But I was miserable. I hurt inside. I didn't have the peace of mind that Jesus promised if we did his work. I didn't have the very thing I preached. Finally, in January of 1956 when I had but six months to go on my tour of duty, I made up my mind to settle it once and for all. I made a final study of the Bible and wrote down everything that sounded true in a notebook on my right. Those things that sounded wrong or inconsistent or that I couldn't believe, I wrote in a notebook to my left. For three months, between 3:00 and 7:00 A. M., sitting under a single bulb in the attic above the barracks, I made a comparative study of the Synoptic Gospels. When I finished, the left-handed notebook was completely filled with chapter and verse and reasons why I could not believe in Christianity. The right-handed notebook contained about two pages of homilies on love. So I gave up Jesus and the Baptist Church.
Oscar Zeta AcostaRelated topics
above attic baptist believe bible bulb chapter christianity church comparative duty everything final hurt inside january jesus left left-handed love mind miserable notebook once peace right right-handed settle single sitting six study synoptic thing three tour under verse work wrong things barracks months gospelsRelated quotes
If, therefore, our personal religious life is likely to be sapped by our devotion to social work, it would be a calamity second to none. But is it really likely that this will happen? The great aim underlying to whole social movement is the creation of a free, just, and brotherly social order. This is the greatest moral task conceivable. Its accomplishment is the manifest will of God for this generation. Every Christian motive is calling us to do it. If it is left undone, millions of lives will be condemned to a deepening moral degradation and to spiritual starvation. Does it look probable that we will lose our contact with God if we plunge too deeply into this work? Does it stand to reason that we shall go astray from Jesus Christ if we engage in the unequal conflict with organized wrong? What kind of ‘spirituality' is it which is likely to get hurt by being put to work for justice and our fellow-men?
Walter Rauschenbusch
There are three basic theories about this coming Final Empire, or The New World Order.
1. It will be a revival of the Roman Empire, where ten European countries try to band together, maybe like the European Common Market.
2. It will be an attempted union of ten world regions, like a North American Region, Asia-Pacific Region, etc.
3. It will be an alliance of 10 Muslim countries that surround (and hate) Israel and have for 4,000-years!
My study has led me to believe this final 10 nation empire will be 10 Muslim nations since they all hate each other and fight all the time just as God said they would in Genesis 16:12. They will never really "bond,” just as iron and clay will not bond with each other. Since this kingdom will have areas where enforcement of their rules and policies (like maybe taking a mark to buy and sell (Revelation 13-14)?) will be "weak” or "broken,” I have long prayed for God to put me some place where it is broken!
Kent Hovind
Speaking of that last contract signing reminds me of a good laugh I had at the expense of the newspaper boys. There were a couple of dozen of them sticking around when I signed, some of them fellows who had been traveling with the Yankees for several seasons; fellows whom I know intimately and well. Yet in their stories, every one of them wrote about me signing that contract with my left hand and some of the newspapers even ran pictures showing me signing left-handed! How they managed it I don't know-for as a matter of fact I write with my right hand now, and I always have. I'm left-handed in everything else I do, but when it comes to writing I'm as right-handed as any right-hander you ever saw. It just goes to show that people take a lot of things for granted. They don't observe things closely, particularly things about which they feel confident.
Babe Ruth
We must be prepared to accept the will of God. The Lord permits all sorts of things to happen to us contrary to our will, for if we always have it our way, we will not be prepared for the Kingdom of Heaven. Neither heaven nor earth will receive those who are self-willed.
God has a Divine plan for each one of us, and we must submit to His plan. We must accept life as it is given to us, without asking, "Why me?” We must know that nothing on earth or in heaven ever happens without the will of God or His permission. We must not become too engrossed with our hardships but concentrate on preserving our inner peace.
Even when we are praying for something, we are trying to force our will instead of accepting God's. All hardships and sorrows that God sends us are necessary for us, but we do not understand this when we are young. When we are older, then we understand that this is the way God shows His love for us.
Tadej of Vitovnica
If you will take the second chapter - let me have the book. [Reaches for a Bible. ] The fourth verse of the second chapter says: "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens," the word day there in the very next chapter is used to describe a period. I do not see that there is any necessity for construing the words, "the evening and the morning," as meaning necessarily a 24-hour day, "in the day when the Lord made the heaven and the earth."... I think it would be just as easy for the kind of God we believe in to make the earth in six days as in six years or in 6 million years or in 600 million years. I do not think it important whether we believe one or the other. ... My impression is they were periods, but I would not attempt to argue against anybody who wanted to believe in literal days.
William Jennings Bryan
