It's More Than A Feeling

 

It’s More Than A Feeling!

 

There is a fragment of a song from the 70’s in my head this morning, I don’t remember the whole song just part of a line, “It’s more than a feeling”. That caused the thought knowing JESUS is more than a feeling. Many Believers live their faith by what and how they feel. Many Believers live their life by what they believe the Bible says based on how they feel about that issue. The Bible is very clear and easy to understand if you take it at face value in context.

 

I’ll give two examples:

The Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:1-42; she was married and divorced four times and was living with a man she was not married to; that was why she was at the well at noon, long after the women of the city would have come to draw their daily water. JESUS started a conversation with her by asking her for a drink of water. (Unheard of in that social climate because she was an unknown woman and because she was a Samaritan – of mixed race and faith) JESUS told her He could give her living water which she thought of as natural water when JESUS was talking of His HOLY SPIRIT. In the middle of their conversation JESUS tells her to go get her husband. She, to a complete stranger of a different faith tells him the truth, she has no husband. Then JESUS commends her for telling the truth, the part she felt was enough, and JESUS filled in the part she left out. So she turned the conversation to religion. JESUS tells her two key things, GOD is SPIRIT and can only be worshipped in SPIRIT and Truth (or you have to know that GOD is Truth therefore you have to believe the truth about GOD then you can worship Him). Then He told her He is the Messiah; the One who gives The SPIRIT to those who believe in Him (John 14:12-18). The result was that the woman returned to her city and told everyone what had happened and the people came out to see JESUS, He stayed there for two days and many of the city believed in Him as their Messiah. The truth is that JESUS gently but firmly confronted the woman about her sinful life style, corrected her religious misunderstanding by presenting her with the Truth (there is only one truth and that’s GODs) and she and most of the city where she lived believed in JESUS: that is what The Gospel is about, that is Christianity as it should be.

 

The adulteress woman in Jerusalem in John 8:2-12; she was caught in the act of adultery and publicly brought to JESUS to test Him. Under The Law she and the man should have been taken out of the city and stoned to death. The religious leaders wanted to find something they could accuse JESUS of so they could put Him to death. When the religious leaders illegally presented the woman to see what JESUS would say and do they, under The Law could have been stoned by the people right there. JESUS ignored them so that they would be more boisterous and more people would be drawn to see what was happening. Then facing them He said, “He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.” JESUS publicly exposed their hypocritical sinful nature because no one threw a stone, but starting with the oldest they all left the woman standing with JESUS. Now the crowd watched to see what JESUS would do. When He asked the woman if there was anyone to condemn her she was able to say no, so JESUS said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more!” Then He told the crowd standing around, “I Am The Light of the world. He who follows me will not walk in darkness, but have the Light of Life.”

 

Believers have many misconceptions today, just as they did when JESUS lived in the flesh.

 

Yesterday I joined a conversation about inclusiveness and acceptance; this is where we have much confusion and misunderstanding in the Church. The two examples above show that JESUS’ ministry was to everyone, no matter their station in life, their ethnicity or their religious belief. The Gospel is centered around, “For GOD so Loved the world that He gave His only begotten SON that who so ever believes in Him, should not perish but have everlasting Life.” (John 3:16) It is clear that only those who reject JESUS do not get everlasting Life. JESUS also said, “I Am The Way, The Truth and The Life; no one comes to The Father except through Me.” (John 14:6) Christianity has to be inclusive of all who are seeking to know GOD. But JESUS also told us the result of believing what we want, saying and doing what we want and living as we want. Review Matthew 7:13-29, 25:31-46; JESUS told the man He healed at the Pool of Bethesda to “Go and sin no more lest a worse thing come upon you.” John 5:1-15

 

I received a meme that says, “Come as you are but if you truly repent and believe (Acts 20:21) in JESUS you will not remain as you are (2 Corinthians 5:17).”

 

Back to my opening thought, Christianity is not a feeling, when as JESUS told us to be His disciples we have to die to ourself and live for Him or “take up our cross daily and follow Him”. Christianity is not a religion, it is not about keeping the rules, it is a personal relationship when through The SPIRIT of GOD who lives in all true Believers JESUS introduces us to GOD The Father, we are adopted into His Family and serve Him as Children who will inherit His Eternal Kingdom. Sanctification is what GOD does in us who yield our life through JESUS. Holiness is the result of the work of GOD in our life that separates us from the world that is condemned to eternal damnation to His eternal Kingdom here and now.

