D.S. al Coda: Go to the Sign of the Cross, Then proceed to the End

Today I received a very rich blessing!  I was invited to come out to Broad River Correctional Center and hear the BRCC Band Concert under the direction of Dr. Dave Osterlund.  Dr. "O" as he is called by the inmates, has done an amazing thing that not many people even know about.  17 months ago Dr. Osterlund started the first and only prison band in SC, and as far as we know, the only prison band in the nation.  All of the band members were required to learn to read music and play in a recorder choir for 15 weeks.  After that, they could choose an instrument to play.  Enough instruments were donated to comprise a 16-piece band covering brass, woodwinds and percussion.  Lexington Baptist gave a trombone, a baritone and a clarinet.  Yes, they may have sounded a bit like the Mayberry Band, but most of these men have only been playing their instrument for 3,4, or 5 months!  And several of them were actually quite good.  I was just so amazed by what I was witnessing that I had

Today is October 12, 2014 and we are in the middle of the Biblical Feast of Tabernacles we are to observe according to Leviticus 23.   If we truly wanted to be accurate in our religious holidays we would be celebrating Jesus’ birth during this Feast every year because that is when He was actually born (And that can be proven using the scriptural account of when Zacharias and Elizabeth gave birth to John, but that’s another subject).   I do celebrate The Light of the World coming during December because that is when Mary was conceived of the Holy Spirit, and we believe that life begins at conception. With that being said, look at Luke 2 which is the account of Jesus’ birth beginning with the angelic proclamation to a group of shepherds.   Verse 20 says, “The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen .” What had the shepherds heard and seen?   The immediate response from most of us is that the shepherds heard and saw an angel telli

This week is the 13th anniversary of 9/11 when America came under attack by an un-named army from an un-named nation.  There are still many unanswered questions about that day, but we do know that there is an evil Satanic presence beyond our comprehension at work in this world, and it is capable of the most heinous atrocities imaginable.   Many of us wonder every September if there will be another attempt at such a catastrophic attack upon our soil at this anniversary, or when ISIS will claim another genocidal victory.  Most of us will agree that it is not a matter of IF, but simply a matter of WHEN we will be targeted again, and we can only wonder WHERE it will occur. So, do I live in fear? Well, in a word, "No!"  I live in prayer!  There are those who say they don't live in fear, but apart from our God, I would propose that in actuality they are living in denial with a false sense of security because we are in the good 'ol U.S. of A.  Or else they may hav

Mom of Slain Israeli Teen Naftali Fraenkel Hopes for 'Peace and Calm' The mother of an Israeli teenager who was kidnapped and murdered said Monday that she shares the pain of the parents of a Palestinian teenager burned to death in what police say was a revenge killing. “No mother or father should go through what we are going now,” said the mother, Rachel Fraenkel, whose son, Naftali, was among three Israeli teens murdered in the West Bank.         “Even in the depth of the mourning of our son, it’s hard for me to de “The shedding of innocent blood is against morality, is against the Torah and Judaism, it’s against the basis of our life in this country.” She concluded: “We truly hope that very soon the peace and calm will come back all over our country.” scribe how distressed we were over the outrage that happened in Jerusalem,” she said, speaking of the apparent revenge killing of Mohammed Abu Khdeir. Retaliation and revenge is an ever-growing snowball that will l

It's a perfect day of rest on this Shabbat to contemplate the sacrifice that Jesus made for us on a Roman cross approximately 1,981 years ago.  But if a day is as a thousand years to God, then it all happened "the day before yesterday" so to speak.  Yet it seems so far removed from our generation, and there are so many questions that puzzle us for which there are no answers.  But one day everything will be brought into the light, and we will know exactly when and where Jesus was crucified, what became of the robe Jesus wore that the soldiers gambled for, and exactly when did Jesus rise from the dead? (All we know is that the Mary's went to the tomb "while it was still dark" and found it empty. But today it is cold. -- The coldness of death was in that tomb where Jesus lay on a hard slab of stone at the healthy earthly age of 33.  Yet He was a part of the One and only Jehovah God from before the creation of the earth. Today it is raining. -- The sky i

