{ One Hundred Eighty-Six }

"In the tide in history that seems to be inextricably moving towards so much of lawlessness and unrighteousness and injustice, I draw comfort from the fact that God always seems to bring it down to the individual and He says set your house in order first. He said to Nehemiah take the men and put them in front of their own homes, let them build a wall in front of their own homes first. And I am confident today and I say this without any pretense, please hear me, I am absolutely confident today that if the church of Jesus Christ sets her house in order we will see revival break out in this land, I have no doubt about that whatsoever. And how does that begin? It begins in YOUR LIFE and it begins in mine. So the finger can't be pointed there...as much as it pains you and me. I have to look this way and say Ravi, is righteousness and justice from God the foundation of my life? Is God's voice present in my life?  What a wonderful thing when you can say the glory is present. The voice of God is heard.  I want you to follow this argument: If there is darkness...could it be from the dust of the herd running in the wrong direction? Are you and I willing to stand alone if need be and move in the right direction where the darkness dissipates and the light shines brightly? Listen to the words of Malcom Muggeridge: 'The world’s way of responding to intimations of decay is to engage equally in idiot hopes and idiot despair. On the one hand some new policy or discovery is confidently expected to put everything to rights: a new fuel, a new drug, détente, world government. On the other, some disaster is as confidently expected to prove our undoing. Capitalism will break down. Fuel will run out. Plutonium will lay us low. Atomic waste will kill us off. Overpopulation will suffocate us, or alternatively, a declining birth rate will put us more surely at the mercy of our enemies. In Christian terms, such hopes and fears are equally beside the point. As Christians we know that here we have no continuing city, that crowns roll in the dust and every earthly kingdom must sometime flounder, whereas we acknowledge a king men did not crown and cannot dethrone, as we are citizens of a city of God they did not build and cannot destroy. Thus the apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, living in a society as depraved and dissolute as ours. Their games, like our television, specialized in spectacles of violence and eroticism. Paul exhorted them to be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in God’s work, to concern themselves with the things that are unseen, for the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal [1 Cor. 15:58; 2 Cor. 4:18]. It was in the breakdown of Rome that Christendom was born. Now in the breakdown of Christendom there are the same requirements and the same possibilities to eschew the fantasy of a disintegrating world and to seek the reality of what is not seen and eternal, the reality of Christ.'  Spiritual leadership is central. Self aggrandizement is fatal. Obedience to known truth is crucial. Responsibility is personal."

 ~Ravi Zacharias  

{ One Hundred Twenty }

"The Bible is the best book in the world."

~John Adams

{ One Hundred Seventeen }

"Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."

~C.S. Lewis

{ One Hundred }

 "The story of every great Christian achievement is the history of answered prayer." 

~E.M. Bounds

{ Forty-Four }

"Duty is ours; results are God's."

~John Quincy Adams

{ Twenty-Four }

Betsy's Battle Flag

From dusk till dawn the livelong night she kept the tallow dips alight,

And fast her nimble fingers flew to sew the stars upon the blue.

With weary eyes and aching head she stiched the stripes of white a red,

And when the day came up the stair complete across a carven chair hung Betsy's battle-flag.

Like shadows in the evening gray the continentals filed away,

With broken boots and ragged coats, But hoarse defiance in their throats;

They bore the marks of want and cold, and some were lame and some were old,

And some with wounds intended bled, but floating bravely overhead was Betsy's battle-flag.

When fell the battle's leaden rain, the soldier hushed his moans of pain,

And raised his dying head to see King George's troopers turn and flee.

Their charging column reeled and broke, and vanished in the rolling smoke,

Before the glory of the stars, the snowy stripes, and scarlet bars of Betsy's battle flag.

The simple stone of Betsy Ross is covered now with mold and moss,

But still her deathless banner flies, and keeps the color of the skies.

A nation thrills, a nation bleeds, A nation follows where it leads,

And every man is proud to yield his life upon a crimson field for Betsy's battle flag.

~Minna Irving