 

Living for GOD does not make us better than others therefore we should not scorn or reject any person. But we are warned to be careful in our association with people who do not believe in GOD and those who live in the way the world accepts.

 

If you want to be a Christian but discount the Bible, you have to believe and practice what JESUS taught Himself in the Gospels, these are His Words, what He said we have to do and not do, otherwise you are not a Christian Believer you are practicing the Christian Religion and that will lead you to hell for eternal damnation. JESUS said, “Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction and there are many who go that way. Because, narrow is the gate and difficult is The Way that leads to Life and there are few who find it.” (Matthew 5:13-14) The difference is that you have to search for The Way and follow it to eternal Life, we are born into the broad way and most people just follow along.

 

GOD said “And you will seek Me and will find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:11-13). You must seek GOD to find GOD then when you find GOD you must live according to His plan for you (it’s not about the rules, it’s about GOD’s Will). JESUS taught us how to pray, “Our Father in Heaven, Holy is Your Name, Your Kingdom Come Your Will be done, in the earth as it is in Heaven…” (Matthew 6:9-13) Isaiah and Hosea remind us that there will be a time when GOD cannot be found. (Isaiah 55:6-7, Hosea 5:6-7,) JESUS warned the religious leaders of His day, “I shall be with you a little while longer and then I go to Him who sent Me. You will seek Me and not find Me and where I go you cannot come.” (John 7:32-36) JESUS told Believers to, “Seek first the Kingdom of GOD and His Righteousness” and the issues of life will be taken care of. (Matthew 6:33-34)

 

If you want to be a Christian or believe that you are a Christian than you have to be CHRIST like, that is what Christian means.

 

As I’m finishing this paper up a song from the 60’s comes to mind, “I’m Hooked on a Feeling”, are you hooked on your feelings or are you committed and submitted to JESUS CHRIST as your LORD and Savior? Faith is trusting in and obeying JESUS and The Word of GOD, not what we feel today about a subject or issue or event in our life!

 

Both of those songs are love songs but the feeling of love is not what gets us through this life. GOD who is Love and loved us when we were His enemies wants to deliver us from living by our feelings to living by our trust and obedience to Him and His Word. (1 John)

Leftists Propose Socialist Communities to Replace Police by John Horvat II

 

Leftists Propose Socialist Communities to Replace Police

  By John Horvat II

 

The defund the police movement clearly defines its goal. Its activists believe police officers are agents of violence inside the community. Their solution is to eliminate police.

However, these same defunders are very unclear about what is to replace the police. They carefully avoid the specifics about how their new order will be maintained.

The one thing that is known is that it will involve the community. The new buzzword is community. The replacements will be “community-based,” “community-driven” and “community-centered.” There is talk of “community outreach,” “community development,” “community building” and “community interaction.” The money taken from the police will be given to “community programs.” The word community sparks a magic feeling of goodwill that will replace violence in society.

Community means different things to different groups.

 

Most city officials see community as community centers, recreational activities, government aid schemes and social or cultural programs. These endeavors work inside the framework of local government and its bureaucracy.

What leftists have in mind when talking about community are self-governing forums in which residents might make local decisions that will change people’s lives and neighborhoods. The left works inside these forums mobilizing the masses to action.

To the conservative, the community is a social unit of caring individuals united in purpose to further the common good. It is full of institutions, organizations, and Edmund Burke called “little platoons” that get things done organically inside the natural process of the social body.

A Concept of Community that Once Existed

Regardless of what community means to people, there is one big problem with all these conceptions.

The classic idea of a community that once existed in America has been swallowed up by the culture. To demand “community-driven” solutions to remedy police problems is an empty proposition.

The historical notion of community was based on the happy juncture of families, farms, workplaces and churches in a given area that provided a common social life.  Each community was a social unit with its way of being and expressing itself that was different from neighboring towns and cities. Where personalities and family ties were strong, a community might even develop its own accent, culture, art or cuisine.

Community Is a Solution

Inside this context, all those who now appeal to community to solve the police “problem” are right. Authentic communities can assume many functions of today’s overburdened police departments. Inside community structures, there would then be no need for massive budgets and equipment outlays.

