CHAPTER 1

A Band of Bullies Persecuting Christians

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In October of 2014 the City Council of Houston, Texas issued subpoenas ordering five prominent church pastors to bring their printed sermons before the council. The mayor, an openly homosexual woman, was displeased with the pastors' recent sermons where they had preached the Bible's teachings regarding this sinful lifestyle. The truth is; her honor was stung by some unflattering reference to her from one or more pulpits in recent days. Rather than handle her grievance as a civil matter, she elected to up the ante by making it a criminal case. This is illegal use of the public laws for personal vengeance.

All bullies are cowards. Given authority, they can always be counted on to use their power in the most disgusting manner. On the schoolyard, the most feared bully is the one who has an older brother backing him up. Should the bully have a teacher or administrator in his pocket, it becomes even worse. We don't usually equate the mayor's office with so much clout. The same week this miscarriage of justice occurred in Houston a much worse thing transpired in Iguala, Guerreros, Mexico. There the mayor's wife is implicated in the illegal actions of the local police who shot up three busloads of young college students. This bully action by the cops resulted in six deaths, twenty-five wounded, and forty-three missing, and presumed dead. The stuff happening in Houston is every bit as illegal as that in Iguala.

It has been postulated before that we can expect to see pastors prosecuted for simply reading the King James Bible to the flock. It appears that might first occur in this nation in Houston, Texas. For a better understanding of these things, take that Bible and read the following passages: Matthew 5:11 – 10:22 – 24:9, and John 15:18-25. The Lord not only told us to expect this suffering for His sake – He tells us we shall prevail in the end at John 4:4 and elsewhere. These dastardly deeds are proliferating world-wide at an alarming rate. In Muslim countries the gavel of justice is replaced with the sword of Islam.

Speaking of that; you will not see people like her honor and the council harassing those Imams for their traitorous, hate-laced sermons. She and her ilk will be in hiding lest the sword of Allah should make their heads into bowling balls.

The same Constitution of the United States which protects her kind also protects the rights of the preachers' sermons in its First Amendment. When she and her council attempt to bully those pastors by controlling their sermons, they are violating the real meaning of "separation of church and state."

Those council members and the mayor have exactly as much authority in this matter as you or I have in telling them what color socks they should wear. Hopefully, Attorney General Greg Abbott or someone can head off this inane action before it becomes a further embarrassment to the good citizens of Texas. They really should, in my humble opinion, suffer more than simple humiliation. They should be strongly reprimanded and turned out of office. Perhaps some civic minded group could get a couple of a million signatures of qualified voters to implement such action.

As we see more and more politically correct foolishness replacing the knowledge of right and wrong, we can expect to see ever increasing disregard for the ordinances of our Creator. If those being persecuted are unable to sway the thinking of the masses, we can expect rough sledding ahead for all.

The Scriptures tell us at II Chronicles 7:14 what is required on our part lest we suffer the judgment of a righteous God. Let us pray for His mercy and His guidance for our elected leaders. Meanwhile, let's pray for strength and wisdom for those persecuted pastors and their flocks in Houston and around the whole world.

CHAPTER 2

A Few More Rotten Apples in the Barrel

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The old adage about a few rotten apples prepares us to expect an occasional bad egg when candling the laying hen's output, to expect an under-performer in every school class, an occasional lemon off the production line. We see an occasional typo in reading Martin Luther's sermons that have been translated from the original German and in print for centuries. But for excellent proof readers, this essay here would have a dozen or so. We still let one get by occasionally. In the Bible, at Galatians 5:9 we see reference to a little leaven spreading throughout the whole lump of bread dough, affecting the entire loaf. This was referring to how a little sin in one's life or the church spreads like a cancer to adversely contaminate the entire being. With that thought in mind, let's examine a few apples in the barrel, or some of today's lumps of bread dough.

Presently our legislative branch of the federal government has the lowest approval rating in history, our executive branch is a collection of slimy felons, and our judiciary is a macabre joke. The House is peopled with those who are afraid of their own shadow; unwilling to stand up for what is best for the nation while allowing the president to commit impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors. They are scared to even mention them, while the liberal media covers their eyes like the see no evil monkey. The jesters in robes at the Supreme Court find a right for a mother to commit infanticide in our constitution, after almost two hundred fifty years! Our latest-- greatest hope for a conservative court slaps us in the face by changing a word in the law creating the Frankenstein Obamacare. Justice Roberts had no more authority to reword an act of Congress than you or I do. I heard one news person say something like "Gee, I think that's illegal."

All the entitlement giveaways of our ruling elite have resulted in their staying in power under alternating banners until we now have a majority of voters sitting on their butts, spending their government checks for beer, booze, and cigarettes. They buy their food with food stamps, live in subsidized housing while whining and voting to keep their checks coming in. All this barrel of rotten apples is sustained by printing trillions of dollars in fiat, funny money and selling paper IOUs in a giant Ponzi scheme. The only difference in this and the original Ponzi scheme is the government's is millions of times larger than the little one Charles Ponzi went to prison for.

We started this discussion talking about a few bad apples in the barrel, and the yeast cake in a large wad of bread dough. What we have regressed into is a further discussion of a barrel of rotten apples that incidentally has a few, very few in some instances, good ones. The yeast has overwhelmed the flour and other ingredients to become totally useless. The words, politics and corruption, have become synonymous in our lexicon. An honest, God fearing person in politics is like an albino zebra-- rare and hard to find. Go to our politician zoo, C-SPAN and watch them perform. They strut like peacocks in their Armani suits and Gucci shoes spouting self-serving rhetoric as they form blocs and alliances to feather their personal beds at the expense of everyone else. They vote outrageous taxes to pay ridiculous prices for insane programs, bankrupting our next three or four generations. You can watch this eerie display for hours and no one even mentions the four ton elephant swinging his trunk with abandon in the china shop; our mushrooming multi-trillion dollar debt. We make fun of England with their Royalty; at least they are largely...