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Tag: lincoln

  • 70 Years (or so)?

    70 Years (or so)?

    70 years (or so)…

    In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread

    Till you return to the ground,

    For out of it you were taken;

    For dust you are,

    And to dust you shall return.”

    Genesis 3:19 NKJV

    Remember… you are dust

    We’ve all heard it:

    “Remember, you are dust” or some graveside equivalent from the Law of Moses or another ‘humble thyself before the Lord thy God’ quote from the Bible.

    In the days of his trouble Job pleads to the LORD:

    Remember, I pray, that You have made me like clay.
    And will You turn me into dust again?

    Job 10:9 NKJV

    ‘Lord HELP ME,’ some of us have prayed;

    ‘God help me,’ ‘Help me Jesus!”

    And we hear the executioner proclaim to the condemned man and all witnesses: “May God have mercy on your soul.”

    You and I know deep down and ALL flesh knows in our heart of hearts — our days will end!

    But the LORD abides forever;
    He has established His throne for judgment,

    And He will judge the world in righteousness;
    He will execute judgment for the peoples with equity.

    Psalm 9:7-8

    Why all this talk about the judgment?

    … it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment…

    Hebrews 9:27b NASB

    NOTE: Roger turned 70

    Although my thoughts now gather more urgency, they tend to come to the page just a bit slower.

    Change ahead in my Christian Social Witness to you and the world.

    Yet as always, my thoughts will remain well-considered in light of scripture before you read it here. (Bear with me and help me by your comments, please.)

    I do have a reflection or two on my three score and ten, which I will share with you more gradually than before.

    Roger Harned – reflection on continued writing at 70 years old

    How many score remain?

    Those accustomed to the language of King James Bible may take account of their days by the same measure of years used by Lincoln.

    Lincoln and Gettysburg Address

    “For score and seven years ago,” Lincoln began on November 19, 1863. He looked back to the year of our Lord 1776 (as they used to say) just 87 years before.

    You may also recall from Lincoln’s memorial to those killed:

    … that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

    Abraham Lincoln – Gettysburg Address

    Lincoln could not have known then that an assassin’s bullet would soon end his own life five years short of just three score years, at age 54.

    All flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust.

    Job 34:18

    Abraham Lincoln and Job were both highly successful men of integrity in life who encountered tragedy. Lincoln no doubt had read in his own King James Bible of Job’s struggles.

    If you’re keeping score

    Only a few of you will know what I once chose as a ‘life verse’ and that it comes from Job.

    {IF you want to know my life verse, just click the link to it above and it will open in a new tab or window.} It may help you to understand more about my purpose and gifts.

    It just so happens that in this year of our Lord {Anno Domini} A.D. 2020, I have, by God’s grace, lived three score and ten years.

    a bit of biography

    • My mother, Marie Hall Harned, lived more than four score years, though her father lived only to three score and five and her mother, Vera Tyler Hall not even to three score.
    • My father William E. Harned, his siblings and father William Alba all lived past four score years.

    Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

    I praise God for good health of this aging flesh and might easily boast (and speculate) of more years to come.

    Yet I remember well so many struggles of the lives of loved ones, their end which came upon us sooner or suddenly.

    Therefore like Job I consider that my end will be dust and strive to live for the life of my saved soul — in worship and love of Christ Jesus, One with God our Father.

    Take to heart your own possible suffering to come from Psalm 22. It precedes one we know so well about ‘the valley of the shadow of death‘:

    Be not far from me,
    for trouble is near,
    and there is none to help…

    … you lay me in the dust of death.

    But you, O Lord, do not be far off!

    excerpt Psalm 22 ESV listen
    a picture of heaven

    Psalm 22 was part of our celebration of the wife of my youth, Becky Rice Harned. We considered our end — knowing how she had suffered to survive just her fiftieth birthday.

    She went to the Lord in spirit in that same year of our Lord, 1999, on the 10th of February, her disintegrating frame now returned to dust.

    Other beloved ones suffer in the flesh even now. Some endure pain known to us, while others, like Becky, suffer in silence.

    This frail frame will fail. So will yours, yet be encouraged in the Lord.

    Though our aging flesh contains the image and essence of our Holy God, our dust is not our living soul.