Individuals inside such communities are zealous of their good names and act accordingly. When families inside communities are strong and healthy, they tend to take care of their own and minimize the need for policing and social aid. Likewise, neighborhoods full of strong families tend to produce their own monitoring systems that watch out for each other.

A strong sense of subsidiarity exists in which each level of community relies upon its own resources. This reduces the need for a strong central government and policing. People rely on the institutions that exist where they live and work together. In a community with a strong religious sense, the people voluntarily adhere to a moral code that is an enormous source of order and peace.

In such communities, the role of the police is limited. These solutions are organic and community-driven. All are oriented toward the common good and even the sanctification of community members.

Broken Communities Will Not Work

Remnants of this community spirit might survive here and there, but they no longer dominate. Sociologists like Charles Murray and Robert Putnam trace the decline of civic spirit with the Sexual Revolution of the sixties. They describe dysfunctional neighborhoods and communities nationwide that are “coming apart” primarily due to family breakdown.

The Sexual Revolution turned society upside down by breaking the social links that carried commitments and duties. It replaced them with a do-your-own-thing individualism that preached the freedom to do whatever pleases the person.

Marxist ideology also plays a role in the shattering of communities. It introduces a class-struggle narrative that pits one part of society against another. It creates a culture of resentment and anger against all types of moral restraint.

The result is a society that Alasdair MacIntyre so fittingly called “a meeting place for individual wills, each with its own set of attitudes and preferences and who understand the world solely as an arena for the achievement of their own satisfaction.”

An appeal to community fragments will not renew society or minimize the role of the police. When family life fades, order breaks down. Where the Church loses her influence, crime, immorality and corruption will thrive.

So many police are needed today in certain places because strong communities no longer exist. In their place are empty social spaces that need police to prevent the chaos of clashing wills from destroying all in its path.

The Wrong Call to Community

The defund the police movement calls upon the government to work with mythical “local organizations, leaders and residents” to rebuild communities. Activists demand immediate investment in “indigenous communities” and “communities of color” that do not exist as unified social units. They call upon the government to provide lots of money, social workers and professional planning.

Such appeals reduce a community to a mechanical and systematic use of resources. Building a community is an organic process that works with human resources, abilities and aspirations. It includes natural and spiritual means that bond people together in charity. A “community” plastered together with experts, dollars, and leftist community organizers and activists is not a community but a Frankenstein monster.

Elements of a True Community

A community presupposes some healthy families that are willing to bond together to work out their problems. It requires leaders who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the common good and take upon themselves the burden of responsibility for others. There needs to be a guiding intelligence to carry projects ahead in the long term.

Above all, there needs to be the light of Christian morality, which makes it easier to practice virtue in common. There must be the fire of Christian charity whereby people love one another for the love of God and practice forbearance with each other’s defects.

Without the stability of these essential elements that activists never mention, community-building is doomed to fail.

On the Road to Socialism

Indeed, the leftist agenda is hostile to the family and faith. It can never build a truly authentic community. In reality, its “community-driven,” “community-led,” or “community-centered” programs are state-driven initiatives leading to socialism.

The left does not hide the predominant role of the government in these “community” projects. Police abolitionist Mychal Denzel Smith writes in The Atlantic about solutions that will call for “an overall restructuring of our economic and political order.” The new order he desires would be “a massive public investment in the general welfare—safe housing, healthy food, free education, free health care, a basic income.”

It would also require massive government structures and funding to implement these plans. It would not expect people or families to abandon their sinful lifestyles and foster virtue to advance the common good.

Defunding the police in times of social decadence is a dangerous proposition. Far more dangerous, however, is establishing leftist “communities.”

 

Why Black Lives Matter Is Wrong by John Horvat II

 

Why the Black Lives Matter Is Wrong and Will Promote a Revolution to Destroy America

By John Horvat II

A revolution rages in America. If an image could characterize this revolution, it would be the recent scene of burning the American flag and Bibles at one of Portland’s nightly riots.

The burning is a clear provocation, meant to offend and outrage. Its goal is to attack those things that still have meaning to countless Americans—God, country, family. The symbolic act communicates an incendiary desire to see these things reduced to ashes.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is the umbrella under which this is happening in America. Its militants circulate in these protests. The “black lives matter” slogan is painted and chanted everywhere by rioters. Greater New York Black Lives Matter president Hawk Newsome threatened to “burn down the system and replace it” should their demands not be met.

