of caring benevolence and benefit behind all directives.

Since America has polluted itself and the world with this godless doctrine of the mind, what can possibly be the path to recovery? Basically, the West must return to being a REAL Christian nation, and return to the ideas of its fathers. Objective value must be returned, the objective value that is God himself and the revelation that is his Word, and the love of a creator that is the basis for all existence. Psalm 9:17 says it best: “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” Is America becoming a hellish place to live today, even as you read this?

Of course, the secular and atheistic world will not suddenly turn on itself, and its grand egomania over night. It will take more wars, more hurricane Katrinas, more Haities, more weird diseases and 9/11’s to get mankind’s attention, much to the premature demise of many an unfortunate. The good news is that God prefers to do his call to repentance any way but the hard way if he can prevent it. But if you have been raised to believe that God is about as important as Santa Claus, you run into difficulty inside the very family unit when radically changing the paradigm of thought about God from social nicety to absolute ruler of your life. This creates a strange disenfranchised society within a society and for several generations can produce a confused populace that votes against itself with every new election. We’ve already seen this in effect.

Christianity must articulate its case in public presentation that is characterized by theological soundness and scholarly, philosophic interpretations of life and reality. The church has indeed failed in the battle to win the minds of men. Christianity has received sympathy, and even emotional agreement from the world as it looks at the church of Christ, but it has not heard us say that God is the only God and Jesus is
his son and equal, and one day all who live will stand in judgment when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess to this truth.

There have been too many sympathetic discussions with modern unbelievers as to who’s truth is best applied to life. As a result, they fail to mention that every man should be a liar and only God be true. The instant that Christianity agrees with the pluralizers, that there are many forms of truth, its cause is lost. It becomes impotent in its directive and then, finally, irrelevant except for greeting cards and the like.

Whether we like to admit it or not, the very foundations of thought that Americans received from education as children, along with many foreigners from around the world, are simply the circular reasoning made up by other people, John Dewey being one of them, who sought to distance themselves from the idea of God as a major force in their lives and also the surrounding society. And that is all it is. It is NOT some newly discovered evolutionary strain of thought that signals human progress, or even the development of mankind from something called the bicameral mind, as atheists would have you believe. No, it is simply man believing he can do it his own way without God, and deceiving himself as to the mounting evidence around the world that forgetting God and going your own way causes no repercussions or answers from that divine deity.


It’s just crazy.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Reviews by Hubie Goode: America the Free - Not Chimerica



America the Free
- Not Chimerica


We often hear the term Chimerica when thinking about Chinese-American relations, and often assume that this means that China owns America. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. China is, indeed, a very smart opponent, but as those who examine carefully will see that America has this matter well at hand.

In these modern days of national strategy, a nation must look out for it’s own interests or face the consequences of not doing so. The most commonly used tactic by a nation to inflict harm, whether intentional or not, is to flood a willing nation with an abundant supply of some materials at such a low rate that it would be stupid for the receiving nation to create their own. An example is the flooding of America with cheap electronics from China. America just can’t compete.

This is no new event. Usually, a recipient nation who observes the flooding behavior of another will impose duties and import limits through their customs and excise departments in order to avoid such a circumstance. But, with the advent of free trade agreements and lobbying, this is proving harder and harder to do.

In the past, customs and excise formed a great part of a nation’s revenues, and so such departments were placed within the scope of income tax collection. Take, for example, Canada. Once Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, on the wake of September 11, it became the Canada Border Services Agency and the Canada Revenue Agency. This was caused directly by the attacks on the twin towers, and an emphasis on security rather than collection by Border Officers.

So with free trade, massive lobbying, and a focus on security rather than import control, countries are facing more and more import flooding by certain nations than others. America is not completely innocent this regard. America is well known for pushing products and services to other countries and implementing all sorts of leverage. And George W. was the master. He pushed ‘coolness’ and ‘oneness.’

How many Britons and Australians remember how proud they felt when George W.’s State of the Nation speech was aired in which he mentioned those countries. How proud a feeling was it?? And in Canada, how many people remember the complaints by our national news agencies and debates on why ‘America snubbed us.’ This is just brilliant! Say that another nation is not ‘cool’ for not letting you do something, and the other country will probably let you rape them or go along with what you want them to do for the ‘cool’ status.