    A few family and long-time friends know a partial history of my life in this world. And I suspect a handful know yours as well.

    Most of you know my own failures and disappointments, as we all have in varying degrees at different times. Yet I do not expect to receive Job’s double blessing before I draw my last breath.

    Job suffered much, as some we know — even as Jesus Christ suffered severely for our sins.

    I am no righteous man – only in Christ’s righteousness – but like Job I have sought to live my life in integrity. I could not have lived through it all without the encouragement of the Holy Spirit through Christ Jesus, when finally I relented from my sins and sought the Lord for help for this helpless flesh.

    Looking back & ahead

    Reflecting back on my three-score and ten, as well as looking forward into the light of life given to my own spirit of hope, I continue in God’s grace.

    I continue in purpose, perhaps more directed toward that which lives within reach of my limited mortal touch.

    Leaving behind each dream and soul beyond my reach, I press on to preach to Gospel exclusively to those whom the Lord has chosen. (You may not be one of these.)

    Those not saved by the grace of God have most likely scrolled past the Light of their salvation already.

    Roger Harned – reflection on why most will never talk of Jesus Christ

    Social Media is not the world

    Based on technical data, talkofJesus.com has reached readers in many countries on at least four continents so far. My Christian Social Witness may yet by God’s grace reach some soul who has doubted the only Son of God as the Way and Truth of Scripture.

    So often Jesus taught His followers, that is, believers who loved the Lord God and one another, and also preached to multitudes which included many who failed to have ears to hear or eyes to see.

    Though in Christ, I am certainly not Christ Jesus. I can no longer preach the Gospel to those who refuse the Good News of Christ Jesus. They have no interest in a relationship with the God of love and life!

    Therefore, Christ’s purpose for my witness of the Gospel to a 21st century church, wrought with ‘christians‘ who witness something other than Christ, pales by comparison. Never-the-less:

    No soul has more need for the true Gospel of Christ Jesus than the 21st century christian.

    Roger Harned – talkofJesus.com

    Although we will soon return to my 2020 series on the Gospel of John, you, beloved reader, will be in for a new and more pointed relational look at scripture as we speak exclusively to the church.

    To be continued... Lord willing...
  • In God We Trust – Hope

    In God We Trust – Hope

    The Lamentations asking “HOW?” are really questions of hope for a fallen nation. Christians hold onto hope.  In God we trust (at least, some of us.)  No Biblical consideration of our present and passing crisis would be complete without hope.

    Recalling from our parallel to Lamentations some of the earlier history of this young nation:

    • October 19, 1781 – Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington and the French at Yorktown Virginia, ending the war. Peace is not declared until two years later in Paris, September 3, 1783.
    • February 18, 1815, (just three decades later) renewed conflict ends after the British attempt to re-conquer the colonies (and defeat the French in Europe & the New World), burning the White House and sacking Washington DC.

    lincoln-memorial-and

    In a temple in Washington D.C., United States of America, sits a statue of a man and leader who often quoted scripture.

    Abraham Lincoln, the new Republican President was about as popular with the Democrats as President Obama, our nation’s first black president is with the Republican party of 2013.

    • November 6, 1860, the election of Lincoln assured that America would be divided by the politics of slavery.
    • Just fifty years after the sacking of Washington D.C. by the British, defeat of the Confederates, the surrender of Lee on April 9, 1865 and the compassionate grace of Lincoln’s policies to reconstruction prevented that collapse and held on to hope.
    • Less than a century later on December 7, 1941, the United States of America entered a war to save Asia and Europe from tyrants of Japan and Germany worse than Napoleon.

    After final defeat of the Axis powers in 1945, the US had a decided edge as empire of strength in a 20th century world which provided a stability of growth and hope until the evolution of decline of morality diminished the once considerable influence of the US empire.

    NOW (just sixty-eight years later), as in Jeremiah’s lament the people are asking HOW?

    A man is no longer a man of his word. A vote of one man has no influence; only money.