 

Why People Sympathize With BLM

Most people think the BLM movement only deals with those suffering from racism. Many people sentimentally feel sorry for the victims of injustice and sympathize with the widespread outrage. Some may even be unaware of the Portland burning of the Bibles and the American flag.

These shallow BLM supporters excuse the violence as the excesses of those expressing their righteous anger against a “racist” establishment and police brutality. The media spin reporting on the protests to support this myth.

Very few take the trouble to dig deeper. Were they to do this, they would see that the BLM movement does not correspond to the mental image promoted by the media. BLM co-founders Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza are avowed and “trained Marxists.” They make no secret of their program to destroy America, as most know it.

 

Digging Deeper

Their radical goals can be found on the BLM web site, and in numerous articles, tweets, and interviews. They extend far beyond the civil rights struggle of old. The BLM manifesto of beliefs wants to overthrow the present “racist” society and replace it with an egalitarian, socialist society that embraces all “oppressed” groups and identities—including class, gender identity, sexual orientation, and immigration status.

For example, the movement seeks to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another.” Theirs is “a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.”

Perhaps its most dangerous belief is its stubborn adherence to class struggle ideology, applying it to their cause. In this case, it reduces all problems to a “systemic” racism that must be opposed in all social structures and institutions. It creates a false division of society and puts all racial and identity categories at war with the present established order.

Thus, for example, the BLM movement wants to abolish policing and prisons as instruments of “white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchal imperialism.” It targets all manifestations of capitalism as tools of oppression and seeks to defer and eventually abolish rent, mortgages, and utility fees.

 

Its religious position resorts to the endlessly recycled liberation theology that applies the Gospel to the Marxist class struggle narrative. Christ is turned into the redeemer of the oppressed against the oppressive establishment. Its co-founder Patrisse Cullors turns to old pagan rituals to ancestors and spirits for help in the struggle.

 

BLM’s idea of struggle also targets the traditional and hierarchical Church that it sees as a tool of white oppression. Thus, militants and sympathizers like Shaun King call for the overthrow of “white” Jesus representations, saints, and stained glass. All things that traditionally represent God and His moral law must go.

 

Presenting a False Dilemma

With such radical goals, it is hard to imagine why the public would sympathize with the movement. Yet more perplexing is the support of the “racist” establishment that BLM unequivocally wants to destroy. Sports figures, tech CEOs, and clergymen seem to trip over each other to see who can out-empathize the other in coddling the BLM cause.

BLM successfully framed the debate to elicit the support of the many Americans who are against racism. BLM and the left blame the sufferings of all black people on racism. Further, they made racism “systemic” so that only a radical change of the American system will yield results. No individual can do a thing about it, except to make amends for participating in the system. Americans are presented with the choice to either support the “anti-racist” struggle or risk being labeled racist. Like all leftist alternatives, the two options represent a false dilemma.

As long as this false dilemma is not denounced and rejected, the BLM cause will continue to advance.

Why the BLM Narrative Is Wrong

Americans must quickly come to grips with the fact that this BLM narrative is wrong. It does not correspond to reality and will destroy Christian America.

The BLM narrative is wrong because the leading cause of the suffering of the black community is not racism. Racism may influence the problem but is not the major cause of the plight of large parts of the black community.

What sinks Americans of any color into poverty is the breakdown of the family and moral living. America’s black community especially suffers from absent fathers, struggling single mothers, and children without stable and moral family lives.

This family and moral breakdown creates a cycle of poverty and suffering that makes it difficult, but not impossible, for children to be raised well. Generally, individuals of any race that establish a stable family life and faithfully follow the Christian moral code will prosper in American society. Study after study supports this conclusion. Any action to weaken these two things adds fuel to the fire of the frightful crisis inside the black community—and all American communities.

The BLM narrative is wrong because it takes this moral problem and turns into a racial one. In doing this, the misbehaving individual is absolved from the obligation to live morally and from all duties to family, community, nation, and God. All blame is ascribed to a racist system imposed by a white majority.

Yet worse, the BLM narrative is wrong because it proposes to destroy the institutions, traditions, and social structures needed to help solve the problem. Instead of strengthening the family, BLM aims to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure” in favor of more fluid ways of living together. Instead of working inside a proven system that brings prosperity, BLM proposes socialist and Marxist schemes that are all proven failures. Communism brought indescribable misery and death to hundreds of millions throughout the twentieth century and still does this today. BLM favors the LGBTQ+ agenda that subverts the much-needed traditional family structure. The movement supports abortion that kills black babies in the womb and destroys the moral fiber of individuals and communities.