Proverbs 31:10-31 is often used to describe a godly woman as a “proverbs 31 woman.” But there is something very unique about this passage that is often disregarded by the English or non-Hebrew speaking world because no one would actually see this unless they were able to read this from a Torah scroll in Hebrew, and even then they could possibly miss this unless someone pointed it out.   This passage is 22 verses long.   There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet and this passage is an acrostic of the Hebrew alphabet – each verse begins with a consecutive letter beginning with the first letter ALEPH and ending with the last letter, TAV.   Now, why is that of significant?   The acrostic of this passage which was written a thousand years before Jesus took on flesh gives us clues about how to become a proverbs 31 woman! In the book of Revelations we find 3 instances where Jesus says, “I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.”   Alpha and Omega are the first and last l

Today I was in the town of Olney, England.   It is the spot on the globe where former slave trader John Newton wrote “Amazing Grace,” and also pastored the Olny Church of St. Peter & St. Paul.   It is also the location of the Sutcliff Baptist Church which is considered the birthplace of the Baptists who first met on that site in a barn around 1650.   We were all very surprised to walk in that historic church in this quaint little village to find dual projection screens, drum set, flat screen rear monitors, sound and light board in the rear.   Coming out of the church and taking a picture of the sign, a little lady was walking by and asked why we would be interested in taking a picture of her church’s sign.   That’s when I met Connie Page, a 90-year-old member of the Baptist Church.   Telling her we were Baptist Singing Men from SC, we asked her what worship was like in Sutcliff 25 years ago when she came to Olney.     As expected, the worship was very traditional with a pipe o

This is one of the 7 Feasts of the Lord (That's what the Bible calls them - it does not say they are the Feasts of the Jews).  The word for FEAST in the Bible is MOED.  It means "A Divine Appointment".   Let's keep these appointments with the Father, and thus OBEY Him that we might draw closer to Him!  If you cannot come to this Passover Seder, decide how you can keep the Feast this year.  He does not tell us exactly how to keep all of the Feasts, just that we are to keep them, remember them and learn how they help us to live.

1 Corinthians 9:25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. In watching the Olympics we have witnessed incredible human physical accomplishments.   Every one of these athletes know that they have a small window of opportunity to compete in games that come around only every four years.   I will never forget exactly 20 years ago when Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed on the knee by a hit man ultimately connected to skating competitor Tonya Harding just prior to the Olympics in Lillehamer.    I had just recovered from vocal surgery in November of 1993 and I saw the video of Nancy Kerrigan on the floor crying out, “Why, why?   Skating is my life!”     That struck me so much because I thought , “Don’t say anything that you can do with your physical body is your life.”   I remember flippantly saying in college, “Music is my life.”   And I came very close to los

I started a "sacrifice bucket" just outside the side door of my heart.  I believe that our Father in heaven still desires for us to make sacrifices unto Him.  Certainly not for the purpose of making atonement for our sins - that was accomplished by the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus on the cross.  But what kind of offering pleases God the most?   We may tend to think that the only thing we can offer to God is something we have perfected or worked on for days or weeks.   But the surprising thing is that while God can accept and bless a sacrificial offering of something we are pleased to offer Him such as a song, a good deed, a certain skill or even money, God is magnified when we give him things that don’t have any place in our hearts and lives!   He wants us to sacrifice to Him our pride and our selfish desires, and He will gladly receive all of our cares and worries. He really loves it when we give Him anything that stands in the way of allowing Him to dwell completely in ou

2 Samuel 24:24 says, “ I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing." The background of this verse is that David had sinned against the Lord by not trusting the LORD, and also of becoming proud of the numbers he had counted in his armies of 800,000 men in Israel and 500,000 in Judah.   God’s judgment upon David resulted in a plague that killed 70,000.   David felt extremely remorseful and realized how much devastation was caused by his sin.   The prophet Gad told him to build an altar and make sacrifices unto God.   So David went to Araunah the Jebusite and said he wanted to buy his threshing floor to build an altar there.   Araunah offered to just give David the threshing floor and the animals to sacrifice to which David replied “I will not sacrifice to the LORD my God burnt offerings that cost me nothing." Note that David’s decision to make a sacrifice was not an effort by David to appease the God he had sinned against.   He was maki