    • 1/21/2009 – WASHINGTON – Barack Obama, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Harry S. Truman, and Richard Nixon (also a Quaker) swore the oath on two Bibles. According to Wikipedia, the word “faithfully” was misplaced. The second oath was administered in a simple, private ceremony.
    • 9/11/2010 – WASHINGTON — House Democrats were preparing late last year for the first floor vote on the financial regulatory overhaul when Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio and other Republican leaders summoned more than 100 industry lobbyists and conservative political activists to Capitol Hill for a private strategy session.  He maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS. They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns… — he has raised $36 million for Republican causes during this election cycle… source: New York Times
    • 12/7/2011 – SWITZERLAND – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Clinton also announced that the U.S. will use both diplomacy and $3 million in foreign aid to help the global fight for gay rights. –Source: Business Insider
    • 12/26/2011 -The complete timeline of the Gingrich divorces shows he’s not been honest with voters source: The Raw Story

    A man is no longer head of his family.  A marriage of a man and a women is no longer honored in the land.

    Corporations have sovereignty over the US Congress, President, and Justices, as well as most ‘consumer’ Nations. Pornographic ads for pharmaceutical companies (with disclaimers which once would have brought congressional restrictions on broadcasters) bombard healthcare ‘consumers’ who are told to ‘tell your doctor’ about their government-subsidized products.

    A genocide of over 45 million children worldwide once unthinkable after the 1945 revelations of the concentration camps is policy guaranteed by government, insured and paid for by taxes from the budget.

    Greed and immorality are rampant: as the Prophets had warned Judah and Jonathan Edwards had warned America.

    We are sinners in the hands of an angry God!

    The lessons and hope of Lamentations are no less applicable in 2013.

    I have presented the warnings of the Prophets to Judah and the disobedience of the kings and people going back 200 years (1813, in context of present-day America).  Jeremiah closes Lamentations with hope, which proved true.

    Lamentations 5:

    21 Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored!
    Renew our days as of old—
    22 unless you have utterly rejected us,
    and you remain exceedingly angry with us.

    As you may recall:

    •  607 BC – Jerusalem fell. Yet just 70 years later:
    • 537 BC – the exiles return to Jerusalem, after which the Temple is rebuilt
    • 455 BC – Ezra and Nehemiah re-establish the Law and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem
    • 440 BC – Warnings of the Prophet Malachi

     “I have loved you,” says the Lord. But you say, “How have you loved us?” – Malachi 1:2

    Does this lament of God through a later Prophet sound familiar as Lamentations of just two centuries earlier?

    Alexander ruled Judah (no longer an empire) from about 332 BC, thus the Greek influence of culture represented in the New Testament and lasting beyond the influence of the rise and fall of the later Roman Empire.

    A great period of silence from God ensues until the time preceding Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, promised Messiah and King.

    The warnings of Malachi to WE the people are little different from what Jesus would preach in Jerusalem.

    Willem A. VanGemeren, in the Baker Bible commentary states:

    God raised up Malachi to address the problems of cynicism, formalism, and unfaithfulness, and questions about the benefits of godliness.  Malachi defends the love, honor, and justice of God…

    Malachi calls for responsibility in marriage, sacrifice, religion, social concerns, tithes, and observance of God’s laws. He redefined the “godly” as those who persevere in godliness.

    Do you persevere in godliness? Do you hold near your trust in God and faith in Christ Jesus?

    MANY in America and the world lament over a pervasive evolution of evil into the morality of mankind and governments who do NOT put their trust in God. As you can see, this is nothing new under the sun… even in America.

     

    • November 19, 1863, just 150 years ago, Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg echo a faith and hope immortalized in the memory of all faithful people of the United States of America (even now divided in the halls of Congress and the streets of Washington D.C.)

    … that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom… and that government of the people… by the people… for the people… shall not perish from the earth.” 

    This government and all governments not obedient to the Laws and will of Almighty God will indeed fall; as have all governments of rebellious man and tyrannical ambition.

    A King, who we crucified on a cross and show disobedience in our daily lives, will rule all people of hope and restore His own Kingdom to come.

    Thy Kingdom come.

    Thy will be done.

    On earth as it is in Heaven.

    This nation is a nation of its people. As in every nation, even a fallen Judah, a remnant of the faithful and obedient remain.

    Leaders and citizens obedient to the King of Heaven, Christ Jesus, will indeed not perish from this fallen earth or the eternal hope of this Kingdom to come.

    Even so, come Lord Jesus.    +