The BLM narrative is also wrong because it does not reflect the true sentiments of the black community, which is religious, patriotic, and generally manifests greater disapproval of homosexuality than other groups.

 

 

Targeting the Moral Law

The goals of Marxist movements are always the same. They want to tear down every manifestation of the natural moral law and establish an egalitarian and immoral society, in which individuals are not responsible for their actions. Ultimately, they revolt against God, Who is the author of this law. This is why Marxists attack the Church; the Church teaches people to know, love, and serve God.

America never was and is not perfect. But it does retain some precious remnants of Christian civilization. The greatest threat to America is the destruction of what remains of the Christian moral law. Should this occur, the nation will be overwhelmed by chaos. This danger imperils all America, not just the black community. All America is in a state of moral decadence and suffers from broken families, shattered communities, and empty churches. Everyone, all races, should unite to fight these common evils. Instead, BLM pursues a policy of division, rage, and class struggle that endangers the nation in this time of supreme crisis.

Thus, it is no surprise that Bibles and the American flags are set on fire. They represent the order to be toppled in the revolution that is coming. Americans need to realize the media’s BLM spin is a big lie that must be rejected. The movement is radically Marxist and homosexual and toils for the destruction of a Christian America. The future of the nation is at risk. Only a return to God and His law can avoid disaster.

As seen on LifeSiteNews.

 

Once Saved Always Saved

 

Once Saved Always Saved

 

There is much controversy in the Church about once saved always saved; here is how I see it.

 

JESUS told the disciples not to rejoice in the authority He gave them over the devil but to rejoice that their names were written in Heaven, Luke 10:20, we have always heard it taught that this is The LAMB’s Book of Life.

 

In Revelation 20 we see that all men will be judged from the books and those whose name is not found in The LAMB’s Book of Life are cast into the lake of fire and brimstone for eternal judgment.

 

In Psalm 139:16 David says, “in Your Book they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.”

 

The Bible is full of references of everything being recorded, every word spoken, every deed done and Revelation 20:11-15 tells us that everyone will be judged by what is written in the books.

 

In Revelation 22:18-19 JESUS says, “For I testify to everyone who hears the Words Of The Prophesy Of This Book: If anyone adds to these things, GOD will add to him the plagues that are written in This Book; and if anyone takes away from the Words Of This Book Of Prophesy, GOD shall take away his part from The Book Of Life, from The Holy City and from the things that are written in this Book.”

 

I believe that at the moment of conception, when the sperm and the egg join (medical science reports that there is a flash of light at this moment) GOD makes them a Living Spirit Being and He gives each of us a calling and gift to be used in His Kingdom in the earth and in Heaven. The days of our natural life are written out in His Book Of Life and the words and deeds of how we live our natural life are written in the books of record. There is a point when our name can be struck from The Book Of Life; there is also a moment when it is un-struck, the moment we are born again. But, our name can be totally removed from The Book Of Life! Study Matthew 7:13-29; 25; Revelation 20:11-15; 22:6-20

Teaching, Training, Testing

 

Teaching, Training, Testing

 

We who are born again, SPIRIT filled Christians know that GOD gave us His SPIRIT to live in us, making us living temples of GOD in the earth where we are to be priests (servants) of His Will and Kingdom in the earth as it is in Heaven.

Study Matthew 6:9-13; John 14:15-18; 1 Corinthians 3:9-17

 

HOLY SPIRIT, who is GOD not a separate being lives in all true believers, He is The One who opens our understanding the GOD’s Word so that we can worship and serve Him.

Study John 4:24; Ephesians 6:17; 2 Timothy 3:10-17; Hebrews 4:12-13

 

HOLY SPIRIT is the Seal or Mark of GOD on all true believers.

Study Revelation Ephesians 4:30; 2 Timothy 2:19; 3:12, 7:3, 9:4, 14:1, 22:3-4

 

So GOD’s SPIRIT teaches us the Word of GOD and how to live; He trains us in using His Gifts and in Spiritual Warfare and He tests us so that we can see our weaknesses and growths and where we need to yield to Him.