So with China flooding America with cheap products, and America focusing on security rather than excise, China has profited quite nicely from America. So nicely, in fact, that it now backs the majority of American debt (holding most of the American currency).

And now, China is focusing it’s attention on rare earth elements, seizing Tibet, making slave-like agreements with Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and trying to pick away at parts of Kashmir in order to get more of it. The Chinese-Ceylon agreement is more subtle than it appears, as is Tibet and Kashmir, but this discussion is for another day.

The real question is, if China is giving up going for oil and banking on rare earth elements, why isn’t America or any other country following suit? Simple: it is ‘common knowledge’ (wink) that collection of these elements emits large amounts of ozone-depleting gasses that will cause global warming. Because nations are afraid to do this, they won’t. They will let China do the dirty work and collect those rare earth materials so that they can use them for green energy.

So, one would argue, because America is chasing oil whilst China is going green by polluting for a little while only, America is the real culprit. China, being the only gatherer will be making substantial profit ala the hoarding principle.

But, for a moment, let’s think very deeply about what’s really going on...

If you are America, the most powerful nation, you will, beyond doubt, have the best minds working for you and understand at a macro level and well-beyond what is going on. What if there are ample rare-earth elements on the moon? Let China waste their time grabbing the stuff from earth and raise prices because they are the only player, and then get it from the moon to sell to them when their time is up. By the way, it’s a no-man’s land between Earth and the moon, so if anyone wants to go there, they might just experience some malfunctions ala American gunfire - I mean micro-meteorites.

But America is working on getting back their debt as we speak. America is busy taking oil fields from Iraq and Afghanistan (with their eyes set on Venezuela), and will sell it to China so that they can fuel their earthly rape for rare materials the world so desires. And how to make these countries play ball?

Simple: do you really think a missile costs two million dollars?

Think about it, who will be responsible for the ‘war on terrorism’ costs of America inserting itself into countries for oil? The country that’s raped (not of their dignity but their materials) of course - I mean ‘freed from tyranny’ and/or ‘given democracy.’ (What wonderful doublespeak).

So China, don’t you worry, America will take back their dollars by selling you oil given to us from newly freed countries, and through their labour to repay the cost of their ‘freedom.’ They owe us that much, after all. And China, while you’re at it, pump-up those rare earth prices and don’t go to the moon because only America can. You don’t own us yet!

About the Author

Spiritual writes for http://www.ConspiracyChat.com, which is a site that analyzes and attempts to justify current and past events and anticipate or predict future events. Spiritual also maintains a site about day-to-day learnings with a spiritual angle. Visit his site at http://www.SpiritualMeans.com.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Understanding the Christian Life: Part 1


Understanding
the Christian Life


Part 1


Here are some things all practicing Christians need to know when trying to understand the Christian life. You’ll always have hurdles to overcome in life, but when they do show up, it’s your perspective on those things which is really paramount. Remember, in life, no matter what happens to you, it is by no means more important that what you tell your self about it. If you break a leg, and it’s the end of everything, then it REALLY IS! However, if you break a leg, and you decide that it is not forever and just for now, and you’ll be back on your feet in no time, then that is REALLY HOW IT IS! Just keep in mind the young girl who is a surfer, who lost her arm to a shark while surfing. She is back doing it again today, with one arm. Think of those hurdles in life as a privilege to grow, to reach. Faith is often put to the test to produce patience, and that in itself has practical results for making you a more fully developed person and Christian in Christ.

If you are someone who has a hard time understanding the trials that we all go through, the answers are readily available from Jesus. You need only to ask, but you must ask knowing you will receive an answer. How that answer will come is sometimes a mystery, for it is often tailored just to you and not for anyone else. God often works in this way, that is why he never gets the front page. All too often he is quietly working in the lives of those around us, sometimes with amazing results, yet we never hear about it. But if you just can’t settle things inside your own heart, whether or not you will hear from God, then for sure, you will not. All arguments about God begin and end with his existence. They all lead down the same road. If God does exist, then there are millions of points of logic that follow, but if he does not exist, then those points are replaced by another group of points of logic. Settle this inside your own heart and mind and rely on the fact that we never need to question the love of Christ for us as his children, and you will receive an answer if you are not clogging the connection between you and God with the wrong things, things that don’t belong, in your life.

