Violence is an evil thing, but when the guns are all in the hands of the men without respect for human rights, then men are really in trouble.”
–Louis L’Amour (The Daybreakers)

“Confuse them, Lord, and frustrate their plans, for I see violence and conflict in the city.”
–Psalm 55:9 (NLT)
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I read an article with the following title: “School Shooter Taken Alive, Will We Now Have Answers?” The answer is emphatically “NO!” Man doesn’t want an answer when he wants an excuse. Right now I have seen the fault of the shooting last week in Florida has ranged from guns to President Trump to the NRA to the Congress to mental instability. NO! None of those things or people are at fault.
Let me direct you to what is at fault, and it is really two things. First, we live in an anti-God, amoral, totally tolerant society. When we began to “legally” allow abortions killing millions of babies, when the “legal” system said that God is no longer welcome in school we opened the floodgates for the breakdown of society. When society began to call right, wrong and wrong, right we began to head down the direction where all kinds of immoral and destructive actions will happen.
The second reason is that there is evil in this world. People laugh at the thought of a devil, someone who is determined to destroy mankind, but there is a real devil and he has a real agenda against God, thus the evil.
The fault of what has happened lies within the heart of man and the deception of Satan. Professing to be wise, they became fools,…Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” (Romans 1:22, 24-25, NASB)
The nation needs God, yet when you have the media scorning and mocking Vice-President Pence because he says he talks to God and God talks to him, saying that is a clear sign of mental illness, we are in trouble. The Bible is mocked and scorned and yet that is Word of God speaking to man. Throw it out and what do you have–chaos and destruction. Hmmm, I wonder if there is a connection: abortion/prayer not in schools with many of the attacks coming in schools?
By the way a little background. The AR-15 is not a high caliber weapon, it is a .223 and it is not fully automatic, but semi-automatic, you have to pull the trigger for each shot.
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Let’s take another look from Robert J. Morgan’s book at the life of Adoniram Judson. He asked for the hand of Ann Hasseltine in marriage but also warned her father of the dangers of her becoming the wife of a missionary. They were married and left for Burma in 1812. “By 1820, there were ten Burmese converts, but at a cost. One Judson child was stillborn; another died of tropical fever.
“When war broke out between Burma and England, Adoniram was accused of being a spy and placed in a death prison. His dark, dank cell was filled with vermin, and Adoniram was shackled at the ankles. Every evening he was hanged upside down with only his head and shoulders resting on the ground.
“Ann, pregnant again, visited one government official after another, urging her husband’s release. On February 16, 1825, eight months after Adoniram’s arrest, she showed up at his prison carrying a small bundle, their newborn daughter Maria.
“Torturous months followed. Adoniram was finally released, but both Ann and Maria soon died of fever. Adoniram suffered a mental breakdown that nearly took both his ministry and his life.”
(Ah, but get ahold of this!) “But God wasn’t finished with him. America’s first foreign missionary still had a world to change!”

Regrets are not actions.”
–Loren D. Estleman (The Hider)

“For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death.”
–2 Corinthians 7:10 (NLT)
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I don’t often do this, or maybe the mind is just lazy, but I’m going to copy a devotion I read yesterday. It’s from a book titled, A Charles Dickens Devotional, by Jean Fischer.

“The thoughts of worldly men are for ever regulated by a moral law of gravitation, which, like the physical one, holds them down to earth. The bright glory of day, and the silent wonders of a starlit night, appeal to their minds in vain. There are no signs in the sun, or in the moon, or in the stars, for their reading. They are like some wise men, who, learning to know each planet by its Latin name, have quite forgotten such small heavenly constellations as Charity, Forbearance, Universal Love, and Mercy, although they shine by night and day so brightly that the blind may see them; and who, looking upward at the spangled sky, see nothing there but the reflections of their own great wisdom and book-learning.
It is curious to imagine these people…, busy in thought, turning their eyes towards the countless spheres that shine above us, and making them reflect the only images their minds contain. The man who lives but in the breath of princes, has nothing his sight but stars for courtiers’ breasts. The envious man beholds his neighbours’ honours even in the sky; to the money-hoarder, and the mass of worldly folk, the whole great universe above glitters with sterling coin–fresh from the mint–stamped with the sovereign’s head–coming always between them and heaven… So do the shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed.
–Barnaby Rudge
Worldliness is defined in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary as: ‘of, relating to, or devoted to this world and its pursuits rather than to religion or spiritual affairs.’ In this passage from Barnaby Rudge, Charles Dickens offers a rich description of worldliness and how it separates us from God.
Jesus said, ‘No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other’ (Matthew 6:24 NIV). The apostle Paul added: ‘If any of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a fool so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.’ (1 Corinthians 3:18-19 NIV)
The opposite of worldliness is heavenly mindedness. We cannot be both at the same time. When we are heavenly minded, we live with Christ as our model, believing that He died for our sins. Second Corinthians 5:17 describes it this way: ‘If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.’ When we set our minds on heavenly things, worldliness is no longer important to us. So choose to look up, keeping your eyes fixed on Christ and shifting your devotion from the world to God. Then watch as the glory of God unfolds in your life.”

“Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.” Colossians 3:2

Men can’t live without Him, and be men!”
–Ralph Connor (The Sky Pilot)

“For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes—the Jew first and also the Gentile.”
–Romans 1:16 (NLT)
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Take a gander at the following epitaphs; they were actually put on tombstones.

On the grave of Ezekiel Pease in Nantucket, MA

Pease is not here,
On his pod
He shelled out his Peas
And went to his God.

On the grave of a grave digger

Hooray my brave boys
Let’s rejoice at his fall.
For if he had lived
He would have buried us all.

One more–on a grave in Silver City, NV

Here lays Butch
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the trigger
But slow on the draw.

I have often wondered at the initials on tombstones or when people say it when someone dies. R.I.P. — Rest In Peace. I guess they say it to make others, or themselves feel good, but in reality many of those who are R.I.P. are not really doing so.
But I want to mention a question raised by Dave Roever in his newsletter. “Must we die to Rest in Peace?” With the terrible shooting yesterday in Florida can we say that we are at peace? Our nation is seeing darkness move across it; the darkness of immorality of a “dark, mental state.” Roever states that “We are a ntion at war, not in the Middle East only, but at home. It’s a spiritual war and it’s deadly. The spiritual state of the Union is cold. Cold and dying.”
A member of the F.B.I. stated on television after yesterday’s shooting that the cause is the moral state of the country. I read where one of those on the view mocked Vice-President Pence and said that he had a mental disorder because he talked to God, and even worse God talked to him. Oh my, how deadly that we would have men that listen when God speaks.
Go back to your school days. Did you ever fear going to school and worried that some nut would come in and start blasting away? We have the media taking constant shots with little or nothing to back up what they say; people do not have to be guilty of any charge, for to be accused is to be guilty–no peace. We have judges making decisions “according to thie wicked conscience, or total lack of conscience.” Praying is not allowed, and any religion or thought is alright unless it is Christian.
If this continues there will be even less peace. There will be a “famine of peace, rest and righteousness.” We must realize, no matter what the liberal left says, no matter what the pseudo-intellectuals say, no matter what the scorners and mockers say, that the only way to have peace is to have faith and hope in Jesus.