 

West Wing Reads

 

West Wing Reads

August 19, 2020

How the White House Prepared for a Pandemic

The Trump Administration “was well aware of the threat of a pandemic before the novel coronavirus emerged,” Joel Zinberg and Tomas Philipson write in The Wall Street Journal. In fact, a White House report produced last September laid the groundwork for President Trump’s historic push for a vaccine, now known as Operation Warp Speed.
 
“The report discussed how the lack of private market incentives had led to underinvestment in developing and using innovative technologies that can quickly produce vaccines for a new virus . . . When Covid-19 appeared a few months later, the administration expeditiously applied the report’s lessons on the value of public-private partnerships to speed vaccine innovation and production.”
 
Now, “new vaccines are being developed at previously unimaginable speed.

 

WSJ OPINION

The White House Prepared for a Pandemic

A September 2019 report laid the groundwork for Operation Warp Speed.

By Joel M. Zinberg and Tomas J. Philipson

Aug. 18, 2020 7:16 pm ET

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo launched the Democrats’ broadside against the Trump administration’s Covid-19 response. “Our current federal government is dysfunctional and incompetent,” he told virtual conventioneers Monday in a recorded speech. “It couldn’t fight off the virus. In fact, it didn’t even see it coming.”

In reality, the administration was well aware of the threat of a pandemic before the novel coronavirus emerged. We helped develop a September 2019 White House report, “Managing the Impact of Pandemic Influenza Through...

Harnessing the power of science to fight the coronavirus

by Kelvin Droegemeier 

 | August 19, 2020 12:00 AM

 

In the midst of the great losses and numerous challenges created by the coronavirus pandemic, science has been catapulted to the front lines in the fight against the “invisible enemy,” SARS-CoV-2.

Decades of scientific discovery and progress have equipped the nation’s scientists, engineers, and healthcare professionals with the knowledge, tools, and technologies needed to understand this novel virus. From years of scientific development, researchers can now identify therapeutic targets, anticipate spread, and rapidly develop innovative treatments for the associated COVID-19 disease.

Science is one of the strongest weapons that we have against this virus, which is why President Trump has enlisted our unrivaled research community in the fight. Since the start of the pandemic, the Trump administration has taken several actions to engage scientists in academia, industry, and government to understand and defeat this disease.

For example, Trump is working with Congress to enable federal agencies to direct billions of dollars in funding to support COVID-19 research aimed at providing life-saving interventions. This massive investment already is producing benefits, as exemplified by the early encouraging findings in patients enrolled in the National Institutes of Health Phase 3 clinical trials of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine.

Trump also initiated Operation Warp Speed as part of a broader strategy to accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of critically needed therapeutics and vaccines — all without compromising ethics, accountability, or safety. Led by the Department of Health and Human Services in partnership with the Department of Defense, Operation Warp Speed aims to deliver significant quantities of a safe, effective vaccine for COVID-19 in the next several months — a process that normally takes years to achieve.

Our ability to wield science against COVID-19 today is the result of generations of men and women whose pioneering work across every field of science paved the way for innovations that protect first responders, diagnose and heal the sick, and guide the decisions of public health policymakers. Rapid development of vaccines and promising therapeutics, such as remdesivir, are possible because thousands of scientific trailblazers in the fields of polio, malaria, and HIV advanced our basic knowledge about the immune system and the molecular biology of viruses. The knowledge and tools that emerged from the Human Genome Project two decades ago, for example, enabled scientists, to sequence the SARS-CoV2 genome fully in only a matter of hours.

Yet, these discoveries and innovations in the biological and health sciences represent just a fraction of how previous discoveries are guiding current response efforts. In a pandemic, supply chains are essential to providing essential goods and services, fueling innovation, and creating American jobs. Social science research on supply chains gives companies large and small the ability to serve people more effectively.

For example, this research reveals new ways to deliver products while reducing points of contact — which means fewer people getting sick. It also reveals new ways that humans can use dynamic route planning to identify and workaround risky hot spots — which means fewer disruptions to our economy.

Social science research also creates technologies that allow companies to better integrate their own production schedules with better knowledge of when other companies are reopening — which means more continuous employment for American workers.

Advances in high performance computing ensure that outputs from epidemiological models (which previously took days, if not weeks, to produce) are now enabling near-real-time decisions for creating and allocating resources such as ventilators. An emphasis on expanding access to high-speed broadband internet helps millions of people work, study, and utilize telemedicine from home. Atmospheric, earth, and ocean sciences research has aided understanding of the survivability of viruses within the environment, yielding important information for creating disinfection plans.

