Watch your words, Preacher

I’ve heard more than one preacher start a statement with “I don’t know about you but…” If this post is mere personal preference, please pardon me for mentioning it, but this seems soft and/or uncertain. (It’s similar to the SM – social media, habit of softening a statement by typing “Just saying.”) “Thus saith the Lord” (over 400 times in the Bible) or “it is written” (about 80 times) both have an authority, a firmness more fitting to the uncertainties of our dying world. The trumpet needs to make a sure sound!

– eab, 2/18/17

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A Christian Can Say –

You’re in charge Lord, of all we do and all we say,

From the day of our birth to our dying day.

All the decades, all the desires, all the delights,

Every land mile, each boat mile, all the flights.

For the man, You’re in charge of a choice wife;

For the lady, You decide who’s man of her life.

For the couple, You handle conception;

One child, no child, several; without exception.

You direct a man to be merchant, or teacher

Doctor, carpenter, animal man, or firm preacher.

You give the lady talents to keep the home:   

Cleaning, ironing, and either cooking or laundry foam.

You decide where we live, country or town,

A house of gloom or glee, smiles or a frown,

Upscale, modern, traditional ranch, track,

Older unpainted, tidy, but little more than a shack.

You Lord, guide us to the right fellow believers;

Protecting us from sheep-clothed-wolves – deceivers.

Send us where the Word is “front and center,”   

Where light is allowed to dawn and enter.

You decide if we live to grow old, then older,

Or face cancer or other problems, weak or bolder.

How wonderful to have a daily, careful Guide,

Through decades untiring, by our soul’s side,

Through cross-roads, intersections, You show the way,

Till we join Enoch, in the Eternal bliss of Your day!

You, Lord are finally in charge

Of the day we the body disembark.

And as the soul has directed in care,

Up, up, up with You, see that it journeys there.

          –eab, 5/7/08

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William Jennings Bryan – birth, Mar. 19, 1860

…Self — the most popular of all the false gods…

                                – William Jennings Bryan, In His Image (NY: Fleming Revell Co., 1922), 75.

 

There is more science in the twenty-fourth verse of the first chapter of Genesis…than in all Darwin wrote.

                                – William Jennings Bryan, In His Image (NY: Fleming Revell Co., 1922), 94.

 

What shall it profit a man if he shall gain all the learning of the schools and lose his faith in God?

                                – William Jennings Bryan, In His Image (NY: Fleming Revell Co., 1922), 118.

 

…The worship of the intellect — an idolatry as deadly to spiritual progress as the worship of images…

                                – William Jennings Bryan, In His Image (NY: Fleming Revell Co., 1922), 127.

           

One can afford to be in a minority but he cannot afford to be wrong.

                                – William Jennings Bryan, In His Image (NY: Fleming Revell Co., 1922), 189.

 

…Confucius…Buddha…Mahomet…Hindu [followers of these] except where they have borrowed from Christian nations…have made no progress in fifteen hundred years.

                                – William Jennings Bryan, In His Image (NY: Fleming Revell Co., 1922), 202.

 

War is not a private affair; it disturbs the commerce of the world obstructs the ocean’s highways and kills innocent bystanders.

                                – William Jennings Bryan, In His Image (NY: Fleming Revell Co., 1922), 231.

 

The preacher should be the boldest of men because of the unselfish character of his work.

                                – William Jennings Bryan, In His Image (NY: Fleming Revell Co., 1922), 261.

William Jennings Bryan was born this date (3/19/1860) in Salem, IL.  He was Democratic contender for the US presidency three-times and Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson until he felt Wilson compromised and Bryan resigned.  He has been called America’s best-known fundamentalist between the uncivil war to the great depression.

 

As a Presbyterian layman, lawyer, and Christian, he defended and won (1925) for the state a victory against the teaching of evolution, in the Tennessee “Scopes Monkey Trial.  Bryan College is named for this great man.  He is also know for his “Cross of Gold” speech 7/8/1896, Chicago.

 

 

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