What can we truly depend upon in this life? As we have seen, in both government and the public eye, money comes and goes like the wind. Fame and stature also can be whisked away or otherwise perverted and the rest of our lives can take a nasty turn down a dark alley. Someone can own a business today, and go to work on her every day for five years, then the government crashes and the business is gone overnight, or else the person dies suddenly and his business is turned over to others, sometimes it is merely closed and the assets sold off. And what has it gotten the owner?

Plant your root firmly in the ground and refuse to budge when those trials come to your life. We learn in these trails whom God really is, and this will not only please God, but it is a lesson we will carry with us forever, a lesson we could have not gotten any other way. For if Jesus was here with us in a temple somewhere, a place we could easily see him with our own eyes, would not you and I be constantly entreating him for assistance, and when that assistance was not in our best interest, we, as typical humans, would then convince ourselves that God could be manipulated our way. How blessed are you who have not seen but hold fast to the knowledge of who God is.

God cannot be manipulated by man, or any other for that matter. So, therefore, when you are tempted to go against God’s word, never ascribe that temptation to God himself. It is our own fallen and wrong desires that bring about the results to sin, and then once we have gone against the reality of God, we have broken the tie that should be binding us, our life line, and this break leads to death.

Keep in mind that we, as his children, are given every good and perfect thing directly from the throne of God, and this goodness has no sun up or sun down, no bad hair days, no sense of time as we have. What came from God to mankind as good 500 years ago is still the same goodness we today can receive. Not only has God never changed from the beginning, but there is very little within mankind that has changed in all of recorded history. Any student of history knows this and even our fairy tails and stories from long ago still apply and make sense to us today. How God has put up with it all this time, is a mystery to me, except that I know as a part of who he is, he understands the deepest parts of mankind, and his mercy and justice is always meted out with that understanding in mind.

Self control is a big linchpin of knowing God. Putting the tongue under submission is a huge part of doing the right thing, being quicker to listen and less purposed to say what we have on our minds. The same can be said of anger, which serves no one, not man or God’s purposes. If this is God’s universe and his reality, and not ours, then it is in our best interest to listen to what God has to say on everything, for there will come a time when there is no buffer zone between us and the immediate perception of God’s presence, and what will you do then? There will be no tantrums, no insisting on our own way, no crying and complaining, for those things are adverse to fitting into God’s universe. We people only seem to get away with it right now, but actually, we benefit from a rich storehouse of grace.

Our happiness with God has much to do with “programming” ourselves to follow his ways. To understand who he is and listen to his word, then turn around and insist upon what feels right to us, or what we have always done, when it directly conflicts with what God would have us do, and how he would have us live, is to deny the reality that we know, as children of God, that is really around us. A reality we accept by faith based upon who God is, and what he says to us and about us. Our existence here on the Earth is an anomaly in the universe, created for us to learn, by reliance on who God is, to ensure that those who choose to be on God’s side of things while not being able to see him, or figure him out, or know what his next move may be in our lives, will one day be cemented in our future positions in eternity knowing as we do what lives we had before, and what havoc and trials separation from the creator of the universe brings about. There will be no blind spot. There will be no doubt, for the horrors of mankind’s life here on Earth will be fresh in the minds of everyone who ever lived for ever an ever. The great thing though, is that we then will never have to fear that this life will ever be repeated, for eternity will be so far above our current existence that deviation from the presence of God will be anathema for us.

Keeping this reality of God in mind, despite what we see, we must then make sure we do not ignore the things we are called to such as care for the needy, whomever they may be, those usually who have no assistance and have fallen on hard times. To ignore the homeless, for instance, is to mock the one who created them. Even worse to arrogantly mistreat them as though they were worthless. If we could see who God is most pleased with today, by being present suddenly in the future, we would surely be shocked by the great crowd of unknown people who would be honored as God’s children, for his ways are not our ways, and his requirements for being pleased have little to do with the way in which we live, and the things we value.

Escape The Hezbollah