The Trump administration’s focus on science extends well beyond our shores to include the global community. Publishers worldwide voluntarily responded to a 16-nation call, led by the White House in March, to make all COVID-19-related scientific publications immediately accessible in a public repository. To leverage these and other research results, the White House joined industry, academic, and nonprofit leaders to release the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset — a collection of nearly 200,000 scholarly articles on the coronavirus that are machine-readable for data and text mining. Researchers around the world already have contributed extensive tools and insights, including numerous peer-reviewed publications, aimed at understanding the virus and its effects.

Just as the United States has united to confront every threat throughout our history, we will emerge from today’s crisis stronger and more resilient. The knowledge and technologies brought to bear in the fight against COVID-19 will serve as the new foundation for the nation’s response to whatever challenge may come next, giving us extraordinary innovations and discoveries that will provide the capabilities needed to maintain the health, safety, and security of our nation.

Kelvin Droegemeier is Trump’s science adviser and the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology.

 

“President Trump recently delivered on our recommendation to suspend the payroll tax . . . The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that Trump's tax deferral may put $100 billion worth of extra pay back in the pockets of U.S. workers through year-end,” Stephen Moore and Alfredo Ortiz write in RealClearMarkets.

 

 

“Chicago police officers have been retiring at double the normal rate recently, raising concerns that the number of new hires won’t keep pace with the number leaving,” Frank Main reports. “Who wants to stay in this environment? . . . The mayor doesn’t back us,” the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President said. Read more in the Chicago Sun-Times.

 

Don't Touch GOD's Anointed!

Don’t Touch GOD’s Anointed!

 

Today I sat in on an on-line service from a Church that I had visited several times when I first moved to the Rio Grande Valley in 2018. There was a good study from Jude and afterwards there was a good discussion over a range of topics that different ones brought up, the theme pretty much stayed around our need to know The Word. One of the participants said (this is how I heard it), he had been listening to a program where the speaker spoke about a certain ministry that was from the prosperity movement. That the minister in question had made a quote he attributed to The Bible that the program speaker said was not a Scripture. It was about JESUS going to hell and having the keys of hell. It seemed to me that the person sharing this believed the program speaker that the prosperity minister was saying things that are not in The Bible or was misquoting The Bible.

 

I was familiar with the scripture that was quoted so I looked it up and read it to the group and gave my opinion. Revelation 1:18 is the verse, “I AM He who lives and was dead and behold I Am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of hades and death.” NKJV In context JESUS is declaring to John who He is and to write down the things he has seem, the things that are and the things that are about to happen, Revelation 1:17-20 Context is very important in understanding and interpreting The Scriptures. I also spoke on the OT quote from Psalms that said that The MESSIAH would lead captivity captive, or lead those in judgment to life who had died before JESUS went to the cross.

 

All of that is the introduction to what I want to talk about.

 

In my short diatribe a also said that we have to be careful of those “ministries” who function is to put down other ministries. That our responsibility is to so know The Word that we recognize when it is misquoted or taken out of context to make a point. I used kings David and Saul as examples. Saul had become an evil king yet David would not strike him; even when he had the chance; because Saul was the anointed by GOD, king, even though David had later been anointed to be king. I also said that the Bible tells us to cover over other’s sins not expose them and that there was no Biblical example of a ministry that was to denigrate other ministries. Someone else said how we are to pray for our enemies and a couple of other things along that line were mentioned.

 

Tonight as my wife and I were laying down to sleep I was reminded by GOD’s SPIRIT that the writers of the epistles did mention some by name who had gone astray and some who were purposely deceiving others by their teachings. Study Romans 16:17-19; 1 Corinthians 15:33-34; Galatians 6:1-5; Ephesians 5:1-21; Colossians 2:8-9, 18-23, 3:12-17; 1 Thessalonians 5:12-15; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15; 1 Timothy 1:3-11, 4:1-11, 6:3-5; 2 Timothy 2:14-18, 23-26, 3:1-9; Titus 3:9-10; James 4:11-12; 2 Peter 2:1-3, 12-22; 1 John2:18-23, 4:20-21; 2 John :7-11; 3 John :9-12; Jude

 

So then, be careful what you say and who you say it about because GOD will hold us accountable for every word we speak. “But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” Matthew 12:36-37